Expansion Of Slavery Research Articles

Abolition, Compromise and "The Everlasting Elusiveness of Truth" in Melville's Pierre

Although readers of Moby-Dick have often seen reflections on the American political landscape within Herman Melville's masterpiece, they have resisted reading Melville's subsequent novel, Pierre, or The Ambiguities as a similar meditation on the sectional crisis of 1850. Written just one year after Moby-Dick in 1851, Pierre has been mined almost exclusively for its autobiographical content, its psychological infrastructure, and its perceived artistic failures.(1) Consequently, Pierre has seemed for twentieth-century readers to be an overwrought love story tangled within a novel about literary achievement, a work that, as Henry Murray has argued, served for Melville as something of a spiritual autobiography.(2) Yet when its perspectives on and reform are brought into view, Pierre, like Moby-Dick, reveals Melville's ongoing concern with ideas of survival, faith, and adherence to a law. The consequences of compromise were still haunting Melville late in 1851. Pierre tells the story of an idealistic young hero's struggle to reconcile himself with a newly-discovered dark half-sister whose suffering he attributes directly to the sins of his father. What has gone unrecognized in this novel is what Toni Morrison has called the ghost in the machine, the preoccupation with the presence of a black in a white world that lies within much nineteenth-century American literature. Morrison suggests that on the subject of race, even canonical writers like Melville have much more to say than has been realized. Perhaps some were not so much transcending politics, or escaping blackness, as they were transforming it into intelligible, accessible, yet artistic modes of discourse.(3) From Morrison's perspective, Moby-Dick is not only a critique of the politics surrounding the Fugitive Slave Law and the 1850 Compromise, as Alan Heimert and others have argued; in the Pequod's relentless pursuit of the white whale, she beholds a critique of the underlying of race driving much of the politics of slavery in the republic.(4) We can find the same ideology of in Pierre. Melville uses his love story to address the competing doctrines of idealism and expediency at the center of political discourse among abolitionists and Northern politicians. Moreover and beyond the politics of these ideologies, he explores the influence of a deeply entrenched belief in white superiority on the aspirations of his presumably altruistic hero as that hero grapples with his dark sibling's claim to equality. Contrary to the hopes of advocates of the Compromise of 1850, the legislation passed that year did not succeed in resolving conflict between anti-slavery activists and those Northerners who preferred compromising with southern slave-holding states over risking the dissolution of the Union.(5) In 1851, abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker continued to argue that slavery not only violated the principle for which the nation's founding fathers had struggled in the Revolution, but that to condone slavery anywhere in the Union was for the nation to transgress the higher law of God.(6) For these reformers, far more than secular justice was at stake; as Garrison once proclaimed, I will perish before an inch shall be surrendered, seeing that the liberties of mankind, the happiness and harmony of the universe, and the authority and majesty of Almighty God, are involved in the issue.(7) No compromise could be deemed acceptable in the pursuit of a cause ordained by God. Among the many who disagreed with the arguments of Garrison was Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, who witnessed antislavery sentiment split his own Whig party and then the nation into Northern and Southern factions.(8) Webster did not conceive a legislative end to slavery to be feasible or even permissible under the Constitution. Although he was opposed to the expansion of slavery, his strategy was never to rid the nation of this great moral, social, and political evil, but to curtail it sufficiently so that it would not dominate the political scene. …

"He Put His Thumb Up to His Nose, And Twirl'd His Fingers at His Foes": Presidential Campaign Songs in 1844

Up Beat Down South "He Put His Thumb Up to His Nose, And Twirl'd His Fingers at His Foes" Presidential Campaign Songs in 1 844 BY GAVIN JAMES CAMPBELL Whigs, Now's the Time, Vote andSing, Sing and Vote —National Clay Melodist (1844) On 17 August 1844, a Tennessee schoolteacher namedJason Niles joined a large crowd of spectators to watch the raising of a "Clay pole" celebrating the Whig party's presidential ticket of Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen. Local party organizers were undoubtedly embarassed when the pole fractured and had to be sent to the local blacksmith's shop for swift repairs. Despite the loss of about forty-five feet, the pole went up successfully and there was "shouting and singing all night." Not to be outdone, Democratic partisans carted in their own pole a week later "drawn by some 20 odd yoke of oxen," on one of which sat a fiddler. After raising their pole without incident, observed Niles, Democrats "sung 'Damn old Clay and Frelinghuysen'." Two weeks later the Whigs responded with another rally and Niles again joined a large assembly of spectators, this time serenaded by "the music of an accordian, fiddle and sweet voices of some Whig singers." As Niles's diary reveals, nineteenth-century presidential candidates could expect their bids for office to inspire a torrent ofmusic and political songs, much of it created for the occasion. Beginning with the raucous 1 840 election between William Henry Harrison and Martin Van Buren, music played an increasingly prominent role in the arsenal of campaign weapons. By 1 844 both Whigs and Democrats were convinced that music could help tip the electoral scales at a time ofbalanced and fierce party competition. Theypublished and disseminated thousands of cheap, pocket-sized booklets, or "songsters," containing newly minted political verses set to well-known tunes. These songsters were important in generating enthusiasm and invective, in sketching out a campaign's broader issues, and in uniting voters at the grassroots in public displays of party loyalty. Such functions were critical in 1 844 as the "dark horse," Tennessee's James K. Polk, sought to defeat Kentucky's Henry Clay in an election eventually decided by fewer than 40,000 popular votes. Although the annexation ofTexas and the westward expansion of slavery were the touchstones of the election, music neverthe-»39 Titlepagefrom The Clay Songster (n.d.). Courtesy ofDuke University Special Collections Ubrary, Durham, TV. C. less played an important role in creating an enthusiastic, committed, involved, and amused electorate. Songs and music celebrating presidential candidates had deep roots, but it wasn't until William Henry Harrison's "log cabin and hard cider" campaign that specially printed political songsters made dieir debut. With tides like A Drop of Cider, or the Tippecanoe Roarer, and The Ij)g Cabin Minstrel, the 1 840 songsters celebrated the virtues and achievements of"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" while at the same time jeering at the Democratic incumbent, Martin Van Buren. Democrats scoffed at such uninspired Whig lyricism as "Van, Van, Van is a used up man." "The idea," one Democratic editor sniffed, "that the people are to be gulled by songs, widiout merit ofeither truth or patriotism, is a chimera ofentire Whig origin ." Whig organizers, on the other hand, were ecstatic, reporting that "our songs are doing more good than anything else." Although many Democrats charged diat Harrison had simply been sung into the White House, they also vowed not to be outsung again. Music helped usher Harrison into the White House, and it also helped usher him out. The composer Henry Dielman had barely finished inking in die last note I40 OAVlN JAMES CAMPBELL ofa "Grand Inauguration March" before he was furiously at work on "President Harrison's Funeral March." Harrison's sudden death after only one month in office catapulted Vice PresidentJohn Tyler into power. Very quickly, however, Tyler and the Whig leadership foundered on ideological shoals, making it clear that Tyler (caustically dubbed "His Accidency") could not bear the Whig party standard in the 1 844 contest. The only logical choice was Henry Clay. "Harry ofthe West" was no stranger to the presidential campaign trail. He had already run twice, losing...

