S1E4 – A Political Free-For-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. Imagine waking up, grabbing your smartphone, pulling up your newsfeed, and seeing this headline. The president is dead. When I imagine that, I think my first questions are, what happened? Then how did it happen? And then if I'm really honest, who did it? That's because we live in a world today shaped by the Kennedy assassination, conspiratorial theories, and a high distrust of politics and politicians in general. It's my presentist bias. But let's assume in our scenario that there are no nefarious elements in play, and that simply the president has died. It's been so long since a sitting president has died, most of us have never had to wrestle with questions like what does this mean for me? What does it mean for the country? And who's president now? And the spectrum of answers to those questions could range from a shoulder shrug to downright anger or even panic. The death of a president is no small thing. What seems a constant until the next scheduled election is suddenly shaken by the jarring unexpectedness of unpredictability. And instantly the vice president is front and center as the new person in the chair of the overall office. Not elected themselves, but an inheritor of the position due to their association with the previous president. But the reality is that any day a sitting president could die. And we would be forced to wonder what happens next. In the previous episode, we ended with the passage of the Compromise of 1850, the final great act of the great Whig senator Henry Clay. The compromise once again kicked the can of slavery down the nation's road, avoiding any sort of controversial stand on the expansion of the peculiar institution, except prohibiting it in the new state of California, not restricting it in some Western territories, and bolstering the Fugitive Slave Act, so that everybody, both southerner and northerner, had a responsibility and duty if an escaped slave appeared within their sphere of existence. In July of 1850, the compromise was still being debated in Congress when the nation and the Capitol paused to recognize and celebrate Independence Day and the 74th birthday of the United States. Washington City rallied for a 4th of July holiday full of festivities and music. Despite an unusual heat wave, the District of Columbia's residents and dignitaries celebrated up and down the grand avenues of the Capitol. Imagine local brass bands starting up festive arrangements of Stephen Foster's latest popular songs of the day, like Oh Susanna, Don't You Cry For Me, and Camp Town Races, sing the song Duda, Duda. At the center of the celebration was a fundraiser, and it was to aid in the further construction of the great new monument to George Washington that was being built and was rising above the city's landscape. Visible and within sight lines of both the White House and the Capitol building, less than 100 feet tall at that point, the square white marble base of the Washington Monument was a focal point that everybody could see. American president Zachary Taylor joined George Washington Park Custis, the 69-year-old adopted son of the first president, to dedicate a stone as a gift from the District of Columbia for the monument itself. Taylor, a war hero from the war with Mexico a few years before, had been elected president in 1848 as the candidate of the Whig Party, though he had been a political his entire life. He was a military man. In July of eighteen forty six, when there was first talk of him entering politics, he wrote a friend, quote, I am not and shall never be an aspirant for that honor. My opinion has always been against the elevating of a military chief to that position. But that December his stance had softened, as he told his son-in-law, quote, I will not say I would not serve if the good people were to be imprudent enough as to elect me, but I would much prefer to retire from the bustle of public life. Taylor finally threw his lot in with the Whigs, but it soon became obvious that he was not a politician by trade. As president, he ignored his cabinet, and he avoided the Whig leaders Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. But as a Virginian and a slaveholder, he also did not stand as a staunch Southerner. First and foremost, Zachary Taylor was for the Union. He had fought for it, and he would defend it. So on the 4th of July 1850, against the heat of the Potomac summer and the heated debates in Congress around Clay's compromise bill, Taylor dealt with it all by enjoying the festivities and consuming lots of cherries and iced raw milk. As a side note, pasteurization was still forty years in the future. After the celebrations wound down during the next few days, the president developed a digestive sickness of the stomach and intestines. Eventually it worsened into what doctors diagnosed as cholera morbis, a catch all term of the day that wasn't very specific, but still very serious. Fever ensued, and treatments that included bleeding, opium, and mercury chloride failed to improve his condition. Days later, Americans opened their newspapers, like the National Intelligencer in Washington. It let off its july eleventh issue with news from the previous day. Weep, fellow citizens, the hand of death has stricken down a great and good man. Zachary Taylor, our honored and beloved president, is no more. A malignant and rapid disease has swept him from among the living. No longer than Thursday last, he was apparently in the full enjoyment of health and strength, participating in the patriotic ceremonies of our nation's birthday, and now he is numbered with the dead. While Americans wondered how new president Millard Fillmore would lead the country, they had no idea what the decade of the eighteen fifties held ahead of them. Taylor would be the very last Whig ever elected president. Less than two years later, the father of the Whig Party, Henry Clay, would also be dead. And in another two years, the party would begin collapsing into non-existence. This seems crazy to our modern ears, doesn't it? We've grown as accustomed to our current two political parties as we have to the inevitability of the sun to set and rise again. For us, our two-party system would seem to be hard-baked into the very fabric of our American reality. But not so fast. The American political landscape tends to remake itself every so often, so that even the labels wouldn't seem quite right to a visitor, say, from 100 years in the past. Remember that great era of progressivism under the Republican Teddy Roosevelt and the solidly Democratic South of Adlai Stevenson? You see, things change, including party ideologies and the votes of the people as the country changes as well. The 1850s will see not just one party blink out of existence, but the other party will rupture along regional lines, producing a political free-for-all, while a chain of incendiary sparks will continue to ignite the fuel of the slavery issue. And Americans had no idea what would happen next. The previous episodes we have been setting the stage. We spent a lot of time looking at context. How was the US government built? What was its structure in terms of form and function? What was the country like at the midpoint of the 19th century? What changes were taking place? And how did chattel slavery come to exist and fuel an economy and culture? If you're jumping into this story with this episode, I do suggest you go back and listen to the previous ones. We don't have time to review at all here, but that's the beauty of a podcast. You can pause and come back at any time. In understanding the U.S. from the revolution through the 1840s, we've had to be patient to see where all this is going. But I hope together we've begun to see that in 1850 there was no clear picture as to where it was leading. Because change is a difficult thing. No one really likes change. Because we all get comfortable in what we like, what we prefer, what requires as little effort at times. Don't get me wrong, if we're not getting what we want, well then something's got to change, right? But let's first consider what it's going to cost me, and then we do our little cost-benefit analysis. What am I willing to give up or sacrifice to get this new thing? And do I really want it that bad when I realize maybe I don't mind things the way they are? We all know how this works, but let's not forget we know this today because of the many freedoms we enjoy today. Imagine not having freedoms. Imagine not having a voice, not having options, not even having anyone to advocate for you. And now we might begin to think differently, that our status quo is not worth preserving, and that change is worth everything to me. At that point, which fear is greater? The fear of trying and losing, or the fear of knowing you've already lost? As we begin to survey the decade of the 1850s, I want us to keep in mind this all-prevailing theme of fear that overshadows every figure, every event, every choice, every response, and the slow progression and compounding difficulties that will face people, North and South, free and enslaved, Whig and Democrat. Months after that faithful 4th of July, the city erupted in another celebration after Congress officially passed the Compromise of 1850. On Saturday evening, September 7th, there were fireworks and a 100-gun salute. The Marine band played patriotic songs down Pennsylvania Avenue, and crowds filled boarding houses to toast and recognize their congressmen and let them thank their constituents. Eleven days later, on September 18th, 1850, President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act into law, along with the other provisions of the compromise. While Southerners nodded in affirmation, Northern abolitionists responded with vitriol. Rodney French, a leading citizen abolitionist, and later the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, called the act the quote, most disgraceful, atrocious, unjust, detestable, heathenish, barbarous, diabolical, mandegrading, woman murdering, demon pleasing, heaven-defying act ever perpetrated. Soon after the signing of the act, Fillmore encountered Massachusetts Congressman Horace Mann at a White House reception. Remember, Mann was the great American educator of the first half of the century. The president approached Mann with an outstretched hand of greeting. Mann refused it. Though prescient abolitionists knew the act was problematic, few outside the antislavery camp could foresee exactly how divisive it would be. It was intended to solve sectional irritations, but it only ignited the fuel that would burn into an inferno of war. Last episode we took a measured, wide-angled look at how and why slavery became what it did in the American South. As Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln summarized at a speech he gave in Peoria in 1854, that the founders had, quote, hid slavery away in the Constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a when or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death, with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Many Americans figured the institution would die out over time. But few people in 1850, other than abolitionists, wanted to do anything about it. And in the southern states, as we saw, a loud group of prominent Southern leaders called the Fire Eaters began proclaiming slavery as a foundational piece of their culture, economy, and way of life. It was a piece that needed to be preserved and honored since it was protected by the Constitution. Legally, the South had built an edifice for slavery, one that was like a revolving bookcase that revealed a hidden passage. For any young Frankenstein fans of Mel Brooks, think put the candle back. But that emphasizes the laughability of how the system even worked. In the South, slaves existed as both persons and property, straddling the line when it came to the law. Transgressions of the law would spin the bookcase around from one side to the other, spinning them into and out of one category to the other. When a slave transgressed say, running away or fomenting a revolt, striking an overseer or stealing something, etc., they were punished as a person. But when transgressions occurred against a slave, beatings, rapes, abuses, they were then codified as mere property, without rights or recourse. I mean, in other words, come on, they're people when we want them to be and property when we don't. It made a joke of the law and a tragedy of human rights. Historian Andrew Del Banco in his fascinating book, The War Before the War, takes an insightful look at how the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 really put the country on a trajectory for conflict. For there were numerous new cases that immediately tested the wisdom of the law right out of the chute. In September 1850, a man named James Hamlet was arrested at his workplace in Brooklyn by a U.S. Marshal because of a warrant due to a claim by his former owner that he be retrieved as property. The new law kicked into action a summary hearing. Despite the scrambling by New York abolitionists to provide legal counsel, help unfortunately arrived too late. Within hours, James Hamlet was transported to Baltimore and listed for sale in the Journal of Commerce. The following month, $800 had been raised to purchase Hamlet's freedom and he returned home, escorted by some 200 people. In February of 1851, a former slave from Virginia named Shadrach had been captured and arrested in Boston. While being held, a crowd of abolitionists gathered to storm the courthouse and rescue Shadrach. They helped him escape pursuit, and he fled to Canada. Two months later, a hundred Boston police officers escorted 23-year-old runaway Thomas Sims to a ship that was about to set sail for Savannah, Georgia, that would return the former slave to his owners. There he would be whipped in public as a punishment and a strong warning for others not to try and do the same. And in August 1851, another former slave, Daniel