S1E2 – The Father of All

This is Breaking Nation, a Civil War podcast. I'm your host, Scott Holmgren. My goal is simple: to bring the American Civil War to life by exploring and discovering the people, the places, and the events, as if we didn't know how it would all turn out. I don't know if you think about it in that way, but it really is. There are local and state politicians trying to get elected every year. Every two years, we have congressional elections for our representatives. On a federal level, senators are elected every six years. And then, of course, every four years is when we elect a president. There's a presidential election. And this happens to be one of those years, actually. But it's a historical constant that Americans always have politics on their mind. Every year, it's something we think about, it's something we debate, we talk about it, we argue about it, we are impassioned about it because we are participants in it. And I'd submit that we can find a lot of common ground with our fellow Americans in the past when we look back into our past. Because I would submit it is our national context as citizens. In fact, just think 20 years ago, back to about the year 2000, right? And think about where you were if you were alive at the time. Think about what it was that you were considering when you went to vote, the questions that were on your mind, and why you voted the way you did. What did you hope to see back in 2000? Let's go back even a little further, say 40 years, back to 1980, when the famous question was asked politically: are you better off than you were four years ago? And if not, maybe it's time for a change. That was the question in 1980. Let's go back further, 60 years ago, say back to 1960, back in the midst of the Cold War, as America was grappling with uh communism in the Soviet Union and leadership, and which direction did we want the country to go in? Those were questions that were on our minds when we went to the polls. And you can continue to just travel back in time. Now take it back to more than 150 years ago. Same questions, no matter the year. We all as Americans wrestle with these same basic questions. We ask these questions every four years, every two years, whenever we have the opportunity to ask the question and then to answer with our vote. The questions come down to some basics, don't they? It is, what do I want? What do I want in my country? What do I want in my reality when it comes to my job, the country I'm living in, the choices that are made, the security I seek, my children or my family members or those around me in my community that we all care about? What is it that I want? What am I seeing? What don't I see? What is it that I like or things that I don't like? Another question: where's the country going? What's the roadmap? Do I like the path that we're on? Am I not quite so crazy about the path that we're on? Is it time for a change? What needs to change? Who needs to change? What changes are important? Which ones are less important? Which ones can I negotiate or compromise? Or are there a trade-off around? And then lastly, like, are we better off? Am I better off than I was before? Do I want to be better off in two, four, or six years? What does that look like? What is it that I aspire to that I want to see the country change into? And so we ask those questions and we reflect on that constantly as Americans, as citizens, as we have a chance to vote. And if we pause and we stop and we think about the American Civil War, which began in 1861 and ended in 1865, I want us to begin with these familiar political sentiments. Because that context, again, it's our national context, it existed as we go back to the 1860s. And I'd like to put before us a few newspapers from the 1860s. These newspapers ought to give us a glimpse of what America was like then. Consider it the news feed. It was the social media of the day. It was where people got information. And there were a lot of newspapers. People were reading papers constantly. They were local. The cities would publish them, and then local papers would reprint the articles in the other papers. And these were on the front pages. And so try to imagine, set your phone down, your newsfeed down for a little bit, and try to imagine doing the same thing but with paper newspapers. And you have a paper and your neighbor has a paper, and the people in the other town they have a paper, and in the cities, you've got dozens of papers that are competing for attention. Consider this. In the April 16th, 1860 issue of the New York Tribune, on the front page, there's an ad. There's an ad that appears for a new hardcover book that was available for $1.25. The book is called Presidential Candidates Are Living Representative Men. And with 1860 being a presidential electioneer, you'd most likely be interested in a book that was advertised this way, it said. Quote: The endeavor has been to give a graphic and comprehensive record of the public acts of these public men, free from any partisan influence, and to present each in the position accorded to him by his party and attained by the advocacy of the principle to which he has devoted his powers of intellect. Thus, the acts and words of each man are allowed to define his own position. It is a work of reference indispensable to everyone in every walk of life. End quote. Yes, 1860 is an election year. And so the question for them, for us, is who are you going to vote for? You should know who your candidates are. So buy a copy of this book, take a look at it, digest it, read on it, reflect on what they say, get to know them through this little book. Now, sadly, in 1860, women and virtually all blacks, both slave and free, are disenfranchised. And for the voters at the time, there are 34 names that appear in the ad as potential candidates in the upcoming election of 1860. And these include some you may recognize, Stephen A. Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and most prominently William H. Seward. Now, interestingly, conspicuously missing from the list is a former congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. He didn't even make the cut for the book. Let's pick up another newspaper. Several months later, in the December 7th, 1860 issue of the Richmond, Virginia Dispatch, you read the front page. And there are little snippets and articles demanding your attention. One story is about a loud and volatile argument on a mailboat. There's another story about how American weapons had been smuggled into Russia during the Crimean War several years earlier. There's another one that says how buffalo riding is the newest popular circus attraction. And then sadly, an astronomer named Charles Eagleman recently passed away. But with all this demanding your attention, there's an article that summarizes the viewpoints on current President James Buchanan's fourth annual message to Congress. We know it as the State of the Union Address. But then it was called the Annual Message to Congress, and President Buchanan had given this message just a few days before on December 3rd. And the dispatch read this way. Quote, the National Intelligencer thus explains the contradiction which the President commits in denying the right of secession, and yet holding that Congress has no right to use coercion to prevent secession. In effect, Mr. Buchanan asserts secession to be a constitutional wrong and yet denies that Congress has the power to prevent the perpetration of that wrong. We can heartily congratulate him on the fact that he is so soon to be relieved from the cares of state. And we assure him that in such relief the