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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/23748-doc.doc b/23748-doc.doc Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7fca5b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/23748-doc.doc diff --git a/23748-doc.zip b/23748-doc.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..dde40bd --- /dev/null +++ b/23748-doc.zip diff --git a/23748-h.zip b/23748-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ed4b98 --- /dev/null +++ b/23748-h.zip diff --git a/23748-h/23748-h.htm b/23748-h/23748-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ba74e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/23748-h/23748-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6060 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> + <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" + http-equiv="content-type"> + <title>HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3</title> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the United States, Volume 3 (of +6), by E. Benjamin Andrews + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) + +Author: E. Benjamin Andrews + +Release Date: December 5, 2007 [EBook #23748] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES *** + + + + +Produced by Don Kostuch + + + + + +</pre> + +<big><big>[Transcriber's Notes]<br> +<br> +Text has been moved to avoid fragmentation of sentences and paragraphs.<br> +<br> +The other five texts in this series were obtained from the 1912 edition<br> +of original books. Volume 3 was missing from the set.<br> +This text, Volume 3, is derived from a PDF image file of the 1896 +edition<br> +on the Internet Archive at<br> +http://www.archive.org/details/histusearliest03andrrich<br> +<br> +[End Transcriber's Notes]<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 732px; height: 477px;" alt="" + src="images/Title0.gif"><br> +The First Gun Fired from Fort Sumter<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES<br> +<br> +FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY<br> +OF AMERICA TO THE PRESENT DAY<br> +<br> +BY<br> +<br> +E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS<br> +PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY<br> +<br> +<br> +WITH 400 ILLUSTRATION AND MAPS<br> +<br> +<br> +VOLUME III<br> +<br> +<br> +NEW YORK<br> +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br> +1896<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY<br> +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br> +<br> +Press of J. J. Little & Co.<br> +Astor Place. New York<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CONTENTS<br> +<br> +PERIOD II<br> +<br> +WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE<br> +DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY<br> +<br> +1814--1840<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I. THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION.<br> +<br> +The Word "Whig."<br> +Republican Prestige.<br> +Schism.<br> +Adams's Election.<br> +Five Doctrines of Whiggism.<br> +I. Broad Construction of the Constitution.<br> +II. The Bank.<br> +Death of Old and Birth of New.<br> +Opposition by Jackson.<br> +III. The Tariff of 1816.<br> +Its Object.<br> +IV. Land.<br> +Whig versus Democratic Policy.<br> +V. Internal Improvements<br> +Rivers and Harbors.<br> +Need of Better Inland Communication.<br> +Contention between the Parties.<br> +Whig Characteristics.<br> +Adams.<br> +Webster.<br> +His Political Attitude.<br> +Clay.<br> +His Power, as an Orator.<br> +His Duel with Randolph.<br> +His Wit.<br> +His Influence.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II. FLORIDA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE.<br> +<br> +Florida's Disputed Boundary.<br> +West Florida Occupied.<br> +Jackson Seizes East Florida.<br> +Puts to Death Ambrister and Arbuthnot.<br> +His Excuse.<br> +Defended by Adams.<br> +Sale of Florida.<br> +Revolt of Spanish America.<br> +Monroe's Declaration.<br> +Its Origin.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III. THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.<br> +<br> +Missouri Wishes Statehood.<br> +Early History of Slavery.<br> +Hostility to it.<br> +First Abolitionist Societies.<br> +Ordinance of 1787.<br> +Slavery in the North.<br> +In the South.<br> +Pleas for its Existence.<br> +Missouri Compromise.<br> +Pro-slavery Arguments.<br> +The Policy Men.<br> +Anti-slavery Opinions.<br> +Difficulties of the Case.<br> +The Anti-slavery Side Ignores these.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT NULLIFICATION.<br> +<br> +Rise of Tariff Rates after 1816.<br> +Relations of Parties and Sections to the Tariff.<br> +Minimum Principle.<br> +Tariff of Abominations Adopted.<br> +Harmful to the South.<br> +Nullification Project.<br> +Calhoun's Life and Pet Political Theory.<br> +South Carolina Recedes.<br> +Compromise Tariff.<br> +State Rights and Central Government.<br> +Webster's Plea.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V. MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S "REIGN."<br> +<br> +Jackson's Life.<br> +Mistaken Ideas.<br> +Civil Service Reform.<br> +Perfecting of Party<br> +Organization in the Country.<br> +Jackson and the United States Bank.<br> +His Popularity.<br> +Revival of West Indian Trade.<br> +French Spoliation Claims.<br> +Paid.<br> +Our Gold and Silver Coinage.<br> +Gold Bill.<br> +Increased Circulation of Gold.<br> +Specie Circular.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH.<br> +<br> +Election of Harrison in 1840.<br> +Causes.<br> +Jackson's Violence.<br> +Sub-treasury Policy.<br> +Panic of 1837.<br> +Decrease of Revenue.<br> +Whig Opposition to Slavery.<br> +Seminole War.<br> +Amistad Case.<br> +Texan Question.<br> +"Tippecanoe and Tyler too."<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII. LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE.<br> +<br> +Population and Area.<br> +The West.<br> +The East.<br> +An American Literature.<br> +Newspaper<br> +Enterprise, Mails, Eleemosynary Institutions.<br> +American Character.<br> +Temperance Reform.<br> +The Land of the Free.<br> +Religion.<br> +Anti-masonic Movement.<br> +Banking Craze.<br> +Moon Hoax.<br> +Party Spirit.<br> +Jackson as a Knight Errant.<br> +His Self-will.<br> +Enmity between Adams and Jackson.<br> +Costumes.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII. INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840.<br> +<br> +F. C. Lowell and his Waltham Power-loom.<br> +Growth of Factory System.<br> +New Corporation Laws.<br> +Gas, Coal, and Other Industries.<br> +The Same Continued.<br> +The National Road.<br> +Stages and Canals.<br> +Ocean Lines.<br> +Beginning of Railroads.<br> +Opposition.<br> +First Locomotive.<br> +Multiplication of Railroads.<br> +<br> +<br> +PERIOD III<br> +<br> +THE YEARS OF SLAVERY CONTROVERSY<br> +<br> +1840-1860<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I. SLAVERY AFTER THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.<br> +<br> +Cotton and Slavery.<br> +Evils of Slavery: Social, Economic.<br> +Slave Insurrections.<br> +Turner's Rebellion.<br> +Abolition in Virginia.<br> +Black Laws.<br> +Lull in Anti-slavery<br> +Agitation.<br> +Colonization Society.<br> +Fugitive Slave Laws.<br> +Prigg's Case.<br> +Personal Liberty<br> +Laws in the North.<br> +Kidnapping Expeditions.<br> +Domestic Slave-trade.<br> +Non-emancipation Laws.<br> +Business Relations between North and South.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II. "IMMEDIATE ABOLITION."<br> +<br> +Renewed Hostility to Slavery.<br> +Lundy.<br> +Garrison.<br> +Affiliations of this Movement.<br> +The New England Anti-slave Society.<br> +Significance, Purpose, Work.<br> +Methods of Abolitionists.<br> +Southern Opposition.<br> +Northern.<br> +Anti-abolitionist Riots at the North.<br> +Murder of Lovejoy.<br> +Outrages against Northern Blacks.<br> +Colored Schools Closed.<br> +Schism among the Abolitionists.<br> +The Liberty Party.<br> +Ultra-abolitionists' Unreason.<br> +Why Abolitionism Spread.<br> +Ambiguity of the Constitution.<br> +Seizure of Black Seamen.<br> +Grievances on both Sides.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III. THE MEXICAN WAR.<br> +<br> +Texas Declares her Independence.<br> +Battle of San Jacinto.<br> +The Democracy Favors<br> +Annexation.<br> +Calhoun's Purpose.<br> +Opposition of Clay and the Whigs.<br> +Texas Admitted to the Union.<br> +Causes of the War.<br> +The Nueces vs. the Rio Grande.<br> +Preliminary Operations.<br> +Battle of Palo Alto.<br> +Declaration of War.<br> +Monterey Captured.<br> +Santa Anna again President.<br> +Buena Vista.<br> +Taylor's Victory.<br> +Scott Appointed to Chief Command.<br> +Capture of Vera Cruz.<br> +Cerro Gordo.<br> +Jalapa.<br> +Re-enforced by Pierce.<br> +On to the City of Mexico.<br> +Contreras.<br> +Churubusco.<br> +Molino del Rey.<br> +Storming of Chapultepec.<br> +Capture of the Capital.<br> +Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.<br> +Its Conditions.<br> +The Oregon Question.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV. CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850.<br> +<br> +Invasion of New Mexico.<br> +Exploration and Seizure of California.<br> +Discovery of Gold.<br> +Resulting Excitement.<br> +Increase of Population.<br> +Gold Yield.<br> +Early Law and Government.<br> +Slavery's Victory.<br> +The Wilmot Proviso.<br> +Taylor President.<br> +Application by California for Admission to the Union.<br> +Clay's Omnibus Bill.<br> +Webster Superseded by Sumner.<br> +Passage of the Omnibus Compromise.<br> +California a State.<br> +Enlargement of Texas.<br> +New Fugitive Slave Law.<br> +Revival of Abolitionism.<br> +Underground Railroad.<br> +Rendition of Anthony Burns.<br> +Other Cases.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V. THE FIGHT FOR KANSAS.<br> +<br> +Plot against the Missouri Compromise.<br> +Pierce's Election.<br> +The Kansas-Nebraska Bill.<br> +Abrogation of the Missouri Compromise.<br> +Squatter Sovereignty.<br> +Anti-slavery Emigration to Kansas.<br> +Political Jobbery by the Slavocracy.<br> +Topeka Convention.<br> +Kansas Riots.<br> +Lecompton Constitution.<br> +Opposed by Free-State Men.<br> +Kansas Admitted to the Union.<br> +Assault upon Sumner.<br> +Southern Repudiation of the Douglas Theory.<br> +Dred Scott Decision.<br> +Startling Assumption of the Supreme Court.<br> +Effect.<br> +Counter-theory.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI. SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES.<br> +<br> +Democracy and Whiggism.<br> +Ambiguous Attitude of the Latter toward Slavery.<br> +The Creole Case.<br> +Giddings's Resolutions.<br> +Quincy Adams as an Abolitionist.<br> +The First Gag Law.<br> +Adams's Opposition.<br> +The Second and Third.<br> +Their Repeal.<br> +Pro-slavery Whigs.<br> +Submission to Slavocracy.<br> +Its Insolent Demands.<br> +Death of Whiggism.<br> +Americanism.<br> +The Know-Nothings.<br> +Revolt from the Democracy at the North.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII. THE CRISIS.<br> +<br> +Consolidation of Anti-slavery Men.<br> +Worse Black Laws.<br> +Schemes for Foreign Conquest.<br> +Lopez's and Walker's Expedition.<br> +Ostend Manifesto.<br> +Supremacy of Slavery.<br> +Rise of Free-soilers.<br> +Incipient Republicanism.<br> +Republican Doctrine.<br> +John Brown's Raid.<br> +Schism between the Northern and the Southern Democrats.<br> +Nomination of Douglas.<br> +Breckenridge and Lane.<br> +Bell and Everett.<br> +Lincoln and Hamlin.<br> +Lincoln's Popularity.<br> +His Election to the Presidency.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII. MATERIAL PROGRESS<br> +<br> +Population and Economic Prosperity.<br> +Growth of the West.<br> +Indian Outbreaks.<br> +Improvements farther East.<br> +Canals and Railroads.<br> +The Steam Horse in the West.<br> +Morse's Telegraph.<br> +Ocean Cables.<br> +Minor Inventions.<br> +Petroleum.<br> +Financial Crisis of 1857.<br> +<br> +<br> +PERIOD IV<br> +<br> +CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION<br> +<br> +1860-1868<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF THE WAR.<br> +<br> +An "Irrepressible Conflict."<br> +Growth of North.<br> +Influence of Missouri Compromise Repeal.<br> +Slavery as Viewed by the South.<br> +Stephens.<br> +Anti-Democratic Habits of Thought.<br> +Compact Theory of the Union.<br> +State Consciousness, South.<br> +Argument for the Calhoun Theory.<br> +Secession not Justifiable by this.<br> +Moderates and Fire-eaters.<br> +Northern Grievances.<br> +Do not Excuse Secession.<br> +Lincoln's Election.<br> +Patriotic and Philanthropic Considerations Ignored.<br> +Prudence also.<br> +Resources of South and of North.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II. SECESSION<br> +<br> +Threats of Secession before 1860.<br> +By New England.<br> +By the South in 1856.<br> +Governor Wise.<br> +The 1860 Campaign.<br> +Attitude of South Carolina.<br> +Of the Gulf States.<br> +Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana.<br> +Election of Lincoln.<br> +South Carolina will Secede.<br> +Judge Magrath.<br> +The Palmetto State Goes.<br> +Enthusiasm.<br> +The State Plays Nation.<br> +Effect upon Other States.<br> +Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana.<br> +and Texas Follow.<br> +Strong Union Spirit Still.<br> +Vain.<br> +Georgia and Secession.<br> +The Question in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee,<br> + Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, North Carolina.<br> +Seizure of United States Property.<br> +Floyd's Theft.<br> +Fort Moultrie Evacuated for Sumter.<br> +Fort Pickens.<br> +New Orleans Mint.<br> +Twiggs's Surrender.<br> +Theory of Seceding States as to Property Seized.<br> +Southern Confederacy.<br> +Davis President.<br> +His History.<br> +Inaugural Address.<br> +Powers.<br> +Confederate Government and Constitution.<br> +Slavery.<br> +State Sovereignty.<br> +Tariff.<br> +Good Features.<br> +Bright Prospects of the New Power.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III. THE NORTH IN THE WINTER OF 1860-61.<br> +<br> +Apathy.<br> +Disbelief in South's Seriousness.<br> +Divided Opinion.<br> +Suggestions toward Compromise.<br> +Anti-coercion.<br> +Convention at Albany.<br> +Mayor Wood of New York.<br> +Buchanan's Vacillation.<br> +Treason all about Him.<br> +Star of the West Fired on.<br> +Inaction of Congress.<br> +Crittenden's Compromise Lost.<br> +Washington Peace Congress.<br> +Vain.<br> +Earnestness of South.<br> +Lincoln Inaugurated.<br> +His Address.<br> +How Received.<br> +His Difficult Task.<br> +Plight of Army, Navy, Treasury.<br> +Sumter Fired on.<br> +Defended.<br> +Evacuated.<br> +Effect at North.<br> +War Spirit.<br> +75,000 Volunteers.<br> +The Sixth Massachusetts in Baltimore.<br> +Washington in Danger.<br> +General Scott's Measures.<br> +March of the Massachusetts Eighth and the New York Seventh.<br> +Their Arrival in Washington.<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV. WAR BEGUN<br> +<br> +Both Sides Expect a Brief Struggle.<br> +South's Advantages.<br> +Call for Three Years' Men.<br> +Butler in Baltimore.<br> +Maryland Saved to the Union.<br> +Alexandria and Arlington<br> +Heights Occupied.<br> +Ellsworth's Death.<br> +Each Side Concentrates Armies in Virginia.<br> +Fight at Big Bethel.<br> +At Vienna.<br> +The Struggle in Missouri.<br> +Lyon and Price.<br> +Battle of Wilson's Creek.<br> +Lyon's Death.<br> +Fremont, Hunter, and Halleck in Missouri.<br> +The Contest in Kentucky.<br> +The State becomes Unionist.<br> +In West Virginia.<br> +Lee and McClellan.<br> +Brilliant Campaign of the Latter.<br> +West Virginia Made a State.<br> +Beauregard at Manassas.<br> +Patterson's Advance.<br> +Harper's Ferry Taken.<br> +"On to Richmond."<br> +Battle of Bull Run.<br> +Union Defeat and Retreat.<br> +Losses.<br> +Comments.<br> +Depression at the North, followed by New Resolution.<br> +McClellan.<br> +Army of Potomac Organized.<br> +The Capital Safe.<br> +Affair of Ball's Bluff.<br> +The South Hopeful.<br> +And with Reason.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS<br> +<br> +<br> +THE FIRST GUN FIRED FROM FORT SUMTER.<br> +<br> +WEBSTER'S HOME AT MARSHFIELD, MASS.<br> +<br> +DANIEL WEBSTER.<br> +(From a picture by Healy at the State Department, Washington).<br> +<br> +THE HOUSE IN WHICH HENRY CLAY WAS BORN.<br> +<br> +THE SCHOOL-HOUSE OF THE SLASHES.<br> +<br> +HENRY CLAY. (From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype).<br> +<br> +JOHN RANDOLPH.<br> +(From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society).<br> +<br> +JAMES MONROE.<br> +(From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T. Jefferson<br> +Coolidge).<br> +<br> +JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. (From a picture by Gilbert Stuart).<br> +<br> +JOHN C. CALHOUN. (From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery).<br> +<br> +CALHOUN'S LIBRARY AND OFFICE.<br> +<br> +ANDREW JACKSON (From a photograph by Brady).<br> +<br> +ROGER B. TANEY.<br> +<br> +MARTIN VAN BUREN. (From a photograph by Brady).<br> +<br> +GENERAL WILLIAM J. WORTH.<br> +<br> +WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.<br> +(From a copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in +1840).<br> +<br> +JOHN TYLER. (From a photograph by Brady).<br> +<br> +A PONY EXPRESS.<br> +<br> +THURLOW WEED. (From an unpublished photograph by Disderi,<br> +Paris, in 1861. In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes).<br> +<br> +FROM AN OLD TIME-TABLE.<br> + (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide).<br> +<br> +TRIAL BETWEEN PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE "TOM THUMB" AND ONE OF<br> +STOCKTON'S AND STOKES' HORSE CARS. (From "History of the First<br> +Locomotives in America").<br> +<br> +PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE.<br> +<br> +OBVERSE AND REVERSE OF A TICKET USED IN 1838 ON THE<br> +NEW YORK & HARLEM RAILROAD.<br> +<br> +BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD, 1830.<br> +<br> +OLD BOSTON & WORCESTER RAILWAY TICKET (ABOUT 1837).<br> +<br> +THE "SOUTH CAROLINA," 1831, AND PLAN OF ITS RUNNING GEAR.<br> +<br> +BOSTON & WORCESTER RAILROAD, 1835.<br> +<br> +THE DISCOVERY OF NAT TURNER.<br> +<br> +JOHN G. WHITTIER.<br> +<br> +WM. LLOYD GARRISON.<br> +<br> +WENDELL PHILLIPS.<br> +<br> +FACSIMILE OF HEADING OF THE "LIBERATOR."<br> +<br> +GENERAL SAM. HOUSTON.<br> +<br> +GENERAL SANTA ANNA.<br> +<br> +JAMES K. POLK. (After a photograph by Brady).<br> +<br> +GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT.<br> +<br> +THE PLAZA OF THE CITY OF MEXICO.<br> +<br> +ZACHARY TAYLOR. (After a photograph by Brady).<br> +<br> +THE SITE OF SAN FRANCISCO IN 1848.<br> +<br> +SUTTER'S MILL, CALIFORNIA, WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED.<br> +<br> +MILLARD FILLMORE.<br> +(From a painting by Carpenter in 1853. at the City Hall, New York).<br> +<br> +THE RENDITION OF ANTHONY BURNS IN BOSTON.<br> +<br> +FRANKLIN PIERCE.<br> +(From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery).<br> +<br> +STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.<br> +<br> +CHARLES SUMNER.<br> +<br> +THOMAS H. BENTON.<br> +<br> +ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah<br> +Brooks. Only five copies of this photograph were printed).<br> +<br> +JOHN BROWN.<br> +<br> +WILLIAM H. SEWARD. (From a photograph by Brady).<br> +<br> +ELIAS HOWE.<br> +<br> +THE VANDALIA. THE PIONEER PROPELLER ON THE LAKES.<br> +<br> +OLD STONE TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA SUSPENSION BRIDGE.<br> +<br> +THE NEW IRON TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA BRIDGE.<br> +<br> +BIRTHPLACE OF S. F. B. MORSE, AT CHARLESTOWN, MASS. BUILT 1775.<br> +<br> +S. F. B. MORSE.<br> +<br> +THE FIRST TELEGRAPHIC INSTRUMENT, AS EXHIBITED IN 1837 BY MORSE.<br> +<br> +<br> +CALENDERS HEATED INTERNALLY BY STEAM, FOR SPREADING INDIA RUBBER INTO<br> +SHEETS OR UPON CLOTH, CALLED THE "CHAFFEE MACHINE."<br> +<br> +THE GREAT EASTERN LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE.<br> +<br> +SOUNDING MACHINE USED BY A CABLE EXPEDITION.<br> +<br> +CYRUS W. FIELD.<br> +<br> +PAYING OUT CABLE GEAR. FROM CHART HOUSE.<br> +<br> +SHORE END OF CABLE--EXACT SIZE.<br> +<br> +BARNACLES ON CABLE.<br> +<br> +JAMES BUCHANAN. (From a photograph by Brady).<br> +<br> +STREET BANNER IN CHARLESTON.<br> +<br> +MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON.<br> +<br> +MAJOR ANDERSON REMOVING HIS FORCES FROM FORT MOULTRIE TO FORT SUMTER,<br> +DECEMBER 26, 1861.<br> +<br> +JEFFERSON DAVIS.<br> +<br> +ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.<br> +<br> +SCENE OF THE FIRST BLOODSHED, AT BALTIMORE.<br> +<br> +CAPTAIN NATHANIEL LYON.<br> +<br> +GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT.<br> +<br> +GENERAL IRVIN McDOWELL.<br> +<br> +GENERAL SAMUEL P. HEINTZELMAN.<br> +<br> +GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON.<br> +<br> +GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +LIST OF MAPS<br> +<br> +THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE ADMISSION OF ARKANSAS, 1836.<br> +<br> +PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA, MORNING 23D FEBRUARY, 1847.<br> +<br> +ROUTE OF THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS TROOPS THROUGH BALTIMORE.<br> +<br> +THE ROUTES OF APPROACH TO WASHINGTON.<br> +<br> +THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.<br> +<br> +BULL RUN--THE FIELD OF STRATEGY.<br> +<br> +BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE FORENOON.<br> +<br> +BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE AFTERNOON.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +PERIOD II.<br> +<br> +WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY.<br> +<br> +1814-1840<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I.<br> +<br> +THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION<br> +<br> +[1820]<br> +<br> +The term "whig" is of Scotch origin. During the bloody conflict of the<br> +Covenanters with Charles II. nearly all the country people of Scotland<br> +sided against the king. As these peasants drove into Edinburgh to<br> +market, they were observed to make great use of the word "whiggam" in<br> +talking to their horses. Abbreviated to "whig," it speedily became, and<br> +has in England and Scotland ever since remained, a name for the<br> +opponents of royal power. It was so employed in America in our<br> +Revolutionary days. Sinking out of hearing after Independence, it<br> +reappeared for fresh use when schism came in the overgrown Democratic<br> +Party.<br> +<br> +The republican predominance after 1800, so complete, bidding so fair to<br> +be permanent, drew all the more fickle Federalists speedily to that<br> +side. Since it was evident that the new party was quite as national in<br> +spirit as the ruling element of the old, the Adams Federalists, those<br> +most patriotic, least swayed in their politics by commercial motives,<br> +including Marshall, the War Federalists, and the recruits enlisted at<br> +the South during Adams's administration, also went over, in sympathy if<br> +not in name, to Republicanism. The fortunate issue of the war silenced<br> +every carper, and the ten years following have been well named the "era<br> +of good feeling."<br> +<br> +But though for long very harmonious, yet, so soon as Federalists began<br> +swelling their ranks, the Republicans ceased to be a strictly<br> +homogeneous party. Incipient schism appeared by 1812, at once announced<br> +and widened by the creation of the protective system and the new United<br> +States Bank in 1816, and the attempted launching of an internal<br> +improvements regime in 1821, all three the plain marks of federalist<br> +survival, however men might shun that name. Republicans like Clay,<br> +Calhoun in his early years, and Quincy Adams, while somewhat more<br> +obsequious to the people, as to political theory differed from old<br> +Federalists in little but name. The same is true of Clinton, candidate<br> +against Madison for the Presidency in 1812, and of many who supported<br> +him.<br> +<br> +[1825]<br> +<br> +But to drive home fatally the wedge between "democratic" and "national"<br> +Republicans, required Jackson's quarrel with Adams and Clay in 1825,<br> +when, the election being thrown into the House, although Jackson had<br> +ninety-nine electoral votes to Adams's eighty-four, Crawford's<br> +forty-one, and Clay's thirty-seven, Clay's supporters, by a "corrupt<br> +bargain," as Old Hickory alleged, voted for Adams and made him<br> +President. Hickory's idea--an untenable one--was that the House was<br> +bound to elect according to the tenor of the popular and the electoral<br> +vote. After all this, however, so potent the charm of the old party, the<br> +avowal of a purpose to build up a new one did not work well, Clay<br> +polling in 1832 hardly half the electoral vote of Adams in 1828. This<br> +democratic gain was partly owing, it is true, to Jackson's popularity,<br> +to the belief that he had been wronged in 1825, and to the widening of<br> +the franchise which had long been going on in the nation. Calhoun's<br> +election as Vice-President in 1828, by a large majority, shows that<br> +party crystallization was then far from complete. From about 1834, the<br> +new political body thus gradually evolved was regularly called the<br> +Whigs, though the name had been heard ever since 1825.<br> +<br> +[1830-1833]<br> +<br> +The doctrines characteristic of Whiggism were chiefly five:<br> +<br> +I. Broad Construction of the Constitution.<br> +<br> +This has been sufficiently explained in the chapter on Federalism and<br> +Anti-Federalism, and need not be dwelt upon. The whig attitude upon it<br> +appears in all that follows.<br> +<br> +II. The Bank.<br> +<br> +The First United States Bank had perished by the expiration of its<br> +charter in 1811. It had been very useful, indeed almost indispensable,<br> +in managing the national finances, and its decease, with the consequent<br> +financial disorder, was a most terrible drawback in the war. Recharter<br> +was, however, by a very small majority, refused. The evils flowing from<br> +this perverse step manifesting themselves day by day, a new Bank of the<br> +United States, modelled closely after the first, was chartered on April<br> +10, 1816, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster being its chief champions.<br> +Republican opponents, Madison among them, were brought around by the<br> +plea that war had proved a national bank a necessary and hence a<br> +constitutional helper of the Government in its appointed work.<br> +<br> +In the management of this second bank there were disorder and<br> +dishonesty, which greatly limited its usefulness. This, notwithstanding,<br> +was considerable. The credit of the nation was restored and its treasury<br> +resumed specie payments. But confidence in the institution was shaken.<br> +We shall see how it met with President Jackson's opposition on every<br> +possible occasion. In 1832 he vetoed a bill for the renewal of its<br> +charter, to expire in 1836, and in 1833 caused all the Government's<br> +deposits in it, amounting to ten million dollars, to be removed. These<br> +blows were fatal to the bank, though it secured a charter from<br> +Pennsylvania and existed, languishing, till 1839.<br> +<br> +III. The Tariff.<br> +<br> +Until the War of 1812 the main purpose of our tariff policy had been<br> +revenue, with protection only as an incident. During the war<br> +manufacturing became largely developed, partly through our own embargo,<br> +partly through the armed hostilities. Manufacture had grown to be an<br> +extensive interest, comparing in importance with agriculture and<br> +commerce. Therefore, in the new tariff of 1816, the old relation was<br> +reversed, protection being made the main aim and revenue the incident.<br> +It is curious to note that this first protective tariff was championed<br> +and passed by the Republicans and bitterly opposed by the Federalists<br> +and incipient Whigs. Webster argued and inveighed vehemently against it,<br> +appealing to the curse of commercial restriction and of governmental<br> +interference with trade, and to the low character of manufacturing<br> +populations.<br> +<br> +But very soon the tables were turned: the Whigs became the high-tariff<br> +party, the Democrats more and more opposing this policy in favor of a<br> +low or a revenue tariff. It should be marked that even now the idea of<br> +protection in its modern form was not the only one which went to make a<br> +high tariff popular. There were, besides, the wish to be prepared for<br> +war by the home production of war material, and also the spirit of<br> +commercial retortion, paying back in her own coin England's burdensome<br> +tax upon our exports to her shores.<br> +<br> +IV. Land.<br> +<br> +What may not improperly be styled the whig land policy sprung from the<br> +whig sentiment for large customs duties. Cheap public lands, offering<br> +each poor man a home for the taking, constantly tended to neutralize the<br> +effect of duties, by raising wages in the manufacturing sections, people<br> +needing a goodly bribe to enter mills in the East when an abundant<br> +living was theirs without money and without price on removing west. As a<br> +rule, therefore, though this question did not divide the two parties so<br> +crisply as the others, the Whigs opposed the free sale of government<br> +land, while the Democrats favored that policy. In spite of this,<br> +however, eastern people who moved westward--and they constituted the<br> +West's main population--quite commonly retained their whig politics even<br> +upon the tariff question itself.<br> +<br> +V. Internal Improvements.<br> +<br> +It has always been admitted that Congress may lay taxes to build and<br> +improve light-houses, public docks, and all such properties whereof the<br> +United States is to hold the title. The general improvement of harbors,<br> +on the other hand, the Constitution meant to leave to the States,<br> +allowing each to cover the expense by levying tonnage duties. The<br> +practice for years corresponded with this. The inland commonwealths,<br> +however, as they were admitted, justly regarded this unfair unless<br> +offset by Government's aid to them in the construction of roads, canals,<br> +and river ways.<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 595px; height: 338px;" alt="" + src="images/027Pic.jpg"><br> +Webster's Home at Marshfield. Mass.<br> +<br> +<br> +The War of 1812 revealed the need of better means for direct<br> +communication with the remote sections of the Union. Transportation to<br> +Detroit had cost fifty cents per pound of ammunition, sixty dollars per<br> +barrel of flour. All admitted that improved internal routes were<br> +necessary. The question was whether the general Government had a right<br> +to construct them without amendment to the Constitution.<br> +<br> +The Whigs, like the old Federalists, affirmed such right, appealing to<br> +Congress's power to establish post-roads, wage war, supervise<br> +inter-state trade, and conserve the common defence and general welfare.<br> +As a rule, the Democrats, being strict constructionists, denied such<br> +right. Some of them justified outlay upon national rivers and commercial<br> +harbors under the congressional power of raising revenue and regulating<br> +commerce. Others conceded the rightfulness of subsidies to States even<br> +for bettering inland routes. Treasury surplus at times, and the many<br> +appropriations which, by common consent, had been made under Monroe and<br> +later for the old National Road, encouraged the whig contention; but the<br> +whig policy had never met general approval down to the time when the<br> +whole question was taken out of politics by the rise of the railroad<br> +system after 1832. The National Road, meantime, extending across Ohio<br> +and Indiana on its way to St. Louis, was made over in 1830 to the States<br> +through which it passed.<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 468px; height: 583px;" alt="" src="images/029Pic.jpg"><br> +Daniel Webster. From a picture by Healy at the State Department,<br> +Washington.<br> +<br> +<br> +The Whig Party deserves great praise as the especial repository, through<br> +several decades, of the spirit of nationality in our country. It<br> +cherished this, and with the utmost boldness proclaimed doctrines<br> +springing from it, at a time when the Democracy, for no other reason<br> +than that it had begun as a state rights party, foolishly combated<br> +these. Yet Whiggism was mightier in theories than in deeds, in political<br> +cunning than in statesmanship. It was far too fearful, on the whole,<br> +lest the country should not be sufficiently governed. To secure power it<br> +allied itself now with the Anti-Masons, strong after 1826 in New<br> +England, New York, and Pennsylvania; and again with the Nullifiers of<br> +South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, led by Calhoun, Troup, and<br> +White. It did the latter by making Tyler, an out-and-out Nullifier, its<br> +Vice-President in 1840.<br> +<br> +A leading Whig during nearly all his political career was John Quincy<br> +Adams, one of the ablest, most patriotic, and most successful presidents<br> +this country has ever had. He possessed a thorough education, mainly<br> +acquired abroad, where, sojourning with his distinguished father, he had<br> +enjoyed while still a youth better opportunities for diplomatic training<br> +than many of our diplomatists have known in a lifetime. He went to the<br> +United States Senate in 1803 as a Federalist. Disgusted with that party,<br> +he turned Republican, losing his place. From 1806 to 1809 he was<br> +professor in Harvard College. In the latter year Madison sent him<br> +Minister to St. Petersburg. He was commissioner at Ghent, then Minister<br> +to England, then Monroe's Secretary of State, then President.<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 568px; height: 340px;" alt="" + src="images/032Pic.jpg"><br> +The House in which Henry Clay was Born.<br> +<br> +<br> +But Mr. Adams's best work was done in the House of Representatives after<br> +he was elected to that body in 1830. He sat in the House until his<br> +death, in 1848--its acknowledged leader in ability, in activity, and in<br> +debate. Friend and foe hailed him as the "Old Man Eloquent," nor were<br> +any there anxious to be pitted against him. He spoke upon almost every<br> +great national question, each time displaying general knowledge; legal<br> +lore, and keenness of analysis surpassed by no American of his or any<br> +age.<br> +<br> +Webster was, however, the great orator of the party. Reared upon a farm<br> +and educated at Dartmouth College, he went to Congress from New<br> +Hampshire as a Federalist in 1813. Removing to Boston, he soon entered<br> +Congress from Massachusetts, first as representative, then as senator,<br> +and from 1827 was in the Senate almost continuously till 1850. He was<br> +Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and again in the<br> +Taylor-Fillmore cabinet from 1850.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 512px; height: 465px;" alt="" + src="images/034Pic.jpg"><br> +The School-house of the Slashes.<br> +<br> +<br> +As an orator Webster had no peer in his time, nor have the years since<br> +evoked his peer. He was an influential party leader, and repeatedly<br> +thought of for President, though too prominent ever to be nominated. On<br> +two momentous questions, the tariff and slavery, he vacillated, his<br> +dubious action concerning the latter costing him his popularity in New<br> +England.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 441px; height: 593px;" alt="" src="images/035Pic.jpg"><br> +Henry Clay. From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype.<br> +<br> +<br> +Yet in many respects the most interesting figure in the party was Henry<br> +Clay. He was born amid the swamps of Hanover County, Va., and had grown<br> +up in most adverse surroundings. His father, a Baptist clergyman, died<br> +while he was an infant, leaving him destitute. In "The Slashes," as the<br> +neighborhood where Clay passed his childhood was called, he might often<br> +have been seen astride a sorry horse with a rope bridle and no saddle,<br> +carrying his bag of grain to the mill. He had attended only district<br> +schools. After obtaining the rudiments of a legal education in Richmond<br> +by service as a lawyer's clerk, he removed to Kentucky. He was soon<br> +famous as a criminal lawyer, and a little later as a politician. The<br> +rest of his life was spent in Congress or cabinet.<br> +<br> +Clay's speeches read ill, but were powerful in their delivery. He spoke<br> +directly to the heart. As he proceeded, his tall and awkward form swayed<br> +with passion. His voice was sweet and winsome. Once Tom Marshall was to<br> +face him in joint debate over a salary grab for which Clay had voted.<br> +Clay had the first word, and as he warmed to his work Marshall slunk<br> +away through the crowd in despair. "Come back," said Clay's haters to<br> +him; "you can answer every point." "Of course," replied Marshall, "but I<br> +can't get up there and do it now." The common people shouted for Clay as<br> +they shouted for neither Webster nor Adams. He had infinite fund of<br> +anecdote, remembered everyone he had ever seen, and was kindly to all.<br> +John Tyler is said to have wept when Clay failed of the Presidential<br> +nomination in the Whig Convention of 1839.<br> +<br> +[1840]<br> +<br> +Clay's vices and inconsistencies were readily forgiven. He had denounced<br> +duelling as barbarous, yet when sharp-tongued John Randolph referred to<br> +him and Adams as having, in 1825, formed "the coalition of Blifil and<br> +Black George, the combination of the Puritan and the blackleg"--for Clay<br> +gambled--Clay challenged him. They met, the diminutive Randolph being in<br> +his dressing-gown. Neither was hurt, as Randolph fired in air and Clay<br> +was no shot. Being asked why he did not kill Randolph, Clay said: "I<br> +aimed at the part of his gown where I thought he was, but when the<br> +bullet got there he had moved." In 1842, when Lord Ashburton was in<br> +Washington, there was a famous whist game, my lord, with Mr. Crittenden,<br> +playing against Clay and the Russian Minister, Count Bodisco, while<br> +Webster looked on. "What shall the stake be?" asked his lordship. "Out<br> +of deference to Her Majesty," said Clay, "we will make it a sovereign."<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 434px; height: 579px;" alt="" src="images/039Pic.jpg"><br> +John Randolph.<br> +From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society.<br> +<br> +<br> +Emphatically patriotic, super-eminent in debate, ambitious, adventurous<br> +in political diplomacy, a hard worker, incessant in activity for his<br> +party, temperate upon the slavery question, whole-souled in every<br> +measure or policy calculated to advance nationality, this versatile man<br> +may be put down as foremost among the leaders of the Whig Party from its<br> +origin till his death.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II.<br> +<br> +FLORIDA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE<br> +<br> +[1816]<br> +<br> +It was a delicate question after the Louisiana purchase how much<br> +territory it embraced east of the Mississippi. Louisiana had under<br> +France, till 1762, reached the Perdido, Florida's western boundary at<br> +present, and was "retroceded" by Spain to France in 1800 "with the same<br> +extent that it had when France possessed it." The United States of<br> +course succeeded to whatever France thus recovered. Spain claimed still<br> +to own West Florida, the name given by Great Britain on receiving it<br> +from France in 1763 to the part of Louisiana between the Perdido and the<br> +Mississippi. Spain had never acquired the district from France, but<br> +obtained it by conquest from Great Britain during our Revolution.<br> +<br> +This claim by Spain, based only on the "retro" in the treaty of 1800,<br> +our Government viewed as fanciful, regarding West Florida undoubtedly<br> +ours through the Louisiana purchase. Spain was intractable, first of<br> +herself, later still more so through Napoleon's dictation. Hence our<br> +offer, in Jefferson's time, to avoid war, of a lump sum for the two<br> +Floridas was spurned by her. In 1810 and 1811, to save it from<br> +anarchy--also to save it from Great Britain or France, now in the<br> +whitest heat of their contest for Spain--we occupied West Florida, as<br> +certainly entitled to it against those powers, yet with no view of<br> +precluding further negotiations with Spain. When in 1812 Louisiana<br> +became a State, its eastern boundary ran as now, including a goodly<br> +portion of the region in debate.<br> +<br> +[1817]<br> +<br> +The necessity of acquiring East Florida, too, was more and more<br> +apparent. That country was without rule, full of filibusterers,<br> +privateers, hostile refugee Creeks and runaway negroes, of whose<br> +services the English had availed themselves freely during the war of<br> +1812, when Spaniards and English made Florida a perpetual base for<br> +hostile raids into our territory. A fort then built by the +English on<br> +the Appalachicola and left intact at the peace with some arms and<br> +ammunition, had been occupied by the negroes, who, from this retreat,<br> +menaced the peace beyond the line. Spain could not preserve law and<br> +order here. This was perhaps a sufficient excuse for the act of General<br> +Gaines in crossing into Florida and bombarding the negro fort, July 27,<br> +1816. Amelia Island, on the Florida coast, a nest of lawless men from<br> +every nation, was in 1817 also seized by the United States with the same<br> +propriety. Knowledge that Spain resented these acts encouraged the<br> +Floridians. Collisions continually occurred all along the line, finally<br> +growing into general hostility. Such was the origin of the First<br> +Seminole War.<br> +<br> +</big></big><big><big><img style="width: 447px; height: 585px;" alt="" + src="images/045Pic.jpg"></big></big><br> +<big><big><br> +James Monroe. From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T.<br> +Jefferson Coolidge.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1818]<br> +<br> +December, 1817, Jackson was placed in command in Georgia. To clear out<br> +the filibusterers, the chief source of the Indians' discontent ever<br> +since before the Creek War, the hero of New Orleans, mistakenly<br> +supposing himself to be fortified by his Government's concurrence,<br> +boldly took forcible possession of all East Florida. Ambrister and<br> +Arbuthnot, two officious English subjects found there, he put to death.<br> +<br> +This procedure was quite characteristic of Old Hickory. He acted upon<br> +the theory that by the law of nations any citizen of one land making war<br> +upon another land, the two being at peace, becomes an outlaw.<br> +International law has no such doctrine, and most likely the maxim<br> +occurred to Jackson rather as an excuse after the act than in the way of<br> +forethought. Nor was it ever proved that the two victims were guilty as<br> +Jackson alleged. With him this probably made little difference. Having<br> +undertaken to quiet the Floridian outbreaks he was determined to<br> +accomplish his end, whatever the consequences of some of his means.<br> +<br> +With the country the New Orleans victor, who had now dared to hang a<br> +British subject, was ten times a hero, but the deed confused and<br> +troubled Monroe's cabinet not a little. Calhoun wished General Jackson<br> +censured, while all his cabinet colleagues disapproved his high-handed<br> +acts and stood ready to disavow them with reparation. On this occasion<br> +Jackson owed much to one whom he subsequently hated and denounced, viz.,<br> +Quincy Adams, by whose bold and acute defence of his doubtful doings,<br> +managed with a fineness of argument and diplomacy which no then American<br> +but Adams could command, he was formally vindicated before both his own<br> +Government and the Governments of England and Spain.<br> +<br> +The posts seized had of course to be given up, yet our bold invasion had<br> +rendered Spain willing at last to sell Florida, while Great Britain,<br> +wishing our countenance in her opposition to the anti-progressive,<br> +misnamed Holy Alliance of continental monarchs, concurred. Spain after<br> +all got the better of the bargain, as we surrendered all claim to Texas,<br> +which the Louisiana purchase had really made ours.<br> +<br> +[1823]<br> +<br> +The Florida imbroglio nursed to its first public utterance a sentiment<br> +which has ever since been spontaneously taken as a principle of American<br> +public policy, almost as if it were a part of our law itself. Spain's<br> +American dependencies had been sensible enough to avail themselves of<br> +that land's distraction in Napoleon's time, to set up as states on their<br> +own account. She naturally wanted them back. Ferdinand VII. withheld<br> +till 1820 his signature of the treaty ceding Florida, in order to<br> +prevent--which, after all, it did not--our recognition of these<br> +revolted provinces as independent nations. Backed by the powerful<br> +Austrian minister, Metternich, and by the Holy Alliance, France, having<br> +aided Ferdinand to suppress at home the liberal rebellion of 1820-23,<br> +began to moot plans for subduing the new Spanish-American States. Great<br> +Britain opposed this, out of motives partly commercial, partly<br> +philanthropic, partly relating to international law, yet was unwilling<br> +so early to recognize the independence of those nations as the United<br> +States had done.<br> +<br> +Assured at least of England's moral support, President Monroe in his<br> +message of December, 1823, declared that we should consider any attempt<br> +on the part of the allied monarchs "to extend their system to any<br> +portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," and<br> +any interposition by them to oppress the young republics or to control<br> +their destiny, "as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward<br> +the United States." This, in kernel, is the first part of Monroe's<br> +doctrine.<br> +<br> +The second part added: "The American continents, by the free and<br> +independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are<br> +henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by<br> +any European powers." The meaning of this was that the mere hap of first<br> +occupancy on the continent by the citizens of any country would not any<br> +longer be recognized by us as giving that country a title to the spot<br> +occupied.<br> +<br> +These important doctrines--for though akin in principle they are really<br> +two--were no sudden creation of individual thought, but the result<br> +rather of slow processes in the public mind. Germs of the first are<br> +traceable to Washington; express statements of both, yet not essentially<br> +detracting from Monroe's originality, to Jefferson. Both were put in<br> +form by Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State. Especially Monroe's,<br> +we believe, is the second, a resolution to which Russia's advance down<br> +the Pacific coast, and more still the recent vexations from the<br> +proximity of Spain in Florida, had pushed him.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III.<br> +<br> +THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE<br> +<br> +Louisiana having become a State in 1812, that portion of the purchase<br> +north of the thirty-third degree took the name of the Missouri<br> +Territory. St. Louis was its centre of population and of influence.<br> +<br> +[1818]<br> +<br> +Being found in this extensive domain at the purchase, slavery had never<br> +been hindered in its growth. It had therefore taken firm root and was<br> +popular. The application, early in 1818, of the densest part of Missouri<br> +Territory for admission into the Union as a slave State, called<br> +attention to this threatening status of slavery beyond the Mississippi,<br> +and occasioned in Congress a prolonged, able, angry, and momentous<br> +debate. Jefferson, still alive, wrote, "The Missouri question is the<br> +most portentous which has ever threatened the Union. In the gloomiest<br> +hour of the Revolutionary War I never had apprehensions equal to those<br> +which I feel from this source."<br> +<br> +To see the bearing of the tremendous question thus raised, we have need<br> +of a retrospect. Property in man is older than history and has been<br> +nearly universal. It cannot be doubted that in an early stage of human<br> +development slavery is a means of furthering civilization. Negro slavery<br> +originated in Africa, spread to Spain before the discovery of America,<br> +to America soon after, and from the Spanish colonies to the English. The<br> +first notice we have of it in English America is that in<br> +1619 a Dutch ship landed twenty blacks at Jamestown for sale. The Dutch<br> +West India Company began importing slaves into Manhattan in 1626. There<br> +were slaves in New England by 1637. Newport was subsequently a great<br> +harbor for slavers. Georgia offered the strongest resistance to the<br> +introduction of the system, but it was soon overcome. Till about 1700,<br> +Virginia had a smaller proportion of slave population than some northern<br> +colonies, and the change later was mostly due to considerations not of<br> +morality but of profit. Anti-slavery cries were indeed heard from an<br> +early period, but they were few and faint. Penn held slaves, though<br> +ordering their emancipation at his death. Whitfield thought slavery to<br> +be of God. But its most culpable abettor was the English Government,<br> +moved by the profits of the slave trade. A Royal African Company, with<br> +the Duke of York, afterward James II., for some time its president, was<br> +formed to monopolize this business, which monarchs and ministries<br> +furthered to the utmost of their power.<br> +<br> +Thus the Revolution found slavery in all the colonies, north as well as<br> +south. But it was then, so far south as Virginia, thought to be an evil.<br> +That commonwealth had passed many laws to restrain it, but the King had<br> +commanded the Governor not to assent to any of them. The Legislature,<br> +replying, stigmatized the traffic as inhuman and a threat to the very<br> +existence of the colony. Hostility extended from the trade to slavery<br> +itself. Jefferson was for emancipation with deportation, and trembled<br> +for his country as he reflected upon the wrong of slavery and the<br> +justice of God. Patrick Henry, George Mason, Peyton Randolph,<br> +Washington, Madison, in a word all the great Virginians of the time held<br> +similar views.<br> +<br> +The Quakers of Pennsylvania were, however, the most aggressive of<br> +slavery's foes. So early as 1775 a society, the first in America if not<br> +in the world for promoting its abolition, was formed in Pennsylvania. In<br> +1789 it was incorporated, with Franklin for president. Similar<br> +organizations soon rose in several northern States, numbering among<br> +their members many of the most eminent men in the land. The British<br> +Abolition Society, formed in 1787, and the labors of Wilberforce,<br> +Clarkson, and Zachary Macaulay against the slave trade in the West<br> +Indies, had influence here, as had still more the French Assembly's bold<br> +proclamation of the Rights of Man.<br> +<br> +The Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwest Territory marked a most decisive<br> +point in the history of slavery. By its decree, in Jefferson's language,<br> +there was never to be either slavery or involuntary servitude in the<br> +said territory otherwise than in punishment for crimes. It is to the<br> +everlasting honor of the southern members then in the Continental<br> +Congress that they all voted for this inhibition. Virginia, whose assent<br> +as a State was necessary to its validity, she having at this time rights<br> +over much of the domain in question, also concurred. Whatever the<br> +strictly legal weight of this prohibition over the immense Louisiana<br> +purchase, it certainly aided much in confirming freedom as the<br> +presupposition and maxim of our law over all our national territory.<br> +<br> +Vermont had never recognized slavery save to prohibit it in its first<br> +constitution. In New Hampshire it existed but nominally. The<br> +Massachusetts constitution of 1780 virtually ended it in that State.<br> +Gradual abolition statutes passed in Pennsylvania in 1780, in Rhode<br> +Island and Connecticut in 1784. The constitution made it possible to<br> +forbid the importation of slaves in 1808. A national law to that effect<br> +was passed in 1807, making the trade illegal and affixing to it heavy<br> +penalties. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1816 for the<br> +purpose of negro deportation. It did little of this, but rendered some<br> +service toward carrying out the act against slave importation. A new law<br> +in 1820, which made this traffic piracy, punishable with death, was<br> +partly due to its influence. Also many, like Birney, Gerrit Smith and<br> +the Tappans, who began as colonizationists, subsequently became<br> +abolitionists.<br> +<br> +Notwithstanding all these influences slavery increased in strength every<br> +year. South Carolina and Georgia were finding it exceedingly profitable<br> +for cotton and rice culture, and the income from slave traffic into the<br> +vast opening lands of Tennessee and Kentucky constituted an irresistible<br> +temptation. In spite of the law of 1807 and of the indescribable horrors<br> +of the business, even the foreign slave trade went on. The institution<br> +found many defenders in the Federal Convention of 1787, and in the first<br> +and subsequent Congresses. The pleas began to be raised, so current<br> +later, that the negro was an inferior being, slavery God's ordinance, a<br> +blessing to slaves and masters alike, and emancipation a folly. Now<br> +began also that policy of bravado by which, for sixty years, the friends<br> +of slavery bullied their opponents into shameful inaction upon that<br> +accursed thing politically as well as morally, which was so nearly to<br> +cost the nation its life. Thus stood matters when the Missouri<br> +Compromise was mooted in the national Legislature.<br> +<br> +We hardly need say that this strife ended in a compromise. Missouri was<br> +created a slave State, balanced by Maine as a free State, but at the<br> +same time slavery was to be excluded forever from all the remainder of<br> +the Louisiana purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the +southern<br> +line of Virginia and Kentucky as well as of Missouri itself. The land<br> +between Missouri and Louisiana had been in 1819 erected into the<br> +"Territory of Arkansaw."<br> +<br> +In the memorable discussion over this issue, involving the country as<br> +well as Congress, two sorts of argumentation were heard in favor of the<br> +suit of Missouri. The genuine pro-slavery men urged the sacredness of<br> +property as such, and the special sacredness of property-right in slaves<br> +as tacitly guaranteed by the Constitution. They also made much of the<br> +third article of the Louisiana purchase treaty. This read as follows:<br> +"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the<br> +Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according<br> +to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all<br> +the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States;<br> +and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free<br> +enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they<br> +profess."<br> +<br> +There were with these, men who acted from mere policy, thinking it best<br> +to admit the slave State because of the difficulty and also the danger<br> +to the Union of suppressing slavery there. They appealed as well to the<br> +sacred compromises in the Constitution, meaning the permission at first<br> +to import slaves, the three-fifths rule for slave representation in<br> +Congress, and the fugitive slave clause. They spoke much of the<br> +necessity of preserving the balance of power within the Union, and of<br> +Congress's inaction as to slavery in the Louisiana purchase hitherto,<br> +and also in Florida. These arguments won many professed foes of slavery,<br> +as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Quincy Adams. In all Congress Clay was<br> +the most earnest pleader for the compromise.<br> +<br> +To all these arguments the unbending friends of free soil replied that<br> +property right was subordinate to the national good, and that Congress<br> +had full power over territorial institutions and should never have<br> +permitted slavery to curse the domain in question. If it had committed<br> +error in the past, that could not excuse continuance in error. The terms<br> +of the Louisiana purchase, it was further urged, could not, even if they<br> +had been meant to do so, which was not true, detract from this sovereign<br> +power. It was pointed out that in every case in which a State had been<br> +admitted thus far, Congress had prescribed conditions. It was boldly<br> +said, still further, that if slavery threatened disunion unless allowed<br> +its way, it ought all the more to be denied its way.<br> +<br> +The chief strength of slavery in this crisis lay in the distressing<br> +practical difficulty, if the prayer of Missouri were refused, of dealing<br> +with slaves and slave proprietorship there, and of quieting a numerous<br> +and spirited population bent upon statehood and slavery together. The<br> +more decided foes of slavery did not sufficiently consider these<br> +complications. Nor did they duly reflect upon the sweeping triumph which<br> +freedom had withal secured in the pledge that the vast bulk of the<br> +Louisiana purchase should be forever free. The pledge was indeed broken<br> +in 1854, but not until such a sense of its sacredness had been impressed<br> +upon the country that the breach availed slavery nothing.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV.<br> +<br> +THE GREAT NULLIFICATION<br> +<br> +[1816-1828]<br> +<br> +The tariff rates of 1816 on cottons and woollens were to be twenty-five<br> +per cent. for three years, after that twenty. Instead of this the cotton<br> +tariff was in 1824 replaced at twenty-five per cent., the same as that<br> +upon woollens costing thirty-three and a third cents or less per square<br> +yard; woollens over this price bearing thirty per cent. Wool, which by<br> +the tariff of 1816 was free, now bore, some grades fifteen, some twenty,<br> +some thirty per cent. Iron duties were put up in 1818 and again in 1824,<br> +from which date for ten years they ranged between forty and one hundred<br> +per cent. The whole tendency of tariff rates was strongly upward. The<br> +duty upon all dutiables averaged between 1816 and 1824 only twenty-four<br> +and a half per cent; from 1824 to 1828 the average was thirty-two and a<br> +half per cent. Importation remained copious, notwithstanding, which made<br> +the cry for protection louder than ever.<br> +<br> +[1828]<br> +<br> +From Quincy Adams's presidency the tariff question becomes on the one<br> +hand political, dividing Whigs from Democrats about exactly, which had<br> +never been the case before, and on the other, sectional, the West, the<br> +Centre, and now also the East, pitted against the solid South, except<br> +Louisiana. The year 1824 heard Webster's last speech for free trade and<br> +saw Calhoun's and Jackson's last vote for protection. However, so strong<br> +was the protectionist sentiment in the XXth Congress, though democratic,<br> +that free-traders could hope to defeat the new tariff bill of 1828 only<br> +by rendering it odious to New England. They therefore conspired to make<br> +prohibitive its rates for Smyrna wool, and nearly so those on iron,<br> +hemp, and cordage for ship-building; also on molasses, the raw material<br> +for rum, whereon no drawback was longer to be allowed if it was<br> +exported.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 448px; height: 582px;" alt="" src="images/065Pic.jpg"><br> +John Quincy Adams. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart.<br> +<br> +<br> +The Whigs had arranged, to be now passed, a series of minimum rates on<br> +woollens, by which all costing over fifty cents a square yard were to<br> +pay as if costing $2.50, and all over this as if costing $4.00. The rate<br> +was to be forty per cent. the first year, forty-five the second, and<br> +fifty thereafter.<br> +<br> +This illustrates the famous "minimum principle," which has played such a<br> +figure in all our tariff history since 1816, its effect being always to<br> +make the tariff much higher than it seems. Thus in the case before us,<br> +most of the woollens then imported cost about ninety cents. If based on<br> +this price, the tariff would be thirty-six per cent., but if based on<br> +$2.50 as the price, it would mount up to one hundred and ten per cent.<br> +To prevent this and to render the bill still more unpalatable to the<br> +Whigs, the Democrats introduced a dollar "minimum," so that the tariff<br> +on the bulk of our imported woollens, costing, as just stated, about<br> +ninety cents, would come in at forty-four and four-tenths per cent.<br> +<br> +But as this was after all more vigorous protection than woollens had<br> +before received, amounting, through minima, in some cases to over one<br> +hundred per cent., sixteen out of the thirty-nine New England members,<br> +led by Webster, accepted this universally odious tariff bill--the Tariff<br> +of Abominations, it was called--as the preferable evil, and, aided by a<br> +few Democrats in each house, made it a law. The average duty on<br> +dutiables was now about forty-three and a third per cent.<br> +<br> +No one can question that this high tariff worked injustice to the South.<br> +It forced from her an undue share of the national taxes, as well as<br> +extensive tribute to northern manufacturers. But in resenting the evil<br> +she exaggerated it, mistakenly referring all the relative decrease in<br> +her prosperity to tariff legislation, when a great part of it was due<br> +simply to slavery. The South complained that selfishness and political<br> +ambition, not patriotism or reason, determined the dominant policy, and<br> +there was of course some truth in this. Moreover, as New England now<br> +favored it, this policy bade fair to become permanent, and since the<br> +tariff bills did not announce protection as their purpose, the<br> +constitutionality of them could not be gotten before the courts.<br> +<br> +[1830]<br> +<br> +Nearly all the southern Legislatures consequently denounced the tariff<br> +as unjust and as hostile to our fundamental law. Most of them were,<br> +however, prudent enough to suggest no illegal remedies. Not so with<br> +fiery South Carolina, where a large party, inspired by Calhoun, proposed<br> +a bold nullification of the tariff act, virtually amounting to<br> +secession. At a dinner in this interest at Washington, April 13, 1830,<br> +Calhoun offered the toast: "The Union; next to our liberty the most<br> +dear; only to be preserved by respecting the rights of the States."<br> +<br> +[1832]<br> +<br> +John C. Calhoun was now, except, perhaps, Clay, the ablest and most<br> +influential politician in all the South. Born in South Carolina in 1782,<br> +of Irish-Presbyterian parentage, though poor and in youth ill-educated<br> +like Clay and Jackson, his energy carried him through Yale College, and<br> +through a course of legal study at Litchfield, Conn., where stood the<br> +only law school then in America. November, 1811, found him a member of<br> +Congress, on fire for war with Britain. Monroe's Secretary of War for<br> +seven years from 1817, he was in 1825 elected Vice-President, and<br> +reelected in 1828. He had meantime turned an ardent free-trader, and<br> +seeing the North's predominance in the Union steadily increasing, had<br> +built up a nullification theory based upon that of the Virginia and<br> +Kentucky resolutions and the Hartford Convention, and upon the history<br> +of the formation of our Constitution. He had worked out to his own<br> +satisfaction the untenable view that each State had the right, not in<br> +the way of revolution but under the Constitution itself--as a contract<br> +between parties that had no superior referee--to veto national laws upon<br> +its own judgment of their unconstitutionality.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 440px; height: 582px;" alt="" src="images/071Pic.jpg"><br> +John C. Calhoun<br> +From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery.<br> +<br> +<br> +On this doctrine South Carolina presently proceeded to act. November 24,<br> +1832, the convention of that State passed its nullification ordinance,<br> +declaring the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 "null, void, and no law,"<br> +defying Congress to execute them there, and agreeing, upon the first use<br> +of force for this purpose, to form a separate government.<br> +<br> +This was the quintessence of folly even had good theory been behind it.<br> +The tone of the proceeding was too hasty and peremptory. The decided<br> +turn of public opinion and of congressional action in favor of large<br> +reduction in duties was ignored. But the theory appealed to was clearly<br> +wrong, and along with its advocates was sure to be reprobated by the<br> +nation. A precious opportunity effectively to redress the evil<br> +complained of was wantonly thrown away. Worst of all, from a tactical<br> +point of view, South Carolina had miscalculated the spirit of President<br> +Jackson. At the dinner referred to, his toast had been the memorable<br> +words: "Our Federal Union; it must be preserved." Men now saw that Old<br> +Hickory was in earnest. General Scott, with troops and warships, was<br> +ordered to Charleston.<br> +<br> +The nullifiers receded, a course made easier by Clay's "compromise<br> +tariff" of 1833, gradually reducing duties for the next ten +years, and<br> +enlarging the free list. From all duties of over twenty per cent. by the<br> +act of 1832, one-tenth of the excess was to be stricken off on September<br> +30, 1835, and another tenth every other year till 1841. Then one-half<br> +the excess remaining was to fall, and in 1842 the rest, so that the end<br> +of the last named year should find no duty over twenty per cent.<br> +<br> +This episode, threatening as it was for a time, drew in its train<br> +results the most happy, revealing with unprecedented vividness to most,<br> +both the original nature of the Constitution as not a compact, and also<br> +the might which national sentiment had attained since the War of 1812.<br> +The doctrine of state rights was seen to have gradually lost, over the<br> +greater part of the country, all its old vitality. Nearly every State<br> +Legislature condemned the South Carolina pretensions, Democrats as<br> +hearty in this as Whigs. Jackson's proclamation against them--impressive<br> +and unanswerable--ran thus: "The Constitution of the United States<br> +forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact<br> +between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same<br> +. . . . I consider the power to annul a law of the United States<br> +incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by<br> +the letter of the Constitution, and destructive of the great object for<br> +which it was formed. . . . Our Constitution does not contain the<br> +absurdity of giving power to make laws, and another power to resist<br> +them. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to<br> +say that the United States are not a nation."<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 451px; height: 485px;" alt="" + src="images/075Pic.jpg"><br> +Calhoun's Library and Office.<br> +<br> +<br> +The congressional debates which the nullification question evoked, among<br> +the ablest in our parliamentary history, held the like high national<br> +tenor. Calhoun's idea, though advocated by him with consummate skill,<br> +was shown to be wholly chimerical. The doughty South Carolinian, from<br> +this moment a waning force in American politics, was supported by Hayne<br> +almost alone, the arguments of both melting into air before Webster's<br> +masterful handling of constitutional history and law. Not questioning<br> +the right of revolution, admitting the general government to be one of<br> +"strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized<br> +powers," the Massachusetts orator made it convincingly apparent that the<br> +Calhoun programme could lead to nothing but anarchy. It was seen that<br> +general and state governments emanate from the people with equal<br> +immediacy, and that the language of the clause, "the Constitution and<br> +the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof" are "the<br> +supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any<br> +State to the contrary notwithstanding," means precisely what it says. To<br> +this language little attention had apparently been paid till this time.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V.<br> +<br> +MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S "REIGN"<br> +<br> +[1828]<br> +<br> +Andrew Jackson was born March 15, 1767. His parents had come from<br> +Carrick-fergus, Ireland, two years before. He was without any education<br> +worthy the name. As a boy, he went into the War for Independence, and<br> +was for a time a British prisoner. He studied law in North Carolina,<br> +moved west, and began legal practice at Nashville. He was one of the<br> +framers of the Tennessee constitution in 1796. In 1797 he was a senator<br> +from that State, and subsequently he was a judge on its supreme bench.<br> +His exploits in the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the Seminole War are<br> +already familiar. They had brought him so prominently and favorably<br> +before the country that in 1824 his vote, both popular and electoral,<br> +was larger than that of any other candidate. As we have seen, he himself<br> +and multitudes throughout the country thought him wronged by the<br> +election over him of John Quincy Adams. This contributed largely to his<br> +popularity later, and in 1828 he was elected by a popular vote of<br> +647,231, against 509,097 for Adams. Four years later he was reelected<br> +against Clay by a still larger majority. Nor did his popularity to any<br> +extent wane during his double administration, notwithstanding his many<br> +violent and indiscreet acts as President.<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 450px; height: 582px;" alt="" src="images/079Pic.jpg"><br> +Andrew Jackson. From a photograph by Brady.<br> +<br> +<br> +Much of Jackson's arbitrariness sprung from a foolish whim of his,<br> +taking his election as equivalent to the enactment of all his peculiar<br> +ideas into law. Ours is a government of the people, he said; the people<br> +had spoken in his election, and had willed so and so. Woe to any senator<br> +or representative who opposed! This was, of course, to mistake entirely<br> +the nature of constitutional government.<br> +<br> +After all, Jackson was by no means the ignorant and passionate old man,<br> +controlled in everything by Van Buren, that many people, especially in<br> +New England, have been accustomed to think him. Illiterate he certainly<br> +was, though Adams exaggerated in calling him "a barbarian who could not<br> +write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name." He was<br> +never popular in the federalist section of the Union. Yet with all his<br> +mistakes and self-will, often inexcusable, he was one of the most<br> +patriotic and clear-headed men who ever administered a government. If he<br> +resorted to unheard-of methods within the law, very careful was he never<br> +to transgress the law.<br> +<br> +The most just criticism of Jackson in his time and later related to the<br> +civil service. It was during his administration that the cry, "turn the<br> +rascals out," first arose, and it is well known that, adopting the<br> +policy of New York and Pennsylvania politicians in vogue since 1800, he<br> +made nearly a clean sweep of his political opponents from the offices at<br> +his disposal. This was the more shameful from being so in contrast with<br> +the policy of preceding presidents. Washington removed but two men from<br> +office, one of these a defaulter; Adams ten, one of these also a<br> +defaulter; Jefferson but thirty-nine; Madison five, three of them<br> +defaulters; and Monroe nine. The younger Adams removed but two, both of<br> +them for cause.<br> +<br> +[1830]<br> +<br> +Yet of Jackson's procedure in this matter it can be said, in partial<br> +excuse, so bitter had been the opposition to him by officeholders as<br> +well as others, that many removals were undoubtedly indispensable in<br> +order to the efficiency of the public service. It is not at all<br> +necessary for the rank and file of the civil service to be of the same<br> +party with the Chief Magistrate, but it is necessary that they should<br> +not be so utterly opposed to him as to feel bound in conscience to be<br> +working for his defeat.<br> +<br> +The fine art of party organization, semi-military in form, has come to<br> +us from Jackson and his workers. Before his time, candidates for high<br> +state offices had usually been nominated by legislative caucuses, and<br> +those for national posts by congressional caucuses. State party<br> +conventions had been held in Pennsylvania and New York. Soon after 1830<br> +such a device for national nominations began to be thought of, and the<br> +history of national party conventions may be said to begin with the<br> +campaign of 1832.<br> +<br> +[1832]<br> +<br> +Jackson's dearest foe while in office was the United States Bank.<br> +Magnifying the dishonesty which had, as everyone knew, disgraced its<br> +management, he attacked it as a monster, an engine of the moneyed<br> +classes for grinding the face of the poor. Like Jefferson, like Madison<br> +at first, he disbelieved in its constitutionality. In his first message<br> +and continually in his official utterances he inveighed against it as a<br> +public danger, using its funds and patronage for party ends. This made<br> +him unpopular with many who had been his friends, so that in the<br> +campaign of 1832 Clay forced the bank question to the front as one on<br> +which Jackson's attitude would greatly advantage the whig cause. He<br> +accepted Clay's challenge with pleasure, and from this moment gave the<br> +bank no quarter. We may call the contest of this year a pitched battle<br> +between Jackson and the bank.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 309px; height: 448px;" alt="" + src="images/085Pic.jpg"><br> +Roger B. Taney.