Davis, had been arrested in Buffalo, New York. But one of his captors had struck Davis and was himself jailed for assault. Fortunately, a judge did not agree with the claims of Davis' owners and set him free. He also escaped to Canada. You see, previously, the northern states and cities operated according to their state laws. But now that the Fugitive Slave Act was a federal law, the authority to enforce it could no longer be pushed on others. Even statesmen who opposed the act understood that they were bound by it. Secretary of State Daniel Webster spoke in Syracuse, New York in May 1851 to uphold the law as passed, saying, quote, If men get together and declare a law of Congress shall not be executed in any case, and assemble in numbers in force to prevent the execution of such law, they are traitors, and are guilty of treason, and bring upon themselves the penalties of that crime. No, no, it is time to put an end to this imposition upon good citizens, good men and good women. It is treason, treason, treason, and nothing else. End quote. Webster's personal view on slavery had to take a backseat to his upholding of the law. But public acts could not mask the brewing conflict within the hearts of many Americans. U.S. District Judge Thomas Irwin stated to a grand jury in June 1851 that Americans had found, quote, a new discovery in ethics, that there are obligations and duties depending upon the dictates of conscience of a higher nature than the laws of our country. This spoke to an emerging inner civil war that was beginning to consume many who hated the fugitive slave law, but could not deal with breaking the law. William Greenleaf Elliot, the founder of Washington University in St. Louis and grandfather of the poet T. S. Elliot, though not taking a public stand against the law, thought that doing so was, quote, more dangerous, because it can always bring to its aid the conscientious feelings of those whose wishes and interests and prejudices and enmities and sectional jealousies that are all made to assume the sacredness of duty. The country which makes this appeal much to do so with sword in hand in open revolt and struggle. End quote. Eliot himself worked toward legislation. For gradual emancipation. But many Americans wrestled with the contradictory reality they lived in, hating the institution of slavery, hating having to submit to the Fugitive Slave Act, hating to have to live caught between the two, and not knowing whether further compromise or disunion or even war would be the outcome. In September 1851, this tension boiled over into violence. A Maryland slave owner, Edward Gorsuch, who had actually freed some of his slaves in the past, heard that four other slaves had run away and were in Pennsylvania. He secured a federal warrant and a marshal in Philadelphia and hired two policemen to ensure and enforce the arrests. Gorsuch's group included family members and others as they traveled to Christiana, Pennsylvania, which had become a fugitive slave refuge. The policemen left the party once they realized they were walking into an unfriendly area. Gorsuch's party reached the home of William Parker, a former slave and abolitionist who also organized blacks for self-defense. They surrounded the house and announced their authority to seize the runaways. Shots were fired in defiance to prevent entry to the house. While Gorsuch and his party debated whether to call for reinforcements, locals, both white and black, suddenly arrived to support Parker and the ex-slaves. The marshal tried to recruit the whites to help Gorsuch, as was their duty under the Fugitive Slave Act. But the Pennsylvanians stood united. Gorsuch then confronted one of his former slaves, and the yard erupted in violence. When the smoke cleared, Edward Gorsuch had been shot dead, and two others were wounded as the arresting party ran away. Parker, the four runaways, and some other blacks fled to Canada. With all the previous incidents making recent headlines, and now a dead slave owner, President Fillmore ordered U.S. Marines to Christiana. Forty-one people, blacks and whites, were arrested and charged with treason. Newspapers across the country picked up the story, and people watched and waited to see what would happen. It was assumed that one of the local white men named Castner Hanway had led the resistance. The trial was presided over by a U.S. Supreme Court justice at the time justices did double duty in Philadelphia. But the federal case was handled poorly, and Hanway was found not guilty of treason. No further charges were pressed against any of those arrested. Yes, the Fugitive Slave Act was law. How it would be handled would be an altogether different issue. After the shootout at Christiana, abolitionists rejoiced. The South boiled in resentment and sectionalism deepened. In this way, the Fugitive Slave Act began to make lines between North and South clearer and more distinct. Let's use the analogy of like drawing something, right? At first the divisions between the regions were like pencil marks where you sort of sketch something in real light, right? And you use multiple strokes. But but then they were drawn over with ink, like using a ballpoint pen, and you start to see the shapes and you make an outline. Then finally you grab that really fat Sharpie marker and just draw the thick line, and now you can clearly see where the line is. Well, year by year, the political parties themselves had to figure out what to do about these lines. Because Whigs were both northern and southern, and Democrats were both northern and southern. In episode two, we were first introduced to the second party system. As it functioned, it reinforced clearly defined positions for each political party on the issues facing the nation through the 1840s. The Whigs, they were for the government playing a role in boosting a market economy. But as the economy boomed after the victory against Mexico and railroad growth and expansion, all that pushed profitability. Hey, some Democrats in the North were just as interested in getting in on the action. They still were anti-bank and anti-monopoly, but now Democrats began to split over the new cotton power that was emerging in the South as both an economic and political force. Whigs saw that governmental power might be interpreted beyond the actual text of the Constitution. This attitude would produce support for federal funds and the favor to create roads and bridges, canals, and other innovative improvements like the Bank of the United States. Whigs saw government as an organization for change. New York newspaper publisher Horace Greeley wrote in 1845 that the Whig philosophy regards a government with hope and confidence as an agency of the community through which vast and beneficent ends may be accomplished. The Democrats wanted less intrusion, less government. And this was illustrated by the motto of the Washington Globe. The Democrat leading paper's slogan was simply the world is governed too much. Immigration was also becoming an issue. The influx of newly arrived Europeans created a reactionary attitude to keep the foreigners out. This nativism pulled together like-minded leaders from both parties, but mostly Protestant Whigs who did not want to see a Catholic America become a Romanist pawn in some papal game. As Whigs sought to improve social conditions, in contrast to the Democrats and their passions of the masses and common man, they saw slavery as an immoral blight on the country. And these moralists wanted new territories and states to be free rather than slave, no matter that the Constitution protected chattel slavery as an institution. So what happened in the 1850s then was a splintering of party solidarity across both Whigs and Democrats. The nativists, against the foreigners and the Catholics, called themselves the American Party officially, but more significantly they became known as the Know Nothings, as they required one another to say, I know nothing, when they were questioned by outsiders, clearly taking an us versus them position. The Free Soil Party took shape as abolitionists and anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats joined together to oppose the expansion of slavery. An opposition party came together, as did a constitutional union party, both opposed to what the Democrats were promoting. This all happened as Americans wrestled with how to deal with the growing issue of slavery that began to dwarf all other issues. Amidst all this, the great leaders of the nation were passing the torch to the next generation. So former presidents Martin Van Buren and John Tyler, they retired to private life. He died in 1849 at the age of 53. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina had died in March of 1850. Henry Clay would die in June of 1852, and Daniel Webster would die in October of that same year. So if you didn't notice, all the statesmen who had been guiding the country through the minefield of slavery were disappearing one by one. And now this brand new piece of legislation, the Fugitive Slave Act, was to be enforced across the country. By who? Who would be called upon to enforce it? Who would challenge it? And who would give voice and hope to the enslaved who were the silent casualties? As President Fillmore served out the remainder of Zachary Taylor's term, a strange tale of intrigue and adventure spilled from the shores of Spanish-held Cuba, one that may have barely raised an eyebrow, unless you happened to be paying attention. In May of 1850, a group of 600 freedom fighters sailed from New Orleans to Cuba under the command of a Venezuelan-born adventurer named Narciso Lopez. The 53-year-old who had once been a general in the Spanish army and an administrator for Spain, but was now disillusioned to the point of becoming a revolutionary, he led his army of filibusters ashore and captured a town. Now, for you and I, when we hear the word filibuster, we typically think of it as that's what they do in Congress, right? It's a delaying act of stopping legislative debate. But the word itself actually comes from a Spanish word for a privateer or a pirate. So Lopez and his filibusters captured and liberated this town, and then Lopez expected the locals to rise up and join his cause. Instead, Lopez was surrounded and forced to flee back to Key West. Four months later, he tried again, this time keeping some forces along the coast of Cuba to secure his supplies, and again the locals and the Spanish army surrounded them. But this time they captured them and executed them in Havana. Sounds like an amazing story, right? This might easily be dismissed as just a case of revolutionary fervor if it wasn't for the fact that several Southerners and a handful of American politicians and military officers were part of the operation. So it's eerily a foreshadowing of the Bay of Pigs a hundred years later, right? That invasion. But what does this have to do with the Civil War? Well, because for some time, Southern states and statesmen had been interested in annexing Cuba to actually make it a state. Geographically speaking, the island of Cuba stood sentinel as the gateway to New Orleans from the Atlantic. Listen to this quote from South Carolina's Democrat Senator Andrew Butler. Quote Shall the Great Mississippi, after mingling with its own, the waters of the Missouri, the Ohio, and thousand other tributary systems, after impelling onward along its majestic course, productions of all kinds, wealth, commerce, and population, so many signs of the mighty approach of a new great and enterprising civilization, shall that Mississippi, I say, while expanding its waters in the wide gulf, announce to the democracy of the world that the advantages and the glory of American institutions will not pass forward, that the Queen of the Antilles, in other words, Cuba, fertile and great and capable of presenting similar development of productions and well-being will stand in the way as a check to the powerful impetus. End quote. If they could annex Cuba, the South could reassert that waterborne transport was a dominant mode of commerce, making that north to south access of commerce and trade superior to the west to east access of railroads and canals. Cuba would pull commerce further south than the south itself. And the Gulf of Mexico would almost be like to the south, like the Mediterranean was to Europe. The question about annexation was not if, but when and how. Because the Caribbean had its own history, didn't it? Spain was seen as a declining European power, mismanaging its trade and assets, and annexation would free Cuba from its backward ways. The Haitian Revolution on San Domingue, that one against the French, that was used as a warning by Southern politicians to demonstrate the worst results of what could happen if slaves gained their freedom. And lower profits in Jamaica were used to show the negative effects of British emancipation in economic terms. These all showed that continued slavery was necessary to continue economic growth and prosperity. Now, the U.S. government had considered an outright purchase of Cuba from Spain, but the Spanish weren't really interested, and American diplomats at the time were not a very creative or sophisticated group. And the Neutrality Act of eighteen eighteen made it illegal for a citizen of the U.S. to prepare and or attack any country that the U.S. was at peace with. Regardless of the law, though, Southerners still thought, hey, where there's a will, there's a way. So as the plan to invade and liberate Cuba developed in its early stages, Lopez himself met with and had the ear of none other than Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, himself a military man and soon to be Secretary of War. Lopez offered Davis $100,000 and a coffee plantation, all his own to join his cause. But Davis declined. However, he thought enough of the plans to pass them along to his friend, Major Robert E. Lee. Lee as well declined. But others did not. Some of those numbered among Lopez's backers were John