great body of people will heartily sympathize. In other words, what is the guy in the White House thinking? Number one, is he even competent to be president? And his handling of the country right now in 1860 makes us wonder who is the next president going to be and who that is will be even more important of an issue. The truth is that Buchanan would be president for just 87 more days. And finally, let's look at the November 30th issue, 1860, of the Chicago Daily Tribune. And in the Chicago Daily Tribune on the front page, you would read some news about donations to the orphan asylum, or that unfortunately a Mrs. Cameron had been run over by a buggy on Clark Street, and that there was a boisterous group of intoxicated young men wanting to serenade a newly married couple. Despite all those stories, you would read this account of the Honorable James Guthrie's speech in Louisville as a commentary on Lincoln's recent election to the presidency. He had just been elected in 1860. Quote Fellow citizens, we have been called here to take into consideration the alarming condition of our country, North and South. Now, for the first time in the history of America, has a political panic arisen, a panic that is striking down the fortunes of the first men and depriving the laborer of his wages. Should the election of a sectional president stolify the progress of a country like ours? A country whose progress is without parallel in history? With the election of a single man, what have we to fear? I say we have a great deal to fear if we fail to do our duty, but we have nothing to fear if we are true to ourselves and to our country. That article is highlighting panic and division. In other words, things are not looking up for the country. We're going to have to be prepared. Now, those three articles, apart from a very distinct style and vocabulary, I have to believe these stories sound just like our newsfeeds today. What is going on in politics? What is going on with the upcoming election? I need to be an informed voter. You need to be an informed voter. Look at the candidates. What about the president right now? He makes no sense. Uh can a state secede, just leave the country or not? What's allowable? What isn't? And what direction is the country headed in? Am I a satisfied or a dissatisfied citizen? So through these papers, hopefully you begin to get this idea that readers and hundreds of others were asking questions. And the reality is, is that they had no idea that the Civil War would begin in just a few months. But the crisis, and I and I'd suggest that that's not too strong a word to use. The crisis facing the country was on everyone's mind, whether you're in New York, whether you're in Richmond, Virginia, whether you were in Chicago, north, south, east, and west. And the question is in this episode that I want to get to is how did it come to that? How did it come to such a crisis? People like to find blame. They like to identify a root cause. Is what is the cause of the Civil War? How did we get here? How did the crisis come to a head? And I would want to start by submitting that war and conflict are central and universal to humanity. Just look through history. It is littered by war. And the idea of a peaceful utopia is a figment of imagination. I know everybody thinks all we need to do is get to peace and we can talk our way there, we can educate our way there, we can do this or that. But I would submit to you, just consider this. Consider the rich irony that Gene Roddenberry, right? Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek. And in his utopian vision of humanity's progress in Star Trek, he still found it necessary to create Klingons. Because war and conflict are universal. You can't get away from it. In fact, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, War is the father of all and king of all. It is the tragic inevitability of conflict, as historian Victor Davis Hansen puts it. The seeds of conflict, fighting, and warfare are buried deep in each one of us. The Apostle James asked this question. He said, What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have. The basic truth of human nature is that when we don't get what we want, we will do whatever it takes to get it. Puritan Richard Sibs wrote this. He said, Where there is dissension of judgment, there will soon be dissension of affections. That fighting spirit to fight for something, to fight for someone, is central to who we are as people. And it can be a great positive. We can definitely celebrate that, but we can also become terrified by it. What will we fight for? Military history and the study of that history is elemental to America, as it is for every country. And Hansen reminds us this pivotal truth. The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. So what was the source of the crisis that led to the American Civil War? What had been brewing and eroding the country's unity for more than 100 years? In order to discover that answer, we'll need to first immerse ourselves in the year 1860. The United States of 160 years ago is a very different place. It's different demographically, socially, economically, culturally. So let's take a look at the data and the information from 1860. And this is America on the eve of the Civil War. In 1860, the population of the entire country was 31 million people. Today, it's more than 310 million people. 10 times as many people. And in 1860, more than 27 million Americans were free, and nearly 4 million were slaves. And just to put things in perspective, these are like the entire population of Texas, were all the free people in America at the time, and then Oklahoma were all the enslaved people of America at the time. So far, far fewer people, a tenth of the current population was spread over about half the geographic territory of the country today. And at that time, the majority of that population was concentrated in the north. Six of the seven most populous states were in the north in 1860. And those six states, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Massachusetts, accounted for nearly half of the entire free population of the country. Because more than 18 million Americans lived in the North, there were about 3 million that lived in what we would call the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. And then there were about 9 million that lived in the South, and many of them were enslaved. So let's talk about the cities a little bit. Of the 25 most populous cities in America in 1860, only three of them were in the Confederate South. New Orleans, which was the sixth most populous city in America, and then Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, which were 22nd and 25th, respectively. And the combined population of those three cities was 247,000 people, which was smaller than the city of Brooklyn all by itself at 266,000. And Brooklyn wasn't even a part of New York City yet. It was separate. Finally, so just to get your attention, get this. Atlanta, Georgia, in 1860 was the 100th largest city in the country. And its population was just 9,554. In fact, it wasn't even the capital of Georgia. But no matter what those numbers say to you or say to us, the rate of growth in the United States by 1860 had been incredible. Because the population of the U.S. had doubled since electing George Washington as the first president. And then it had doubled again. Think about that graphed out. The rate of growth doubled and doubled again. And not only had its population quadrupled, so had its territory in square miles growing from 13 states to 33. And Kansas would be added as number 34 on January 29th, 1861. Now a great majority of the population growth was due to immigration, as 2.9 million foreign-born Americans came from Germany and Ireland alone by 1860. And many were Roman Catholic, which is why there were many Protestant and what we would call nativist organizations that sprang into existence. They didn't care for immigrants. And these immigrants also stratified the society because they would flood the working class, providing labor for the rapid growth in manufacturing. Now, don't get me wrong, the United States was still incredibly a rural nation. Today, 80% of Americans live in cities and 20% live in rural areas. But in 1860, those percentages were flipped. 