Civil War Origins of the Southern Republican Press

The Republican party that emerged during the 1850s was organized in the North and represented Northern interests. Its leaders criticized Southern domi- nation of the federal government and called for legislation ending slavery expansion and developing the Northern free laboreconomy. Although Southern whites were almost unanimously opposed to this new party, many Republicans believed its program could appeal to nonslaveholders and hoped to expand into the slave states. By 1860 they had created weak organizations in theborder states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware but, except for a small pocket in western Virginia, had not found any support in the other eleven slave states. Indeed, after the Republicans elected Abraham Lincoln president in i860, these eleven states left the Union. ' The civil war that resulted from the secession of these Southern states provided an unusual opportunity for Republicans to expand southward. With the protection of the Union army, Republicans established beachheads in a number of states that they hoped to enlarge after the war. One important mea- sure of their success was the emergence of Republican newspapers behind Union lines in the South. Traditionally, throughout the United States, political parties had forged a close alliance with newspapers. Party leaders depended on editors to transmit party doctrine to their readers, refute the positions of their political opponents, and rally support for their party during elections. In turn, the newspapers received support from the party, which, if it controlled national, state, or local governments, supplied their sheets with patronage.2 By the time

Divided Government and Dysfunctional Politics

Divided Government and Dysfunctional Politics

Women, Landed Property, and the Accumulation of Wealth in Early Colonial Lagos

Previous articleNext article No AccessWomen, Landed Property, and the Accumulation of Wealth in Early Colonial LagosKristin MannKristin Mann Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 16, Number 4Summer, 1991Women, Family, State, and Economy in Africa Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/494699 Views: 16Total views on this site Citations: 16Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1991 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Marcia Wright Gender, Women, and Power in Africa, 1750–1914, (Nov 2020): 415–430.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119535812.ch25Jane Hooper “A mere business affair”?Women in the social and commercial worlds of nineteenth-century Madagascar, Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines 54, no.33 (Jun 2020): 437–457.https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2020.1749096Mariana P. Candido Understanding African women’s access to landed property in nineteenth-century Benguela, Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines 54, no.33 (Aug 2020): 395–417.https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2020.1749095Tom Goodfellow, Olly Owen Thick claims and thin rights: Taxation and the construction of analogue property rights in Lagos, Economy and Society 49, no.33 (Jul 2020): 406–432.https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2020.1730587Mariana P. Candido The Expansion of Slavery in Benguela During the Nineteenth Century, International Review of Social History 65, no.S28S28 (Mar 2020): 67–92.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859020000140Omolade Adunbi (Re)inventing development: China, infrastructure, sustainability and special economic zones in Nigeria, Africa 89, no.44 (Nov 2019): 662–679.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972019000846Michael Attah Divorcing Marriage from Marital Assets: Why Equity and Women Fail in Property Readjustment Actions in Nigeria, Journal of African Law 62, no.33 (Sep 2018): 427–446.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021855318000207Temilola Alanamu Church Missionary Society evangelists and women's labour in nineteenth-century Abẹ́òkúta, Africa 88, no.22 (May 2018): 291–311.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972017000924Tom Goodfellow, Oliver Owen Taxation, Property Rights and the Social Contract in Lagos, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2018).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3120572Mariana P. Candido Engendering West Central African History: The Role of Urban Women in Benguela in the Nineteenth Century, History in Africa 42 (Apr 2015): 7–36.https://doi.org/10.1017/hia.2015.16Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome Gendered States: Women’s Civil Society Activism in Nigerian Politics, (Jan 2013): 109–155.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137324535_5Paul Tiyambe Zeleza Discriminations de genre dans l’historiographie africaine, (Jan 2010): 355–374.https://doi.org/10.4000/books.iheid.5908Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch De la ville en Afrique noire, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 61, no.55 (May 2017): 1085–1119.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0395264900039949Marjorie K. McIntosh The Diversity of Social Capital in English Communities, 1300–1640 (with a Glance at Modern Nigeria), The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no.33 (Jan 1999): 459–490.https://doi.org/10.1162/002219598551788Barbara M Cooper Gender, Movement, and History: Social and Spatial Transformations in 20th Century Maradi, Niger, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15, no.22 (Nov 2016): 195–221.https://doi.org/10.1068/d150195Lisa A. Lindsay ‘To return to the bosom of their fatherland’: Brazilian immigrants in nineteenth‐century Lagos, Slavery & Abolition 15, no.11 (Jun 2008): 22–50.https://doi.org/10.1080/01440399408575114

Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (review)

76CTVTL WAR HISTORY Besides, a white man might one day acquire slaves of his own. Hence, these men saw a threat to slavery as a threat to their liberty and independence. The men of the upcountry seceded not because they loved or were dominated by a planter elite but because they were devoted to their own special form of republicanism. The central strength of this book rests in Ford's ability to connect South Carolina's economic growth, the local politics of the state, and its movement for secession. But it is precisely because he has so successfully collapsed the boundaries around these categories that his adherence to other artificial boundaries is highlighted. It seems hard to believe that the style of politics engaged in by white men in their relations with each other was totally unconnected to the political style of these men in their relations with white women and slaves. At any rate, regardless of how these white men may have treated each other, it seems misleading to use the term "democratic" to describe a political universe which so consciously excluded so many people. Similarly, although the book recognizes the significance of both honor and evangelical Christianity as important sets of values in shaping upcountry life, Ford walls off these beliefs and loses sight of them as he concentrates so intently on republican ideology. Overall, Ford offers us a carefully researched, wellwritten analysis—but only of a segment of the political and economic life of a region of the South. Kenneth S. Greenberg Suffolk University Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. By Daniel W. Crofts. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Pp. xxvii, 502. $45.00.) Daniel W. Crofts's important book explores topics usually ignored and discovers cautionary lessons for presentist historians. Focusing on the period between secession and Lincoln's call for volunteers, he studies the Unionist impulse in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. He concentrates on the issues that dominated that time, place and electorate— which were Union and peace, not slavery—and insists that historians, overwhelmed by the antislavery results of the Civil War, have lost sight of the political realities and possibilities that existed before war and emancipation came. The heart of Crofts's argument is that, in the three states he studies, an integrative two-party system in which partisan loyalty cut across class and region survived in 1860. This fact, plus lower numbers of slaveholders and slaves, set the Upper South apart politically from the Lower South, enabling Unionism to weather the first wave of secessionist enthusiasm and winning the referenda of early 1861 on secession. Crofts's multiple BOOK REVIEWS77 regressions of county level voting statistics convincingly demonstrate that these elections separated nonslaveholders from the Democratic party, reduced the power of the planters, and made possible a new political coalition of Unionist Whigs and nonslaveholders. This Unionist party, while representing the first stages of a real shift in the social bases of politics, needed peace to survive—not least because most of its leaders were conditional Unionists who felt a sense of brotherhood with the rest of the South and, although they thought secession would be disastrous for the Upper South, rejected any Union based on force. They believed Southern Rights leaders were deluded and conspiratorial, but they still put the burden of compromise on the Republicans, demanding in a series of projected compromises that the Republicans guarantee the protection and even the potential expansion of slavery. The Confederacy, of course, ignored the proposed compromises, and Unionists could only hope that time, and a recognition of economic and political vulnerability, would lead the seceders back into the United States. If this did not happen, then peaceful separation would be politically better for the Union party than war. Lincoln and the Republicans, then, were being asked to acquiesce in the protection of slavery and in the destruction of both the country and themselves as a political force. Lincoln could not do that, and his call for volunteers to put down rebellion after the fall of Fort Sumter submerged the Unionist movement. For the conditional Unionists, regional ideology and emotion seemed stronger than the partisan and...