Quitman, who at the time was the governor of Mississippi. John Henderson, who was a former senator from Mississippi, Lawrence Segur, the editor of the New Orleans Delta, and Colonel William Logan Crittenden, a former U.S. officer, and the nephew of the U.S. Attorney General. Crittenden was Lopez's second in command. It's crazy. A gaggle of prominent Southern politicians backing a Venezuelan rebel, financing and weaponizing a private army, American officers and soldiers among the ranks. I mean, it sounds like a Hollywood political thriller. And it ended in a bay of pigs like disaster. After the failure of the invasion, Governor Quitman was forced to resign in violation of the Neutrality Act, but he was not convicted because of hung juries. Then he prepared for still another filibuster excursion with the encouragement of the president, Franklin Pierce, until other matters pulled everyone's focus and attention away from Cuba. The Army officer, Colonel Crittenden, and fifty of his men were executed by firing squad in Havana's old square as pirates. He was only twenty seven. Why were some in the South so fixated on Cuba? Because on one hand, adding a state would mean growth in both dollars and in congressional influence in votes. If Southerners couldn't guarantee that new slave states would emerge from the land secured after the war with Mexico, then maybe they could just go out and get some states of their own. Secondly, Southerners watched the Caribbean Islands with alarm. As news from the European colonies there made its way to the South, leaders and politicians saw their failures and weaknesses, and these facts could be the undoing of slavery as an institution. There was the weakness of English abolitionism, the poor judgment of French democratization, and the small mindedness of Spanish hypocrisy, as they were illegally importing more slaves and willing to simultaneously arm them. Although a failure, the Lopez and Crittenden affair wasn't a one off, because it wouldn't be the last time Southern filibusters would look further south. Slavery would be the central issue for the United States in the eighteen fifties. Yes, expansion and growth were important, but would slavery expand with the country as well? Yes, immigration was a concern, though it powered the country's labor force, but how could the southern slave labor force be allowed when more and more saw it as an evil? Yes, the economy and power being amassed in the U.S. needed to be regulated, but why was slavery not? For issue after issue it seemed to always come back around to slavery. In 1836, Congress decided it would not let itself be distracted by the issue of slavery. The Constitution allowed for it, even protected it, so Congress decided why make a big deal about it? We just won't talk about it. Congress instituted a gag rule on itself. In May, the House passed House Rule twenty one that said quote all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers relating in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery shall, without being printed or referred, be laid upon the table and that no further action whatever be taken thereon. In December of the following year they added the second gag rule. No further action would now not only be taken on the subject of slavery, but also on the subjects of the abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring of slaves in any state, district, or territory in the United States. End quote. These gag rules silenced and tabled any initiative to bring up and debate slavery in Congress. At the time former President John Quincy Adams was serving as a congressman from his native Massachusetts. He had other ideas. He wanted to force the issue to bring the ugly side of slavery and pro southern tactics into the light, but the more he pushed, the more others pushed back. By 1839, Adams was getting a dozen death threats each month. His chief opponent in the House was a fellow Whig, but a Virginian, Henry Wise. Adams and Wise both used rules of order as weapons. There were several artful measures that could be employed to stymie and gag petitions. These included contesting motions repeatedly, calling the speaker to decide points of order, and then asking that House rules be enforced. All three tactics effectively halted a debate in its tracks. Another favorite tactic was questioning the reception of a petition followed by the tabling of the question rather than the petition. That avoided First Amendment violation since the petition was neither accepted nor rejected. That is some fancy lawyering. This was how Congress worked, or more accurately, how it didn't work. This was the high age of the American lawyer. In his book Civil War Lawyers, historian Arthur T. Downey provides an insight into this golden age for the legal profession. By the time of Abraham Lincoln's election, twelve of the 16 presidents of the U.S. were lawyers. The 30th Congress from 1847 to 1849 was made up of 74% lawyers. And in 1847, In 1845, 95% of the Senate had legal training. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the law was a way for men of ambition and drive to apply their talents and make their way in the world, even if they came from nowhere. It didn't matter who your daddy was. Didn't matter where you went to school. If you were good at it, you could succeed. Most became lawyers via apprenticeships. And even with that, in 1840, only eleven of thirty states required lawyers to do so. Lincoln himself was admitted to the bar in 1837 without any written exam. He was endorsed by a county judge and was given a routine exam by two Illinois Supreme Court justices. The French political philosopher and the historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, in the 1830s of Litigators in America, quote, lawyers formed a unique kind of community. In some states they traveled in groups, riding circuit from county seat to county seat. They stayed in local inns, sometimes sharing a room and even a bed with their fellow travelers after an evening of food and drink. End quote. Many knew one another and would work with and against one another. In fact, Lincoln's cabinet, made up of his rivals during the election, were nearly all lawyers as well. It was a professional fraternity. It could be gentlemanly, it could be deadly. If we can look at the history of the Civil War through this lawyerly lens and not our presentist sensibilities, and the fact that many of the highest ranking politicians were lawyers, it becomes clearer why certain questions came to the forefront of the country and not others. Changing the law wasn't necessarily the first thought. Instead, Congress would time after say, Well, here's the law. How do we move forward with this issue? What legal room is there to maneuver? Or what legal roadblocks can be thrown up to snuff out an objection? The question of slavery was for a long time a massively giant legal firestorm before it spilled into open war when judicial solutions failed. By 1844, the gag rules came to an end. Adams, along with an influx of newly elected Northern Democrats, repealed House Rule 21, ending the gag rule struggle. But before we leave the congressional sandbox, filled with its rules and regulations, let's not miss an entirely different area of the playground. Because there's a part of the 19th century American political landscape that lies outside the structured order of sandboxes and swing sets. There's that part of the playground that was out back, out behind the school building, where disagreements and other issues were settled, where there were no teachers or recess monitors keeping an eye on everyone. Congress had its own version of bullies and toadies and a code of honor. Back in 1836, 35-year-old Democrat Jonathan Silly, spelled C-I-L-L-E-Y, was elected to Congress from his third district in Maine. Taking office the following March, the New Englander had been in the House for less than a year when in the winter of 1838 he was handed a letter from a Whig colleague, William Graves of Kentucky. It was a challenge to a duel. It seems Silly had made comments in the House that were critical of a man named James Watson Webb, who was the editor of the New York Courier and Inquirer, a paper devoted to Whig ideals. Silly, a Democrat, had insinuated that Webb had received $52,000 as a quid pro quo that encouraged him to change his mind on policy and state so in his newspaper. Webb, having been so affronted by this attack, challenged Silly to a duel and had his friend Graves deliver the challenge. Silly, on the receiving end of the challenge, and now the one being insulted, refused to accept the letter. William Graves in turn took this as an affront to his honor and his party, and so he challenged Silly to a duel. To uphold his standing, the main man accepted. Two men, both congressmen, who had no original issue with each other, are now going to duel because of procedural dishonor. On february twenty fourth, they met at dueling grounds in Bladensburg, Maryland, since dueling was prohibited within the District of Columbia. After three exchanges of rifle fire, Graves shot Silly through the femoral artery, and he bled to death within minutes. It's the only time when one congressman killed another congressman. This sounds insane, but it was a perfect storm of annabellum politics and honor. The lines between disgracing a party or an individual were so blurred that it hardly mattered who said what or to whom. We're not talking about attacking someone on social media. This was about personal reputation and party loyalty to the point of killing someone. You've all seen Hamilton, right? The vice president Aaron Burr killing former Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. The code duello, these rules for duels, uh, for one-on-one combat. This was officially illegal, but the gentleman classes of both North and South would still duel to preserve their honor. This attitude of personal strength and force would emerge through the personalities of Southern congressmen as slavery once again became an issue that could be debated. The gag rules were now gone, but duels and honor were ready to take their place. Force would be force whether written down or not. In the 1850s, the Democrats held their party together with a tenuous tension. Keeping the Democratic Party in power demanded solidarity and required the allowance of slavery. The Southern Democrats wouldn't have it any other way. And the Northern Democrats, who hated the institution, had to simply accept it, roll over and avoid the mess altogether. Virginia Representative John Randolph labeled these weak willed Northerners doe faces. He said they were willing to compromise their conscience and morality and religion because, quote, they were scared at their own doe faces, end quote. If Southern swagger held sway, Northern spinelessness could be needed like doe and punched at will. Walt Whitman composed this verse in 1850 as a critique. Taking the point of view of these compromising Northern Democrats, he wrote, quote, We are all docile doe faces, they need us with the fist. They the dashing Southern lords, we labor as they list. End quote. These politicians, these doe faces, these dodgers of resolution, would frequently avoid decisive votes. They would change the way they voted, and they would flee the chamber rather than standing up to pro-slavery members. They waffled between representing their people back home and not offending their own party. Meanwhile, challenges and altercations were commonplace on Capitol Hill. Historian Joanne Freeman covers this part of American political history in her eye-opening book, The Field of Blood. Representatives often carried pistols or buoy knives when they entered the House chamber. There were more than 70 incidents of violence in Congress. It simply belied the real vitriol and responses across the country related to the issue of slavery. As we saw in the last episode, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, began appearing in serialized form in a newspaper called The National Era, beginning in June of 1851. When published as a book in 1852, it sold over 300,000 copies that year alone. That was a hundred times more copies than books written by Hawthorne, Melville, and Thoreau. The book brought the subject of chattel slavery front and center to the American people. Whites in the North were stirred by its dramatic power and perpetrated violence. Whites in the South were offended and insulted by its pointed agenda. They thought, how dare the abolitionists wag their fingers at us and attack our way of life? By eighteen fifty two, Congress was no longer constrained by gag rules. It had made a bold move by enacting the Compromise of eighteen fifty and empowering federal authorities with the Fugitive Slave Act. Now it would be time to see what would happen next. How would the country respond? eighteen fifty two was to be an election year, and the country would respond through its votes. What would the people choose? Who would they elect? As the people were soon to go to the polls, one of the most famous anti-slavery speeches ever was given in Rochester, New York. It was july fifth, eighteen fifty-two. And the city's Corinthian Hall was packed, full with members and invited guests of the Rochester Ladies Anti Slavery Society as part of Independence Day celebrations. Onto the stage stepped a figure of dignity and authority. Frederick Douglass. He was thirty-four. His dark hair framed his distinct features that drew you to his fixing gaze. Later in life his hair and beard would grow silver with wisdom. His eyes were strong beneath a brow both furrowed and honest. He was one of the greatest abolitionist orators in all of America. Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglas escaped when he was twenty and made his way north to Massachusetts. In eighteen forty five, his autobiography was published, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. It was so eloquent that many people at first could not believe that a former slave could have written it. But once they heard him speak, there was no doubt about the power behind his testimony and his words. He spoke all across New England before traveling to Great Britain and Ireland. When he returned he began to publish his first newspaper, The North Star in Rochester. This was a voice that would not be bound by a gag rule. It wouldn't be intimidated by insults and effrontery. It was a voice that clearly and plainly spoke for millions of enslaved persons who never had the opportunity to speak for themselves. Whereas before he often and frequently told his own story of his own experiences, now he would begin to speak of the bondage of African Americans and the national struggle against slavery. He targeted the Fugitive Slave Act and racial hypocrisy of many Northerners. After an appropriate Independence Day introduction, recalling the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and their resolve to declare their freedom, Douglass shifted gears to the present, to eighteen fifty two. He continued I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. After connecting the plight of America's slaves to that of the Jews in Babylon, he then read from Psalm one hundred thirty seven, and then appealed on behalf of his enslaved brothers and sisters. Above your national tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains heavy and grievous yesterday are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never look blacker to me than on this fourth of July. He then placed both slavery and abolition on trial, with a series of questions and answers that argued for a higher law, which is established above the laws of the land, and yet the work required of the country was far from done. What to the American slave is your fourth of July? I answer a day that reveals to him more than all other days in the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham, your boasted liberty an unholy license, your national greatness swelling vanity, your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your denunciations of tyrants brass fronted impudence, your shouts of liberty and equality hollow mockery. Your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy. A thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Go where you may, search will you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. After painting this bleak picture and then acknowledging the pro slavery elements of the Constitution, Douglas then gave voice to his hope, and the hope of the enslaved, with progress all around, progress must be the way forward. Allow me to say in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. I therefore leave off where I began with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. It would become known as the What to the Slave is the Fourth of July speech, and it would remain a powerful force that is remembered to this very day. Within months of that speech, Americans would go to the polls to elect a president. Now let's pause. Before we take stock of the election of 1852 and observe what America would choose, let's look back a bit to the midterms of 1850 and see where America was politically two years prior. Zachary Taylor had died and Whig Millard Fillmore was then president. The 32nd Congress was Democratic led in both chambers. In the House, 125 Democrats held the majority, over 86 Whigs. And there were 21 other seats divided between five other factions. There were three members of the Southern Rights Party and 10 members of the Union Party, all from Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. For one election cycle, here was a dividing line between Southerners who were open to leaving the Union and those who wanted to preserve it. There were also three independent Democrats and an independent Whig who were distancing themselves from their party. And lastly, four representatives of the Free Soil Party that opposed the expansion of slavery. In the Senate, it was a 35-23 split for Democrats and Whigs, but there were three free soil senators. Now remember, this is the time before the 17th Amendment took effect, whereby senators were elected directly by the people of each state. Before 1913, senators were elected by state legislatures. So if we use that lens to look at the roll call of senators in 1850, we'll see three northern states where there was definite fragmentation amidst the Whig Party, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Ohio. We've got three senators who would have historically been Whigs, moving further in line with an abolitionist population that has gained control of seats in those states' governments, who are now free soil representatives. So in the 1850 midterms, the Whig Party is not only losing seats to the Democrats, it's also bleeding to offshoots of other ideologies. It will never recover. That now brings us to the election of 1852, which would continue the trend. The Whigs met in Baltimore to choose a presidential candidate. Because of the divisiveness over the compromise of 1850 that Fillmore signed into law and the Fugitive Slave Act, Whigs began to split between Southerners who backed Fillmore and Northerners who saw General Winfield Scott, the hero of the war with Mexico, as their man. Don't forget the Whigs had successfully won before with military men, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, so why not stick with a winning formula, right? On the 53rd ballot of the convention, Scott got the nomination. The very same month in the very same city, the Democrats met. As a hint to the growing divisions within their party, four different candidates led the balloting at different times. Lewis Cass of Michigan, who had lost to Zachary Taylor four years before, two former members of the Polk cabinet, William Marcy and James Buchanan, and a brand new rising political star from Illinois, Senator Stephen A. Douglas. After 48 ballots, everyone's favorite second choice, Franklin Pierce, was nominated. Pierce, a senator from New Hampshire, had also been a general in the war, a fact not lost on the Democrats looking to tap into a war hero. But to say that neither Scott nor Pierce were the initial first choice of all Democrats and Whigs gives a hint to show just how watered down party leadership had become. In the end, it wasn't much of a contest, as Pierce ran away with the electoral and popular votes. Scott's anti slavery position was too radical for many, and further splintering of the Whigs didn't help. So now let's look at the new 33rd Congress after the election of 1852. In the House, the Democrats outnumbered the Whigs two to one with three free soil representatives winning seats. In the Senate, the Democrats outnumbered the Whigs 37 to 17, but now there were five free soilers in one know-nothing. Again, the legislatively elected senators say a great deal about how the states themselves were moving. And now we can add Vermont and Kentucky to the list of declining Whig states. Watching these elections is vital to see all the ideological drifts that were rippling across the country. Number one, it demonstrated that the compromise of 1850 was not sustainable. It was meant to address the questions of slavery, but there were many, both North and South, who were not behind it. Number two, it affirmed the generational changes that were occurring. Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and many of their peers were no longer leading Congress. Different voices with different ideas were becoming more and more visible and vocal. And number three, it had bred an attitude of uncertainty about what would happen next. The cracks were showing, and no one was even suggesting that it should be held together. In fact, there were some that were thinking, and this is for my Monty Python friends, and now for something completely different. In East Central Wisconsin, there was a little settlement named Ripon. Founded in 1849 and named for the English city of the same name in North Yorkshire, it boasted a college within two years. In eighteen fifty, a New York lawyer named Alvin Bove moved to Ripon with his family, opened an office for his practice, and began to help build his community. Through Bove's influence, the community became quite a hotbed of political discourse, with Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers exchanging views and challenging one another through debate. By 1852, with the Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Act fresh in their memories, Bove and others began suggesting it was time for a new party for new ideas. Bove had returned to visit his home state of New York and had even met with anti-slavery publisher Horace Greeley. By 1854, Bove led a meeting at a local congregational church, resolving that it was time to set aside old parties and create a new one to deal solely with the issue of slavery. Weeks later, a runaway slave named Joshua Glover made his way to Racine, Wisconsin. On March 9th, Glover's master in Missouri got a federal warrant again because of the new Fugitive Slave Act and had him arrested and brought to Milwaukee. That night locals stormed the jail and freed Glover. Less than two weeks later, on March 20th, 1854, eighty miles away, Alvin Bove and sixteen others gathered in a little white schoolhouse in Ripon. And there they, as anti-Democrats, formed what would become the new Republican Party. Bove would be quoted as saying, quote, We went into the little meeting held in a schoolhouse, Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats. We came out of it Republicans, and we were the first Republicans in the Union. No one quite knows the official origin of the name, but Beauvais, Horace Greeley, and Wisconsin newspaper editor Edwin Hurlbert all were involved. Many people before had used the name Republican synonymously with antislavery monikers, and it also echoed with the historical strains of Thomas Jefferson's use in the 1790s. With publicity for the party spread by Greeley's New York Tribune, words spread and a national party would form by 1856. At the same time as the brand new party was being forged, Congress was in the throes of hammering out a new piece of legislation that would be another spark of ignition that caused the fire of slavery to burn brighter. The problem was expansion into new territories. And the issue was slavery. In 1854, Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas drafted a new bill for handling the unorganized territory of Nebraska. The territory was becoming problematic as new settlers flowed into the region, what would eventually become Kansas and Nebraska. Railroad companies were eagerly eyeing different routes for their railroads, and many wondered if they would take northern or more southern routes. The issue came to a head when the Democratic senator from Missouri, David Acheson, promised his support only if slavery was permitted in Nebraska. Let's stop and visualize our geography for a second. Remember the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Henry Clay's great plan that admitted Maine is a free state, Missouri as a slave state, and then drew a line across the bottom of Missouri at the 3630 parallel that would prohibit slavery north of it. Well, guess what? That line was below the Nebraska territory. Uh-oh. And Acheson wouldn't budge. Neither would other Southern senators. They forced the Senate to table the plan. Congress remained in deadlock until Douglas modified his bill to apply the same principles of the Compromise of 1850 to the Nebraska Territory. In other words, when any subsequent territories or states formed, their constituents would prescribe whether slavery would be permitted or not. Douglas was a firm believer of this, and he called it popular sovereignty. Let the people of each state decide. It was a style of limited populism. It was also a deliberate undoing of the Missouri Compromise at the hands of the Southern slaveholding power bloc. Iowa lawyer Samuel Freeman Miller, who would later become a Supreme Court justice, prophetically declared during the heart of the debate that the proposed act and popular sovereignty would, quote, split the national parties along sectional lines, and that issues that once united Northern and Southern Whigs and Democrats, such as banks and internal improvements, would be no match for the divisive slavery issue. End quote. A group of free soil politicians, including Salmon Chase and Joshua Giddings of Ohio and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, penned an appeal of the independent Democrats, which appeared in the Cincinnati Gazette in January of 1854 and elsewhere. The appeal stated, quote, We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge, as a criminal betrayal of precious rights, as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the old world, and free laborers from our own states, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism inhabited by masters and slaves. But would the appeal make any difference? Douglas himself worked hard to gain support from congressmen both North and South. In so doing, he also decided to take his case to President Pierce. The president, wary of a political firestorm brewing, wanted to get a Supreme Court decision on whether the original Missouri Compromise was constitutional or not. While not the support he was seeking, Douglas thought it was still a way forward until Acheson and his backers said no again. Together they all met with Pierce again and persuaded him to go along. Their argument was didn't the compromise of 1850 invalidate the one of 1820? With this new rationale, yet another revised bill was put forth, one that also divided the territory into two, Kansas and Nebraska. For four months, the Senate debated the bill, only increasing the angst felt all across the country regarding the expansion of slavery. In the end, free state senators were split, 14 for and 12 against, mostly along party lines, while the slave state senators cross party lines and approved the bill 23 to 2. As the bill went to the House, the