20% of Americans lived in cities, 80% lived in rural areas. And this point alone should convey the sense of locale for the majority of Americans. Most stayed where they were born and where they lived. Now, as the country grew in numbers, it also grew in education. And one reason Americans could adapt so quickly and perform at such high levels was because of how highly educated they were. Not counting the slave population, mind you, 90% of all Americans were literate in the 1850s. And at that time in the entire world, only Denmark and Sweden could match that. To propel this, there was one man who impacted the educational system in the US perhaps more than anyone. Any other, and his name was Horace Mann. And throughout the 1830s and 1840s, as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, he relentlessly worked to apply principles he advocated for in the Common School Journal, including this quote, the public should no longer remain ignorant, that such an education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public, and that education should be provided by well-trained professional teachers. End quote. And his work revolutionized the school system in his state, which in turn had a ripple effect in influencing others. And finally, in 1848, he was elected to Congress. Today we take literacy and public education for granted, but in the years leading up to the Civil War, the U.S. was being transformed by training its professional force of teachers who would in turn create a literate and well-educated populace. During the same time, the Industrial Revolution that began in Great Britain at the end of the 1700s spread across to the rest of Europe and the United States in the early 1800s. And there were four main developments that we can look at, that we can understand and reflect on. The first one is that machine tools replaced hand tools. Tools would be made by machines. And so machine tools were now being used to create other goods. That's the first thing. The second thing is that textile manufacturing saw water power harnessed for mills. And so there were spinning devices, and water power fueled these textile manufacturing centers, which increased output, which increased the need for more material coming in, i.e. cotton. And at that time, uh in the late 1790s, Eli Whitney had it invented the cotton gin. And the cotton gin, which is short for engine, the cotton gin greatly increased textile manufacturing in the United States and literally around the world. The third thing was steam power. So steam engines now began to build on the efficiency and power of water, but harnessed. And fourth, iron production came on strong as wood fuel was replaced by coal, and steam power increased the output of cast iron. So all these technological advances, all these things, the machine tools, the textile manufacturing, the steam power, iron production, all of this changed the agriculture, the textiles, the weaponry, the building, the construction, and the manufacturing of all kinds. A tremendous revolution in how goods were produced and made. And this led to what the Europeans called the American system of interchangeability and automation. When we think of the birth of, say, assembly lines, often we might think of Henry Ford, right, building his Model T uh in a factory at the start of the 20th century. Well, I would submit that the forerunner of the assembly line was developed in the early 1800s, this American system in small factories and manufacturing plants across the northern part of America that produced clothing and goods. Because where there was a city, there was labor, and where there was labor, there was production. With that said, cities were also getting closer to one another, not in distance, mind you, but in time because of another revolution. It was a transportation explosion. Before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, transportation of people and goods was best done by sailing ships along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. So if you remember your map and geography, that's why all the major cities of America were essentially coastal cities. Think about it: Boston, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah. But once the Erie Canal in 1825 connected Buffalo and the Great Lakes to Albany on the Hudson River, thousands more miles of canals began to be dredged into the American landscape. And when Robert Fulton's steamboats began navigating U.S. waterways, what used to be month-long overland journeys westward suddenly became week-long boat rides. And the river system became the new superhighways of transport and commerce. The Mississippi, the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Arkansas rivers all moved goods and animals and people all across the country. And then came the railroads. By 1860, U.S. cities would be connected by more than 30,000 miles of rail track. That was more railroad mileage than the rest of the entire world at the time combined. Weeks of travel became days. Also, ocean-going screw ships, sloops, and frigates could now sail free of the whim of the wind. There were paddle-wheel ships as well, and they all carried a full set of sails as a backup, as steam engines could be unreliable. But the great sailing navies and fleets of America and the world now had to modernize with machinery. Now think about how fast that change came. What had just happened in these 50 years from 1810 to 1860? 50 years. I mean, for us, stop and think. 50 years ago would be the 1970s. And guess what? 50 years ago, Americans were driving in cars along the same highways we drive today. And we fly using jet engine technology that's been around since then, too. Yes, things are way more efficient, but the modes of transportation are essentially the same. We travel the same way people did in 1970. Planes, trains, and automobiles. But in 1800, it would take people six weeks to travel from New York to Chicago. And just 50 years later, their grandkids could do it in two days. That is a revolution in transportation. And it wasn't just people and goods. Information now moved like lightning across the country due to the invention of Samuel Morse's telegraph. Instead of taking months for news to travel at the rate of, say, sailing ships or horseback, or even days for news to travel at the rate of railroads, information now could be sent in hours or even minutes via the wires that now stretch from city to city across the American landscape. So much so that the newspaper industry exploded and the Associated Press was formed in New York City in order to pool resources for the dissemination of up-to-date news. So let's pause, is your head spinning yet? In just 40 to 50 years, so much had changed in the United States, from population to education, from technology to transportation. And then there are the politics. The combination of rapid advances in transportation, manufacturing, education began to shape American culture and politics