Treachery or Hoax?: The Rumored Southern Conspiracy to Confederate with Mexico

Treachery or Hoax? The Rumored Southern Conspiracy to Confederate with Mexico by Mark J. Stegmaier Northern Free-Soilers and Southern proslavery radicals could not contain their feelings ofintensejubilation on July 3 1 , 1850. Together these two extremes had managed that day in the U.S. Senate to tear apart the Omnibus Bill, a disparate combination ofproposals to settle all the outstanding sectional issues over slavery expansion into Western territories. Neither Northern nor Southern "ultras" liked the Omnibus, largely the brainchild of Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, and wished that no compromise be passed. The one thing the radicals of opposite extremes could agree upon was that they loathed compromise. Thus, on July 3 1 , while Clay and other moderates grieved over a loss which they believed might portend dissolution of the Union, the Senate radicals celebrated—Jefferson Davis of Mississippi grinned delightedly, William Seward of New York "was dancing about like a little top," and Salmon Chase of Ohio clasped hands with Pierre Soulè of Louisiana.1 A few days after the defeat of the Omnibus, an astounding report appeared . The account was authored by James E. Harvey, writing under the names "Independent" in the Philadelphia North American, "Veritas"in the New York Courier and Enquirer, and "Viator" in the Boston Journal, and unsigned in the St. Louis Intelligencer. The several versions presented substantially the same information, with minor variations in wording and phrasing, and were dated either August 3 or 4. Harvey related that a few months before, in April, a person of influence in the South traveled incogThe author gratefully acknowledges the excellent research assistance provided by Amalia Gensman at various archives in Mexico City, and by Sharon Orton at the Public Record Office in Surrey. 1 This scene was reported by "A Looker On" in the New York Morning Express, Aug. 2, 1850. Civil War History, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, © 1989 by the Kent State University Press TREACHERY OR HOAX?29 nito to Mexico City and there proposed to leading Mexican government officials a plan whereby Mexico would join the Southern states in a new confederacy with Mexico City as its capital. The Mexican foreign minister, José Maria de Lacunza, was said to have vigorously supported the plan in a long speech to the Mexican cabinet. The cabinet however refused to countenance the plan, and the Southern emissary then departed for California. Harvey added that the British chargé d'affaires in Mexico City, Percy W. Doyle, supported the plan to the extent of his influence. Harvey also declared that President Zachary Taylor had been informed ofthe plot several months before his death in July and had taken steps to prevent "injurious consequences." Harvey declared the evidence to be indubitable and recommended both that Congress investigate the matter and that the U.S. government demand information from the Mexican government relevant to the conspiracy.2 In a letter to the Courier and Enquirer four days later, Harvey declared that the evidence he had seen consisted ofcorrespondence from a reliable source or sources. He said that he had been shown the material in its original form and had been permitted to divulge the principal facts ofthe plot and the names ofsome ofthe parties connected with it. He indicated that he had been forbidden to reveal who had informed the government of the plan.3 Another Washington correspondent, "Henrico" (probably John E. Tuel) ofthe Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, elaborated on the scheme in his letter of August 6. Henrico claimed that the plot described by Harvey had been the subject ofa detailed plan given to Senator Sam Houston ofTexas during the previous winter. Henrico had alluded to this scheme in a letter in late May, and in several June letters had connected plans to take over Cuba by the filibuster Narciso Lopez and plans to restore monarchy in Mexico with the goals of the pro-Southern Nashville Convention. Now in August, Henrico declared that the plan delivered to Houston earlier promised him the presidency or dictatorship ofthe new confederacy if Mexico refused to voluntarilyjoin and had to be conquered; if Mexico readilyjoined, Mexico City would be the capital. Henrico claimed that the Nashville Convention had proposed that the old Missouri Compromise...

After "The First Northern Victory": The Republican Party Comes to Congress, 1855-1856

After First Northern Victory: The Republican Party Comes to Congress, 1855-1856 Between its first electoral victories in the congressional races of I854 and Abraham Lincoln's triumph in the presidential contest six years later, the Republican party grew from one faction among several opposing the dominant Democrats to a majority position within the Northern electorate. Accounts of its rise to political prominence often have the quality of an American morality play. Determined to resist the further expansion of slavery on the American continent, the Republicans proved able to overcome the hesitations and resistance of the indifferent, the hostile, and those with other agenda. Although Republicans themselves disagreed about timing and the reach of their future policies, there was no question that with their victory in I860, at a minimum, the further expansion of slavery had been checked, a situation which Southern secessionists read clearly, to their ultimate sor-

Kentucky's Governors, 1792-1985 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS187 desire". . . to advance the doctrine of state rights . . ." (p. 9). He did admit a desire to enter the U.S. Senate, but always "my principle being that my first allegiance was to the state of which I was a citizen" (p. 52; see also pp. 138 and 148). As a state righter, naturally Davis was a strict constructionist, and he enunciated this often. James Buchanan once commented upon it, opining in a humorous story that Davis truly was the quintessential strict constructionist (p. 34 n. 49) . Davis stood firmly in support of slavery. Indeed he insisted that "no man who assails the institution" should be appointed to any federal office (p. 22). He was interested in publications that defended the institution , and personally endorsed one book that did so (pp. 85-86). Too, he favored the free expansion of slavery into the territories (p. 30), and he believed "the country on the Pacific is in many respects adapted to slave labor" (p. 142). He genuinely was concerned with promoting sound education, and was profoundly involved with upgrading the quality of instruction at West Point. He urged requirements in foreign languages and other rigorous courses (p. 82). Under his direction the military academy extended the study to a five-year program (although only three classes graduated under that plan). Davis sternly rejected requests by certain cadets that they be allowed to grow beards, and their hair long (pp. 104-6). A number of Davis's significant involvements in furthering the adoption of technological innovation are touched upon. Perhaps none is so intriguing as the army's implementation of a corrugated iron boatwagon, an early precursor of the amphibious vehicle (pp. 106-7). Some of the personal tidbits are amusing. Davis wrote his spouse referring to her as "my dear Waafe" (p. 44). One shudders at the "Cork treatment," that he suggested for their daughter's diarrhoea (p. 46). He wrote to his brother, late in September 1855, that "my health is as good as usual [but] I find my sight failingrapidly under the labors of my present station, and the position has been found as I anticipated [—] neither pleasant nor remunerative" (p. 123). One suspects that he was momentarily weary of public life. Herman Hattaway University of Missouri-Kansas City Kentucky'sGovernors, 1792-1985. Edited by Lowell H. Harrison. (Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, 1986. Pp. xxi, 197. $22.00.) This book is one of the best of its kind. It is hard to resist a slim volume that delivers what its title promises. For the person wanting to find out more about Kentucky's governors, this is the book to consult. Kentucky has had fifty-two governors since its admission to the Union in 1792, including George W. Johnson and Richard Hawes, the gover- 188CIVIL WAR HISTORY nors of Confederate Kentucky. The sketches are written by scholars with special knowledge of the governors and their times. Of the thirtythree contributors, twenty-three are professors of history and the others hold archival or editorial positions. Individually and collectively they have handled their difficult assignments well. The sketches average about 1,200 words each. There is generally a paragraph or two on family background, education, and early experiences ; one or two on the campaign and election; and one or two on the term as governor. As good historians are trained to do, the authors develop the causes and consequences of gubernatorial decisions and give consideration to significant national developments. The book begins with an overview of the governorship by Thomas D. Clark. Although the Bluegrass State has had four constitutions, the powers of the governor have remained basically the same since 1792. He or she serves a single four-year term; a second term can be sought after a four-year hiatus. Clark traces the constitutional and political evolution of the office and ably describes its joys and sorrows. Particularly pithy is the comment of an old ex-govemor who told a group of Kentucky politicians that the two things in his life he never wanted to have again were "gonorrhea and the governorship of Kentucky." A few of the governors have been of national stature—Isaac Shelby, John J...

