American History                                                  Lecture 7                      The Search for a Compromise over Slavery                                                (1837-1860) KEY THEMES:    * What arguments were used to justify slavery and to justify its      abolition?    * To what degree did the debate over slavery reflect these ideological      concerns, and to what degree were the debates really about the      realpolitik of keeping the country united? THE STATUS QUO IN 1837 Population (1840):    * 9,640,000    * The territory of the United States still did not include Texas,      Colorado, or any of the territory lying to the west of the Rocky      Mountains. The United States jointly occupied the "Oregon Country"      (the present-day states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, and parts of      British Columbia, Montana and Wyoming) with Britain. As well, Hawaii,      Alaska and America's territories in the Pacific and Caribbean were not      yet under the U.S. flag. Other than this, The territory of the U.S.      was the same as it is today. Political:    * Michigan became a state in 1837, bringing the total number of states      to 26.    * The Union was increasingly divided into a rural, agricultural south in      which the economy was highly dependent on slave labour, and an      urbanizing, industrializing north in which slavery had been abolished.      The slave issue dominated politics from the end of Andrew Jackson's      presidency to the beginning of the Civil War.    * Jackson's era had completely transformed the political landscape.      Presidents were now popularly elected. The old Republican and      Federalist parties were dead, and the Republican mantle had been taken      up (minus the patrician leadership) by the Democrats. The Federalist      mantle had been taken up by the Whig Party, which had also abandoned      an aristocratic leadership in favour of a populist style. Military:    * The United States is a minor power in a world dominated by a single      enormous power more dominant than any nation since the time of Rome:      Great Britain and the mighty British Empire.    * In the Western Hemisphere, Britain and the United States have come to      an informal understanding that suits the interests that both have in      the maintenance of free trade and an end to mercantilism. This takes      the form of the Monroe Doctrine opposing new European imperialism in      the Americas, which is enforced by the Royal Navy. In addition,      however, the United States is now in a position to overawe its Latin      American neighbours (which, as we shall see in the lecture on foreign      policy in this period, it does on a regular basis). SLAVERY: A BACKGROUND DISCUSSION What is Slavery? 1 Slavery is defined in most dictionaries as being "enforced servitude." But that only gets us part-way to understanding what it really is. Jeffrey Rogers Hummel puts it a little differently in a recent book. He says,                The most salient economic feature of [slavery] is that it was                like theft. It involved a compulsory transfer from black slaves                to white masters. Whereas free workers exchanged labor for market                wages, a slave owner could rent out slaves at the same wage, force                them to do the same work, but grant them only a portion of the                earnings in money or kind and keep the difference. The amount the                owner kept constituted the transfer and gave slaves a positive                [value to their owners]. 2 I agree with this description, but I don't think that the appropriate crime to which to compare slavery is theft. Theft is a secretive act, done when you are not paying attention. That means that, like fraud, it cannot be done on a regular, systematic basis. Robbery is a better analogy, because it involves stealing your wealth from you right in front of your eyes, under the threat of force. But the best analogy of all is extortion, in which someone regularly and systematically extracts some of your surplus wealth or income under threat of punishment. Slavery is extortion taken to its logical extreme, in which the extortionist takes over the direct management of the activities of the person from whom he is extorting wealth, in order to ensure: 1. The more efficient stripping of all wealth beyond that which is needed for bare survival. 