administration urged passage by all Democrats, since it would determine how governmental patronage would be managed. But the opposition was intense. Democrat Thomas Hart Benton broke ranks and vowed to stand on the Missouri Compromise to the end. New York Democratic Congressman Francis Cutting delayed the passage of the bill on March 27, 1854, which resulted in many Democrats calling him a traitor. Leading the cry was Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge. He and Cutting essentially out-offended one another to the brink of a duel. Headlines reported a fatality as if one had actually occurred, even though it had not. But the slavery issue was still center stage as illustrated by Congressional Mayhem. Greeley's Tribune wrote that the episode was, quote, part of a well-constructed plan to persuade by intimidation and violence every independent Northern Democrat who dares to defy the mandates of the slave ocracy, end quote. The pro-slavery press returned fire like this from the Daily Union on June 8, 1854, describing Northerners as, quote, outlawed enemies to society, like wild beasts of the forest, fair game to be hunted by all, whose safety, property, and lives they are perpetually placing in jeopardy. End quote. Each side attacked the other for being the dirty playing aggressor and violating fundamental rights, sometimes figuratively, other times literally. On another occasion, when free soilers delayed debate, Southerners retaliated with insults that led to the drawing of weapons on the House floor. Virginian Henry Edmondson was about to attack Lewis Campbell of Ohio when the sergeant at arms restrained and arrested him. But at the end of the day, as in the Senate, Northern representatives split along party lines while most Southerners united to support the bill. The final vote was 113 to 100 in favor. On May 30th, 1854, President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law. Abraham Lincoln, upon receiving the news, recorded in a note his disbelief that the Missouri compromise mattered no more. He wrote, quote, We were thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion. There's that fear we talked about earlier. Fear of what would happen next. Fear that something that once held security for a generation, the Missouri Compromise, had just been obliterated. Fear that whatever the Southerners would want, the Southerners would get. Fear that the Fugitive Slave Act was causing and forcing all Americans to take and practice pro-slavery actions. Fear that no one would be able to do anything about it. But there were many who were prepared to sacrifice their fears for greater good. Five days before Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law, Whig Senator William Seward voiced his willingness to counterattack. Quote, Come on, then, gentlemen of the slave states, since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of the cause of freedom. We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right. End quote. Weeks later at another Fourth of July gathering now in 1854 in Farmingham, Massachusetts, abolitionist and publisher William Lloyd Garrison spoke and was joined by former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth and Henry David Thoreau. Garrison burned copies of the Constitution and the Compromise of 1850 to symbolically protest how both documents protected the evils of slavery. Garrison used pointed language when identifying the Constitution. It was, quote, a covenant with death and an agreement with hell, the source and parent of the other atrocities, so perish all compromises with tyranny. In October 1854, Lincoln, choosing to overcome his fears, joined his fellow Illinois Douglas to speak before voters in Peoria. On the 16th, Douglass first spoke for three hours, defending his triumph of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and promoting the virtues of popular sovereignty. After a break for dinner, the crowds reconvened in front of the Peoria Courthouse to hear from Lincoln. He responded with a call to learn from history. What was there to learn from New England's anti-slavery stance? What was to be learned from the Northwest Ordinance, which ensured that Illinois itself would be free. These lessons proved to be a stark contrast to the declared indifference of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which Lincoln suggested held a covert zeal for the spread of slavery. He targeted Douglass's popular sovereignty, saying, I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives a Republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence. And yet Lincoln also revealed a humility and a humanity, showing how early he was on his own journey of the heart, saying, quote, I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If all earthly power were given to me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South. This would not be the only time Lincoln and Douglas would present their political philosophies, and they would most certainly speak and debate one another again. Some could not overcome their fears, and they despaired, like Benjamin Brown French, a New Englander who spent his professional life in the Capitol and would eventually become a Republican. He composed a poem that wondered if it wasn't time for disunion, since the South was fixed in its stance. It was titled Then Let the Union Slide. In particular two stanzas read Is the North to be downtrodden beneath the southern heel, as if their flesh were sodden, and their hearts had ceased to feel. To all the high toned fancies of these lords must they submit, and receive with slavery Kansas, because the South saw fit. If o'er that freedom glorious for which our fathers died, slavery must be victorious, then let the Union slide. For 'tis not worth the keeping if o'er our fathers' graves, man, shackled man is weeping, that half his race are slaves. Before we look at the chronological boots on the ground fallout from this new Kansas Nebraska Act, let's consider the political mayhem the legislation caused. Douglas essentially manipulated the process so that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 could be done away with, giving states the right to choose their own course in terms of slavery. Northerners took a strong stand, and Pierce saw his support across the country plummet. Both Pierce and Douglas were viewed as puppets of the South, and the new Fugitive Slave Act only reinforced the narrative, making every American effectively Southern in the mandate to support slaveholders. The Democratic and Whig parties were straining under the pressures of North and South sectionalism. The political free-for-all began to expand in scope. This was aided and encouraged by the rise of the telegraph for communicating, railroads for distributing, and steam and rotary printing presses for printing, which made the media, newspapers, and journalists a force to be reckoned with. Especially for congressmen whose constituents back home could no longer be fed by narratives the politicians could shape themselves. The control of political conversation was slipping through the fingers of the parties. The editors of New York had, by 1852, consolidated resources and reach through what was originally known as the New York Associated Press, eventually becoming the Associated Press. Soon, New York's journalism was jumping past Washington's party outlets in influence. The stories, editorials, and letters generated by the New York Papers informed a northern populace that became inundated with sectional passions. Congressmen began to identify more strongly with their section than with their party, and belligerence in brawling tended to be driven by extreme policies. By 1854, independent newspapers had swelled in number, and non-local reporters filled the congressional galleries. Some politicians slowly lost some control of their own image. Others allied themselves with prominent New York editors such as Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald, and Henry Jarvis Raymond of the New York Times to shape their stories. Many papers developed and promoted a new format called letters. As letter writers emerged in print, letters were portrayed as eyewitness accounts with insightful details and realistic irreverence. Gritty and biting, it was like 60 minutes style investigative journalism. Perhaps investigative, but certainly sensationalist. This approach sold papers and exposed the bullying and vitriol that was growing within Congress. Both Northerners and Southerners were routinely caricatured as fanatic extremists, both for and against the slave power. The Alexandria Gazette put forth this opinion on march twenty ninth, eighteen fifty-four. Some things never change. If you look at a map of the contiguous United States, Missouri and Kansas are right there in the middle. It's the literal heartland of the country. I find it no coincidence that the political and social heart of the country itself was about to face a stress test of unprecedented proportions. And in 1854 all eyes looked to the region as the midterm elections approached. Stephen A. Douglas had fought for the Kansas Nebraska Act. He wanted popular sovereignty, and now he and the country got it. The people would get to choose whether the Kansas Territory would be free or slave, and everyone watched. How would this go? At first, new settlers moved into the territory, with the hopes and dreams of thousands who had gone before them. A new life awaits you, the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure. The goal was to establish residency in order to secure the right to vote. Missouri, being right next door, was where most new folks came from. And Missouri was a slave state. Quickly then it became apparent that if the free soilers wanted Kansas to be free, they better get a move on. Soon the Exodus became a race. Pro slavery settlers founded towns like Acheson and Leavenworth. Remember Missouri Senator David Acheson, the one who had Douglas modify the original Nebraska Act, who went with Douglas to see the president, and now who helped found a town bearing his name? Well Acheson recruited thousands of armed pro-slavery Missourians and led them across the border into Kansas. His privateers were known as border ruffians. They would enforce a pro-slavery agenda in the New Territory at gunpoint. They would threaten, torture, and murder if necessary. Not to be outdone, the Free Soilers and Northern Benevolent Societies sponsored and funded thousands of Northerners from New England, Pennsylvania, and Ohio to move west and put down roots in Kansas. Antislavery settlers founded Lawrence, Topeka, and Manhattan. One story, probably apocryphal, describes the abolitionist preacher Henry Beecher Ward, the brother of Uncle Tom's cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, as sending crates to Kansas that were labeled as containing Bibles. The Beecher's Bibles, they were actually Sharp's rifles from the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company of Connecticut. They were extremely accurate at long ranges, hence the name given to those skilled at using them, Sharps shooters. As the calendar flipped to 1855, Kansas was filling up fast with northerners, with southerners, and with weapons, and with charismatic leaders who would do all they could to ensure the state voted the way they wanted. For every pro-slavery David Acheson, there was an anti-slavery John Brown. John Brown was born in Connecticut and would live all across the North. First in Ohio, then he'd move to New England, again in Ohio, then to Pennsylvania, a third time in Ohio, on to Massachusetts, and eventually to North Elba, New York. Brown was a deeply religious man, believing he was an instrument of the Almighty. He studied to become a minister, but never completed the program. Instead, he found a passion for the plight of the enslaved. While making a living running a tannery, surveying for new roads, running a bank, and even delivering mail, Brown helped runaway slaves through the Underground Railroad. His own family grew to twenty children, seven with his first wife, who died in eighteen thirty two, and thirteen with his second. By the time he got to New York, John Brown had lost most of what he'd made, but had met many abolitionists and built an impressive social network through anti-slavery societies, churches, newspapers, and militia like organizations. In 1855, he, six sons, and a son-in-law all moved to Kansas, with the express intent to make the state free. Photos of the fifty five year old Brown show him square jawed with intense eyes, a high forehead topped by a shock of thick black hair. He had come to the heartland of America on a mission from God. On march thirtieth, eighteen fifty five, Kansas held its first election for its territorial legislature, and everything was smooth sailing. Not now, pay attention and see if you can follow along. First, the pro slavery border ruffians stormed into Kansas for the vote, and pro slavery candidates won thirty seven of the thirty nine seats. The Free Soilers cried foul. Then the territorial governor, Andrew Reeder, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, called out the voter fraud and invalidated the results in eleven races. Then in May, a special election for those eleven seats was held. Eight free soil delegates were elected. Reader named the town of Pawnee as the territorial capital. Then on July 2, the legislature met with a majority of pro-slavery delegates, and they immediately invalidated the special election, declaring the original candidates winners. They then moved the capital to Lecompton and adopted a slave code for the state. Then the Free Soilers elected delegates to a second legislature in Topeka and said that they were the legitimate government. In the fall, they drafted the first territorial constitution to legitimize their claim. At this point, President Pierce had enough. On August 16th, he fired Reeder and replaced him with Democrat Ohio Congressman Wilson Shannon. Pierce refused