Lewis Cass and Slavery Expansion: "The Father of Popular Sovereignty" and Ideological Infanticide

Lewis Cass and Slavery Expansion: "The Father of Popular Sovereignty" and Ideological Infanticide

Lincoln and Van Buren in the Steps of the Fathers: Another Look at the Lyceum Address

LINCOLN AND VAN BUREN IN THE STEPS OF THE FATHERS: ANOTHER LOOK AT THE LYCEUM ADDRESS Major L. Wilson On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered an address to the Young Men's Lyceum at Springfield, IUinois, entitled "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions." Less than a year earlier, on March 4, 1837, President Martin Van Buren dealt with the same matter in his Inaugural Address. Both expressed concerns widely shared at the time and the ambiguous nature of these concerns: they proudly claimed success for the "repubUcan experiment" begun by the fathers, yet warned that it might fail if the present age proved false. "It impresses on my mind a firm beUef," the president observed, "that the perpetuation of our institutions depends upon ourselves."1 To the sons had faUen the solemn duty of preserving the work of the founding fathers. While both expressed a common concern for preserving the republic, Lincoln and Van Buren differed in their assessment of the specific dangers facing it. One was the widespread incidence of mob action. Deploring "the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country ," Lincoln feared thelong-run effectofthe "mobocratic spirit" would be to erode "the attachment of the People" and destroy the basis of self government. "Let reverence for the laws," he urged, "become the pohrical reUgion of the nation." Van Buren likewise saw how the "ardor of public sentiment" often outran "the regular progress ofthe judicial tribunals ." By wounding "the majesty of the law," moreover, mob action might eventually provide the occasion "for abridging the liberties of the people." On balance, however, Van Buren was far less concerned about mob violence than Lincoln. Reaffirmingat this point aJeffersonian trust in the "generous patriotism" and "sound common sense" of the people, he believed they would soon return to the "landmarks of social order."2 1 Roy P. Basler, ed., TheCollectedWorks ofAbraham Lincoln,9vols. (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953), 1:108-15; James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 20 vols. (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), 4:1530-37, 1532; Rush Welter, The Mind of America, 1820-1860 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 276-93. 2 Basier, Works of Lincoln, 1:109, 111, 112; Richardson, Messages, 4:1533. 198CIVIL WAR HISTORY On two other dangers to the republic the differences were much clearer and sharper. Lincoln devoted only two sentences to the rising voice of abolitionist agitation and expressed no personal opinion on the matter. In a lengthy passage, by contrast, Van Buren condemned abolitionism as the greatest threat to the republic. Regarding the menace of Caesarism Van Buren made no explicit references at all, whereas Lincoln placed central emphasis on it in his address. The Lyceum Address has been the subject of a considerable number of studies. Done mainly from the perspective oflater events—mounting sectional controversy and the Civil War—these studies impute to the young Lincoln prophetic powers of one sort or another. Some argue that he was very ambitious and that he identified with the Caesarian figure he predicted would arise. Otherstudies see Lincoln as a prophet of"poUtical reUgion." During the controversy over the expansion of slavery in the 1850s he accordingly held up the principle of equaUty to judge and redeem a divided nation; after war began he invoked divine providence in behalf of a new birth of freedom. Relatively little attention, on the other hand, has been given to Van Buren's views and none to a comparison of them with the views of Lincoln . In taking up the matter this essay focuses particularly on the political context of the 1830s, at a time when the system oftwo-party competition was approaching maturity. If a prophet of some sort, the young Lincoln was also a Whig politician. As a Whig, moreover, his views on the perpetuation of republican institutions surely gained greater clarity and force in dialectical contrast with the party ideology of Democrats. And no other Democrat had contributed more to the organization of his party and its ideological identification than President Van Buren. A closer look at his views will throw further Ught on the Lyceum Address and, in reciprocal fashion...

A Southern Dilemma: Slavery Expansion and the California Statehood Issue in 1850—A Reconsideration

A Southern Dilemma: Slavery Expansion and the California Statehood Issue in 1850—A Reconsideration