2. That the person from whom he is extorting will conduct his activities in such a manner as to produce a maximum of goods or services that can be extorted (such as basic physical labour) and a minimum of those goods or services that are not subject to extortion (such as leisure, recreation, self-education, family activity and so on). This point is absolutely critical. Recent economic analysis of slavery indicates that it is the restriction of these personal activities in order to maximize labour that represented the chief economic advantage of slave over free labour in the American South, and hence the chief method by which slave-owners stole from their human chattels. Under most circumstances, slavery is less efficient as a method of organizing society than is freedom. This is the central fact of social and political life; if the reverse were true, we would all almost certainly live under conditions of perpetual slavery. I make this observation simply because political leadership throughout history is characterized by repeated attempts to use forced servitude of one sort or another to achieve conquest, construction of monuments and public works, and all of the other great works of the State. Serfdom, conscription into the military, the forced participation of peasants in public works projects and a thousand other examples show the repeated effort of leaders to introduce forced servitude whenever possible. Slavery was less efficient in the United States, just like everywhere else. This meant that it could survive only if the entire loss was imposed upon the enslaved group, leaving enough profit behind to make the process beneficial to the slave-owners. Slavery was certainly efficient enough to do this, in certain specific areas of the economy. But it was not sufficiently efficient to expand the institution into (for example) the factories. Slaves sometimes were sent to work in factories. But escape was easier in such places, sabotage was a possibility, and shirking from work could be carried out with less danger of immediate punishment. Therefore the most profitable arrangement for an owner who planned to send a slave to a factory was to allow the slave to earn a part of the profit of his work---as a sort of productivity incentive---and to allow the slave to use his savings to eventually purchase himself. This would be a further incentive to hard work. In this way, profits to the slave-owner would be maximized. But this resulted in the eventual emancipation of factory slaves, which meant that slavery could never really expand into the factories. Similar incentive problems prevented it from spreading into farming for food crops. This, rather than any moral consideration, was what kept slavery out of the North. One of the costs of slavery is keeping slaves from escaping. The lower the "exit cost" (to use the economists' term) of leaving an undesirable situation, the less that a person can be exploited. For a slave on a plantation on a Caribbean island, the typical exit cost of fleeing was death by drowning. But continental North and South America was full of wilderness frontiers. This lowered the cost considerably. Some slaves were able to escape into the jungles of South and Central America, where---to give just one example---some of them served as allies to Sir Francis Drake in his raids on the Spanish. The forests of Florida served a similar purpose. The exit cost for American slaves was driven lower yet by the appearance of a very large country (Canada) where slavery was completely banned. It was now possible for slaves to escape north to a place where they would be permanently free. To prevent this border from moving further south towards the slave-holding states, the Constitution of 1787 specifically provided that             No person held to service or labour in one State, under the laws              thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law              or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour,              but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such              service or labour may be due. This is known as the fugitive slave clause. In the 1790s, Congress enacted a fugitive slave law to give precise meaning to this provision. The fugitive slave law, which remained in effect until the middle of the Civil War, was the most important method by which the United States as a whole subsidized the institution of slavery to keep it alive despite its inherent inefficiencies. A second, and less well-known method by which exit costs were raised was by means of slave patrols. These were, as Hummel explains,           The chief way that the South's slaveholding elite externalised             the costs of [slavery] . . . . Established in every slave state,             these patrols enforced black codes by apprehending runaways,             monitoring the rigid pass requirements for blacks traversing the             countryside, breaking up large gatherings and assemblies of             blacks, visiting slave quarters randomly, inflicting impromptu             punishments, and as occasion arose, suppressing insurrections. This involved much free work, which was performed by poor Southern whites:             The patrollers generally made their rounds at night and were more             active and regular in areas with many slaves. Loosely connected             with the local militia, patrol duty was compulsory for most             able-bodied white males. Exemption usually required paying a fine             or hiring a substitute. The slave patrols thereby affixed a tax             that shifted enforcement costs to small slaveholders and poor             whites who owned no slaves. 