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1833]<br> +<br> +In 1832 he vetoed a bill for a renewal of its charter, which was to<br> +expire in 1836, and in 1833 he proceeded to break it by removing the<br> +United States deposits which it held. Such removal was by law within the<br> +power of the Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary McLane refused to<br> +execute Jackson's will. He was removed and Duane appointed. Then Duane<br> +was removed and Roger B. Taney appointed, who obeyed the President's<br> +behest. The bank was emptied by checking out the public money as wanted,<br> +at the same time depositing no more, the funds being instead placed in<br> +"pet" state banks, as they were called because of the government favor<br> +thus shown them.<br> +<br> +The financial distress rightly or wrongly ascribed to this measure<br> +throughout the country, instead of injuring Jackson, probably, on the<br> +whole, made him still more popular, as showing the power of the bank.<br> +When Congress met in 1833, the Senate passed a vote of censure upon him<br> +for what he had done. Rancorous wranglings and debates pervaded Congress<br> +and the whole land. After persistent effort by Jackson's bosom friend,<br> +Senator Benton, of Missouri, this censure-vote was expunged by the<br> +XXIVth Congress, second session, January 16, 1837. This was before<br> +Jackson left office, and he accounted it the greatest triumph of his<br> +public life.<br> +<br> +[1830]<br> +<br> +<br> +Jackson was somehow fortunate in dealing with foreign nations. It was he<br> +who recovered for American ships that British West Indian trade which<br> +had been so long denied. Negotiations were opened with Great Britain,<br> +which, in 1830, had the result of placing American vessels in the<br> +British West Indian ports at an equal advantage with British vessels<br> +sailing thither from the United States--terms which, through the<br> +contiguity of those islands to us, gave us a trade there better than<br> +that of any other nation. This diplomacy brought the administration much<br> +applause.<br> +<br> +When Jackson became President, France was still in our debt on account<br> +of her spoliations upon American commerce after the settlement of 1803.<br> +The matter had been in negotiation ever since 1815, but hitherto in<br> +vain. Jackson took it up with zeal, but with his usual apparent<br> +recklessness. A treaty had been concluded in 1831, as a final settlement<br> +between the two countries, binding France to pay twenty-five million<br> +francs and the United States to pay one and one-half million. The first<br> +instalment from France became due February 2, 1833, but was not paid.<br> +Jackson's message to Congress in 1834, not an instalment having yet been<br> +received, contained a distinct threat of war should not payment begin<br> +forthwith. He also bade Edward Livingston, minister at Paris, in the<br> +same contingency to demand his passports and leave Paris for London.<br> +<br> +[1835]<br> +<br> +Most public men, even those in his cabinet, thought this action<br> +foolhardy and useless; but Quincy Adams, neither expecting nor receiving<br> +any thanks for it, just as in the Seminole War difficulty, nobly stood<br> +up for the President. A telling speech by him in the House led to its<br> +unanimous resolution, March 2, 1835, that the execution of the treaty<br> +should be insisted on. The French ministry blustered, and for a time<br> +diplomatic relations between the two countries were entirely ruptured.<br> +But France, affecting to see in the message of 1835, though voiced in<br> +precisely the same tone as its predecessor, some apology for the menace<br> +contained in that, began its payments. This money, as also all due from<br> +the other states included in Napoleon's continental system, was paid<br> +during Jackson's administration, a result which brought him and his<br> +party great praise, not more for the money than for the respect and<br> +consideration secured to the United States by insistence upon its<br> +rights. The President's message to Congress in 1835 announced the entire<br> +extinguishment of the public debt--the first and the last time this has<br> +occurred in all our national history.<br> +<br> +An important measure touching the hard-money system of our country was<br> +passed in large part through the influence of President Jackson. By the<br> +Mint Law of 1792 our silver dollar was made to contain three hundred and<br> +seventy-one and a quarter grains of fine silver, or four hundred and<br> +sixteen of standard silver. The amount of pure silver in this venerable<br> +coin has remained unchanged ever since; only, in 1837, by a reduction of<br> +the alloy fraction to exactly one-tenth, the total weight of the coin<br> +became what it now is, four hundred and twelve and a half grains,<br> +nine-tenths fine. The same law of 1792 had given the gold dollar just<br> +one-fifteenth the weight of the silver dollar. This proportion, which<br> +Hamilton had arrived at after careful investigation characteristic of<br> +the man, was exactly correct at the time, but within a year, as is now<br> +known, on account of increase in the relative value of gold, the gold<br> +dollar at fifteen to one became more valuable than its silver mate. The<br> +consequence was that the gold brought to the United States mint for<br> +coinage fell off year by year, until some of the years between 1820 and<br> +1830 it had been almost zero. Gold money had nearly ceased to circulate.<br> +<br> +[1834-1836]<br> +<br> +Jackson resolved to restore the yellow metal to daily use. In this he<br> +was opposed by many Whigs, who, so zealous were they for the United<br> +States Bank, had become paper money men. The so-called Gold Bill was<br> +carried through Congress in 1834, changing the proportion of silver to<br> +gold in our currency from fifteen to one to sixteen to one. It should<br> +have been fifteen and a half to one. Now gold in its turn was<br> +over-valued, so that silver gradually ceased to circulate, as gold had<br> +almost ceased before. This result was made worse after 1848, when there<br> +was a still further appreciation of silver through the discovery of gold<br> +in California and Australia. Silver dollars did not again circulate<br> +freely in the country until 1878, though they were full legal tender<br> +till 1873. Gold, on the other hand, was everywhere seen after 1834,<br> +though not abundant in circulation, owing to the large amounts of paper<br> +money then in use.<br> +<br> +In 1836 the President ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to put forth<br> +the famous Specie Circular, declaring that only gold, silver, or land<br> +scrip should be received in payment for public lands. The occasion of<br> +this was that while land sales were very rapidly increasing, the<br> +receipts hitherto had consisted largely in the notes of insolvent banks.<br> +Land speculators would organize a bank, procure for it, if they could,<br> +the favor of being a "pet" bank, issue notes, borrow these as<br> +individuals and buy land with them. The notes were deposited, when they<br> +would borrow them again to buy land with, and so on. As there was little<br> +specie in the West, the circular broke up many a fine plan, and evoked<br> +much ill-feeling. Gold was drawn from the East, where, as many of the<br> +banks had none too much, the drain caused not a few of them to collapse.<br> +The condition of business at this time was generally unsound, and this<br> +westward movement of gold was all that was needed to precipitate a<br> +crisis. A crisis accordingly came on soon after, painfully severe. It is<br> +unfair, however, to arraign Jackson's order as wholly responsible for<br> +the evils which accompanied this monetary cataclysm. It was rather an<br> +occasion than the cause.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI.<br> +<br> +THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH<br> +<br> +[1837]<br> +<br> +Partly Jackson's personal influence, partly his able aides, partly<br> +favoring circumstances had, during his administrations, brought the<br> +Democracy into excellent condition, patriotic, national in general<br> +spirit, with a creed that, however imperfect--close construction being<br> +its integrating idea--was, after all, definite, consistent, and<br> +thoughtful. Yet in 1840 the Democrats, who four years before had chosen<br> +Van Buren by an electoral vote of 170 to 73, had to surrender, with the<br> +same Van Buren for candidate, to the Whigs by a majority of 234<br> +electoral votes to 60; only five States, and but two of them northern,<br> +going for the democratic candidate.<br> +<br> +There were several causes for this defeat. Jackson had made many enemies<br> +as well as many friends, some of these within his own party, while the<br> +entire opposition to him was indescribably bitter on account of the<br> +personal element entering into the struggle. The commendably national<br> +spirit of the Whig Party told well in its favor. Upon this point its<br> +attitude proved far more in accord with the best sentiment of the nation<br> +than that of the Democracy, sound as the latter was at the core and<br> +nobly as its chief had behaved in the nullification crisis.<br> +<br> +More influential still was the financial predicament into which on<br> +Jackson's retirement his successor and the country were plunged. The<br> +commercial distress which seemed to spring from Jackson's measures was<br> +now first fully realized. Anger and pain from the death of the bank had<br> +not abated. Ardent hatred prevailed toward the "pet" banks, extending to<br> +the party whose darlings they were, while the Specie Circular was held<br> +to have ruined most of the others. The subsequent legislation for<br> +distributing the treasury surplus among the States, by removing the<br> +deposits from the pet banks, destroyed many of these as well. They had<br> +been using this government money for the discount of loans to business<br> +men, and were not in condition instantly to pay it back. Hence the panic<br> +of 1837. First the New York City banks suspended, soon followed by the<br> +others throughout that State, all sustained in their course by an act of<br> +the Legislature. Suspension presently occurred everywhere else. The<br> +financial pressure continued through the entire summer of 1837, banks,<br> +corporations, and business men going to the wall, and all values greatly<br> +sinking. Boston suffered one hundred and sixty-eight business failures<br> +in six months.<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 472px; height: 606px;" alt="" src="images/095Pic.jpg"><br> +Martin Van Buren.<br> +From a photograph by Brady.<br> +<br> +<br> +One of Van Buren's earliest acts after assuming office was to call an<br> +extra session of Congress for September 4, 1837, to consider the<br> +financial condition of the country. When it convened, an increase of the<br> +whig vote was apparent, though the Democrats were still in the majority.<br> +On the President's recommendation, agitation now began in favor of the<br> +sub-treasury or independent treasury plan, still in use to-day, of<br> +keeping the government moneys. This had been first broached in 1834-35<br> +by Whigs. The Democrats then opposed it; but now they took it up as a<br> +means of counteracting the whig purpose to revive a national bank.<br> +<br> +There was soon less need of any such special arrangement, as the<br> +treasury was swiftly running dry. In June of the preceding year, 1836,<br> +both parties concurring, an act had passed providing that after January<br> +1, 1837, all surplus revenue should be distributed to the States in<br> +proportion to their electoral votes. It was meant to be a loan, to be<br> +recalled, however, only by vote of Congress, but it proved a donation.<br> +Twenty-eight millions were thus paid in all, never to return. Such a<br> +disposition of the revenue had now to be stopped and reverse action<br> +instituted. Importers called for time on their revenue bonds, which had<br> +to be allowed, and this checked income. This special session was needed<br> +to authorize an issue of ten millions in treasury notes to tide the<br> +Government over the crisis.<br> +<br> +[1840]<br> +<br> +Another influence which now worked powerfully against the Democracy was<br> +hostility to slavery. This campaign--it was the first--saw a "Liberty<br> +Party" in the field, with its own candidates, Birney and Earle. The<br> +abolition sentiment, of which more will be said in a subsequent chapter,<br> +was growing day by day, and little as the Whigs could be called an<br> +antislavery party on the whole, their rank and file were very much more<br> +of that mind than those of the opposition. Jackson had ranted wildly<br> +against the despatch of abolition literature through the mails. The<br> +second Seminole War, 1835-42, was waged mainly in deference to<br> +slave-holders, to recover for them their Florida runaways, and, by<br> +removal of the Seminoles beyond the Mississippi, to break up a popular<br> +resort for escaped negroes. The Indians, under Osceola, whose +wife, as<br> +daughter to a slave-mother, had been treacherously carried back into<br> +bondage, fought like tigers. After their massacre of Major Dade and his<br> +detachment, Generals Gaines, Jesup, Taylor, Armistead, and Worth<br> +successively marched against them, none but the last-named successful in<br> +subduing them. Over 500 persons had been restored to slavery, each one<br> +costing the Government, as was estimated, at least $80,000 and the lives<br> +of three white soldiers.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 418px; height: 410px;" alt="" + src="images/100Pic.jpg"><br> +General William J. Worth.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1839]<br> +<br> +Van Buren was to the slavocrats even more obsequious than Jackson. His<br> +spirit was shown, among other things, by the Amistad case, in 1839. The<br> +schooner Amistad was sailing between Havana and Puerto Principe with a<br> +cargo of negroes kidnapped in Africa. Under the lead of a bright negro<br> +named Cinque the captives revolted and killed or confined all the crew<br> +but two, whom they commanded to steer the ship for Africa. Instead,<br> +these directed her to the United States coast, where she was seized off<br> +Long Island by a war vessel and brought into New London. The negroes<br> +were, even by Spanish law, not slaves but free men, as Spain had<br> +prohibited the slave trade. Yet when their case was tried before the<br> +district court, Mr. Van Buren spared no effort to procure their release<br> +to the Spanish claimants. He even had a government vessel all ready to<br> +convey the poor victims back to Cuba. The district court having decided<br> +for the blacks, the government attorney appealed to the circuit court,<br> +thence also to the supreme court. Final judgment happily +re-affirmed<br> +that the men were free. The supreme court trial was the occasion of one<br> +of John Quincy Adams's most splendid forensic victories, he being the<br> +counsel for the negroes.<br> +<br> +The attitude of the administration in this affair greatly injured the<br> +party in the North, the more as it but illustrated a spirit and policy<br> +which had grown characteristic of the party's head. In several instances<br> +previous to this time, when ships conveying slaves from one of the<br> +United States to another, entered the ports of the Bahama Islands<br> +through stress of weather, England had, while freeing them, allowed some<br> +compensation. Now, having emancipated the slaves in her own West Indian<br> +possessions, she declined longer to continue that practice. Her first<br> +refusal touched the slaves on the ship Enterprise, which had put in at<br> +Port Hamilton in 1835. Jackson's administration in vain sought<br> +indemnity, Van Buren, then Secretary of State, designating this business<br> +as "the most immediately pressing" before the English embassy.<br> +<br> +[1840]<br> +<br> +In the same pro-slavery interest an increasing proportion of the<br> +Democracy, though not Van Buren himself, had come to favor the<br> +annexation of Texas. The southwestern boundary of the United States had<br> +ever since the purchase in Florida in 1819 been recognized as the Sabine<br> +River, west of this lying the then foreign country of Texas. France had<br> +claimed the Rio Grande as Louisiana's western bound, but Mr. Monroe, to<br> +placate the North in the Florida annexation, had receded from this<br> +claim. Texas and Coahuila became a state in the new Mexican republic,<br> +which Spain recognized in 1821; but in 1836 Texas declared itself<br> +independent. It was ill-governed and weighed down with debt, and hence<br> +almost immediately, in 1837, asked membership in the American Union. Its<br> +annexation was bitterly opposed all over the North, so bitterly in fact<br> +that the northern Democrats would not have dared, even had they wished,<br> +to favor the scheme. Yet so strong was the southern influence in the<br> +party by 1840 that the democratic platform that year urged the<br> +"re-annexation" of Texas, the term assuming that as a part of Louisiana<br> +it had always been ours since 1803. This was a fact, but it was now<br> +asseverated by the Democracy for a selfish sectional purpose, and the<br> +cry brought thousands of votes to the Whigs.<br> +<br> +It proved good politics for the Whigs in 1840 to pass over Clay and<br> +adopt as their candidate William Henry Harrison. He had indeed been<br> +unsuccessful in 1836, owing to the great popularity of Jackson, all<br> +whose influence went for Van Buren; but now that "Little Van," or<br> +"Matty," as Jackson used to call him, stood alone, Harrison had a better<br> +chance. His political record had been inconspicuous but honorable.<br> +Nothing could be alleged against his character. He was a gentleman of<br> +some ability, while his brilliant military record in 1812, now revived<br> +to the minutest detail, gave him immense popularity. Every surviving<br> +Tippecanoe or Thames veteran stumped his vicinity for the old war-horse.<br> +Many wavering Democrats in the South, especially those of the<br> +nullification stripe, were toled to the whig ticket by the nomination of<br> +John Tyler for Vice-President. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" rang through<br> +the land as the whig watchword for the campaign. During the<br> +electioneering every hamlet was regaled with portrayals of Harrison's<br> +simple farm life at North Bend, where, a log cabin his dwelling, and<br> +hard cider--so one would have supposed--his sole beverage, he had been a<br> +genuine Cincinnatus. "Tippecanoe and Tyler" were therefore elected;<br> +their popular vote numbering 1,275,017, against 1,128,702 polled for Van<br> +Buren.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 447px; height: 587px;" alt="" src="images/105Pic.jpg"><br> +William Henry Harrison<br> +From a Copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in 1840.<br> +<br> +<br> +However, this whig success, for a moment so imposing, proved superficial<br> +and brief. Harrison died at the end of his first month in office, and<br> +Tyler, coming in, showed that though training under the whig banner, he<br> +had not renounced a single one of his democratic principles. The Whigs<br> +scorned and soon officially repudiated him During the entire four years<br> +that he held office there was constant deadlock between him and the<br> +slight whig majority in Congress, which gave the Democrats main control<br> +in legislation. The panic of 1837 was forgotten, while the hold of the<br> +Democracy upon the country was so firm that its gains in Congress and<br> +its triumphs in the States once more went steadily on.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII.<br> +<br> +LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE<br> +<br> +[1835]<br> +<br> +By the census of 1830 the United States had a population of 12,866,020,<br> +the increase having been for the preceding ten years about sufficient to<br> +double the inhabitants in thirty years. There were twenty-four States,<br> +Indiana having been taken into the Union in 1816, Mississippi in 1817,<br> +Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820, and Missouri, the<br> +last, in 1821. Florida, Michigan, and Arkansas were the Territories. The<br> +area, now that Florida had been annexed, was 725,406 square miles.<br> +<br> +Comparatively little of the soil of Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, and<br> +Wisconsin had as yet been occupied, though settlements were making on<br> +most of the larger streams. The southwest had at this time filled up<br> +more rapidly than the northwest. In 1830 the centre of population for<br> +the Union was farther south than it has ever been at any other time.<br> +Except in Louisiana and Missouri, not over thirty thousand inhabitants<br> +were to be found west of the Mississippi. The vast outer ranges of the<br> +Louisiana purchase remained a mysterious wilderness. Indianapolis in<br> +1827 contained twenty-five brick houses, sixty frame, and about eighty<br> +log houses; also a court-house, a jail, and three churches. Chicago was<br> +laid out in 1830. Thither in, 1834 went one mail per week, from Niles,<br> +Mich., on horseback. In 1833 it was incorporated as a town, having 175<br> +houses and 550 inhabitants. That year it began publishing a newspaper<br> +and organized two churches. In 1837 it was a city, with 4,170<br> +inhabitants. The Territory of Iowa had in 1836, 10,500 inhabitants; in<br> +1840, 43,000. At this time Wisconsin had 31,000. So early as 1835 Ohio<br> +had nearly or quite 1,000,000 inhabitants. Sixty-five of its towns had<br> +together 125 newspapers. Between 1830 and 1840 Ohio's population rose<br> +from 900,000 to 1,500,000; Michigan's, from 30,000 to 212,000; and the<br> +whole country's, from 13,000,000 to 17,000,000. Before 1840, eight<br> +steamers connected Chicago with Buffalo.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 451px; height: 579px;" alt="" src="images/111Pic.jpg"><br> +John Tyler<br> +From a photograph by Brady.<br> +<br> +<br> +By 1840 nearly all the land of the United States this side the<br> +Mississippi had been taken up by settlers. The last districts to be<br> +occupied were Northern Maine, the Adirondack region of New York, a strip<br> +in Western Virginia from the Potomac southward through Kentucky nearly<br> +to the Tennessee line, the Pine Barrens of Georgia, and the extremities<br> +of Michigan and Wisconsin. Beyond the Father of Waters his shores were<br> +mostly occupied, as well as those of his main tributaries, a good way<br> +from their mouths. The Missouri Valley had population as far as Kansas<br> +City. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa Territory had many settlements at<br> +some distance from the streams. The aggregate population of the country<br> +was 17,069,453, the average density twenty-one and a tenth to the square<br> +mile. The mass of westward immigration was as yet native, since the<br> +great rush from Europe only began about 1847. This was fortunate, as<br> +fixing forever the American stamp upon the institutions of western<br> +States. To compensate each new commonwealth for the non-taxation of the<br> +United States land it contained, it received one township in each<br> +thirty-six as its own for educational purposes, a provision to which is<br> +due the magnificent school system of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,<br> +Minnesota, and their younger sisters.<br> +<br> +Farther east, too, there had, of course, been growth, but it was slower.<br> +In 1827 Hartford had but 6,900 inhabitants; New Haven, 7,100; Newark, N.<br> +J., 6,500, and New Brunswick about the same. The State of New York paid<br> +out, between 1815 and 1825, nearly $90,000 for the destruction of<br> +wolves, showing that its rural population had attained little density.<br> +The entire country had vastly improved in all the elements of<br> +civilization. A national literature had sprung up, crowding out the<br> +reprints of foreign works which had previously ruled the market. Bryant,<br> +Cooper, Dana, Drake, Halleck, and Irving were now re-enforced by writers<br> +like Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Poe, Prescott,<br> +and Whittier. Educational institutions were multiplied and their methods<br> +bettered, The number of newspapers had become enormous. Several<br> +religious journals were established previous to 1830, among them the New<br> +York Observer, which dates from 1820, and the Christian Register, from<br> +1821. Steam printing had been introduced in 1823. The year 1825 saw the<br> +first Sunday paper; it was the New York Sunday Courier. Greeley began<br> +his New York Tribune only in 1841.<br> +<br> +Fresh news had begun to be prized, as shown by the competition between<br> +the two great New York sheets, the Journal of Commerce and the Morning<br> +Enquirer, each of which, in 1827, established for this purpose swift<br> +schooner lines and pony expresses. The Journal of Commerce in 1833 put<br> +on a horse express between Philadelphia and New York, with relays of<br> +horses, enabling it to publish congressional news a day earlier than any<br> +of its New York contemporaries. Other papers soon imitated this example,<br> +whereupon the Journal extended its relays to Washington. Mails came to<br> +be more numerous and prompt. More letters were written, and, from 1839,<br> +letters were sent in envelopes. Postage-stamps were not used till 1847.<br> +Most of the principal cities in the country, including Rochester and<br> +Cincinnati, published dailies before 1830. Baltimore and Louisville had<br> +each a public school in 1829. This year witnessed in Boston the<br> +beginning work of the first blind asylum in the country. In Hartford<br> +instruction had already been given to the deaf and dumb since 1817.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 490px; height: 399px;" alt="" + src="images/116Pic.jpg"><br> +A Pony Express.<br> +<br> +<br> +By the fourth decade of the century the American character had assumed a<br> +good deal of definiteness and greatly interested foreign travellers.<br> +There was, by those who knew what foreign manners were, much foolish<br> +aping of the same. English visitors noted Brother Jonathan's drawl in<br> +talking, his phlegmatic temperament, keen eye, and blistering<br> +inquisitiveness. Jonathan was a rover and a trader, everywhere at home,<br> +everywhere bent upon the main chance. He ate too rapidly, chewed and<br> +smoked tobacco, and spat indecently. He drank too much. During the first<br> +quarter of the century nearly everyone used liquor, and drunkenness was<br> +shamefully common. Every public entertainment, even if religious, set<br> +out provision of free punch. At hotels, brandy was placed upon the<br> +table, free as water to all. The smaller sects often held preaching<br> +services in bar-rooms for lack of better accommodations. On such<br> +occasions the preacher was not infrequently observed, without affront to<br> +anyone, to refresh himself from behind the bar just before announcing<br> +his text.<br> +<br> +In 1824 commenced in Boston a temperance movement which accomplished in<br> +this matter the most happy reform. It swept New England, passing thence<br> +to all the other parts of the Union. By the end of 1829 over a thousand<br> +temperance societies were in existence. The distilling and importation<br> +of spirits fell off immensely. It became fashionable not to drink, and<br> +little by little drinking came to be stigmatized as immoral.<br> +<br> +By the time of which we now speak, the old habit of expressing<br> +solicitude for the fate of the Union had passed away. Whig like<br> +Democrat--so different from old Federalist-swore by "the people." Every<br> +American believed in America. Travelling abroad, the man from this<br> +country was wont to assume, and if opposed to contend, ill-manneredly<br> +sometimes, that its institutions were far the best in the world. No one<br> +wished a change. The unparalleled prosperity of all contributed to this<br> +satisfaction. Cities and towns came up in a day. Public improvements<br> +were to be seen making in every direction. There was no idle aristocracy<br> +on the one hand, no beggars on the other. Self-respect was universal.<br> +The people held the power. If men attained great wealth, as not a few<br> +did, they usually did not waste it but invested it. Business enterprise<br> +was intense and common. Character entered into credit as an element<br> +along with financial resources. People did not crowd into cities, but<br> +loved and built up the country rather. Laws and penalties were become<br> +more mild. In 1837 a man was flogged at the whipping-post in Providence,<br> +R. I., for horse-stealing, perhaps the last case of the kind in the<br> +country. Prisons were now made clean and healthy, and the idea of<br> +reforming the criminal instead of taking vengeance upon him was<br> +spreading. Reformatories for children had been opened in New York,<br> +Boston, and Philadelphia. There were institutions for homeless children,<br> +for the sick poor, for the insane, and for other unfortunate classes.<br> +<br> +By this time the Methodists and Baptists had become extremely strong in<br> +numbers. In 1833 the Massachusetts constitution was altered, abolishing<br> +obligatory contributions for the support of the ministry of the standing<br> +order. Connecticut had made the same change fifteen years before, in its<br> +constitution of 1818. In many localities the newer denominations,<br> +hitherto sects, were more influential than the old one, and in this<br> +abolition of ecclesiastical taxes they had with them Jews, atheists,<br> +deists, agnostics, and heathen.<br> +<br> +About 1825 began a period of peculiar religious enthusiasm. Missions to<br> +the heathen were instituted. Revivals were numerous and often shook<br> +whole neighborhoods for weeks and months. About this date Millerism<br> +began to make converts. William Miller, from whom it took its name,<br> +preached far and wide that the world would be destroyed in 1843,<br> +securing multitudes of disciples, who clung to his general belief even<br> +after his prophecy as to the specific date for the final catastrophe was<br> +seen to have failed. Mormonism was also founded, in 1830, and the Book<br> +of Mormon published by Joseph Smith. A church of this order, organized<br> +this year at Manchester, N. Y., removed the next to Kirtland, O., and<br> +thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built<br> +the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they<br> +regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for<br> +polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where,<br> +however, they were not fully settled until 1848.<br> +<br> +As part of the same general stir we may perhaps register the<br> +anti-masonic movement. One William Morgan, a Mason residing in Western<br> +New York, was reported about to expose in a publication the secrets of<br> +that order. The Masons were desirous of preventing this and made several<br> +forcible efforts to that end. Morgan was soon missing, and the exciting<br> +assumption was almost universally made that the Masons had taken him<br> +off. There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found<br> +impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, and witnesses were<br> +nearly all Masons. An intense and widespread feeling was developed that<br> +Masonry held itself superior to the laws, was therefore a foe to the<br> +Government and must be destroyed. The Anti-Masons became a mighty<br> +political party. Masons were driven from office. In 1832 anti-masonic<br> +nominations were made for President and Vice-President, which had much<br> +to do with the small vote of Clay in that year. It was this party that<br> +brought to the front politically William H. Seward, Millard Fillmore,<br> +and Thurlow Weed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 448px; height: 580px;" alt="" src="images/123Pic.jpg"><br> +Thurlow Weed. From an unpublished Photograph by Disderi, Paris, in 1861.<br> +In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes.<br> +<br> +<br> +In 1833 Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania passed laws<br> +suppressing lotteries, but the gambling mania seemed to transform itself<br> +into a craze for banks. In many parts this was such that actual riots<br> +took place when subscriptions to the stock of banks were opened, the<br> +earliest comers subscribing the whole with the purpose of selling to<br> +others at an advance. To make a bank was thought the great panacea for<br> +every ill that could befall. In this we see that the American people,<br> +bright as they were, could be duped.<br> +<br> +Less wonder, then, at the success of the Moon Hoax, perpetrated in 1835.<br> +It was generally known that Sir John Herschel had gone to the Cape of<br> +Good Hope to erect an observatory. One day the New York Sun came out<br> +with what purported to be part of a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal<br> +of Science, giving an account of Herschel's remarkable discoveries. The<br> +moon, so the bogus relation ran, had been found to be inhabited by human<br> +beings with wings. Herschel had seen flocks of them flying about. Their<br> +houses were triangular in form. The telescope had also revealed beavers<br> +in the moon, exhibiting most remarkable intelligence. Pictures of some<br> +of these and of moon scenery accompanied the article. The fraud was so<br> +clever as to deceive learned and unlearned alike. The sham story was<br> +continued through several issues of the Sun, and gave the paper an<br> +enormous sale. As it arrived in the different places, crowds scrambled<br> +for it, nor would those who failed to secure copies disperse until some<br> +one more fortunate had read to them all that the paper said upon the<br> +subject. Several colleges sent professorial deputations to the Sun<br> +office to see the article, and particularly the appendices, which, it<br> +was alleged, had been kept back. Richard Adams Locke was the author of<br> +this ingenious deception, which was not exploded until the arrival of<br> +authentic intelligence from Edinburgh.<br> +<br> +Party spirit sometimes ran terribly high. A New York City election in<br> +1834 was the occasion of a riot between men of the two parties,<br> +disturbances continuing several days. Political meetings were broken up,<br> +and the militia had to be called out to enforce order. Citizens armed<br> +themselves, fearing attacks upon banks and business houses. When it was<br> +found that the Whigs were triumphant in the city, deafening salutes were<br> +fired. Philadelphia Whigs celebrated this victory with a grand barbecue,<br> +attended, it was estimated, by fifty thousand people. The death of<br> +Harrison was malignantly ascribed to overeating in Washington, after his<br> +long experience with insufficient diet in the West. Whigs exulted over<br> +Jackson's cabinet difficulties. Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet," the power<br> +behind the throne, gave umbrage to his official advisers. Duff Green,<br> +editor of the United States Telegraph, the President's "organ," was one<br> +member; Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, and Amos Kendall, first of<br> +Massachusetts, then of Kentucky, were others, these three the most<br> +influential. All had long worked, written, and cheered for Old Hickory.<br> +In return he gave them good places at Washington, and now they enjoyed<br> +dropping in at the White House to take a smoke with the grizzly hero and<br> +help him curse the opposition as foes of "the people."<br> +<br> +Major Eaton, Old Hickory's first Secretary of War, had married a<br> +beautiful widow, maiden name Peggy O'Neil, of common birth, and much<br> +gossipped about. The female members of other cabinet families refused to<br> +associate with her, the Vice-President's wife leading. Jackson took up<br> +Mrs. Eaton's cause with all knightly zeal. He berated her traducers and<br> +persecutors in long and fierce personal letters. His niece and<br> +housekeeper, Mrs. Donelson, one of the anti-Eatonites, he turned out of<br> +the White House, with her husband, his private secretary. The breach was<br> +serious anyway, and might have been far more so but for the healing<br> +offices of Van Buren, who used all his courtliness and power of place to<br> +help the President bring about the social recognition of Mrs. Eaton. He<br> +called upon her, made parties in her honor, and secured her entree to<br> +the families of the greatest foreign ministers. Mrs. Eaton triumphed,<br> +but the scandal would not down.<br> +<br> +When Jackson wrote his foreign message upon the French spoliation<br> +claims, his cabinet were aghast and begged him to soften its tone. Upon<br> +his refusal, it is said, they stole to the printing-office and did it<br> +themselves. But the proofs came back for Jackson's perusal. The lad who<br> +brought them was the late Mr. J. S. Ham, of Providence, R. I. He used to<br> +say that he had never known what profane swearing was till he listened<br> +to General Jackson's comments as those proofs were read.<br> +<br> +Jackson and Quincy Adams were personal as well as political foes. When<br> +the President visited Boston, Harvard College bestowed on him the degree<br> +of Doctor of Laws. Adams, one of the overseers, opposed this with all<br> +his might. As "an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, he would not be<br> +present to witness her disgrace in conferring her highest literary<br> +honors upon a barbarian." Subsequently he would refer, with a sneer, to<br> +"Dr. Andrew Jackson." The President's illness at Boston Adams declared<br> +"four-fifths trickery" and the rest mere fatigue. He was like John<br> +Randolph, said Adams, who for forty years was always dying. "He is now<br> +alternately giving out his chronic diarrhoea and making Warren bleed him<br> +for a pleurisy, and posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of laws,<br> +mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to hear a fulsome address and<br> +receive two cannon-balls from Edward Everett."<br> +<br> +To be sure, manifestations of a contrary spirit between the political<br> +parties were not wanting. The entire nation mourned for Madison after<br> +his death in 1836, as it had on the decease of Jefferson and John Adams<br> +both on the same day, July 4, 1826.<br> +<br> +A note or two upon costume may not uninterestingly close this chapter.<br> +<br> +Enormous bonnets were fashionable about 1830. Ladies also wore Leghorn<br> +hats, with very broad brims rolled up behind, tricked out profusely with<br> +ribbons and artificial flowers. Dress-waists were short and high. Skirts<br> +were short, too, hardly reaching the ankles. Sleeves were of the<br> +leg-of-mutton fashion, very full above the elbows but tightening toward<br> +the wrist. Gentlemen still dressed for the street not so differently<br> +from the revolutionary style. Walking-coats were of broadcloth, blue,<br> +brown, or green, to suit the taste, with gilt buttons. Bottle-green was<br> +a very stylish color for evening coats. Blue and the gilt buttons for<br> +street wear were, however, beginning to be discarded, Daniel Webster<br> +being one of the last to walk abroad in them. The buff waistcoat, white<br> +cambric cravat, and ruffled shirt still held their own. Collars for full<br> +dress were worn high, covering half the cheek, a fashion which persisted<br> +in parts of the country till 1850 or later.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII.<br> +<br> +INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840<br> +<br> +[1840]<br> +<br> +During the War of 1812 we had in England an industrial spy, whose<br> +campaign there has perhaps accomplished more for the country than all<br> +our armies did. It was Francis C. Lowell, of Boston. Great Britain was<br> +just introducing the power loom. The secret of structure was guarded<br> +with all vigilance, yet Lowell, passing from cotton factory to cotton<br> +factory with Yankee eyes, ears, and wit, came home in 1814, believing,<br> +with good reason, as it proved, that he could set up one of the machines<br> +on American soil. Broad Street in Boston was the scene of his initial<br> +experiments, but the factory to the building of which they led was at<br> +Waltham. It was owned by a company, one of whose members was Nathan<br> +Appleton. Water furnished the motive power. By the autumn of 1814 Lowell<br> +had perfected his looms and placed them in the factory. Spinning<br> +machinery was also built, mounting seventeen hundred spindles. English<br> +cotton-workers did not as yet spin and weave under the same roof, so<br> +that the Lowell Mill at Waltham may, with great probability, be<br> +pronounced the first in the world to carry cloth manufacture<br> +harmoniously through all its several successive steps from the raw stuff<br> +to the finished ware.<br> +<br> +From this earliest establishment of the power-loom here, the<br> +cotton-cloth business strode rapidly forward. Fall River, Holyoke,<br> +Lawrence, Lowell, and scores of other thriving towns sprung into being.<br> +Every year new mills were built. In 1831 there were 801; in 1840, 1,240;<br> +in 1850, 1,074. Henceforth, through consolidation, the number of<br> +factories decreased, but the number of spindles grew steadily larger.<br> +This rise of great manufacturing concerns was facilitated by a new order<br> +of corporation laws. There had been corporations in the country before<br> +1830, as the Waltham case shows; but the system had had little<br> +evolution, as incorporation had in each case to proceed from a special<br> +legislative act. In 1837 Connecticut passed a statute making this<br> +unnecessary and enabling a group of persons to become a corporation on<br> +complying with certain simple requirements. New York placed a similar<br> +provision in its constitution of 1846. The Dartmouth College decision of<br> +the United States Supreme Court in 1819, interpreting an act of<br> +incorporation as a contract, which, by the Constitution, no State can<br> +violate, still further humored and aided the corporation system.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 477px; height: 699px;" alt="" src="images/134Pic.jpg"><br> +From an Old Time-table. (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide.)<br> +<br> +<br> +In 1816 the streets of Baltimore were lighted with gas. A gas-light<br> +company was incorporated in New York in 1823. Not till 1836, however,<br> +did the Philadelphia streets have gas lights. The first savings-banks<br> +were established in Philadelphia and Boston in 1816. Baltimore had one<br> +two years later. Portable fire-proof safes were used in 1820. The Lehigh<br> +coal trade flourished this year, and also the manufacture of iron with<br> +coal. The whale fishery, too, was now beginning. The first factory in<br> +Lowell started in 1821. In 1822 there was a copper rolling mill in<br> +Baltimore, the only one then in America, and Paterson, N. J., began the<br> +manufacture of cotton duck. Patent leather was made in the United States<br> +by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of<br> +flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and<br> +matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next<br> +year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools.<br> +Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a<br> +Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask table linen in<br> +1828. The same year saw paper made from straw, and planing machinery in<br> +operation. The insuring of lives began in this country in 1812.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 712px; height: 196px;" alt="" + src="images/136Pic.jpg"><br> +Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive "Tom Thumb" and one of +Stockton's<br> +and Stokes' Horse Cars. From "History of the First Locomotive in<br> +America."<br> +<br> +<br> +The first figured muslin woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps<br> +in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico<br> +printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery<br> +at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in<br> +New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831,<br> +being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines<br> +were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood<br> +screws were turned out at Providence. About the same time, 1832, pins<br> +were made by machinery, hosiery was woven by a power-loom process, and<br> +Colt perfected his revolver. In 1837 brass clocks were put upon the<br> +American market, and by 1840 extensively exported. Also in 1837 Nashua<br> +was making machinists' tools. By 1839 the manufacture of iron with hard<br> +coal was a pronounced success. In 1840 daguerreotypes began to appear.<br> +Steam fire-engines were seen the next year.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 466px; height: 428px;" alt="" + src="images/138Pic.jpg"><br> +Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1829.<br> +<br> +<br> +So early as 1816 the New York and Philadelphia stages made the distance<br> +from city to city between sun and sun. The National Road from Cumberland<br> +was finished to Wheeling in 1820, having been fourteen years in<br> +construction and costing $17,000,000. It was subsequently extended<br> +westward across Ohio and Indiana. It was thirty-five feet wide,<br> +thoroughly macadamized, and had no grade of above five degrees. Over<br> +parts of this road no less than 150 six-horse teams passed daily,<br> +besides four or five four-horse mail and passenger coaches. In Jackson's<br> +time, when for some months there was talk of war with France and extra<br> +measures were thought proper for assuring the loyalty of Louisiana,<br> +swift mail connections were made with the Mississippi by the National<br> +Road. Its entire length was laid out into sections of sixty-three miles<br> +apiece, each with three boys and nine horses, only six hours and<br> +eighteen minutes being allowed for traversing a section, viz., a rate of<br> +about ten miles an hour. Great men and even presidents travelled by the<br> +public coaches of this road, though many of them used their own<br> +carriages. James K. Polk often made the journey from Nashville to<br> +Washington in his private carriage. Keeping down the Cumberland River to<br> +the Ohio, and up this to Wheeling, he would strike into the National<br> +Road eastward to Cumberland, Md. He came thus so late as 1845, to be<br> +inaugurated as President; only at this time he used the new railway from<br> +Cumberland to the Relay House, where he changed to the other new railway<br> +which had already joined Baltimore with Washington.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 384px; height: 446px;" alt="" src="images/140Pic.jpg"><br> +Obverse and Reverse of a Ticket used in 1838 on the New York & +Harlem<br> +Railroad.<br> +<br> +<br> +The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name<br> +itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first<br> +street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was<br> +at this time beginning to end, that of canals and railroads opening. Yet<br> +in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to<br> +hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not<br> +uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late<br> +evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So<br> +soon as available the canal packet was a much more easy and elegant<br> +means of travel. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester<br> +in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it<br> +to Buffalo. The Blackstone Canal, between Worcester and Providence, was<br> +opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the<br> +Chesapeake and Delaware, the Cumberland and Oxford in Maine, the<br> +Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Canal with<br> +Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles<br> +long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Canal was<br> +completed in 1830.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 545px; height: 378px;" alt="" src="images/141Pic.jpg"><br> +Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1830.<br> +<br> +<br> +Salt-water transportation had meantime been much facilitated by the use<br> +of steam. It had been thought a great achievement when, in 1817, the<br> +Black Ball line of packet ships between New York and Liverpool was<br> +regularly established, consisting of four vessels of from four hundred<br> +to five hundred tons apiece. But two years later a steamship crossed the<br> +Atlantic to Liverpool from Savannah. It took her twenty-five<br> +days--longer than the time in which the distance often used to be<br> +accomplished under sail. In 1822 there was a regular steamboat between<br> +Norfolk and New York, though no steamboat was owned in Boston till 1828.<br> +The Atlantic was first crossed exclusively by steam-power in 1838, and<br> +the first successful propeller used in 1839. The last-named year also<br> +witnessed the beginning of a permanent express line between Boston and<br> +New York, by the Stonington route. The next year, the Adams Express<br> +Company was founded, doing its first business between these two cities<br> +over the Springfield route, in competition with that by the Stonington.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 481px; height: 284px;" alt="" src="images/143Pic.jpg"><br> +Old Boston & Worcester Railway Ticket (about 1837).<br> +<br> +<br> +But all these improvements were soon to be overshadowed by the work of<br> +the railway and locomotive. The first road of rails in America was in<br> +the Lehigh coal district of Pennsylvania. Its date is uncertain, but not<br> +later than 1825. In 1826, October 7th, the second began operation, at<br> +Quincy, Mass., transporting granite from the quarries to tide-water,<br> +about three miles. This experiment attracted great attention, showing<br> +how much heavier loads could be transported over rails than upon common<br> +roads, and with how much greater ease and less expense ordinary weights<br> +could be carried. The same had been demonstrated in England before.<br> +Locomotives were not yet used in either country, but only horse-power.<br> +The conviction spread rapidly that not only highway transportation but<br> +even that by canals would soon be, for all large burdens, either quite<br> +superseded or of secondary importance. In 1827 the Maryland Legislature<br> +chartered a railroad from Baltimore to Wheeling. The projectors, though<br> +regarding it a bold act, promised an average rate between the two cities<br> +of at least four miles per hour. Subscriptions were offered for more<br> +than twice the amount of the stock. The Massachusetts Legislature the<br> +same year appointed commissioners to look out a railway route between<br> +Boston and Hudson River. Also in this year a railway was completed at<br> +Mauch Chunk, Pa., for transporting coal to the landing on the Lehigh.<br> +The descent was by gravity, mules being used to haul back the cars.<br> +<br> +In most country parts, the new railway projects encountered great<br> +hostility. Engineers were not infrequently clubbed from the fields as<br> +they sought to survey. Learned articles appeared in the papers arguing<br> +against the need of railways and exhibiting the perils attending them.<br> +When steam came to be used, these scruples were re-enforced by the<br> +alleged danger that the new system of travel would do away with the<br> +market for oats and for horses, and that stage-drivers would seek wages<br> +in vain.<br> +<br> +The first trip by a locomotive was in 1828, over the Carbondale and<br> +Honesdale route in Pennsylvania. The engine was of English make, and run<br> +by Mr. Horatio Allen, who had had it built. This was a year before the<br> +first steam railroad was opened in England. July 4, 1828, construction<br> +upon the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was begun. It, like the other +early<br> +roads, was built of stone cross-ties, with wooden rails topped with<br> +heavy straps of iron. Such ties were soon replaced by wooden ones, as<br> +less likely to be split by frost, but the wooden rail with its iron<br> +strap might be seen on branch lines, for instance, between Monocacy<br> +Bridge and Frederick City, Md., so late as the Civil War.<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 517px; height: 408px;" alt="" + src="images/146Pic.jpg"><br> +The "South Carolina," 1831, and plan of its running gear.<br> +<br> +<br> +The first railroad for passengers in this country went into operation<br> +between Charleston and Hamburg, S. C., in 1830. The locomotive had been<br> +gotten up in New York, the first of American make. It had four wheels<br> +and an upright boiler. This year the railroad between Albany and<br> +Schenectady was begun, and fourteen miles of the Baltimore & Ohio +opened<br> +for use. In 1831 Philadelphia was joined to Pittsburgh by a line of<br> +communication consisting of a railway to Columbia, a canal thence to<br> +Hollidaysburg, another railway thence over the Alleghanies to Johnstown,<br> +and then on by canal. The railway over the mountains consisted of<br> +inclined planes mounted by the use of stationary engines. It is<br> +interesting to notice the view which universally prevailed at first,<br> +that the locomotive could not climb grades, and that where this was<br> +necessary stationary engines would have to be used. Not till 1836 was it<br> +demonstrated that locomotives could climb. Up to the same date, also,<br> +locomotives had burned wood, but this was now found inferior to coal,<br> +and began to be given up except where it was much the cheaper fuel.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 552px; height: 197px;" alt="" + src="images/147Pic.jpg"><br> +Boston & Worcester Railroad, 1835.<br> +<br> +<br> +From 1832 the railway system grew marvellously. The year 1833 saw<br> +completed the South Carolina Railroad between Charleston and the<br> +Savannah River, one hundred and thirty-six miles. This was the first<br> +railway line in this country to carry the mails, and the longest<br> +continuous one then in the world. Two years later Boston was connected<br> +by railway with Providence, with Lowell, and with Worcester, Baltimore<br> +with Washington, and the New York & Erie commenced. In 1839 +Worcester<br> +was joined to Springfield in the same manner, and in 1841 a passenger<br> +could travel by rail from Boston to Rochester, changing cars, however,<br> +at least ten times.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +PERIOD III.<br> +<br> +THE YEARS OF SLAVERY CONTROVERSY 1840-1860<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I.<br> +<br> +SLAVERY AFTER THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE<br> +<br> +[1820]<br> +<br> +Slavery would most likely never have imperilled the life of this nation<br> +had it not been for the colossal industrial revolution sketched above.<br> +Cotton had been grown here since, 1621, and some exportation of it is<br> +said to have occurred in 1747. Till nearly 1800 very little had gone<br> +from the United States to England, for by the old process a slave could<br> +clean but five or six pounds a day. In 1784, an American ship which<br> +brought eight bags to Liverpool was seized, on the ground that so much<br> +could not have been the produce of the United States. Jay's treaty, as<br> +first drawn, consented that no cotton should be exported from America.<br> +It changed the very history of the country when, in 1793, Eli Whitney<br> +invented the saw-gin, by which a slave could clean 1,000 pounds of<br> +cotton per day. Slavery at once ceased to be a passive, innocuous<br> +institution, promising soon to die out, and became a means of gain, to<br> +be upheld and extended in all possible ways. The cotton export, but<br> +189,316 pounds in 1791, and a third less in 1792, rose to 487,600 pounds<br> +in 1793, to 1,610,760 pounds in 1794, to 6,276,300 pounds in 1795, and<br> +to 38,118,041 pounds in 1804. Within five years after Whitney's<br> +invention, cotton displaced indigo as the great southern staple, and the<br> +slave States had become the cotton-field of the world. In 1869 the<br> +export was nearly 1,400,000,000 pounds, worth about $161,500,000.<br> +[Footnote: Johnson, in Lalor's Cyclopaedia, Art. "Slavery."]<br> +<br> +So profitable was slavery to vast numbers of individuals because of this<br> +its new status, that men would not notice how, after all, it militated<br> +against the nation's supreme interests. It polluted social relations in<br> +obvious ways, setting at naught among slaves family ties and the behests<br> +of virtue, influences that reacted terribly upon the whites. The entire<br> +government of slaves had a brutalizing tendency, more pronounced as time<br> +passed. "Plantation manners" were cultivated, which, displaying<br> +themselves in Congress and elsewhere, in all discussions and measures<br> +relating to the execrable institution, made the North believe that the<br> +South was drifting toward barbarism. This was an exaggeration, yet<br> +everyone knew that schools in the South were rare and poor, and thought<br> +and speech little free as compared with the same in the North. Political<br> +power, like the slaves, was in the hands of a few great barons, totally<br> +merciless toward even southerners who differed from them. It is of +course<br> +not meant that virtue, kindliness, intelligence, and fair-mindedness<br> +were ever wanting in that section, but they flourished in spite of the<br> +slave-system.<br> +<br> +Economically slavery was an equal evil, taking as was the superficial<br> +evidence to the contrary. No cruelty could make the slave work like a<br> +free man, while his power to consume was enormous. Infants, aged, and<br> +weak had to be supported by the owner. Even the best slaves were<br> +improvident. Everywhere slave labor tended to banish free. Upon slave<br> +soil scarcely an immigrant could be led to set foot. Poor whites grew<br> +steadily poorer, their lot often more wretched than that of slaves.<br> +Invention, care, forethought were as good as unknown among them. Slave<br> +labor proved incompetent even for agriculture, impoverishing the richest<br> +soil in comparatively few years, whence the perpetual impulse of the<br> +slave-owners to acquire new territory. The dishonesty of blacks and the<br> +danger of slave insurrections made property insecure, at the same time<br> +that the system diminished in every community the number of its natural<br> +defenders. The result was that the South, the superior of the North in<br> +natural resources, was, by 1800, rapidly becoming the inferior in every<br> +single element of prosperity.<br> +<br> +[1831]<br> +<br> +One of these insurrections was the event of 1831 in Virginia,<br> +originating near the southern border. Four slaves in alliance with three<br> +whites commenced it by killing several families and pressing all the<br> +slaves they could find into their service, until the force was nearly<br> +two hundred. They spread desolation everywhere. Fifty-five white persons<br> +were murdered before the insurrection was in hand. Virginia and North<br> +Carolina called out troops, and at last all the insurgents were captured<br> +or killed. The leader was a black named Nat Turner, who believed himself<br> +called of God to give his people freedom. He had heard voices in the air<br> +and seen signs on the sky, which, with many other portents, he<br> +interpreted as proofs of his divine commission. When all was over Turner<br> +escaped to the woods, dug a hole under some fence-rails and lived there<br> +for six weeks, coming out only at midnight for food. Driven thence by<br> +discovery, he still managed to hide here and there about the plantations<br> +in spite of a whole country of armed men in search of him, until at last<br> +he was accidentally confronted in the bush by a white man with levelled<br> +rifle. He was hanged, November 11th, and sixteen others later. His wife<br> +was tortured for evidence, but in vain. Twelve negroes were transported.<br> +Very many were, without trial, punished in inhuman ways, the heads of<br> +some impaled along the highway as a warning. Partly in consequence of<br> +this horrible affair, originated a stout movement for the abolition of<br> +slavery in Virginia. This was favored by many of the ablest men in the<br> +Old Dominion, but they were overruled.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 561px; height: 567px;" alt="" + src="images/154Pic.jpg"><br> +The Discovery of Nat Turner.<br> +<br> +<br> +Danger from the blacks necessitated the most rigid laws concerning them.<br> +Time had been when it was thought not dangerous to teach slaves to read.<br> +In 1742 Commissary Garden, of the English Society for Propagating the<br> +Gospel, founded a negro school in Charleston, where slaves were taught<br> +by slave teachers, these last being the society's property. Honest Elias<br> +Neale, the society's catechist in New York, engaged in the same work<br> +there, and afterward catechists were so employed in Philadelphia. That<br> +organization did much to stir up the planters to teach their slaves the<br> +rudiments of Christianity. [Footnote: Eggleston in Century, May, 1888.]<br> +Now, all this was changed. The strictest laws were made to keep every<br> +slave in the most abject ignorance, to prevent their congregating, and<br> +to make it impossible for abolitionists or abolitionist literature or<br> +influence to get at them.<br> +<br> +[1816]<br> +<br> +Inconvenient and perilous as slavery was, southern devotion to it for<br> +many reasons strengthened rather than weakened. The masses did not<br> +perceive the ruin the system was working, which, moreover, consisted<br> +with great profits to vast numbers of influential men and to many<br> +localities. Border States little by little gave up the hope of becoming<br> +free, the old anti-slavery convictions of their best men faltering, and<br> +the practical problem of emancipation, really difficult, being too<br> +easily decided insoluble. More significant, owing to a variety of<br> +circumstances, the abolition spirit itself greatly subsided early in the<br> +present century. Completion of the emancipation process in the North was<br> +assured by the action of New York in 1817, proclaiming a total end to<br> +slavery there from July 4, 1827. The view that each State was absolute<br> +sovereign over slavery within its own borders, responsibility for it and<br> +its abuses there ending with the State's own citizens, was now<br> +universally accepted. Success in securing the act of 1807, making the<br> +slave trade illegal from January 1, 1808, and affixing to it heavy<br> +penalties, lulled multitudes to sleep. This act, however, had effect<br> +only gradually, and its beneficence was greatly lessened in that it left<br> +confiscated negroes to the operation of the local law.<br> +<br> +Such quietude was furthered through the formation of the American<br> +Colonization Society in 1816, by easy philanthropists and statesmen,<br> +North as well as South, who swore by the Constitution as admitting no<br> +fundamental amendment, admired its three great compromises, loved all<br> +brethren of the Union except agitators, and deprecated slavery and the<br> +black race about equally; its mission negro deportation, but its actual<br> +efforts confined to the dumping of free blacks, reprobates, and<br> +castaways in some remote corner of the universe, for the convenience of<br> +slave-holders themselves. [Footnote: 3 Schouler's United States, 198.]<br> +<br> +[1839]<br> +<br> +Meantime much was occurring to harden northern hostility to slavery into<br> +resolute hatred, a fire which might smoulder long but could not die out.<br> +The fugitive slave law for the rendition of runaways found in free<br> +States operated cruelly at best, and was continually abused to kidnap<br> +free blacks. The owner or his attorney or agent could seize a slave<br> +anywhere on the soil of freedom, bring him before the magistrate of the<br> +county, city, or town corporate in which the arrest was made, and prove<br> +his ownership by testimony or by affidavit; and the certificate of such<br> +magistrate that this had been done was a sufficient warrant for the<br> +return of the poor wretch into bondage. Obstruction, rescue, or aid<br> +toward escape was fined in the sum of five hundred dollars. This is the<br> +pith of the fugitive slave act of 1793. It might have been far more<br> +mischievous but for the interpretation put upon it in the celebrated<br> +case of Prigg versus Pennsylvania.<br> +<br> +Mr. Prigg was the agent of a Maryland slave-owner. He had in 1839<br> +pursued a slave woman into Pennsylvania, and when refused her surrender<br> +by the local magistrate carried her away by force. He was indicted in<br> +Pennsylvania for kidnapping, an amicable lawsuit made up, and an appeal<br> +taken to the United States Supreme Court. Here, in an opinion prepared<br> +by Justice Story, the Pennsylvania statute under which the magistrate<br> +had acted, providing a mode for the return of fugitives by state<br> +authorities, was declared unconstitutional on the ground that only<br> +Congress could legislate on the subject; but it was added that while a<br> +free State had no right in any way to block the capture of a runaway, as<br> +for example by ordering a jury trial to determine whether a seized<br> +person had really been a slave, so as to protect free persons of dark<br> +complexion, yet States might forbid their officers to aid in the<br> +recovery of slaves. As the act of 1793 did not name any United States<br> +officials for this service it became nearly inoperative. Spite of this<br> +terrible construction of the Constitution, which Chief Justice Taney<br> +thought should have included an assertion of a State's duty by<br> +legislation to aid rendition, many northern States passed personal<br> +liberty laws, besetting the capture of slaves with all possible<br> +difficulties thought compatible with the Constitution. The South<br> +denounced all such laws whatever as unconstitutional, and perhaps some<br> +of them were.<br> +<br> +[1835]<br> +<br> +Constitutional or not, they were needed. There were regular expeditions<br> +to carry off free colored persons from the coasts of New York and New<br> +Jersey, many of them successful. The foreign slave-trade, with its<br> +ineffable atrocities, proved defiant of law and preternaturally<br> +tenacious of life. A lucrative but barbarous domestic trade had sprung<br> +up between the Atlantic States, Virginia and North Carolina especially,<br> +and those on the Gulf, for the supply of the southern market. Families<br> +were torn apart, gangs of the poor creatures driven thousands of miles<br> +in shackles or carried coastwise in the over-filled holds of vessels, to<br> +live or die--little matter which--under unknown skies and strange,<br> +heartless masters.<br> +<br> +The slave codes of the southern States grew severer every year, as did<br> +legislation against free colored people. Laws were passed rendering<br> +emancipation more difficult and less a blessing when obtained. The<br> +Mississippi and Alabama constitutions, 1817 and 1819 respectively, and<br> +all those in the South arising later, were shaped so as to place general<br> +emancipation beyond the power even of Legislatures. Congress was even<br> +thus early--so it seemed at the North--all too subservient to the<br> +slave-holders, partly through the operation of the three-fifths rule,<br> +partly from fear that opposition would bring disunion, partly in that<br> +ambitious legislators were eager for southern votes. As to the Senate,<br> +the South had taken care, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee having evened<br> +the score, all before 1800, to allow no new northern State to be<br> +admitted unless matched by a southern. In addition to all this, the<br> +North had a vast trade with the South, and northern capitalists held to<br> +an enormous amount mortgages on southern property of all sorts, so that<br> +large and influential classes North had a pecuniary interest in<br> +maintaining at the South both good nature and business prosperity.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II.<br> +<br> +"IMMEDIATE ABOLITION"<br> +<br> +[1832]<br> +<br> +While slavery was thus strengthening itself upon its own soil and in<br> +some respects also at the North, its champions ever more alert and<br> +forward, its old foes asleep, these very facts were provoking thought<br> +about the institution and hostility to it, destined in time to work its<br> +overthrow. Interested people saw that slavery, so aggressive and<br> +defiant, must be fought to be put down, and that if the Constitution was<br> +its bulwark, as all believed, provided a tithe of what the South as well<br> +as the North had said of its evils was true, the whole country, and not<br> +the South only, was guilty in tolerating the curse. In 1821 Lundy began<br> +publishing his Genius of Universal Emancipation, seconded, from 1829, by<br> +the more radical Garrison. In 1831 Garrison founded the Liberator,<br> +whose motto, "immediate and unconditional emancipation," was intended as<br> +a rebuke to the tame policy of the colonizationists. "I am in earnest,"<br> +said the plucky man, when his utterances threatened to cost him his<br> +life, "I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will<br> +not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." These were startling<br> +tones. Had God turned a new prophet loose in the earth?<br> +<br> +The abolition spirit was a part of the general moral and religious<br> +quickening we have mentioned as beginning about 1825, and revealing<br> +itself in revivals, missions, a religious press, and belief in the end<br> +of the world as approaching. The ethical teaching of the great German<br> +philosopher, Emanuel Kant, denouncing all use of man as an instrument,<br> +began to take effect in America through the writings of Coleridge.<br> +Hatred of slavery was gradually intensified and spread. In 1832 rose the<br> +New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 the American Society was<br> +organized, with a platform declaring "slavery a crime."<br> +<br> +[1833]<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 330px; height: 452px;" alt="" src="images/165Pic.jpg"><br> +John G. Whittier in 1833.<br> +<br> +<br> +This declaration marked one of the most important turning-points in all<br> +the history of the United States. It drew the line. It brought to view<br> +the presence in our land of two sets of earnest thinkers, with<br> +diametrically opposite views touching slavery, who could not permanently<br> +live together under one constitution. May, Phillips, Weld, Whittier, the<br> +Tappans, and many other men of intellect, of oratorical power, and of<br> +wealth, drew to Garrison's side. State abolition societies were<br> +organized all over the North, the Underground Railroad was hard worked<br> +in helping fugitives to Canada, and fiery prophets harangued wherever<br> +they could get a hearing, demanding "immediate abolition" in the name of<br> +God.<br> +<br> +The Abolitionists proposed none but moral arms in fighting<br> +slavery--papers, pamphlets, public addresses, personal appeals. They<br> +deprecated rebellion by slaves, and urged congressional action against<br> +slavery only in the District of Columbia, in the territories, and at<br> +sea, where the absolute jurisdiction of the general Government was<br> +admitted by nearly all. Nevertheless, southern hostility to them was<br> +indescribably ferocious and uncompromising. They were charged with<br> +instigating all the slave insurrections and insubordination that<br> +occurred, and with having made necessary the new, more diabolical<br> +discipline over blacks, both bond and free. Southern papers and<br> +Legislatures incessantly commanded that Abolitionists be delivered up to<br> +southern justice, their societies and their publications suppressed by<br> +law, and abolitionist agitation made penal. There were northerners quite<br> +ready to grant these demands. Rage against abolitionism, much of it, if<br> +possible, even more unreasoning, prevailed at the North. Garrison says<br> +that he found here "contempt more bitter, detraction more relentless,<br> +prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slave-owners<br> +themselves." The Church, politics, business--all interests save<br> +righteousness--seemed to bow to the false god. Of all utterances against<br> +abolitionism, those of clergymen and religious journals were the<br> +bitterest. To call slavery sin was the unpardonable sin.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 378px; height: 460px;" alt="" + src="images/167Pic.jpg"><br> +Wm. Lloyd Garrison.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1834-1836]<br> +<br> +In 1834, on July 4th, a mob broke up a meeting of the American<br> +Anti-Slavery Society in New York. A few days after, Lewis Tappan's house<br> +was sacked in the same manner, as well as several churches,<br> +school-houses, and dwellings of colored families. At Newark, N. J., a<br> +colored man who had been introduced into a pulpit by the minister of the<br> +congregation, was forcibly wrenched therefrom and carried off to jail.<br> +The pulpit was then torn down and the church gutted. In Norwich, Conn.,<br> +the mob pulled an abolitionist lecturer from his platform and drummed<br> +him out of town to the Rogues' March. In 1836 occurred the murder of<br> +Rev. E. P. Lovejoy, at Alton, Ill. He was the publisher of The Observer,<br> +an abolitionist sheet, which had already been three times suspended by<br> +the destruction of his printing apparatus. It was at a meeting held in<br> +Faneuil Hall over this occurrence that Wendell Phillips first made his<br> +appearance as an anti-slavery orator. Also in 1836 the office at<br> +Cincinnati in which James G. Birney published The Philanthropist, was<br> +sacked, the types scattered, and the press broken and sunk in the river.<br> +Birney was a southerner by birth, and had been a slave-holder, but had<br> +freed his slaves. Between 1834 and 1840 there was hardly a place of any<br> +size in the North where an Abolitionist could speak with certain safety.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 332px; height: 395px;" alt="" + src="images/169Pic.jpg"><br> +Wendell Phillip.