beyond the period of American history that sometimes is called the Era of Good Feelings or the Jacksonian period, roughly from after the War of 1812 through the 1840s. Before that time, the generation of the Founding Fathers was politically made up of two groups. There were the Federalists, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, those who supported a stronger, centralized government. They supported economic growth and friendship with Great Britain. And then there were the Democratic Republicans, the party of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, those who held to more Republican ideals and opposed Hamilton's policies like a national bank, and they tended to be friendly with France. Now, this two group system, the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans, is considered the first party system of American politics. And all this is important because by the 1850s, these two political and cultural parties and purposes had evolved, primarily due to the force of President Andrew Jackson, into what became known as the Second Party system. You see, Andrew Jackson began as a Democratic Republican, and the party slowly evolved into the Democratic Party, and Jackson's loyalists led it. The Whig Party, and that's spelled WHIG, that party was an amalgam of everybody who opposed Andrew Jackson. These would be people who were former national Republicans, people who were anti-Masonic in their stance, people who were abolitionists and opposed slavery, and then free soilers, people who thought that lands and territories should not allow for the extension of slavery. So let's talk about the Democrats for a second. The Democrats shaped themselves as those who represented the common folk, the hard-working Americans who earned their living honestly, in stark contrast to the system of the Second Bank of the United States, which was full of corruption and greed. The Democrats had their base along the frontier of the country and where substance farming was widespread. Immigrants, Irish, and German Catholics were drawn to the Democratic ranks. And together the Democrats believed the people were the best decision makers, not a centralized elite or financial institution. And to help the growth of farms and families, the Democrats were expansionists, so they were eager to realize the dream of manifest destiny that the United States should continue to expand and occupy the entire North American continent. Opposed to the Democrats were the Whigs. And they took their name from the revolutionary colonists who opposed King George III. The new American Whigs opposed what they saw as the new monarchy of King Andrew, otherwise known as President Andrew Jackson, and his authority and overreach. The Whigs promoted expansion of the economy and free enterprise while limiting presidential power. The Whigs tended to be more upscale and metropolitan. They were English or Scots-Irish and Protestant in their background. And they also included a very strong moral base that was opposed to Masonic orders and that called for the abolition of slavery. Now the Democrats and the Whigs of the Second Party system were not the same as 21st century liberals and conservatives. There are bits and pieces of socialist, capitalist, traditional, and progressive perspectives in both mindsets. They drew different lines in different sands at that time. So it's important for us that we resist the urge to simply slap names on ideologies that govern our current point of view. That would be the presentist temptation. Because politics as we know it was arranged differently. But the drivers of political persuasion and power are still things we can identify with. Why does all of this matter? Because I'd submit it's at this point we need to get inside the minds and hearts of what made Americans tick in 1860 as a nation. Their ideologies, their beliefs, their values, the things that influenced their choices and decisions. What hills would they die on, and where might they compromise? When would they work together? And when wouldn't they? The country's political beliefs, what the people believed about their country and valued in 1860, as they do for us today, rests on the keystone that the entire American experiment rests on, the Constitution. If we were to flip back through the American calendar, it reminds us that we declared ourselves independent from Great Britain in 1776. Then we fought the British for another five years. Five years. But once the fighting of the Revolutionary War ended in 1781, what happened next? Well, the Battle of Yorktown was in 1781, and although the Treaty of Paris in 1783 officially ended the conflict, the fighting was all but over in 1781. But then the Constitution was written in 1787 and took effect in 1789. So if we do the math, there are about eight years that aren't accounted for. The United States of America had existed, but how was it functioning without the Constitution? What was going on from 1781 to 1789? Well, from 1781 to 1789, the United States operated according to a document. By its full title, it was called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Let me repeat that. So eighty years before the Civil War, the very document that we chose as Americans at that time to build upon as a framework spelled out the literal division that would break the nation in two, the Confederacy and the Union. Commonly the document is referred to as the Articles of Confederation. And as we've calculated, it lasted only about eight years. Why was that? In the nineteen thirties, historian James Trusloe Adams wrote in The March of Democracy, which was his multivolume History of the US, this succinct summary of the articles. The form of government then inaugurated was both clumsy and weak. There was no executive, the president of Congress being merely the presiding officer elected by that body, which itself sat as a single chamber. The Congress itself had no power of taxation, of regulating commerce, or of enforcing its measures on the several states. The acts it was allowed to perform, such as declaring peace and war, making treaties, sending and receiving ambassadors, determining boundary disputes, regulating Indian affairs, and coinage, had to be agreed to by the representatives of nine states, each of the thirteen having a single vote. No amendments could be made to the articles except by the unanimous consent of all. The situation was simultaneously logical and ridiculous. On one hand, the colonists had just fought King George III of England to free themselves from under the tyranny of a monarch's centralized power. So governmental power belongs to the new states. On the other hand, the colonists could never have secured that freedom had they not acted together and in concert to some degree with a form of centralization. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. No powerful central government, except enough for the country to actually work. And yet it just never really worked. Often during those years, less than half of the congressional delegates were ever even present for a session. But just before the total governmental overhaul began, the Congress did accomplish one remarkable thing. That is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. So why does this matter in a discussion of the Civil War? Well, let's look at it, because in it we're going to see some reoccurring themes: expansion into new territories, states within the Union, the separation of federal and state authority, and even slavery. So, first let's talk a little bit about expansion under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. After the Revolutionary War, via the Treaty of Paris in 1783, a huge block of land was given to the U.S. by Great Britain. And it's what makes up today's states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. Kind of sounds like the Big Ten or the original Big Ten. And it was north of the Ohio River all the way west to the Mississippi. So whenever the U.S. gains territory, the question arises, what do we do with it? And how does it get done? Well, originally the first colonies had claims on land to the west in ways that look like long stripes or ribbons on a map. So in theory, when the Virginia colony was first established, so the state of Virginia there on the Atlantic seaboard, it had claim on all the land between the 34th and 41st parallels from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific. In other words, Virginia would go west through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and so on and so forth. Instead, through the Northwest Ordinance, the area would now be divided into new states rather than extensions of existing states. We're used to this version of history as we're taught how the country grew with the addition of new states and new stars on our flag. But it didn't have to be this way. Had they stuck with the original intent of the colonies, imagine our U.S. map just being the original states running all the way across North America to the Pacific. It would certainly have a different look, feel, and shape, wouldn't it? But no, the Northwest Ordinance said that the land would be divided into new states that would now be distinct and separate from the others, and then added to the Union. Statehood would come once the population in each territory reached sixty thousand, and each state would have equal representation in Congress. Then the ordinance addresses slavery. In Article VI it says this there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, provided, always, that any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed. And conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid. End quote. Now there is no explicit documentation as to who wrote Article VI or what debate, if any, took place over its wording or inclusion. But this document was approved in July of 1787. At the same time, the convention to revise the government was meeting in Philadelphia from May 25th on into September of 1787. This was the new Constitutional Convention. And it made George Washington the chairman, which in itself was a gesture that, hey, we're going to be serious about the task at hand this time. But no matter who was in the chair, the challenge was going to be fundamental. James Truslow Adams again writes, quote, The greatest difficulty which had to be overcome was the old jealousy of the states for one another and their pretensions to complete sovereignty individually. How to reconcile the sovereignty of the several states with the creation of a general government which should have genuine power would have been an almost insuperable problem to solve, even had the states been all of the same size and power. But to this was added the fact that they differed greatly, and that the small ones feared placing themselves under control of the larger ones. End quote. States controlling one another, states competing with one another, power struggles between states and blocks of states, those issues aren't really on our radar today. We're more used to intrastate issues, not interstate issues. You know, an intrastate issue uh might be one how a state is controlled by a large concentration of people in a city or two while leaving the smaller rural population in a political jam. But representative inequality between states was just too soon in the wake of the revolution that sought to rectify that issue. How can we just fight a war where we want equal representation and now some states are going to have more than others? I get it. It's a concern. So how did the new constitutional convention navigate this seemingly impossible situation? Well, first, what came to be known as the Virginia Plan within the convention built the framework of the new government around a division of powers, in that there would be three separate branches for executive, legislative, and judicial purposes. Remember your schoolhouse rock videos like I do, right? The legislative congress would now consist of two houses instead of one under the old Confederation Plan, and the lower house elected by the people of each state, the upper house nominated by the legislatures of each state, and this Virginia plan resulted in the existence of the House of Representatives and the Senate, a bicameral legislation. Secondly, to keep the bigger states from dominating the smaller ones, a deal was struck at the convention known as the Connecticut Compromise. It provided a solution, the upper house or Senate would provide equal representation for every state, while the lower house of representatives would provide representation according to each state's population, calculated by adding the entire free population to three-fifths of any slave population. When the new constitution was ratified in 1788, then it also included what is known as the Fugitive Slave Clause within the Constitution. It's Article 4, Section 2. And here's a direct effect of the Northwest Ordinance now that language had to be created for all the states, both free and slave. So this clause states that, quote, no person held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof, escaping into another shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. Did you listen carefully? No use of the word slave. But even though the term slave was not used, the implication was crystal clear. Any slave that left a state would be summarily returned. Now secondly, Article I Section 9 of the Constitution in a very passive way said that the government could not prohibit the importation of slaves for the next twenty years. Here's what it says. Quote The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person. Again, no use of the word slave, but certainly the importation of persons as if they were property. Outside of that, the Constitution provided no further guidance on the issue of slavery, nothing condemning it as a deplorable evil, nothing condoning it as a necessary right. As Joseph Ellis says in his book Founding Brothers, quote, the distinguishing feature of the document when it came to slavery was its evasiveness. It was a prudent exercise in ambiguity. Less than a year after the new Constitution came into force, in March of 1789, there were three petitions that landed in the House of Representatives calling for the abolition of slavery. One of them was even endorsed by so famous a name as Benjamin Franklin. But since the Constitution gave the slave trade a 20-year grace period until 1808, there could be no interference with the trade itself. But there was no prohibition on ending the institution itself. And so the issue went to committee, where Southerners tied up the issue so tight it couldn't be untangled. It was the impracticality of dealing with the institution. There were too many slaves to free, it was too expensive to reimburse their owners, and there were too many to relocate or recolonize. And those impracticalities became greater and greater. There were certainly other plans in the 1790s. Thomas Jefferson had many vague ideas. Other politicians such as Fernando Fairfax or St. George Tucker, who are both from Virginia, they both were suggesting gradual liberation. Historian Paul Finkelman describes Tucker's work as, quote, simultaneously visionary, philanthropic, racist, vicious, utterly