3 Therefore, much of the cost of slavery was passed off to poor Southern whites, who were effectively subsidizing an inefficient institution that could not have survived on its own. And finally, slavery was subsidized by state acts, passed by the legislatures of most slave states, restricting the right of manumission, and / or forbidding freed slaves to settle within the boundaries of the state. This does not sound like a subsidy, but it was. In fact, laws forbidding free slaves from settling in a state keeps down the growth of free Black communities in slave states, where slaves could find people willing to help them escape. Laws preventing manumission were an additional means of preventing the rise of such communities. Laws forbidding the settlement of free Blacks in an area of course imposed huge personal costs on these individuals who were now forced to move. Laws forbidding manumission imposed costs on both masters who would have maximized their profits from a particular slave by allowing him to purchase his own freedom, and on the slaves who were now forbidden to ever gain free status. Thus, wealth and well-being was transferred from both groups to the greater body of slave owners. A final note should be made regarding the nature of slavery. Many contemporary historians of oppressed or downtrodden groups feel that it is important to stress the "agency" of the individuals who were members of these groups at the time. This means, in so many words, that they were not simply automatons, submitting unthinkingly to their position, and that they acted with as much dignity and as much independence as was possible, under the difficult circumstances in which they were placed. Sometimes this was done by means of resistance and other times by simply getting on with life. This seems to me to be such an obvious truth that I cannot fathom why it is that any historian would regard "agency" as a sparkling new toy. At any rate, it is most definitely the case that enslaved Blacks practiced agency, and did their best to have rich and fulfilling lives, given the hideous constraints that they were under. These were full human beings, regardless of the degradations that their masters imposed upon them. As far back as 1800, a slave named Gabriel had planned an attack on Richmond. In 1822, Denmark Vesey, a slave in Charleston, plotted a rebellion in South Carolina. When an informer gave away the plot, 35 Blacks were executed. In 1831, Nat Turner led a revolt of about 70 slaves in Virginia, which was put down bloodily. But it was not just through rebellion that agency was exercised. Many slaves attempted to escape (about 1000 per year were successful) 4, and many others made the conscious decision not to escape because they loved their families even more than they loved their freedom, and could not bear to be separated from them. Among those who did escape were some remarkable personalities, of whom the most famous was the brilliant Frederick Douglass, who escaped, travelled to England to avoid bounty hunters, purchased his own freedom, became a best-selling author, and later served as a diplomat. Others performed daring and courageous work with the Underground Railroad. The World-wide Move to Abolish Slavery, 1772-1900: The eminent American historian, C. Vann Woodward, writes that "The nineteenth century was pre-eminently the century of emancipation." 5  More than anything else, the one feature that made the world in 1900 different from the world in 1800 was the elimination nearly everywhere of legalized slavery. At the beginning of the 1800s, slavery was the normal state of most human beings in many countries on every continent, and was legally forbidden only in England, Canada and a few American states. By 1900, it survived only in some parts of Africa and in Arabia. When the American Revolution began, every state permitted slavery---which was also legal in every other British colony, and also in every major European state and in each of the great colonial empires. Moreover, slavery had been permitted in almost every country in every stage of history, and was regarded as simply part of the way that the world worked. In practice, however, there was relatively little slavery in western Europe, for the simple practical reason that it was an easy matter for a slave with no distinguishing physical features to escape from his or her master in any society that was mostly made up of free men, and simply vanish into the cities or towns. In central and eastern Europe, the situation was much different. In Italy, Prussia and elsewhere, most peasants were serfs, held in a condition of forced servitude only marginally better than that of slaves (in fact, the word "serf" is derived from the Latin word for slave). In Russia, which had Europe's largest serf population, there was no difference of any sort to separate serfdom---the condition of the majority of the population---from out-and-out slavery. But the late 1700s saw a dramatic change in attitudes towards slavery in the English-speaking world, and the first reductions in the geographical extent of slavery. In 1772, in a famous decision (Sommersett's Case), Lord Chief Justice the Earl of Mansfield ruled that because slavery represented a restriction on individual freedom, it could not exist in England under the common law, and that only a positive action by Parliament to enact a new law