CHAPTER XXIII

SLAVERY TROUBLE (1849-1861)

The ownership of human beings. History shows that from very early times men owned slaves who were as much under the control of their masters as oxen. Slavery was then thought merciful, because prisoners of war were often killed unless they were kept as slaves. The Greeks had slaves and declared that some human beings were naturally born to command and others to obey. Americans who kept slaves said that the Greeks were right in believing that nature intended certain races to be slaves.

The belief that the few are born to rule while the many are fit only to obey, long remained unquestioned. But soon after the English colonization of America, thoughtful Englishmen and Frenchmen began to ask the reason for this inequality and they came to the conclusion that "all men are by nature free and equal." Thomas Jefferson, one of the most famous men of the South, made human equality in government the corner stone of the Declaration of Independence. He declared that "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" are “unalienable Rights" of all. He tried unsuccessfully to put a paragraph in the Declaration condemning the king of Great Britain for his determination "to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold" and "for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce."

Both North and South are responsible for introducing slavery into the English colonies. New Englanders made money by bringing shiploads of slaves to America. The northern colonists had slaves but gradually found them unprofitable. The cultivation of cotton made slavery profitable in the South (p. 293). It is easy to argue that what is profitable is right; thus New England shipowners argued that slaves were better off

in America than in Africa, and cotton planters declared that the Bible approved of slavery, and came to believe that it was a benefit to the negro. If the climate had been different, so that all the cotton and rice lands had been in the North, the South might have been the first to insist that slaves should be freed.

Early abolitionists unpopular in the North.—Widespread feeling that slayery is wrong developed slowly, even after the Declaration of Independence. In the first third of the nineteenth century, "abolitionists," as those who believed in abolishing slavery were called, were almost as unpopular in the North as in the South. A mob tied a rope to William Lloyd Garrison (1805– 1879), a famous early abolitionist, and dragged him through the streets of Boston. An Illinois mob killed the editor of a paper for attacking slavery. The attorney-general of Massachusetts said of this editor: "He died as the fool dieth." The antislavery poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, the New England Quaker poet, made him unpopular with publishers and magazine editors. Connecticut imprisoned a woman for teaching negroes without the consent of the town officers. The North long thought that abolitionists were impractical and ought to be suppressed.

Growing opposition to slavery.-The opposition to slavery gradually became worldwide. Great Britain and France freed their slaves before 1850. People were then impressed with the fact that the United States was the only great civilized nation to uphold slavery. Mexico abolished it in 1829 and urged Cuba to become independent of Spain and to free her slaves. The new interest in social reform was continually growing in the United States. Societies were organized not only to abolish slavery but also to promote temperance, the humane treatment of the insane, and the rights of women.

Stories like the following, told by John Randolph of Virginia, a descendant of Pocahontas, made people think. "The greatest orator I ever heard," said Randolph, "was a woman. She was a slave. She was a mother, and her rostrum was the auction block." She was pleading not to be separated from her children.

Such cases of separation were not the rule, but many began to feel that it ought never to be in the power of any person to cause such a separation. Abraham Lincoln expressed the opinion of many when he said that no one was good enough to be the master of another, and that if he were good enough, he would not want such power.

The political history of the thirteen years following the war with Mexico (1848-1861) revolves around the question of slavery. The opposition to it was continually growing more intense.

Three administrations (1849-1861).—The influence of slavery was felt in all the nominations for the presidency during this period. Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, a general in the Mexican War, who was thought to be favorable to slavery, was nominated by the Whigs. The new "Free Soil" party nominated Martin Van Buren on a platform calling for "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." He polled enough Democratic votes to cause the defeat of the Democratic party, so that Taylor was elected. In a little more than a year after he was inaugurated, Taylor died (1850). He was succeeded by Vice President Millard Fillmore, a former member of the national House of Representatives, who had grown up on a pioneer farm in central New York. His father had two books in his library, the Bible and a hymn book, and the boy was nineteen before he saw a copy of Shakespeare or of Robinson Crusoe, or a map of the United States.

The next President was Franklin Pierce, a Democrat of New Hampshire, who had been an officer in the Mexican War and a United States senator. He was elected because men believed that he would not cause trouble by attacking slavery. He was a college mate of the great American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote for the presidential campaign a life of Pierce, which helped elect him. Pierce appointed Hawthorne consul at Liverpool and thus enabled him to take those European travels which gave him material for his romance called The Marble Faun. Many remember Pierce because of his relations with Hawthorne,

whose fame is more lasting than that of his presidential friend. Pierce served one term (1853-1857).

Pierce was succeeded by a Democrat, James Buchanan (bŭ-kǎn'ăn) of Pennsylvania. He had been United States senator, Secretary of State, and minister to Russia and to Great Britain. He was chosen because it was known that he favored slavery and would try to keep the peace between the North and the South. Like the other Presidents after Jackson's time until the Civil War, he served only one term (1857-1861).

The balance of free and slave states.—Gold was discovered in California in 1848. So many gold seekers, known as "FortyNiners," rushed to California the next year that it was ready to become a state in a little more than a year after it had been ceded to the United States. It surprised the South by asking for admission as a state without slavery. The South said that the southern half of California ought to be a slave state, because a prolongation of the southern boundary line of Missouri would meet the Pacific Ocean near Monterey. If this boundary of the Missouri Compromise were extended through the new territory, southern California would be open to slavery. In 1849, when California applied for admission to the Union, there were fifteen free and fifteen slave states, and the South was anxious to preserve the balance (pp. 279, 329).

Compromise of 1850.-The South demanded that the new Southwest ceded by Mexico should be open to slavery and that the states formed from this territory should be slave states, so that each section might continue to have an equal number of senators. The North was opposed to the extension of slavery. There would have been civil war then if neither side had yielded.

Henry Clay, who was then in the Senate, took up for the third time the role of peacemaker (pp. 280, 317). He was assisted by Daniel Webster, whose famous Seventh of March speech in favor of compromise offended the northern abolitionists and made them call him a traitor to the cause of humanity.

EFFECT OF COMPROMISE OF 1850 AND KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT OF 1854 (p. 343)

Both sides finally agreed to the following compromise, known as the Compromise of 1850:

(1) All of California was admitted as a free state;

(2) Texas gave up its claim to New Mexico and lands farther north and was paid $10,000,000 by the United States;

(3) The Mexican cession outside of Texas and California was divided into two territories, New Mexico and Utah. Owners of slaves might take them into these territories. Any state formed in this region was to be a slave or a free state as the majority of its people might wish.

(4) A strict Fugitive Slave Law was passed, to make it easier for southern owners to recover slaves that escaped to the North.

(5) There were to be no more slave markets in the District of Columbia, but persons living there might have slaves.

The majority of people in both sections thought that this compromise settled the dispute about slavery.

Trouble over the Fugitive Slave Law.-The Constitution gave the South the right to ask for the return of fugitive slaves