to recognize the Topeka government and stated that it represented an insurrection. In response, Congress sent a special committee that investigated the situation. It would eventually agree that fraud had taken place and the elections were false. There were more actual free soil settlers than pro slavery settlers. In November, a feud between a pro slavery settler and a free soil settler that had nothing to do with politics ended in the murder of the free soiler, Charles Dow. When the local sheriff took action, parties of armed free soilers and pro slavery settlers formed. Governor Shannon called out the territory militia, which was almost all pro slavery Missourians. The free soilers raised their own militia led by the Topeka government's governor. It turned into a standoff at Lawrence, Kansas, and another free soiler was killed. Shannon had to negotiate the peace, and everyone went home. So by 1856 we've got a territory that's supposed to decide whether it's going to be free or slave, choosing neither, but acting if it's both. We've got two governments with two capitals. We've got roving bands of violent vigilantes enforcing agendas. We've got a president who's trying to placate his Democratic Party while a handful of federal troops stand uncomfortably by watching opposing armed state militias posture themselves as a show of force. A severe prairie winter cools off the hotheads for several months. But with the spring there came two preliminary facts. Number one, settlers resumed their flow into the territory, bringing more manpower and more weapons. And number two, a pro-slavery judge in the Lecompton government ordered a grand jury to indict members of the other government for treason. Several of these members lived in the town of Lawrence. In May of eighteen fifty-six, over the course of four days, rapid sparks of ignition would demonstrate to the American people just how flammable slavery was and just how close civil war could be. On May 21st, David Acheson fired up his border ruffians and additional hired guns from Texas with a speech. Yes, the treasonous free soilers in Lawrence ought to be indicted, but the abolitionist newspapers in Lawrence printing its anti-slavery rhetoric was the greater threat. In his words, it was time to plunder and quote draw blood. The army of eight hundred, bringing five cannon as well, took positions along the high ground surrounding Lawrence. The leaders of both sides met, the pro-slavery forces demanded no resistance, the townspeople would not fight. The army then charged the town and destroyed the newspapers, burned down the hotel, and ransacked homes and shops. Other than one ruffian killed by falling debris, no one else died. In Washington, DC, Congress had been following the craziness in Kansas. Free soil politicians called out the blatant pro-slavery forces that were trying to make Kansas a slave state. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner had identified the organized violence and coercion that Acheson was behind. Sumner directed his most pointed remarks against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas and South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. Specifically, Sumner and Butler had engaged in a series of public insults toward one another that frequently employed sexual imagery. This was monumentally offensive. Each accused the other of harlotry, sexual abuse of slaves either by their love for or hatred against the institution. Sumner must have been in bed with the slaves. Butler must have been raping them for pleasure. That was the type of language. Butler's cousin, Congressman Preston Brooks, was outraged. He considered challenging Sumner to a duel to defend his cousin's honor. But he was dissuaded by others who insisted that duels were for gentlemen of equal standing, and that Sumner was not his equal, they said. Brooks agreed, but something must be done. The following day, may twenty second, as Lawrence, Kansas was smoldering from the attack, Preston Brooks entered the United States Capitol building in Washington. Accompanied by two other Southern Congressmen, Brooks walked into the mostly empty Senate chamber and took a back seat. Looking up to the public galleries above, he watched as several ladies made their way to the exits. Once they were gone, Brooks strode down the aisle to where Charles Sumner was sitting at his desk. The Senator was writing letters. As he noticed a figure standing over him, Sumner looked up. Brooks leaned forward saying Mr Sumner, I read your speech with care, and as much impartiality as was possible, and I felt it was my duty to tell you that you have libeled my state and slandered a relative who is aged and absent, and I am come to punish you for it. As the final words spilled from his mouth, Brooks was already raising his heavy walking cane with an ornamental gold head into the air. Then he swung it down squarely on Sumner's head. The stunned senator reeled in his seat as the next blow came crashing down. Then another, and another, and another. Sumner's head split open and blood flowed down his face. He tried to move, but his legs got caught under his desk. Brooks grabbed him by his coat to steady him and continued striking him time and time again. Others in the Senate moved quickly toward the attack, yelling, Don't kill him. But Brooks' two friends warned them not to interfere, shouting, let them alone, one showing his own cane and a pistol as proof of their intent. Sumner raised his arms in self-defense, but Brooks persisted blow by blow. The cane snapped in two from the force, and Sumner finally got free of the desk, pulling it from the bolts that had held it to the floor. After thirty blows, Brooks stopped, satisfied. As the spectators pressed in, several moved to help their fallen comrade, and then the three southerners exited the chamber. Sumner slumped to the floor, unconscious, covered in blood. He would recover, but the shock of the attack was unimaginable. A spontaneous scuffle was one thing. A premeditated attack was another. An altercation between men similarly armed was one thing, but a beating on an unarmed opponent was another. A run in on the grounds or sidewalks of the Capitol was one thing, but an ambush on the floor of the Senate chamber was another. Brooks was way out of bounds. And the timing couldn't have been worse. Word of the raid on Lawrence the day before was reaching newspapers right as the attack unfolded on Sumner. The telegraph ensured that news of the beating reached New York papers within 45 minutes. Two days later, back in Kansas, John Brown heard the incredible news. His time in Massachusetts endeared him to the abolitionist viewpoint of state politicians like Sumner. His blood began to boil. First there was the attack on the town of Lawrence, then the attack on an anti-slavery champion in the Senate. These deeds could not go unpunished. On May 24th, Brown, with his family and militia and towed, advanced to Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas. They apprehended five men from their homes who were known pro-slavery activists and hacked them to death with broadswords. When news of the Pottawatomie massacre spread across the country's newspapers, suddenly abolitionism now had a face and a name for violence. John Brown became a symbol of both the action abolitionists wanted and the violent threat that Southerners would not stand for. With bleeding Kansas erupting in violence and bleeding Sumner symbolizing the breakdowns within Congress, Southerners still sought justification for the Continent Empire's present and its future. For every inch it would give it would have to take a mile. As the Richmond Inquirer said in eighteen fifty four, quote, the only possible way by which the South can indemnify itself for its concessions to the antislavery fanaticism is by the acquisition of additional slave territory. Back in eighteen fifty, the South had looked to Cuba as possible new slave territory. By eighteen fifty six, its gaze turned toward a slight gray eyed man of destiny and the country of Nicaragua. William Walker was born in Nashville and got his medical degree in Philadelphia. After studying in Europe, he returned to New Orleans where he studied law. He then traveled to San Francisco to own and edit a newspaper, where he also fought three duels, getting wounded twice. After filibustering adventures in Mexico, where he tried to set up an independent Republic of Sonora, Walker watched civil war break out in Nicaragua. What happened next is surreal. Why it happened is much harder to figure out. William Walker sailed from San Francisco on may third, eighteen fifty five to Nicaragua with fifty-seven filibusters. He made allies of the local rebels and together took control of the national government. Soon, President Pierce recognized regenerated Nicaragua, and thousands of American immigrants made their way to the renewed country. The following year Walker proclaimed himself president and legalized slavery. But then the surrounding countries turned on the upstart American. Thousands of troops from Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador battled Walker's army in eighteen fifty six and eighteen fifty seven. On may first, nearly two years to the day that he began his expedition, Walker surrendered to the U.S. Navy and was taken back to New York. He was to try three more times to lead filibuster campaigns to Central America, each time being hailed as a heroic adventurer who represented the grandest aspirations of Southern slaveholders. Finally, in eighteen sixty, Walker would try again, this time being seized by British authorities. He was turned over to the Honduran government, where he was tried, convicted, and executed by firing squad. He was only thirty six. How was this brilliant and eccentric man able to stage a coup that demanded a coalition of countries to unite in a war against him? On one hand, there was certainly hubris and glory in making a name for himself. Likewise there was money to be made. Because the Panama Canal was still almost 60 years in the future, there was no way to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific unless you took the long way around South America and Cape Horn. But there was a business owned by millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt called the Accessory Transit Company. They controlled transportation through and over Nicaraguan territory. Seizure of Nicaragua could lead to control of the profits. And lastly, there was a Southern Secret Society called the Knights of the Golden Circle, founded by American George Bickley. Founded in 1854, the KGC ran a series of shadowy efforts to create a slavery empire all around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. There were plans for filibusters and colonization, expansion and raising of armies. Eventually the KGC focused on helping the Confederacy win or survive the Civil War. In the end, it wasn't all that secret, and it certainly wasn't very successful. William Walker was most likely party to all these influences, and was the one who got the furthest in the pursuit of the expansion of slavery beyond the borders of the United States. The presidential election of 1856 gives us another fixed point to survey the state of American politics. How were the parties faring? The 1854 midterms saw the Senate stay in control of the Democrats, who held 40 seats, but the 22 other senators were a mixture made up of one free soiler, two know-nothings, eight Whigs, and eleven members of the brand new Republican Party. The state legislatures of Tennessee, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Connecticut joined the other states pulling away from the quickly evaporating Whig Party. In the House, it was even more extreme. The Democrats found themselves outnumbered by a caucus of anti Democrats, 82 to 152. All the former Whigs ran as either Republicans or members of an opposition party and found themselves allied with the Know Nothings. What would this mean for? The election of 1856. The Whigs had essentially dissolved. Northern Whigs joined the growing Republican movement or the nativist know-nothings, while many Southern Whigs became Democrats. This shift tipped the balance of power back to the Democrats who would recapture the House. In the presidential election, Democrat James Buchanan beat two opponents, Republican John C. Fremont and former President Millard Fillmore, who was the Know Nothing candidate. The Democrats moved on from the troubled Pierce administration and stayed clear of the ambitious Stephen A. Douglas in a move to try and put the Kansas-Nebraska Act behind them by avoiding the two men most responsible for it. To balance the ticket, the doeface Buchanan from Pennsylvania, a longtime senator and secretary of state under Polk, was paired with John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky as VP. The first Republican candidate was the California Explorer and General Fremont, who ran on the explicit anti-slavery platform of the party. At the convention in Philadelphia, they nominated William Dayton of New Jersey for vice president, although Abraham Lincoln got votes as well at the outset. As Buchanan and Breckenridge were sworn into office on March 4, 1857, the first ever photograph of a presidential inauguration was taken. Somewhere up on the wooden platform under the East Front Pediment sits Buchanan and Chief Justice Roger B. Tawney. Perhaps they were talking in hushed tones with one another about things other than the administration of the oath of office that would soon take place. Of the hundreds of dignitaries and spectators in attendance, many had no idea what would happen just two days later. On March 6th, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that would be the next explosive event with slavery at its core. It was a decision known as Dred Scott versus Sanford, and it would be the most controversial decision in the country's history up until then. The case had been traveling through the legal system