impractical, internally inconsistent, and hopelessly complex, end quote. And it's identifying the presentest challenges for someone at the time who is trying to think outside of his contextual box. Could the expense of compensation for slaves have been spread out sufficiently to mitigate the overall cost? Maybe. Could relocation have been solved beyond just establishing the new colony of Liberia in West Africa to include other places, perhaps even places west of the original colonies? Maybe. Was there a leader who might emerge to do this? Well, the only one who made himself visible was Benjamin Franklin, and he was already old and sick. He wrote a powerful parody in 1790, published across the North, that stirred those ready once again to address the problem of slavery. Unfortunately, he died weeks later. Madison stepped in to straddle the issue once again, and it went nowhere. James Madison's influence led the Congress to decide it could do nothing. And forty-three years later, Daniel Webster, the famous politician from Massachusetts, would sing the same song when he said, quote, My opinion of the powers of Congress on the subject of slavery and slaves is that Congress has no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves. This was so resolved by the House in 1790, and I do not know of a different opinion since. So then Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 a few years later to enforce the original Fugitive Slave Clause. This came about because of a case of kidnapping and extradition that had been bouncing through the courts for years. A black man named John Davis had been a slave of a Virginian who lived in the area south of the village at that time of Pittsburgh. When states' boundaries were finalized in 1779, the Virginian suddenly found himself now to be a resident of Pennsylvania. And in 1780, the state of Pennsylvania passed a Gradual Emancipation Act, which required Davis' owner to register him by a certain day or he would immediately be free. Davis was never registered and was then legally free. Years later, Davis was hired out to work for a man named Miller in Virginia until a group of anti-slavery Pennsylvanians found his whereabouts and brought him back. But then Miller hired three Virginians to go north and capture Davis, who was then sold to another in eastern Virginia. In 1788, a judge in Pennsylvania indicted the three Virginians for kidnapping. But Virginia's Governor Randolph refused the request for their extradition in 1791. This case and many others demonstrated why something needed to be done. If left to state versus state showdowns, what was the point of delivering up on claim of the party to whom it must be due, end quote? What was the point of that language in the Fugitive Slave Clause? In response, many northern states created personal liberty laws that made it more difficult than just claiming a person was a slave. Evidence and warrants now entered the process. But at the end of the day, it really depended on state judges rather than federal law, and a new industry of slave catchers and bounty hunters evolved in order to return slaves to their owners. How could this possibly be happening? Going back to the Constitutional Convention, how could the people who look to live free from the yoke of oppression of King George III turn a blind eye to the millions of people within their own borders who were under the yoke of oppression of slavery? What were they doing in the Constitutional Convention? Well, they were trying to build a better structure for governing. How were they doing it? Making compromises to placate the differing interests of states. Who were they ignoring? The slave population. All of this brings us to 1789. New constitution, new form of government, new president as executive, but the old problem of slavery ignored. It was Thomas Jefferson who initially penned some of the most powerful words in human history when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Doesn't it say all men? How do slaves work into that equation? They don't. What about Jefferson's paradoxical ownership of slaves himself, while also signing the eighteen oh seven Act prohibiting further importation of slaves into the US? These are studies in contradiction. Because ultimately the American Civil War was caused by slavery. Because it was never dealt with decisively before eighteen sixty. Because the framework of the Constitution made allowances for it. Because the issue of centralized power was handled via compromise. Because the new country needed unity in order to declare its independence. Because as separate colonies, they could not individually stand up to Great Britain. And there are a lot of side alleys to go down when unpacking all of this, and different people to meet and listen to along the journey, and even foreign countries to consider, all of which require delving into. But at the end of the day, to say that the Civil War was caused by slavery is both correct and still too simplistic, and it demands an expansive contextual understanding to do it justice. And we haven't even begun to broach the moral arguments against slavery in America's South, and how America's slavery was different from other types of slavery throughout history, across millennia, and around the globe. But let's refocus. Because at the time of the brand new Constitution, the founders, the statesmen, and the soldiers who flipped the calendar from the 1700s and into the 1800s also had no idea what was in front of them. Imagine it is the year 1800, and in a way it was anything goes politically, the Wild West, a make it up as you can environment of possibilities. The revolutionary figures who stepped into history could have just as easily been forgotten traitors dangling from hangmen's nooses, had a battle gone in favor of the redcoats. And after they finished fighting the British, then they set upon one another. The turning of the century was like a giant bench clearing American political brawl in terms of personalities and rhetoric, challenges of honor and accusations, rivalries and apocalyptic exaggeration. Remember this. In 1804, the vice president of the United States shot and killed the former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in a duel. Let me repeat that. The vice president of the United States shot and killed the former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in a duel. Can you even imagine a headline like that today? Yes, Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton. And we might think that distrust of politicians is a modern mindset. But in 1802, the media of the day described political leaders and their followers as, quote, chimney sweeper politicians and scavenger statesmen, and the very refuse and filth of society. End quote. Imagine a high-ranking member of a president's cabinet writing this opinion about a presidential candidate known to everybody. This person wrote, quote, There are great and intrinsic defects in his character which unfit him for the office of chief magistrate, extreme egotism, vanity without boundaries. He is often liable to paroxysms of anger which deprive him of self-command and produce very outrageous behavior to those who approach him. End quote. And then this person actually endorsed the candidate. It's a wonder the country even survived a year. Historian Joseph Ellis calls this period, quote, a decade-long shouting match, end quote. And it was from the circus, once the new government was formed, the U.S. began to crawl, then toddle, then walk forward. Jefferson would become president and oversee the doubling of the country's physical size