permitting slavery could cause the condition of slavery to exist under law. Parliament refused to enact such a law, and slavery in England was ended. This resulted in the freeing of about 15,000 slaves in England. In 1787, the first effort to resettle ex-slaves in Africa commenced, with the return of a group to Sierra Leone. And the campaign to end slavery led to the legal termination of the slave trade, enforced by the Royal Navy, in 1807. In 1833, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. Henceforth, Britain moved to the forefront of international efforts to abolish slavery. There were also actions to reduce slavery elsewhere. France banned slavery during the Revolution and then re-introduced it temporarily, but under Napoleon, serfs were freed everywhere that France conquered. In 1844 France enacted laws to free the slaves in its colonies. Denmark also freed the slaves in its Caribbean holdings in 1844. The republics of Central and South America, including Mexico, declared their slaves free as soon as they achieved independence in the 1820s. The serfs of Russia were freed in the 1860s (but tragically re-enslaved under Josef Stalin in the 1930s, and then freed again as Communism crumbled). In Brazil, slavery was abolished in 1888, at the cost of the overthrow of the monarchy. SLAVERY BECOMES AN ISSUE IN AMERICA: Early History of Slavery in the American colonies (1600-1777): The first permanent English settlement in what would become the United States took place in Virginia in the first decade of the 1600s. A decade later, in 1619, the first captive Africans arrived in the Virginia colony. Initially, servitude in the colony was neither permanent nor race-based. Many impecunious white settlers from the British Isles would enter into contractual states known as "indentured servitude", under which they would consent to serving a period of several years as a slave in return for the payment by some other party of their passage from England. This sort of servitude by contract, although rare, is still practiced under specialized conditions to this very day. The Australian military has recently been recruiting military personnel in Canada, offering to pay for their passage to Australia and guaranteeing them employment for a period of six years upon arrival. In return, the officers who accept these contracts must agree to serve not less than three years in the Australian military, and are not free to leave this employ even if they later have second thoughts about the contract. However, this form of servitude was found to be a great deal less profitable, as a method of managing captives from Africa, than outright permanent servitude. By the 1640s, African captives were being treated in much the same manner that ancient societies had treated their war captives. Their servitude, having been forced on them involuntarily, was not subject to termination at any point. The last Africans to "enjoy" contracts of temporary indenture were freed in the 1650s. After that, all Blacks brought into Virginia were treated as permanent slaves. Like the Spanish, the Portuguese and the French, the English were perfectly happy to enslave captive Indians as well as the Africans (and likewise, those Indians who were allied with the French were happy to enslave captive Englishmen and women). But it was too easy for Indian slaves to escape into the surrounding bush. Therefore, both South Carolina and Massachusetts preferred to sell Indian captives into slavery in the sugar islands of the Caribbean, where escape was impossible, and to purchase Africans for domestic slavery. 6 In the American colonies, efforts to abolish slavery began with the revolution. In 1777, the independent republic of Vermont included a provision banning slavery in its constitution. It was followed in 1780 by Pennsylvania and in 1783 by Massachusetts. All other northern states followed suit over the next twenty years, ending with New Jersey, which legally ended slavery in 1804. In general, slavery tended to be abolished in a manner designed to produce the smallest possible amount of economic loss to any slave owners in the relevant jurisdiction. In this way, their support (however reluctant) could be secured. In practice, this meant that slavery was abolished in the least generous possible manner. 7  ypically, those persons already in servitude would remain slaves either for the rest of their lives or for some very long period after the date at which the anti-slave law was set in force. In some cases, children born to these slaves after the date at which the law was passed would remain in servitude until they reached the age of majority. Invariably, all or most of the land worked by the slaves would remain under the ownership of the slave-owners, thereby transforming the slaves into tenant farmers and the former slave-owners into landlords. As this virtually guaranteed that the ex-slaves would become indebted to the landlords, a form of semi-feudal relations resembling serfdom often replaced slavery. One measure of the lack of generosity of these laws is the fact that in 1860, there were still thirteen Black slaves in New Jersey, where the law abolishing slavery had been enacted fifty-six years earlier. 