A People and a Nation: A History of the United States

A People and a Nation: A History of the United States

"Native Soil": Nativists, Colonizationists, and the Rhetoric of Nationality

"NATIVE SOIL": NATIVISTS, COLONIZATIONISTS, AND THE RHETORIC OF NATIONALITY Dale T. Knobel "What shall we do with the colored people?" began the editorial in the January 1852 issue of the Republic, "A Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Politics, and Art." "This is now the great question with the pseudo-philanthropists, and the conclusion seems to be, that we must send them to Africa. To this proposition the colored people object, and, as we think, very reasonably and very naturally." Following this opening sally against the African colonization movement and its chief institutional patron, the American Colonization Society, Thomas R. Whitney added a much stronger opinion. "We are utterly opposed to the proposition of a wholesale expatriation of the colored race. . . . We question very much the assumed right to remove them, or the policy of encouraging them to emigrate."1 The American Colonization Society had confronted such criticism in leading forums for antislavery thought since the early 1830s. But the Republic was no mouthpiece for abolitionism. It was the official organ of the Order of United Americans, a New York City-based nativist secret society which had a richly deserved reputation for conservatism on issues connected with race and section. Founded in 1845, the OL1A devoted itself to most of the conventional goals of antebellum nativism. a twenty-one year residency requirement for naturalized citizenship, restriction of public office-holding to Protestants—preferably nativeborn —and the denial of public assistance to parochial education. In 1851, Thomas Whitney, one of the Order's organizers, won for his young journal the right to speak for the Grand Executive Committee and the New York State Chancery of the OUA.2 Considering the Order's history and political affiliations, Whitney's use of the Republic to denounce colonizationism at first seems unaccountable. Certainly there is little in 1 "The Colored People," Republic 3 (Jan. 1852): 40. 2 "A Good Word for the Republic," Republic 2 (July 1851): 45. Civil War History, Vol. XXVII, No. 4 Copyright© 1981 byThe Kent State University Press 0009-8078/81/2704-0002 $01.00/0 NATIVISM315 the historiography of antebellum nativism leading us to anticipate such an attack. That it can be explained is testimony to the importance nativist leaders invested in the avowed ideology of the movement, however heterogeneous nativism's sources. For Whitney's diatribe was only a particularly direct example of the sensitivity displayed by midcentury nativist ideologues about their conception of who should be accounted qualified to participate fully in American life. That Whitney and other representatives of the Order of United Americans found African colonization threatening suggests the extent to which a racial definition of American nationality interfered with an ethnocentric one. The falling out of conservative exponents of cultural and racial homogeneity over the question of black residency rights indicates just how unsettled the popular understanding of nationality remained in the midnineteenth century. During the 1850s, no group of northern politicians worked harder to evade the troublesome issues raised by pressures for slavery expansion and antislavery resistance or to conciliate southern sentiment than the leadership of the Order of United Americans. Most of Thomas Whitney's associates descended from the anti-Seward wing of the New York State Whig party which subscribed to the view that an effective challenge to the Democracy could only be sustained by an intersectional coalition of voters. Its head, Millard Fillmore, insisted that the only "national" position on slavery was acquiescence in silencing antislavery agitation, especially in Congress, and surrender of all legislation on the subject of slavery extension to the affected territories. Like Fillmore's "Silver Grey" Whigs, the Order's strength was concentrated in metropolitan New York where the interest of many merchants, manufacturers , and their employees was in intersectional harmony and commerce.3 By 1850, the two groups found it convenient to make use of one another. Conservative New York Whigs observed that by currying OUA favor they could enlist voters with nativistic concerns in their effort to wrest control of the state party apparatus from the reputedly antislavery Seward element. The OUA, which retained its identity as a fraternal society and resisted the temptation to take on the character of a political party, relied upon...

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS365 figure for whom the historical record is largely incomplete. Schweninger has done an impressive amount of research in federal and county records, newspapers, and manuscript sources, and he has presented his findings in a clear and pleasing style. The result is a welcome contribution to reconstruction historiography. Lawrence N. Powell Tulane University The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War. By Gerald W. Wolff. (New York, Revisionist Press, 1977. Pp. viii, 378. $49.95.) Historians have conventionally regarded the controversy over the passage of the Kansas-NebraskaBill in 1854 as signifying thebreakdown of the second American party system. North-South polarity, die conventional wisdom goes, replaced political party division. Gerald Wolff's thesis is that these hostilities between the North and the South encompassed less than the above explanation leads oneto expect. He bases his conclusion on an intensive study of voting behavior in the Thirty-third Congress, the Congress that passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Wolff's roll-call analyses reveal that on Homestead legislation and also on tariff questions party affiliations of individual Congressmen proved more determining than section of residence. Since Congress turned to Homestead and tariff bills after the passage of KansasNebraska , the author feels justified in concluding that party spirit survived the seeming debacle. Further, Wolff considers fully all the roll-calls on amendments and procedural questions associated with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Although he acknowledges that the final vote revealed a strongly sectional split, especially among Congressmen elected as Whigs, the examination of the related roll calls shows that even on the KansasNebraska issue party identity persisted. Most Whigs, Northern and Southern, Wolff finds, took a "moderate" position. Wolff's work prompts two criticisms. First, his findings lack the novelty he claims for them. Historians have, it is true, seen the KansasNebraska Act as marking the collapse of the Whig party, but they have hardly denied that on matters unrelated to slavery expansion internal differences within the South persisted. Second, revealing as the intensive study of one Congress may be, the period covered is too short for meaningful generalization. On attitudes toward Homestead legislation, for instance, all Wolff establishes is that immediately following KansasNebraska 's passage, many Southerners still favored a homestead bill. His study offers no insight into later Southern solidarity and leaves open the possibility that 1854 may have heralded the beginning of the sense 366 CIVIL war history that Homestead and slavery expansion were closely related. In short, the subtitle "Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War" claims too much for this study of one Congress. These reservations should not obscure the book's merits. Not the least of these is a lucid explanation of the techniques of roll-call analysis, provided in the text as well as in the endnotes. Wolff s research results in splendid tables giving voting information for each member of the Thirty-third Congress. Fortunate indeed are future biographers whose subjects happen to have served in that body. Most important, the narrow chronological scope that prevents the study from sustaining generalizations about the causes of the Civil War makes possible what may well be the most detailedstudy in existence of a single Congress. Certainly, Wolff establishes that despite the party chaos associated with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, old loyalties and old predilections persisted among congressmen. Kansas-Nebraska may have killed the second party system, but The Kansas-Nebraska Bill makes it impossible to believe that death was instantaneous. John V. Mering University of Arizona Custer in the Civil War: His Unfinished Memoirs. Compiled and Edited by John M. Carroll. (San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1977. Pp. 233. $27.50.) The modern reputation of George Armstrong Custer is fraught with irony. A successful "fighting general" during the Civil War, he is principally remembered for his disastrous defeat on the Little Big Horn in 1876. Because his grand finale was so memorable, Custer, the most celebrated army loser of the Indian wars, now commonly serves as the symbolic villain of white conquest. "Custer died for your sins," a red power slogan admonishes us. TheCuster publishing industry, which has flourished ever since the Generalfell, reflects the popularpreoccupation with Custer's...