with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. More land meant more room to expand, and more room to expand meant the question: will slavery expand with it? Historian Joseph Ellis in his book American Creation looks at this one moment as an opportunity that Jefferson really could have done something. He explores how the Louisiana Purchase might have provided a means by which Jefferson could have ended slavery in the U.S., albeit gradually. He could have first had Congress prohibit slavery in the territory, similarly to how the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 did so. Had they done that and abolished slavery and then made it a condition for admission into the Union, the entire Louisiana Territory and the land west of the Mississippi could have been free. Secondly, the revenue generated from the sale of new federal lands could have been used as a fund to compensate slave owners in the South as they freed slaves according to an agreed-upon schedule. Ellis actually shows that it was a creative solution to a sticky problem. However, Jefferson did not pursue this or any other strategy for intentionally winding down slavery. Why? Well, frankly, the Federalists in New England and those abolitionists who lived in those states, they never pressed him to make slavery an issue with Louisiana. Instead, most of the New Englanders decided to advance their own cause for secession from the Union. They were sick of what was going on and said, let's leave the country ourselves. And that led to eventual dissolution of the Federalist Party itself. Rather than emphasizing the issue by bringing it up, Jefferson decided that the best course would be to let it recede into the shadows. Thomas Jefferson's actions or inactions meant that someone else would have to lead the country through the sectional divides due to slavery. And that someone was Senator Henry Clay from Kentucky. No two individuals are more at the political vortex of slavery in the United States than Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay. Let's start with Jefferson. Historian Dennis Rasmussen is a professor at Syracuse and has written a fantastic book called Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders. In it, he walks with Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, and their doubts later in their lives as they grappled with the infancy of America. He sorts through their words and actions to draw distinctions they made when it came to partisanship, federal strength, civic virtue, sectionalism, and slavery. In Jefferson's case, here you have a figure who merits his own monument in Washington, D.C. He has a spot upon Mount Rushmore. He's the writer of the Declaration of Independence. He was the first Secretary of State and the third president. He sold his personal library to the Library of Congress, and he owned slaves, and averaged about a hundred persons at any given time across his lifetime as a Virginia planter. He was and remains an enigma. He championed the greatest basic self-evident truths of humanity, the equalities that every person should enjoy. And then he lavishly accumulated wealth, goods, furniture, libraries, artwork, and hundreds of bottles of wine while minister to France. The paradox of Jefferson comes to the Civil War in his ideal. Of state sovereignty and toleration of slavery. During the period of the Articles of Confederation, a purpose for centralized power to him was in regard to foreign policy. Jefferson often said, quote, My general plan would be to make the states one as to everything connected with foreign nations, and several as to everything purely domestic. End quote. Can you imagine every state doing its own thing? In Jefferson's mind, it could be perfectly acceptable, except maybe when we needed to work together to go fight a war. Jefferson's views obviously shifted once the Constitution was ratified, but even then he often found himself at definitive odds with Hamilton and the Federalists, who wanted to build and expand the national government. Layered upon this framework, the issue of slavery took on a sectional flavor over time. While many Americans didn't like the institution, most, including many of the founders, figured that eventually it would die out over time. But history proved this not to be the case. Slavery had been a part of the Southern society and economy for 150 years at the time of the Declaration of Independence. It would not simply disappear. And in 1793, the invention of the cotton gin caused the southern cotton industry to explode as a cash crop that could be stored for a long period of time and shipped great distances without spoiling. Slavery expanded as profitability rose. And while this dramatically and obviously benefited the South, manufacturers in the North saw an increase in production as well. We're talking about mammoth growth. It didn't simply double or triple or even grow by 10 times. Production multiplied over 180 times in less than 20 years. And then Jefferson was elected president in 1800. When Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory, he opposed legislation that would have prohibited the domestic slave trade in the newly acquired region. He could only admit that emancipation might be an option if those liberated would be relocated elsewhere. But he didn't see how that was possible, so there was nothing that could be done. Though passive to do anything about it and active in perpetuating it, Jefferson did understand what was happening. In a letter written to John Holmes of Maine in 1820, he painted slavery and the course towards civil war with compelling colors. Jefferson wrote this, quote, but this momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 76 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. Likewise in the diary of one Isaac Briggs, a Quaker from Maryland who visited the Virginians home at Monticello, Briggs attributed Jefferson to have said this quote The Union will be broken. All the horrors of civil war, embittered by local jealousies and mutual recriminations will ensue. Bloodshed, rapon, and cruelty will soon roam at large, will desolate our once happy land, and turn the fruitful field into a howling wilderness. This from a man who was there at the beginning. Thomas Jefferson, who did so much to build the country, but so little to address slavery. Someone who did try to do something about it was Henry Clay, but he was also a man of his times. Also a native of Virginia, born in 1777, Clay settled in Kentucky as a lawyer and eventually entered politics. Why should we pay attention to him as we examine the causes of the Civil War? Well, here's four reasons. Number one, he built his career on good penmanship. That's actually true. He got his first job as a clerk because his boss needed someone with immaculate handwriting. Number two, many of his legal cases are still relevant and even cited by the Supreme Court today. Number three, he founded an American political party, the aforementioned Whig Party. And fourthly, he earned his nickname as the Great Compromiser during the decades leading up to the war. He ran for president three times, in 1824 as a Democratic-Republican, in 1832 as a national Republican, and in 1848 as a Whig. No one embodied the evolution of the second party system quite like Henry Clay. By the way, he never won. But in the decades leading up to the Civil War, he was one of three congressmen known as the Great Triumvirate who shaped American politics: Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Again, we see the outlines of a civil war take shape in these three men: Webster, a northerner, Calhoun a