<br> +<br> +<br> +The destruction of colored people's houses became for a time an<br> +every-day occurrence in many northern cities. For some years the<br> +condition of the free blacks and their friends was hardly better north<br> +than south. Schools for colored children were violently opposed even in<br> +New England. One kept by Miss Prudence Crandall, at Canterbury, Conn.,<br> +was, after its opponents had for months sought in every manner to close<br> +it, destroyed by fire. The lady herself was imprisoned, and such schools<br> +were by law forbidden in the State. A colored school at Canaan, N. H.,<br> +was voted a nuisance by a meeting of the town; the building was then<br> +dragged from its foundations and ruined. Many who aided in these deeds<br> +belonged to what were regarded the most respectable classes of society.<br> +<br> +[1839-1840]<br> +<br> +Owing to the vagaries and unpatriotism of the Garrisonians, there was<br> +from 1840 schism in the abolition ranks. Garrison and his closest<br> +sympathizers were very radical on other questions besides that<br> +concerning the sin of slavery. They declared the Constitution "a league<br> +with death and a covenant with hell" because it recognized slavery. They<br> +would neither vote nor hold office under it. They upbraided the churches<br> +as full of the devil's allies. They also advocated community of<br> +property, women's rights, and some of them free love. Others, as Birney,<br> +Whittier, and Gerrit Smith, refused to believe so ill of the<br> +Constitution or of the churches, and wished to rush the slavery question<br> +right into the political arena. The division, far from hindering,<br> +greatly set forward the abolitionist cause. Perhaps neither abolition<br> +society, as such, had, after the schism of 1840, quite the influence<br> +which the old exerted at first, but by this time a very general public<br> +opinion maintained anti-slavery propagandism, pushing it henceforth more<br> +powerfully than ever, as well as, through broader modes of utterance and<br> +action, more successfully. Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, each enlisted<br> +his muse in the crusade. Wendell Phillips's tongue was a flaming sword.<br> +Clergymen, politicians, and other people entirely conservative in most<br> +things, felt free to join the new society of political Abolitionists.<br> +<br> +In 1839 the Governor of Virginia made a requisition on Governor Seward<br> +of New York, to send to Virginia three sailors charged with having aided<br> +a slave out of bondage. Seward declined, on the ground that by New York<br> +law the sailors were guilty of no crime, as that law knew nothing of<br> +property in man. He accompanied his refusal with a discussion of slavery<br> +and slave law quite in the abolitionist vein. To a like call from<br> +Georgia, Seward responded in the same way, and his example was followed<br> +by other northern governors. The Liberty Party took the field in 1840,<br> +Birney and Earle for candidates, who polled nearly 7,000 votes. Four<br> +years later Birney and Morris received 62,300.<br> +<br> +It would be a mistake, let us remember, to regard the anti-abolitionist<br> +temper at the North wholly as apathy, friendliness to slavery, or the<br> +result of truckling to the South. Besides sharing the general fanaticism<br> +which mixed itself with the movement, the Abolitionists ignored the<br> +South's dilemma--the ultras totally, the moderates too much. "What<br> +would you do, brethren, were you in our place?" asked Dr. Richard<br> +Fuller, of Baltimore, in a national religious meeting where slavery was<br> +under debate; "how would you go to work to realize your views?" Dr.<br> +Spencer H. Cone, of New York, roared in reply, "I would proclaim liberty<br> +throughout all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof." But the thing<br> +was far from being so simple as that. Denouncing the Constitution as<br> +Garrison did could not but affront patriotic hearts. It was impolitic,<br> +to say the least, to import English co-agitators, who could not<br> +understand the intricacies of the subject as presented here.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 644px; height: 244px;" alt="" + src="images/174Pic.jpg"> <br> +facsimile of Heading of the "Liberator."<br> +<br> +<br> +The fact that, defying slave-masters and sycophants alike, the cause of<br> +abolition still went on conquering and to conquer, was due much less to<br> +the strength of its arguments and the energy of its agitation than to<br> +the South's wild outcry and preposterous effrontery of demand.<br> +Conservative northerners began to see that, bad as abolitionism might<br> +be, the means proposed for its suppression were worse still, being<br> +absolutely subversive of personal liberty, free speech, and a free<br> +press. More serious was the conviction, which the South's attitude<br> +nursed, that such mortal horror at Abolitionists and their propaganda<br> +could only be explained by some sort of a conviction on the part of the<br> +South itself that the Abolitionists were right, and that slavery was<br> +precisely the heinous and damnable evil they declared it to be. It was<br> +mostly in considering this aspect of the case that the Church and clergy<br> +more and more developed conscience and voice on freedom's side, as<br> +practical allies of abolitionism. In each great denomination the South<br> +had to break off from the North on account of the latter's love to the<br> +black as a human being. Men felt that an institution unable to stand<br> +discussion ought to fall. By 1850 there were few places at the North<br> +where an Abolitionist might not safely speak his mind.<br> +<br> +It were as unjust as it would be painful to view this long, courageous,<br> +desperate defence of slavery as the pure product of depravity. The South<br> +had a cause, in logic, law, and, to an extent, even in justice. Both<br> +sides could rightly appeal to the Constitution, the deep, irrepressible<br> +antagonism of freedom against bondage having there its seat. The very<br> +existence of the Constitution presupposed that each section should<br> +respect the institutions of the other. What right, then, had the North<br> +to allow publications confessedly intended to destroy a legal southern<br> +institution, deeply rooted and cherished? From a merely constitutional<br> +point of view this question was no less proper than the other: What<br> +right had the South, among much else, to enact laws putting in prison<br> +northern citizens of color absolutely without indictment, when, as<br> +sailors, they touched at southern ports, and keeping them there till<br> +their ships sailed? This outrage had occurred repeatedly. +What was<br> +worse, when Messrs. Hoar and Hubbard visited Charleston and New Orleans,<br> +respectively, to bring amicable suits that should go to the Supreme<br> +Court and there decide the legality of such detention, they were obliged<br> +to withdraw to escape personal violence.<br> +<br> +It was said that the North must bear these incidents of slavery, so<br> +obnoxious to it, in deference to our complex political system. Yes, but<br> +it was equally the South's duty to bear the, to it, obnoxious incidents<br> +of freedom. Southern men seem never to have thought of this. Doubtless,<br> +as emancipation in any style would have afflicted it, the South could<br> +not but account all incitements thereto as hardships; but the North must<br> +have suffered hardships, if less gross and tangible, yet more real and<br> +galling, had it acceded to southern wishes touching liberty of person,<br> +speech, and the press. That at the North which offended the South was of<br> +the very soul and essence of free government; that at the South which<br> +aggrieved the North was, however important, certainly somewhat less<br> +essential. Manifestly, considerations other than legal or constitutional<br> +needed to be invoked in order to a decision of the case upon its merits,<br> +and these, had they been judicially weighed, must, it would seem, all<br> +have told powerfully against slavery. Not to raise the question whether<br> +the black was a man, with the inalienable rights mentioned in the<br> +Declaration of Independence, the South's own economic and moral weal,<br> +and further--what one would suppose should alone have determined the<br> +question--its social peace and political stability loudly demanded<br> +every possible effort and device for the extirpation of slavery. That<br> +this would have been difficult all must admit; that it was intrinsically<br> +possible the examples of Cuba and Brazil since sufficiently prove.<br> +<br> +</big></big> +<table style="text-align: left; width: 1297px; height: 940px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;"><img + style="width: 632px; height: 924px;" alt="" src="images/181Left.jpg"><br> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;"><img + style="width: 648px; height: 928px;" alt="" src="images/181Right.jpg"><br> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<big><big><br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III.<br> +<br> +THE MEXICAN WAR<br> +<br> +[1836]<br> +<br> +Attracted by fertility of soil and advantages for cattle-raising, large<br> +numbers of Americans had long been emigrating to Texas. By 1830 they<br> +probably comprised a majority of its inhabitants. March 2, 1836, Texas<br> +declared its independence of Mexico, and on April 10th of that year<br> +fought in defence of the same the decisive battle of San Jacinto. Here<br> +Houston gained a complete victory over Santa Anna, the Mexican<br> +President, captured him, and extorted his signature to a treaty<br> +acknowledging Texan independence. This, however, as having been forced,<br> +the Mexican Government would not ratify.<br> +<br> +[1845]<br> +<br> +Not only did the Texans almost to a man wish annexation to our Union,<br> +but, as we have seen, the dominant wing of the democratic party in the<br> +Union itself was bent upon the same, forcing a demand for this into<br> +their national platform in 1840. Van Buren did not favor it, which was<br> +the sole reason why he forfeited to Polk the democratic nomination in<br> +1844. Polk was elected by free-soil votes cast for Birney, which, had<br> +Clay received them, would have carried New York and Michigan for him and<br> +thus elected him; but the result was hailed as indorsing annexation.<br> +Calhoun, Tyler's Secretary of State, more influential than any other one<br> +man in bringing it about, therefore now advocated it more zealously than<br> +ever. Calhoun's purpose in this was to balance the immense growth of the<br> +North by adding to southern territory Texas, which would of course<br> +become a slave State, and perhaps in time make several States. As the<br> +war progressed he grew moderate, out of fear that the South's show of<br> +territorial greed would give the North just excuse for sectional<br> +measures.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 349px; height: 433px;" alt="" + src="images/180Pic.jpg"><br> +General Sam. Houston.<br> +<br> +<br> +Henry Clay, with nearly the entire Whig Party, from the first opposed<br> +the Tyler-Calhoun programme. Clay's own reason for this, as his<br> +memorable Lexington speech in 1847 disclosed, was that the United States<br> +would be looked upon "as actuated by a spirit of rapacity and an<br> +inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement." His party as a whole<br> +dreaded more the increment which would come to the slave power. After<br> +much discussion in Congress, Texas was annexed to the Union on January<br> +25, 1845, just previous to Polk's accession. June 18th, the Texan<br> +Congress unanimously assented, its act being ratified July 4th by a<br> +popular convention. Thus were added to the United States 376,133 square<br> +miles of territory.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 333px; height: 422px;" alt="" + src="images/182Pic.jpg"><br> +General Santa Anna.<br> +<br> +<br> +The all-absorbing question now was where Texas ended: at the Nueces, as<br> +Mexico declared, or at the Rio Grande, as Texas itself had maintained,<br> +insisting upon that stream as of old the bourne between Spanish America<br> +and the French Louisiana. Mexico, proud, had recognized neither the<br> +independence of Texas nor its annexation by the United States, yet would<br> +probably have agreed to both as preferable to war, had the alternative<br> +been allowed. To be sure, she was dilatory in settling admitted claims<br> +for certain depredations upon our commerce, threatened to take the<br> +annexation as a casus belli, withdrew her envoy and declined to accept<br> +Slidell as ours, and precipitated the first actual bloodshed. Yet war<br> +might have been averted, and our Government, not Mexico's, was to blame<br> +for the contrary result. Slidell played the bully, the navy threatened<br> +the coast, our wholly deficient title, through Texas, to the<br> +Nueces-Rio-Grande tract was assumed without the slightest ado to be<br> +good, and when General Arista, having crossed the river in Taylor's<br> +vicinity, repelled the latter's attack upon him, the President, followed<br> +by Congress, falsely alleged war to exist "by act of the Republic of<br> +Mexico."<br> +<br> +[1846]<br> +<br> +During most of 1845, General Zachary Taylor was at Corpus Christi on the<br> +west bank of the Nueces, in command of 3,600 men. The first aggressive<br> +movement occurred in March of the following year, when Taylor, invading<br> +the disputed territory by command from Washington, advanced to the Rio<br> +Grande, opposite Matamoras. April 26th, a Mexican force crossed the<br> +river and captured a party of American dragoons which attacked them.<br> +Taylor drew back to establish communication with Point Isabel, and on<br> +advancing again toward the Rio Grande, May 8th, found before him a<br> +Mexican force of nearly twice his numbers, commanded by Arista. The<br> +battle of Palo Alto ensued, and next day that of Resaca de la Palma,<br> +Taylor completely victorious in both. May 13th, before knowledge of<br> +these actions had reached Washington, warranted merely by news of the<br> +cavalry skirmish on April 26th, Congress declared war, and the President<br> +immediately called for 50,000 volunteers. In July Taylor was re-enforced<br> +by Worth, and proceeded to organize a campaign against Monterey, a<br> +strongly fortified town some ninety miles toward the City of Mexico.<br> +This place was reached September 19th, and captured on the 22d, after<br> +hard fighting and severe losses on both sides. An armistice of eight<br> +weeks followed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 441px; height: 586px;" alt="" src="images/185Pic.jpg"><br> +James K. Polk, after a photograph by Brady.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 476px; height: 658px;" alt="" src="images/187Pic.jpg"><br> +PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA MORNING 23 OF FEB 1847.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1847]<br> +<br> +Meantime a revolution had occurred in Mexico. The banished Santa Anna<br> +was recalled, and as President of the Republic assumed command of the<br> +Mexican armies. On February 23, 1847, occurred one of the most<br> +sanguinary but brilliant battles of the war, that of Buena Vista.<br> +Taylor, learning that a Mexican force was advancing under Santa Anna, at<br> +least double the 5,200 left him after the requisition upon him which<br> +General Scott had just made, drew back to the strong position of Buena<br> +Vista, south of Saltillo. Here Santa Anna, having through an intercepted<br> +despatch learned of Taylor's weakness, ferociously fell upon him with a<br> +force 12,000 strong. On right and centre, by dint of good tactics and<br> +bull-dog fighting, Taylor held his own and more, but the foe succeeded<br> +at first in partly turning and pushing back his left. The Mexican<br> +commander bade Taylor surrender, but was refused, whence the saying that<br> +"Old Rough and Ready," as they called Taylor, "was whipped but didn't<br> +know it."<br> +<br> +To check the flanking movement he sent forward two regiments of<br> +infantry, well supported by dragoons and artillery, who charged the<br> +advancing mass, broke the Mexicans' column, and sent them fleeing in<br> +confusion. This saved the day. The American loss was 746, including<br> +several officers, among them Lieutenant-Colonel Clay, son of the<br> +Kentucky statesman. Colonel Jefferson Davis, one day to be President of<br> +the Southern Confederacy, caused during this conflict great havoc in the<br> +enemy's ranks with his Mississippi riflemen. Santa Anna's loss was<br> +2,000.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 342px; height: 432px;" alt="" + src="images/189Pic.jpg"><br> +General Winfield Scott.<br> +<br> +<br> +General Winfield Scott had meantime been ordered to Mexico as chief in<br> +command. Taylor was a Whig, and the Whigs whispered that his martial<br> +deeds were making the democratic cabinet dread him as a presidential<br> +candidate. But Scott was a Whig, too, and if there was anything in the<br> +surmise, his victorious march must have given Polk's political household<br> +additional food for reflection. Scott's plan was to reduce Vera Cruz,<br> +and thence march to the Mexican capital, two hundred miles away, by the<br> +quickest route. Vera Cruz capitulated March 27, 1847.<br> +<br> +Scott straightway struck out for the interior. He was bloodily opposed<br> +at Cerro Gordo, April 18th, and at Jalapa, but he made quick work of the<br> +enemy at both these places. In the latter city, after his victory, he<br> +awaited promised re-enforcements. When the last of these had arrived,<br> +August 6th, under General Franklin Pierce, so that he could muster about<br> +14,000 men, he advanced again. August 10th the Americans were in sight<br> +of the City of Mexico. This was a natural stronghold, and art had added<br> +to its strength in every possible way. Except on the south and west it<br> +was nearly inaccessible if defended with any spirit. Scott of course<br> +directed his attack toward the west and south sides of the city. The<br> +first battle in the environs of the capital was fiercely fought near the<br> +village of Contreras, and proved an overwhelming defeat for the<br> +Mexicans. Two thousand were killed or wounded, while nearly 1,000,<br> +including four generals, were captured, together with a large quantity<br> +of stores and ammunition. The American loss was only 60 killed and<br> +wounded.<br> +<br> +The survivors fled to Churubusco, farther toward the city, where, with<br> +every advantage of position, Santa Anna had united his forces for a<br> +final stand. An old stone convent, which our artillery could not reach<br> +till late in the action, was utilized as a barricade, and from this the<br> +Mexicans poured a most deadly fire upon their assailants. The Americans<br> +were victorious, as usual, but their loss was fearful, 1,000 being<br> +killed or wounded, including 76 officers. A truce to last a fortnight<br> +was now agreed upon, but Scott, seeing that the Mexicans were taking<br> +advantage of it to strengthen their fortifications, did not wait so<br> +long. He now had about 8,500 men fit for duty, and sixty-eight guns.<br> +Hostilities were renewed September 7th, by the storm and capture,<br> +costing nearly 800 men, of Molino del Rey, or "King's Mill," a mile and<br> +a half from the city.<br> +<br> +Possession of the Molino opened the way to Chapultepec, the Gibraltar of<br> +Mexico, 1,100 yards nearer the goal. As it was built upon a rock 150<br> +feet high, impregnable on the north and well-nigh so on the eastern and<br> +most of the southern face, only the western and part of the southern<br> +sides could be scaled. But the stronghold was the key to the city, and<br> +after surveying the situation, a council of war decided that it must be<br> +taken. Two picked American detachments, one from the west, one from the<br> +south, pushed up the rugged steeps in face of a withering fire. The<br> +rock-walls to the base of the castle had to be mounted by ladders. This<br> +was successfully accomplished; the enemy were driven from the building<br> +back into the city, and the castle and grounds occupied by our troops. A<br> +large number of fugitives were cut off by a force sent around to the<br> +north.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 629px; height: 445px;" alt="" + src="images/193Pic.jpg"><br> +The Plaza of the City of Mexico.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1848]<br> +<br> +To pierce the city was even now by no means easy. The approach was by<br> +two roads, one entering the Belen gate, the other the San Cosme. General<br> +Quitman advanced toward the Belen, but at the entrance was stopped by a<br> +destructive cannonade from the citadel itself. Those fighting their way<br> +toward the San Cosme succeeded in entering the city, Lieutenant U. S.<br> +Grant making his mark in the gallant work of this day. The city was<br> +evacuated that night, and on the 15th of September, 1847, was fully in<br> +the hands of Scott.<br> +<br> +The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. It<br> +established the Rio Grande as the boundary between the two countries,<br> +and New Mexico, of course including what is now Arizona and also<br> +California, was ceded to the United States for $15,000,000. The United<br> +States also assumed, to the sum of $3,250,000, the claims of American<br> +citizens upon Mexico. For Gadsden's Purchase, in 1853, between the Gila<br> +River and the Mexican State of Chihuahua, we paid $10,000,000 more. Our<br> +territory thus received in all, as a consequence of the Mexican War, an<br> +increment of 591,398 square miles.<br> +<br> +Inseparable from the politics of the Mexican War is the Oregon question,<br> +since Oregon's re-occupation and "fifty-four forty or fight" had been<br> +democratic cries for securing to Polk west-northern votes in 1844. We<br> +had, however, no valid claim so far north, except against Russia--by the<br> +treaty of 1824. The Louisiana purchase, indeed, had vested us with<br> +whatever--very dubious--rights France had upon the Pacific, and the<br> +Florida treaty of 1819 gave us the far better title of Spain to the<br> +coast north of 42 degrees. This treaty, with Gray's discovery of the<br> +Columbia in 1792, Lewis and Clarke's official explorations of the<br> +Columbia valley in 1804-05-06, England's retrocession, in 1818, of<br> +Astoria, captured during the War of 1812, and extensive actual<br> +settlements upon the river by American citizens from 1832 on, made our<br> +claim perfect up to 49 degrees at least. This parallel the convention<br> +with Great Britain in 1818 had already fixed as our northern line from<br> +the Lake of Woods to the Rocky Mountains. Between this and 54 degrees 40<br> +minutes, England's title, from exploration and settlement, was superior<br> +to ours, which was based upon alleged old Spanish discovery. The same<br> +convention of 1818, renewed in 1827, opened the Oregon country to<br> +occupation by settlers from both nations. Increase of immigration<br> +rendering a fixing of jurisdictions imperative, England pressed for the<br> +line of the Columbia below its intersection of the forty-ninth parallel.<br> +We had twice offered to settle upon 49 degrees, which limit the rapid<br> +growth of our population in the region induced England in 1836 to<br> +accept. Whether Polk's blustering demand for "all Oregon," which came<br> +near bringing on war with England, and his much condemned recession<br> +later, were mere opportunist acts, is still a question. Many consider<br> +them pieces of a deep-laid policy by Polk to tole Mexico to war in hope<br> +of England's aid, then, suddenly pacifying England, to devour Mexico at<br> +his leisure.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV.<br> +<br> +CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850<br> +<br> +[1846]<br> +<br> +One of the campaigns at the beginning of the Mexican War was that of<br> +General Stephen W. Kearney, from Fort Leavenworth, against New Mexico.<br> +It was opened in May, 1846. He invaded the country without much<br> +opposition, arrived at Santa Fe August 18th, having marched 873 miles,<br> +declared the inhabitants free from all allegiance to Mexico, and formed<br> +a territorial government over them as United States subjects.<br> +<br> +Captain John C. Fremont had previously, but in the same year, 1846, been<br> +sent to California at the head of an exploring expedition, and in May he<br> +was notified to remain in the country in anticipation of hostilities. On<br> +June 15th he captured Samona. Meanwhile, Commodore Sloat was erecting<br> +our flag over the towns on the coast. In July Sloat was superseded by<br> +Commodore Stockton, who routed the Mexican commander, De Castro, at Los<br> +Angeles, joined Fremont, and on August 13th seized Monterey, the then<br> +capital. The two commanders now placed themselves at the head of a<br> +provisional government for California.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 459px; height: 599px;" alt="" src="images/199Pic.jpg"><br> +Zachary Taylor. After a photograph by Brady.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 465px; height: 399px;" alt="" + src="images/201Pic.jpg"><br> +The Site of San Francisco in 1848.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1848-1849]<br> +<br> +In 1848, on the same day and almost at the same hour when the peace of<br> +Guadalupe Hidalgo was concluded, gold was discovered in California. It<br> +was on the land of one Sutter, a Swiss settler in the Sacramento Valley,<br> +as some workmen were opening a flume for a mill. In three months over<br> +4,000 persons were there, digging for gold with great success. By July,<br> +1849, it is thought, 15,000 had arrived. Nearly all were forced to live<br> +in booths, tents, log huts, and under the open sky. The sparse<br> +population previously on the ground left off farming and grazing and<br> +opened mines. People became insane for gold. Immigrants soon came in<br> +immense hordes. In 1846, aside from roving Indians, California had<br> +numbered not much over 15,000 inhabitants. By 1850, it seems certain<br> +that the territory contained no fewer than 92,597. The new-comers were<br> +from almost every land and clime--Mexico, South America, the Sandwich<br> +Islands, China--though, of course, most were Americans. The bulk of<br> +these hailed from the Northwest and the Northeast. To this land of<br> +promise the sturdy pioneers from the Mississippi Valley found their way<br> +on foot, on horseback, or in wagons, over the Rocky Mountains and the<br> +Sierras, following trails previously untrodden by civilized man. Those<br> +from the East made long detours around Cape Horn or across the Isthmus<br> +of Panama.<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 477px; height: 434px;" alt="" + src="images/202Pic.jpg"><br> +Sutter's Mill, California, where Gold was First Discovered.<br> +<br> +<br> +The yield of gold from the virgin placers was enormous, a laborer's<br> +average the first season being perhaps an ounce a day, though many made<br> +much more. During the first two years about $40,000,000 worth of gold<br> +was extracted. According to careful estimates the gold yield of the<br> +United States, mostly from California, which had been only $890,000 in<br> +1847, increased to $10,000,000 in 1848, to $40,000,000 in 1849, to<br> +$50,000,000 in 1850, to $55,000,000 in 1851, to $60,000,000 in 1852, and<br> +in 1853 to $65,000,000.<br> +<br> +Most interesting were the spontaneous governmental and legal<br> +institutions which arose in these motley communities, some of them<br> +finding their originals in the English mining districts, others in<br> +Mexico and Spain, and still others recalling the mining customs of<br> +medieval Germany. For a time many camps had each its independent<br> +government, disconnected from all human authority around or above. Some<br> +of these were modelled after the Mexican Alcaldeship, others after the<br> +New England town. Over those who rushed to the vicinity of Sutter's mill<br> +that gentleman became virtual Alcalde, though he was not recognized by<br> +all. The men first opening a placer would seek to pre-empt all the<br> +adjoining land, giving up only when others came in numbers too strong<br> +for them. Officers were elected and new customs sanctioned as they were<br> +needed. Partnerships were sacredly maintained, yet by no other law than<br> +that of the camp. Crimes against property and life seem to have been<br> +infrequent at first, but the unparalleled wealth toled in and developed<br> +a criminal class, which the rudimentary government could not control.<br> +San Francisco formed in 1851 a vigilance committee of citizens, by which<br> +crimes could be more summarily and surely punished. The pioneer banking<br> +house in California began business at San Francisco in January, 1849.<br> +The same month saw the first frame house on the Sacramento, near<br> +Sutter's Fort.<br> +<br> +The vast acquisition of territory by the Mexican War seemed destined to<br> +be a great victory for slavery, because nearly all of it lay south of 36<br> +degrees 30 minutes and hence by the Missouri Compromise could become<br> +slave soil. But there was the complication that under Mexico all this<br> +wide realm had been free. To exist there legally slavery must therefore<br> +be established by Congress, making the case very different from the<br> +cases of Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, which came under United States<br> +authority already burdened. This predisposed many who were not in<br> +general opposed to slavery, against extending the institution hither.<br> +Early in the war a bill had passed the House, failing almost by accident<br> +in the Senate, which contained the famous Wilmot Proviso, so named from<br> +its mover in the House, that, except for crime, neither slavery nor<br> +involuntary servitude should ever exist in any of the territories to be<br> +annexed. Wilmot was a Democrat, and at this time a decided majority of<br> +his party favored the proviso. But the pro-slavery wing rallied, while<br> +the Whigs, disbelieving in the war and in annexation both, offered the<br> +proviso Democrats no hearty aid. In consequence it was defeated both<br> +then and after the annexation.<br> +<br> +The election of 1848 went for the Whigs, and the next March 4th, General<br> +Taylor became President. Though a southerner and a slave-holder, he was<br> +moderate and a true patriot. So rapid had been the influx into<br> +California that the Territory needed a stable government. Accordingly,<br> +one of Taylor's first acts as President was to urge California to apply<br> +for admission to statehood. General Riley, military governor, at once<br> +called a convention, which, sitting from September 1st to October 13th,<br> +framed a constitution and made request that California be taken into the<br> +Union. This constitution prohibited slavery, and thus a new firebrand<br> +was tossed into the combustible material with which the political<br> +situation abounded. By this time nearly all the friends of freedom were<br> +for the proviso, but its enemies as well had greatly increased. The<br> +immense growth, actual and prospective, of northern population, greatly<br> +inspired one side and angered the other.<br> +<br> +[1850]<br> +<br> +Resort was now had again to the old, illusive device of compromise, Clay<br> +being the leader as usual. He brought forward his "Omnibus Bill," so<br> +called because it threw a sop to everybody. It failed to pass as a<br> +single measure, but was broken up and enacted piecemeal. Stubborn was<br> +the fight. Radicals of the one part would consent to nothing short of<br> +extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific; those of the<br> +other stood solidly for the unmodified proviso.<br> +<br> +In this crisis occurred President Taylor's death, July 9, 1850, which<br> +was most unfortunate. He was known not to favor the pro-slavery<br> +aggression which, in spite of Clay's personal leaning in the opposite<br> +direction, the omnibus bill embodied. Mr. Fillmore, as also Webster,<br> +whom he made his Secretary of State, nervous with fear of an<br> +anti-slavery reputation, went fully Clay's length. The debate on this<br> +compromise of 1850 was the occasion when Webster deserted the free-soil<br> +principles which were now dominant in New England. His celebrated speech<br> +of March. 7th marked the crisis of his life. He argued that the proviso<br> +was not needed to prevent slavery in the newly gotten district, while<br> +its passage would be a wanton provocation to the South From this moment<br> +Massachusetts dropped him. When she next elected a senator for a full<br> +term, it was Charles Sumner, candidate of the united Democrats and<br> +Free-soilers, who went to Congress pledged to fight slavery to the<br> +death.<br> +<br> +But the omnibus compromises were passed. California was, indeed,<br> +admitted free, September 9, 1850--the thirty-first State in order--and<br> +slave-trade in the District of Columbia slightly alleviated. On the<br> +other hand, Texas was stretched to include a huge piece of New Mexico<br> +that was free before, and paid $10,000,000 to relinquish further claims.<br> +This was virtually a bonus to holders of her scrip, which from seventeen<br> +cents the dollar instantly rose to par. New Mexico and Utah were to be<br> +organized as Territories without the proviso, and were made powerless to<br> +legislate on slavery till they should become States. Least sufferable, a<br> +fugitive slave law was passed, so Draconian that that of 1793, hitherto<br> +in force, was benign in comparison. It placed the entire power of the<br> +general Government at the slave-hunter's disposal, and ordered rendition<br> +without trial or grant of habeas corpus, on a certificate to be had by<br> +simple affidavit. Bystanders, if bidden, were obliged to help marshals,<br> +and tremendous penalties imposed for aid to fugitives.<br> +<br> +This act facilitated the recovery of fugitives at first, but not<br> +permanently. Many who had labored for its passage soon saw that it was a<br> +mistake. It powerfully fanned the abolition flame all over the North.<br> +New personal liberty laws were enacted. A daily increasing number<br> +adopted the view that the new act was unconstitutional, on the ground<br> +that the Constitution places the rendition of slaves as of criminals in<br> +the hands of States, and guarantees jury trial, even upon title to<br> +property, if over twenty dollars in value. After the act had been<br> +justified in the courts, multitudes of moderate northern men urged to a<br> +dangerous degree the doctrine of state rights in defence of the liberty<br> +laws. Others adopted the cry of the "higher law," and without joining<br> +Garrison in denouncing the Government, did not hesitate to oppose in<br> +every possible way the operation of this drastic legislation for<br> +slave-catching.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 446px; height: 579px;" alt="" src="images/211Pic.jpg"><br> +Millard Fillmore.<br> +From a painting by Carpenter in 1853, at the City Hall, New York.<br> +<br> +<br> +The country's growth made escape from bondage continually easier and<br> +easier. Once across the border a runaway was sure to find many friends<br> +and few enemies. Openly, or, if this was required, by stealth, he was<br> +passed quickly along to the Canada line. Between 1830 and 1860 over<br> +30,000 slaves are estimated to have taken refuge in Canada. By 1850,<br> +probably no less than 20,000 had found homes in the free States. The new<br> +law moved many of these across into the British dominions. It was hence<br> +increasingly difficult for the slave-owner to recover stray property.<br> +All possible legal obstructions were placed in his way, and when these<br> +failed he was likely still to be opposed by a mob which might prove too<br> +powerful for the marshal and any posse which he could gather.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 475px; height: 487px;" alt="" + src="images/214Pic.jpg"><br> +The Rendition of Anthony Burns in Boston.<br> +<br> +<br> +In Boston, when a slave named Shadrach was arrested, his friends made a<br> +sudden dash, rescued him from the officers and freed him. With Simms the<br> +same was attempted, but in vain. The removal of Anthony Burns +from that<br> +city in 1855 was possible only by escorting him down State Street to the<br> +revenue cutter in waiting, inside a dense hollow square of United States<br> +artillerymen and marines, with the whole city's militia under arms and<br> +at hand. Business houses as well as residences were closed and draped in<br> +mourning. It was an indignity which Massachusetts never forgot. At<br> +Alton, Ill., slave-hunters seized a respectable colored woman, long<br> +resident there, who fully believed herself free. She was surrounded by<br> +an infuriated company of citizens, and would have been wrenched from her<br> +captors' clutch had not they, in their terror, offered to sell her back<br> +into freedom. The needed $1,200 was raised in a few minutes, and the<br> +agonized creature restored to her family. Judge Davis, whom the evidence<br> +had compelled to deliver the woman, on rendering the sentence resigned<br> +his commission, declaring: "The law gives you your victim. Thank it and<br> +not me, and may God have mercy on your sinful souls."<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V.<br> +<br> +THE FIGHT FOR KANSAS<br> +<br> +[1850-1854]<br> +<br> +The measures of 1850 proved anything but the "finality" upon slavery<br> +discussion which both parties, the Whigs as loudly as the Democrats,<br> +promised and insisted that they should be. Elated by its victory in<br> +1850, and also by that of 1852, when the anti-slavery sentiment of<br> +northern Whigs drove so many of their old southern allies to vote for<br> +Pierce, giving him his triumphant election, the slavocracy in 1854<br> +proceeded in its work of suicide to undo the sacred Missouri Compromise<br> +of 1820. Douglas, the ablest northern Democrat, led in this, succeeding,<br> +as official pacificator between North and South, somewhat to the office<br> +of Clay, who had died June 29, 1852. The aim of most who were with him<br> +was to make Kansas-Nebraska slave soil, but we may believe that Douglas<br> +himself cherished the hope and conviction that freedom was its destiny.<br> +<br> +This rich country west and northwest of Missouri, consecrated to freedom<br> +by the Missouri Compromise, had been slowly filling with civilized men.<br> +It did not promise to be a profitable field for slavery, nor would<br> +economic considerations ever have originated a slavery question<br> +concerning it. But politically its character as slave or free was of the<br> +utmost consequence to the South, where the resolution gradually arose<br> +either to secure it for the peculiar institution or else prevent its<br> +organization even as a Territory. A motion for such organization had<br> +been unsuccessfully made about 1843, and it was repeated, equally<br> +without effect, each session for ten years. None of these motions had<br> +contained any hint that slavery could possibly find place in the<br> +proposed Territory. The bill of December 15, 1853, like its<br> +predecessors, had as first drawn no reference whatever to slavery, but<br> +when it returned from the committee on Territories, of which Douglas was<br> +chairman, the report, not explicitly, indeed, made the assumption,<br> +unheard of before, that Kansas-Nebraska stood in the same relation to<br> +slavery in which Utah and New Mexico had stood in 1850; and that the<br> +compromise of that year, in leaving the question of slavery to the<br> +States to be formed from these Territories, had already set aside the<br> +agreement of 1820. These assumptions were totally false. The act of 1850<br> +gave Utah and New Mexico no power as Territories over the debatable<br> +institution, and contained not the slightest suggestion of any rule in<br> +the matter for territories in general.<br> +<br> +But the hint was taken, and on January 16th notice given of intention to<br> +move an out-and-out abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. Such<br> +abrogation was at once incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska bill reported<br> +by Douglas, January 23, 1854. This separated Kansas from Nebraska, and<br> +the subsequent struggle raged in reference to Kansas alone. The bill<br> +erroneously declared it established by the acts of 1850 that "all<br> +questions as to slavery in the Territories," no less than in the States<br> +which should grow out of them, were to be left to the residents, subject<br> +to appeal to the United States courts. It passed both houses by good<br> +majorities and was signed by President Pierce May 30th. Its animus<br> +appeared from the loss in the Senate of an amendment, moved by S. P.<br> +Chase, of Ohio, allowing the Territory to prohibit slavery.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 451px; height: 593px;" alt="" src="images/219Pic.jpg"><br> +Franklin Pierce.<br> +From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery.<br> +<br> +<br> +Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and<br> +taking heresy of "squatter sovereignty," that Congress, though<br> +possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Constitution,<br> +general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch<br> +slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace "to vote<br> +up or vote down." At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed<br> +"nonintervention," and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery<br> +character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the<br> +repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render<br> +Kansas free.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 347px; height: 441px;" alt="" + src="images/222Pic.jpg"><br> +Stephen A. Douglas.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1855]<br> +<br> +This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid<br> +anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was<br> +the Kansas Aid Society, another a Massachusetts corporation entitled the<br> +New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began<br> +to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in<br> +real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in<br> +apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote<br> +against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by<br> +Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and<br> +returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905<br> +legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast<br> +for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the<br> +pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the<br> +subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at<br> +Pawnee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered<br> +that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative<br> +authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to<br> +support the fugitive slave law.<br> +<br> +The free-state settlers, now a majority, ignored this Legislature and<br> +its acts, and at once set to work to secure Kansas admission to the<br> +Union as a State without slavery. The Topeka convention, October 23,<br> +1855, formed the Topeka constitution, which was adopted December 14th,<br> +only forty-six votes being polled against it. This showed that<br> +pro-slavery men abstained from voting. January 15, 1856, an election was<br> +held under this constitution for state officers, a state legislature,<br> +and a representative in Congress. The House agreed, July 3d, by one<br> +majority, to admit Kansas with the Topeka constitution, but the Senate<br> +refused. The Topeka Legislature assembled July 4th, but was dispersed by<br> +United States troops.<br> +<br> +[1856-1857]<br> +<br> +This was done under command from Washington. President Pierce, backed by<br> +the Senate with its steady pro-slavery majority, was resolved at all<br> +hazards to recognize the pro-slavery authorities of Kansas and no other,<br> +and, as it seemed, to force it to become a slave State; but fortunately<br> +the House had an anti-slavery majority which prevented this. The friends<br> +of freedom in Kansas had also on their side the history that was all<br> +this time making in Kansas itself. During the summer of 1856 that<br> +Territory was a theatre of constant war. Men were murdered, towns<br> +sacked. Both sides were guilty of violence, but the free-state party<br> +confessedly much the less so, having far the better cause. Nearly all<br> +admitted that this party was in the majority. Even the governors, all<br> +Democrats, appointed by Pierce, acknowledged this, some of them, to all<br> +appearance, being removed as a punishment for the admission. Governor<br> +Geary, in office from September, 1856, to March, 1857, and Governor<br> +Walker, in office from May, 1857, were just and able men, and their<br> +decisions, in most things favorable to the free-state cause, had much<br> +weight with the country.<br> +<br> +Walker's influence in the Territory led the free-state men to take part<br> +in the territorial election of October, 1857, where they were entirely<br> +triumphant. But the old, pro-slavery Legislature had called a<br> +constitutional convention, which met at Lecompton, September, 1857, and<br> +passed the Lecompton constitution. This constitution sanctioned slavery<br> +and provided against its own submission to popular vote. It ordained<br> +that only its provision in favor of slavery should be so submitted. This<br> +pro-slavery clause was adopted, but only because the free-state men<br> +would not vote. The Topeka Legislature submitted the whole constitution<br> +to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and<br> +Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton constitution,<br> +although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March,<br> +1859, had adopted constitutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being<br> +that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not<br> +admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the<br> +United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the<br> +Wyandotte constitution and hence as a free State.<br> +<br> +It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S.<br> +Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly<br> +attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon<br> +the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but<br> +unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted<br> +severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State.<br> +This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the<br> +Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon<br> +him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never<br> +recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial<br> +duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate,<br> +characterized the assault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks,<br> +but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the<br> +barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame,<br> +representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the<br> +caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he<br> +named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for<br> +the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would<br> +endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a<br> +majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned,<br> +but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina constituency.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 340px; height: 389px;" alt="" + src="images/227Pic.jpg"><br> +Charles Sumner.<br> +<br> +<br> +While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown<br> +cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had<br> +gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was<br> +to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause<br> +2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully<br> +legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out<br> +the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged<br> +to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one<br> +citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general<br> +Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought<br> +was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of<br> +the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as<br> +to establish it.<br> +<br> +The new southern or Calhoun theory assumed startling significance for<br> +the Nation when, in 1857, it was proclaimed in the Dred Scott decision<br> +of the United States Supreme Court as part of the innermost life of our<br> +Constitution. Dred Scott was a slave of an army officer, who had taken<br> +him from Missouri first into Illinois, a free State, then into<br> +Wisconsin, covered by the Missouri Compromise, then back into Missouri.<br> +Here the slave learned that by decisions of the Missouri courts his life<br> +outside of Missouri constituted him free, and in 1848, having been<br> +whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for assault. The decision was<br> +in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri<br> +Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him<br> +also he prosecuted for assault, but as he and Sandford belonged to<br> +different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court.<br> +Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not<br> +a citizen of Missouri but a slave.<br> +<br> +It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court<br> +having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to<br> +the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizenship of the<br> +negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The<br> +upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it<br> +was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of<br> +pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the<br> +old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all<br> +other legislation against slavery in Territories unconstitutional, and<br> +the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into<br> +all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in<br> +its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's<br> +citizenship was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable<br> +implication being that no man of African blood could be an American<br> +citizen.<br> +<br> +This decision rendered jubilant all friends of slavery, as also the<br> +ultra Abolitionists, but correspondingly disheartened the sober friends<br> +of human liberty. How, it was asked, is the cause of freedom to be<br> +advanced when the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the highest<br> +tribunal existing for that purpose, virtually establishes slavery in New<br> +England itself, provided any slave-master wishes to come there with his<br> +troop? But anti-slavery men did not despair. Patriots had of course to<br> +obey the court till its opinion should be reversed, yet its opinion was<br> +at once repudiated as bad law. Men like Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Giddings,<br> +Seward, and Lincoln, appealing to both the history and the letter of the<br> +Constitution, and to the course of legislation and of judicial decisions<br> +on slavery even in the slave States, had been elaborating and<br> +demonstrating the counter theory, under which our fundamental law<br> +appeared as anything but a "covenant with hell."<br> +<br> +The pith of this counter theory was that slaves were property not by<br> +moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence<br> +freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our<br> +government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for<br> +its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney were<br> +right as against Douglas in ascribing to Congress all power over the<br> +Territories, it was as impossible to find slaves in any United States<br> +Territory as to find a king there. Slaves taken into Territories<br> +therefore became free. Slaves taken into any free State became free.<br> +Slaves carried from a slave State on to the high seas became free. Even<br> +the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution must be applied in the way<br> +least favorable to slavery.<br> +<br> +On the other hand Douglas was right in his view that citizens and not<br> +States were the partners in the Territories. As to the assertion of<br> +incompatibility between citizenship and African blood, it would not<br> +stand historical examination a moment. If it was true that the framers<br> +of the Constitution did not consciously include colored persons in the<br> +"ourselves and our posterity" for whom they purposed the "Blessings of<br> +Liberty," neither did they consciously exclude, as is clear from the<br> +fact that nearly everyone of them expected blacks some time to be free.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI.<br> +<br> +SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES<br> +<br> +[1841]<br> +<br> +The Democratic Party was predominantly southern, the Whig northern. Both<br> +sought to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the<br> +better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the<br> +Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and<br> +prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent<br> +and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was<br> +that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they<br> +tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a<br> +whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the<br> +slavocracy. This status became more pronounced with the progress of the<br> +controversy and of the South's self-assertion. It was real under<br> +Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk,<br> +Pierce, and Buchanan.<br> +<br> +Whig temper toward slavery was throughout the North much better, but<br> +whig party action was little better. Fear of losing southern supporters<br> +permanently forbade all frank enlistment by the Whig Party for freedom.<br> +The mighty leaders, Adams, Webster, even Clay, were well inclined, and<br> +the party, as such, was at the South persistently accused of alliance<br> +with the Abolitionists. This was untrue. Abolitionists, Liberal Party<br> +men, and Free-soilers oftener voted with Democrats than with Whigs. Clay<br> +complained once that Abolitionists denounced him as a slave-holder,<br> +slave-holders as an Abolitionist, while both voted for Van Buren.<br> +Compromise was the bane of this party as of the other; and each of the<br> +resplendent chieftains named at one time or another seemed so reverent<br> +to Belial that the record is painful reading.<br> +<br> +When in 1841 the ship Creole sailed from Richmond with one hundred and<br> +thirty-five slaves on board bound for the southern market, and one<br> +Madison Washington, a recovered runaway on board, headed a dash upon<br> +captain and crew, got possession of the vessel and took her into New<br> +Providence, Clay was as loud as Calhoun or any southern senator in<br> +demanding of the English Government the return of these slaves to<br> +bondage or, at least, that of "the mutineers," as they were called.<br> +Webster, Secretary of State at the time, instructed Edward Everett, our<br> +English minister, to insist upon this, his arguments being sound and his<br> +tone emphatic enough to please Mr. Calhoun. This was the time when<br> +Giddings, of Ohio, brought into the House his resolutions to the effect<br> +that slavery was a state institution only, and that hence any slave<br> +carried on to the open ocean or to any other locality where only<br> +national law prevailed, was free. He was censured in the House by a<br> +large majority and resigned, but his Ohio constituency immediately<br> +re-elected him.<br> +<br> +[1836-1844]<br> +<br> +Up to this time Giddings and Adams were the only pronounced anti-slavery<br> +men in that body. Adams had acquiesced in the Missouri Compromise, but<br> +all his subsequent career, especially his course in the House of<br> +Representatives after 1830, is not only creditable to him so far as the<br> +slavery question is concerned, but registers him as one of the most<br> +influential opponents of slavery in our history. Refusing to be classed<br> +with the Abolitionists, he was, in effect, the most efficient<br> +Abolitionist of them all.<br> +<br> +Previous to 1835, though petitions against slavery reached Congress in<br> +great numbers and nettled many members, they had been received and<br> +referred in the usual manner. But in February, 1836, the House created a<br> +special committee to consider these petitions. It reported a resolution,<br> +which passed under the previous question, that thereafter all papers of<br> +the kind should be tabled without printing or reference. Adams declared<br> +to the House: "I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the<br> +Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the<br> +rights of my constituents." In this rencounter Adams advanced the view<br> +on which the Emancipation Proclamation by and by proceeded, that<br> +slavery, even in States, was not beyond reach of the national arm, but<br> +would be at the mercy of Congress the instant slave-masters should<br> +rebel. This, the first of the gag laws, was, however, enacted. The<br> +second, or Patton gag, was passed on December 21, 1837, and the third,<br> +or Atherton gag, a year later. The principle of these, practically<br> +cutting off all petitions to Congress respecting slavery, was taken up<br> +in the twenty-first rule of the House in 1840.<br> +<br> +Mr. Adams was from the first the resolute and uncompromising foe of the<br> +gag policy. Wagon-loads of petitions came to him to offer, among them<br> +one for his own expulsion from the House and one to dissolve the Union,<br> +and he presented all.<br> +<br> +February 6, 1837, he inquired of Mr. Speaker whether or not it would be<br> +appropriate to offer a petition in his hand from slaves, whereupon the<br> +pro-slavery members flew at him like vampires. After much uproar, in<br> +which Adams gave as good as was sent him, he sarcastically reminded his<br> +already infuriated assailants that the petition was in favor of slavery,<br> +not against, and that he had emphatically not offered it, but only made<br> +an innocent inquiry of the Speaker about doing so, the proper answer to<br> +which was so far from obvious that the Speaker himself had signified his<br> +intention to take the sense of the House upon it. Regularly, year after<br> +year, Adams moved the abolition of the gag rule, was beaten as<br> +regularly, long as a matter of course, sometimes after heated debate in<br> +which he was always victor. But little by little the majority vote<br> +against him lessened. In 1842 the gag passed by but four votes, in 1843<br> +it had a majority of three only, in 1844 his motion to strike it out was<br> +carried by a vote of one hundred and eight to eighty. Adams wrote that<br> +day in his diary: "Blessed, forever blessed be the name of God."<br> +<br> +[1850]<br> +<br> +But a plenitude of Whigs, not all southern, voted for each of these<br> +gags. The worst one of all was moved by a Whig. The XXVIIth Congress,<br> +strongly whig, voted to retain the gag, which it was left for the<br> +XXVIIIth, strongly democratic, finally to repeal. At the South, slavery<br> +more and more overbore party feeling. Said Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, in<br> +1854, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery, no Democracy--I<br> +am a pro-slavery man." It should be added, however, that as the<br> +conflict progressed, pro-slavery Whigs became few save in the South, and<br> +that these nearly all soon turned Democrats.<br> +<br> +Most humiliating was the vassalage to the slave power displayed by<br> +northern congressmen of both parties, though forming a majority in the<br> +House during all the great days of the slavery battle. The gag history<br> +is one example. Resolutions against unquestionably unconstitutional laws<br> +imprisoning northern seamen at southern ports simply because they were<br> +colored, were tabled in the House by a large majority. Slavery in the<br> +District of Columbia, where Congress had the right of "exclusive<br> +legislation in all cases whatsoever," so that the entire nation was<br> +responsible, defied every effort to abolish it till 1862, after the<br> +Civil War began. Nor was the trade there in aught alleviated till 1850,<br> +when some modification of it was possible as an element of the<br> +compromise described in the preceding chapter. An enlargement of<br> +Missouri, adding to the northwest corner of that State, as slave<br> +territory, a vast tract which the Missouri Compromise had forever<br> +devoted to freedom, being in truth a preliminary repeal of that pact,<br> +was carried without opposition.<br> +<br> +The brutal and murderous lawlessness practised against Abolitionists was<br> +praised by northern congressmen often as slavery came up in debate. Even<br> +Senator Silas Wright, of New York, subsequently famous as a foe of<br> +slavery, in remarks upon the reference of anti-slavery petitions,<br> +boasted of the atrocities at Utica in 1835 and of others similar, as<br> +proof that "resistance to these dangerous and wicked agitators in the<br> +North had reached a point beyond law and above law." A bill, in 1836,<br> +for closing the mails to abolitionist literature, another defiance of<br> +the Constitution, Amendment I., secured engrossment in the Senate by the<br> +casting vote of Vice-President Van Buren; Wright, Tallmadge, and<br> +Buchanan also favoring; but failed to pass, nineteen to twenty-five,<br> +because Benton, Clay, and Crittenden had the patriotism to vote nay.<br> +<br> +Discussion hereon laid bare the vital contradiction in our governmental<br> +system. Calhoun showed that the Constitution permits each State for<br> +itself to define, in order to inhibit, incendiary literature.<br> +Characteristically, he would have forced mail agents to obey state laws<br> +upon this matter. Yet for Congress to have so directed would plainly<br> +have been abridging freedom of the press.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 480px; height: 610px;" alt="" + src="images/243Pic.jpg"><br> +Thomas H. Benton.<br> +<br> +<br> +Had the Whig Party, while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough<br> +boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have<br> +been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance<br> +passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders<br> +and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern<br> +members--twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri<br> +Compromise--proved deadly to the organization, its faithful old<br> +battalions going over in the South to the Democrats, in the North to the<br> +Republicans.<br> +<br> +Many Whigs took the latter course by a circuitous route. Ever since the<br> +alien and sedition laws, cry had been raised at intervals against the<br> +too easy attainment of citizenship by the unnumbered immigrants<br> +thronging to our shores, and agitation raised, more or less successful,<br> +to thrust forward "Nativism" or Americanism, with opposition to the<br> +Roman Catholic Church, as an issue in our politics. To such movements<br> +Whigs, as legatees of Federalism, were always more friendly than<br> +Democrats, which was partly a cause and partly a consequence of the<br> +affinity that naturalized citizens all along showed for the Democratic<br> +Party.<br> +<br> +Americanism had its greatest run after 1850, when the Whigs saw their<br> +organization going to pieces, and, mistakenly in part, attributed<br> +democratic success to the immigrant vote. A secret fraternity arose,<br> +called the "Know-nothings," from "I don't know," the ever-repeated reply<br> +of its members to inquiry about its nature and doings. "America for<br> +Americans" was their cry, and they proposed to "put none but Americans<br> +on guard." At first pursuing their aims through silent manipulation of<br> +the old parties, by 1854 the Know-nothings swung out as a third party.<br> +From this date they lustily competed with the Republicans for the hosts<br> +of whig and democratic stragglers jostled from their old ranks by the<br> +omnibus bill legislation, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the "Crime<br> +against Kansas" committed by Pierce and his slavocratic Senate. In 1855<br> +this party assumed national proportions, and worried seasoned<br> +politicians not a little; but having crystallized around no living<br> +issue, like that which nerved Republicanism, it fell like a<br> +rocket-stick, its sparks going over to make redder still republican<br> +fires. Henry Wilson became a Republican from the status of a<br> +Know-nothing; so did Banks, Colfax, and a score of others subsequently<br> +eminent among their new associates. Some had of old been Democrats,<br> +though most had been Whigs.<br> +<br> +Notwithstanding many appearances to the contrary, the Democracy had<br> +begun to lose its hold upon the North from the moment of Polk's<br> +nomination in 1844. In that act it showed preference, on the score of<br> +availability, for a small man as presidential candidate. Harrison's<br> +election and Van Buren's defeat in 1840 doubtless had something to do<br> +with this. The same disposition was revealed in 1852, when Pierce was<br> +made candidate. What harmed the party still more was swerving from<br> +strict construction in declaring for the annexation of Texas, which in<br> +this case did not imply enlargement of view in reading the Constitution,<br> +but simply subserviency to the slave power. In this way Van Buren was<br> +alienated and the vote of New York lost in 1848, insuring defeat that<br> +year.<br> +<br> +[1856-1860]<br> +<br> +This particular breach was pretty well healed, but the evil survived.<br> +Then came the compromise repeal, wherein the Democracy stood by the<br> +South in casting to the winds, the moment it promised to be of service<br> +to the North, a solemn bargain which had yielded the South Florida,<br> +Arkansas, and Missouri as slave States. Northern Democrats, especially<br> +in the rural parts, unwilling longer to serve slavery, drew off from the<br> +party in increasing numbers. Northern States one by one passed to the<br> +opposition. The whole of New England had gone over in 1856, also New<br> +York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa--Buchanan having six votes<br> +outside those of Pennsylvania, where he won, as many believed, by unfair<br> +means. In 1860, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Indiana,<br> +Minnesota, and Oregon crossed to the same side.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII.<br> +<br> +THE CRISIS<br> +<br> +[1850]<br> +<br> +The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was politically a remarkable<br> +epoch. It not only consolidated old anti-slavery men, but cooled, to say<br> +the least, many "silvergray," or conservative Whigs, as well as many<br> +"hards" and "hunkers" among the Democrats. But the slavocrats were blind<br> +to the risk they were running, and grew bolder than ever. There were now<br> +propositions for renewing the foreign slave-trade. Worse black laws were<br> +enacted. There was increased ferocity toward all who did not pronounce<br> +slavery a blessing, prouder domineering in politics, especially in<br> +Congress, and perpetual threat of secession in case the slave power<br> +should fail to have its way.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 441px; height: 591px;" alt="" src="images/251Pic.jpg"><br> +Abraham Lincoln. After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah<br> +Brooks. (Only five copies of this photograph were printed.)<br> +<br> +<br> +There were also plans for foreign conquest in slavery's behalf, which<br> +received countenance from public and even from national authorities. The<br> +idea seemed to be that the victory and territorial enlargement<br> +consequent upon the Mexican War might be repeated in Central America and<br> +Cuba. The efforts of Lopez in 1850 and 1851 to conquer Cuba with aid<br> +from the United States had indeed been brought to an end through this<br> +adventurer's execution in the latter year by the Cuban authorities.<br> +Pierce put forth a proclamation in 1854, warning American citizens<br> +against like attempts in future. Defying this, the next year William<br> +Walker headed a filibustering expedition to the Pacific coast of<br> +Nicaragua, conquering the capital of that state and setting up a<br> +government which proceeded to re-establish slavery and invite<br> +immigration from the United States. Driven out by a coalition of other<br> +Central American states against him, Walker at once organized a new<br> +raid, and landed at Punta Arenas, Nicaragua, November 25, 1857; but he<br> +was seized by Commodore Paulding of our navy and brought to New York. He<br> +made a similar effort the next year, and another in 1860, when he<br> +captured Truxillo in Honduras, only to be soon overwhelmed, tried and<br> +shot.<br> +<br> +[1852]<br> +<br> +If the Government at Washington was not openly implicated in any of<br> +these movements, no more, surely, did it heartily deprecate them.<br> +Fillmore's administration had in 1852 declined to enter into an alliance<br> +with Great Britain and France disclaiming intention to secure Cuba. In<br> +1854, inspired by Pierce, our ministers at London, Paris, and Madrid,<br> +met at Ostend and put forth the "Ostend Manifesto." The tenor of this<br> +was that Spain would be better off without Cuba and we with it, and<br> +further, that, if Spain refused to sell, the United States ought as a<br> +means of self-preservation to take that island by force, lest it should<br> +become a second San Domingo. This proposition, like everything else<br> +relating to the great Repeal, was under umbrage in 1856; but in 1858 the<br> +southern Democrats in Congress brought in a bill to purchase Cuba for<br> +$30,000,000, and the democratic platform of 1860 spoke for the<br> +acquisition thereof at the earliest practicable moment, by all<br> +"honorable and just means."<br> +<br> +[1854]<br> +<br> +Thus an institution, barbarous, anti-democratic, sectional, an<br> +unmitigated curse even to its section, not so much as named in the<br> +Constitution, beginning with apology from all, by the zeal and<br> +unscrupulousness of advocates, the consolidation of political power at<br> +the South, and apathy, sycophancy, divided counsels, and commercial<br> +greed in the North, gradually amassed might, till, at the middle of Mr.<br> +Buchanan's term, every branch of the national Government was its tool,<br> +the Supreme Court included, enabling it authoritatively to mis-read the<br> +Constitution, declare the Union a pro-slavery compact, and act<br> +accordingly. But justice would not be mocked, and, though advancing upon<br> +halting foot, dealt the death-blow like lightning at last.<br> +<br> +We have seen the feeble efforts of the old Liberty Party to make head<br> +against slavery, Birney and Earle being its candidates in 1840, Birney<br> +and Morris in 1844. In 1848 these "conscience Free-soilers" were<br> +re-enforced by what have been called the "political Free-soilers" of the<br> +State of New York, led by ex-President Van Buren. This astute organizer,<br> +aware that his defeat in the democratic convention of 1844 had resulted<br> +from southern and pro-slavery influences, led a bolt in the New York<br> +Democracy. His partisans in this were known as the "Barn-burners," while<br> +the administration Democrats were called the "Hunkers." In the<br> +democratic convention of 1848 at Baltimore appeared representatives of<br> +both factions, and both sets were admitted, each with half the state<br> +vote. This satisfied neither side. The Barn-burners called a convention<br> +at Utica in June, and put Van Buren in nomination for the presidency.<br> +The Liberty Party men had the preceding year nominated Hale for this<br> +office, but now, seeing their opportunity, they called a new convention<br> +at Buffalo for August 9, 1848, to which all Free-soilers were invited;<br> +and this convention made Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams its<br> +candidates for President and Vice-President. The platform declared<br> +against any further extension of slavery. The party was henceforth known<br> +as the "Free-soilers," the name coming from its insistence that the<br> +territory conquered from Mexico should forever remain free. Its platform<br> +denounced slavery as a sin against God and a crime against man, and<br> +repudiated the compromise of 1850. It also laid special emphasis upon<br> +the wickedness of the new fugitive slave law, of which it demanded the<br> +repeal. By 1852 the regular Democracy in New York had won back a large<br> +proportion of the Barn-burners or free-soil revolters, so that the<br> +free-soil prospect in this year was not encouraging. Only 146,149<br> +free-soil votes were polled in all the northern states.<br> +<br> +[1856]<br> +<br> +What quickened this drooping movement into new and triumphant life was<br> +the revocation of the Missouri Compromise. This rallied to the free-soil<br> +standard nearly all the northern Whigs, many old Barn-burners who since<br> +1848 had returned to the democratic fold, and vast numbers of other<br> +anti-Lecompton Democrats. Most of the Know-nothings throughout the North<br> +also joined it, while of course it had in all its anti-slavery measures<br> +the hearty co-operation, directly political or other, of the<br> +Abolitionists. The first national convention of this new party,<br> +fortunately styling itself "Republican," was in 1856. Whig doctrine<br> +early appeared in the party by the demand for protection, internal<br> +improvements, and a national banking system; in fact, Republicanism may<br> +be said to have received nearly entire the whig mantle, as the Whigs did<br> +that of Federalism.<br> +<br> +But the living soul and integrating idea of the party was new, the rigid<br> +confinement of slavery and the slave power to their narrowest<br> +constitutional limits. It denounced the repeal of the Missouri<br> +Compromise. In the election of this year, 1856, eleven States chose<br> +Republican electors, viz.: all New England, also New York, Ohio,<br> +Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Evidently the Democracy had at last found<br> +a foe at which it were best not to sneer. The Dred Scott decision<br> +immensely aided the growth of this new political power, as it was now<br> +quite generally believed in the North that the whole policy of the South<br> +was a greedy, selfish grasping for the extension of slavery.