The Revolution in the New York Party Systems, 1840-1860 (review)

276BOOK REVIEWS sion across space. In contrast to the importance of time to corporate freedom, there was a timeless element in federative freedom; the qualitative improvement stressed by the former gave way to quantitative improvement in the latter. A strict construction of the Constitution implied that a perfect order of freedom had been defined at the outset and only a rigid adherence to that order could insure progress for the nation. This neat dialectic between corporate and federative freedom was thrown into confusion in the late 1840's by the quarrel over the expansion of slavery and the "fruits of manifest destiny." A third concept, individual freedom, appeared and, as defined by the Free Soil position, dominated the following decade. Attacking the spread of slavery as a subversion of the national idea, mixing elements of both corporate and federative freedom, the Free Soilers added a sectional configuration and, more importantly, a moral imperative to the political debate, all of which added up, according to Wilson, to irrepressible conflict. The conflict's irrepressibility is rather assumed than conclusively demonstrated, although there is no doubt that, for Wilson, the Civil War was the inevitable consequence of the Free Soilers' alteration of the debate and their interjection into the discussion of factors that could not be resolved politically. Finally, the author offers an analysis of the political philosophy of William H. Seward, in whose career he finds the entire period summarized. Although identified with the phrase "irrepressible conflict," Seward provided the synthesis of the contending ideas of freedom and progress that might have saved the Union. No brief summary can possibly do justice to the many nuances of Wilson's thesis. Suffice it to say, that it makes much good sense. It is not, however, an easy book to read. There are simply too many threads to separate easily and the author's style occasionally obscures rather than clarifies them. For many scholars interested in this period, his study (as presented in this book) will not even be new, for it is based on eleven articles which Wilson published in a number of journals between 1967 and 1971. Focusing, as he does, on only one element of public expression (albeit a very important one), he does not, of course, tell the whole story but his work does add further dimension to other studies of American nationalism and the idea of progress during the early nineteenth century (among them the work of Somkin and Nagel, on which Wilson himself has relied to an extent). Robert W. Johannsen University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The Revolution in the New York Party Systems, 1840-1860. By Mark L. Berger. (Port Washington, New York, and London: Kennikat Press, 1973. Pp. 172. $8.50.) BOOK REVIEWS277 This book describes the foundation and triumph of the Republican party in New York state during the years 1854-1856. Its thesis argues that by 1854 slavery, temperance, and nativism weakened the faction-ridden Whig and Democratic parties and thereby started a revolution that culminated in 1856, when the slavery issue pushed aside the other two issues and the Republicans emerged as the state's best organized and most sincere antislavery party. Most influential in helping along this process were the dramatic events of the slavery controversy in Kansas and the willingness of local factional leaders to use the slavery issue for their petty advantages. If we were to reduce the thesis to an equation it would read: factionalism plus slavery equals the New York Republicans. The men and events that dot this narrative are well known to all students of the period, and all play their familiar roles. Professor Berger offers a minor but welcome fresh insight when he credits Thurlow Weed as the master-builder who joined a varied array of factions into a winning Republican coalition. But the author strives for more than this insight; he attempts to show how the other two disruptive forces, temperance and nativism, lost out to slavery in the contest for political dominance. This he accomplishes by showing how Weed and his Republican allies took up temperance to attract that faction and then exploited the nativists' own factional divisions over slavery to bring them into...

The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire: 1854-1861 (review)