Southerner, and Clay from a border state. And as we'll come to see, the prevailing mindset towards slavery during this time was one that was weighted as pragmatic rather than moral. Slavery was seen first and foremost as part of the fabric of society and culture, and only then might it be considered wrong. Our mindset today is the opposite. Who cares if something works or not? If it's wrong, it's wrong. Do the right thing. That attitude had always been alive within those for whom the abolition of slavery was the goal, but it had been the minority way of thinking. And again, it's easy to say all this because the slaves themselves didn't have a voice or a choice. When watching Henry Clay, it's important to set aside your presentism. Clay demonstrates the vast majority of the thinking of his day. He understood the mockery that the institution of slavery made of high-minded rhetoric, like all men are created equal. He also knew slavery had a regrettable function within the economy, and he was part of a social structure that used human property as a marker of status, and always ensured that a white man could always look down on someone below him. And yet he tried to insist otherwise. Clay wrote this in the pages of the Kentucky Gazette. Quote, Can any humane man be happy and contented when he sees near thirty thousand of his fellow beings around him deprived of all the rights which make life desirable, transferred like cattle from the possession of one to another? When he hears the piercing cries of husbands separated from wives and children from parents? No. End quote. Clay saw the wrong in slavery. And if you hadn't guessed it, he also owned slaves. And he believed in gradual emancipation. And he insisted that there be a plan for relocating freed blacks elsewhere. And he worked hard to mitigate the spread of slavery and to keep the country together. There is that pragmatism pushing its way to the front ahead of the moral consideration for what's right and wrong. His first great step for compromise occurred when Clay helped assemble the congressional support for the Missouri Compromise of 1820. When Missouri had enough citizens to apply for statehood, there was a numeric balance, as well as political balance in the Senate of 11 free states and 11 slave states. While Missouri was poised to be admitted as a slave state, and Maine was nearly ready as well, some in Congress proposed banning slavery altogether. This had been tried, as we saw, in 1790 and effectively swept under the rug. But now, 30 years later, passions were higher and the slave trade had been outlawed a dozen years earlier, and many wanted to see the institution go. Congressman James Talmage of New York wanted the gradual emancipation of Missouri slaves. Thomas Cobb of Georgia threatened disunion. The issue became embroiled in disagreements over the Bank of the United States and how far federal power could reach into states' business. The Missouri problem was going to tear the country apart. Until Illinois Senator Jesse Thomas proposed admitting Missouri and Maine to keep the balance, letting Missouri retain its slaves, but then drawing a line along the southern border of the state at latitude 3630, prohibiting slavery anywhere north of the line, except for Missouri. Clay worked to build a coalition and then strategically use parliamentary procedure to sidestep objections to make sure the plan passed through Congress. And it did. But the problem of slavery wouldn't go away. Thirty years later, Clay was instrumental in the passage of the Compromise of 1850. Both of these legislative acts presented pragmatic solutions to the sectional crises that threatened the Union. But ultimately, the solutions would come to nothing. No matter how many backflips Congress did, how many hoops the states had to jump through to keep the peace, slavery wouldn't go away and it couldn't be ignored. What Thomas Jefferson fretted over and what Henry Clay tried to manage, the cruel institution of slavery, it would have to be dealt with in an altogether different way. Because it would mock the pragmatists, it would insult the idealists, and it would leave the Union in shambles. It would bring the moral argument directly into the forefront and insist that it be reckoned with. Consider this analogy. Palm trees survive because they can bend in a storm without breaking. For 80 years, the United States had bent and flexed as slavery had been managed through compromise. The young palm tree that Jefferson helped plant had swayed, sometimes violently, and was propped up time and time again by Clay and others. But by 1860, the tree couldn't bend anymore. It was rigidly shaking and trembling in a fixed and fragile state as the hurricane of conflict began to roar around it. So to answer the question, what caused the Civil War? We can see that it was primarily caused by slavery, with a series of numerous underlying and surrounding factors. These contributing causes include, number one, the inherent tension between federal and state powers as dictated in the Constitution and politicized by party systems. Number two, the sectional economic and social differences between the North and the South. Number three, the societal elitism and pragmatism within the mindset of a great majority of free Americans. And number four, the imperfections of many, many, many people who both wouldn't and couldn't address it as a pathway that was leading the country toward war. So what can we learn from all this? First, I'd stress that it's never wise to simplify causes. The cause and effect model is a compounding one. Causes are often many, and they may lie dormant for a while. They might spark others into existence, and they never ever exist in a vacuum. If I want to stir up more trouble, I should just make the cause of something simple. Because what I'm actually doing is being simplistic, and that's not a good plan. Secondly, in order to steer away from being simplistic, problems demand a thoughtful examination. I'll be the first to admit that this episode has only scratched the very surface of the causes of the Civil War. The themes we've touched on will come back time and time again to demand our attention. So we need to be ready to do just that. Third, does a lazy response really have any value? Reading Jefferson sometimes can be maddening, especially when we recognize him on one hand as brilliant and insightful, and on the other as passive and contradictory. So what can I take away from the lessons of a laissez-faire attitude in my own life? Fourth, it takes work to truly shape an informed opinion. Opinions are like grains of sand, they're innumerable and they're everywhere. But in order to actually have opinions that have substance, will I do the work necessary to form them, to test them, and to refine them? And finally, what does it take for something to really matter to me? We can judge people like Jefferson and Clay all day long, but we shouldn't. We make identical mistakes in ways we don't yet realize. Hundreds of years from now, people will be shocked and say, What were they thinking? So how am I going to decide what hills I will die on? How does conviction, compromise, and collaboration work in my day-to-day? In our next episode of Breaking Nation, we'll take a deeper look at slavery in North America, how it was different from slavery everywhere else, how Britain and the United States failed to address it for hundreds of years, and how it became the primary cause of the American Civil War. Check out our website at BreakingNation.com. I'm Scott Holmgren, your host. Thank you for listening. And if you're not learning, you're not living.