<br> +<br> +[1858]<br> +<br> +Out of this conviction, apparently, grew the John Brown raid into<br> +Virginia in 1858. John Brown was an enthusiast, whom sufferings from the<br> +Border Ruffians in Kansas, where one of his sons had been atrociously<br> +murdered and another driven to insanity by cruel treatment as a<br> +prisoner, had frenzied in his opposition to slavery. He had dedicated<br> +himself to its extirpation. The intrepid old man formed the purpose of<br> +invading Virginia, and of placing himself with a few white allies at the<br> +head of a slave insurrection that should sweep the State. Friends +in<br> +the North had contributed money for the purchase of arms, and on October<br> +16th, Brown, with fourteen white men and four negroes, seized the United<br> +States Armory at Harper's Ferry. He stopped the railway trains, freed<br> +some slaves, and assumed to rule the town. United States troops were at<br> +once despatched to the scene, when the misguided hero, with his devoted<br> +band, fortified themselves in the engine house, surrendering only after<br> +thirteen of them, including two of Brown's sons, were killed or mortally<br> +wounded. Brown and the other survivors were soon tried, convicted, and<br> +hung. This insane attempt was deprecated by nearly all of all parties;<br> +but the fate of Brown, with his resolute bravery, begot him large<br> +sympathy, and the false assumption of the South that he really<br> +represented northern feeling made his deed helpful to the anti-slavery<br> +movement, of which the Republican Party was now the centre.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 373px; height: 436px;" alt="" + src="images/260Pic.jpg"><br> +John Brown.<br> +<br> +<br> +[1860]<br> +<br> +Notwithstanding all this the Democracy might still have elected a<br> +president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud<br> +with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that<br> +very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State<br> +and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the<br> +northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the<br> +doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede<br> +from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did<br> +not so desire, but sincerely believed in that doctrine as part and<br> +parcel of the true democratic faith. But it was now obvious that the<br> +working out of the Douglas theory was absolutely sure to make free all<br> +the western States henceforth to be formed. This would, of course,<br> +remove the Senate from the domination of slavery. Hence the South was<br> +irrevocably opposed to it, and insisted with all its might upon the<br> +Calhoun-Taney contention that the national Government must protect<br> +slavery in all the Territories to which it pleased to go. In a passage<br> +at arms with Douglas as they were stumping Illinois for the senatorship<br> +in 1858, Lincoln keenly forced upon him the question whether under the<br> +Dred Scott decision any Territory could possibly be kept free from<br> +slavery. "If," said he, "Douglas answers yes, he can never be President;<br> +if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator." Douglas replied in<br> +the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South<br> +a doomed man.<br> +<br> +The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic<br> +convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the<br> +delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though<br> +willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott<br> +decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from<br> +Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from<br> +Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded.<br> +Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not<br> +two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and<br> +when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds<br> +vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new<br> +seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The<br> +so-called Constitutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket,<br> +Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and<br> +Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between<br> +the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted.<br> +<br> +The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal<br> +Hamlin, of Maine. Lincoln was already a marked man in his party,<br> +especially in the West, his brilliant joint debate with Judge Douglas<br> +during some months in 1858 having brought out his matchless good sense<br> +and good nature, his rare knowledge of our history and law, and his high<br> +quality as thinker and speaker. Born in Kentucky in 1809, removing to<br> +Indiana in 1816, to Illinois in 1830, reared in extreme poverty and<br> +wholly self-educated, this man had risen by his wits, his sturdy<br> +perseverance and industry, his extraordinary ability, and his proverbial<br> +honesty, to be the acknowledged peer of the "Little Giant" himself. He<br> +began political life a Whig and ably represented that party in the<br> +national Congress from 1847 to 1849, making his voice heard against the<br> +high-handed procedure of the Administration in the Mexican War. But as<br> +with Seward, Greeley, Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, Sherman, Dayton,<br> +Corwin, and Collamer, subsequent events had intensified his anti-slavery<br> +feeling, convincing him, as he avowed, that the Union could not<br> +"permanently continue half slave and half free." He was thus drawn to<br> +unite his fortunes with the Republicans. His nomination was received<br> +coolly in the East, where Seward had been preferred; but as men studied<br> +Lincoln's record they were convinced of the wisdom which had made him<br> +the party's leader. He swept New England, New York, New Jersey,<br> +Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin,<br> +California, Minnesota, and Oregon, having 180 electoral votes to<br> +Breckenridge's 72, Bell's 39, and Douglas's 12.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 448px; height: 582px;" alt="" src="images/265Pic.jpg"><br> +William H. Seward.<br> +From a photograph by Brady.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII.<br> +<br> +MATERIAL PROGRESS<br> +<br> +[1860]<br> +<br> +The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,443,321. In spite of<br> +the threatening political complications between 1840 and 1860, these<br> +years were characterized by astonishing economic prosperity. The decade<br> +after 1848 was, indeed, in point of advance in material weal, the golden<br> +age of our history. Between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the nation<br> +swelled 120 per cent., the value of its farms 103 per cent., its total<br> +manufacturing product 87 per cent., its manufactured export 171 per<br> +cent., its railroad mileage 220 per cent. Making all due allowance for<br> +the rise of prices during the period, this is still a remarkable<br> +exhibit.<br> +<br> +The great West continued to come under the hand of civilization. Between<br> +1850 and 1860 our centre of population made a longer stride westward<br> +than during any other decade--from east of the meridian of Parkersburg,<br> +W. Va., to the meridian of Chillicothe, O. Florida and Texas having been<br> +admitted to statehood in 1845, Iowa followed next year, Wisconsin in<br> +1848, California in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized<br> +Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska,<br> +Utah, and Washington Territories were organized before 1860. By this<br> +date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was<br> +sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in<br> +1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In<br> +1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable<br> +routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties<br> +the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places<br> +become dense.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 458px; height: 584px;" alt="" + src="images/269Pic.jpg"><br> +Elias Howe.<br> +<br> +<br> +Immigration hither was unfortunately checked a little later by Indian<br> +hostilities, the gravest attacks being in 1847 and 1855. In the latter<br> +year Major Haller, leading an exploring party, was surrounded by the<br> +savages and cut off from food and water, only making his escape by a<br> +fight of two days against overwhelming odds. He and his party at last<br> +hewed their desperate way through, losing their entire outfit, besides<br> +one-fifth of their number. The whole territory was harassed by Indians<br> +on the war path, and General Wool had to be sent up from San Francisco<br> +to restore peace. This done, immigration was renewed. A thousand new<br> +inhabitants came to Oregon in 1852, and its northern half was organized<br> +as Washington Territory the following year. The Pacific Mail Steamship<br> +Company had been chartered in 1848, and four years earlier a newspaper<br> +started, the first in English on that coast. Its seat was Oregon City,<br> +its name the Flumgudgeon Gazette.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 468px; height: 568px;" alt="" + src="images/271Pic.jpg"><br> +The Vandalia. The Pioneer Propeller On the Lakes.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 469px; height: 398px;" alt="" + src="images/272Pic.jpg"><br> +Old Stone Towers of the Niagara Suspension Bridge.<br> +<br> +<br> +The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common<br> +with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting<br> +sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The<br> +same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its<br> +theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to<br> +be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built<br> +in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856.<br> +The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855.<br> +<br> +The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of canals. The<br> +Miami Canal, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 1825,<br> +was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and<br> +Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts was, in<br> +1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to<br> +railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the<br> +State the canal and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and<br> +soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller<br> +from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next<br> +year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga.,<br> +was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston<br> +& Maine Railway finished to Berwick.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 409px; height: 332px;" alt="" + src="images/274Pic.jpg"><br> +The New Iron Towers of the Niagara Bridge.<br> +<br> +<br> +The first railway out of Chicago--it was the first in Illinois--was<br> +built in 1850, to Elgin. Chicago had no railway connection with the East<br> +till two years later, when the Michigan Southern was opened. The<br> +Michigan Central was finished soon after the Southern, and the Rock<br> +Island before the end of the year. The Michigan Central had direct<br> +connection east across Canada to Niagara Falls by 1854. In 1856 the<br> +Burlington route reached the Mississippi and the Rock Island went on to<br> +Iowa City. This year witnessed the opening of the first railroad in<br> +California--from Sacramento to Folsom. In 1857 Chicago and St. Louis<br> +were joined by rails, as also the latter city with Baltimore, over the<br> +Parkersburg branch of the Baltimore & Ohio.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 479px; height: 345px;" alt="" + src="images/275Pic.jpg"><br> +Birthplace of S. F. B. Morse, at Charlestown, Mass. Built 1775.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 343px; height: 418px;" alt="" + src="images/276Pic.jpg"><br> +S. F. B. Morse.<br> +<br> +We now come to an improvement of which the preceding period knew<br> +nothing, the magnetic telegraph, introduced by Professor Morse in 1844.<br> +In this year Morse secured a congressional appropriation of $30,000 for<br> +a line from Washington to Baltimore. The wires were at first encased in<br> +tubes underground. In spite of the success of the project, further<br> +governmental patronage was refused, the Postmaster-General advising<br> +against it under the conviction that the invention could not become<br> +practically valuable. Morse appealed for aid from private capitalists.<br> +Ezra Cornell, of New York, soon opened a short line in Boston for<br> +exhibition, following this with a similar enterprise in New York City.<br> +The admission fee was twelve and a half cents. Few cared to pay even<br> +this trifle, so that the undertaking was hardly a success in either<br> +city.<br> +<br> +Amos Kendall then engaged as Morse's agent, and by dint of great effort<br> +secured subscriptions for a line from New York to Philadelphia, being<br> +obliged to sell the shares for one-half their face value. Incorporation<br> +was secured from the Maryland Legislature, under the first American<br> +charter, for the telegraph business. The line was completed in 1845 to<br> +the Hudson opposite the upper end of Manhattan Island, and an effort<br> +made to insulate the wire and connect with the city along the bottom of<br> +the river. This failed, and for some time messages had to be taken over<br> +in boats. In 1846 the wire was carried on to Baltimore. In the same year<br> +Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were connected by telegraph, New York and<br> +Albany, New York and Boston, Boston and Buffalo. The first line in<br> +California was erected in 1853.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 324px; height: 453px;" alt="" + src="images/278Pic.jpg"><br> +The First Telegraphic Instrument, as exhibited in 1837 by Morse.<br> +<br> +<br> +In 1850 Hiram Sibley embarked in the telegraph business. He bought the<br> +House patent, and next year organized the New York and Mississippi<br> +Valley Telegraph Company. By 1853 or 1854, some twenty companies had<br> +started, with a capital of $7,000,000--too many for good +management or<br> +high profits. Accordingly, Sibley and Cornell united in buying them up,<br> +and thus formed, in 1856, the Western Union, which Sibley's energy<br> +extended all over the country east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1860 he<br> +went to Washington with a scheme for a transcontinental telegraph line,<br> +and secured from Congress a subsidy of $40,000 for ten years. Just then<br> +the Overland Telegraph Company was started in San Francisco. It and<br> +Sibley united, breaking ground July 1, 1861, and proceeding at the rate<br> +of nearly ten miles of wire per day. On October 25th, telegraph wire<br> +stretched all the way between the two oceans. In 1864 this line was<br> +amalgamated with the Western Union.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 486px; height: 306px;" alt="" + src="images/279Pic.jpg"><br> +Calenders heated internally by Steam, for spreading India Rubber into<br> +Sheets or upon Cloth, called the "Chaffee Machine."<br> +<br> +<br> +Still more wonderful, ocean telegraphy was broached and made successful<br> +during these years. Tentative efforts to operate the current under water<br> +were made between Governor's Island and New York City so early as 1842.<br> +A copper wire was used, insulated with hemp string coated with India<br> +rubber and pitch. In 1846 a similar arrangement was encased in lead<br> +pipe. This device failed, and sub-aqueous telegraphy seems to have been<br> +for the time given up.<br> +<br> +In 1854 Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, with Peter Cooper and other<br> +capitalists of that city, organized the New York, Newfoundland, and<br> +London Telegraph Company, stock a million and a half dollars, and began<br> +plans to connect New York with St. Johns, Newfoundland, by a cable under<br> +the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Little progress was made, however, till 1857,<br> +when it was attempted to lay a cable across the Atlantic from<br> +Newfoundland. The paying out was begun at Queenstown and proceeded<br> +successfully until three hundred and thirty-five miles had been laid,<br> +when the cable parted. Nothing more was done till the next year in June.<br> +Then, in 1858, after several more unsuccessful efforts, the two<br> +continents were successfully joined. The two ships containing the cable<br> +met in mid-ocean, where it was spliced and the paying out begun in each<br> +direction. The one reached Newfoundland the same day, August 5th, on<br> +which the other reached Valencia, Ireland. No break had occurred, and<br> +after the necessary arrangements had been effected, the first message<br> +was transmitted on August 16th. It was from the Queen of Great Britain<br> +to the President of the United States, and read, "Glory to God in the<br> +highest, peace on earth and good will to men." A monster celebration of<br> +the event was had in New York next day.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 469px; height: 380px;" alt="" + src="images/282Pic.jpg"><br> +The Great Eastern Laying the Atlantic Cable.<br> +<br> +<br> +Although inter-continental communication had been actually opened, the<br> +cable did not work, nor did ocean cabling become a successful and<br> +regular business till 1866, when a new cable was laid. This event<br> +attracted the more attention from the fact that the largest ship ever<br> +built was used in paying out the cable. It was the Great Eastern, 680<br> +feet long and 83 broad, with 25,000 tons displacement.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 489px; height: 427px;" alt="" + src="images/283Pic.jpg"><br> +Sounding Machine used by a Cable Expedition.<br> +<br> +<br> +Street railways became common in our largest cities before 1860, the<br> +first in New England, that between Boston and Cambridge, dating from<br> +1856. Sleeping-cars began to be used in 1858. The express business went<br> +on developing, being opened westward from Buffalo first in 1845. A steam<br> +fire-engine was tried in New York in 1841, but the invention was<br> +successful only in 1853. Baltimore used one in 1858. Goodyear<br> +triumphantly vulcanized rubber in 1844, making serviceable a gum which<br> +had been used in various forms already but without ability to stand<br> +heat. Elias Howe took out his first patent for a sewing machine in 1846,<br> +being kept in vigorous fight against infringements for the next eight<br> +years. The anaesthetic power of ether was discovered in 1844.<br> +Gutta-percha was first imported hither in 1847. The first application of<br> +the Bessemer steel process in this country was made in New Jersey in<br> +1856, the manufacture of watches by machinery begun in 1857,<br> +photo-lithography in 1859. New York had a clearing house in 1853, Boston<br> +in 1855. The petroleum business may with propriety be dated from 1860,<br> +although the existence of oil in Northwestern Pennsylvania had been long<br> +known, and some use made of it since 1826. For several years experiments<br> +had been making in refining the oil. The excellence of the light from it<br> +now drew attention to the value of the product, wells began to be bored<br> +and oil land sold for fabulous prices.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 472px; height: 627px;" alt="" + src="images/285Pic.jpg"><br> +Cyrus W. Field.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 471px; height: 555px;" alt="" + src="images/287Pic.jpg"><br> +Paying out Cable Gear. From Chart House.<br> +<br> +<br> +We close this chapter with a word about the painful financial crisis<br> +that swept over the country in the autumn of 1857. Its causes are<br> +somewhat occult, but two appear to have been the chief, viz., the<br> +over-rapid building of railroads and the speculation induced by the<br> +prosperity and the rise of prices incident to the new output of gold.<br> +Interest on the best securities rose to three, four, and five per cent.<br> +a month. On ordinary securities no money at all could be had. Commercial<br> +houses of the highest repute went down. The climax was in September and<br> +October. The three leading banks in Philadelphia suspended specie<br> +payments, at once followed in this by all the banks of the Middle<br> +States, and upon the 13th of the next month by the New York banks.<br> +Manufacturing was very largely abandoned for the time, at least thirty<br> +thousand operatives being thrown out of work in New York City alone.<br> +Prices even of agricultural produce fell enormously. Tramps were to be<br> +met on every road. Easier times fortunately returned by spring, when<br> +business resumed pretty nearly its former prosperous march.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 373px; height: 377px;" alt="" + src="images/288Pic.jpg"><br> +Shore End of Cable-exact size. [About 3.5 inches in diameter.]<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 381px; height: 327px;" alt="" + src="images/289Pic.jpg"><br> +Barnacles on Cable.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +PERIOD IV.<br> +<br> +CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION<br> +<br> +1860-1868<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I.<br> +<br> +CAUSES OF THE WAR<br> +<br> +[1861]<br> +<br> +It were a mistake to refer the great Rebellion, for ultimate source, to<br> +ambiguity in the Constitution or to the wickedness of politicians or of<br> +the people. It was simply the last resort in an "irrepressible conflict"<br> +of principle--in the struggle for and against the genius of the world's<br> +advance. Economic, social, and moral evolution, resulting in two<br> +radically different civilizations, had enforced upon each section<br> +unfaithfulness to the spirit and even to the letter of its<br> +constitutional covenant. The South was not to blame that slavery was at<br> +first profitable; and if it deemed it so too long and even thought of it<br> +as a good morally, these convictions, however big with ill consequences<br> +to the nation, were but errors of view, not strange considering the then<br> +status of slavery in the world.<br> +<br> +The South's pride, holding it to the course once chosen, was also no<br> +indictable offence. Nor could the North on its part be taxed with crime<br> +for its "higher law fanaticism," which was simply the spirit of the age;<br> +or for seeing early what all believe now, that slavery was a blight upon<br> +the land. Much as was "nominated in the bond" of the Constitution,<br> +neither law nor equity forbade free States to increase the more rapidly<br> +in numbers, wealth, and other elements of prosperity; and northern<br> +congressmen must have been other than human, if, seeing this increase<br> +and being in the majority, they had gone on punctiliously heeding formal<br> +obligation against manifest national weal. And when, in 1854, the great<br> +sacred compact of 1820 was set aside by the authority of the South<br> +itself, the North felt free even from formal fetters. All talk of<br> +extra-legal negotiations and understandings touching slavery was now at<br> +an end. The northern majority was at last united to legislate upon<br> +slavery as it would, subject only to the Constitution. The South too<br> +late saw this, and fearing that the peculiar institution, shut up to its<br> +old home, would die, sought separation, with such chance of expansion as<br> +this might yield.<br> +<br> +The South had come to love slavery too well, the Constitution too<br> +little. Upon conserving slavery all parties there, however dissident as<br> +to modes, however hostile in other matters, were unconditionally bent.<br> +The chief argument even of those opposing disunion was that it<br> +endangered slavery. Our new government, said Alexander H. Stephens, soon<br> +to be vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, is founded, its<br> +cornerstone rests, upon the great physical, philosophical, and moral<br> +truth, to which Jefferson and the men of his day were blind, that the<br> +negro, by nature or the curse of Canaan, is not equal to the white man;<br> +that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is, by ordination of<br> +Providence, whose wisdom it is not for us to inquire into or question,<br> +his natural and normal condition. As the apostle of such a principle the<br> +South could not but abjure the old establishment, whose genius and<br> +working were inevitably in the contrary direction. Many confessed it to<br> +be the essential nature of our Government, and not unfair treatment<br> +under it, against which they rebelled.<br> +<br> +Slavery had also bred hatred of the Union indirectly, by fostering<br> +anti-democratic habits of thought, feeling, and action. "The form of<br> +liberty existed, the press seemed to be free, the deliberations of<br> +legislative bodies were tumultuous, and every man boasted of his<br> +independence. But the spirit of true liberty, tolerance of the minority<br> +and respect for individual opinion, had departed, and those deceitful<br> +appearances concealed the despotism of an inexorable master, slavery,<br> +before whom the most powerful of slave-holders was himself but a slave,<br> +as abject as the meanest." Over wide sections, untitled manorial lords,<br> +"more intelligent than educated, brave but irascible, proud but<br> +overbearing," controlled all voting and office-holding. Congressional<br> +districts were their pocket-boroughs, and they ignored the common man<br> +save to use him. The system grew, instead of statesmen, sectionalists,<br> +whom love for the "peculiar institution" rendered callous to national<br> +interests.<br> +<br> +The vigorous secession movements in the South at once after Lincoln's<br> +election, raised a question of the first magnitude, which few people at<br> +the North had reflected upon since 1833, viz., whether or not<br> +non-revolutionary secession was possible. Almost unanimously the North<br> +denied such possibility, the South affirmed it. This was at bottom<br> +manifestly nothing but the old question of state sovereignty over again.<br> +The South held the Union to be a state compact, which the northern<br> +parties thereto had broken. To prove the compact theory no new proof was<br> +now adduced. Rather did the southern people take the assertion of it as<br> +an axiom, with a simplicity which spoke volumes for the influence of<br> +Calhoun and for the indoctrination which the South had received in 1832.<br> +<br> +Not alone Calhoun but nearly every other southerner of great influence,<br> +at least from the day of the Missouri Compromise, had been inculcating<br> +the supreme authority of the State as compared with the Union. The<br> +southern States were all large, and, as travelling in or between them<br> +was difficult and little common, they retained far more than those at<br> +the North each its original separateness and peculiarities. Southern<br> +population was more fixed than northern; southern state traditions were<br> +held in far the deeper reverence. In a word, the colonial condition of<br> +things to a great extent persisted in the South down to the very days of<br> +the war. There was every reason why Alabama or North Carolina should,<br> +more than Connecticut, feel like a separate nation.<br> +<br> +This intense state consciousness might gradually have subsided but for<br> +the deep prejudices and passions begotten of slavery and of the<br> +opposition it encountered from the North. Their resolution, against<br> +emancipation led Southerners to cherish a view which made it seem<br> +possible for them as a last resort to sever their alliance with the<br> +North. It was this conjunction of influences, linking the slave-holder's<br> +jealousy and pride to a false but natural conception of state<br> +sovereignty, which created in southern men that love of State, intense<br> +and sincere as real patriotism, causing them to look upon northern men,<br> +with their different theory, as foes and foreigners.<br> +<br> +A very imposing historical argument could of course have been built up<br> +for the Calhoun theory of the Union. The Union emerged from the<br> +preceding Confederacy without a shock. Most who voted for it were<br> +unaware how radical a change it embodied. The Constitution, one may even<br> +admit, could not have been adopted had it then been understood to<br> +preclude the possibility of secession. Doubtless, too, the gradual<br> +change of view concerning it all over the North, sprung from the<br> +multiplication of social and economic ties between sections and States,<br> +rather than from study of constitutional law. We believe that the<br> +untruth of the central-sovereignty theory in no wise follows from these<br> +admissions, and that its correctness might be made apparent from a<br> +plenitude of considerations.<br> +<br> +Champions of the northern side deemed it the less necessary to expatiate<br> +upon this question, since, admitting the South's basal contention, the<br> +right in question depended upon sufficiency of grievance. As, in the<br> +South's view, the case was one of sovereigns one party of whom, without<br> +referee, was about to break a compact without the other's consent, the<br> +adequacy of the grievance should, to excuse the step, have been<br> +absolutely beyond question. On the contrary it was subject to the<br> +gravest question.<br> +<br> +The South's only significant indictment against the North was the one<br> +concerning the personal liberty laws. Moderates like Stephens, indeed,<br> +stoutly condemned this plea for secession as insufficient; but,<br> +believing in the State as sovereign, they had perforce to yield, and<br> +they became as enthusiastic as any when once this "paramount authority"<br> +had spoken. "Fire-eaters," at first a small minority, saw this advantage<br> +and worked it to the utmost. On its complaint touching the personal<br> +liberty legislation the South's case utterly broke down, theorizing the<br> +Union into a rope of sand, not "more perfect" but far less so than the<br> +old, which itself was to be "perpetual." According to the Calhoun<br> +contention States were the parties to a pact, and it was a good way from<br> +clear that any northern State as such, even by personal liberty<br> +legislation, had broken the alleged pact. The liberty laws were innocent<br> +at least in form, and at worst had never been endorsed in any state<br> +convention. Buchanan himself testified that the fugitive slave law had<br> +been faithfully executed, and its operation is well known never to have<br> +been resisted by any public authority.<br> +<br> +It was suspicious that no State ventured upon secession alone. It was<br> +equally remarkable that the Gulf States were the readiest to go, and<br> +made most of the personal liberty laws as their pretext, accounting this<br> +cry, as was ingenuously confessed, a necessary means for holding the<br> +border States solidly to the southern cause. Weak enough, indeed, was<br> +the complaint of "consolidationist" aggression, of which +certainly no<br> +party to the so-called pact was or could have been guilty. But the deeps<br> +of folly were sounded when northern "persecution" of the South was<br> +mentioned, or Lincoln's election as threat of such. This was simply the<br> +election as President, in a perfectly constitutional way, of a citizen,<br> +honest and unambitious, who was pledged against touching slavery in<br> +States. Having become President, he was unable to procure minister, law,<br> +treaty, or even adequate guard for his own person save by the consent of<br> +the party hitherto in power. Lincoln had failed of a popular majority by<br> +a million. Both Houses of Congress were against him at the time of his<br> +election, and, but for the absence of southern members, they would, it<br> +is likely, have continued so through his entire term. It was the South's<br> +bad logic on these points which gave the war Democrats their excellent<br> +plea for drawing sword on the northern side.<br> +<br> +But even supposing secession technically justifiable, how strange that<br> +it should have been judged rational, prudent, or in the long run best<br> +for the South itself. Could aught but frenzy have so drowned in<br> +Americans the memories of our great past; or launched them upon a course<br> +that must have ended by Mexicanizing this nation, wresting from it the<br> +lead in freedom's march, and crushing out, in the breast of struggling<br> +patriotism the world over, all hope of government by and for the people!<br> +The South ought at least to have spared itself. Either its alleged<br> +horror at the advance of central-sovereignty sentiment at the North was<br> +sheer pretence, or it should have been certain that this section would<br> +not hesitate, as Buchanan so illogically did, to coerce "rebellious"<br> +state-bodies. If the North believed the totality of the nation to be the<br> +"paramount authority," Lincoln would surely imitate Jackson instead of<br> +Buchanan, and in doing so he would not seek military support in vain.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 452px; height: 592px;" alt="" src="images/301Pic.jpg"><br> +James Buchanan. From a photograph by Brady.<br> +<br> +<br> +Quite as sure, too, must the final result have appeared from the census<br> +of 1850, had people been calm enough to read this. By that census the<br> +free States had a population fifty per cent. above the population of the<br> +slave states, slaves included, and the disparity was rapidly increasing.<br> +Their wealth was even more preponderant, being, slaves apart, nearly one<br> +hundred per cent. the larger. Their merchant tonnage was five times the<br> +greater--even young inland Ohio out-doing old South Carolina in this,<br> +and the one district of New York City the whole South. The North had<br> +three or four times the South's miles of railway, all the sinews of war<br> +without importation, and mechanics unnumbered and of every sort. And<br> +while champions of the Union would fight with all the prestige of law,<br> +national history and the status quo on their side, Europe's aid to the<br> +South, or even that of the border slave States, was more than<br> +problematical, as was a successful career for the Confederacy in case<br> +its independence should chance to be won. Events proved that the very<br> +defence of slavery had best prospect in the Union, and it seems as if<br> +this might have been foreseen by all, as it actually was by some.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II.<br> +<br> +SECESSION<br> +<br> +[1861]<br> +<br> +Secession was no new thought at the South. It lurked darkly behind the<br> +Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798-99. It was brought out into<br> +broad daylight by South Carolina in the nullification troubles of 1832.<br> +"Texas or disunion!" was the cry at the South in 1843-44. In 1850 South<br> +Carolina declared herself ready to secede in the event of legislation<br> +hostile to slavery. Two years later the same State solemnly affirmed<br> +that it had a right to secede, but that, out of deference to the wishes<br> +of the other slave States, it forbore to exercise such right.<br> +<br> +It must be admitted that in early years the North had helped to make the<br> +thought of secession familiar. In 1803, in view of the great increase of<br> +southern territory by the Louisiana Purchase, and again in 1813, when<br> +New England opposition to the war with England culminated in the<br> +Hartford Convention, there had been talk of a separate northern<br> +confederacy. But from that time on the thought of disunion died out at<br> +the North, while the South dallied with it more and more boldly. During<br> +the presidential campaign of 1856, threats were made that if Fremont,<br> +the republican candidate, should be elected, the South would leave the<br> +Union. In October of that year a secret convention of southern governors<br> +was held at Raleigh, N. C., supposed to have been for the purpose of<br> +considering such a contingency. Governor Wise, of Virginia, who called<br> +the convention, afterward proclaimed that had Fremont been chosen he<br> +would have marched to Washington at the head of 20,000 troops, seized<br> +the Capitol, and prevented the inauguration. This threatening attitude<br> +in 1856 may have been chiefly an electioneering device; but during the<br> +next four years the gulf between North and South widened rapidly, and<br> +the southern leaders turned more and more resolutely toward secession as<br> +the remedy for their alleged wrongs.<br> +<br> +No sooner had the presidential campaign of 1860 begun than deep<br> +mutterings foretold the coming storm. "Elect Lincoln, and the South will<br> +secede!" cried the campaign orators of the South, while the halls of<br> +Congress rang with threats similar in tenor. As the campaign went on and<br> +republican success became probable, the southern leaders began to nerve<br> +up their hosts for the conflict. In October the governor and congressmen<br> +of South Carolina, with other prominent politicians, met and unanimously<br> +resolved that if Lincoln should win, the Palmetto State ought to<br> +renounce the Union. Similar meetings were held in Georgia, Alabama,<br> +Mississippi, and Florida. Governor Gist sent a confidential circular to<br> +the governors of all the cotton States declaring that South Carolina<br> +would secede with any other State, or would make the plunge alone if<br> +others would promise to follow. The governors of Florida, Alabama, and<br> +Mississippi replied that their States would certainly do this. Georgia<br> +proposed to wait for some overt act by the National Government. North<br> +Carolina and Louisiana, it was learned, would probably not go out at<br> +all.<br> +<br> +But the enthusiasts in South Carolina had got all the encouragement they<br> +wanted, and bided their time. Their time was at hand. The presidential<br> +election fell on November 6th. Next day the tidings flashed over the<br> +land that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President by the vote of a<br> +solid North against a solid South. The wires had scarcely ceased to<br> +thrill with this message of death to slavery-extension, when South<br> +Carolina sounded a trumpet-call to the South. Her Legislature ordered a<br> +secession state convention to meet in December, issued a call for 10,000<br> +volunteers, and voted money for the purchase of arms. Federal<br> +office-holders resigned. Judge Magrath, of the United States District<br> +Court, laid aside his robes, declaring, "So far as I am concerned, the<br> +temple of Justice raised under the Constitution of the United States is<br> +now closed." Militia organized throughout the State. The streets of<br> +Charleston echoed nightly with the tramp of drilling minute-men.<br> +Secession orators harangued enthusiastic crowds. Hardly a coat but bore<br> +a secession cockade. November 17th, the Palmetto flag was unfurled in<br> +Charleston. It was a gala day. Cannon roared, bands played the<br> +Marseillaise, and processions paraded the streets bearing such mottoes<br> +as "Let's Bury the Union's Dead Carcass!" "Death to All Abolitionists!"<br> +The whole South was beside itself with excitement. One State after<br> +another assembled its convention to decide the question of secession.<br> +Even the Georgia Legislature, within a week after the election of<br> +Lincoln, voted $1,000,000 to arm the State.<br> +<br> +The South Carolina convention met at Charleston, and on December 20th<br> +unanimously adopted an ordinance declaring:<br> +<br> +"The union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under<br> +the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved."<br> +<br> +This action was hailed with wildest enthusiasm. Huge placards--"The<br> +Union is Dissolved!"--were posted throughout the city, while the clang<br> +of bells and the boom of cannon notified the country round. The<br> +sidewalks were thronged with ladies wearing secession bonnets made of<br> +cotton with palmetto decorations. A party of gentlemen visited the tomb<br> +of Calhoun, and there registered their vows to defend the southern cause<br> +with their fortunes and lives. In the evening the convention marched to<br> +the hall in procession, and formally signed the revolutionary ordinance.<br> +The chairman then solemnly proclaimed South Carolina an "independent<br> +commonwealth." The little State, whose white population was less than<br> +300,000, began to play at being a nation. The governor was authorized to<br> +appoint a cabinet and receive foreign ambassadors, and the papers put<br> +information from other parts of the country under the head of "foreign<br> +news."<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 324px; height: 812px;" alt="" + src="images/310Pic.jpg"><br> +Street Banner in Charleston.<br> +"One voice and millions of strong arms to uphold the honor of South<br> +Carolina 1776-1860"<br> +<br> +<br> +The secession of South Carolina was greeted with joy in most of the<br> +other slave States. Montgomery and Mobile, Ala., each fired one hundred<br> +guns. At Richmond, Va., a palmetto banner was unfurled, while bells,<br> +bonfires, and processions celebrated the event all over the South. The<br> +other cotton States, spurred on by the bold deed of South Carolina,<br> +rapidly followed her lead. Mississippi seceded January 9th, Florida the<br> +10th, Alabama the 11th, Georgia the 19th, Louisiana the 26th, Texas<br> +February 1st.<br> +<br> +It is probable that only in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida<br> +were the majority of whites in favor of secession. The South was after<br> +all full of Union sentiment. The ordinance of secession proceeded in<br> +each State from a convention, and the election of delegates to this<br> +witnessed the earnest work. The noble efforts of those Union men in<br> +their fierce struggle have never yet been appreciated. But they fought<br> +against great odds, and were inevitably overborne. The opposition was<br> +organized, ably led, and white-hot with zeal. The political power and<br> +the wealth of the South lay in the hands of the secessionists. The<br> +clergy threw their weight on that side, preaching that slavery, God's<br> +ordinance, was in danger. Union proclivities were crushed out by force.<br> +Vigilance committees were everywhere on the alert. In the rougher States<br> +of the Southwest abolitionists were tarred and feathered. Some were<br> +shot. In all the States Union men were warned to keep quiet or leave the<br> +South. One of the most powerful agents of intimidation was the Knights<br> +of the Golden Circle, a vast secret society which extended throughout<br> +the southern States.<br> +<br> +Yet, in spite of all, the vote was close even in several of the cotton<br> +States. The Georgia people wanted new safeguards for slavery, but did<br> +not at first desire secession. Alexander H. Stephens, who headed the<br> +anti-secession movement, declared that Georgia was won over to take the<br> +fatal step at last only by the cry, "Better terms can be made out of the<br> +Union than in it." Even then the first vote for secession stood only 165<br> +to 130. In Louisiana the popular vote for convention delegates was<br> +20,000 for secession and 17,000 against.<br> +<br> +The border States held aloof. Kentucky and Tennessee refused to call<br> +conventions. So, for long, did North Carolina. The convention of<br> +Virginia and of Missouri each had a majority of Union delegates. When<br> +the Confederate Government was organized in February, only seven of the<br> +fifteen slave States had seceded. Their white population was about<br> +2,600,000, or less than half that of the entire slave region. But<br> +Arkansas and North Carolina were soon swept along by the current, and<br> +seceded in May. Virginia and Tennessee were finally carried (the former<br> +in May, the latter in June) by the aid of troops, who swarmed in from<br> +the seceded States, and turned the elections into a farce. Unionists in<br> +the Virginia Convention were given the choice to vote secession, leave,<br> +or be hanged. Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland resisted all<br> +attempts to drag them into the Confederacy, though the first two, after<br> +the United States began to apply force, appeared neutral rather than<br> +loyal.<br> +<br> +The seizure of United States property went hand in hand with secession.<br> +Most of the government works were feebly garrisoned, and made no<br> +resistance. By January 15th the secessionists had possession of arsenals<br> +at Augusta, Ga., Mount Vernon, Ala., Fayetteville, N. C, Chattahoochee,<br> +Fla., and Baton Rouge, La., of forts in Alabama and Georgia, of a<br> +navy-yard at Pensacola, Fla., and of Forts Jackson and St. Philip,<br> +commanding the mouth of the Mississippi. At one arsenal they found<br> +150,000 pounds of powder, at another 22,000 muskets and rifles, besides<br> +ammunition and cannon, at another 50,000 small arms and 20 heavy guns.<br> +The whole South had been well supplied with military stores by the<br> +enterprising foresight of J. B. Floyd, of Virginia, Buchanan's Secretary<br> +of War, who had sent thither 115,000 muskets from the Springfield<br> +arsenal alone.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 330px; height: 415px;" alt="" + src="images/315Pic.jpg"><br> +Major Robert Anderson.<br> +<br> +<br> +Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, was held by Major Robert Anderson,<br> +of Kentucky, with a garrison of some seventy men. On December 27th the<br> +whole country was thrilled, and the South enraged, by the news that on<br> +the previous night Anderson had secretly transferred his whole force to<br> +Fort Sumter, a new and stronger work in the centre of the harbor,<br> +leaving spiked cannon and burning gun-carriages behind him at Moultrie.<br> +The South Carolina militia at once occupied the deserted fortress with<br> +the other harbor fortifications, and began to put them into a state of<br> +defence. At Pensacola, Fla., Lieutenant Slemmer, by a movement similar<br> +to Anderson's, held Fort Pickens.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 474px; height: 572px;" alt="" + src="images/317Pic.jpg"><br> +Major Anderson removing his Forces from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter,<br> +December 26, 1861.<br> +<br> +<br> +The seizure of government property went on through January and February.<br> +In Louisiana all the commissary stores were confiscated, and the revenue<br> +cutter McClelland surrendered. The mint at New Orleans, containing over<br> +half a million in gold and silver, was seized. More than half of the<br> +regular army were stationed in Texas, under General Twiggs. In February,<br> +at the demand of a secessionist committee of public safety, he<br> +surrendered his entire force, together with eighteen military posts. The<br> +troops were sent to a Gulf port and there detained.<br> +<br> +This wholesale seizure of government property, worth some $20,000,000,<br> +has brought down upon the South much scathing rebuke. The conduct of<br> +Floyd, stabbing his country under the cloak of a cabinet office, cannot<br> +be too strongly condemned; but with the seceding States the case was<br> +different. Having (so they thought) established themselves as<br> +independent republics, they could not allow the military works within<br> +their borders to remain in the hands of a foreign power. As to the<br> +Government's property right, they recognized it, and proposed to pay<br> +damages. The provisional constitution of the Confederacy, adopted in<br> +February, provided for negotiations to settle the claim of the United<br> +States.<br> +<br> +The southern leaders were not more anxious to get the slave States out<br> +of the Union than to get them into a grand Southern Confederacy. Early<br> +in January a caucus of secession congressmen was held at Washington, and<br> +arrangements made for a constitutional convention.<br> +<br> +February 4, 1861, delegates from the States which had left the Union met<br> +at Montgomery, Ala., and formed themselves into a provisional Congress.<br> +A temporary government, styled "The Confederate States of America," was<br> +soon organized. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was chosen President by<br> +the Congress, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President.<br> +Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808. He graduated at West Point, fought<br> +as colonel in the Mexican war, served three terms as congressman from<br> +Mississippi, the last two in the Senate, and was Secretary of War under<br> +Pierce. After Calhoun's death, in 1850, he became the most prominent of<br> +the ultra southern leaders. The new President was brought from Jackson,<br> +Miss., to Montgomery by a special train, his progress a continual<br> +ovation. Cheering crowds gathered at every station to see and hear him.<br> +February 18th Davis was inaugurated. In his address, which was calm and<br> +moderate in tone, he declared that reunion was now "neither practicable<br> +nor desirable;" he hoped for peace, but said that if the North refused<br> +this, the South must appeal to arms, secure in the blessing of God on a<br> +just cause.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 314px; height: 505px;" alt="" + src="images/320Pic.jpg"><br> +Jefferson Davis.<br> +<br> +<br> +The Confederate President was intrusted with very large powers,<br> +including supreme control of military affairs. He was authorized to<br> +muster into the service of the central government the regiments which<br> +had been forming in the various States. A call was issued for 100,000<br> +volunteers, and provision made for organizing a regular army. President<br> +Davis appointed a cabinet, with state, treasury, war, navy, and<br> +post-office departments. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, a rabid<br> +secessionist, became Secretary of State.<br> +<br> +March 11th the Confederate Congress adopted a permanent constitution. It<br> +reproduced that of the United States, with some important changes. State<br> +sovereignty was recognized in the preamble, which read, "We, the people<br> +of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and<br> +independent character," etc. Slavery was called by name, and elaborate<br> +safeguards fixed for it in the States and Territories. Slave-trade from<br> +beyond the sea, or with states not in the Confederacy, was, however,<br> +prohibited. Protective tariffs were absolutely forbidden. The president<br> +and vice-president were to serve six years, and the former could not be<br> +re-elected. Some valuable features were inserted. Members of the cabinet<br> +might discuss matters pertaining to their departments in either house of<br> +congress. The president could veto one part of an appropriation bill<br> +without killing the whole, and was required to lay before the senate his<br> +reasons for the removal of any officers from the civil service.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 313px; height: 397px;" alt="" + src="images/322Pic.jpg"><br> +Alexander H. Stephens.<br> +<br> +<br> +By the last of April all the seceded States had ratified this<br> +constitution. The other slave States were taken in as fast as they<br> +withdrew from the Union. The Southern Confederacy, now fairly launched,<br> +set sail over strange seas upon its short but eventful voyage. At the<br> +start the hopes of those it bore rose high. Few believed that the North<br> +would dare draw sword. Even if it should, the southern heart, proud and<br> +brave, felt sure of victory. King Cotton would win Europe to their side.<br> +Peace would come soon. Visions of a glorious future dazzled the<br> +imaginative mind of the South. A vast slave empire, founded on the<br> +"great physical, philosophical, and moral truth" that slavery is the<br> +"natural condition," of the inferior black race, would spread encircling<br> +arms around the Great Gulf, swallowing up the feeble states of Mexico,<br> +and rise to a wealth and glory unparalleled in the history of nations.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III.<br> +<br> +THE NORTH IN THE WINTER OF 1860-61<br> +<br> +[1860-1861]<br> +<br> +At the beginning of the secession movement the North slumbered and<br> +slept. Even South Carolina's withdrawal from the Union caused little<br> +alarm. "She will be glad enough to come back before long," prophesied<br> +many. As the revolution progressed there was a gradual awakening, but<br> +division of opinion paralyzed action. Ultra Abolitionists, with a few<br> +others, urged that the South be let go in peace. Most Republicans<br> +favored the preservation of the Union by force of arms if necessary; but<br> +nearly all Democrats, with many Republicans, wished for compromise. Of<br> +the latter class a few prayed the prodigals to return on their own<br> +terms. More proposed a rigid enforcement of the fugitive slave law, the<br> +repeal of personal liberty legislation, and acquiescence in the Dred<br> +Scott decision, with all future like decrees of the Supreme +Court. This<br> +may be called the northern-democratic position. The most pronounced<br> +Republicans, as Seward and Stanton, would gladly have voted to<br> +re-enforce the Constitution's guarantee to slavery in the slave States.<br> +<br> +Throughout the North the feeling was strong against all efforts at<br> +coercion. Most democratic papers and many republican ones insisted<br> +loudly that use of arms was not to be mentioned, and that the South must<br> +be conciliated. A democratic convention met at Albany in January, to<br> +protest against forcible measures. The sentiment that if force were to<br> +be used it should be "inaugurated at home," here evoked hearty response.<br> +There were signs of even a deeper disaffection. An ex-governor of New<br> +Jersey declared that his State would join the Confederacy. Mayor Wood,<br> +of New York, proposed that if the Union were broken up, his city should<br> +announce herself an independent republic.<br> +<br> +At Washington matters were still worse. President Buchanan, loyal but<br> +weak, feared to lift a finger. In his December message to Congress, he<br> +insisted that a State had no right to secede, but that the United States<br> +had no power to coerce a State which should secede. A majority of his<br> +cabinet were southern men, three of them zealous secessionists. His most<br> +intimate friends in Congress were southerners. These surrounded the<br> +vacillating Chief Magistrate, and paralyzed what little energy was in<br> +him, meanwhile taking advantage of his inaction to launch the<br> +Confederacy. Now and then, spurred on by loyal old General Scott and by<br> +the Union members of his cabinet, the President tried to break away from<br> +the toils which the conspirators had spun around him. The Star of the<br> +West was secretly sent with supplies and recruits to re-enforce Fort<br> +Sumter. But Secretary Thompson warned South Carolina, and when the<br> +vessel arrived off Charleston, January 9th, hostile batteries fired upon<br> +her and forced her out to sea again. Another plan to relieve the fort<br> +was half formed, but came to nothing. Buchanan's term was on the point<br> +of expiring, and he sat supinely looking on while the disruption of the<br> +Union proceeded apace.<br> +<br> +The northern side in Congress showed little wisdom or spirit. Most<br> +northern congressmen truckled to the South or wasted their energies in<br> +fruitless attempts at compromise. Both houses, each by more than a<br> +two-thirds majority, recommended a constitutional amendment depriving<br> +Congress forever of the power to touch slavery in any State without the<br> +consent of all the States. In December the venerable Crittenden, of<br> +Kentucky, laid before the Senate his famous Suggestions for Compromise.<br> +These, besides embodying the above amendment, restored the Missouri<br> +Compromise, let each new State decide for itself whether it would be<br> +slave or free, and forbade Congress to abolish slavery in the District<br> +of Columbia or interfere with the inter-state transportation of slaves.<br> +The United States was to pay for all fugitives whose capture should be<br> +successfully prevented, and slaves as slaves could be carried through<br> +free States. This measure, before Congress all winter, was finally lost<br> +only for lack of southern votes.<br> +<br> +A peace congress, called by Virginia, met at Washington in February.<br> +Most of the northern States were represented and all the southern which<br> +had not seceded. It sat for three weeks, and adopted resolutions<br> +identical in substance with the Crittenden Compromise. These dangerously<br> +large offers of concession, mainly well meant, happily proved useless.<br> +The South had gone too far. She did not want compromise, but was bent<br> +upon setting up a slave empire.<br> +<br> +Mr. Lincoln arrived safely in Washington on February 23d, having eluded<br> +a rumored plot to assassinate him in Baltimore. He accomplished this by<br> +assuming a slight disguise and taking an earlier train than the one in<br> +which he had been announced to go. He was duly inaugurated on March 4th.<br> +In his inaugural he disclaimed all purpose to interfere with slavery in<br> +the slave States, yet denied the right of secession, and proposed to<br> +regain and hold the property and places belonging to the United States<br> +in all parts thereof. There would be no bloodshed, he said, unless it<br> +were forced upon the Government. "In your hands, my dissatisfied<br> +fellow-countrymen," so ran his memorable words, "in your hands, not in<br> +mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. You can have no conflict<br> +without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but<br> +friends." This message, held out as an olive branch, the South denounced<br> +as a menace. Some northern papers condemned it as the "knell and requiem<br> +of the Union." But the general feeling it evoked at the North was one of<br> +rejoicing. People believed that a hand both moderate and firm had at<br> +length seized the helm.<br> +<br> +The new President stood faced by an herculean task. Congress was not yet<br> +fully purged of traitors, while Washington still swarmed with their<br> +friends and agents. Floyd's treachery had tied Lincoln's hands. All the<br> +best munitions of war had been sent south. Of the rifled cannon<br> +belonging to the United States not one was left. Only a handful of<br> +regular troops were within call, and the resignations of their officers<br> +came in daily. The plight of the navy and treasury was no better.<br> +Amazing coolness and the absurd prejudice against coercing States<br> +largely possessed even the loyal masses. The attack on Sumter was thus a<br> +god-send.<br> +<br> +April 8th, Governor Pickens received notice from President Lincoln that<br> +an attempt would be made to provision that fort. Thereupon General<br> +Beauregard, who had left the United States army to take charge of the<br> +fortifications at Charleston, was ordered by President Davis to demand<br> +its evacuation. Major Anderson replied that they should be starved out<br> +by the 15th, and would leave the fort then unless his Government sent<br> +supplies. This answer was held unsatisfactory, and at 3.20 on the<br> +morning of April 12th Beauregard notified Anderson that his batteries<br> +would open fire in one hour.<br> +<br> +Fort Sumter stood on an artificial island at the entrance of the harbor.<br> +It was pentagonal in shape, the walls of brick, eight feet thick and<br> +forty feet high. The parapet was pierced for 140 guns, but only 48 were<br> +in condition for use. The garrison, including some 40 workmen and a<br> +band, numbered 128. Surrounding the fort on all sides except toward the<br> +sea, and distant from 1,300 to 2,500 yards, 19 Confederate batteries<br> +were in position, mounting 47 cannon and mortars, and manned by 3,000 or<br> +4,000 volunteers. These works were provided with bomb-proofs made of<br> +railroad iron or of palmetto logs and sand.<br> +<br> +The wharves, roofs, and steeples of Charleston were black with expectant<br> +crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle<br> +loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to<br> +the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful<br> +trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun.<br> +One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the<br> +stronghold is girt by an almost continuous circle of flashing artillery.<br> +Shells scream through the air and explode above the doomed work, and<br> +great cannon-balls bury themselves in the brick walls. Still Sumter<br> +speaks not. Anderson is waiting for daylight. About six o'clock he<br> +breakfasts his garrison on pork and water, the only provisions left. An<br> +hour later the embrasures are opened, the black guns run out, and Sumter<br> +hurls back her answer to the voice of rebellion. The bombs making it<br> +unsafe to use the barbette cannons of the open rampart, Anderson was<br> +confined to his twenty-one casemate pieces, mostly of light calibre. The<br> +fire was kept up briskly all the morning. Sumter stood it well, but did<br> +little damage to the opposing batteries. At sunset the guns of both<br> +sides became silent, but the mortars maintained a slow fire through the<br> +night.<br> +<br> +Early next morning the cannonade opened afresh, and in the course of the<br> +forenoon hot shot set fire to Sumter's wooden barracks. The flames soon<br> +got beyond control; the powder magazine had to be closed; and the heat<br> +and smoke became so stifling that the garrison was forced, in order to<br> +avoid suffocation, to lie face downward upon the floor, each man with a<br> +wet cloth at his mouth. Powder was at last exhausted. About one o'clock<br> +the flag was shot away. It was immediately raised again upon a low<br> +jury-mast, but could not be seen for the smoke, and Beauregard sent to<br> +ask if Anderson had surrendered. The latter offered to evacuate upon the<br> +terms named before the bombardment, to which Beauregard agreed, and all<br> +firing ceased. The next day at noon, after a salute of fifty guns to<br> +their flag, Major Anderson and his men evacuated the scene of their<br> +heroism, and soon after took passage for New York.<br> +<br> +The disunion leaders had rightly calculated that an open blow would<br> +bring the border slave States into the Confederacy; but they had not<br> +anticipated the effect of such a deed beyond Mason and Dixon's line.<br> +When it was known that the old flag had been fired upon, a thrill of<br> +passionate rage electrified the North from Maine to Oregon. Then was<br> +witnessed an uprising unparalleled in our history if not in that of<br> +mankind. From every city, town, and hamlet, loud and earnest came the<br> +call, "The Union must be preserved! Away with compromise! Away with<br> +further attempts to conciliate traitors! To arms!" Slavery might do all<br> +else, so little did most northerners yet feel its evil, but it could not<br> +rend the Union. Pulpit, platform, and press echoed with patriotic cries.<br> +Everywhere were Union meetings, speeches, and parades. Union badges<br> +decked everyone's clothing, and the Stars and Stripes were kept unfurled<br> +as only on national holidays before. In New York City a mass-meeting of<br> +two hundred thousand declared for war. The New York Herald changed its<br> +sneer to a war-blast. Party lines were thrown down. Democrats like<br> +Butler, Cass, and Dickinson were in the Union van. Senator Douglas,<br> +lately Lincoln's antagonist, and at first strongly opposed to coercion,<br> +went through the West arousing the people by his patriotic eloquence.<br> +"There can be no neutrals now," were his words, "only patriots and<br> +traitors."<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 576px; height: 368px;" alt="" + src="images/336Pic.jpg"><br> +Route of the Sixth Massachusetts Troops through +Baltimore.]<br> +<br> +<br> +April 15th, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand<br> +volunteers, and each free State responded with twice its quota.<br> +Enlisting offices were opened in every town and hamlet, and the roll of<br> +the drum and the tramp of armed men with faces set southward were heard<br> +all over the North. First to march was the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment.<br> +Forming on Boston Common it took cars for Washington on April 17th,<br> +reaching Baltimore on the morning of the 19th.<br> +<br> +Maryland was trembling in the balance between Union and disunion. A<br> +determined disunionist minority was working with might and main to drag<br> +the State into secession. Baltimore was white-hot with southern zeal,<br> +determined that the Bay State troops should never reach Washington<br> +through that metropolis. Eight of the cars containing the soldiers were<br> +drawn safely across the city. The next was assailed by a hooting mob,<br> +and the windows smashed in by bricks and paving stones. Some of the<br> +soldiers were wounded by pistol shots, and a scattering fire was<br> +returned. Sand, stones, anchors, and other obstructions were heaped upon<br> +the track. The remaining four companies therefore left the cars and<br> +started to march. They soon met the mob, flying a secession flag. A<br> +melee ensued. The troops moved double-quick toward the Washington depot,<br> +surrounded by a seething mass of infuriated secessionists filling the<br> +air with their brick-bats and stones, while bullets whizzed from<br> +sidewalks and windows. The troops returned the fire, and several in the<br> +crowd fell. The chief of police with fifty officers appeared on the<br> +scene, who, by presenting cocked revolvers, held the rioters in check<br> +for a while, till the distressed troops could join their comrades.<br> +Baltimore was in the hands of this secessionist band for the rest of the<br> +day. The bridges north of that city were also burned, so that no more<br> +troops could reach Washington by this route.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 478px; height: 436px;" alt="" + src="images/338Pic.jpg"><br> +Scene of the First Bloodshed, at Baltimore.<br> +<br> +<br> +Meanwhile the capital city was in great peril, devotees of the South<br> +being each moment expected to make an attack upon it. Only fifteen<br> +companies of local militia and six of regulars were present at<br> +inauguration time, stationed by General Scott at critical points in the<br> +city. Pickets were posted continually on roads and bridges outside. Four<br> +hundred Pennsylvania troops happily arrived on April 18th, and the next<br> +day came the Sixth Massachusetts. But the city was not yet secure. There<br> +were reports that large bodies of men were gathering in Maryland and<br> +Virginia for a descent upon it. Washington was put in a state of siege,<br> +the public buildings barricaded and provided with sentinels. The<br> +Government seized the Potomac steamers and also all the flour within<br> +reach. Business ceased. Alarmed by rumors of a military impressment,<br> +hundreds of government clerks, besides officers in the army and navy,<br> +came out in their true colors and fled south. Enemies at Baltimore had<br> +cut off telegraphic communication between Washington and the North.<br> +Reports came that re-enforcements were on the way, but day followed day<br> +without witnessing their arrival. The President and all Unionists were<br> +in an agony of suspense.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 500px; height: 582px;" alt="" src="images/340Pic.jpg"><br> +The Routes of Approach to Washington.<br> +Russell & Struthers, Eng's, N. York.<br> +<br> +<br> +On April 22d the Eighth Massachusetts, under General B. F. Butler, and<br> +the famous Seventh Regiment from New York City, met at Annapolis. Here<br> +they were delayed several days. Governor Hicks had warned them not to<br> +land on Maryland soil. The railroad to Washington had been torn up for<br> +many miles and the engines damaged. Among his troops Butler found the<br> +very machinists who had made the engines. Repairs were promptly<br> +effected, the track re-laid, and about noon of the 25th the gallant New<br> +Yorkers landed in Washington amid the joyful shouts of the loyal<br> +populace. Up Pennsylvania Avenue swept the solid ranks, bands playing<br> +and colors flying, to gladden the heart of the careworn President as he<br> +welcomed them at the White House. A sudden change came over the city.<br> +Secessionists slunk away, the faces of the loyal beamed with joy. The<br> +national capital was safe.<br> +<br> +<br> +</big></big> +<table style="text-align: left; width: 1294px; height: 968px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;"><img + style="width: 648px; height: 1004px;" alt="" src="images/342PicA.jpg"><br> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;"><img + style="width: 648px; height: 1004px;" alt="" src="images/342PicB.jpg"><br> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<big><big><br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV.<br> +<br> +WAR BEGUN<br> +<br> +[1861]<br> +<br> +It was now apparent to both North and South that war was inevitable. Yet<br> +neither side believed the other in full earnest or dreamed of a long<br> +struggle. Sanguine northerners looked to see the rebellion stamped out<br> +in thirty days. The more cautious allowed three months.<br> +<br> +The President, however, soon saw that more troops, enlisted for a longer<br> +term, would be necessary. At the outset the South certainly possessed<br> +decided advantages: greater earnestness, more men of leisure aching for<br> +war and accustomed to saddle and firearms, a militia better organized,<br> +owing to fear of slave insurrections, and now for a long time in special<br> +training, and withal a certain soldierly fire and dash native to the<br> +people. The South also had superior arms. Enlistments there were prompt<br> +and abundant. The troops were ably commanded, 262 of the 951 regular<br> +army officers whom secession found in service, including many very high<br> +in rank, joining their States in the new cause, besides a large number<br> +of West Point graduates from civil life.<br> +<br> +Accordingly on May 3d Mr. Lincoln issued a new call for troops, 42,000<br> +volunteers to serve three years or during the war, 23,000 regulars, and<br> +18,000 seamen. It was of first importance to secure Maryland for the<br> +Union. On the night of May 13th, under cover of a thunderstorm, General<br> +Butler suddenly entered rebellious Baltimore with less than 1,000 men,<br> +and entrenched upon Federal Hill. Overawed by this bold move, the<br> +secessionists made no resistance. A political reaction soon set in<br> +throughout the State, which became firmly Unionist. Baltimore was once<br> +more open to the passage of troops, who kept steadily hurrying to the<br> +front.<br> +<br> +Meanwhile the Confederate forces were getting uncomfortably close to<br> +Washington. From the White House a secession flag could be seen flying<br> +at Alexandria, which was occupied by a small pro-secession garrison.<br> +There was fear lest that party would occupy Arlington Heights, across<br> +from Washington, and thence pour shot and shell into the city. At two<br> +o'clock on the morning of May 24th, eight regiments crossed the Potomac<br> +and took possession of these hills as far south as Alexandria, and<br> +fortified them. The latter place was entered by Colonel Ellsworth with<br> +his famous New York Zouaves. No resistance was made, as the Confederates<br> +had retired, but Ellsworth was brutally assassinated while hauling down<br> +the secession flag.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 338px; height: 406px;" alt="" + src="images/345Pic.jpg"><br> +Captain Nathaniel Lyon.<br> +<br> +<br> +Upon the secession of Virginia the Confederate capital was removed to<br> +Richmond. The main armies of both sides were now encamped on Old<br> +Dominion soil, and at no great distance apart; but the commanders were<br> +busy drilling their raw troops, so that for a time only trifling<br> +engagements occurred. General Butler, with a considerable body of men,<br> +was occupying Fortress Monroe, at the mouth of the James River. June<br> +10th, an expedition sent by him against the Confederates at Big Bethel,<br> +some twelve miles distant, was repulsed after a spirited attack, with a<br> +total loss of sixty-eight. A week later an Ohio regiment took the cars<br> +to make a reconnoissance toward Vienna, a village not far south of<br> +Washington. They were surprised by Confederates, who placed two guns on<br> +the track and fired on the train as it came around a curve. The Ohioans<br> +sprang to the ground, and after some fighting drove their opponents<br> +back.<br> +<br> +All this time both North and South were struggling for possession of the<br> +neutral States. Governor Jackson, of Missouri, was straining every nerve<br> +to force his State into secession. Early in May two or three regiments<br> +of militia were got together and drilled in a camp near St. Louis.<br> +Cannon were sent by President Davis, boxed up and marked "marble."<br> +Captain Lyon, of the regular army, who held the St. Louis arsenal with a<br> +few companies, reconnoitred the secessionist camp in female dress. The<br> +next day, May 10th, assisted by local militia, he suddenly surrounded it<br> +and took 1,200 prisoners. A month later he embarked some soldiers on<br> +three swift steamers, sailed up the Missouri to Jefferson City, the<br> +state capital, and raised the Union flag once more over the State House.<br> +Governor Jackson fled. During the next month all the armed disunionists<br> +were driven into the southwestern part of the State.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 342px; height: 431px;" alt="" + src="images/348Pic.jpg"><br> +General John C. Fremont.<br> +<br> +<br> +The last of July a state convention organized a provisional government<br> +and declared for the Union. But the secessionists, under General Price,<br> +continued the struggle. The Union forces, after a brave fight against<br> +great odds at Wilson's Creek, August 10th, in which Lyon was killed, had<br> +to retreat north. General Fremont had shortly before been put at the<br> +head of the Western Department, which included Missouri, Kentucky,<br> +Illinois, and Kansas. His difficulties were great. He was unable to<br> +clear the State of secessionists, who besieged Lexington and took it on<br> +September 20th. Generals Hunter and Halleck, Fremont's successors, were<br> +equally unsuccessful, and the State was harassed by a petty warfare all<br> +the year.