book reviews171 scious," in a bizarre book about racism, fundamental differences between Negroes and whites, and our society's search for racial harmony. Convinced that a "psychoanalytically oriented history should be much more therapeutic," he charts a course in a Table of Contents that conveys reliably the flavor and sweep of his interests: History, Sigmund Freud and the Old South; Cannibalism, George Fitzhugh and the Mechanism of Introjection; George Fitzhugh and the Mechanism of Repression; The Slaveholder and the Six Faces of the Slave; The Master and Slave; Castration Anxiety in the North and South; Three is a Crowd: the White North Adopts the Black Slave Child; and, in an Epilogue—Psychohistory, the Black Power Movement and Woman's Liberation; Psychohistory in the Wide and Narrow Perspectives of Afro-American History. The pace continues inside, where an exasperating array of opinions, insights and messages tumble together in statements which indicate why this kind of psycho-history is often criticized as trying to have it all ways: "In the present book, the slave is refered to as representing in the unconscious mind of whites many things, such as penis, mother, father, god, feces, devil, death, evil, joy and child" (p. 19). "To the mind of the slave the white man was feces. Feces is many things as money, death, toy, weapon, child and gift. The slave thought of his owner as all of these things, and also as father, mother, devil, god and penis" (p. 113). Some of these statements are useful: a major facet of the slave personality was playing the system for all it was worth while maintaining a shuffling facade (p. 152). Some are careless: Denmark Vesey's conspiracy (1822) is put into "the 1831 to 1860 period" (p. 214). And others boggle the mind: "Genovese did not see that at least an equal tragedy for Fitzhugh [a tragedy equal to not having read Marx] is that he had no familiarity with Sigmund Freud who was only one year old when CANNIBALS ALL appeared" (p. 62). Norman Q. Brown, Fritz Perls and Joel Kovel, some antebellum writers , and a few others are the major sources for The Old South: A Psycho -history. But historical documents such as the "Management of Negroes" articles in antebellum agricultural journals, planters' diaries, and the insurrectionists' "Confessions," were not used. The value of this evidence is that it lays bare the planters' sexual anxieties, compulsion for order, and ambivalent feelings about blacks, as well as the slave rebels' conceptions of resistance and freedom, in contemporary expressions and symbols, which are sufficiently rich, and need not be teased out and distorted by cumbersome twentieth-century language. Gerald W. Mullin California State University, Sacramento The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire: 1854-1861. By Robert E. May. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Pp. 285. $10.00.) 172CIVIL war history In its many forms, the question of the expansion of slavery into present and future territories of the United States must be one of the most thoroughly studied issues in antebellum historiography. Taking the shape of the asserted constitutional right of slaveholders to carry their human property westward, it provided the basis for the great sectional compromises and conflicts dating from the various ordinances of the 1780's down to the abortive Crittenden plan of the secession winter. In its economic and demographic guise, it has embroiled historians in a rich and confusing debate over the "natural limits" of slavery expansion, and the alleged imperatives within the southern political economy which demanded the acquisition of new lands. The expansion theme has also presented an intriguing chapter in the diplomatic history of the 1840's and 1850's, as southern politicians and eager filibusterers parried with their adversaries and with public opinion over the pursuit of Caribbean territory. Although it deals mainly with the latter problem, Robert E. May's The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire is the most ambitious effort yet to relate the Caribbean question to the larger picture of southern economic and political anxieties, and to secession. He describes with real skill the way in which the notion of manifest destiny was transformed by the political controversies of the last decades...

Southern Moderates and Secession: Senator Robert M. T. Hunter's Call for Union

Journal Article Southern Moderates and Secession: Senator Robert M. T. Hunter's Call for Union Get access William S. Hitchcock William S. Hitchcock University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 59, Issue 4, March 1973, Pages 871–884, https://doi.org/10.2307/1918366 Published: 01 March 1973

The American Civil War as a Constitutional Crisis

WITHIN the span of a single generation-during the thirty-odd years that began with the annexation of Texas in I845 and ended with the withdrawal of the last Union troops from the South in x877-the United States underwent a succession of constitutional crises more severe and menacing than any before or since. From I845 on, for some fifteen years, a constitutional dispute over the expansion of slavery into the western territories grew increasingly tense until a paralysis of normal constitutional functioning set in. Abruptly, in i86o-x86i, this particular constitutional cr'isis was transformed into another: namely, that of secession. Though the new crisis was intimately linked with the old, its constitutional character was fundamentally different. The question of how the Constitution ought -to operate as a piece of working machinery was superseded by the question of whether it might and should be dismantled. A showdown had come, and the fouryear convulsion of Civil War ensued. Then, when hostilities ended in i865, there came not the hoped for dawn of peace, but instead a third great constitutional struggle over Reconstruction, which lasted a dozen years and proved as harsh and divisive as any cold war im history. When the nation finally emerged from three decades of corrosive strife, no observer could miss the profound alterations that its institutions had undergone. Into the prodigious vortex of crisis and war every current of American life had ultimately been drawn. So all-devouring was the conflict and so momentous its effects that to characterize it (as I have done) as a series of constitutional crises will seem to many readers an almost irresponsible use of language, a grotesque belittling of the issues. Powerful economic forces, it will be pointed out, were pitted against one another in the struggle. Profound moral perplexities were generated by the existence of slavery, and the attacks upon it had social and psychologcal repercussions of incredible complexity. hevarious questions

The American Civil War as a Constitutional Crisis

WITHIN the span of a single generation-during the thirty-odd years that began with the annexation of Texas in I845 and ended with the withdrawal of the last Union troops from the South in x877-the United States underwent a succession of constitutional crises more severe and menacing than any before or since. From I845 on, for some fifteen years, a constitutional dispute over the expansion of slavery into the western territories grew increasingly tense until a paralysis of normal constitutional functioning set in. Abruptly, in i86o-x86i, this particular constitutional cr'isis was transformed into another: namely, that of secession. Though the new crisis was intimately linked with the old, its constitutional character was fundamentally different. The question of how the Constitution ought -to operate as a piece of working machinery was superseded by the question of whether it might and should be dismantled. A showdown had come, and the fouryear convulsion of Civil War ensued. Then, when hostilities ended in i865, there came not the hoped for dawn of peace, but instead a third great constitutional struggle over Reconstruction, which lasted a dozen years and proved as harsh and divisive as any cold war im history. When the nation finally emerged from three decades of corrosive strife, no observer could miss the profound alterations that its institutions had undergone. Into the prodigious vortex of crisis and war every current of American life had ultimately been drawn. So all-devouring was the conflict and so momentous its effects that to characterize it (as I have done) as a series of constitutional crises will seem to many readers an almost irresponsible use of language, a grotesque belittling of the issues. Powerful economic forces, it will be pointed out, were pitted against one another in the struggle. Profound moral perplexities were generated by the existence of slavery, and the attacks upon it had social and psychologcal repercussions of incredible complexity. hevarious questions