for 10 years, trying to determine if Dred Scott was a slave or a free man. It became a federal case when a family member of Scott's owner was a resident of New York, because Scott was claiming freedom in Missouri. Appeals led it to the Supreme Court. The convoluted case had to do with the often contradictory standings slaves and freed blacks had from state to state and which states had what authority. The official verdict, when published, was 240 pages. In it, Dred Scott was to remain a slave and property of John Sanford via a seven two decision. Chief Justice Tawney also went well beyond the specific issue of Scott's freedom. He also argued that slaves northern descendants, the quote, Negro African race, had ever been accorded rights of citizenship, quote, rights which the white man was bound to respect. Tani also battered the constitutionality of the original Missouri Compromise. His decision heavily favored Southerners and their rights around their peculiar institution. The court was now aligned with Congress, and if the Kansas Nebraska Act hadn't completely shredded the Missouri Compromise, it had now been incinerated to a crisp. Across the North, many saw this as the final act of a Southern power coup. The slaveholders ran Congress, pulled the strings of their puppet president, and now rendered the ultimate verdict from the bench of the highest court in the land. Frederick Douglass responded from New York in a speech on may fourteenth, saying, You will readily ask me how I am affected by this devilish decision, this judicial incarnation of wolfishness. My answer is, and no thanks to the slave holding wing of the Supreme Court, my hopes were never brighter than now. I have no fear that the national conscience will be put to sleep by such an open, glaring and scandalous tissue of lies as that decision is, and has been over and over shown to be. The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world. It is very great, but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. Judge Tawney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities. He cannot change the essential nature of things, making evil good and good evil. In Springfield, Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas had spoken about his support for the court's decision, and Abraham Lincoln was present, listening and formulating his own thoughts. Two weeks later, on june twenty sixth, eighteen fifty seven, it was his turn to speak and denounce the many powers that kept the black man a slave, saying All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house, they have searched his person and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key. The keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places, and they stand musing as to what invention and all the dominions of mind and matter can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is. 1857 also saw further development in Kansas as John Brown continued to lead free soil forces on attacks and to defend anti-slavery residents. After one engagement at Osawatomy, Brown reportedly vowed, quote, I only have a short time to live, only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. It was approved in a landslide because free soilers refused to participate. Congress, determining that there were voting irregularities, ordered another election, and this time it was shot down 11 to 1. Another constitution was drafted by the Free Soilers, but when sent to the U.S. Senate, the Democrats stopped it and let it die in committee. Eventually, a final document was put forth known as the Wyandotte Constitution that would be approved by a referendum in 1859. It would sit dormant until Kansas finally became a state in 1861. By the end of 1857, John Brown had left Kansas, traveling back east, now a famous figure in abolitionist circles. He would meet with supporters along the way, frequently being handed large sums of cash to support his efforts. As he did, he prayed and dreamed. He had had a vision for 20 years or more, a vision of a slave insurrection, with himself at the lead. He would be the American Moses, leading people to a promised land. It would be a blow to slavery and lead to the emancipation of all the slaves. As he acquired funds and broaden his social network, the idea began to come into clear focus. In January of 1858, he stopped in Rochester, New York and met with Frederick Douglass. And Brown began to grow a beard. The dream was to conduct his operation in a mountainous area where a small group could be more effective. He imagined the Appalachians. In the mountains of Virginia, he'd be able to do more of what he called Kansas work. As John Brown made his plans, so did Southern leaders. With the Fugitive Slave Act ensuring slaves couldn't just run away, with the Dred Scott case stating that blacks could not even be citizens, and with the Missouri Compromise Line now erased from the national map, fire eaters in the South began to fix their gaze on another piece of history that they believed they could undo, the eighteen oh eight Act prohibiting the importation of slaves. In May of eighteen fifty eight, the Southern Commercial Convention met in Montgomery, Alabama, to discuss and debate strategies to reopen the Atlantic slave trade. Fire eater William Lowns Yancey spoke to the Assembly in direct and logical terms. Suppose a captain from New Orleans were to ask the gentleman from Virginia if it was lawful for him to buy slaves and take them to New Orleans. The answer would be that it was lawful, provided he did not buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa. The captain would ask, Where shall I buy them? The gentleman, actuated by that principle of interest, which governs all mankind would naturally tell him to come to Richmond and buy his slaves there. Now, if it is right to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa and carry them there? Several strategies for reopening the trade were put forth. First, repeal the eighteen oh eight Act through congressional action. That would be the slow bureaucratic method. Second, argue the constitutionality of these laws through legal maneuvering. That one's for the lawyers. Another option would be to simply nullify the laws, start importing slaves and let the courts deal with it. Well, nullification as an idea had been tried before and it failed. But now with a doe face in the White House, maybe that could work. Finally, and here's the outside the box approach, bring Africans over as apprentices and put them to work as such with wage labor and contract freedom, but no other. A New Orleans newspaper suggested paying slaves $3.50 a month, deducting the expenses of their transport from Africa and living expenses over 20 years, then giving them $500 at the end of the contract, which would cover their transport back to Africa. Louisiana's House favored passing a bill along these lines, but its Senate did not. Nothing ever came of all the strategizing that would generate enough traction to kickstart an actual plan, but the conversation expressed the South's deep desire to be free of the economic superiority of the North. Virginian author and editor Edward Pollard wrote in his book Black Diamonds of this yearning for freedom that a new slave trade would encourage. Quote, slavery never yet has spoken and it is time it should speak. When it does, its first utterance will be we must be free, free to expand according to our own nature, free of the touch of any hostile hand upon us. Oh the sheer irony and hypocrisy. In order to be free of their own slavery at the hands of the North, they believed in the manifest destiny of the slavery of blacks as a way of life. But the attitudes of Northerners in Congress were beginning to turn as well. It was time to stop rolling over and time to start hitting back. On February 6th, 1858, during an overnight session, debate ranged in the House over the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution sent from Kansas. And over the course of hours and hours, plenty of congressmen had imbibed and taken advantage of the Capitol's private storehouses of whiskey and Madeira. At one point, Radical Republican Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania got mixed up arguing procedure with Democrat Lawrence Keat of South Carolina. Keat grabbed Groh's throat and Grow pushed him aside. Keat grabbed again and Groh slugged him. Southerners rushed in as did Republicans, and thirty or so congressmen brawled over desks, chairs, and one another. At one point, John Potter of Wisconsin grabbed William Barksdale of Mississippi and pulled off his toupee to everyone's astonishment and laughter. Eventually the scene settled, but Northerners were proving they would fight. That same year, antislavery senators Benjamin Wade of Ohio, Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania all swore loyalty to one another and vowed to challenge opponents to duels and fights to the death. They decided there was no other response to the insults from Southerners who bullied their way through Congress. They understood that duels were considered barbaric by their constituents back up north, but they refused to be humiliated in the Senate. As the three wrote about their pledge years later, they used phrases like gross personal abuse, unendurable outrage, and frantic with rage and shame. In the form of public debate, 1858 witnessed the most extraordinary series of verbal jousting the country had ever seen. It's crazy today to think that a Senate race would capture the attention of great sections of the country, especially if we're reminded that people didn't even directly elect senators. Like we discussed earlier, senators were chosen by each state's own legislature. But in 1858, in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for the Senate. This was truly the next generation after Clay, Webster, and Calhoun finally stepping up to take center stage in America. Lincoln and Douglas could not have looked more different. The sitting senator Douglas was short and stocky, with a perpetual crease in his brow. Dressed well to do in expensive suits, the Vermont native was a stark contrast to the tall, lanky Lincoln with his well-worn and disheveled clothes. Lincoln spoke with a clear, high pitched voice that had tremendous carrying power. Douglas's voice was lower, a more resonant force. They had to be able to project, because they were about to embark on a seven city debate circuit. Lincoln first captured the attention of the nation's newspapers on June 16th in Springfield, after he had won the Republicans' nomination for the Senate. It would be his famous House Divided Speech, in which he said, quote, We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. The following month, Lincoln challenged his opponent to a series of debates. Douglas accepted. They had both recently spoken in Springfield and Chicago, so Lincoln suggested seven appearances, one in each of the remaining seven congressional districts of Illinois. Between august twenty first and october fifteenth, they would debate in Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton. As the schedule was released, the big newspapers in Chicago sent stenographers via the railroads connecting all the cities. Every word would be captured and then transcribed and telegraphed back to cities where newspapers could publish the accounts the very next day. There had never been anything like it before. Each debate would draw between 10,000 and 18,000 people. Imagine speaking that loud for an hour and a half. Imagine the pressure to persuade. The debates were more a challenge for Lincoln than for Douglas, who was the incumbent. Lincoln had to communicate the evolving Republican position, which was part abolitionist, part free soil, part radical, part conservative, and fully white. His primary goal limit the spread of slavery. Second, show black people to be human, and third, attract moderates, without alienating too many. Douglas's main point in the debates was the inferiority of the black race. In Ottawa, he said the black person belongs to an inferior race and must always occupy an inferior position. In response, Lincoln chose not to preach, but knew his role as a politician. So he spoke to his audience, not denying the differences between the races and certainly not being as forceful as a garrison or Frederick Douglass. He knew racial prejudice was too great to attack head on. That would have to be for another day. But in these debates, he could argue what he had said earlier in Chicago, back in July, when he urged, quote, I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any abolitionist. Let us doubt. Discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race, and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things and unite as one people throughout this land. End quote. Douglas was just as sure of his position. In his first debate with Lincoln in Ottawa on august twenty first, he said, Do you desire to turn this beautiful state into a free Negro colony? If you desire Negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the state and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves and to make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican Party. I believe this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever. End quote. Lincoln was more nuanced, as he had to pay attention to his audience at the time. The truth was that most whites in Illinois were prejudiced in thinking blacks were not equal to whites. It is a fact that Lincoln had said in the sixth debate with Douglas on October 13th in Quincy, quote, there is no reason in the world why the Negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. But it's also a fact that Lincoln had said at the fourth debate in Charleston on September 18th, quote, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And as inasmuch as they cannot so live while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. Remember, Lincoln was a politician, and he was trying to attract moderates. To