<br> +<br> +In Kentucky, Governor Magoffin was inclined to secession. The<br> +Legislature leaned the other way, but preferred neutrality to active<br> +participation on either side. September 6th, Brigadier-General U. S.<br> +Grant occupied Paducah, an important strategical point at the junction<br> +of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. Next day the Confederate General Polk,<br> +advancing from below, took possession of Columbus on the Mississippi.<br> +With both hostile armies thus encamped on her soil, Kentucky could no<br> +longer be neutral. Her decision was quickly taken. The Legislature<br> +demanded of President Davis to withdraw Polk's forces, at the same time<br> +calling upon General Anderson, the hero of Sumter, who had been placed<br> +in charge of the Department of the Cumberland, to take active measures<br> +for the defence of this his native State.<br> +<br> +The mountain portion of Virginia belonged to the West rather than to the<br> +South. It contained only 18,000 slaves, against nearly 500,000 in<br> +Eastern Virginia. Union sentiment was therefore strong, and when the old<br> +State seceded from the Union, Western Virginia proceeded to secede from<br> +the State. General Lee sent troops to hold it for the Confederacy.<br> +Thereupon General McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio,<br> +threw several regiments across the river into Virginia, and defeated the<br> +foe in minor engagements at Philippi, Rich Mountain, and Carrick's Ford.<br> +By the middle of July he was able to report, "Secession is killed in<br> +this country." Later in the year the Confederates renewed their<br> +attempts, but were finally driven out. West Virginia organized a<br> +separate government, and was subsequently admitted to the Union as a<br> +State by itself.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 487px; height: 516px;" alt="" src="images/351Pic.jpg"><br> +Bull Run--the Field of Strategy.<br> +<br> +<br> +While these struggles were going on in the border commonwealths, the<br> +Union soldiers lay inactive along the Potomac. Constant drill had<br> +changed the mob into some semblance of an organized army, but the<br> +careful Scott feared to risk a general engagement. The hostile forces<br> +stretched in three pairs of groups across Virginia from northwest to<br> +southeast. In the southeastern part of the State, at Fortress Monroe,<br> +Butler faced the Confederate Magruder. At Manassas, opposite Washington,<br> +and about thirty miles southwest, lay a Confederate army under General<br> +Beauregard. General Patterson, a veteran of the War of 1812, commanded<br> +considerable forces in Southern Pennsylvania. About the middle of June<br> +he advanced against Harper's Ferry, which had been abandoned by the<br> +Unionists the latter part of April and was now occupied by General<br> +Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston evacuated the place upon Patterson's<br> +approach, and retreated up the Shenandoah Valley, in a southwesterly<br> +direction, to Winchester. Patterson followed part way, and the two<br> +armies now lay watching each other.<br> +<br> +Anxious to see the rebellion put down by one blow, the North was<br> +becoming impatient. "On to Richmond!" was the ceaseless cry. Yielding to<br> +this, Scott ordered an advance. July 16th, General McDowell, leaving one<br> +division to protect Washington, led forth an army 28,000 strong to<br> +attack the enemy at Manassas. He advanced slowly and with great caution.<br> +The enemy were found posted in a line eight miles long upon the south<br> +bank of Bull Run, a small river three miles east of Manassas, running in<br> +a southeasterly direction. Several days were spent in reconnoitering.<br> +Meanwhile, Johnston, whom Patterson was expected to hold at Winchester,<br> +had stolen away to join Beauregard, their combined forces numbering<br> +about 30,000. McDowell was ignorant of Johnston's movement, supposing<br> +him still at Winchester.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 294px; height: 351px;" alt="" + src="images/353Pic.jpg"><br> +General Irvin McDowell.<br> +<br> +<br> +On the morning of the 21st McDowell advanced to the attack. Beauregard<br> +held all the lower fords, besides a stone bridge on the Warrenton<br> +turnpike which crosses the river at right angles. Two divisions, under<br> +Hunter and Heintzelman, were set in motion before sunrise to make a<br> +flanking detour and cross Bull Run at Sudley's Ford, some distance<br> +farther up. To distract attention from this movement, Tyler's division<br> +began an attack at the stone bridge. This was held by a regiment and a<br> +half, with four guns, under General Evans. He replied vigorously at<br> +first, but perceiving after a while that Tyler was only feigning, and<br> +learning of the flank movement above, he left four companies at the<br> +bridge and drew up the rest of his forces on a ridge north of Warrenton<br> +turnpike to await Hunter and Heintzelman's approach down the Sudley<br> +road.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 286px; height: 386px;" alt="" + src="images/355Pic.jpg"><br> +General Samuel P. Heintzelman.<br> +<br> +<br> +The fight began about ten o'clock. Both sides were soon re-enforced.<br> +After two hours' stubborn fighting the Confederates were driven back<br> +across the pike, beyond Young's Branch of Bull Run, and took up a second<br> +position on a hill each side of the Henry House. The whole Union force<br> +had now crossed Bull Run. Griffin's and Ricketts' powerful batteries<br> +were posted in favorable positions, whence they poured a deadly fire<br> +upon the Confederates. The whole Union line advanced to the turnpike.<br> +About two o'clock the Confederates were forced to abandon their second<br> +position and fall back still farther.<br> +<br> +Early in the morning Beauregard and Johnston had given orders for an<br> +attack upon the Union forces across the river, not knowing that McDowell<br> +had assumed the offensive. These orders were now countermanded, and all<br> +available troops hurried up the Sudley road toward the Warrenton pike<br> +front. Till after noon the prospect for the Confederates looked gloomy.<br> +They had been steadily driven back. Some of their regiments had lost<br> +heavily, while all were more or less demoralized. Johnston and<br> +Beauregard gave their personal direction to re-forming the line upon a<br> +second ridge to the south of the Warrenton pike, under cover of a<br> +semicircular piece of woods. Twelve regiments, with twenty-two guns and<br> +two companies of cavalry, concentrated in this favorable position and<br> +awaited the Union advance.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 453px; height: 452px;" alt="" + src="images/357Pic.jpg"><br> +Bull Run-Battle of the Forenoon.<br> +<br> +<br> +McDowell had fourteen regiments available for the attack. He decided to<br> +hurl them against the Confederate centre and left. About half-past two<br> +Griffin's and Ricketts' batteries took up an advanced position on Henry<br> +Hill. The Confederate guns opened fire, and a short artillery duel took<br> +place. A Confederate regiment now advances to capture the exposed<br> +batteries. They are mistaken for Union re-enforcements and allowed to<br> +come within close range. The muskets are levelled. A terrible volley is<br> +poured into the batteries. The gunners are stricken down. The frantic<br> +horses dash madly down the hill. After a little confusion the Union<br> +troops boldly advance and retake the batteries. The battle surges back<br> +and forth. The guns are three times captured and lost again. The fight<br> +becomes general along the Confederate centre and left. The Union<br> +generals are getting alarmed. So far they have been confident of<br> +victory. Now regiment after regiment is going to pieces in this terrific<br> +melee, and still the "rebels" hold their ground. About half-past four<br> +o'clock General Early arrives by rail with three thousand more of<br> +Johnston's army, and, assisted by a battery and five companies of<br> +cavalry, bursts upon the extreme right flank and rear of McDowell's<br> +line.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="width: 486px; height: 495px;" alt="" src="images/359Pic.jpg"><br> +Bull Run--Battle of the Afternoon.<br> +<br> +<br> +This manoeuvre decided the day. The Union ranks waver, break, flee. The<br> +centre and left soon follow, though in better order. Union and<br> +Confederate generals alike were astonished at the sudden change.<br> +McDowell found it impossible to stem the tide once set in, and gave<br> +orders to fall back across Bull Run to Centreville, where his reserves<br> +were stationed. As the retreat went on it turned to a downright rout.<br> +The Confederates made only a feeble pursuit, but fear of pursuit spread<br> +alarm through the flying ranks, demoralized by long marching and hard<br> +fighting. Baggage and ammunition-wagons, ambulances, private vehicles<br> +which had been standing in the rear, joined the sweeping tide, adding to<br> +the confusion and in some places causing temporary blockade. Frightened<br> +teamsters cut traces and galloped recklessly away. Panic and stampede<br> +resulted, soon reaching the soldiers. Flinging away muskets and<br> +knapsacks, they sought safety in flight. The army entered Centreville a<br> +disorganized mass. Fugitives could not be stayed even there, but<br> +streamed through and on toward Washington. McDowell gave the order to<br> +continue the retreat. The reserve brigades, with the one regiment of<br> +regulars, covered the rear in good order. All that night the crazy<br> +hustle to the rear was kept up, and on Monday the hungry and exhausted<br> +stragglers poured into Washington under a drizzling rain, the people<br> +receiving them with heavy hearts but generous hands.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 339px; height: 438px;" alt="" + src="images/361Pic.jpg"><br> +General Joseph E. Johnston.<br> +<br> +<br> +The Union loss was 481 killed, 1,011 wounded, 1,460 prisoners.<br> +Twenty-five guns were lost, thirteen of them on the retreat. The<br> +Confederate loss was 387 killed, 1,580 wounded. The numbers actively<br> +engaged were about 18,000 on each side. General Sherman pronounced Bull<br> +Run "one of the best planned battles of the war, but one of the worst<br> +fought." The latter fact was but natural. The troops on both sides were<br> +poorly drilled, and most of them had never been under fire before.<br> +Precision of movement, concert of action on any large scale, were<br> +impossible. Neither side needed to be ashamed of this initial trial.<br> +<br> +The North was at first much cast down. The faint-hearted considered the<br> +Union hopelessly lost, but pluck and patriotism carried the day. On the<br> +morrow after the battle Congress voted that an army of 500,000 should be<br> +raised, and appropriated $500,000,000 to carry on the war. General<br> +McClellan, whose brilliant campaign in West Virginia had won him easy<br> +fame, was put in command of the Army of the Potomac. The young general<br> +was a West Point graduate and had served with distinction in the Mexican<br> +War. An accomplished military student, a skilful engineer, and a superb<br> +organizer, he threw himself with energy into the task of fortifying<br> +Washington and building up a splendid army. Many of the three-months<br> +volunteers re-enlisted. Thousands of new recruits came flocking to camp,<br> +and before long companies, regiments, and brigades amounting to 150,000<br> +men were drilling daily on the banks of the Potomac, while formidable<br> +works crowned the entire crest of Arlington Heights. In October the aged<br> +General Scott resigned, and McClellan, at the summit of his popularity<br> +with army and people, became commander-in-chief.<br> +<br> +<br> +<img style="border: 2px solid ; width: 327px; height: 378px;" alt="" + src="images/363Pic.jpg"><br> +General George B. McClellan.<br> +<br> +<br> +For several weeks after Bull Run it was feared that Beauregard and his<br> +men would descend upon Washington, then in a defenceless condition; but<br> +they were in no state to attack. They too felt the need of preparation<br> +for the coming struggle, whose magnitude both sides now began to<br> +realize.<br> +<br> +A disheartening affair occurred in October. On the night of the 20th two<br> +Massachusetts regiments crossed the Potomac at Ball's Bluff, a few miles<br> +above Washington, to surprise a hostile camp which according to rumor<br> +had been established there. A large force concealed in the woods<br> +attacked and forced them to retreat. They were re-enforced by 1,900 men<br> +under Colonel Baker. The enemy were also re-enforced. Baker was killed<br> +and the Union soldiers driven over the bluff into the river. The boats<br> +were totally inadequate in number, and the men had to make their way<br> +across as best they could, exposed to the Confederate fire. The total<br> +Union loss was 1,000.<br> +<br> +On the whole, then, the South had reason to be gratified with the<br> +aggregate result of the first year of war. Bull Run gave the<br> +Confederates a sense of invincibility, and the ready recognition by the<br> +foreign powers of their rights as belligerents, offered hope that<br> +England would soon acknowledge their independence itself. And they<br> +thought that the North had been doing its best when it had only been<br> +getting ready.<br> +<br> +<br> +END OF VOLUME III.<br> +HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES<br> +<br> +</big></big> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the United States, Volume 3 +(of 6), by E. Benjamin Andrews + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES *** + +***** This file should be named 23748-h.htm or 23748-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/7/4/23748/ + +Produced by Don Kostuch + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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/dev/null +++ b/23748-pdf.zip diff --git a/23748.txt b/23748.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..966106a --- /dev/null +++ b/23748.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5927 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the United States, Volume 3 (of +6), by E. Benjamin Andrews + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) + +Author: E. Benjamin Andrews + +Release Date: December 5, 2007 [EBook #23748] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES *** + + + + +Produced by Don Kostuch + + + + +[Transcriber's Notes] + +Text has been moved to avoid fragmentation of sentences and paragraphs. + +The other five texts in this series were obtained from the 1912 edition +of original books. Volume 3 was missing from the set. +This text, Volume 3, is derived from a PDF image file of the 1896 edition +on the Internet Archive at +http://www.archive.org/details/histusearliest03andrrich + +[End Transcriber's Notes] + + + +HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES + + + +[Illustration: Ten soldiers servicing and aiming a cannon.] +The First Gun Fired from Fort Sumter + + + +HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES + +FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY +OF AMERICA TO THE PRESENT DAY + +BY + +E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS +PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY + + +WITH 400 ILLUSTRATION AND MAPS + + +VOLUME III + + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1896 + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + +Press of J. J. Little & Co. +Astor Place. New York + + + +CONTENTS + +PERIOD II + +WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE +DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY + +1814--1840 + + +CHAPTER I. THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION. + +The Word "Whig." +Republican Prestige. +Schism. +Adams's Election. +Five Doctrines of Whiggism. +I. Broad Construction of the Constitution. +II. The Bank. +Death of Old and Birth of New. +Opposition by Jackson. +III. The Tariff of 1816. +Its Object. +IV. Land. +Whig versus Democratic Policy. +V. Internal Improvements +Rivers and Harbors. +Need of Better Inland Communication. +Contention between the Parties. +Whig Characteristics. +Adams. +Webster. +His Political Attitude. +Clay. +His Power, as an Orator. +His Duel with Randolph. +His Wit. +His Influence. + + +CHAPTER II. FLORIDA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE. + +Florida's Disputed Boundary. +West Florida Occupied. +Jackson Seizes East Florida. +Puts to Death Ambrister and Arbuthnot. +His Excuse. +Defended by Adams. +Sale of Florida. +Revolt of Spanish America. +Monroe's Declaration. +Its Origin. + + +CHAPTER III. THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. + +Missouri Wishes Statehood. +Early History of Slavery. +Hostility to it. +First Abolitionist Societies. +Ordinance of 1787. +Slavery in the North. +In the South. +Pleas for its Existence. +Missouri Compromise. +Pro-slavery Arguments. +The Policy Men. +Anti-slavery Opinions. +Difficulties of the Case. +The Anti-slavery Side Ignores these. + + +CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT NULLIFICATION. + +Rise of Tariff Rates after 1816. +Relations of Parties and Sections to the Tariff. +Minimum Principle. +Tariff of Abominations Adopted. +Harmful to the South. +Nullification Project. +Calhoun's Life and Pet Political Theory. +South Carolina Recedes. +Compromise Tariff. +State Rights and Central Government. +Webster's Plea. + + +CHAPTER V. MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S "REIGN." + +Jackson's Life. +Mistaken Ideas. +Civil Service Reform. +Perfecting of Party +Organization in the Country. +Jackson and the United States Bank. +His Popularity. +Revival of West Indian Trade. +French Spoliation Claims. +Paid. +Our Gold and Silver Coinage. +Gold Bill. +Increased Circulation of Gold. +Specie Circular. + + +CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH. + +Election of Harrison in 1840. +Causes. +Jackson's Violence. +Sub-treasury Policy. +Panic of 1837. +Decrease of Revenue. +Whig Opposition to Slavery. +Seminole War. +Amistad Case. +Texan Question. +"Tippecanoe and Tyler too." + + +CHAPTER VII. LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE. + +Population and Area. +The West. +The East. +An American Literature. +Newspaper +Enterprise, Mails, Eleemosynary Institutions. +American Character. +Temperance Reform. +The Land of the Free. +Religion. +Anti-masonic Movement. +Banking Craze. +Moon Hoax. +Party Spirit. +Jackson as a Knight Errant. +His Self-will. +Enmity between Adams and Jackson. +Costumes. + + +CHAPTER VIII. INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840. + +F. C. Lowell and his Waltham Power-loom. +Growth of Factory System. +New Corporation Laws. +Gas, Coal, and Other Industries. +The Same Continued. +The National Road. +Stages and Canals. +Ocean Lines. +Beginning of Railroads. +Opposition. +First Locomotive. +Multiplication of Railroads. + + +PERIOD III + +THE YEARS OF SLAVERY CONTROVERSY + +1840-1860 + +CHAPTER I. SLAVERY AFTER THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. + +Cotton and Slavery. +Evils of Slavery: Social, Economic. +Slave Insurrections. +Turner's Rebellion. +Abolition in Virginia. +Black Laws. +Lull in Anti-slavery +Agitation. +Colonization Society. +Fugitive Slave Laws. +Prigg's Case. +Personal Liberty +Laws in the North. +Kidnapping Expeditions. +Domestic Slave-trade. +Non-emancipation Laws. +Business Relations between North and South. + + +CHAPTER II. "IMMEDIATE ABOLITION." + +Renewed Hostility to Slavery. +Lundy. +Garrison. +Affiliations of this Movement. +The New England Anti-slave Society. +Significance, Purpose, Work. +Methods of Abolitionists. +Southern Opposition. +Northern. +Anti-abolitionist Riots at the North. +Murder of Lovejoy. +Outrages against Northern Blacks. +Colored Schools Closed. +Schism among the Abolitionists. +The Liberty Party. +Ultra-abolitionists' Unreason. +Why Abolitionism Spread. +Ambiguity of the Constitution. +Seizure of Black Seamen. +Grievances on both Sides. + + +CHAPTER III. THE MEXICAN WAR. + +Texas Declares her Independence. +Battle of San Jacinto. +The Democracy Favors +Annexation. +Calhoun's Purpose. +Opposition of Clay and the Whigs. +Texas Admitted to the Union. +Causes of the War. +The Nueces vs. the Rio Grande. +Preliminary Operations. +Battle of Palo Alto. +Declaration of War. +Monterey Captured. +Santa Anna again President. +Buena Vista. +Taylor's Victory. +Scott Appointed to Chief Command. +Capture of Vera Cruz. +Cerro Gordo. +Jalapa. +Re-enforced by Pierce. +On to the City of Mexico. +Contreras. +Churubusco. +Molino del Rey. +Storming of Chapultepec. +Capture of the Capital. +Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. +Its Conditions. +The Oregon Question. + + +CHAPTER IV. CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. + +Invasion of New Mexico. +Exploration and Seizure of California. +Discovery of Gold. +Resulting Excitement. +Increase of Population. +Gold Yield. +Early Law and Government. +Slavery's Victory. +The Wilmot Proviso. +Taylor President. +Application by California for Admission to the Union. +Clay's Omnibus Bill. +Webster Superseded by Sumner. +Passage of the Omnibus Compromise. +California a State. +Enlargement of Texas. +New Fugitive Slave Law. +Revival of Abolitionism. +Underground Railroad. +Rendition of Anthony Burns. +Other Cases. + + +CHAPTER V. THE FIGHT FOR KANSAS. + +Plot against the Missouri Compromise. +Pierce's Election. +The Kansas-Nebraska Bill. +Abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. +Squatter Sovereignty. +Anti-slavery Emigration to Kansas. +Political Jobbery by the Slavocracy. +Topeka Convention. +Kansas Riots. +Lecompton Constitution. +Opposed by Free-State Men. +Kansas Admitted to the Union. +Assault upon Sumner. +Southern Repudiation of the Douglas Theory. +Dred Scott Decision. +Startling Assumption of the Supreme Court. +Effect. +Counter-theory. + + +CHAPTER VI. SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES. + +Democracy and Whiggism. +Ambiguous Attitude of the Latter toward Slavery. +The Creole Case. +Giddings's Resolutions. +Quincy Adams as an Abolitionist. +The First Gag Law. +Adams's Opposition. +The Second and Third. +Their Repeal. +Pro-slavery Whigs. +Submission to Slavocracy. +Its Insolent Demands. +Death of Whiggism. +Americanism. +The Know-Nothings. +Revolt from the Democracy at the North. + + +CHAPTER VII. THE CRISIS. + +Consolidation of Anti-slavery Men. +Worse Black Laws. +Schemes for Foreign Conquest. +Lopez's and Walker's Expedition. +Ostend Manifesto. +Supremacy of Slavery. +Rise of Free-soilers. +Incipient Republicanism. +Republican Doctrine. +John Brown's Raid. +Schism between the Northern and the Southern Democrats. +Nomination of Douglas. +Breckenridge and Lane. +Bell and Everett. +Lincoln and Hamlin. +Lincoln's Popularity. +His Election to the Presidency. + + +CHAPTER VIII. MATERIAL PROGRESS + +Population and Economic Prosperity. +Growth of the West. +Indian Outbreaks. +Improvements farther East. +Canals and Railroads. +The Steam Horse in the West. +Morse's Telegraph. +Ocean Cables. +Minor Inventions. +Petroleum. +Financial Crisis of 1857. + + +PERIOD IV + +CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION + +1860-1868 + +CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF THE WAR. + +An "Irrepressible Conflict." +Growth of North. +Influence of Missouri Compromise Repeal. +Slavery as Viewed by the South. +Stephens. +Anti-Democratic Habits of Thought. +Compact Theory of the Union. +State Consciousness, South. +Argument for the Calhoun Theory. +Secession not Justifiable by this. +Moderates and Fire-eaters. +Northern Grievances. +Do not Excuse Secession. +Lincoln's Election. +Patriotic and Philanthropic Considerations Ignored. +Prudence also. +Resources of South and of North. + + +CHAPTER II. SECESSION + +Threats of Secession before 1860. +By New England. +By the South in 1856. +Governor Wise. +The 1860 Campaign. +Attitude of South Carolina. +Of the Gulf States. +Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana. +Election of Lincoln. +South Carolina will Secede. +Judge Magrath. +The Palmetto State Goes. +Enthusiasm. +The State Plays Nation. +Effect upon Other States. +Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana. +and Texas Follow. +Strong Union Spirit Still. +Vain. +Georgia and Secession. +The Question in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, + Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, North Carolina. +Seizure of United States Property. +Floyd's Theft. +Fort Moultrie Evacuated for Sumter. +Fort Pickens. +New Orleans Mint. +Twiggs's Surrender. +Theory of Seceding States as to Property Seized. +Southern Confederacy. +Davis President. +His History. +Inaugural Address. +Powers. +Confederate Government and Constitution. +Slavery. +State Sovereignty. +Tariff. +Good Features. +Bright Prospects of the New Power. + + +CHAPTER III. THE NORTH IN THE WINTER OF 1860-61. + +Apathy. +Disbelief in South's Seriousness. +Divided Opinion. +Suggestions toward Compromise. +Anti-coercion. +Convention at Albany. +Mayor Wood of New York. +Buchanan's Vacillation. +Treason all about Him. +Star of the West Fired on. +Inaction of Congress. +Crittenden's Compromise Lost. +Washington Peace Congress. +Vain. +Earnestness of South. +Lincoln Inaugurated. +His Address. +How Received. +His Difficult Task. +Plight of Army, Navy, Treasury. +Sumter Fired on. +Defended. +Evacuated. +Effect at North. +War Spirit. +75,000 Volunteers. +The Sixth Massachusetts in Baltimore. +Washington in Danger. +General Scott's Measures. +March of the Massachusetts Eighth and the New York Seventh. +Their Arrival in Washington. + + +CHAPTER IV. WAR BEGUN + +Both Sides Expect a Brief Struggle. +South's Advantages. +Call for Three Years' Men. +Butler in Baltimore. +Maryland Saved to the Union. +Alexandria and Arlington +Heights Occupied. +Ellsworth's Death. +Each Side Concentrates Armies in Virginia. +Fight at Big Bethel. +At Vienna. +The Struggle in Missouri. +Lyon and Price. +Battle of Wilson's Creek. +Lyon's Death. +Fremont, Hunter, and Halleck in Missouri. +The Contest in Kentucky. +The State becomes Unionist. +In West Virginia. +Lee and McClellan. +Brilliant Campaign of the Latter. +West Virginia Made a State. +Beauregard at Manassas. +Patterson's Advance. +Harper's Ferry Taken. +"On to Richmond." +Battle of Bull Run. +Union Defeat and Retreat. +Losses. +Comments. +Depression at the North, followed by New Resolution. +McClellan. +Army of Potomac Organized. +The Capital Safe. +Affair of Ball's Bluff. +The South Hopeful. +And with Reason. + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +THE FIRST GUN FIRED FROM FORT SUMTER. + +WEBSTER'S HOME AT MARSHFIELD, MASS. + +DANIEL WEBSTER. +(From a picture by Healy at the State Department, Washington). + +THE HOUSE IN WHICH HENRY CLAY WAS BORN. + +THE SCHOOL-HOUSE OF THE SLASHES. + +HENRY CLAY. (From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype). + +JOHN RANDOLPH. +(From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society). + +JAMES MONROE. +(From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T. Jefferson +Coolidge). + +JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. (From a picture by Gilbert Stuart). + +JOHN C. CALHOUN. (From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery). + +CALHOUN'S LIBRARY AND OFFICE. + +ANDREW JACKSON (From a photograph by Brady). + +ROGER B. TANEY. + +MARTIN VAN BUREN. (From a photograph by Brady). + +GENERAL WILLIAM J. WORTH. + +WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. +(From a copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in 1840). + +JOHN TYLER. (From a photograph by Brady). + +A PONY EXPRESS. + +THURLOW WEED. (From an unpublished photograph by Disderi, +Paris, in 1861. In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes). + +FROM AN OLD TIME-TABLE. + (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide). + +TRIAL BETWEEN PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE "TOM THUMB" AND ONE OF +STOCKTON'S AND STOKES' HORSE CARS. (From "History of the First +Locomotives in America"). + +PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE. + +OBVERSE AND REVERSE OF A TICKET USED IN 1838 ON THE +NEW YORK & HARLEM RAILROAD. + +BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD, 1830. + +OLD BOSTON & WORCESTER RAILWAY TICKET (ABOUT 1837). + +THE "SOUTH CAROLINA," 1831, AND PLAN OF ITS RUNNING GEAR. + +BOSTON & WORCESTER RAILROAD, 1835. + +THE DISCOVERY OF NAT TURNER. + +JOHN G. WHITTIER. + +WM. LLOYD GARRISON. + +WENDELL PHILLIPS. + +FACSIMILE OF HEADING OF THE "LIBERATOR." + +GENERAL SAM. HOUSTON. + +GENERAL SANTA ANNA. + +JAMES K. POLK. (After a photograph by Brady). + +GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT. + +THE PLAZA OF THE CITY OF MEXICO. + +ZACHARY TAYLOR. (After a photograph by Brady). + +THE SITE OF SAN FRANCISCO IN 1848. + +SUTTER'S MILL, CALIFORNIA, WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED. + +MILLARD FILLMORE. +(From a painting by Carpenter in 1853. at the City Hall, New York). + +THE RENDITION OF ANTHONY BURNS IN BOSTON. + +FRANKLIN PIERCE. +(From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery). + +STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. + +CHARLES SUMNER. + +THOMAS H. BENTON. + +ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah +Brooks. Only five copies of this photograph were printed). + +JOHN BROWN. + +WILLIAM H. SEWARD. (From a photograph by Brady). + +ELIAS HOWE. + +THE VANDALIA. THE PIONEER PROPELLER ON THE LAKES. + +OLD STONE TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA SUSPENSION BRIDGE. + +THE NEW IRON TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA BRIDGE. + +BIRTHPLACE OF S. F. B. MORSE, AT CHARLESTOWN, MASS. BUILT 1775. + +S. F. B. MORSE. + +THE FIRST TELEGRAPHIC INSTRUMENT, AS EXHIBITED IN 1837 BY MORSE. + + +CALENDERS HEATED INTERNALLY BY STEAM, FOR SPREADING INDIA RUBBER INTO +SHEETS OR UPON CLOTH, CALLED THE "CHAFFEE MACHINE." + +THE GREAT EASTERN LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE. + +SOUNDING MACHINE USED BY A CABLE EXPEDITION. + +CYRUS W. FIELD. + +PAYING OUT CABLE GEAR. FROM CHART HOUSE. + +SHORE END OF CABLE--EXACT SIZE. + +BARNACLES ON CABLE. + +JAMES BUCHANAN. (From a photograph by Brady). + +STREET BANNER IN CHARLESTON. + +MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON. + +MAJOR ANDERSON REMOVING HIS FORCES FROM FORT MOULTRIE TO FORT SUMTER, +DECEMBER 26, 1861. + +JEFFERSON DAVIS. + +ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. + +SCENE OF THE FIRST BLOODSHED, AT BALTIMORE. + +CAPTAIN NATHANIEL LYON. + +GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT. + +GENERAL IRVIN McDOWELL. + +GENERAL SAMUEL P. HEINTZELMAN. + +GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON. + +GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN. + + + +LIST OF MAPS + +THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE ADMISSION OF ARKANSAS, 1836. + +PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA, MORNING 23D FEBRUARY, 1847. + +ROUTE OF THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS TROOPS THROUGH BALTIMORE. + +THE ROUTES OF APPROACH TO WASHINGTON. + +THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. + +BULL RUN--THE FIELD OF STRATEGY. + +BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE FORENOON. + +BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE AFTERNOON. + + + +PERIOD II. + +WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY. + +1814-1840 + +CHAPTER I. + +THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION + +[1820] + +The term "whig" is of Scotch origin. During the bloody conflict of the +Covenanters with Charles II. nearly all the country people of Scotland +sided against the king. As these peasants drove into Edinburgh to +market, they were observed to make great use of the word "whiggam" in +talking to their horses. Abbreviated to "whig," it speedily became, and +has in England and Scotland ever since remained, a name for the +opponents of royal power. It was so employed in America in our +Revolutionary days. Sinking out of hearing after Independence, it +reappeared for fresh use when schism came in the overgrown Democratic +Party. + +The republican predominance after 1800, so complete, bidding so fair to +be permanent, drew all the more fickle Federalists speedily to that +side. Since it was evident that the new party was quite as national in +spirit as the ruling element of the old, the Adams Federalists, those +most patriotic, least swayed in their politics by commercial motives, +including Marshall, the War Federalists, and the recruits enlisted at +the South during Adams's administration, also went over, in sympathy if +not in name, to Republicanism. The fortunate issue of the war silenced +every carper, and the ten years following have been well named the "era +of good feeling." + +But though for long very harmonious, yet, so soon as Federalists began +swelling their ranks, the Republicans ceased to be a strictly +homogeneous party. Incipient schism appeared by 1812, at once announced +and widened by the creation of the protective system and the new United +States Bank in 1816, and the attempted launching of an internal +improvements regime in 1821, all three the plain marks of federalist +survival, however men might shun that name. Republicans like Clay, +Calhoun in his early years, and Quincy Adams, while somewhat more +obsequious to the people, as to political theory differed from old +Federalists in little but name. The same is true of Clinton, candidate +against Madison for the Presidency in 1812, and of many who supported +him. + +[1825] + +But to drive home fatally the wedge between "democratic" and "national" +Republicans, required Jackson's quarrel with Adams and Clay in 1825, +when, the election being thrown into the House, although Jackson had +ninety-nine electoral votes to Adams's eighty-four, Crawford's +forty-one, and Clay's thirty-seven, Clay's supporters, by a "corrupt +bargain," as Old Hickory alleged, voted for Adams and made him +President. Hickory's idea--an untenable one--was that the House was +bound to elect according to the tenor of the popular and the electoral +vote. After all this, however, so potent the charm of the old party, the +avowal of a purpose to build up a new one did not work well, Clay +polling in 1832 hardly half the electoral vote of Adams in 1828. This +democratic gain was partly owing, it is true, to Jackson's popularity, +to the belief that he had been wronged in 1825, and to the widening of +the franchise which had long been going on in the nation. Calhoun's +election as Vice-President in 1828, by a large majority, shows that +party crystallization was then far from complete. From about 1834, the +new political body thus gradually evolved was regularly called the +Whigs, though the name had been heard ever since 1825. + +[1830-1833] + +The doctrines characteristic of Whiggism were chiefly five: + +I. Broad Construction of the Constitution. + +This has been sufficiently explained in the chapter on Federalism and +Anti-Federalism, and need not be dwelt upon. The whig attitude upon it +appears in all that follows. + +II. The Bank. + +The First United States Bank had perished by the expiration of its +charter in 1811. It had been very useful, indeed almost indispensable, +in managing the national finances, and its decease, with the consequent +financial disorder, was a most terrible drawback in the war. Recharter +was, however, by a very small majority, refused. The evils flowing from +this perverse step manifesting themselves day by day, a new Bank of the +United States, modelled closely after the first, was chartered on April +10, 1816, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster being its chief champions. +Republican opponents, Madison among them, were brought around by the +plea that war had proved a national bank a necessary and hence a +constitutional helper of the Government in its appointed work. + +In the management of this second bank there were disorder and +dishonesty, which greatly limited its usefulness. This, notwithstanding, +was considerable. The credit of the nation was restored and its treasury +resumed specie payments. But confidence in the institution was shaken. +We shall see how it met with President Jackson's opposition on every +possible occasion. In 1832 he vetoed a bill for the renewal of its +charter, to expire in 1836, and in 1833 caused all the Government's +deposits in it, amounting to ten million dollars, to be removed. These +blows were fatal to the bank, though it secured a charter from +Pennsylvania and existed, languishing, till 1839. + +III. The Tariff. + +Until the War of 1812 the main purpose of our tariff policy had been +revenue, with protection only as an incident. During the war +manufacturing became largely developed, partly through our own embargo, +partly through the armed hostilities. Manufacture had grown to be an +extensive interest, comparing in importance with agriculture and +commerce. Therefore, in the new tariff of 1816, the old relation was +reversed, protection being made the main aim and revenue the incident. +It is curious to note that this first protective tariff was championed +and passed by the Republicans and bitterly opposed by the Federalists +and incipient Whigs. Webster argued and inveighed vehemently against it, +appealing to the curse of commercial restriction and of governmental +interference with trade, and to the low character of manufacturing +populations. + +But very soon the tables were turned: the Whigs became the high-tariff +party, the Democrats more and more opposing this policy in favor of a +low or a revenue tariff. It should be marked that even now the idea of +protection in its modern form was not the only one which went to make a +high tariff popular. There were, besides, the wish to be prepared for +war by the home production of war material, and also the spirit of +commercial retortion, paying back in her own coin England's burdensome +tax upon our exports to her shores. + +IV. Land. + +What may not improperly be styled the whig land policy sprung from the +whig sentiment for large customs duties. Cheap public lands, offering +each poor man a home for the taking, constantly tended to neutralize the +effect of duties, by raising wages in the manufacturing sections, people +needing a goodly bribe to enter mills in the East when an abundant +living was theirs without money and without price on removing west. As a +rule, therefore, though this question did not divide the two parties so +crisply as the others, the Whigs opposed the free sale of government +land, while the Democrats favored that policy. In spite of this, +however, eastern people who moved westward--and they constituted the +West's main population--quite commonly retained their whig politics even +upon the tariff question itself. + +V. Internal Improvements. + +It has always been admitted that Congress may lay taxes to build and +improve light-houses, public docks, and all such properties whereof the +United States is to hold the title. The general improvement of harbors, +on the other hand, the Constitution meant to leave to the States, +allowing each to cover the expense by levying tonnage duties. The +practice for years corresponded with this. The inland commonwealths, +however, as they were admitted, justly regarded this unfair unless +offset by Government's aid to them in the construction of roads, canals, +and river ways. + + +[Illustration: Large sprawling residence.] +Webster's Home at Marshfield. Mass. + + +The War of 1812 revealed the need of better means for direct +communication with the remote sections of the Union. Transportation to +Detroit had cost fifty cents per pound of ammunition, sixty dollars per +barrel of flour. All admitted that improved internal routes were +necessary. The question was whether the general Government had a right +to construct them without amendment to the Constitution. + +The Whigs, like the old Federalists, affirmed such right, appealing to +Congress's power to establish post-roads, wage war, supervise +inter-state trade, and conserve the common defence and general welfare. +As a rule, the Democrats, being strict constructionists, denied such +right. Some of them justified outlay upon national rivers and commercial +harbors under the congressional power of raising revenue and regulating +commerce. Others conceded the rightfulness of subsidies to States even +for bettering inland routes. Treasury surplus at times, and the many +appropriations which, by common consent, had been made under Monroe and +later for the old National Road, encouraged the whig contention; but the +whig policy had never met general approval down to the time when the +whole question was taken out of politics by the rise of the railroad +system after 1832. The National Road, meantime, extending across Ohio +and Indiana on its way to St. Louis, was made over in 1830 to the States +through which it passed. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Daniel Webster. From a picture by Healy at the State Department, +Washington. + + +The Whig Party deserves great praise as the especial repository, through +several decades, of the spirit of nationality in our country. It +cherished this, and with the utmost boldness proclaimed doctrines +springing from it, at a time when the Democracy, for no other reason +than that it had begun as a state rights party, foolishly combated +these. Yet Whiggism was mightier in theories than in deeds, in political +cunning than in statesmanship. It was far too fearful, on the whole, +lest the country should not be sufficiently governed. To secure power it +allied itself now with the Anti-Masons, strong after 1826 in New +England, New York, and Pennsylvania; and again with the Nullifiers of +South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, led by Calhoun, Troup, and +White. It did the latter by making Tyler, an out-and-out Nullifier, its +Vice-President in 1840. + +A leading Whig during nearly all his political career was John Quincy +Adams, one of the ablest, most patriotic, and most successful presidents +this country has ever had. He possessed a thorough education, mainly +acquired abroad, where, sojourning with his distinguished father, he had +enjoyed while still a youth better opportunities for diplomatic training +than many of our diplomatists have known in a lifetime. He went to the +United States Senate in 1803 as a Federalist. Disgusted with that party, +he turned Republican, losing his place. From 1806 to 1809 he was +professor in Harvard College. In the latter year Madison sent him +Minister to St. Petersburg. He was commissioner at Ghent, then Minister +to England, then Monroe's Secretary of State, then President. + +[Illustration: Small house.] +The House in which Henry Clay was Born. + + +But Mr. Adams's best work was done in the House of Representatives after +he was elected to that body in 1830. He sat in the House until his +death, in 1848--its acknowledged leader in ability, in activity, and in +debate. Friend and foe hailed him as the "Old Man Eloquent," nor were +any there anxious to be pitted against him. He spoke upon almost every +great national question, each time displaying general knowledge; legal +lore, and keenness of analysis surpassed by no American of his or any +age. + +Webster was, however, the great orator of the party. Reared upon a farm +and educated at Dartmouth College, he went to Congress from New +Hampshire as a Federalist in 1813. Removing to Boston, he soon entered +Congress from Massachusetts, first as representative, then as senator, +and from 1827 was in the Senate almost continuously till 1850. He was +Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and again in the +Taylor-Fillmore cabinet from 1850. + + +[Illustration: One room log building.] +The School-house of the Slashes. + + +As an orator Webster had no peer in his time, nor have the years since +evoked his peer. He was an influential party leader, and repeatedly +thought of for President, though too prominent ever to be nominated. On +two momentous questions, the tariff and slavery, he vacillated, his +dubious action concerning the latter costing him his popularity in New +England. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Henry Clay. From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype. + + +Yet in many respects the most interesting figure in the party was Henry +Clay. He was born amid the swamps of Hanover County, Va., and had grown +up in most adverse surroundings. His father, a Baptist clergyman, died +while he was an infant, leaving him destitute. In "The Slashes," as the +neighborhood where Clay passed his childhood was called, he might often +have been seen astride a sorry horse with a rope bridle and no saddle, +carrying his bag of grain to the mill. He had attended only district +schools. After obtaining the rudiments of a legal education in Richmond +by service as a lawyer's clerk, he removed to Kentucky. He was soon +famous as a criminal lawyer, and a little later as a politician. The +rest of his life was spent in Congress or cabinet. + +Clay's speeches read ill, but were powerful in their delivery. He spoke +directly to the heart. As he proceeded, his tall and awkward form swayed +with passion. His voice was sweet and winsome. Once Tom Marshall was to +face him in joint debate over a salary grab for which Clay had voted. +Clay had the first word, and as he warmed to his work Marshall slunk +away through the crowd in despair. "Come back," said Clay's haters to +him; "you can answer every point." "Of course," replied Marshall, "but I +can't get up there and do it now." The common people shouted for Clay as +they shouted for neither Webster nor Adams. He had infinite fund of +anecdote, remembered everyone he had ever seen, and was kindly to all. +John Tyler is said to have wept when Clay failed of the Presidential +nomination in the Whig Convention of 1839. + +[1840] + +Clay's vices and inconsistencies were readily forgiven. He had denounced +duelling as barbarous, yet when sharp-tongued John Randolph referred to +him and Adams as having, in 1825, formed "the coalition of Blifil and +Black George, the combination of the Puritan and the blackleg"--for Clay +gambled--Clay challenged him. They met, the diminutive Randolph being in +his dressing-gown. Neither was hurt, as Randolph fired in air and Clay +was no shot. Being asked why he did not kill Randolph, Clay said: "I +aimed at the part of his gown where I thought he was, but when the +bullet got there he had moved." In 1842, when Lord Ashburton was in +Washington, there was a famous whist game, my lord, with Mr. Crittenden, +playing against Clay and the Russian Minister, Count Bodisco, while +Webster looked on. "What shall the stake be?" asked his lordship. "Out +of deference to Her Majesty," said Clay, "we will make it a sovereign." + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +John Randolph. +From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society. + + +Emphatically patriotic, super-eminent in debate, ambitious, adventurous +in political diplomacy, a hard worker, incessant in activity for his +party, temperate upon the slavery question, whole-souled in every +measure or policy calculated to advance nationality, this versatile man +may be put down as foremost among the leaders of the Whig Party from its +origin till his death. + + + +CHAPTER II. + +FLORIDA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE + +[1816] + +It was a delicate question after the Louisiana purchase how much +territory it embraced east of the Mississippi. Louisiana had under +France, till 1762, reached the Perdido, Florida's western boundary at +present, and was "retroceded" by Spain to France in 1800 "with the same +extent that it had when France possessed it." The United States of +course succeeded to whatever France thus recovered. Spain claimed still +to own West Florida, the name given by Great Britain on receiving it +from France in 1763 to the part of Louisiana between the Perdido and the +Mississippi. Spain had never acquired the district from France, but +obtained it by conquest from Great Britain during our Revolution. + +This claim by Spain, based only on the "retro" in the treaty of 1800, +our Government viewed as fanciful, regarding West Florida undoubtedly +ours through the Louisiana purchase. Spain was intractable, first of +herself, later still more so through Napoleon's dictation. Hence our +offer, in Jefferson's time, to avoid war, of a lump sum for the two +Floridas was spurned by her. In 1810 and 1811, to save it from +anarchy--also to save it from Great Britain or France, now in the +whitest heat of their contest for Spain--we occupied West Florida, as +certainly entitled to it against those powers, yet with no view of +precluding further negotiations with Spain. When in 1812 Louisiana +became a State, its eastern boundary ran as now, including a goodly +portion of the region in debate. + +[1817] + +The necessity of acquiring East Florida, too, was more and more +apparent. That country was without rule, full of filibusterers, +privateers, hostile refugee Creeks and runaway negroes, of whose +services the English had availed themselves freely during the war of +1812, when Spaniards and English made Florida a perpetual base for +hostile raids into our territory. A fort then built by the English on +the Appalachicola and left intact at the peace with some arms and +ammunition, had been occupied by the negroes, who, from this retreat, +menaced the peace beyond the line. Spain could not preserve law and +order here. This was perhaps a sufficient excuse for the act of General +Gaines in crossing into Florida and bombarding the negro fort, July 27, +1816. Amelia Island, on the Florida coast, a nest of lawless men from +every nation, was in 1817 also seized by the United States with the same +propriety. Knowledge that Spain resented these acts encouraged the +Floridians. Collisions continually occurred all along the line, finally +growing into general hostility. Such was the origin of the First +Seminole War. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +James Monroe. From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T. +Jefferson Coolidge. + + +[1818] + +December, 1817, Jackson was placed in command in Georgia. To clear out +the filibusterers, the chief source of the Indians' discontent ever +since before the Creek War, the hero of New Orleans, mistakenly +supposing himself to be fortified by his Government's concurrence, +boldly took forcible possession of all East Florida. Ambrister and +Arbuthnot, two officious English subjects found there, he put to death. + +This procedure was quite characteristic of Old Hickory. He acted upon +the theory that by the law of nations any citizen of one land making war +upon another land, the two being at peace, becomes an outlaw. +International law has no such doctrine, and most likely the maxim +occurred to Jackson rather as an excuse after the act than in the way of +forethought. Nor was it ever proved that the two victims were guilty as +Jackson alleged. With him this probably made little difference. Having +undertaken to quiet the Floridian outbreaks he was determined to +accomplish his end, whatever the consequences of some of his means. + +With the country the New Orleans victor, who had now dared to hang a +British subject, was ten times a hero, but the deed confused and +troubled Monroe's cabinet not a little. Calhoun wished General Jackson +censured, while all his cabinet colleagues disapproved his high-handed +acts and stood ready to disavow them with reparation. On this occasion +Jackson owed much to one whom he subsequently hated and denounced, viz., +Quincy Adams, by whose bold and acute defence of his doubtful doings, +managed with a fineness of argument and diplomacy which no then American +but Adams could command, he was formally vindicated before both his own +Government and the Governments of England and Spain. + +The posts seized had of course to be given up, yet our bold invasion had +rendered Spain willing at last to sell Florida, while Great Britain, +wishing our countenance in her opposition to the anti-progressive, +misnamed Holy Alliance of continental monarchs, concurred. Spain after +all got the better of the bargain, as we surrendered all claim to Texas, +which the Louisiana purchase had really made ours. + +[1823] + +The Florida imbroglio nursed to its first public utterance a sentiment +which has ever since been spontaneously taken as a principle of American +public policy, almost as if it were a part of our law itself. Spain's +American dependencies had been sensible enough to avail themselves of +that land's distraction in Napoleon's time, to set up as states on their +own account. She naturally wanted them back. Ferdinand VII. withheld +till 1820 his signature of the treaty ceding Florida, in order to +prevent--which, after all, it did not--our recognition of these +revolted provinces as independent nations. Backed by the powerful +Austrian minister, Metternich, and by the Holy Alliance, France, having +aided Ferdinand to suppress at home the liberal rebellion of 1820-23, +began to moot plans for subduing the new Spanish-American States. Great +Britain opposed this, out of motives partly commercial, partly +philanthropic, partly relating to international law, yet was unwilling +so early to recognize the independence of those nations as the United +States had done. + +Assured at least of England's moral support, President Monroe in his +message of December, 1823, declared that we should consider any attempt +on the part of the allied monarchs "to extend their system to any +portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," and +any interposition by them to oppress the young republics or to control +their destiny, "as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward +the United States." This, in kernel, is the first part of Monroe's +doctrine. + +The second part added: "The American continents, by the free and +independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are +henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by +any European powers." The meaning of this was that the mere hap of first +occupancy on the continent by the citizens of any country would not any +longer be recognized by us as giving that country a title to the spot +occupied. + +These important doctrines--for though akin in principle they are really +two--were no sudden creation of individual thought, but the result +rather of slow processes in the public mind. Germs of the first are +traceable to Washington; express statements of both, yet not essentially +detracting from Monroe's originality, to Jefferson. Both were put in +form by Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State. Especially Monroe's, +we believe, is the second, a resolution to which Russia's advance down +the Pacific coast, and more still the recent vexations from the +proximity of Spain in Florida, had pushed him. + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE + +Louisiana having become a State in 1812, that portion of the purchase +north of the thirty-third degree took the name of the Missouri +Territory. St. Louis was its centre of population and of influence. + +[1818] + +Being found in this extensive domain at the purchase, slavery had never +been hindered in its growth. It had therefore taken firm root and was +popular. The application, early in 1818, of the densest part of Missouri +Territory for admission into the Union as a slave State, called +attention to this threatening status of slavery beyond the Mississippi, +and occasioned in Congress a prolonged, able, angry, and momentous +debate. Jefferson, still alive, wrote, "The Missouri question is the +most portentous which has ever threatened the Union. In the gloomiest +hour of the Revolutionary War I never had apprehensions equal to those +which I feel from this source." + +To see the bearing of the tremendous question thus raised, we have need +of a retrospect. Property in man is older than history and has been +nearly universal. It cannot be doubted that in an early stage of human +development slavery is a means of furthering civilization. Negro slavery +originated in Africa, spread to Spain before the discovery of America, +to America soon after, and from the Spanish colonies to the English. The +first notice we have of it in English America is that in +1619 a Dutch ship landed twenty blacks at Jamestown for sale. The Dutch +West India Company began importing slaves into Manhattan in 1626. There +were slaves in New England by 1637. Newport was subsequently a great +harbor for slavers. Georgia offered the strongest resistance to the +introduction of the system, but it was soon overcome. Till about 1700, +Virginia had a smaller proportion of slave population than some northern +colonies, and the change later was mostly due to considerations not of +morality but of profit. Anti-slavery cries were indeed heard from an +early period, but they were few and faint. Penn held slaves, though +ordering their emancipation at his death. Whitfield thought slavery to +be of God. But its most culpable abettor was the English Government, +moved by the profits of the slave trade. A Royal African Company, with +the Duke of York, afterward James II., for some time its president, was +formed to monopolize this business, which monarchs and ministries +furthered to the utmost of their power. + +Thus the Revolution found slavery in all the colonies, north as well as +south. But it was then, so far south as Virginia, thought to be an evil. +That commonwealth had passed many laws to restrain it, but the King had +commanded the Governor not to assent to any of them. The Legislature, +replying, stigmatized the traffic as inhuman and a threat to the very +existence of the colony. Hostility extended from the trade to slavery +itself. Jefferson was for emancipation with deportation, and trembled +for his country as he reflected upon the wrong of slavery and the +justice of God. Patrick Henry, George Mason, Peyton Randolph, +Washington, Madison, in a word all the great Virginians of the time held +similar views. + +The Quakers of Pennsylvania were, however, the most aggressive of +slavery's foes. So early as 1775 a society, the first in America if not +in the world for promoting its abolition, was formed in Pennsylvania. In +1789 it was incorporated, with Franklin for president. Similar +organizations soon rose in several northern States, numbering among +their members many of the most eminent men in the land. The British +Abolition Society, formed in 1787, and the labors of Wilberforce, +Clarkson, and Zachary Macaulay against the slave trade in the West +Indies, had influence here, as had still more the French Assembly's bold +proclamation of the Rights of Man. + +The Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwest Territory marked a most decisive +point in the history of slavery. By its decree, in Jefferson's language, +there was never to be either slavery or involuntary servitude in the +said territory otherwise than in punishment for crimes. It is to the +everlasting honor of the southern members then in the Continental +Congress that they all voted for this inhibition. Virginia, whose assent +as a State was necessary to its validity, she having at this time rights +over much of the domain in question, also concurred. Whatever the +strictly legal weight of this prohibition over the immense Louisiana +purchase, it certainly aided much in confirming freedom as the +presupposition and maxim of our law over all our national territory. + +Vermont had never recognized slavery save to prohibit it in its first +constitution. In New Hampshire it existed but nominally. The +Massachusetts constitution of 1780 virtually ended it in that State. +Gradual abolition statutes passed in Pennsylvania in 1780, in Rhode +Island and Connecticut in 1784. The constitution made it possible to +forbid the importation of slaves in 1808. A national law to that effect +was passed in 1807, making the trade illegal and affixing to it heavy +penalties. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1816 for the +purpose of negro deportation. It did little of this, but rendered some +service toward carrying out the act against slave importation. A new law +in 1820, which made this traffic piracy, punishable with death, was +partly due to its influence. Also many, like Birney, Gerrit Smith and +the Tappans, who began as colonizationists, subsequently became +abolitionists. + +Notwithstanding all these influences slavery increased in strength every +year. South Carolina and Georgia were finding it exceedingly profitable +for cotton and rice culture, and the income from slave traffic into the +vast opening lands of Tennessee and Kentucky constituted an irresistible +temptation. In spite of the law of 1807 and of the indescribable horrors +of the business, even the foreign slave trade went on. The institution +found many defenders in the Federal Convention of 1787, and in the first +and subsequent Congresses. The pleas began to be raised, so current +later, that the negro was an inferior being, slavery God's ordinance, a +blessing to slaves and masters alike, and emancipation a folly. Now +began also that policy of bravado by which, for sixty years, the friends +of slavery bullied their opponents into shameful inaction upon that +accursed thing politically as well as morally, which was so nearly to +cost the nation its life. Thus stood matters when the Missouri +Compromise was mooted in the national Legislature. + +We hardly need say that this strife ended in a compromise. Missouri was +created a slave State, balanced by Maine as a free State, but at the +same time slavery was to be excluded forever from all the remainder of +the Louisiana purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern +line of Virginia and Kentucky as well as of Missouri itself. The land +between Missouri and Louisiana had been in 1819 erected into the +"Territory of Arkansaw." + +In the memorable discussion over this issue, involving the country as +well as Congress, two sorts of argumentation were heard in favor of the +suit of Missouri. The genuine pro-slavery men urged the sacredness of +property as such, and the special sacredness of property-right in slaves +as tacitly guaranteed by the Constitution. They also made much of the +third article of the Louisiana purchase treaty. This read as follows: +"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the +Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according +to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all +the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; +and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free +enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they +profess." + +There were with these, men who acted from mere policy, thinking it best +to admit the slave State because of the difficulty and also the danger +to the Union of suppressing slavery there. They appealed as well to the +sacred compromises in the Constitution, meaning the permission at first +to import slaves, the three-fifths rule for slave representation in +Congress, and the fugitive slave clause. They spoke much of the +necessity of preserving the balance of power within the Union, and of +Congress's inaction as to slavery in the Louisiana purchase hitherto, +and also in Florida. These arguments won many professed foes of slavery, +as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Quincy Adams. In all Congress Clay was +the most earnest pleader for the compromise. + +To all these arguments the unbending friends of free soil replied that +property right was subordinate to the national good, and that Congress +had full power over territorial institutions and should never have +permitted slavery to curse the domain in question. If it had committed +error in the past, that could not excuse continuance in error. The terms +of the Louisiana purchase, it was further urged, could not, even if they +had been meant to do so, which was not true, detract from this sovereign +power. It was pointed out that in every case in which a State had been +admitted thus far, Congress had prescribed conditions. It was boldly +said, still further, that if slavery threatened disunion unless allowed +its way, it ought all the more to be denied its way. + +The chief strength of slavery in this crisis lay in the distressing +practical difficulty, if the prayer of Missouri were refused, of dealing +with slaves and slave proprietorship there, and of quieting a numerous +and spirited population bent upon statehood and slavery together. The +more decided foes of slavery did not sufficiently consider these +complications. Nor did they duly reflect upon the sweeping triumph which +freedom had withal secured in the pledge that the vast bulk of the +Louisiana purchase should be forever free. The pledge was indeed broken +in 1854, but not until such a sense of its sacredness had been impressed +upon the country that the breach availed slavery nothing. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE GREAT NULLIFICATION + +[1816-1828] + +The tariff rates of 1816 on cottons and woollens were to be twenty-five +per cent. for three years, after that twenty. Instead of this the cotton +tariff was in 1824 replaced at twenty-five per cent., the same as that +upon woollens costing thirty-three and a third cents or less per square +yard; woollens over this price bearing thirty per cent. Wool, which by +the tariff of 1816 was free, now bore, some grades fifteen, some twenty, +some thirty per cent. Iron duties were put up in 1818 and again in 1824, +from which date for ten years they ranged between forty and one hundred +per cent. The whole tendency of tariff rates was strongly upward. The +duty upon all dutiables averaged between 1816 and 1824 only twenty-four +and a half per cent; from 1824 to 1828 the average was thirty-two and a +half per cent. Importation remained copious, notwithstanding, which made +the cry for protection louder than ever. + +[1828] + +From Quincy Adams's presidency the tariff question becomes on the one +hand political, dividing Whigs from Democrats about exactly, which had +never been the case before, and on the other, sectional, the West, the +Centre, and now also the East, pitted against the solid South, except +Louisiana. The year 1824 heard Webster's last speech for free trade and +saw Calhoun's and Jackson's last vote for protection. However, so strong +was the protectionist sentiment in the XXth Congress, though democratic, +that free-traders could hope to defeat the new tariff bill of 1828 only +by rendering it odious to New England. They therefore conspired to make +prohibitive its rates for Smyrna wool, and nearly so those on iron, +hemp, and cordage for ship-building; also on molasses, the raw material +for rum, whereon no drawback was longer to be allowed if it was +exported. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +John Quincy Adams. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart. + + +The Whigs had arranged, to be now passed, a series of minimum rates on +woollens, by which all costing over fifty cents a square yard were to +pay as if costing $2.50, and all over this as if costing $4.00. The rate +was to be forty per cent. the first year, forty-five the second, and +fifty thereafter. + +This illustrates the famous "minimum principle," which has played such a +figure in all our tariff history since 1816, its effect being always to +make the tariff much higher than it seems. Thus in the case before us, +most of the woollens then imported cost about ninety cents. If based on +this price, the tariff would be thirty-six per cent., but if based on +$2.50 as the price, it would mount up to one hundred and ten per cent. +To prevent this and to render the bill still more unpalatable to the +Whigs, the Democrats introduced a dollar "minimum," so that the tariff +on the bulk of our imported woollens, costing, as just stated, about +ninety cents, would come in at forty-four and four-tenths per cent. + +But as this was after all more vigorous protection than woollens had +before received, amounting, through minima, in some cases to over one +hundred per cent., sixteen out of the thirty-nine New England members, +led by Webster, accepted this universally odious tariff bill--the Tariff +of Abominations, it was called--as the preferable evil, and, aided by a +few Democrats in each house, made it a law. The average duty on +dutiables was now about forty-three and a third per cent. + +No one can question that this high tariff worked injustice to the South. +It forced from her an undue share of the national taxes, as well as +extensive tribute to northern manufacturers. But in resenting the evil +she exaggerated it, mistakenly referring all the relative decrease in +her prosperity to tariff legislation, when a great part of it was due +simply to slavery. The South complained that selfishness and political +ambition, not patriotism or reason, determined the dominant policy, and +there was of course some truth in this. Moreover, as New England now +favored it, this policy bade fair to become permanent, and since the +tariff bills did not announce protection as their purpose, the +constitutionality of them could not be gotten before the courts. + +[1830] + +Nearly all the southern Legislatures consequently denounced the tariff +as unjust and as hostile to our fundamental law. Most of them were, +however, prudent enough to suggest no illegal remedies. Not so with +fiery South Carolina, where a large party, inspired by Calhoun, proposed +a bold nullification of the tariff act, virtually amounting to +secession. At a dinner in this interest at Washington, April 13, 1830, +Calhoun offered the toast: "The Union; next to our liberty the most +dear; only to be preserved by respecting the rights of the States." + +[1832] + +John C. Calhoun was now, except, perhaps, Clay, the ablest and most +influential politician in all the South. Born in South Carolina in 1782, +of Irish-Presbyterian parentage, though poor and in youth ill-educated +like Clay and Jackson, his energy carried him through Yale College, and +through a course of legal study at Litchfield, Conn., where stood the +only law school then in America. November, 1811, found him a member of +Congress, on fire for war with Britain. Monroe's Secretary of War for +seven years from 1817, he was in 1825 elected Vice-President, and +reelected in 1828. He had meantime turned an ardent free-trader, and +seeing the North's predominance in the Union steadily increasing, had +built up a nullification theory based upon that of the Virginia and +Kentucky resolutions and the Hartford Convention, and upon the history +of the formation of our Constitution. He had worked out to his own +satisfaction the untenable view that each State had the right, not in +the way of revolution but under the Constitution itself--as a contract +between parties that had no superior referee--to veto national laws upon +its own judgment of their unconstitutionality. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +John C. Calhoun +From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery. + + +On this doctrine South Carolina presently proceeded to act. November 24, +1832, the convention of that State passed its nullification ordinance, +declaring the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 "null, void, and no law," +defying Congress to execute them there, and agreeing, upon the first use +of force for this purpose, to form a separate government. + +This was the quintessence of folly even had good theory been behind it. +The tone of the proceeding was too hasty and peremptory. The decided +turn of public opinion and of congressional action in favor of large +reduction in duties was ignored. But the theory appealed to was clearly +wrong, and along with its advocates was sure to be reprobated by the +nation. A precious opportunity effectively to redress the evil +complained of was wantonly thrown away. Worst of all, from a tactical +point of view, South Carolina had miscalculated the spirit of President +Jackson. At the dinner referred to, his toast had been the memorable +words: "Our Federal Union; it must be preserved." Men now saw that Old +Hickory was in earnest. General Scott, with troops and warships, was +ordered to Charleston. + +The nullifiers receded, a course made easier by Clay's "compromise +tariff" of 1833, gradually reducing duties for the next ten years, and +enlarging the free list. From all duties of over twenty per cent. by the +act of 1832, one-tenth of the excess was to be stricken off on September +30, 1835, and another tenth every other year till 1841. Then one-half +the excess remaining was to fall, and in 1842 the rest, so that the end +of the last named year should find no duty over twenty per cent. + +This episode, threatening as it was for a time, drew in its train +results the most happy, revealing with unprecedented vividness to most, +both the original nature of the Constitution as not a compact, and also +the might which national sentiment had attained since the War of 1812. +The doctrine of state rights was seen to have gradually lost, over the +greater part of the country, all its old vitality. Nearly every State +Legislature condemned the South Carolina pretensions, Democrats as +hearty in this as Whigs. Jackson's proclamation against them--impressive +and unanswerable--ran thus: "The Constitution of the United States +forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact +between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same +. . . . I consider the power to annul a law of the United States +incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by +the letter of the Constitution, and destructive of the great object for +which it was formed. . . . Our Constitution does not contain the +absurdity of giving power to make laws, and another power to resist +them. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to +say that the United States are not a nation." + + +[Illustration: Small room with a desk, fireplace, and bookshelf.] +Calhoun's Library and Office. + + +The congressional debates which the nullification question evoked, among +the ablest in our parliamentary history, held the like high national +tenor. Calhoun's idea, though advocated by him with consummate skill, +was shown to be wholly chimerical. The doughty South Carolinian, from +this moment a waning force in American politics, was supported by Hayne +almost alone, the arguments of both melting into air before Webster's +masterful handling of constitutional history and law. Not questioning +the right of revolution, admitting the general government to be one of +"strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized +powers," the Massachusetts orator made it convincingly apparent that the +Calhoun programme could lead to nothing but anarchy. It was seen that +general and state governments emanate from the people with equal +immediacy, and that the language of the clause, "the Constitution and +the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof" are "the +supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any +State to the contrary notwithstanding," means precisely what it says. To +this language little attention had apparently been paid till this time. + + + +CHAPTER V. + +MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S "REIGN" + +[1828] + +Andrew Jackson was born March 15, 1767. His parents had come from +Carrick-fergus, Ireland, two years before. He was without any education +worthy the name. As a boy, he went into the War for Independence, and +was for a time a British prisoner. He studied law in North Carolina, +moved west, and began legal practice at Nashville. He was one of the +framers of the Tennessee constitution in 1796. In 1797 he was a senator +from that State, and subsequently he was a judge on its supreme bench. +His exploits in the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the Seminole War are +already familiar. They had brought him so prominently and favorably +before the country that in 1824 his vote, both popular and electoral, +was larger than that of any other candidate. As we have seen, he himself +and multitudes throughout the country thought him wronged by the +election over him of John Quincy Adams. This contributed largely to his +popularity later, and in 1828 he was elected by a popular vote of +647,231, against 509,097 for Adams. Four years later he was reelected +against Clay by a still larger majority. Nor did his popularity to any +extent wane during his double administration, notwithstanding his many +violent and indiscreet acts as President. + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Andrew Jackson. From a photograph by Brady. + + +Much of Jackson's arbitrariness sprung from a foolish whim of his, +taking his election as equivalent to the enactment of all his peculiar +ideas into law. Ours is a government of the people, he said; the people +had spoken in his election, and had willed so and so. Woe to any senator +or representative who opposed! This was, of course, to mistake entirely +the nature of constitutional government. + +After all, Jackson was by no means the ignorant and passionate old man, +controlled in everything by Van Buren, that many people, especially in +New England, have been accustomed to think him. Illiterate he certainly +was, though Adams exaggerated in calling him "a barbarian who could not +write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name." He was +never popular in the federalist section of the Union. Yet with all his +mistakes and self-will, often inexcusable, he was one of the most +patriotic and clear-headed men who ever administered a government. If he +resorted to unheard-of methods within the law, very careful was he never +to transgress the law. + +The most just criticism of Jackson in his time and later related to the +civil service. It was during his administration that the cry, "turn the +rascals out," first arose, and it is well known that, adopting the +policy of New York and Pennsylvania politicians in vogue since 1800, he +made nearly a clean sweep of his political opponents from the offices at +his disposal. This was the more shameful from being so in contrast with +the policy of preceding presidents. Washington removed but two men from +office, one of these a defaulter; Adams ten, one of these also a +defaulter; Jefferson but thirty-nine; Madison five, three of them +defaulters; and Monroe nine. The younger Adams removed but two, both of +them for cause. + +[1830] + +Yet of Jackson's procedure in this matter it can be said, in partial +excuse, so bitter had been the opposition to him by officeholders as +well as others, that many removals were undoubtedly indispensable in +order to the efficiency of the public service. It is not at all +necessary for the rank and file of the civil service to be of the same +party with the Chief Magistrate, but it is necessary that they should +not be so utterly opposed to him as to feel bound in conscience to be +working for his defeat. + +The fine art of party organization, semi-military in form, has come to +us from Jackson and his workers. Before his time, candidates for high +state offices had usually been nominated by legislative caucuses, and +those for national posts by congressional caucuses. State party +conventions had been held in Pennsylvania and New York. Soon after 1830 +such a device for national nominations began to be thought of, and the +history of national party conventions may be said to begin with the +campaign of 1832. + +[1832] + +Jackson's dearest foe while in office was the United States Bank. +Magnifying the dishonesty which had, as everyone knew, disgraced its +management, he attacked it as a monster, an engine of the moneyed +classes for grinding the face of the poor. Like Jefferson, like Madison +at first, he disbelieved in its constitutionality. In his first message +and continually in his official utterances he inveighed against it as a +public danger, using its funds and patronage for party ends. This made +him unpopular with many who had been his friends, so that in the +campaign of 1832 Clay forced the bank question to the front as one on +which Jackson's attitude would greatly advantage the whig cause. He +accepted Clay's challenge with pleasure, and from this moment gave the +bank no quarter. We may call the contest of this year a pitched battle +between Jackson and the bank. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Roger B. Taney. + + +[1833] + +In 1832 he vetoed a bill for a renewal of its charter, which was to +expire in 1836, and in 1833 he proceeded to break it by removing the +United States deposits which it held. Such removal was by law within the +power of the Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary McLane refused to +execute Jackson's will. He was removed and Duane appointed. Then Duane +was removed and Roger B. Taney appointed, who obeyed the President's +behest. The bank was emptied by checking out the public money as wanted, +at the same time depositing no more, the funds being instead placed in +"pet" state banks, as they were called because of the government favor +thus shown them. + +The financial distress rightly or wrongly ascribed to this measure +throughout the country, instead of injuring Jackson, probably, on the +whole, made him still more popular, as showing the power of the bank. +When Congress met in 1833, the Senate passed a vote of censure upon him +for what he had done. Rancorous wranglings and debates pervaded Congress +and the whole land. After persistent effort by Jackson's bosom friend, +Senator Benton, of Missouri, this censure-vote was expunged by the +XXIVth Congress, second session, January 16, 1837. This was before +Jackson left office, and he accounted it the greatest triumph of his +public life. + +[1830] + + +Jackson was somehow fortunate in dealing with foreign nations. It was he +who recovered for American ships that British West Indian trade which +had been so long denied. Negotiations were opened with Great Britain, +which, in 1830, had the result of placing American vessels in the +British West Indian ports at an equal advantage with British vessels +sailing thither from the United States--terms which, through the +contiguity of those islands to us, gave us a trade there better than +that of any other nation. This diplomacy brought the administration much +applause. + +When Jackson became President, France was still in our debt on account +of her spoliations upon American commerce after the settlement of 1803. +The matter had been in negotiation ever since 1815, but hitherto in +vain. Jackson took it up with zeal, but with his usual apparent +recklessness. A treaty had been concluded in 1831, as a final settlement +between the two countries, binding France to pay twenty-five million +francs and the United States to pay one and one-half million. The first +instalment from France became due February 2, 1833, but was not paid. +Jackson's message to Congress in 1834, not an instalment having yet been +received, contained a distinct threat of war should not payment begin +forthwith. He also bade Edward Livingston, minister at Paris, in the +same contingency to demand his passports and leave Paris for London. + +[1835] + +Most public men, even those in his cabinet, thought this action +foolhardy and useless; but Quincy Adams, neither expecting nor receiving +any thanks for it, just as in the Seminole War difficulty, nobly stood +up for the President. A telling speech by him in the House led to its +unanimous resolution, March 2, 1835, that the execution of the treaty +should be insisted on. The French ministry blustered, and for a time +diplomatic relations between the two countries were entirely ruptured. +But France, affecting to see in the message of 1835, though voiced in +precisely the same tone as its predecessor, some apology for the menace +contained in that, began its payments. This money, as also all due from +the other states included in Napoleon's continental system, was paid +during Jackson's administration, a result which brought him and his +party great praise, not more for the money than for the respect and +consideration secured to the United States by insistence upon its +rights. The President's message to Congress in 1835 announced the entire +extinguishment of the public debt--the first and the last time this has +occurred in all our national history. + +An important measure touching the hard-money system of our country was +passed in large part through the influence of President Jackson. By the +Mint Law of 1792 our silver dollar was made to contain three hundred and +seventy-one and a quarter grains of fine silver, or four hundred and +sixteen of standard silver. The amount of pure silver in this venerable +coin has remained unchanged ever since; only, in 1837, by a reduction of +the alloy fraction to exactly one-tenth, the total weight of the coin +became what it now is, four hundred and twelve and a half grains, +nine-tenths fine. The same law of 1792 had given the gold dollar just +one-fifteenth the weight of the silver dollar. This proportion, which +Hamilton had arrived at after careful investigation characteristic of +the man, was exactly correct at the time, but within a year, as is now +known, on account of increase in the relative value of gold, the gold +dollar at fifteen to one became more valuable than its silver mate. The +consequence was that the gold brought to the United States mint for +coinage fell off year by year, until some of the years between 1820 and +1830 it had been almost zero. Gold money had nearly ceased to circulate. + +[1834-1836] + +Jackson resolved to restore the yellow metal to daily use. In this he +was opposed by many Whigs, who, so zealous were they for the United +States Bank, had become paper money men. The so-called Gold Bill was +carried through Congress in 1834, changing the proportion of silver to +gold in our currency from fifteen to one to sixteen to one. It should +have been fifteen and a half to one. Now gold in its turn was +over-valued, so that silver gradually ceased to circulate, as gold had +almost ceased before. This result was made worse after 1848, when there +was a still further appreciation of silver through the discovery of gold +in California and Australia. Silver dollars did not again circulate +freely in the country until 1878, though they were full legal tender +till 1873. Gold, on the other hand, was everywhere seen after 1834, +though not abundant in circulation, owing to the large amounts of paper +money then in use. + +In 1836 the President ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to put forth +the famous Specie Circular, declaring that only gold, silver, or land +scrip should be received in payment for public lands. The occasion of +this was that while land sales were very rapidly increasing, the +receipts hitherto had consisted largely in the notes of insolvent banks. +Land speculators would organize a bank, procure for it, if they could, +the favor of being a "pet" bank, issue notes, borrow these as +individuals and buy land with them. The notes were deposited, when they +would borrow them again to buy land with, and so on. As there was little +specie in the West, the circular broke up many a fine plan, and evoked +much ill-feeling. Gold was drawn from the East, where, as many of the +banks had none too much, the drain caused not a few of them to collapse. +The condition of business at this time was generally unsound, and this +westward movement of gold was all that was needed to precipitate a +crisis. A crisis accordingly came on soon after, painfully severe. It is +unfair, however, to arraign Jackson's order as wholly responsible for +the evils which accompanied this monetary cataclysm. It was rather an +occasion than the cause. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH + +[1837] + +Partly Jackson's personal influence, partly his able aides, partly +favoring circumstances had, during his administrations, brought the +Democracy into excellent condition, patriotic, national in general +spirit, with a creed that, however imperfect--close construction being +its integrating idea--was, after all, definite, consistent, and +thoughtful. Yet in 1840 the Democrats, who four years before had chosen +Van Buren by an electoral vote of 170 to 73, had to surrender, with the +same Van Buren for candidate, to the Whigs by a majority of 234 +electoral votes to 60; only five States, and but two of them northern, +going for the democratic candidate. + +There were several causes for this defeat. Jackson had made many enemies +as well as many friends, some of these within his own party, while the +entire opposition to him was indescribably bitter on account of the +personal element entering into the struggle. The commendably national +spirit of the Whig Party told well in its favor. Upon this point its +attitude proved far more in accord with the best sentiment of the nation +than that of the Democracy, sound as the latter was at the core and +nobly as its chief had behaved in the nullification crisis. + +More influential still was the financial predicament into which on +Jackson's retirement his successor and the country were plunged. The +commercial distress which seemed to spring from Jackson's measures was +now first fully realized. Anger and pain from the death of the bank had +not abated. Ardent hatred prevailed toward the "pet" banks, extending to +the party whose darlings they were, while the Specie Circular was held +to have ruined most of the others. The subsequent legislation for +distributing the treasury surplus among the States, by removing the +deposits from the pet banks, destroyed many of these as well. They had +been using this government money for the discount of loans to business +men, and were not in condition instantly to pay it back. Hence the panic +of 1837. First the New York City banks suspended, soon followed by the +others throughout that State, all sustained in their course by an act of +the Legislature. Suspension presently occurred everywhere else. The +financial pressure continued through the entire summer of 1837, banks, +corporations, and business men going to the wall, and all values greatly +sinking. Boston suffered one hundred and sixty-eight business failures +in six months. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Martin Van Buren. +From a photograph by Brady. + + +One of Van Buren's earliest acts after assuming office was to call an +extra session of Congress for September 4, 1837, to consider the +financial condition of the country. When it convened, an increase of the +whig vote was apparent, though the Democrats were still in the majority. +On the President's recommendation, agitation now began in favor of the +sub-treasury or independent treasury plan, still in use to-day, of +keeping the government moneys. This had been first broached in 1834-35 +by Whigs. The Democrats then opposed it; but now they took it up as a +means of counteracting the whig purpose to revive a national bank. + +There was soon less need of any such special arrangement, as the +treasury was swiftly running dry. In June of the preceding year, 1836, +both parties concurring, an act had passed providing that after January +1, 1837, all surplus revenue should be distributed to the States in +proportion to their electoral votes. It was meant to be a loan, to be +recalled, however, only by vote of Congress, but it proved a donation. +Twenty-eight millions were thus paid in all, never to return. Such a +disposition of the revenue had now to be stopped and reverse action +instituted. Importers called for time on their revenue bonds, which had +to be allowed, and this checked income. This special session was needed +to authorize an issue of ten millions in treasury notes to tide the +Government over the crisis. + +[1840] + +Another influence which now worked powerfully against the Democracy was +hostility to slavery. This campaign--it was the first--saw a "Liberty +Party" in the field, with its own candidates, Birney and Earle. The +abolition sentiment, of which more will be said in a subsequent chapter, +was growing day by day, and little as the Whigs could be called an +antislavery party on the whole, their rank and file were very much more +of that mind than those of the opposition. Jackson had ranted wildly +against the despatch of abolition literature through the mails. The +second Seminole War, 1835-42, was waged mainly in deference to +slave-holders, to recover for them their Florida runaways, and, by +removal of the Seminoles beyond the Mississippi, to break up a popular +resort for escaped negroes. The Indians, under Osceola, whose wife, as +daughter to a slave-mother, had been treacherously carried back into +bondage, fought like tigers. After their massacre of Major Dade and his +detachment, Generals Gaines, Jesup, Taylor, Armistead, and Worth +successively marched against them, none but the last-named successful in +subduing them. Over 500 persons had been restored to slavery, each one +costing the Government, as was estimated, at least $80,000 and the lives +of three white soldiers. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General William J. Worth. + + +[1839] + +Van Buren was to the slavocrats even more obsequious than Jackson. His +spirit was shown, among other things, by the Amistad case, in 1839. The +schooner Amistad was sailing between Havana and Puerto Principe with a +cargo of negroes kidnapped in Africa. Under the lead of a bright negro +named Cinque the captives revolted and killed or confined all the crew +but two, whom they commanded to steer the ship for Africa. Instead, +these directed her to the United States coast, where she was seized off +Long Island by a war vessel and brought into New London. The negroes +were, even by Spanish law, not slaves but free men, as Spain had +prohibited the slave trade. Yet when their case was tried before the +district court, Mr. Van Buren spared no effort to procure their release +to the Spanish claimants. He even had a government vessel all ready to +convey the poor victims back to Cuba. The district court having decided +for the blacks, the government attorney appealed to the circuit court, +thence also to the supreme court. Final judgment happily re-affirmed +that the men were free. The supreme court trial was the occasion of one +of John Quincy Adams's most splendid forensic victories, he being the +counsel for the negroes. + +The attitude of the administration in this affair greatly injured the +party in the North, the more as it but illustrated a spirit and policy +which had grown characteristic of the party's head. In several instances +previous to this time, when ships conveying slaves from one of the +United States to another, entered the ports of the Bahama Islands +through stress of weather, England had, while freeing them, allowed some +compensation. Now, having emancipated the slaves in her own West Indian +possessions, she declined longer to continue that practice. Her first +refusal touched the slaves on the ship Enterprise, which had put in at +Port Hamilton in 1835. Jackson's administration in vain sought +indemnity, Van Buren, then Secretary of State, designating this business +as "the most immediately pressing" before the English embassy. + +[1840] + +In the same pro-slavery interest an increasing proportion of the +Democracy, though not Van Buren himself, had come to favor the +annexation of Texas. The southwestern boundary of the United States had +ever since the purchase in Florida in 1819 been recognized as the Sabine +River, west of this lying the then foreign country of Texas. France had +claimed the Rio Grande as Louisiana's western bound, but Mr. Monroe, to +placate the North in the Florida annexation, had receded from this +claim. Texas and Coahuila became a state in the new Mexican republic, +which Spain recognized in 1821; but in 1836 Texas declared itself +independent. It was ill-governed and weighed down with debt, and hence +almost immediately, in 1837, asked membership in the American Union. Its +annexation was bitterly opposed all over the North, so bitterly in fact +that the northern Democrats would not have dared, even had they wished, +to favor the scheme. Yet so strong was the southern influence in the +party by 1840 that the democratic platform that year urged the +"re-annexation" of Texas, the term assuming that as a part of Louisiana +it had always been ours since 1803. This was a fact, but it was now +asseverated by the Democracy for a selfish sectional purpose, and the +cry brought thousands of votes to the Whigs. + +It proved good politics for the Whigs in 1840 to pass over Clay and +adopt as their candidate William Henry Harrison. He had indeed been +unsuccessful in 1836, owing to the great popularity of Jackson, all +whose influence went for Van Buren; but now that "Little Van," or +"Matty," as Jackson used to call him, stood alone, Harrison had a better +chance. His political record had been inconspicuous but honorable. +Nothing could be alleged against his character. He was a gentleman of +some ability, while his brilliant military record in 1812, now revived +to the minutest detail, gave him immense popularity. Every surviving +Tippecanoe or Thames veteran stumped his vicinity for the old war-horse. +Many wavering Democrats in the South, especially those of the +nullification stripe, were toled to the whig ticket by the nomination of +John Tyler for Vice-President. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" rang through +the land as the whig watchword for the campaign. During the +electioneering every hamlet was regaled with portrayals of Harrison's +simple farm life at North Bend, where, a log cabin his dwelling, and +hard cider--so one would have supposed--his sole beverage, he had been a +genuine Cincinnatus. "Tippecanoe and Tyler" were therefore elected; +their popular vote numbering 1,275,017, against 1,128,702 polled for Van +Buren. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +William Henry Harrison +From a Copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in 1840. + + +However, this whig success, for a moment so imposing, proved superficial +and brief. Harrison died at the end of his first month in office, and +Tyler, coming in, showed that though training under the whig banner, he +had not renounced a single one of his democratic principles. The Whigs +scorned and soon officially repudiated him During the entire four years +that he held office there was constant deadlock between him and the +slight whig majority in Congress, which gave the Democrats main control +in legislation. The panic of 1837 was forgotten, while the hold of the +Democracy upon the country was so firm that its gains in Congress and +its triumphs in the States once more went steadily on. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE + +[1835] + +By the census of 1830 the United States had a population of 12,866,020, +the increase having been for the preceding ten years about sufficient to +double the inhabitants in thirty years. There were twenty-four States, +Indiana having been taken into the Union in 1816, Mississippi in 1817, +Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820, and Missouri, the +last, in 1821. Florida, Michigan, and Arkansas were the Territories. The +area, now that Florida had been annexed, was 725,406 square miles. + +Comparatively little of the soil of Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, and +Wisconsin had as yet been occupied, though settlements were making on +most of the larger streams. The southwest had at this time filled up +more rapidly than the northwest. In 1830 the centre of population for +the Union was farther south than it has ever been at any other time. +Except in Louisiana and Missouri, not over thirty thousand inhabitants +were to be found west of the Mississippi. The vast outer ranges of the +Louisiana purchase remained a mysterious wilderness. Indianapolis in +1827 contained twenty-five brick houses, sixty frame, and about eighty +log houses; also a court-house, a jail, and three churches. Chicago was +laid out in 1830. Thither in, 1834 went one mail per week, from Niles, +Mich., on horseback. In 1833 it was incorporated as a town, having 175 +houses and 550 inhabitants. That year it began publishing a newspaper +and organized two churches. In 1837 it was a city, with 4,170 +inhabitants. The Territory of Iowa had in 1836, 10,500 inhabitants; in +1840, 43,000. At this time Wisconsin had 31,000. So early as 1835 Ohio +had nearly or quite 1,000,000 inhabitants. Sixty-five of its towns had +together 125 newspapers. Between 1830 and 1840 Ohio's population rose +from 900,000 to 1,500,000; Michigan's, from 30,000 to 212,000; and the +whole country's, from 13,000,000 to 17,000,000. Before 1840, eight +steamers connected Chicago with Buffalo. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +John Tyler +From a photograph by Brady. + + +By 1840 nearly all the land of the United States this side the +Mississippi had been taken up by settlers. The last districts to be +occupied were Northern Maine, the Adirondack region of New York, a strip +in Western Virginia from the Potomac southward through Kentucky nearly +to the Tennessee line, the Pine Barrens of Georgia, and the extremities +of Michigan and Wisconsin. Beyond the Father of Waters his shores were +mostly occupied, as well as those of his main tributaries, a good way +from their mouths. The Missouri Valley had population as far as Kansas +City. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa Territory had many settlements at +some distance from the streams. The aggregate population of the country +was 17,069,453, the average density twenty-one and a tenth to the square +mile. The mass of westward immigration was as yet native, since the +great rush from Europe only began about 1847. This was fortunate, as +fixing forever the American stamp upon the institutions of western +States. To compensate each new commonwealth for the non-taxation of the +United States land it contained, it received one township in each +thirty-six as its own for educational purposes, a provision to which is +due the magnificent school system of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, +Minnesota, and their younger sisters. + +Farther east, too, there had, of course, been growth, but it was slower. +In 1827 Hartford had but 6,900 inhabitants; New Haven, 7,100; Newark, N. +J., 6,500, and New Brunswick about the same. The State of New York paid +out, between 1815 and 1825, nearly $90,000 for the destruction of +wolves, showing that its rural population had attained little density. +The entire country had vastly improved in all the elements of +civilization. A national literature had sprung up, crowding out the +reprints of foreign works which had previously ruled the market. Bryant, +Cooper, Dana, Drake, Halleck, and Irving were now re-enforced by writers +like Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Poe, Prescott, +and Whittier. Educational institutions were multiplied and their methods +bettered, The number of newspapers had become enormous. Several +religious journals were established previous to 1830, among them the New +York Observer, which dates from 1820, and the Christian Register, from +1821. Steam printing had been introduced in 1823. The year 1825 saw the +first Sunday paper; it was the New York Sunday Courier. Greeley began +his New York Tribune only in 1841. + +Fresh news had begun to be prized, as shown by the competition between +the two great New York sheets, the Journal of Commerce and the Morning +Enquirer, each of which, in 1827, established for this purpose swift +schooner lines and pony expresses. The Journal of Commerce in 1833 put +on a horse express between Philadelphia and New York, with relays of +horses, enabling it to publish congressional news a day earlier than any +of its New York contemporaries. Other papers soon imitated this example, +whereupon the Journal extended its relays to Washington. Mails came to +be more numerous and prompt. More letters were written, and, from 1839, +letters were sent in envelopes. Postage-stamps were not used till 1847. +Most of the principal cities in the country, including Rochester and +Cincinnati, published dailies before 1830. Baltimore and Louisville had +each a public school in 1829. This year witnessed in Boston the +beginning work of the first blind asylum in the country. In Hartford +instruction had already been given to the deaf and dumb since 1817. + + +[Illustration: Express rider changing horses.] +A Pony Express. + + +By the fourth decade of the century the American character had assumed a +good deal of definiteness and greatly interested foreign travellers. +There was, by those who knew what foreign manners were, much foolish +aping of the same. English visitors noted Brother Jonathan's drawl in +talking, his phlegmatic temperament, keen eye, and blistering +inquisitiveness. Jonathan was a rover and a trader, everywhere at home, +everywhere bent upon the main chance. He ate too rapidly, chewed and +smoked tobacco, and spat indecently. He drank too much. During the first +quarter of the century nearly everyone used liquor, and drunkenness was +shamefully common. Every public entertainment, even if religious, set +out provision of free punch. At hotels, brandy was placed upon the +table, free as water to all. The smaller sects often held preaching +services in bar-rooms for lack of better accommodations. On such +occasions the preacher was not infrequently observed, without affront to +anyone, to refresh himself from behind the bar just before announcing +his text. + +In 1824 commenced in Boston a temperance movement which accomplished in +this matter the most happy reform. It swept New England, passing thence +to all the other parts of the Union. By the end of 1829 over a thousand +temperance societies were in existence. The distilling and importation +of spirits fell off immensely. It became fashionable not to drink, and +little by little drinking came to be stigmatized as immoral. + +By the time of which we now speak, the old habit of expressing +solicitude for the fate of the Union had passed away. Whig like +Democrat--so different from old Federalist-swore by "the people." Every +American believed in America. Travelling abroad, the man from this +country was wont to assume, and if opposed to contend, ill-manneredly +sometimes, that its institutions were far the best in the world. No one +wished a change. The unparalleled prosperity of all contributed to this +satisfaction. Cities and towns came up in a day. Public improvements +were to be seen making in every direction. There was no idle aristocracy +on the one hand, no beggars on the other. Self-respect was universal. +The people held the power. If men attained great wealth, as not a few +did, they usually did not waste it but invested it. Business enterprise +was intense and common. Character entered into credit as an element +along with financial resources. People did not crowd into cities, but +loved and built up the country rather. Laws and penalties were become +more mild. In 1837 a man was flogged at the whipping-post in Providence, +R. I., for horse-stealing, perhaps the last case of the kind in the +country. Prisons were now made clean and healthy, and the idea of +reforming the criminal instead of taking vengeance upon him was +spreading. Reformatories for children had been opened in New York, +Boston, and Philadelphia. There were institutions for homeless children, +for the sick poor, for the insane, and for other unfortunate classes. + +By this time the Methodists and Baptists had become extremely strong in +numbers. In 1833 the Massachusetts constitution was altered, abolishing +obligatory contributions for the support of the ministry of the standing +order. Connecticut had made the same change fifteen years before, in its +constitution of 1818. In many localities the newer denominations, +hitherto sects, were more influential than the old one, and in this +abolition of ecclesiastical taxes they had with them Jews, atheists, +deists, agnostics, and heathen. + +About 1825 began a period of peculiar religious enthusiasm. Missions to +the heathen were instituted. Revivals were numerous and often shook +whole neighborhoods for weeks and months. About this date Millerism +began to make converts. William Miller, from whom it took its name, +preached far and wide that the world would be destroyed in 1843, +securing multitudes of disciples, who clung to his general belief even +after his prophecy as to the specific date for the final catastrophe was +seen to have failed. Mormonism was also founded, in 1830, and the Book +of Mormon published by Joseph Smith. A church of this order, organized +this year at Manchester, N. Y., removed the next to Kirtland, O., and +thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built +the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they +regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for +polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where, +however, they were not fully settled until 1848. + +As part of the same general stir we may perhaps register the +anti-masonic movement. One William Morgan, a Mason residing in Western +New York, was reported about to expose in a publication the secrets of +that order. The Masons were desirous of preventing this and made several +forcible efforts to that end. Morgan was soon missing, and the exciting +assumption was almost universally made that the Masons had taken him +off. There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found +impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, and witnesses were +nearly all Masons. An intense and widespread feeling was developed that +Masonry held itself superior to the laws, was therefore a foe to the +Government and must be destroyed. The Anti-Masons became a mighty +political party. Masons were driven from office. In 1832 anti-masonic +nominations were made for President and Vice-President, which had much +to do with the small vote of Clay in that year. It was this party that +brought to the front politically William H. Seward, Millard Fillmore, +and Thurlow Weed. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Thurlow Weed. From an unpublished Photograph by Disderi, Paris, in 1861. +In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes. + + +In 1833 Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania passed laws +suppressing lotteries, but the gambling mania seemed to transform itself +into a craze for banks. In many parts this was such that actual riots +took place when subscriptions to the stock of banks were opened, the +earliest comers subscribing the whole with the purpose of selling to +others at an advance. To make a bank was thought the great panacea for +every ill that could befall. In this we see that the American people, +bright as they were, could be duped. + +Less wonder, then, at the success of the Moon Hoax, perpetrated in 1835. +It was generally known that Sir John Herschel had gone to the Cape of +Good Hope to erect an observatory. One day the New York Sun came out +with what purported to be part of a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal +of Science, giving an account of Herschel's remarkable discoveries. The +moon, so the bogus relation ran, had been found to be inhabited by human +beings with wings. Herschel had seen flocks of them flying about. Their +houses were triangular in form. The telescope had also revealed beavers +in the moon, exhibiting most remarkable intelligence. Pictures of some +of these and of moon scenery accompanied the article. The fraud was so +clever as to deceive learned and unlearned alike. The sham story was +continued through several issues of the Sun, and gave the paper an +enormous sale. As it arrived in the different places, crowds scrambled +for it, nor would those who failed to secure copies disperse until some +one more fortunate had read to them all that the paper said upon the +subject. Several colleges sent professorial deputations to the Sun +office to see the article, and particularly the appendices, which, it +was alleged, had been kept back. Richard Adams Locke was the author of +this ingenious deception, which was not exploded until the arrival of +authentic intelligence from Edinburgh. + +Party spirit sometimes ran terribly high. A New York City election in +1834 was the occasion of a riot between men of the two parties, +disturbances continuing several days. Political meetings were broken up, +and the militia had to be called out to enforce order. Citizens armed +themselves, fearing attacks upon banks and business houses. When it was +found that the Whigs were triumphant in the city, deafening salutes were +fired. Philadelphia Whigs celebrated this victory with a grand barbecue, +attended, it was estimated, by fifty thousand people. The death of +Harrison was malignantly ascribed to overeating in Washington, after his +long experience with insufficient diet in the West. Whigs exulted over +Jackson's cabinet difficulties. Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet," the power +behind the throne, gave umbrage to his official advisers. Duff Green, +editor of the United States Telegraph, the President's "organ," was one +member; Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, and Amos Kendall, first of +Massachusetts, then of Kentucky, were others, these three the most +influential. All had long worked, written, and cheered for Old Hickory. +In return he gave them good places at Washington, and now they enjoyed +dropping in at the White House to take a smoke with the grizzly hero and +help him curse the opposition as foes of "the people." + +Major Eaton, Old Hickory's first Secretary of War, had married a +beautiful widow, maiden name Peggy O'Neil, of common birth, and much +gossipped about. The female members of other cabinet families refused to +associate with her, the Vice-President's wife leading. Jackson took up +Mrs. Eaton's cause with all knightly zeal. He berated her traducers and +persecutors in long and fierce personal letters. His niece and +housekeeper, Mrs. Donelson, one of the anti-Eatonites, he turned out of +the White House, with her husband, his private secretary. The breach was +serious anyway, and might have been far more so but for the healing +offices of Van Buren, who used all his courtliness and power of place to +help the President bring about the social recognition of Mrs. Eaton. He +called upon her, made parties in her honor, and secured her entree to +the families of the greatest foreign ministers. Mrs. Eaton triumphed, +but the scandal would not down. + +When Jackson wrote his foreign message upon the French spoliation +claims, his cabinet were aghast and begged him to soften its tone. Upon +his refusal, it is said, they stole to the printing-office and did it +themselves. But the proofs came back for Jackson's perusal. The lad who +brought them was the late Mr. J. S. Ham, of Providence, R. I. He used to +say that he had never known what profane swearing was till he listened +to General Jackson's comments as those proofs were read. + +Jackson and Quincy Adams were personal as well as political foes. When +the President visited Boston, Harvard College bestowed on him the degree +of Doctor of Laws. Adams, one of the overseers, opposed this with all +his might. As "an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, he would not be +present to witness her disgrace in conferring her highest literary +honors upon a barbarian." Subsequently he would refer, with a sneer, to +"Dr. Andrew Jackson." The President's illness at Boston Adams declared +"four-fifths trickery" and the rest mere fatigue. He was like John +Randolph, said Adams, who for forty years was always dying. "He is now +alternately giving out his chronic diarrhoea and making Warren bleed him +for a pleurisy, and posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of laws, +mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to hear a fulsome address and +receive two cannon-balls from Edward Everett." + +To be sure, manifestations of a contrary spirit between the political +parties were not wanting. The entire nation mourned for Madison after +his death in 1836, as it had on the decease of Jefferson and John Adams +both on the same day, July 4, 1826. + +A note or two upon costume may not uninterestingly close this chapter. + +Enormous bonnets were fashionable about 1830. Ladies also wore Leghorn +hats, with very broad brims rolled up behind, tricked out profusely with +ribbons and artificial flowers. Dress-waists were short and high. Skirts +were short, too, hardly reaching the ankles. Sleeves were of the +leg-of-mutton fashion, very full above the elbows but tightening toward +the wrist. Gentlemen still dressed for the street not so differently +from the revolutionary style. Walking-coats were of broadcloth, blue, +brown, or green, to suit the taste, with gilt buttons. Bottle-green was +a very stylish color for evening coats. Blue and the gilt buttons for +street wear were, however, beginning to be discarded, Daniel Webster +being one of the last to walk abroad in them. The buff waistcoat, white +cambric cravat, and ruffled shirt still held their own. Collars for full +dress were worn high, covering half the cheek, a fashion which persisted +in parts of the country till 1850 or later. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840 + +[1840] + +During the War of 1812 we had in England an industrial spy, whose +campaign there has perhaps accomplished more for the country than all +our armies did. It was Francis C. Lowell, of Boston. Great Britain was +just introducing the power loom. The secret of structure was guarded +with all vigilance, yet Lowell, passing from cotton factory to cotton +factory with Yankee eyes, ears, and wit, came home in 1814, believing, +with good reason, as it proved, that he could set up one of the machines +on American soil. Broad Street in Boston was the scene of his initial +experiments, but the factory to the building of which they led was at +Waltham. It was owned by a company, one of whose members was Nathan +Appleton. Water furnished the motive power. By the autumn of 1814 Lowell +had perfected his looms and placed them in the factory. Spinning +machinery was also built, mounting seventeen hundred spindles. English +cotton-workers did not as yet spin and weave under the same roof, so +that the Lowell Mill at Waltham may, with great probability, be +pronounced the first in the world to carry cloth manufacture +harmoniously through all its several successive steps from the raw stuff +to the finished ware. + +From this earliest establishment of the power-loom here, the +cotton-cloth business strode rapidly forward. Fall River, Holyoke, +Lawrence, Lowell, and scores of other thriving towns sprung into being. +Every year new mills were built. In 1831 there were 801; in 1840, 1,240; +in 1850, 1,074. Henceforth, through consolidation, the number of +factories decreased, but the number of spindles grew steadily larger. +This rise of great manufacturing concerns was facilitated by a new order +of corporation laws. There had been corporations in the country before +1830, as the Waltham case shows; but the system had had little +evolution, as incorporation had in each case to proceed from a special +legislative act. In 1837 Connecticut passed a statute making this +unnecessary and enabling a group of persons to become a corporation on +complying with certain simple requirements. New York placed a similar +provision in its constitution of 1846. The Dartmouth College decision of +the United States Supreme Court in 1819, interpreting an act of +incorporation as a contract, which, by the Constitution, no State can +violate, still further humored and aided the corporation system. + + +[Illustration: Train schedule.] +From an Old Time-table. (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide.) + + +In 1816 the streets of Baltimore were lighted with gas. A gas-light +company was incorporated in New York in 1823. Not till 1836, however, +did the Philadelphia streets have gas lights. The first savings-banks +were established in Philadelphia and Boston in 1816. Baltimore had one +two years later. Portable fire-proof safes were used in 1820. The Lehigh +coal trade flourished this year, and also the manufacture of iron with +coal. The whale fishery, too, was now beginning. The first factory in +Lowell started in 1821. In 1822 there was a copper rolling mill in +Baltimore, the only one then in America, and Paterson, N. J., began the +manufacture of cotton duck. Patent leather was made in the United States +by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of +flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and +matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next +year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools. +Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a +Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask table linen in +1828. The same year saw paper made from straw, and planing machinery in +operation. The insuring of lives began in this country in 1812. + + +[Illustration: Two rail cars that look like ordinary wagons with iron +wheels. One is pulled by a horse, the other by a primitive steam engine.] +Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive "Tom Thumb" and one of Stockton's +and Stokes' Horse Cars. From "History of the First Locomotive in +America." + + +The first figured muslin woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps +in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico +printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery +at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in +New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831, +being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines +were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood +screws were turned out at Providence. About the same time, 1832, pins +were made by machinery, hosiery was woven by a power-loom process, and +Colt perfected his revolver. In 1837 brass clocks were put upon the +American market, and by 1840 extensively exported. Also in 1837 Nashua +was making machinists' tools. By 1839 the manufacture of iron with hard +coal was a pronounced success. In 1840 daguerreotypes began to appear. +Steam fire-engines were seen the next year. + + +[Illustration: Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1829.] + + +So early as 1816 the New York and Philadelphia stages made the distance +from city to city between sun and sun. The National Road from Cumberland +was finished to Wheeling in 1820, having been fourteen years in +construction and costing $17,000,000. It was subsequently extended +westward across Ohio and Indiana. It was thirty-five feet wide, +thoroughly macadamized, and had no grade of above five degrees. Over +parts of this road no less than 150 six-horse teams passed daily, +besides four or five four-horse mail and passenger coaches. In Jackson's +time, when for some months there was talk of war with France and extra +measures were thought proper for assuring the loyalty of Louisiana, +swift mail connections were made with the Mississippi by the National +Road. Its entire length was laid out into sections of sixty-three miles +apiece, each with three boys and nine horses, only six hours and +eighteen minutes being allowed for traversing a section, viz., a rate of +about ten miles an hour. Great men and even presidents travelled by the +public coaches of this road, though many of them used their own +carriages. James K. Polk often made the journey from Nashville to +Washington in his private carriage. Keeping down the Cumberland River to +the Ohio, and up this to Wheeling, he would strike into the National +Road eastward to Cumberland, Md. He came thus so late as 1845, to be +inaugurated as President; only at this time he used the new railway from +Cumberland to the Relay House, where he changed to the other new railway +which had already joined Baltimore with Washington. + + +[Illustration: One side is an image of a rail car, the other a signature.] +Obverse and Reverse of a Ticket used in 1838 on the New York & Harlem +Railroad. + + +The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name +itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first +street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was +at this time beginning to end, that of canals and railroads opening. Yet +in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to +hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not +uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late +evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So +soon as available the canal packet was a much more easy and elegant +means of travel. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester +in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it +to Buffalo. The Blackstone Canal, between Worcester and Providence, was +opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the +Chesapeake and Delaware, the Cumberland and Oxford in Maine, the +Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Canal with +Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles +long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Canal was +completed in 1830. + + +[Illustration: Two horses pulling a rail car.] +Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1830. + + +Salt-water transportation had meantime been much facilitated by the use +of steam. It had been thought a great achievement when, in 1817, the +Black Ball line of packet ships between New York and Liverpool was +regularly established, consisting of four vessels of from four hundred +to five hundred tons apiece. But two years later a steamship crossed the +Atlantic to Liverpool from Savannah. It took her twenty-five +days--longer than the time in which the distance often used to be +accomplished under sail. In 1822 there was a regular steamboat between +Norfolk and New York, though no steamboat was owned in Boston till 1828. +The Atlantic was first crossed exclusively by steam-power in 1838, and +the first successful propeller used in 1839. The last-named year also +witnessed the beginning of a permanent express line between Boston and +New York, by the Stonington route. The next year, the Adams Express +Company was founded, doing its first business between these two cities +over the Springfield route, in competition with that by the Stonington. + + +[Illustration: Old Boston & Worcester Railway Ticket (about 1837).] + + +But all these improvements were soon to be overshadowed by the work of +the railway and locomotive. The first road of rails in America was in +the Lehigh coal district of Pennsylvania. Its date is uncertain, but not +later than 1825. In 1826, October 7th, the second began operation, at +Quincy, Mass., transporting granite from the quarries to tide-water, +about three miles. This experiment attracted great attention, showing +how much heavier loads could be transported over rails than upon common +roads, and with how much greater ease and less expense ordinary weights +could be carried. The same had been demonstrated in England before. +Locomotives were not yet used in either country, but only horse-power. +The conviction spread rapidly that not only highway transportation but +even that by canals would soon be, for all large burdens, either quite +superseded or of secondary importance. In 1827 the Maryland Legislature +chartered a railroad from Baltimore to Wheeling. The projectors, though +regarding it a bold act, promised an average rate between the two cities +of at least four miles per hour. Subscriptions were offered for more +than twice the amount of the stock. The Massachusetts Legislature the +same year appointed commissioners to look out a railway route between +Boston and Hudson River. Also in this year a railway was completed at +Mauch Chunk, Pa., for transporting coal to the landing on the Lehigh. +The descent was by gravity, mules being used to haul back the cars. + +In most country parts, the new railway projects encountered great +hostility. Engineers were not infrequently clubbed from the fields as +they sought to survey. Learned articles appeared in the papers arguing +against the need of railways and exhibiting the perils attending them. +When steam came to be used, these scruples were re-enforced by the +alleged danger that the new system of travel would do away with the +market for oats and for horses, and that stage-drivers would seek wages +in vain. + +The first trip by a locomotive was in 1828, over the Carbondale and +Honesdale route in Pennsylvania. The engine was of English make, and run +by Mr. Horatio Allen, who had had it built. This was a year before the +first steam railroad was opened in England. July 4, 1828, construction +upon the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was begun. It, like the other early +roads, was built of stone cross-ties, with wooden rails topped with +heavy straps of iron. Such ties were soon replaced by wooden ones, as +less likely to be split by frost, but the wooden rail with its iron +strap might be seen on branch lines, for instance, between Monocacy +Bridge and Frederick City, Md., so late as the Civil War. + + +[Illustration: Horizontal and verical view of a articulated locaomotive.] +The "South Carolina," 1831, and plan of its running gear. + + +The first railroad for passengers in this country went into operation +between Charleston and Hamburg, S. C., in 1830. The locomotive had been +gotten up in New York, the first of American make. It had four wheels +and an upright boiler. This year the railroad between Albany and +Schenectady was begun, and fourteen miles of the Baltimore & Ohio opened +for use. In 1831 Philadelphia was joined to Pittsburgh by a line of +communication consisting of a railway to Columbia, a canal thence to +Hollidaysburg, another railway thence over the Alleghanies to Johnstown, +and then on by canal. The railway over the mountains consisted of +inclined planes mounted by the use of stationary engines. It is +interesting to notice the view which universally prevailed at first, +that the locomotive could not climb grades, and that where this was +necessary stationary engines would have to be used. Not till 1836 was it +demonstrated that locomotives could climb. Up to the same date, also, +locomotives had burned wood, but this was now found inferior to coal, +and began to be given up except where it was much the cheaper fuel. + + +[Illustration: Locomotive, tender and two cars.] +Boston & Worcester Railroad, 1835. + + +From 1832 the railway system grew marvellously. The year 1833 saw +completed the South Carolina Railroad between Charleston and the +Savannah River, one hundred and thirty-six miles. This was the first +railway line in this country to carry the mails, and the longest +continuous one then in the world. Two years later Boston was connected +by railway with Providence, with Lowell, and with Worcester, Baltimore +with Washington, and the New York & Erie commenced. In 1839 Worcester +was joined to Springfield in the same manner, and in 1841 a passenger +could travel by rail from Boston to Rochester, changing cars, however, +at least ten times. + + + +PERIOD III. + +THE YEARS OF SLAVERY CONTROVERSY 1840-1860 + +CHAPTER I. + +SLAVERY AFTER THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE + +[1820] + +Slavery would most likely never have imperilled the life of this nation +had it not been for the colossal industrial revolution sketched above. +Cotton had been grown here since, 1621, and some exportation of it is +said to have occurred in 1747. Till nearly 1800 very little had gone +from the United States to England, for by the old process a slave could +clean but five or six pounds a day. In 1784, an American ship which +brought eight bags to Liverpool was seized, on the ground that so much +could not have been the produce of the United States. Jay's treaty, as +first drawn, consented that no cotton should be exported from America. +It changed the very history of the country when, in 1793, Eli Whitney +invented the saw-gin, by which a slave could clean 1,000 pounds of +cotton per day. Slavery at once ceased to be a passive, innocuous +institution, promising soon to die out, and became a means of gain, to +be upheld and extended in all possible ways. The cotton export, but +189,316 pounds in 1791, and a third less in 1792, rose to 487,600 pounds +in 1793, to 1,610,760 pounds in 1794, to 6,276,300 pounds in 1795, and +to 38,118,041 pounds in 1804. Within five years after Whitney's +invention, cotton displaced indigo as the great southern staple, and the +slave States had become the cotton-field of the world. In 1869 the +export was nearly 1,400,000,000 pounds, worth about $161,500,000. +[Footnote: Johnson, in Lalor's Cyclopaedia, Art. "Slavery."] + +So profitable was slavery to vast numbers of individuals because of this +its new status, that men would not notice how, after all, it militated +against the nation's supreme interests. It polluted social relations in +obvious ways, setting at naught among slaves family ties and the behests +of virtue, influences that reacted terribly upon the whites. The entire +government of slaves had a brutalizing tendency, more pronounced as time +passed. "Plantation manners" were cultivated, which, displaying +themselves in Congress and elsewhere, in all discussions and measures +relating to the execrable institution, made the North believe that the +South was drifting toward barbarism. This was an exaggeration, yet +everyone knew that schools in the South were rare and poor, and thought +and speech little free as compared with the same in the North. Political +power, like the slaves, was in the hands of a few great barons, totally +merciless toward even southerners who differed from them. It is of course +not meant that virtue, kindliness, intelligence, and fair-mindedness +were ever wanting in that section, but they flourished in spite of the +slave-system. + +Economically slavery was an equal evil, taking as was the superficial +evidence to the contrary. No cruelty could make the slave work like a +free man, while his power to consume was enormous. Infants, aged, and +weak had to be supported by the owner. Even the best slaves were +improvident. Everywhere slave labor tended to banish free. Upon slave +soil scarcely an immigrant could be led to set foot. Poor whites grew +steadily poorer, their lot often more wretched than that of slaves. +Invention, care, forethought were as good as unknown among them. Slave +labor proved incompetent even for agriculture, impoverishing the richest +soil in comparatively few years, whence the perpetual impulse of the +slave-owners to acquire new territory. The dishonesty of blacks and the +danger of slave insurrections made property insecure, at the same time +that the system diminished in every community the number of its natural +defenders. The result was that the South, the superior of the North in +natural resources, was, by 1800, rapidly becoming the inferior in every +single element of prosperity. + +[1831] + +One of these insurrections was the event of 1831 in Virginia, +originating near the southern border. Four slaves in alliance with three +whites commenced it by killing several families and pressing all the +slaves they could find into their service, until the force was nearly +two hundred. They spread desolation everywhere. Fifty-five white persons +were murdered before the insurrection was in hand. Virginia and North +Carolina called out troops, and at last all the insurgents were captured +or killed. The leader was a black named Nat Turner, who believed himself +called of God to give his people freedom. He had heard voices in the air +and seen signs on the sky, which, with many other portents, he +interpreted as proofs of his divine commission. When all was over Turner +escaped to the woods, dug a hole under some fence-rails and lived there +for six weeks, coming out only at midnight for food. Driven thence by +discovery, he still managed to hide here and there about the plantations +in spite of a whole country of armed men in search of him, until at last +he was accidentally confronted in the bush by a white man with levelled +rifle. He was hanged, November 11th, and sixteen others later. His wife +was tortured for evidence, but in vain. Twelve negroes were transported. +Very many were, without trial, punished in inhuman ways, the heads of +some impaled along the highway as a warning. Partly in consequence of +this horrible affair, originated a stout movement for the abolition of +slavery in Virginia. This was favored by many of the ablest men in the +Old Dominion, but they were overruled. + + +[Illustration: Turner, holding a short sword and another man pointing a +rifle at him.] +The Discovery of Nat Turner. + + +Danger from the blacks necessitated the most rigid laws concerning them. +Time had been when it was thought not dangerous to teach slaves to read. +In 1742 Commissary Garden, of the English Society for Propagating the +Gospel, founded a negro school in Charleston, where slaves were taught +by slave teachers, these last being the society's property. Honest Elias +Neale, the society's catechist in New York, engaged in the same work +there, and afterward catechists were so employed in Philadelphia. That +organization did much to stir up the planters to teach their slaves the +rudiments of Christianity. [Footnote: Eggleston in Century, May, 1888.] +Now, all this was changed. The strictest laws were made to keep every +slave in the most abject ignorance, to prevent their congregating, and +to make it impossible for abolitionists or abolitionist literature or +influence to get at them. + +[1816] + +Inconvenient and perilous as slavery was, southern devotion to it for +many reasons strengthened rather than weakened. The masses did not +perceive the ruin the system was working, which, moreover, consisted +with great profits to vast numbers of influential men and to many +localities. Border States little by little gave up the hope of becoming +free, the old anti-slavery convictions of their best men faltering, and +the practical problem of emancipation, really difficult, being too +easily decided insoluble. More significant, owing to a variety of +circumstances, the abolition spirit itself greatly subsided early in the +present century. Completion of the emancipation process in the North was +assured by the action of New York in 1817, proclaiming a total end to +slavery there from July 4, 1827. The view that each State was absolute +sovereign over slavery within its own borders, responsibility for it and +its abuses there ending with the State's own citizens, was now +universally accepted. Success in securing the act of 1807, making the +slave trade illegal from January 1, 1808, and affixing to it heavy +penalties, lulled multitudes to sleep. This act, however, had effect +only gradually, and its beneficence was greatly lessened in that it left +confiscated negroes to the operation of the local law. + +Such quietude was furthered through the formation of the American +Colonization Society in 1816, by easy philanthropists and statesmen, +North as well as South, who swore by the Constitution as admitting no +fundamental amendment, admired its three great compromises, loved all +brethren of the Union except agitators, and deprecated slavery and the +black race about equally; its mission negro deportation, but its actual +efforts confined to the dumping of free blacks, reprobates, and +castaways in some remote corner of the universe, for the convenience of +slave-holders themselves. [Footnote: 3 Schouler's United States, 198.] + +[1839] + +Meantime much was occurring to harden northern hostility to slavery into +resolute hatred, a fire which might smoulder long but could not die out. +The fugitive slave law for the rendition of runaways found in free +States operated cruelly at best, and was continually abused to kidnap +free blacks. The owner or his attorney or agent could seize a slave +anywhere on the soil of freedom, bring him before the magistrate of the +county, city, or town corporate in which the arrest was made, and prove +his ownership by testimony or by affidavit; and the certificate of such +magistrate that this had been done was a sufficient warrant for the +return of the poor wretch into bondage. Obstruction, rescue, or aid +toward escape was fined in the sum of five hundred dollars. This is the +pith of the fugitive slave act of 1793. It might have been far more +mischievous but for the interpretation put upon it in the celebrated +case of Prigg versus Pennsylvania. + +Mr. Prigg was the agent of a Maryland slave-owner. He had in 1839 +pursued a slave woman into Pennsylvania, and when refused her surrender +by the local magistrate carried her away by force. He was indicted in +Pennsylvania for kidnapping, an amicable lawsuit made up, and an appeal +taken to the United States Supreme Court. Here, in an opinion prepared +by Justice Story, the Pennsylvania statute under which the magistrate +had acted, providing a mode for the return of fugitives by state +authorities, was declared unconstitutional on the ground that only +Congress could legislate on the subject; but it was added that while a +free State had no right in any way to block the capture of a runaway, as +for example by ordering a jury trial to determine whether a seized +person had really been a slave, so as to protect free persons of dark +complexion, yet States might forbid their officers to aid in the +recovery of slaves. As the act of 1793 did not name any United States +officials for this service it became nearly inoperative. Spite of this +terrible construction of the Constitution, which Chief Justice Taney +thought should have included an assertion of a State's duty by +legislation to aid rendition, many northern States passed personal +liberty laws, besetting the capture of slaves with all possible +difficulties thought compatible with the Constitution. The South +denounced all such laws whatever as unconstitutional, and perhaps some +of them were. + +[1835] + +Constitutional or not, they were needed. There were regular expeditions +to carry off free colored persons from the coasts of New York and New +Jersey, many of them successful. The foreign slave-trade, with its +ineffable atrocities, proved defiant of law and preternaturally +tenacious of life. A lucrative but barbarous domestic trade had sprung +up between the Atlantic States, Virginia and North Carolina especially, +and those on the Gulf, for the supply of the southern market. Families +were torn apart, gangs of the poor creatures driven thousands of miles +in shackles or carried coastwise in the over-filled holds of vessels, to +live or die--little matter which--under unknown skies and strange, +heartless masters. + +The slave codes of the southern States grew severer every year, as did +legislation against free colored people. Laws were passed rendering +emancipation more difficult and less a blessing when obtained. The +Mississippi and Alabama constitutions, 1817 and 1819 respectively, and +all those in the South arising later, were shaped so as to place general +emancipation beyond the power even of Legislatures. Congress was even +thus early--so it seemed at the North--all too subservient to the +slave-holders, partly through the operation of the three-fifths rule, +partly from fear that opposition would bring disunion, partly in that +ambitious legislators were eager for southern votes. As to the Senate, +the South had taken care, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee having evened +the score, all before 1800, to allow no new northern State to be +admitted unless matched by a southern. In addition to all this, the +North had a vast trade with the South, and northern capitalists held to +an enormous amount mortgages on southern property of all sorts, so that +large and influential classes North had a pecuniary interest in +maintaining at the South both good nature and business prosperity. + + + +CHAPTER II. + +"IMMEDIATE ABOLITION" + +[1832] + +While slavery was thus strengthening itself upon its own soil and in +some respects also at the North, its champions ever more alert and +forward, its old foes asleep, these very facts were provoking thought +about the institution and hostility to it, destined in time to work its +overthrow. Interested people saw that slavery, so aggressive and +defiant, must be fought to be put down, and that if the Constitution was +its bulwark, as all believed, provided a tithe of what the South as well +as the North had said of its evils was true, the whole country, and not +the South only, was guilty in tolerating the curse. In 1821 Lundy began +publishing his Genius of Universal Emancipation, seconded, from 1829, by +the more radical Garrison. In 1831 Garrison founded the Liberator, +whose motto, "immediate and unconditional emancipation," was intended as +a rebuke to the tame policy of the colonizationists. "I am in earnest," +said the plucky man, when his utterances threatened to cost him his +life, "I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will +not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." These were startling +tones. Had God turned a new prophet loose in the earth? + +The abolition spirit was a part of the general moral and religious +quickening we have mentioned as beginning about 1825, and revealing +itself in revivals, missions, a religious press, and belief in the end +of the world as approaching. The ethical teaching of the great German +philosopher, Emanuel Kant, denouncing all use of man as an instrument, +began to take effect in America through the writings of Coleridge. +Hatred of slavery was gradually intensified and spread. In 1832 rose the +New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 the American Society was +organized, with a platform declaring "slavery a crime." + +[1833] + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +John G. Whittier in 1833. + + +This declaration marked one of the most important turning-points in all +the history of the United States. It drew the line. It brought to view +the presence in our land of two sets of earnest thinkers, with +diametrically opposite views touching slavery, who could not permanently +live together under one constitution. May, Phillips, Weld, Whittier, the +Tappans, and many other men of intellect, of oratorical power, and of +wealth, drew to Garrison's side. State abolition societies were +organized all over the North, the Underground Railroad was hard worked +in helping fugitives to Canada, and fiery prophets harangued wherever +they could get a hearing, demanding "immediate abolition" in the name of +God. + +The Abolitionists proposed none but moral arms in fighting +slavery--papers, pamphlets, public addresses, personal appeals. They +deprecated rebellion by slaves, and urged congressional action against +slavery only in the District of Columbia, in the territories, and at +sea, where the absolute jurisdiction of the general Government was +admitted by nearly all. Nevertheless, southern hostility to them was +indescribably ferocious and uncompromising. They were charged with +instigating all the slave insurrections and insubordination that +occurred, and with having made necessary the new, more diabolical +discipline over blacks, both bond and free. Southern papers and +Legislatures incessantly commanded that Abolitionists be delivered up to +southern justice, their societies and their publications suppressed by +law, and abolitionist agitation made penal. There were northerners quite +ready to grant these demands. Rage against abolitionism, much of it, if +possible, even more unreasoning, prevailed at the North. Garrison says +that he found here "contempt more bitter, detraction more relentless, +prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slave-owners +themselves." The Church, politics, business--all interests save +righteousness--seemed to bow to the false god. Of all utterances against +abolitionism, those of clergymen and religious journals were the +bitterest. To call slavery sin was the unpardonable sin. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Wm. Lloyd Garrison. + + +[1834-1836] + +In 1834, on July 4th, a mob broke up a meeting of the American +Anti-Slavery Society in New York. A few days after, Lewis Tappan's house +was sacked in the same manner, as well as several churches, +school-houses, and dwellings of colored families. At Newark, N. J., a +colored man who had been introduced into a pulpit by the minister of the +congregation, was forcibly wrenched therefrom and carried off to jail. +The pulpit was then torn down and the church gutted. In Norwich, Conn., +the mob pulled an abolitionist lecturer from his platform and drummed +him out of town to the Rogues' March. In 1836 occurred the murder of +Rev. E. P. Lovejoy, at Alton, Ill. He was the publisher of The Observer, +an abolitionist sheet, which had already been three times suspended by +the destruction of his printing apparatus. It was at a meeting held in +Faneuil Hall over this occurrence that Wendell Phillips first made his +appearance as an anti-slavery orator. Also in 1836 the office at +Cincinnati in which James G. Birney published The Philanthropist, was +sacked, the types scattered, and the press broken and sunk in the river. +Birney was a southerner by birth, and had been a slave-holder, but had +freed his slaves. Between 1834 and 1840 there was hardly a place of any +size in the North where an Abolitionist could speak with certain safety. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Wendell Phillip. + + +The destruction of colored people's houses became for a time an +every-day occurrence in many northern cities. For some years the +condition of the free blacks and their friends was hardly better north +than south. Schools for colored children were violently opposed even in +New England. One kept by Miss Prudence Crandall, at Canterbury, Conn., +was, after its opponents had for months sought in every manner to close +it, destroyed by fire. The lady herself was imprisoned, and such schools +were by law forbidden in the State. A colored school at Canaan, N. H., +was voted a nuisance by a meeting of the town; the building was then +dragged from its foundations and ruined. Many who aided in these deeds +belonged to what were regarded the most respectable classes of society. + +[1839-1840] + +Owing to the vagaries and unpatriotism of the Garrisonians, there was +from 1840 schism in the abolition ranks. Garrison and his closest +sympathizers were very radical on other questions besides that +concerning the sin of slavery. They declared the Constitution "a league +with death and a covenant with hell" because it recognized slavery. They +would neither vote nor hold office under it. They upbraided the churches +as full of the devil's allies. They also advocated community of +property, women's rights, and some of them free love. Others, as Birney, +Whittier, and Gerrit Smith, refused to believe so ill of the +Constitution or of the churches, and wished to rush the slavery question +right into the political arena. The division, far from hindering, +greatly set forward the abolitionist cause. Perhaps neither abolition +society, as such, had, after the schism of 1840, quite the influence +which the old exerted at first, but by this time a very general public +opinion maintained anti-slavery propagandism, pushing it henceforth more +powerfully than ever, as well as, through broader modes of utterance and +action, more successfully. Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, each enlisted +his muse in the crusade. Wendell Phillips's tongue was a flaming sword. +Clergymen, politicians, and other people entirely conservative in most +things, felt free to join the new society of political Abolitionists. + +In 1839 the Governor of Virginia made a requisition on Governor Seward +of New York, to send to Virginia three sailors charged with having aided +a slave out of bondage. Seward declined, on the ground that by New York +law the sailors were guilty of no crime, as that law knew nothing of +property in man. He accompanied his refusal with a discussion of slavery +and slave law quite in the abolitionist vein. To a like call from +Georgia, Seward responded in the same way, and his example was followed +by other northern governors. The Liberty Party took the field in 1840, +Birney and Earle for candidates, who polled nearly 7,000 votes. Four +years later Birney and Morris received 62,300. + +It would be a mistake, let us remember, to regard the anti-abolitionist +temper at the North wholly as apathy, friendliness to slavery, or the +result of truckling to the South. Besides sharing the general fanaticism +which mixed itself with the movement, the Abolitionists ignored the +South's dilemma--the ultras totally, the moderates too much. "What +would you do, brethren, were you in our place?" asked Dr. Richard +Fuller, of Baltimore, in a national religious meeting where slavery was +under debate; "how would you go to work to realize your views?" Dr. +Spencer H. Cone, of New York, roared in reply, "I would proclaim liberty +throughout all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof." But the thing +was far from being so simple as that. Denouncing the Constitution as +Garrison did could not but affront patriotic hearts. It was impolitic, +to say the least, to import English co-agitators, who could not +understand the intricacies of the subject as presented here. + + +[Illustration: facsimile of Heading of the "Liberator."] + + +The fact that, defying slave-masters and sycophants alike, the cause of +abolition still went on conquering and to conquer, was due much less to +the strength of its arguments and the energy of its agitation than to +the South's wild outcry and preposterous effrontery of demand. +Conservative northerners began to see that, bad as abolitionism might +be, the means proposed for its suppression were worse still, being +absolutely subversive of personal liberty, free speech, and a free +press. More serious was the conviction, which the South's attitude +nursed, that such mortal horror at Abolitionists and their propaganda +could only be explained by some sort of a conviction on the part of the +South itself that the Abolitionists were right, and that slavery was +precisely the heinous and damnable evil they declared it to be. It was +mostly in considering this aspect of the case that the Church and clergy +more and more developed conscience and voice on freedom's side, as +practical allies of abolitionism. In each great denomination the South +had to break off from the North on account of the latter's love to the +black as a human being. Men felt that an institution unable to stand +discussion ought to fall. By 1850 there were few places at the North +where an Abolitionist might not safely speak his mind. + +It were as unjust as it would be painful to view this long, courageous, +desperate defence of slavery as the pure product of depravity. The South +had a cause, in logic, law, and, to an extent, even in justice. Both +sides could rightly appeal to the Constitution, the deep, irrepressible +antagonism of freedom against bondage having there its seat. The very +existence of the Constitution presupposed that each section should +respect the institutions of the other. What right, then, had the North +to allow publications confessedly intended to destroy a legal southern +institution, deeply rooted and cherished? From a merely constitutional +point of view this question was no less proper than the other: What +right had the South, among much else, to enact laws putting in prison +northern citizens of color absolutely without indictment, when, as +sailors, they touched at southern ports, and keeping them there till +their ships sailed? This outrage had occurred repeatedly. What was +worse, when Messrs. Hoar and Hubbard visited Charleston and New Orleans, +respectively, to bring amicable suits that should go to the Supreme +Court and there decide the legality of such detention, they were obliged +to withdraw to escape personal violence. + +It was said that the North must bear these incidents of slavery, so +obnoxious to it, in deference to our complex political system. Yes, but +it was equally the South's duty to bear the, to it, obnoxious incidents +of freedom. Southern men seem never to have thought of this. Doubtless, +as emancipation in any style would have afflicted it, the South could +not but account all incitements thereto as hardships; but the North must +have suffered hardships, if less gross and tangible, yet more real and +galling, had it acceded to southern wishes touching liberty of person, +speech, and the press. That at the North which offended the South was of +the very soul and essence of free government; that at the South which +aggrieved the North was, however important, certainly somewhat less +essential. Manifestly, considerations other than legal or constitutional +needed to be invoked in order to a decision of the case upon its merits, +and these, had they been judicially weighed, must, it would seem, all +have told powerfully against slavery. Not to raise the question whether +the black was a man, with the inalienable rights mentioned in the +Declaration of Independence, the South's own economic and moral weal, +and further--what one would suppose should alone have determined the +question--its social peace and political stability loudly demanded +every possible effort and device for the extirpation of slavery. That +this would have been difficult all must admit; that it was intrinsically +possible the examples of Cuba and Brazil since sufficiently prove. + + +[Illustration: Map of the United Staes and Territories.] + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE MEXICAN WAR + +[1836] + +Attracted by fertility of soil and advantages for cattle-raising, large +numbers of Americans had long been emigrating to Texas. By 1830 they +probably comprised a majority of its inhabitants. March 2, 1836, Texas +declared its independence of Mexico, and on April 10th of that year +fought in defence of the same the decisive battle of San Jacinto. Here +Houston gained a complete victory over Santa Anna, the Mexican +President, captured him, and extorted his signature to a treaty +acknowledging Texan independence. This, however, as having been forced, +the Mexican Government would not ratify. + +[1845] + +Not only did the Texans almost to a man wish annexation to our Union, +but, as we have seen, the dominant wing of the democratic party in the +Union itself was bent upon the same, forcing a demand for this into +their national platform in 1840. Van Buren did not favor it, which was +the sole reason why he forfeited to Polk the democratic nomination in +1844. Polk was elected by free-soil votes cast for Birney, which, had +Clay received them, would have carried New York and Michigan for him and +thus elected him; but the result was hailed as indorsing annexation. +Calhoun, Tyler's Secretary of State, more influential than any other one +man in bringing it about, therefore now advocated it more zealously than +ever. Calhoun's purpose in this was to balance the immense growth of the +North by adding to southern territory Texas, which would of course +become a slave State, and perhaps in time make several States. As the +war progressed he grew moderate, out of fear that the South's show of +territorial greed would give the North just excuse for sectional +measures. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General Sam. Houston. + + +Henry Clay, with nearly the entire Whig Party, from the first opposed +the Tyler-Calhoun programme. Clay's own reason for this, as his +memorable Lexington speech in 1847 disclosed, was that the United States +would be looked upon "as actuated by a spirit of rapacity and an +inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement." His party as a whole +dreaded more the increment which would come to the slave power. After +much discussion in Congress, Texas was annexed to the Union on January +25, 1845, just previous to Polk's accession. June 18th, the Texan +Congress unanimously assented, its act being ratified July 4th by a +popular convention. Thus were added to the United States 376,133 square +miles of territory. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General Santa Anna. + + +The all-absorbing question now was where Texas ended: at the Nueces, as +Mexico declared, or at the Rio Grande, as Texas itself had maintained, +insisting upon that stream as of old the bourne between Spanish America +and the French Louisiana. Mexico, proud, had recognized neither the +independence of Texas nor its annexation by the United States, yet would +probably have agreed to both as preferable to war, had the alternative +been allowed. To be sure, she was dilatory in settling admitted claims +for certain depredations upon our commerce, threatened to take the +annexation as a casus belli, withdrew her envoy and declined to accept +Slidell as ours, and precipitated the first actual bloodshed. Yet war +might have been averted, and our Government, not Mexico's, was to blame +for the contrary result. Slidell played the bully, the navy threatened +the coast, our wholly deficient title, through Texas, to the +Nueces-Rio-Grande tract was assumed without the slightest ado to be +good, and when General Arista, having crossed the river in Taylor's +vicinity, repelled the latter's attack upon him, the President, followed +by Congress, falsely alleged war to exist "by act of the Republic of +Mexico." + +[1846] + +During most of 1845, General Zachary Taylor was at Corpus Christi on the +west bank of the Nueces, in command of 3,600 men. The first aggressive +movement occurred in March of the following year, when Taylor, invading +the disputed territory by command from Washington, advanced to the Rio +Grande, opposite Matamoras. April 26th, a Mexican force crossed the +river and captured a party of American dragoons which attacked them. +Taylor drew back to establish communication with Point Isabel, and on +advancing again toward the Rio Grande, May 8th, found before him a +Mexican force of nearly twice his numbers, commanded by Arista. The +battle of Palo Alto ensued, and next day that of Resaca de la Palma, +Taylor completely victorious in both. May 13th, before knowledge of +these actions had reached Washington, warranted merely by news of the +cavalry skirmish on April 26th, Congress declared war, and the President +immediately called for 50,000 volunteers. In July Taylor was re-enforced +by Worth, and proceeded to organize a campaign against Monterey, a +strongly fortified town some ninety miles toward the City of Mexico. +This place was reached September 19th, and captured on the 22d, after +hard fighting and severe losses on both sides. An armistice of eight +weeks followed. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +James K. Polk, after a photograph by Brady. + + +[Illustration: Map.] +PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA MORNING 23 OF FEB 1847. + + +[1847] + +Meantime a revolution had occurred in Mexico. The banished Santa Anna +was recalled, and as President of the Republic assumed command of the +Mexican armies. On February 23, 1847, occurred one of the most +sanguinary but brilliant battles of the war, that of Buena Vista. +Taylor, learning that a Mexican force was advancing under Santa Anna, at +least double the 5,200 left him after the requisition upon him which +General Scott had just made, drew back to the strong position of Buena +Vista, south of Saltillo. Here Santa Anna, having through an intercepted +despatch learned of Taylor's weakness, ferociously fell upon him with a +force 12,000 strong. On right and centre, by dint of good tactics and +bull-dog fighting, Taylor held his own and more, but the foe succeeded +at first in partly turning and pushing back his left. The Mexican +commander bade Taylor surrender, but was refused, whence the saying that +"Old Rough and Ready," as they called Taylor, "was whipped but didn't +know it." + +To check the flanking movement he sent forward two regiments of +infantry, well supported by dragoons and artillery, who charged the +advancing mass, broke the Mexicans' column, and sent them fleeing in +confusion. This saved the day. The American loss was 746, including +several officers, among them Lieutenant-Colonel Clay, son of the +Kentucky statesman. Colonel Jefferson Davis, one day to be President of +the Southern Confederacy, caused during this conflict great havoc in the +enemy's ranks with his Mississippi riflemen. Santa Anna's loss was +2,000. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General Winfield Scott. + + +General Winfield Scott had meantime been ordered to Mexico as chief in +command. Taylor was a Whig, and the Whigs whispered that his martial +deeds were making the democratic cabinet dread him as a presidential +candidate. But Scott was a Whig, too, and if there was anything in the +surmise, his victorious march must have given Polk's political household +additional food for reflection. Scott's plan was to reduce Vera Cruz, +and thence march to the Mexican capital, two hundred miles away, by the +quickest route. Vera Cruz capitulated March 27, 1847. + +Scott straightway struck out for the interior. He was bloodily opposed +at Cerro Gordo, April 18th, and at Jalapa, but he made quick work of the +enemy at both these places. In the latter city, after his victory, he +awaited promised re-enforcements. When the last of these had arrived, +August 6th, under General Franklin Pierce, so that he could muster about +14,000 men, he advanced again. August 10th the Americans were in sight +of the City of Mexico. This was a natural stronghold, and art had added +to its strength in every possible way. Except on the south and west it +was nearly inaccessible if defended with any spirit. Scott of course +directed his attack toward the west and south sides of the city. The +first battle in the environs of the capital was fiercely fought near the +village of Contreras, and proved an overwhelming defeat for the +Mexicans. Two thousand were killed or wounded, while nearly 1,000, +including four generals, were captured, together with a large quantity +of stores and ammunition. The American loss was only 60 killed and +wounded. + +The survivors fled to Churubusco, farther toward the city, where, with +every advantage of position, Santa Anna had united his forces for a +final stand. An old stone convent, which our artillery could not reach +till late in the action, was utilized as a barricade, and from this the +Mexicans poured a most deadly fire upon their assailants. The Americans +were victorious, as usual, but their loss was fearful, 1,000 being +killed or wounded, including 76 officers. A truce to last a fortnight +was now agreed upon, but Scott, seeing that the Mexicans were taking +advantage of it to strengthen their fortifications, did not wait so +long. He now had about 8,500 men fit for duty, and sixty-eight guns. +Hostilities were renewed September 7th, by the storm and capture, +costing nearly 800 men, of Molino del Rey, or "King's Mill," a mile and +a half from the city. + +Possession of the Molino opened the way to Chapultepec, the Gibraltar of +Mexico, 1,100 yards nearer the goal. As it was built upon a rock 150 +feet high, impregnable on the north and well-nigh so on the eastern and +most of the southern face, only the western and part of the southern +sides could be scaled. But the stronghold was the key to the city, and +after surveying the situation, a council of war decided that it must be +taken. Two picked American detachments, one from the west, one from the +south, pushed up the rugged steeps in face of a withering fire. The +rock-walls to the base of the castle had to be mounted by ladders. This +was successfully accomplished; the enemy were driven from the building +back into the city, and the castle and grounds occupied by our troops. A +large number of fugitives were cut off by a force sent around to the +north. + + +[Illustration: The Plaza of the City of Mexico.] + + +[1848] + +To pierce the city was even now by no means easy. The approach was by +two roads, one entering the Belen gate, the other the San Cosme. General +Quitman advanced toward the Belen, but at the entrance was stopped by a +destructive cannonade from the citadel itself. Those fighting their way +toward the San Cosme succeeded in entering the city, Lieutenant U. S. +Grant making his mark in the gallant work of this day. The city was +evacuated that night, and on the 15th of September, 1847, was fully in +the hands of Scott. + +The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. It +established the Rio Grande as the boundary between the two countries, +and New Mexico, of course including what is now Arizona and also +California, was ceded to the United States for $15,000,000. The United +States also assumed, to the sum of $3,250,000, the claims of American +citizens upon Mexico. For Gadsden's Purchase, in 1853, between the Gila +River and the Mexican State of Chihuahua, we paid $10,000,000 more. Our +territory thus received in all, as a consequence of the Mexican War, an +increment of 591,398 square miles. + +Inseparable from the politics of the Mexican War is the Oregon question, +since Oregon's re-occupation and "fifty-four forty or fight" had been +democratic cries for securing to Polk west-northern votes in 1844. We +had, however, no valid claim so far north, except against Russia--by the +treaty of 1824. The Louisiana purchase, indeed, had vested us with +whatever--very dubious--rights France had upon the Pacific, and the +Florida treaty of 1819 gave us the far better title of Spain to the +coast north of 42 degrees. This treaty, with Gray's discovery of the +Columbia in 1792, Lewis and Clarke's official explorations of the +Columbia valley in 1804-05-06, England's retrocession, in 1818, of +Astoria, captured during the War of 1812, and extensive actual +settlements upon the river by American citizens from 1832 on, made our +claim perfect up to 49 degrees at least. This parallel the convention +with Great Britain in 1818 had already fixed as our northern line from +the Lake of Woods to the Rocky Mountains. Between this and 54 degrees 40 +minutes, England's title, from exploration and settlement, was superior +to ours, which was based upon alleged old Spanish discovery. The same +convention of 1818, renewed in 1827, opened the Oregon country to +occupation by settlers from both nations. Increase of immigration +rendering a fixing of jurisdictions imperative, England pressed for the +line of the Columbia below its intersection of the forty-ninth parallel. +We had twice offered to settle upon 49 degrees, which limit the rapid +growth of our population in the region induced England in 1836 to +accept. Whether Polk's blustering demand for "all Oregon," which came +near bringing on war with England, and his much condemned recession +later, were mere opportunist acts, is still a question. Many consider +them pieces of a deep-laid policy by Polk to tole Mexico to war in hope +of England's aid, then, suddenly pacifying England, to devour Mexico at +his leisure. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 + +[1846] + +One of the campaigns at the beginning of the Mexican War was that of +General Stephen W. Kearney, from Fort Leavenworth, against New Mexico. +It was opened in May, 1846. He invaded the country without much +opposition, arrived at Santa Fe August 18th, having marched 873 miles, +declared the inhabitants free from all allegiance to Mexico, and formed +a territorial government over them as United States subjects. + +Captain John C. Fremont had previously, but in the same year, 1846, been +sent to California at the head of an exploring expedition, and in May he +was notified to remain in the country in anticipation of hostilities. On +June 15th he captured Samona. Meanwhile, Commodore Sloat was erecting +our flag over the towns on the coast. In July Sloat was superseded by +Commodore Stockton, who routed the Mexican commander, De Castro, at Los +Angeles, joined Fremont, and on August 13th seized Monterey, the then +capital. The two commanders now placed themselves at the head of a +provisional government for California. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Zachary Taylor. After a photograph by Brady. + + +[Illustration: Hillside facing bay, with about 35 houses. About 100 +ships are in the bay.] +The Site of San Francisco in 1848. + + +[1848-1849] + +In 1848, on the same day and almost at the same hour when the peace of +Guadalupe Hidalgo was concluded, gold was discovered in California. It +was on the land of one Sutter, a Swiss settler in the Sacramento Valley, +as some workmen were opening a flume for a mill. In three months over +4,000 persons were there, digging for gold with great success. By July, +1849, it is thought, 15,000 had arrived. Nearly all were forced to live +in booths, tents, log huts, and under the open sky. The sparse +population previously on the ground left off farming and grazing and +opened mines. People became insane for gold. Immigrants soon came in +immense hordes. In 1846, aside from roving Indians, California had +numbered not much over 15,000 inhabitants. By 1850, it seems certain +that the territory contained no fewer than 92,597. The new-comers were +from almost every land and clime--Mexico, South America, the Sandwich +Islands, China--though, of course, most were Americans. The bulk of +these hailed from the Northwest and the Northeast. To this land of +promise the sturdy pioneers from the Mississippi Valley found their way +on foot, on horseback, or in wagons, over the Rocky Mountains and the +Sierras, following trails previously untrodden by civilized man. Those +from the East made long detours around Cape Horn or across the Isthmus +of Panama. + + +[Illustration: A few log buildings and a tent in a small clearing.] +Sutter's Mill, California, where Gold was First Discovered. + + +The yield of gold from the virgin placers was enormous, a laborer's +average the first season being perhaps an ounce a day, though many made +much more. During the first two years about $40,000,000 worth of gold +was extracted. According to careful estimates the gold yield of the +United States, mostly from California, which had been only $890,000 in +1847, increased to $10,000,000 in 1848, to $40,000,000 in 1849, to +$50,000,000 in 1850, to $55,000,000 in 1851, to $60,000,000 in 1852, and +in 1853 to $65,000,000. + +Most interesting were the spontaneous governmental and legal +institutions which arose in these motley communities, some of them +finding their originals in the English mining districts, others in +Mexico and Spain, and still others recalling the mining customs of +medieval Germany. For a time many camps had each its independent +government, disconnected from all human authority around or above. Some +of these were modelled after the Mexican Alcaldeship, others after the +New England town. Over those who rushed to the vicinity of Sutter's mill +that gentleman became virtual Alcalde, though he was not recognized by +all. The men first opening a placer would seek to pre-empt all the +adjoining land, giving up only when others came in numbers too strong +for them. Officers were elected and new customs sanctioned as they were +needed. Partnerships were sacredly maintained, yet by no other law than +that of the camp. Crimes against property and life seem to have been +infrequent at first, but the unparalleled wealth toled in and developed +a criminal class, which the rudimentary government could not control. +San Francisco formed in 1851 a vigilance committee of citizens, by which +crimes could be more summarily and surely punished. The pioneer banking +house in California began business at San Francisco in January, 1849. +The same month saw the first frame house on the Sacramento, near +Sutter's Fort. + +The vast acquisition of territory by the Mexican War seemed destined to +be a great victory for slavery, because nearly all of it lay south of 36 +degrees 30 minutes and hence by the Missouri Compromise could become +slave soil. But there was the complication that under Mexico all this +wide realm had been free. To exist there legally slavery must therefore +be established by Congress, making the case very different from the +cases of Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, which came under United States +authority already burdened. This predisposed many who were not in +general opposed to slavery, against extending the institution hither. +Early in the war a bill had passed the House, failing almost by accident +in the Senate, which contained the famous Wilmot Proviso, so named from +its mover in the House, that, except for crime, neither slavery nor +involuntary servitude should ever exist in any of the territories to be +annexed. Wilmot was a Democrat, and at this time a decided majority of +his party favored the proviso. But the pro-slavery wing rallied, while +the Whigs, disbelieving in the war and in annexation both, offered the +proviso Democrats no hearty aid. In consequence it was defeated both +then and after the annexation. + +The election of 1848 went for the Whigs, and the next March 4th, General +Taylor became President. Though a southerner and a slave-holder, he was +moderate and a true patriot. So rapid had been the influx into +California that the Territory needed a stable government. Accordingly, +one of Taylor's first acts as President was to urge California to apply +for admission to statehood. General Riley, military governor, at once +called a convention, which, sitting from September 1st to October 13th, +framed a constitution and made request that California be taken into the +Union. This constitution prohibited slavery, and thus a new firebrand +was tossed into the combustible material with which the political +situation abounded. By this time nearly all the friends of freedom were +for the proviso, but its enemies as well had greatly increased. The +immense growth, actual and prospective, of northern population, greatly +inspired one side and angered the other. + +[1850] + +Resort was now had again to the old, illusive device of compromise, Clay +being the leader as usual. He brought forward his "Omnibus Bill," so +called because it threw a sop to everybody. It failed to pass as a +single measure, but was broken up and enacted piecemeal. Stubborn was +the fight. Radicals of the one part would consent to nothing short of +extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific; those of the +other stood solidly for the unmodified proviso. + +In this crisis occurred President Taylor's death, July 9, 1850, which +was most unfortunate. He was known not to favor the pro-slavery +aggression which, in spite of Clay's personal leaning in the opposite +direction, the omnibus bill embodied. Mr. Fillmore, as also Webster, +whom he made his Secretary of State, nervous with fear of an +anti-slavery reputation, went fully Clay's length. The debate on this +compromise of 1850 was the occasion when Webster deserted the free-soil +principles which were now dominant in New England. His celebrated speech +of March. 7th marked the crisis of his life. He argued that the proviso +was not needed to prevent slavery in the newly gotten district, while +its passage would be a wanton provocation to the South From this moment +Massachusetts dropped him. When she next elected a senator for a full +term, it was Charles Sumner, candidate of the united Democrats and +Free-soilers, who went to Congress pledged to fight slavery to the +death. + +But the omnibus compromises were passed. California was, indeed, +admitted free, September 9, 1850--the thirty-first State in order--and +slave-trade in the District of Columbia slightly alleviated. On the +other hand, Texas was stretched to include a huge piece of New Mexico +that was free before, and paid $10,000,000 to relinquish further claims. +This was virtually a bonus to holders of her scrip, which from seventeen +cents the dollar instantly rose to par. New Mexico and Utah were to be +organized as Territories without the proviso, and were made powerless to +legislate on slavery till they should become States. Least sufferable, a +fugitive slave law was passed, so Draconian that that of 1793, hitherto +in force, was benign in comparison. It placed the entire power of the +general Government at the slave-hunter's disposal, and ordered rendition +without trial or grant of habeas corpus, on a certificate to be had by +simple affidavit. Bystanders, if bidden, were obliged to help marshals, +and tremendous penalties imposed for aid to fugitives. + +This act facilitated the recovery of fugitives at first, but not +permanently. Many who had labored for its passage soon saw that it was a +mistake. It powerfully fanned the abolition flame all over the North. +New personal liberty laws were enacted. A daily increasing number +adopted the view that the new act was unconstitutional, on the ground +that the Constitution places the rendition of slaves as of criminals in +the hands of States, and guarantees jury trial, even upon title to +property, if over twenty dollars in value. After the act had been +justified in the courts, multitudes of moderate northern men urged to a +dangerous degree the doctrine of state rights in defence of the liberty +laws. Others adopted the cry of the "higher law," and without joining +Garrison in denouncing the Government, did not hesitate to oppose in +every possible way the operation of this drastic legislation for +slave-catching. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Millard Fillmore. +From a painting by Carpenter in 1853, at the City Hall, New York. + + +The country's growth made escape from bondage continually easier and +easier. Once across the border a runaway was sure to find many friends +and few enemies. Openly, or, if this was required, by stealth, he was +passed quickly along to the Canada line. Between 1830 and 1860 over +30,000 slaves are estimated to have taken refuge in Canada. By 1850, +probably no less than 20,000 had found homes in the free States. The new +law moved many of these across into the British dominions. It was hence +increasingly difficult for the slave-owner to recover stray property. +All possible legal obstructions were placed in his way, and when these +failed he was likely still to be opposed by a mob which might prove too +powerful for the marshal and any posse which he could gather. + + +[Illustration: Three angry men looking out a window at crowd of citizens +and soldiers in large plaza.] +The Rendition of Anthony Burns in Boston. + + +In Boston, when a slave named Shadrach was arrested, his friends made a +sudden dash, rescued him from the officers and freed him. With Simms the +same was attempted, but in vain. The removal of Anthony Burns from that +city in 1855 was possible only by escorting him down State Street to the +revenue cutter in waiting, inside a dense hollow square of United States +artillerymen and marines, with the whole city's militia under arms and +at hand. Business houses as well as residences were closed and draped in +mourning. It was an indignity which Massachusetts never forgot. At +Alton, Ill., slave-hunters seized a respectable colored woman, long +resident there, who fully believed herself free. She was surrounded by +an infuriated company of citizens, and would have been wrenched from her +captors' clutch had not they, in their terror, offered to sell her back +into freedom. The needed $1,200 was raised in a few minutes, and the +agonized creature restored to her family. Judge Davis, whom the evidence +had compelled to deliver the woman, on rendering the sentence resigned +his commission, declaring: "The law gives you your victim. Thank it and +not me, and may God have mercy on your sinful souls." + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE FIGHT FOR KANSAS + +[1850-1854] + +The measures of 1850 proved anything but the "finality" upon slavery +discussion which both parties, the Whigs as loudly as the Democrats, +promised and insisted that they should be. Elated by its victory in +1850, and also by that of 1852, when the anti-slavery sentiment of +northern Whigs drove so many of their old southern allies to vote for +Pierce, giving him his triumphant election, the slavocracy in 1854 +proceeded in its work of suicide to undo the sacred Missouri Compromise +of 1820. Douglas, the ablest northern Democrat, led in this, succeeding, +as official pacificator between North and South, somewhat to the office +of Clay, who had died June 29, 1852. The aim of most who were with him +was to make Kansas-Nebraska slave soil, but we may believe that Douglas +himself cherished the hope and conviction that freedom was its destiny. + +This rich country west and northwest of Missouri, consecrated to freedom +by the Missouri Compromise, had been slowly filling with civilized men. +It did not promise to be a profitable field for slavery, nor would +economic considerations ever have originated a slavery question +concerning it. But politically its character as slave or free was of the +utmost consequence to the South, where the resolution gradually arose +either to secure it for the peculiar institution or else prevent its +organization even as a Territory. A motion for such organization had +been unsuccessfully made about 1843, and it was repeated, equally +without effect, each session for ten years. None of these motions had +contained any hint that slavery could possibly find place in the +proposed Territory. The bill of December 15, 1853, like its +predecessors, had as first drawn no reference whatever to slavery, but +when it returned from the committee on Territories, of which Douglas was +chairman, the report, not explicitly, indeed, made the assumption, +unheard of before, that Kansas-Nebraska stood in the same relation to +slavery in which Utah and New Mexico had stood in 1850; and that the +compromise of that year, in leaving the question of slavery to the +States to be formed from these Territories, had already set aside the +agreement of 1820. These assumptions were totally false. The act of 1850 +gave Utah and New Mexico no power as Territories over the debatable +institution, and contained not the slightest suggestion of any rule in +the matter for territories in general. + +But the hint was taken, and on January 16th notice given of intention to +move an out-and-out abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. Such +abrogation was at once incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska bill reported +by Douglas, January 23, 1854. This separated Kansas from Nebraska, and +the subsequent struggle raged in reference to Kansas alone. The bill +erroneously declared it established by the acts of 1850 that "all +questions as to slavery in the Territories," no less than in the States +which should grow out of them, were to be left to the residents, subject +to appeal to the United States courts. It passed both houses by good +majorities and was signed by President Pierce May 30th. Its animus +appeared from the loss in the Senate of an amendment, moved by S. P. +Chase, of Ohio, allowing the Territory to prohibit slavery. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Franklin Pierce. +From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery. + + +Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and +taking heresy of "squatter sovereignty," that Congress, though +possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Constitution, +general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch +slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace "to vote +up or vote down." At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed +"nonintervention," and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery +character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the +repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render +Kansas free. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Stephen A. Douglas. + + +[1855] + +This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid +anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was +the Kansas Aid Society, another a Massachusetts corporation entitled the +New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began +to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in +real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in +apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote +against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by +Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and +returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905 +legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast +for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the +pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the +subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at +Pawnee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered +that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative +authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to +support the fugitive slave law. + +The free-state settlers, now a majority, ignored this Legislature and +its acts, and at once set to work to secure Kansas admission to the +Union as a State without slavery. The Topeka convention, October 23, +1855, formed the Topeka constitution, which was adopted December 14th, +only forty-six votes being polled against it. This showed that +pro-slavery men abstained from voting. January 15, 1856, an election was +held under this constitution for state officers, a state legislature, +and a representative in Congress. The House agreed, July 3d, by one +majority, to admit Kansas with the Topeka constitution, but the Senate +refused. The Topeka Legislature assembled July 4th, but was dispersed by +United States troops. + +[1856-1857] + +This was done under command from Washington. President Pierce, backed by +the Senate with its steady pro-slavery majority, was resolved at all +hazards to recognize the pro-slavery authorities of Kansas and no other, +and, as it seemed, to force it to become a slave State; but fortunately +the House had an anti-slavery majority which prevented this. The friends +of freedom in Kansas had also on their side the history that was all +this time making in Kansas itself. During the summer of 1856 that +Territory was a theatre of constant war. Men were murdered, towns +sacked. Both sides were guilty of violence, but the free-state party +confessedly much the less so, having far the better cause. Nearly all +admitted that this party was in the majority. Even the governors, all +Democrats, appointed by Pierce, acknowledged this, some of them, to all +appearance, being removed as a punishment for the admission. Governor +Geary, in office from September, 1856, to March, 1857, and Governor +Walker, in office from May, 1857, were just and able men, and their +decisions, in most things favorable to the free-state cause, had much +weight with the country. + +Walker's influence in the Territory led the free-state men to take part +in the territorial election of October, 1857, where they were entirely +triumphant. But the old, pro-slavery Legislature had called a +constitutional convention, which met at Lecompton, September, 1857, and +passed the Lecompton constitution. This constitution sanctioned slavery +and provided against its own submission to popular vote. It ordained +that only its provision in favor of slavery should be so submitted. This +pro-slavery clause was adopted, but only because the free-state men +would not vote. The Topeka Legislature submitted the whole constitution +to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and +Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton constitution, +although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March, +1859, had adopted constitutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being +that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not +admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the +United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the +Wyandotte constitution and hence as a free State. + +It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S. +Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly +attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon +the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but +unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted +severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State. +This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the +Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon +him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never +recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial +duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate, +characterized the assault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks, +but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the +barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame, +representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the +caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he +named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for +the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would +endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a +majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned, +but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina constituency. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Charles Sumner. + + +While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown +cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had +gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was +to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause +2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully +legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out +the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged +to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one +citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general +Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought +was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of +the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as +to establish it. + +The new southern or Calhoun theory assumed startling significance for +the Nation when, in 1857, it was proclaimed in the Dred Scott decision +of the United States Supreme Court as part of the innermost life of our +Constitution. Dred Scott was a slave of an army officer, who had taken +him from Missouri first into Illinois, a free State, then into +Wisconsin, covered by the Missouri Compromise, then back into Missouri. +Here the slave learned that by decisions of the Missouri courts his life +outside of Missouri constituted him free, and in 1848, having been +whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for assault. The decision was +in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri +Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him +also he prosecuted for assault, but as he and Sandford belonged to +different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court. +Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not +a citizen of Missouri but a slave. + +It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court +having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to +the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizenship of the +negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The +upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it +was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of +pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the +old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all +other legislation against slavery in Territories unconstitutional, and +the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into +all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in +its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's +citizenship was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable +implication being that no man of African blood could be an American +citizen. + +This decision rendered jubilant all friends of slavery, as also the +ultra Abolitionists, but correspondingly disheartened the sober friends +of human liberty. How, it was asked, is the cause of freedom to be +advanced when the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the highest +tribunal existing for that purpose, virtually establishes slavery in New +England itself, provided any slave-master wishes to come there with his +troop? But anti-slavery men did not despair. Patriots had of course to +obey the court till its opinion should be reversed, yet its opinion was +at once repudiated as bad law. Men like Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Giddings, +Seward, and Lincoln, appealing to both the history and the letter of the +Constitution, and to the course of legislation and of judicial decisions +on slavery even in the slave States, had been elaborating and +demonstrating the counter theory, under which our fundamental law +appeared as anything but a "covenant with hell." + +The pith of this counter theory was that slaves were property not by +moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence +freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our +government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for +its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney were +right as against Douglas in ascribing to Congress all power over the +Territories, it was as impossible to find slaves in any United States +Territory as to find a king there. Slaves taken into Territories +therefore became free. Slaves taken into any free State became free. +Slaves carried from a slave State on to the high seas became free. Even +the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution must be applied in the way +least favorable to slavery. + +On the other hand Douglas was right in his view that citizens and not +States were the partners in the Territories. As to the assertion of +incompatibility between citizenship and African blood, it would not +stand historical examination a moment. If it was true that the framers +of the Constitution did not consciously include colored persons in the +"ourselves and our posterity" for whom they purposed the "Blessings of +Liberty," neither did they consciously exclude, as is clear from the +fact that nearly everyone of them expected blacks some time to be free. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES + +[1841] + +The Democratic Party was predominantly southern, the Whig northern. Both +sought to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the +better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the +Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and +prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent +and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was +that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they +tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a +whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the +slavocracy. This status became more pronounced with the progress of the +controversy and of the South's self-assertion. It was real under +Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk, +Pierce, and Buchanan. + +Whig temper toward slavery was throughout the North much better, but +whig party action was little better. Fear of losing southern supporters +permanently forbade all frank enlistment by the Whig Party for freedom. +The mighty leaders, Adams, Webster, even Clay, were well inclined, and +the party, as such, was at the South persistently accused of alliance +with the Abolitionists. This was untrue. Abolitionists, Liberal Party +men, and Free-soilers oftener voted with Democrats than with Whigs. Clay +complained once that Abolitionists denounced him as a slave-holder, +slave-holders as an Abolitionist, while both voted for Van Buren. +Compromise was the bane of this party as of the other; and each of the +resplendent chieftains named at one time or another seemed so reverent +to Belial that the record is painful reading. + +When in 1841 the ship Creole sailed from Richmond with one hundred and +thirty-five slaves on board bound for the southern market, and one +Madison Washington, a recovered runaway on board, headed a dash upon +captain and crew, got possession of the vessel and took her into New +Providence, Clay was as loud as Calhoun or any southern senator in +demanding of the English Government the return of these slaves to +bondage or, at least, that of "the mutineers," as they were called. +Webster, Secretary of State at the time, instructed Edward Everett, our +English minister, to insist upon this, his arguments being sound and his +tone emphatic enough to please Mr. Calhoun. This was the time when +Giddings, of Ohio, brought into the House his resolutions to the effect +that slavery was a state institution only, and that hence any slave +carried on to the open ocean or to any other locality where only +national law prevailed, was free. He was censured in the House by a +large majority and resigned, but his Ohio constituency immediately +re-elected him. + +[1836-1844] + +Up to this time Giddings and Adams were the only pronounced anti-slavery +men in that body. Adams had acquiesced in the Missouri Compromise, but +all his subsequent career, especially his course in the House of +Representatives after 1830, is not only creditable to him so far as the +slavery question is concerned, but registers him as one of the most +influential opponents of slavery in our history. Refusing to be classed +with the Abolitionists, he was, in effect, the most efficient +Abolitionist of them all. + +Previous to 1835, though petitions against slavery reached Congress in +great numbers and nettled many members, they had been received and +referred in the usual manner. But in February, 1836, the House created a +special committee to consider these petitions. It reported a resolution, +which passed under the previous question, that thereafter all papers of +the kind should be tabled without printing or reference. Adams declared +to the House: "I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the +Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the +rights of my constituents." In this rencounter Adams advanced the view +on which the Emancipation Proclamation by and by proceeded, that +slavery, even in States, was not beyond reach of the national arm, but +would be at the mercy of Congress the instant slave-masters should +rebel. This, the first of the gag laws, was, however, enacted. The +second, or Patton gag, was passed on December 21, 1837, and the third, +or Atherton gag, a year later. The principle of these, practically +cutting off all petitions to Congress respecting slavery, was taken up +in the twenty-first rule of the House in 1840. + +Mr. Adams was from the first the resolute and uncompromising foe of the +gag policy. Wagon-loads of petitions came to him to offer, among them +one for his own expulsion from the House and one to dissolve the Union, +and he presented all. + +February 6, 1837, he inquired of Mr. Speaker whether or not it would be +appropriate to offer a petition in his hand from slaves, whereupon the +pro-slavery members flew at him like vampires. After much uproar, in +which Adams gave as good as was sent him, he sarcastically reminded his +already infuriated assailants that the petition was in favor of slavery, +not against, and that he had emphatically not offered it, but only made +an innocent inquiry of the Speaker about doing so, the proper answer to +which was so far from obvious that the Speaker himself had signified his +intention to take the sense of the House upon it. Regularly, year after +year, Adams moved the abolition of the gag rule, was beaten as +regularly, long as a matter of course, sometimes after heated debate in +which he was always victor. But little by little the majority vote +against him lessened. In 1842 the gag passed by but four votes, in 1843 +it had a majority of three only, in 1844 his motion to strike it out was +carried by a vote of one hundred and eight to eighty. Adams wrote that +day in his diary: "Blessed, forever blessed be the name of God." + +[1850] + +But a plenitude of Whigs, not all southern, voted for each of these +gags. The worst one of all was moved by a Whig. The XXVIIth Congress, +strongly whig, voted to retain the gag, which it was left for the +XXVIIIth, strongly democratic, finally to repeal. At the South, slavery +more and more overbore party feeling. Said Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, in +1854, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery, no Democracy--I +am a pro-slavery man." It should be added, however, that as the +conflict progressed, pro-slavery Whigs became few save in the South, and +that these nearly all soon turned Democrats. + +Most humiliating was the vassalage to the slave power displayed by +northern congressmen of both parties, though forming a majority in the +House during all the great days of the slavery battle. The gag history +is one example. Resolutions against unquestionably unconstitutional laws +imprisoning northern seamen at southern ports simply because they were +colored, were tabled in the House by a large majority. Slavery in the +District of Columbia, where Congress had the right of "exclusive +legislation in all cases whatsoever," so that the entire nation was +responsible, defied every effort to abolish it till 1862, after the +Civil War began. Nor was the trade there in aught alleviated till 1850, +when some modification of it was possible as an element of the +compromise described in the preceding chapter. An enlargement of +Missouri, adding to the northwest corner of that State, as slave +territory, a vast tract which the Missouri Compromise had forever +devoted to freedom, being in truth a preliminary repeal of that pact, +was carried without opposition. + +The brutal and murderous lawlessness practised against Abolitionists was +praised by northern congressmen often as slavery came up in debate. Even +Senator Silas Wright, of New York, subsequently famous as a foe of +slavery, in remarks upon the reference of anti-slavery petitions, +boasted of the atrocities at Utica in 1835 and of others similar, as +proof that "resistance to these dangerous and wicked agitators in the +North had reached a point beyond law and above law." A bill, in 1836, +for closing the mails to abolitionist literature, another defiance of +the Constitution, Amendment I., secured engrossment in the Senate by the +casting vote of Vice-President Van Buren; Wright, Tallmadge, and +Buchanan also favoring; but failed to pass, nineteen to twenty-five, +because Benton, Clay, and Crittenden had the patriotism to vote nay. + +Discussion hereon laid bare the vital contradiction in our governmental +system. Calhoun showed that the Constitution permits each State for +itself to define, in order to inhibit, incendiary literature. +Characteristically, he would have forced mail agents to obey state laws +upon this matter. Yet for Congress to have so directed would plainly +have been abridging freedom of the press. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Thomas H. Benton. + + +Had the Whig Party, while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough +boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have +been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance +passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders +and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern +members--twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri +Compromise--proved deadly to the organization, its faithful old +battalions going over in the South to the Democrats, in the North to the +Republicans. + +Many Whigs took the latter course by a circuitous route. Ever since the +alien and sedition laws, cry had been raised at intervals against the +too easy attainment of citizenship by the unnumbered immigrants +thronging to our shores, and agitation raised, more or less successful, +to thrust forward "Nativism" or Americanism, with opposition to the +Roman Catholic Church, as an issue in our politics. To such movements +Whigs, as legatees of Federalism, were always more friendly than +Democrats, which was partly a cause and partly a consequence of the +affinity that naturalized citizens all along showed for the Democratic +Party. + +Americanism had its greatest run after 1850, when the Whigs saw their +organization going to pieces, and, mistakenly in part, attributed +democratic success to the immigrant vote. A secret fraternity arose, +called the "Know-nothings," from "I don't know," the ever-repeated reply +of its members to inquiry about its nature and doings. "America for +Americans" was their cry, and they proposed to "put none but Americans +on guard." At first pursuing their aims through silent manipulation of +the old parties, by 1854 the Know-nothings swung out as a third party. +From this date they lustily competed with the Republicans for the hosts +of whig and democratic stragglers jostled from their old ranks by the +omnibus bill legislation, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the "Crime +against Kansas" committed by Pierce and his slavocratic Senate. In 1855 +this party assumed national proportions, and worried seasoned +politicians not a little; but having crystallized around no living +issue, like that which nerved Republicanism, it fell like a +rocket-stick, its sparks going over to make redder still republican +fires. Henry Wilson became a Republican from the status of a +Know-nothing; so did Banks, Colfax, and a score of others subsequently +eminent among their new associates. Some had of old been Democrats, +though most had been Whigs. + +Notwithstanding many appearances to the contrary, the Democracy had +begun to lose its hold upon the North from the moment of Polk's +nomination in 1844. In that act it showed preference, on the score of +availability, for a small man as presidential candidate. Harrison's +election and Van Buren's defeat in 1840 doubtless had something to do +with this. The same disposition was revealed in 1852, when Pierce was +made candidate. What harmed the party still more was swerving from +strict construction in declaring for the annexation of Texas, which in +this case did not imply enlargement of view in reading the Constitution, +but simply subserviency to the slave power. In this way Van Buren was +alienated and the vote of New York lost in 1848, insuring defeat that +year. + +[1856-1860] + +This particular breach was pretty well healed, but the evil survived. +Then came the compromise repeal, wherein the Democracy stood by the +South in casting to the winds, the moment it promised to be of service +to the North, a solemn bargain which had yielded the South Florida, +Arkansas, and Missouri as slave States. Northern Democrats, especially +in the rural parts, unwilling longer to serve slavery, drew off from the +party in increasing numbers. Northern States one by one passed to the +opposition. The whole of New England had gone over in 1856, also New +York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa--Buchanan having six votes +outside those of Pennsylvania, where he won, as many believed, by unfair +means. In 1860, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Indiana, +Minnesota, and Oregon crossed to the same side. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE CRISIS + +[1850] + +The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was politically a remarkable +epoch. It not only consolidated old anti-slavery men, but cooled, to say +the least, many "silvergray," or conservative Whigs, as well as many +"hards" and "hunkers" among the Democrats. But the slavocrats were blind +to the risk they were running, and grew bolder than ever. There were now +propositions for renewing the foreign slave-trade. Worse black laws were +enacted. There was increased ferocity toward all who did not pronounce +slavery a blessing, prouder domineering in politics, especially in +Congress, and perpetual threat of secession in case the slave power +should fail to have its way. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Abraham Lincoln. After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah +Brooks. (Only five copies of this photograph were printed.) + + +There were also plans for foreign conquest in slavery's behalf, which +received countenance from public and even from national authorities. The +idea seemed to be that the victory and territorial enlargement +consequent upon the Mexican War might be repeated in Central America and +Cuba. The efforts of Lopez in 1850 and 1851 to conquer Cuba with aid +from the United States had indeed been brought to an end through this +adventurer's execution in the latter year by the Cuban authorities. +Pierce put forth a proclamation in 1854, warning American citizens +against like attempts in future. Defying this, the next year William +Walker headed a filibustering expedition to the Pacific coast of +Nicaragua, conquering the capital of that state and setting up a +government which proceeded to re-establish slavery and invite +immigration from the United States. Driven out by a coalition of other +Central American states against him, Walker at once organized a new +raid, and landed at Punta Arenas, Nicaragua, November 25, 1857; but he +was seized by Commodore Paulding of our navy and brought to New York. He +made a similar effort the next year, and another in 1860, when he +captured Truxillo in Honduras, only to be soon overwhelmed, tried and +shot. + +[1852] + +If the Government at Washington was not openly implicated in any of +these movements, no more, surely, did it heartily deprecate them. +Fillmore's administration had in 1852 declined to enter into an alliance +with Great Britain and France disclaiming intention to secure Cuba. In +1854, inspired by Pierce, our ministers at London, Paris, and Madrid, +met at Ostend and put forth the "Ostend Manifesto." The tenor of this +was that Spain would be better off without Cuba and we with it, and +further, that, if Spain refused to sell, the United States ought as a +means of self-preservation to take that island by force, lest it should +become a second San Domingo. This proposition, like everything else +relating to the great Repeal, was under umbrage in 1856; but in 1858 the +southern Democrats in Congress brought in a bill to purchase Cuba for +$30,000,000, and the democratic platform of 1860 spoke for the +acquisition thereof at the earliest practicable moment, by all +"honorable and just means." + +[1854] + +Thus an institution, barbarous, anti-democratic, sectional, an +unmitigated curse even to its section, not so much as named in the +Constitution, beginning with apology from all, by the zeal and +unscrupulousness of advocates, the consolidation of political power at +the South, and apathy, sycophancy, divided counsels, and commercial +greed in the North, gradually amassed might, till, at the middle of Mr. +Buchanan's term, every branch of the national Government was its tool, +the Supreme Court included, enabling it authoritatively to mis-read the +Constitution, declare the Union a pro-slavery compact, and act +accordingly. But justice would not be mocked, and, though advancing upon +halting foot, dealt the death-blow like lightning at last. + +We have seen the feeble efforts of the old Liberty Party to make head +against slavery, Birney and Earle being its candidates in 1840, Birney +and Morris in 1844. In 1848 these "conscience Free-soilers" were +re-enforced by what have been called the "political Free-soilers" of the +State of New York, led by ex-President Van Buren. This astute organizer, +aware that his defeat in the democratic convention of 1844 had resulted +from southern and pro-slavery influences, led a bolt in the New York +Democracy. His partisans in this were known as the "Barn-burners," while +the administration Democrats were called the "Hunkers." In the +democratic convention of 1848 at Baltimore appeared representatives of +both factions, and both sets were admitted, each with half the state +vote. This satisfied neither side. The Barn-burners called a convention +at Utica in June, and put Van Buren in nomination for the presidency. +The Liberty Party men had the preceding year nominated Hale for this +office, but now, seeing their opportunity, they called a new convention +at Buffalo for August 9, 1848, to which all Free-soilers were invited; +and this convention made Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams its +candidates for President and Vice-President. The platform declared +against any further extension of slavery. The party was henceforth known +as the "Free-soilers," the name coming from its insistence that the +territory conquered from Mexico should forever remain free. Its platform +denounced slavery as a sin against God and a crime against man, and +repudiated the compromise of 1850. It also laid special emphasis upon +the wickedness of the new fugitive slave law, of which it demanded the +repeal. By 1852 the regular Democracy in New York had won back a large +proportion of the Barn-burners or free-soil revolters, so that the +free-soil prospect in this year was not encouraging. Only 146,149 +free-soil votes were polled in all the northern states. + +[1856] + +What quickened this drooping movement into new and triumphant life was +the revocation of the Missouri Compromise. This rallied to the free-soil +standard nearly all the northern Whigs, many old Barn-burners who since +1848 had returned to the democratic fold, and vast numbers of other +anti-Lecompton Democrats. Most of the Know-nothings throughout the North +also joined it, while of course it had in all its anti-slavery measures +the hearty co-operation, directly political or other, of the +Abolitionists. The first national convention of this new party, +fortunately styling itself "Republican," was in 1856. Whig doctrine +early appeared in the party by the demand for protection, internal +improvements, and a national banking system; in fact, Republicanism may +be said to have received nearly entire the whig mantle, as the Whigs did +that of Federalism. + +But the living soul and integrating idea of the party was new, the rigid +confinement of slavery and the slave power to their narrowest +constitutional limits. It denounced the repeal of the Missouri +Compromise. In the election of this year, 1856, eleven States chose +Republican electors, viz.: all New England, also New York, Ohio, +Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Evidently the Democracy had at last found +a foe at which it were best not to sneer. The Dred Scott decision +immensely aided the growth of this new political power, as it was now +quite generally believed in the North that the whole policy of the South +was a greedy, selfish grasping for the extension of slavery. + +[1858] + +Out of this conviction, apparently, grew the John Brown raid into +Virginia in 1858. John Brown was an enthusiast, whom sufferings from the +Border Ruffians in Kansas, where one of his sons had been atrociously +murdered and another driven to insanity by cruel treatment as a +prisoner, had frenzied in his opposition to slavery. He had dedicated +himself to its extirpation. The intrepid old man formed the purpose of +invading Virginia, and of placing himself with a few white allies at the +head of a slave insurrection that should sweep the State. Friends in +the North had contributed money for the purchase of arms, and on October +16th, Brown, with fourteen white men and four negroes, seized the United +States Armory at Harper's Ferry. He stopped the railway trains, freed +some slaves, and assumed to rule the town. United States troops were at +once despatched to the scene, when the misguided hero, with his devoted +band, fortified themselves in the engine house, surrendering only after +thirteen of them, including two of Brown's sons, were killed or mortally +wounded. Brown and the other survivors were soon tried, convicted, and +hung. This insane attempt was deprecated by nearly all of all parties; +but the fate of Brown, with his resolute bravery, begot him large +sympathy, and the false assumption of the South that he really +represented northern feeling made his deed helpful to the anti-slavery +movement, of which the Republican Party was now the centre. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +John Brown. + + +[1860] + +Notwithstanding all this the Democracy might still have elected a +president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud +with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that +very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State +and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the +northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the +doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede +from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did +not so desire, but sincerely believed in that doctrine as part and +parcel of the true democratic faith. But it was now obvious that the +working out of the Douglas theory was absolutely sure to make free all +the western States henceforth to be formed. This would, of course, +remove the Senate from the domination of slavery. Hence the South was +irrevocably opposed to it, and insisted with all its might upon the +Calhoun-Taney contention that the national Government must protect +slavery in all the Territories to which it pleased to go. In a passage +at arms with Douglas as they were stumping Illinois for the senatorship +in 1858, Lincoln keenly forced upon him the question whether under the +Dred Scott decision any Territory could possibly be kept free from +slavery. "If," said he, "Douglas answers yes, he can never be President; +if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator." Douglas replied in +the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South +a doomed man. + +The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic +convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the +delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though +willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott +decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from +Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from +Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded. +Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not +two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and +when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds +vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new +seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The +so-called Constitutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket, +Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and +Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between +the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted. + +The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal +Hamlin, of Maine. Lincoln was already a marked man in his party, +especially in the West, his brilliant joint debate with Judge Douglas +during some months in 1858 having brought out his matchless good sense +and good nature, his rare knowledge of our history and law, and his high +quality as thinker and speaker. Born in Kentucky in 1809, removing to +Indiana in 1816, to Illinois in 1830, reared in extreme poverty and +wholly self-educated, this man had risen by his wits, his sturdy +perseverance and industry, his extraordinary ability, and his proverbial +honesty, to be the acknowledged peer of the "Little Giant" himself. He +began political life a Whig and ably represented that party in the +national Congress from 1847 to 1849, making his voice heard against the +high-handed procedure of the Administration in the Mexican War. But as +with Seward, Greeley, Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, Sherman, Dayton, +Corwin, and Collamer, subsequent events had intensified his anti-slavery +feeling, convincing him, as he avowed, that the Union could not +"permanently continue half slave and half free." He was thus drawn to +unite his fortunes with the Republicans. His nomination was received +coolly in the East, where Seward had been preferred; but as men studied +Lincoln's record they were convinced of the wisdom which had made him +the party's leader. He swept New England, New York, New Jersey, +Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, +California, Minnesota, and Oregon, having 180 electoral votes to +Breckenridge's 72, Bell's 39, and Douglas's 12. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +William H. Seward. +From a photograph by Brady. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +MATERIAL PROGRESS + +[1860] + +The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,443,321. In spite of +the threatening political complications between 1840 and 1860, these +years were characterized by astonishing economic prosperity. The decade +after 1848 was, indeed, in point of advance in material weal, the golden +age of our history. Between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the nation +swelled 120 per cent., the value of its farms 103 per cent., its total +manufacturing product 87 per cent., its manufactured export 171 per +cent., its railroad mileage 220 per cent. Making all due allowance for +the rise of prices during the period, this is still a remarkable +exhibit. + +The great West continued to come under the hand of civilization. Between +1850 and 1860 our centre of population made a longer stride westward +than during any other decade--from east of the meridian of Parkersburg, +W. Va., to the meridian of Chillicothe, O. Florida and Texas having been +admitted to statehood in 1845, Iowa followed next year, Wisconsin in +1848, California in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized +Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska, +Utah, and Washington Territories were organized before 1860. By this +date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was +sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in +1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In +1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable +routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties +the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places +become dense. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Elias Howe. + + +Immigration hither was unfortunately checked a little later by Indian +hostilities, the gravest attacks being in 1847 and 1855. In the latter +year Major Haller, leading an exploring party, was surrounded by the +savages and cut off from food and water, only making his escape by a +fight of two days against overwhelming odds. He and his party at last +hewed their desperate way through, losing their entire outfit, besides +one-fifth of their number. The whole territory was harassed by Indians +on the war path, and General Wool had to be sent up from San Francisco +to restore peace. This done, immigration was renewed. A thousand new +inhabitants came to Oregon in 1852, and its northern half was organized +as Washington Territory the following year. The Pacific Mail Steamship +Company had been chartered in 1848, and four years earlier a newspaper +started, the first in English on that coast. Its seat was Oregon City, +its name the Flumgudgeon Gazette. + + +[Illustration: The Vandalia. The Pioneer Propeller On the Lakes.] + + +[Illustration: Old Stone Towers of the Niagara Suspension Bridge.] + + +The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common +with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting +sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The +same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its +theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to +be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built +in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856. +The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855. + +The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of canals. The +Miami Canal, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 1825, +was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and +Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts was, in +1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to +railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the +State the canal and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and +soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller +from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next +year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga., +was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston +& Maine Railway finished to Berwick. + + +[Illustration: The New Iron Towers of the Niagara Bridge.] + + +The first railway out of Chicago--it was the first in Illinois--was +built in 1850, to Elgin. Chicago had no railway connection with the East +till two years later, when the Michigan Southern was opened. The +Michigan Central was finished soon after the Southern, and the Rock +Island before the end of the year. The Michigan Central had direct +connection east across Canada to Niagara Falls by 1854. In 1856 the +Burlington route reached the Mississippi and the Rock Island went on to +Iowa City. This year witnessed the opening of the first railroad in +California--from Sacramento to Folsom. In 1857 Chicago and St. Louis +were joined by rails, as also the latter city with Baltimore, over the +Parkersburg branch of the Baltimore & Ohio. + + +[Illustration: Three story frame building; first floor is shops.] +Birthplace of S. F. B. Morse, at Charlestown, Mass. Built 1775. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +S. F. B. Morse. + +We now come to an improvement of which the preceding period knew +nothing, the magnetic telegraph, introduced by Professor Morse in 1844. +In this year Morse secured a congressional appropriation of $30,000 for +a line from Washington to Baltimore. The wires were at first encased in +tubes underground. In spite of the success of the project, further +governmental patronage was refused, the Postmaster-General advising +against it under the conviction that the invention could not become +practically valuable. Morse appealed for aid from private capitalists. +Ezra Cornell, of New York, soon opened a short line in Boston for +exhibition, following this with a similar enterprise in New York City. +The admission fee was twelve and a half cents. Few cared to pay even +this trifle, so that the undertaking was hardly a success in either +city. + +Amos Kendall then engaged as Morse's agent, and by dint of great effort +secured subscriptions for a line from New York to Philadelphia, being +obliged to sell the shares for one-half their face value. Incorporation +was secured from the Maryland Legislature, under the first American +charter, for the telegraph business. The line was completed in 1845 to +the Hudson opposite the upper end of Manhattan Island, and an effort +made to insulate the wire and connect with the city along the bottom of +the river. This failed, and for some time messages had to be taken over +in boats. In 1846 the wire was carried on to Baltimore. In the same year +Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were connected by telegraph, New York and +Albany, New York and Boston, Boston and Buffalo. The first line in +California was erected in 1853. + + + +[Illustration: The First Telegraphic Instrument, as exhibited in 1837 by +Morse.] + + +In 1850 Hiram Sibley embarked in the telegraph business. He bought the +House patent, and next year organized the New York and Mississippi +Valley Telegraph Company. By 1853 or 1854, some twenty companies had +started, with a capital of $7,000,000--too many for good management or +high profits. Accordingly, Sibley and Cornell united in buying them up, +and thus formed, in 1856, the Western Union, which Sibley's energy +extended all over the country east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1860 he +went to Washington with a scheme for a transcontinental telegraph line, +and secured from Congress a subsidy of $40,000 for ten years. Just then +the Overland Telegraph Company was started in San Francisco. It and +Sibley united, breaking ground July 1, 1861, and proceeding at the rate +of nearly ten miles of wire per day. On October 25th, telegraph wire +stretched all the way between the two oceans. In 1864 this line was +amalgamated with the Western Union. + + +[Illustration: Machine with three rollers about 2 feet in diameter and +5 feet long, connected with large gears.] +Calenders heated internally by Steam, for spreading India Rubber into +Sheets or upon Cloth, called the "Chaffee Machine." + + +Still more wonderful, ocean telegraphy was broached and made successful +during these years. Tentative efforts to operate the current under water +were made between Governor's Island and New York City so early as 1842. +A copper wire was used, insulated with hemp string coated with India +rubber and pitch. In 1846 a similar arrangement was encased in lead +pipe. This device failed, and sub-aqueous telegraphy seems to have been +for the time given up. + +In 1854 Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, with Peter Cooper and other +capitalists of that city, organized the New York, Newfoundland, and +London Telegraph Company, stock a million and a half dollars, and began +plans to connect New York with St. Johns, Newfoundland, by a cable under +the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Little progress was made, however, till 1857, +when it was attempted to lay a cable across the Atlantic from +Newfoundland. The paying out was begun at Queenstown and proceeded +successfully until three hundred and thirty-five miles had been laid, +when the cable parted. Nothing more was done till the next year in June. +Then, in 1858, after several more unsuccessful efforts, the two +continents were successfully joined. The two ships containing the cable +met in mid-ocean, where it was spliced and the paying out begun in each +direction. The one reached Newfoundland the same day, August 5th, on +which the other reached Valencia, Ireland. No break had occurred, and +after the necessary arrangements had been effected, the first message +was transmitted on August 16th. It was from the Queen of Great Britain +to the President of the United States, and read, "Glory to God in the +highest, peace on earth and good will to men." A monster celebration of +the event was had in New York next day. + + +[Illustration: Large steam ship with side paddles.] +The Great Eastern Laying the Atlantic Cable. + + +Although inter-continental communication had been actually opened, the +cable did not work, nor did ocean cabling become a successful and +regular business till 1866, when a new cable was laid. This event +attracted the more attention from the fact that the largest ship ever +built was used in paying out the cable. It was the Great Eastern, 680 +feet long and 83 broad, with 25,000 tons displacement. + + +[Illustration: Three men tending machinery.] +Sounding Machine used by a Cable Expedition. + + +Street railways became common in our largest cities before 1860, the +first in New England, that between Boston and Cambridge, dating from +1856. Sleeping-cars began to be used in 1858. The express business went +on developing, being opened westward from Buffalo first in 1845. A steam +fire-engine was tried in New York in 1841, but the invention was +successful only in 1853. Baltimore used one in 1858. Goodyear +triumphantly vulcanized rubber in 1844, making serviceable a gum which +had been used in various forms already but without ability to stand +heat. Elias Howe took out his first patent for a sewing machine in 1846, +being kept in vigorous fight against infringements for the next eight +years. The anaesthetic power of ether was discovered in 1844. +Gutta-percha was first imported hither in 1847. The first application of +the Bessemer steel process in this country was made in New Jersey in +1856, the manufacture of watches by machinery begun in 1857, +photo-lithography in 1859. New York had a clearing house in 1853, Boston +in 1855. The petroleum business may with propriety be dated from 1860, +although the existence of oil in Northwestern Pennsylvania had been long +known, and some use made of it since 1826. For several years experiments +had been making in refining the oil. The excellence of the light from it +now drew attention to the value of the product, wells began to be bored +and oil land sold for fabulous prices. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Cyrus W. Field. + + +[Illustration: Several men tending a large machine on the deck of a ship.] +Paying out Cable Gear. From Chart House. + + +We close this chapter with a word about the painful financial crisis +that swept over the country in the autumn of 1857. Its causes are +somewhat occult, but two appear to have been the chief, viz., the +over-rapid building of railroads and the speculation induced by the +prosperity and the rise of prices incident to the new output of gold. +Interest on the best securities rose to three, four, and five per cent. +a month. On ordinary securities no money at all could be had. Commercial +houses of the highest repute went down. The climax was in September and +October. The three leading banks in Philadelphia suspended specie +payments, at once followed in this by all the banks of the Middle +States, and upon the 13th of the next month by the New York banks. +Manufacturing was very largely abandoned for the time, at least thirty +thousand operatives being thrown out of work in New York City alone. +Prices even of agricultural produce fell enormously. Tramps were to be +met on every road. Easier times fortunately returned by spring, when +business resumed pretty nearly its former prosperous march. + + +[Illustration: Cross section of cable; central conductor is about .25 +inches in diameter; it is surrounded by layers of insulation and twelve +.5 inch wires for protection.] +Shore End of Cable-exact size. + + +[Illustration: Barnacles on Cable.] + + + +PERIOD IV. + +CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION + +1860-1868 + +CHAPTER I. + +CAUSES OF THE WAR + +[1861] + +It were a mistake to refer the great Rebellion, for ultimate source, to +ambiguity in the Constitution or to the wickedness of politicians or of +the people. It was simply the last resort in an "irrepressible conflict" +of principle--in the struggle for and against the genius of the world's +advance. Economic, social, and moral evolution, resulting in two +radically different civilizations, had enforced upon each section +unfaithfulness to the spirit and even to the letter of its +constitutional covenant. The South was not to blame that slavery was at +first profitable; and if it deemed it so too long and even thought of it +as a good morally, these convictions, however big with ill consequences +to the nation, were but errors of view, not strange considering the then +status of slavery in the world. + +The South's pride, holding it to the course once chosen, was also no +indictable offence. Nor could the North on its part be taxed with crime +for its "higher law fanaticism," which was simply the spirit of the age; +or for seeing early what all believe now, that slavery was a blight upon +the land. Much as was "nominated in the bond" of the Constitution, +neither law nor equity forbade free States to increase the more rapidly +in numbers, wealth, and other elements of prosperity; and northern +congressmen must have been other than human, if, seeing this increase +and being in the majority, they had gone on punctiliously heeding formal +obligation against manifest national weal. And when, in 1854, the great +sacred compact of 1820 was set aside by the authority of the South +itself, the North felt free even from formal fetters. All talk of +extra-legal negotiations and understandings touching slavery was now at +an end. The northern majority was at last united to legislate upon +slavery as it would, subject only to the Constitution. The South too +late saw this, and fearing that the peculiar institution, shut up to its +old home, would die, sought separation, with such chance of expansion as +this might yield. + +The South had come to love slavery too well, the Constitution too +little. Upon conserving slavery all parties there, however dissident as +to modes, however hostile in other matters, were unconditionally bent. +The chief argument even of those opposing disunion was that it +endangered slavery. Our new government, said Alexander H. Stephens, soon +to be vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, is founded, its +cornerstone rests, upon the great physical, philosophical, and moral +truth, to which Jefferson and the men of his day were blind, that the +negro, by nature or the curse of Canaan, is not equal to the white man; +that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is, by ordination of +Providence, whose wisdom it is not for us to inquire into or question, +his natural and normal condition. As the apostle of such a principle the +South could not but abjure the old establishment, whose genius and +working were inevitably in the contrary direction. Many confessed it to +be the essential nature of our Government, and not unfair treatment +under it, against which they rebelled. + +Slavery had also bred hatred of the Union indirectly, by fostering +anti-democratic habits of thought, feeling, and action. "The form of +liberty existed, the press seemed to be free, the deliberations of +legislative bodies were tumultuous, and every man boasted of his +independence. But the spirit of true liberty, tolerance of the minority +and respect for individual opinion, had departed, and those deceitful +appearances concealed the despotism of an inexorable master, slavery, +before whom the most powerful of slave-holders was himself but a slave, +as abject as the meanest." Over wide sections, untitled manorial lords, +"more intelligent than educated, brave but irascible, proud but +overbearing," controlled all voting and office-holding. Congressional +districts were their pocket-boroughs, and they ignored the common man +save to use him. The system grew, instead of statesmen, sectionalists, +whom love for the "peculiar institution" rendered callous to national +interests. + +The vigorous secession movements in the South at once after Lincoln's +election, raised a question of the first magnitude, which few people at +the North had reflected upon since 1833, viz., whether or not +non-revolutionary secession was possible. Almost unanimously the North +denied such possibility, the South affirmed it. This was at bottom +manifestly nothing but the old question of state sovereignty over again. +The South held the Union to be a state compact, which the northern +parties thereto had broken. To prove the compact theory no new proof was +now adduced. Rather did the southern people take the assertion of it as +an axiom, with a simplicity which spoke volumes for the influence of +Calhoun and for the indoctrination which the South had received in 1832. + +Not alone Calhoun but nearly every other southerner of great influence, +at least from the day of the Missouri Compromise, had been inculcating +the supreme authority of the State as compared with the Union. The +southern States were all large, and, as travelling in or between them +was difficult and little common, they retained far more than those at +the North each its original separateness and peculiarities. Southern +population was more fixed than northern; southern state traditions were +held in far the deeper reverence. In a word, the colonial condition of +things to a great extent persisted in the South down to the very days of +the war. There was every reason why Alabama or North Carolina should, +more than Connecticut, feel like a separate nation. + +This intense state consciousness might gradually have subsided but for +the deep prejudices and passions begotten of slavery and of the +opposition it encountered from the North. Their resolution, against +emancipation led Southerners to cherish a view which made it seem +possible for them as a last resort to sever their alliance with the +North. It was this conjunction of influences, linking the slave-holder's +jealousy and pride to a false but natural conception of state +sovereignty, which created in southern men that love of State, intense +and sincere as real patriotism, causing them to look upon northern men, +with their different theory, as foes and foreigners. + +A very imposing historical argument could of course have been built up +for the Calhoun theory of the Union. The Union emerged from the +preceding Confederacy without a shock. Most who voted for it were +unaware how radical a change it embodied. The Constitution, one may even +admit, could not have been adopted had it then been understood to +preclude the possibility of secession. Doubtless, too, the gradual +change of view concerning it all over the North, sprung from the +multiplication of social and economic ties between sections and States, +rather than from study of constitutional law. We believe that the +untruth of the central-sovereignty theory in no wise follows from these +admissions, and that its correctness might be made apparent from a +plenitude of considerations. + +Champions of the northern side deemed it the less necessary to expatiate +upon this question, since, admitting the South's basal contention, the +right in question depended upon sufficiency of grievance. As, in the +South's view, the case was one of sovereigns one party of whom, without +referee, was about to break a compact without the other's consent, the +adequacy of the grievance should, to excuse the step, have been +absolutely beyond question. On the contrary it was subject to the +gravest question. + +The South's only significant indictment against the North was the one +concerning the personal liberty laws. Moderates like Stephens, indeed, +stoutly condemned this plea for secession as insufficient; but, +believing in the State as sovereign, they had perforce to yield, and +they became as enthusiastic as any when once this "paramount authority" +had spoken. "Fire-eaters," at first a small minority, saw this advantage +and worked it to the utmost. On its complaint touching the personal +liberty legislation the South's case utterly broke down, theorizing the +Union into a rope of sand, not "more perfect" but far less so than the +old, which itself was to be "perpetual." According to the Calhoun +contention States were the parties to a pact, and it was a good way from +clear that any northern State as such, even by personal liberty +legislation, had broken the alleged pact. The liberty laws were innocent +at least in form, and at worst had never been endorsed in any state +convention. Buchanan himself testified that the fugitive slave law had +been faithfully executed, and its operation is well known never to have +been resisted by any public authority. + +It was suspicious that no State ventured upon secession alone. It was +equally remarkable that the Gulf States were the readiest to go, and +made most of the personal liberty laws as their pretext, accounting this +cry, as was ingenuously confessed, a necessary means for holding the +border States solidly to the southern cause. Weak enough, indeed, was +the complaint of "consolidationist" aggression, of which certainly no +party to the so-called pact was or could have been guilty. But the deeps +of folly were sounded when northern "persecution" of the South was +mentioned, or Lincoln's election as threat of such. This was simply the +election as President, in a perfectly constitutional way, of a citizen, +honest and unambitious, who was pledged against touching slavery in +States. Having become President, he was unable to procure minister, law, +treaty, or even adequate guard for his own person save by the consent of +the party hitherto in power. Lincoln had failed of a popular majority by +a million. Both Houses of Congress were against him at the time of his +election, and, but for the absence of southern members, they would, it +is likely, have continued so through his entire term. It was the South's +bad logic on these points which gave the war Democrats their excellent +plea for drawing sword on the northern side. + +But even supposing secession technically justifiable, how strange that +it should have been judged rational, prudent, or in the long run best +for the South itself. Could aught but frenzy have so drowned in +Americans the memories of our great past; or launched them upon a course +that must have ended by Mexicanizing this nation, wresting from it the +lead in freedom's march, and crushing out, in the breast of struggling +patriotism the world over, all hope of government by and for the people! +The South ought at least to have spared itself. Either its alleged +horror at the advance of central-sovereignty sentiment at the North was +sheer pretence, or it should have been certain that this section would +not hesitate, as Buchanan so illogically did, to coerce "rebellious" +state-bodies. If the North believed the totality of the nation to be the +"paramount authority," Lincoln would surely imitate Jackson instead of +Buchanan, and in doing so he would not seek military support in vain. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +James Buchanan. From a photograph by Brady. + + +Quite as sure, too, must the final result have appeared from the census +of 1850, had people been calm enough to read this. By that census the +free States had a population fifty per cent. above the population of the +slave states, slaves included, and the disparity was rapidly increasing. +Their wealth was even more preponderant, being, slaves apart, nearly one +hundred per cent. the larger. Their merchant tonnage was five times the +greater--even young inland Ohio out-doing old South Carolina in this, +and the one district of New York City the whole South. The North had +three or four times the South's miles of railway, all the sinews of war +without importation, and mechanics unnumbered and of every sort. And +while champions of the Union would fight with all the prestige of law, +national history and the status quo on their side, Europe's aid to the +South, or even that of the border slave States, was more than +problematical, as was a successful career for the Confederacy in case +its independence should chance to be won. Events proved that the very +defence of slavery had best prospect in the Union, and it seems as if +this might have been foreseen by all, as it actually was by some. + + + +CHAPTER II. + +SECESSION + +[1861] + +Secession was no new thought at the South. It lurked darkly behind the +Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798-99. It was brought out into +broad daylight by South Carolina in the nullification troubles of 1832. +"Texas or disunion!" was the cry at the South in 1843-44. In 1850 South +Carolina declared herself ready to secede in the event of legislation +hostile to slavery. Two years later the same State solemnly affirmed +that it had a right to secede, but that, out of deference to the wishes +of the other slave States, it forbore to exercise such right. + +It must be admitted that in early years the North had helped to make the +thought of secession familiar. In 1803, in view of the great increase of +southern territory by the Louisiana Purchase, and again in 1813, when +New England opposition to the war with England culminated in the +Hartford Convention, there had been talk of a separate northern +confederacy. But from that time on the thought of disunion died out at +the North, while the South dallied with it more and more boldly. During +the presidential campaign of 1856, threats were made that if Fremont, +the republican candidate, should be elected, the South would leave the +Union. In October of that year a secret convention of southern governors +was held at Raleigh, N. C., supposed to have been for the purpose of +considering such a contingency. Governor Wise, of Virginia, who called +the convention, afterward proclaimed that had Fremont been chosen he +would have marched to Washington at the head of 20,000 troops, seized +the Capitol, and prevented the inauguration. This threatening attitude +in 1856 may have been chiefly an electioneering device; but during the +next four years the gulf between North and South widened rapidly, and +the southern leaders turned more and more resolutely toward secession as +the remedy for their alleged wrongs. + +No sooner had the presidential campaign of 1860 begun than deep +mutterings foretold the coming storm. "Elect Lincoln, and the South will +secede!" cried the campaign orators of the South, while the halls of +Congress rang with threats similar in tenor. As the campaign went on and +republican success became probable, the southern leaders began to nerve +up their hosts for the conflict. In October the governor and congressmen +of South Carolina, with other prominent politicians, met and unanimously +resolved that if Lincoln should win, the Palmetto State ought to +renounce the Union. Similar meetings were held in Georgia, Alabama, +Mississippi, and Florida. Governor Gist sent a confidential circular to +the governors of all the cotton States declaring that South Carolina +would secede with any other State, or would make the plunge alone if +others would promise to follow. The governors of Florida, Alabama, and +Mississippi replied that their States would certainly do this. Georgia +proposed to wait for some overt act by the National Government. North +Carolina and Louisiana, it was learned, would probably not go out at +all. + +But the enthusiasts in South Carolina had got all the encouragement they +wanted, and bided their time. Their time was at hand. The presidential +election fell on November 6th. Next day the tidings flashed over the +land that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President by the vote of a +solid North against a solid South. The wires had scarcely ceased to +thrill with this message of death to slavery-extension, when South +Carolina sounded a trumpet-call to the South. Her Legislature ordered a +secession state convention to meet in December, issued a call for 10,000 +volunteers, and voted money for the purchase of arms. Federal +office-holders resigned. Judge Magrath, of the United States District +Court, laid aside his robes, declaring, "So far as I am concerned, the +temple of Justice raised under the Constitution of the United States is +now closed." Militia organized throughout the State. The streets of +Charleston echoed nightly with the tramp of drilling minute-men. +Secession orators harangued enthusiastic crowds. Hardly a coat but bore +a secession cockade. November 17th, the Palmetto flag was unfurled in +Charleston. It was a gala day. Cannon roared, bands played the +Marseillaise, and processions paraded the streets bearing such mottoes +as "Let's Bury the Union's Dead Carcass!" "Death to All Abolitionists!" +The whole South was beside itself with excitement. One State after +another assembled its convention to decide the question of secession. +Even the Georgia Legislature, within a week after the election of +Lincoln, voted $1,000,000 to arm the State. + +The South Carolina convention met at Charleston, and on December 20th +unanimously adopted an ordinance declaring: + +"The union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under +the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." + +This action was hailed with wildest enthusiasm. Huge placards--"The +Union is Dissolved!"--were posted throughout the city, while the clang +of bells and the boom of cannon notified the country round. The +sidewalks were thronged with ladies wearing secession bonnets made of +cotton with palmetto decorations. A party of gentlemen visited the tomb +of Calhoun, and there registered their vows to defend the southern cause +with their fortunes and lives. In the evening the convention marched to +the hall in procession, and formally signed the revolutionary ordinance. +The chairman then solemnly proclaimed South Carolina an "independent +commonwealth." The little State, whose white population was less than +300,000, began to play at being a nation. The governor was authorized to +appoint a cabinet and receive foreign ambassadors, and the papers put +information from other parts of the country under the head of "foreign +news." + + +[Illustration: Street Banner in Charleston.] +"One voice and millions of strong arms to uphold the honor of South +Carolina 1776-1860" + + +The secession of South Carolina was greeted with joy in most of the +other slave States. Montgomery and Mobile, Ala., each fired one hundred +guns. At Richmond, Va., a palmetto banner was unfurled, while bells, +bonfires, and processions celebrated the event all over the South. The +other cotton States, spurred on by the bold deed of South Carolina, +rapidly followed her lead. Mississippi seceded January 9th, Florida the +10th, Alabama the 11th, Georgia the 19th, Louisiana the 26th, Texas +February 1st. + +It is probable that only in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida +were the majority of whites in favor of secession. The South was after +all full of Union sentiment. The ordinance of secession proceeded in +each State from a convention, and the election of delegates to this +witnessed the earnest work. The noble efforts of those Union men in +their fierce struggle have never yet been appreciated. But they fought +against great odds, and were inevitably overborne. The opposition was +organized, ably led, and white-hot with zeal. The political power and +the wealth of the South lay in the hands of the secessionists. The +clergy threw their weight on that side, preaching that slavery, God's +ordinance, was in danger. Union proclivities were crushed out by force. +Vigilance committees were everywhere on the alert. In the rougher States +of the Southwest abolitionists were tarred and feathered. Some were +shot. In all the States Union men were warned to keep quiet or leave the +South. One of the most powerful agents of intimidation was the Knights +of the Golden Circle, a vast secret society which extended throughout +the southern States. + +Yet, in spite of all, the vote was close even in several of the cotton +States. The Georgia people wanted new safeguards for slavery, but did +not at first desire secession. Alexander H. Stephens, who headed the +anti-secession movement, declared that Georgia was won over to take the +fatal step at last only by the cry, "Better terms can be made out of the +Union than in it." Even then the first vote for secession stood only 165 +to 130. In Louisiana the popular vote for convention delegates was +20,000 for secession and 17,000 against. + +The border States held aloof. Kentucky and Tennessee refused to call +conventions. So, for long, did North Carolina. The convention of +Virginia and of Missouri each had a majority of Union delegates. When +the Confederate Government was organized in February, only seven of the +fifteen slave States had seceded. Their white population was about +2,600,000, or less than half that of the entire slave region. But +Arkansas and North Carolina were soon swept along by the current, and +seceded in May. Virginia and Tennessee were finally carried (the former +in May, the latter in June) by the aid of troops, who swarmed in from +the seceded States, and turned the elections into a farce. Unionists in +the Virginia Convention were given the choice to vote secession, leave, +or be hanged. Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland resisted all +attempts to drag them into the Confederacy, though the first two, after +the United States began to apply force, appeared neutral rather than +loyal. + +The seizure of United States property went hand in hand with secession. +Most of the government works were feebly garrisoned, and made no +resistance. By January 15th the secessionists had possession of arsenals +at Augusta, Ga., Mount Vernon, Ala., Fayetteville, N. C, Chattahoochee, +Fla., and Baton Rouge, La., of forts in Alabama and Georgia, of a +navy-yard at Pensacola, Fla., and of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, +commanding the mouth of the Mississippi. At one arsenal they found +150,000 pounds of powder, at another 22,000 muskets and rifles, besides +ammunition and cannon, at another 50,000 small arms and 20 heavy guns. +The whole South had been well supplied with military stores by the +enterprising foresight of J. B. Floyd, of Virginia, Buchanan's Secretary +of War, who had sent thither 115,000 muskets from the Springfield +arsenal alone. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Major Robert Anderson. + + +Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, was held by Major Robert Anderson, +of Kentucky, with a garrison of some seventy men. On December 27th the +whole country was thrilled, and the South enraged, by the news that on +the previous night Anderson had secretly transferred his whole force to +Fort Sumter, a new and stronger work in the centre of the harbor, +leaving spiked cannon and burning gun-carriages behind him at Moultrie. +The South Carolina militia at once occupied the deserted fortress with +the other harbor fortifications, and began to put them into a state of +defence. At Pensacola, Fla., Lieutenant Slemmer, by a movement similar +to Anderson's, held Fort Pickens. + + +[Illustration: Several soldiers loading boats by moonlight.] +Major Anderson removing his Forces from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, +December 26, 1861. + + +The seizure of government property went on through January and February. +In Louisiana all the commissary stores were confiscated, and the revenue +cutter McClelland surrendered. The mint at New Orleans, containing over +half a million in gold and silver, was seized. More than half of the +regular army were stationed in Texas, under General Twiggs. In February, +at the demand of a secessionist committee of public safety, he +surrendered his entire force, together with eighteen military posts. The +troops were sent to a Gulf port and there detained. + +This wholesale seizure of government property, worth some $20,000,000, +has brought down upon the South much scathing rebuke. The conduct of +Floyd, stabbing his country under the cloak of a cabinet office, cannot +be too strongly condemned; but with the seceding States the case was +different. Having (so they thought) established themselves as +independent republics, they could not allow the military works within +their borders to remain in the hands of a foreign power. As to the +Government's property right, they recognized it, and proposed to pay +damages. The provisional constitution of the Confederacy, adopted in +February, provided for negotiations to settle the claim of the United +States. + +The southern leaders were not more anxious to get the slave States out +of the Union than to get them into a grand Southern Confederacy. Early +in January a caucus of secession congressmen was held at Washington, and +arrangements made for a constitutional convention. + +February 4, 1861, delegates from the States which had left the Union met +at Montgomery, Ala., and formed themselves into a provisional Congress. +A temporary government, styled "The Confederate States of America," was +soon organized. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was chosen President by +the Congress, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President. +Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808. He graduated at West Point, fought +as colonel in the Mexican war, served three terms as congressman from +Mississippi, the last two in the Senate, and was Secretary of War under +Pierce. After Calhoun's death, in 1850, he became the most prominent of +the ultra southern leaders. The new President was brought from Jackson, +Miss., to Montgomery by a special train, his progress a continual +ovation. Cheering crowds gathered at every station to see and hear him. +February 18th Davis was inaugurated. In his address, which was calm and +moderate in tone, he declared that reunion was now "neither practicable +nor desirable;" he hoped for peace, but said that if the North refused +this, the South must appeal to arms, secure in the blessing of God on a +just cause. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Jefferson Davis. + + +The Confederate President was intrusted with very large powers, +including supreme control of military affairs. He was authorized to +muster into the service of the central government the regiments which +had been forming in the various States. A call was issued for 100,000 +volunteers, and provision made for organizing a regular army. President +Davis appointed a cabinet, with state, treasury, war, navy, and +post-office departments. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, a rabid +secessionist, became Secretary of State. + +March 11th the Confederate Congress adopted a permanent constitution. It +reproduced that of the United States, with some important changes. State +sovereignty was recognized in the preamble, which read, "We, the people +of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and +independent character," etc. Slavery was called by name, and elaborate +safeguards fixed for it in the States and Territories. Slave-trade from +beyond the sea, or with states not in the Confederacy, was, however, +prohibited. Protective tariffs were absolutely forbidden. The president +and vice-president were to serve six years, and the former could not be +re-elected. Some valuable features were inserted. Members of the cabinet +might discuss matters pertaining to their departments in either house of +congress. The president could veto one part of an appropriation bill +without killing the whole, and was required to lay before the senate his +reasons for the removal of any officers from the civil service. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Alexander H. Stephens. + + +By the last of April all the seceded States had ratified this +constitution. The other slave States were taken in as fast as they +withdrew from the Union. The Southern Confederacy, now fairly launched, +set sail over strange seas upon its short but eventful voyage. At the +start the hopes of those it bore rose high. Few believed that the North +would dare draw sword. Even if it should, the southern heart, proud and +brave, felt sure of victory. King Cotton would win Europe to their side. +Peace would come soon. Visions of a glorious future dazzled the +imaginative mind of the South. A vast slave empire, founded on the +"great physical, philosophical, and moral truth" that slavery is the +"natural condition," of the inferior black race, would spread encircling +arms around the Great Gulf, swallowing up the feeble states of Mexico, +and rise to a wealth and glory unparalleled in the history of nations. + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE NORTH IN THE WINTER OF 1860-61 + +[1860-1861] + +At the beginning of the secession movement the North slumbered and +slept. Even South Carolina's withdrawal from the Union caused little +alarm. "She will be glad enough to come back before long," prophesied +many. As the revolution progressed there was a gradual awakening, but +division of opinion paralyzed action. Ultra Abolitionists, with a few +others, urged that the South be let go in peace. Most Republicans +favored the preservation of the Union by force of arms if necessary; but +nearly all Democrats, with many Republicans, wished for compromise. Of +the latter class a few prayed the prodigals to return on their own +terms. More proposed a rigid enforcement of the fugitive slave law, the +repeal of personal liberty legislation, and acquiescence in the Dred +Scott decision, with all future like decrees of the Supreme Court. This +may be called the northern-democratic position. The most pronounced +Republicans, as Seward and Stanton, would gladly have voted to +re-enforce the Constitution's guarantee to slavery in the slave States. + +Throughout the North the feeling was strong against all efforts at +coercion. Most democratic papers and many republican ones insisted +loudly that use of arms was not to be mentioned, and that the South must +be conciliated. A democratic convention met at Albany in January, to +protest against forcible measures. The sentiment that if force were to +be used it should be "inaugurated at home," here evoked hearty response. +There were signs of even a deeper disaffection. An ex-governor of New +Jersey declared that his State would join the Confederacy. Mayor Wood, +of New York, proposed that if the Union were broken up, his city should +announce herself an independent republic. + +At Washington matters were still worse. President Buchanan, loyal but +weak, feared to lift a finger. In his December message to Congress, he +insisted that a State had no right to secede, but that the United States +had no power to coerce a State which should secede. A majority of his +cabinet were southern men, three of them zealous secessionists. His most +intimate friends in Congress were southerners. These surrounded the +vacillating Chief Magistrate, and paralyzed what little energy was in +him, meanwhile taking advantage of his inaction to launch the +Confederacy. Now and then, spurred on by loyal old General Scott and by +the Union members of his cabinet, the President tried to break away from +the toils which the conspirators had spun around him. The Star of the +West was secretly sent with supplies and recruits to re-enforce Fort +Sumter. But Secretary Thompson warned South Carolina, and when the +vessel arrived off Charleston, January 9th, hostile batteries fired upon +her and forced her out to sea again. Another plan to relieve the fort +was half formed, but came to nothing. Buchanan's term was on the point +of expiring, and he sat supinely looking on while the disruption of the +Union proceeded apace. + +The northern side in Congress showed little wisdom or spirit. Most +northern congressmen truckled to the South or wasted their energies in +fruitless attempts at compromise. Both houses, each by more than a +two-thirds majority, recommended a constitutional amendment depriving +Congress forever of the power to touch slavery in any State without the +consent of all the States. In December the venerable Crittenden, of +Kentucky, laid before the Senate his famous Suggestions for Compromise. +These, besides embodying the above amendment, restored the Missouri +Compromise, let each new State decide for itself whether it would be +slave or free, and forbade Congress to abolish slavery in the District +of Columbia or interfere with the inter-state transportation of slaves. +The United States was to pay for all fugitives whose capture should be +successfully prevented, and slaves as slaves could be carried through +free States. This measure, before Congress all winter, was finally lost +only for lack of southern votes. + +A peace congress, called by Virginia, met at Washington in February. +Most of the northern States were represented and all the southern which +had not seceded. It sat for three weeks, and adopted resolutions +identical in substance with the Crittenden Compromise. These dangerously +large offers of concession, mainly well meant, happily proved useless. +The South had gone too far. She did not want compromise, but was bent +upon setting up a slave empire. + +Mr. Lincoln arrived safely in Washington on February 23d, having eluded +a rumored plot to assassinate him in Baltimore. He accomplished this by +assuming a slight disguise and taking an earlier train than the one in +which he had been announced to go. He was duly inaugurated on March 4th. +In his inaugural he disclaimed all purpose to interfere with slavery in +the slave States, yet denied the right of secession, and proposed to +regain and hold the property and places belonging to the United States +in all parts thereof. There would be no bloodshed, he said, unless it +were forced upon the Government. "In your hands, my dissatisfied +fellow-countrymen," so ran his memorable words, "in your hands, not in +mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. You can have no conflict +without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but +friends." This message, held out as an olive branch, the South denounced +as a menace. Some northern papers condemned it as the "knell and requiem +of the Union." But the general feeling it evoked at the North was one of +rejoicing. People believed that a hand both moderate and firm had at +length seized the helm. + +The new President stood faced by an herculean task. Congress was not yet +fully purged of traitors, while Washington still swarmed with their +friends and agents. Floyd's treachery had tied Lincoln's hands. All the +best munitions of war had been sent south. Of the rifled cannon +belonging to the United States not one was left. Only a handful of +regular troops were within call, and the resignations of their officers +came in daily. The plight of the navy and treasury was no better. +Amazing coolness and the absurd prejudice against coercing States +largely possessed even the loyal masses. The attack on Sumter was thus a +god-send. + +April 8th, Governor Pickens received notice from President Lincoln that +an attempt would be made to provision that fort. Thereupon General +Beauregard, who had left the United States army to take charge of the +fortifications at Charleston, was ordered by President Davis to demand +its evacuation. Major Anderson replied that they should be starved out +by the 15th, and would leave the fort then unless his Government sent +supplies. This answer was held unsatisfactory, and at 3.20 on the +morning of April 12th Beauregard notified Anderson that his batteries +would open fire in one hour. + +Fort Sumter stood on an artificial island at the entrance of the harbor. +It was pentagonal in shape, the walls of brick, eight feet thick and +forty feet high. The parapet was pierced for 140 guns, but only 48 were +in condition for use. The garrison, including some 40 workmen and a +band, numbered 128. Surrounding the fort on all sides except toward the +sea, and distant from 1,300 to 2,500 yards, 19 Confederate batteries +were in position, mounting 47 cannon and mortars, and manned by 3,000 or +4,000 volunteers. These works were provided with bomb-proofs made of +railroad iron or of palmetto logs and sand. + +The wharves, roofs, and steeples of Charleston were black with expectant +crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle +loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to +the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful +trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun. +One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the +stronghold is girt by an almost continuous circle of flashing artillery. +Shells scream through the air and explode above the doomed work, and +great cannon-balls bury themselves in the brick walls. Still Sumter +speaks not. Anderson is waiting for daylight. About six o'clock he +breakfasts his garrison on pork and water, the only provisions left. An +hour later the embrasures are opened, the black guns run out, and Sumter +hurls back her answer to the voice of rebellion. The bombs making it +unsafe to use the barbette cannons of the open rampart, Anderson was +confined to his twenty-one casemate pieces, mostly of light calibre. The +fire was kept up briskly all the morning. Sumter stood it well, but did +little damage to the opposing batteries. At sunset the guns of both +sides became silent, but the mortars maintained a slow fire through the +night. + +Early next morning the cannonade opened afresh, and in the course of the +forenoon hot shot set fire to Sumter's wooden barracks. The flames soon +got beyond control; the powder magazine had to be closed; and the heat +and smoke became so stifling that the garrison was forced, in order to +avoid suffocation, to lie face downward upon the floor, each man with a +wet cloth at his mouth. Powder was at last exhausted. About one o'clock +the flag was shot away. It was immediately raised again upon a low +jury-mast, but could not be seen for the smoke, and Beauregard sent to +ask if Anderson had surrendered. The latter offered to evacuate upon the +terms named before the bombardment, to which Beauregard agreed, and all +firing ceased. The next day at noon, after a salute of fifty guns to +their flag, Major Anderson and his men evacuated the scene of their +heroism, and soon after took passage for New York. + +The disunion leaders had rightly calculated that an open blow would +bring the border slave States into the Confederacy; but they had not +anticipated the effect of such a deed beyond Mason and Dixon's line. +When it was known that the old flag had been fired upon, a thrill of +passionate rage electrified the North from Maine to Oregon. Then was +witnessed an uprising unparalleled in our history if not in that of +mankind. From every city, town, and hamlet, loud and earnest came the +call, "The Union must be preserved! Away with compromise! Away with +further attempts to conciliate traitors! To arms!" Slavery might do all +else, so little did most northerners yet feel its evil, but it could not +rend the Union. Pulpit, platform, and press echoed with patriotic cries. +Everywhere were Union meetings, speeches, and parades. Union badges +decked everyone's clothing, and the Stars and Stripes were kept unfurled +as only on national holidays before. In New York City a mass-meeting of +two hundred thousand declared for war. The New York Herald changed its +sneer to a war-blast. Party lines were thrown down. Democrats like +Butler, Cass, and Dickinson were in the Union van. Senator Douglas, +lately Lincoln's antagonist, and at first strongly opposed to coercion, +went through the West arousing the people by his patriotic eloquence. +"There can be no neutrals now," were his words, "only patriots and +traitors." + + +[Illustration: Route of the Sixth Massachusetts Troops through Baltimore.] + + +April 15th, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand +volunteers, and each free State responded with twice its quota. +Enlisting offices were opened in every town and hamlet, and the roll of +the drum and the tramp of armed men with faces set southward were heard +all over the North. First to march was the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment. +Forming on Boston Common it took cars for Washington on April 17th, +reaching Baltimore on the morning of the 19th. + +Maryland was trembling in the balance between Union and disunion. A +determined disunionist minority was working with might and main to drag +the State into secession. Baltimore was white-hot with southern zeal, +determined that the Bay State troops should never reach Washington +through that metropolis. Eight of the cars containing the soldiers were +drawn safely across the city. The next was assailed by a hooting mob, +and the windows smashed in by bricks and paving stones. Some of the +soldiers were wounded by pistol shots, and a scattering fire was +returned. Sand, stones, anchors, and other obstructions were heaped upon +the track. The remaining four companies therefore left the cars and +started to march. They soon met the mob, flying a secession flag. A +melee ensued. The troops moved double-quick toward the Washington depot, +surrounded by a seething mass of infuriated secessionists filling the +air with their brick-bats and stones, while bullets whizzed from +sidewalks and windows. The troops returned the fire, and several in the +crowd fell. The chief of police with fifty officers appeared on the +scene, who, by presenting cocked revolvers, held the rioters in check +for a while, till the distressed troops could join their comrades. +Baltimore was in the hands of this secessionist band for the rest of the +day. The bridges north of that city were also burned, so that no more +troops could reach Washington by this route. + + +[Illustration: Waterfront; ships and buildings.] +Scene of the First Bloodshed, at Baltimore. + + +Meanwhile the capital city was in great peril, devotees of the South +being each moment expected to make an attack upon it. Only fifteen +companies of local militia and six of regulars were present at +inauguration time, stationed by General Scott at critical points in the +city. Pickets were posted continually on roads and bridges outside. Four +hundred Pennsylvania troops happily arrived on April 18th, and the next +day came the Sixth Massachusetts. But the city was not yet secure. There +were reports that large bodies of men were gathering in Maryland and +Virginia for a descent upon it. Washington was put in a state of siege, +the public buildings barricaded and provided with sentinels. The +Government seized the Potomac steamers and also all the flour within +reach. Business ceased. Alarmed by rumors of a military impressment, +hundreds of government clerks, besides officers in the army and navy, +came out in their true colors and fled south. Enemies at Baltimore had +cut off telegraphic communication between Washington and the North. +Reports came that re-enforcements were on the way, but day followed day +without witnessing their arrival. The President and all Unionists were +in an agony of suspense. + + +[Illustration: Map of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.] +The Routes of Approach to Washington. +Russell & Struthers, Eng's, N. York. + + +On April 22d the Eighth Massachusetts, under General B. F. Butler, and +the famous Seventh Regiment from New York City, met at Annapolis. Here +they were delayed several days. Governor Hicks had warned them not to +land on Maryland soil. The railroad to Washington had been torn up for +many miles and the engines damaged. Among his troops Butler found the +very machinists who had made the engines. Repairs were promptly +effected, the track re-laid, and about noon of the 25th the gallant New +Yorkers landed in Washington amid the joyful shouts of the loyal +populace. Up Pennsylvania Avenue swept the solid ranks, bands playing +and colors flying, to gladden the heart of the careworn President as he +welcomed them at the White House. A sudden change came over the city. +Secessionists slunk away, the faces of the loyal beamed with joy. The +national capital was safe. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +WAR BEGUN + +[1861] + +It was now apparent to both North and South that war was inevitable. Yet +neither side believed the other in full earnest or dreamed of a long +struggle. Sanguine northerners looked to see the rebellion stamped out +in thirty days. The more cautious allowed three months. + +The President, however, soon saw that more troops, enlisted for a longer +term, would be necessary. At the outset the South certainly possessed +decided advantages: greater earnestness, more men of leisure aching for +war and accustomed to saddle and firearms, a militia better organized, +owing to fear of slave insurrections, and now for a long time in special +training, and withal a certain soldierly fire and dash native to the +people. The South also had superior arms. Enlistments there were prompt +and abundant. The troops were ably commanded, 262 of the 951 regular +army officers whom secession found in service, including many very high +in rank, joining their States in the new cause, besides a large number +of West Point graduates from civil life. + +Accordingly on May 3d Mr. Lincoln issued a new call for troops, 42,000 +volunteers to serve three years or during the war, 23,000 regulars, and +18,000 seamen. It was of first importance to secure Maryland for the +Union. On the night of May 13th, under cover of a thunderstorm, General +Butler suddenly entered rebellious Baltimore with less than 1,000 men, +and entrenched upon Federal Hill. Overawed by this bold move, the +secessionists made no resistance. A political reaction soon set in +throughout the State, which became firmly Unionist. Baltimore was once +more open to the passage of troops, who kept steadily hurrying to the +front. + +Meanwhile the Confederate forces were getting uncomfortably close to +Washington. From the White House a secession flag could be seen flying +at Alexandria, which was occupied by a small pro-secession garrison. +There was fear lest that party would occupy Arlington Heights, across +from Washington, and thence pour shot and shell into the city. At two +o'clock on the morning of May 24th, eight regiments crossed the Potomac +and took possession of these hills as far south as Alexandria, and +fortified them. The latter place was entered by Colonel Ellsworth with +his famous New York Zouaves. No resistance was made, as the Confederates +had retired, but Ellsworth was brutally assassinated while hauling down +the secession flag. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +Captain Nathaniel Lyon. + + +Upon the secession of Virginia the Confederate capital was removed to +Richmond. The main armies of both sides were now encamped on Old +Dominion soil, and at no great distance apart; but the commanders were +busy drilling their raw troops, so that for a time only trifling +engagements occurred. General Butler, with a considerable body of men, +was occupying Fortress Monroe, at the mouth of the James River. June +10th, an expedition sent by him against the Confederates at Big Bethel, +some twelve miles distant, was repulsed after a spirited attack, with a +total loss of sixty-eight. A week later an Ohio regiment took the cars +to make a reconnoissance toward Vienna, a village not far south of +Washington. They were surprised by Confederates, who placed two guns on +the track and fired on the train as it came around a curve. The Ohioans +sprang to the ground, and after some fighting drove their opponents +back. + +All this time both North and South were struggling for possession of the +neutral States. Governor Jackson, of Missouri, was straining every nerve +to force his State into secession. Early in May two or three regiments +of militia were got together and drilled in a camp near St. Louis. +Cannon were sent by President Davis, boxed up and marked "marble." +Captain Lyon, of the regular army, who held the St. Louis arsenal with a +few companies, reconnoitred the secessionist camp in female dress. The +next day, May 10th, assisted by local militia, he suddenly surrounded it +and took 1,200 prisoners. A month later he embarked some soldiers on +three swift steamers, sailed up the Missouri to Jefferson City, the +state capital, and raised the Union flag once more over the State House. +Governor Jackson fled. During the next month all the armed disunionists +were driven into the southwestern part of the State. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General John C. Fremont. + + +The last of July a state convention organized a provisional government +and declared for the Union. But the secessionists, under General Price, +continued the struggle. The Union forces, after a brave fight against +great odds at Wilson's Creek, August 10th, in which Lyon was killed, had +to retreat north. General Fremont had shortly before been put at the +head of the Western Department, which included Missouri, Kentucky, +Illinois, and Kansas. His difficulties were great. He was unable to +clear the State of secessionists, who besieged Lexington and took it on +September 20th. Generals Hunter and Halleck, Fremont's successors, were +equally unsuccessful, and the State was harassed by a petty warfare all +the year. + +In Kentucky, Governor Magoffin was inclined to secession. The +Legislature leaned the other way, but preferred neutrality to active +participation on either side. September 6th, Brigadier-General U. S. +Grant occupied Paducah, an important strategical point at the junction +of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. Next day the Confederate General Polk, +advancing from below, took possession of Columbus on the Mississippi. +With both hostile armies thus encamped on her soil, Kentucky could no +longer be neutral. Her decision was quickly taken. The Legislature +demanded of President Davis to withdraw Polk's forces, at the same time +calling upon General Anderson, the hero of Sumter, who had been placed +in charge of the Department of the Cumberland, to take active measures +for the defence of this his native State. + +The mountain portion of Virginia belonged to the West rather than to the +South. It contained only 18,000 slaves, against nearly 500,000 in +Eastern Virginia. Union sentiment was therefore strong, and when the old +State seceded from the Union, Western Virginia proceeded to secede from +the State. General Lee sent troops to hold it for the Confederacy. +Thereupon General McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio, +threw several regiments across the river into Virginia, and defeated the +foe in minor engagements at Philippi, Rich Mountain, and Carrick's Ford. +By the middle of July he was able to report, "Secession is killed in +this country." Later in the year the Confederates renewed their +attempts, but were finally driven out. West Virginia organized a +separate government, and was subsequently admitted to the Union as a +State by itself. + + +[Illustration: Map.] +Bull Run--the Field of Strategy. + + +While these struggles were going on in the border commonwealths, the +Union soldiers lay inactive along the Potomac. Constant drill had +changed the mob into some semblance of an organized army, but the +careful Scott feared to risk a general engagement. The hostile forces +stretched in three pairs of groups across Virginia from northwest to +southeast. In the southeastern part of the State, at Fortress Monroe, +Butler faced the Confederate Magruder. At Manassas, opposite Washington, +and about thirty miles southwest, lay a Confederate army under General +Beauregard. General Patterson, a veteran of the War of 1812, commanded +considerable forces in Southern Pennsylvania. About the middle of June +he advanced against Harper's Ferry, which had been abandoned by the +Unionists the latter part of April and was now occupied by General +Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston evacuated the place upon Patterson's +approach, and retreated up the Shenandoah Valley, in a southwesterly +direction, to Winchester. Patterson followed part way, and the two +armies now lay watching each other. + +Anxious to see the rebellion put down by one blow, the North was +becoming impatient. "On to Richmond!" was the ceaseless cry. Yielding to +this, Scott ordered an advance. July 16th, General McDowell, leaving one +division to protect Washington, led forth an army 28,000 strong to +attack the enemy at Manassas. He advanced slowly and with great caution. +The enemy were found posted in a line eight miles long upon the south +bank of Bull Run, a small river three miles east of Manassas, running in +a southeasterly direction. Several days were spent in reconnoitering. +Meanwhile, Johnston, whom Patterson was expected to hold at Winchester, +had stolen away to join Beauregard, their combined forces numbering +about 30,000. McDowell was ignorant of Johnston's movement, supposing +him still at Winchester. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General Irvin McDowell. + + +On the morning of the 21st McDowell advanced to the attack. Beauregard +held all the lower fords, besides a stone bridge on the Warrenton +turnpike which crosses the river at right angles. Two divisions, under +Hunter and Heintzelman, were set in motion before sunrise to make a +flanking detour and cross Bull Run at Sudley's Ford, some distance +farther up. To distract attention from this movement, Tyler's division +began an attack at the stone bridge. This was held by a regiment and a +half, with four guns, under General Evans. He replied vigorously at +first, but perceiving after a while that Tyler was only feigning, and +learning of the flank movement above, he left four companies at the +bridge and drew up the rest of his forces on a ridge north of Warrenton +turnpike to await Hunter and Heintzelman's approach down the Sudley +road. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General Samuel P. Heintzelman. + + +The fight began about ten o'clock. Both sides were soon re-enforced. +After two hours' stubborn fighting the Confederates were driven back +across the pike, beyond Young's Branch of Bull Run, and took up a second +position on a hill each side of the Henry House. The whole Union force +had now crossed Bull Run. Griffin's and Ricketts' powerful batteries +were posted in favorable positions, whence they poured a deadly fire +upon the Confederates. The whole Union line advanced to the turnpike. +About two o'clock the Confederates were forced to abandon their second +position and fall back still farther. + +Early in the morning Beauregard and Johnston had given orders for an +attack upon the Union forces across the river, not knowing that McDowell +had assumed the offensive. These orders were now countermanded, and all +available troops hurried up the Sudley road toward the Warrenton pike +front. Till after noon the prospect for the Confederates looked gloomy. +They had been steadily driven back. Some of their regiments had lost +heavily, while all were more or less demoralized. Johnston and +Beauregard gave their personal direction to re-forming the line upon a +second ridge to the south of the Warrenton pike, under cover of a +semicircular piece of woods. Twelve regiments, with twenty-two guns and +two companies of cavalry, concentrated in this favorable position and +awaited the Union advance. + + +[Illustration: Map.] +Bull Run-Battle of the Forenoon. + + +McDowell had fourteen regiments available for the attack. He decided to +hurl them against the Confederate centre and left. About half-past two +Griffin's and Ricketts' batteries took up an advanced position on Henry +Hill. The Confederate guns opened fire, and a short artillery duel took +place. A Confederate regiment now advances to capture the exposed +batteries. They are mistaken for Union re-enforcements and allowed to +come within close range. The muskets are levelled. A terrible volley is +poured into the batteries. The gunners are stricken down. The frantic +horses dash madly down the hill. After a little confusion the Union +troops boldly advance and retake the batteries. The battle surges back +and forth. The guns are three times captured and lost again. The fight +becomes general along the Confederate centre and left. The Union +generals are getting alarmed. So far they have been confident of +victory. Now regiment after regiment is going to pieces in this terrific +melee, and still the "rebels" hold their ground. About half-past four +o'clock General Early arrives by rail with three thousand more of +Johnston's army, and, assisted by a battery and five companies of +cavalry, bursts upon the extreme right flank and rear of McDowell's +line. + + +[Illustration: Map.] +Bull Run--Battle of the Afternoon. + + +This manoeuvre decided the day. The Union ranks waver, break, flee. The +centre and left soon follow, though in better order. Union and +Confederate generals alike were astonished at the sudden change. +McDowell found it impossible to stem the tide once set in, and gave +orders to fall back across Bull Run to Centreville, where his reserves +were stationed. As the retreat went on it turned to a downright rout. +The Confederates made only a feeble pursuit, but fear of pursuit spread +alarm through the flying ranks, demoralized by long marching and hard +fighting. Baggage and ammunition-wagons, ambulances, private vehicles +which had been standing in the rear, joined the sweeping tide, adding to +the confusion and in some places causing temporary blockade. Frightened +teamsters cut traces and galloped recklessly away. Panic and stampede +resulted, soon reaching the soldiers. Flinging away muskets and +knapsacks, they sought safety in flight. The army entered Centreville a +disorganized mass. Fugitives could not be stayed even there, but +streamed through and on toward Washington. McDowell gave the order to +continue the retreat. The reserve brigades, with the one regiment of +regulars, covered the rear in good order. All that night the crazy +hustle to the rear was kept up, and on Monday the hungry and exhausted +stragglers poured into Washington under a drizzling rain, the people +receiving them with heavy hearts but generous hands. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General Joseph E. Johnston. + + +The Union loss was 481 killed, 1,011 wounded, 1,460 prisoners. +Twenty-five guns were lost, thirteen of them on the retreat. The +Confederate loss was 387 killed, 1,580 wounded. The numbers actively +engaged were about 18,000 on each side. General Sherman pronounced Bull +Run "one of the best planned battles of the war, but one of the worst +fought." The latter fact was but natural. The troops on both sides were +poorly drilled, and most of them had never been under fire before. +Precision of movement, concert of action on any large scale, were +impossible. Neither side needed to be ashamed of this initial trial. + +The North was at first much cast down. The faint-hearted considered the +Union hopelessly lost, but pluck and patriotism carried the day. On the +morrow after the battle Congress voted that an army of 500,000 should be +raised, and appropriated $500,000,000 to carry on the war. General +McClellan, whose brilliant campaign in West Virginia had won him easy +fame, was put in command of the Army of the Potomac. The young general +was a West Point graduate and had served with distinction in the Mexican +War. An accomplished military student, a skilful engineer, and a superb +organizer, he threw himself with energy into the task of fortifying +Washington and building up a splendid army. Many of the three-months +volunteers re-enlisted. Thousands of new recruits came flocking to camp, +and before long companies, regiments, and brigades amounting to 150,000 +men were drilling daily on the banks of the Potomac, while formidable +works crowned the entire crest of Arlington Heights. In October the aged +General Scott resigned, and McClellan, at the summit of his popularity +with army and people, became commander-in-chief. + + +[Illustration: Portrait.] +General George B. McClellan. + + +For several weeks after Bull Run it was feared that Beauregard and his +men would descend upon Washington, then in a defenceless condition; but +they were in no state to attack. They too felt the need of preparation +for the coming struggle, whose magnitude both sides now began to +realize. + +A disheartening affair occurred in October. On the night of the 20th two +Massachusetts regiments crossed the Potomac at Ball's Bluff, a few miles +above Washington, to surprise a hostile camp which according to rumor +had been established there. A large force concealed in the woods +attacked and forced them to retreat. They were re-enforced by 1,900 men +under Colonel Baker. The enemy were also re-enforced. Baker was killed +and the Union soldiers driven over the bluff into the river. The boats +were totally inadequate in number, and the men had to make their way +across as best they could, exposed to the Confederate fire. The total +Union loss was 1,000. + +On the whole, then, the South had reason to be gratified with the +aggregate result of the first year of war. Bull Run gave the +Confederates a sense of invincibility, and the ready recognition by the +foreign powers of their rights as belligerents, offered hope that +England would soon acknowledge their independence itself. And they +thought that the North had been doing its best when it had only been +getting ready. + + +END OF VOLUME III. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the United States, Volume 3 +(of 6), by E. 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