our presentist ears, this sounds unacceptable. But remember, we weren't the audience that day. To the listeners of 1858, Lincoln was socially progressive in comparison to most white Americans. Others who were more outspoken for black equality had less chance to become a senator or even president. So Lincoln was the right man at the right time, with the right penchant for growing in the breadth of his vision. Across the debates, Lincoln also began to argue against the aristocratic slave owning class. Favor for wealth and status would be to allow the peculiar institution, unique to their position as slave owners, to spread into new territories and states? What would keep the aristocracy from extending slavery to not only those of different skin color, but to those of, say, lesser intelligence? Would intellectually inferior whites eventually be enslaved? It was a compelling logic. But Lincoln also understood current laws and was not advocating for the federal government to usurp the state authority when it came to slavery. It was only 1858. In seven years it would be a different reality. But no one knew that. Ultimately, both Lincoln and Douglas became names people would recognize. The Telegraph allowed the debates to be daily news all across the country. It was as if all the people were allowed inside the Senate chambers to hear the great statesmen of the past. But the country's newspapers were now the forums of debate, and anyone could have a seat. At that moment, the most consequential discussions for the country were happening in small towns in Illinois and not in the nation's capital. On November 2nd, the ballots were counted, and the voters of Illinois chose their state legislators. The Republicans essentially won the north half of the state, and the Democrats won the south half. The Republicans won the popular vote for all the legislators combined, the district electoral votes tipped in favor of the Democrats, who chose Douglas for the Senate. Lincoln lost, but was not defeated. In fact, he was inspired. He wrote to his friend Iliazar Payne on November 19, 1858. The question is not half settled. The fight would go on. The Fugitive Slave Act would make it go on. The filibuster visions would make it go on. The threats and violence in the Senate would make it go on. Popular sovereignty would make it go on. The bleeding in Kansas would make it go on. The Dred Scott decision would make it go on. Talk of reopening the slave trade would make it go on. And the Lincoln Douglas debates confronted Americans with the reality that the fight would go on and on until something was done about it. In October eighteen fifty nine, something was done. The eastern US gently rises up from the Atlantic coast to a rich plain of farmland before it lifts up into the long ridge of mountainous ribbons that are the Appalachians. Across these rocky heights there are intermittent gaps and through ways that would allow people and animals and then boats and trains to pass through. One of those places was where the Shenandoah River joins the Potomac. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal also flowed through, bringing coal east to the cities until the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad could do it faster. It was also a regional hub for firearms. This place featured the U.S. arsenal and armory and Hall's rifle works. The place was known as Harper's Ferry, and it was the gateway to the Shenandoah Valley, and was located where Virginia met Maryland. And it was where John Brown chose to launch his slave revolt. Two months earlier, the now full bearded Brown had met in secret with Frederick Douglass again, near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He shared his plan. He would seize the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry and use his own cache of weapons, two hundred sharps rifles, and nine hundred and fifty wooden pikes for those who couldn't operate a firearm, to arm the slaves he believed would flock to his call. His goal was to rally others, black and white, and send out armed bands that would free more slaves and gather more supplies and dissolve the morale of slaveholders. He would use the appellations to move further south and create more agitation. Douglas could not support the plan. He believed an attack on federal property would be seen as an attack on the United States. He anticipated more harm would come of it than good. He believed the attack would be a suicide mission. Brown could not convince him that this was the way to shock people into action. And Douglas departed. John Brown had shared parts and pieces of his plans with a network of around eighty people in total, though no one knew of all the details. One group known as the Secret Six supplied most of the funds that would finance the operation. On Sunday night, october sixteenth, eighteen fifty nine, Brown's party, twenty two men in all, swung into action. They split into smaller parties that cut telegraph lines into and out of Harper's Ferry. They secured the river bridges, and then they took some hostages while freeing local slaves. After midnight, the first fatality occurred when a free black man was accidentally shot because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The gunshot warned locals that something was happening, and word slowly spread. While it was still dark on the morning of the seventeenth, a train from the west was stopped on the Baltimore and Ohio line. Brown spoke with the engineer and passengers and detained them for several hours. When he allowed them to continue, the conductor wanted assurance that the track or bridges weren't damaged. Brown allowed all the passengers off and they waited in the hotel. Satisfied that they could proceed, the train departed, with Brown himself walking across the bridge in front of the locomotive, escorting them across. As soon as the train arrived at a working telegraph post, it sent a message. First to the B and Offices, then to the Maryland militia, then to the Governor of Virginia, the Secretary of War, and the President himself. As employees of the Armory began to arrive for work that morning, Brown and his men took them as hostages and split them up into groups. Approximately sixty people were held in one building, as well as a smaller brick building known as the Engine House. Over the next few hours, as word spread, dozens and dozens of armed militia arrived from the surrounding towns and counties. At that moment, noon on the seventeenth, Brown had his decision point. Would he stay or would he leave? Perhaps he didn't know that the situation was getting out of hand, but the moment passed. Eventually his men guarding the bridges were forced back by the arriving local militia. The expected rallying of hundreds of slaves and abolitionists never materialized, and Brown suddenly found himself pinned in. He and his men barricaded themselves in the engine house, and sporadic firing began. Most of the hostages were able to escape while Brown kept ten or so close by. Soon people began to get shot, wounded, and killed. Townspeople, militia, and several of Brown's party. Within hours, President Buchanan ordered a detachment of ninety U.S. Marines to board a train in Washington for Harper's Ferry. Colonel Robert E. Lee was ordered there as well to take command. They arrived by ten PM that night. Lee had no uniform on hand, so he was dressed in civilian clothes. The very next morning, then, october eighteenth, thousands of townspeople were on hand to watch Lee and his second in command, a young lieutenant named James Ewell Brown Stewart, form up the Marines and prepared to assault the engine house. Lee sent Stewart forward with a white flag and an offer for Brown to surrender. He refused. A signal was given, and the Marines attacked. They first tried sledgehammers, then used a ladder as a battering ram to break through the doors. As guns cracked and men shouted, the Marines broke through, killing a few of Brown's men, and Brown was wounded by a saber stroke. One Marine was killed and another wounded. And then it was over. The attack lasted all of three minutes. Brown and his surviving followers were captured, tried and sentenced relatively quickly to avoid the threat of lynchings. On december second, John Brown was hung by the neck until dead. Ironically, present for the event were Professor Thomas J. Jackson of the Virginia Military Institute, Southern Fire Eater Edmund Ruffin, and an actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth. John Brown's closing remarks from his imprisonment were published in New York papers, saying, I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised people was not wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit, so let it be done. The South saw this as a pure threat. The Richmond Inquirer wrote on october twenty fifth, eighteen fifty nine, quote, The Harper's Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of disunion more than any other event since the formation of the government. It has rallied to that standard of men who formerly looked upon it with horror. It had revived with tenfold strength the desire of a Southern Confederacy. In the North, Brown was a martyr. In Haiti, flags were flown at half mast. In Europe he was admired but questioned as being a fanatic. The South saw it as a prelude to war. The Senate formed a committee to investigate the attack, specifically to know if there was an organization attempting to subvert the government of any of the states, and if any other citizens were accessory via money, arms, munitions, or otherwise. The Democrats in particular wanted to know if the Republican Party had any involvement. In the end, the report concluded that there was no organization behind the deed. It was, quote, simply the act of lawless ruffians distinguishable from ordinary felonies by the fact that the money to maintain them had been contributed and furnished by the citizens of other states of the Union. Lincoln himself weighed the event against history and what he believed about the law. He wrote, quote, John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves in which the slaves refused to participate. That affair in its philosophy corresponds with many attempts related in history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt which ends in little else than his own execution. A Kansas newspaper reported that Lincoln added that Harper's Ferry, quote, was a violation of law, and it was, as all such attacks must be, futile as far as any effect it might have on the extinction of a great evil. We have a means provided for the expression of our belief in regard to slavery. It is through the ballot box, the peaceful method provided by the Constitution. Herman Melville, in a collection of poems written during the Civil War called John Brown The Meteor of the Conflict. The attack on Harper's Ferry was a watershed moment for America. Again, because of the rapid advances in communication, everyone everywhere knew about it right away. And it was the culmination of everything that had been building up in the eighteen fifties to that point. It expressed the myriad of fears that were buried deep in the hearts of its people. Fears of whites and fears of blacks, fears within the political parties, fears of complacency and of violence, fears of emancipation and fears of war. And Harper's Fairy brought to light perhaps the greatest fear of all have we made no progress? If not, what could possibly happen next? What can we take away from the pressure cooker that was the eighteen fifties? First, what can I learn from the revolutions in reporting the news and the media? eighteen fifty eight and eighteen fifty nine were miracles of interconnectedness and certainly accelerated the questions around slavery. We have our own versions of instant news coverage and opinions. Do I listen and take in a broad range of information? Or do I listen to just a few voices? Which approach gives me the greatest sense of understanding? Do I focus on accuracy or inaccuracy of specific facts? Or am I seeking a bigger picture? One that includes varying degrees of truth? How do I respond to the news? Am I quick to react? Is it wiser to wait and seek prudence? Or might I miss an opportunity due to analysis paralysis? Second, which is more important, power or principle? The doe faces of the North chose to preserve their place rather than stand on their convictions. The slaveholders of the South chose to live according to principles while wondering if the power they currently held would be enough to expand their spheres of influence or turn back the clock to a time when slavery was not hated? How can I learn and discover the wisdom between the ends justifying the means and when that's simply an excuse? And finally, how do I understand myself to be maturing? Across the decade, people's views on government, institutions, behaviors, decisions, ideas, race, representation, and freedom were being challenged and affirmed in ways that they had not been before. It's a reminder that none of us are fixed points. That life is a journey, and I am a different person than I used to be and will be a different person than I am. I still have a long way to go. I can't help but think of one of my favorite Lincoln quotes of all time. I don't like that man, I must get to know him better. In our next episode we wonder what happens next. Would John Brown inspire more slave revolts? Would the southern states expand, bringing slavery west or even south into Mexico? Were the Democrats the last party standing and the future hope of the Union? And what would the political free for all create as the country headed for elections in eighteen sixty? Thanks for listening. Please like, follow, and subscribe. Please leave a rating and a review. The more reviews a podcast gets, the greater exposure it gets. Share it with family and friends. I genuinely appreciate your support.com. I'm Scott Holmgren, your host. Thank you for listening. And if you're not learning, you're not living.