8 Many of the leaders of the American Revolution were slave-holders themselves (most notably Washington, Jefferson, and Madison). But this did not mean that they were supporters of slavery as an institution. All of them regarded the institution as an evil which blackened their own reputations and even their souls. Some, like Jefferson, were ultimately unsuccessful in their efforts to find a way of freeing their slaves without ensuring their own financial ruin. But Washington arranged for his slaves to be freed upon his death and that of his wife. His Last Will and Testament, from which I quoted in an earlier lecture, provides classic testimony of the difficulty inherent in attempting to free one's slaves without leaving them in a state of destitution scarcely better than servitude. For reasons of personal financial interest, therefore, the leaders of the Revolution ensured that the Constitution of 1787 did not include any provisions banning slavery, even though they regarded it as an evil. But they did take measures to ensure the gradual elimination of slavery. Its expansion into the federally-administered Northwest Territory was forbidden, and the importation of slaves was to be banned from 1808 onward. Presumably the Founding Fathers believed that this would result in the eventual elimination of slavery, which would simply die out as the supply of slaves dried up and as their geographical range was restricted. It seems reasonable to guess that they would have expected it to be an extinct institution by the far-distant future date of 1860. And all this would be done without undue financial loss to any current slave owner. All of this probably would have happened, had it not been for the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by the New England engineering genius, Eli Whitney. The cotton gin permitted the seeds in raw cotton to be separated from the fibres at a fraction of the very high cost previously associated with this process. As a result, cotton, which had previously been a very expensive luxury cloth, became competitive with wool and other cloths, and cotton clothing came into general use, thus which producing one of the greatest improvements in personal comfort in recorded history. However, the dramatic drop in the cost of cotton cloth meant that the demand for cotton soared, and this led to the rapid expansion of cotton cultivation across the American south, in a band extending from the Carolinas in the east to Texas in the west. And cotton, more than any other crop, is suitable to being tended by slave labour. Slave labourers, goaded on by overseers, can be more efficient than free labourers at dull, repetitive, physically unpleasant tasks that are performed in gangs (so that many slaves can be tended by a single overseer). This makes them very poor for certain types of agricultural labour, such as tending flocks, taking care of livestock, or grain farming. But slave labour is ideal for tending such crops as rice, tobacco, sugar cane, and cotton. Cotton soon came to overwhelm the other more traditional slave-tended crops, and by the first decades of the Nineteenth Century, cotton had become the leading American crop and the leading American export. Moreover, America developed a virtual monopoly over the world's supply of this increasingly valuable commodity. As a result, by 1820 the slave population of the United States was three times as great as it had been in the 1770s. Moreover, the slave population had shifted in geographical location. It was now centered in the "deep South"---the cotton-growing states along the Gulf of Mexico, and it was virtually eliminated (as the Founders had planned) in the North. By 1830, only 3,000 slaves remained in the Northern states. 9  Yet in the states where it did survive, its economic viability was far greater than it had been at the time of the founding of the United States. The rise of Strong Anti-slavery and Pro-slavery Sentiments, 1820-1860: The first antislavery society in the world had been founded in Philadelphia in the 1780s. It had carried on its work peacefully, and similar groups had sprung up throughout the United States in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Century. In each case, the societies proposed that slaves be freed through voluntary "manumission" or termination of the slave condition, on the part of the masters. They also favoured the adoption of laws in each state that would gradually eliminate the condition of servitude. Although some anti-slavery society members would have preferred immediate termination of slavery in each state adopting such laws, all were willing to accept that its gradual elimination was a worthwhile advance. The elimination of the international slave trade was another goal. In general, early emancipationists were no great lovers of the Black race. They normally opposed slavery on the basis of the sinful nature of the institution and therefore of the moral stain which it imposed on the slaveholder and on the society which tolerated it. Very few people were prepared to argue that the end goal of emancipation should be an integrated, multi-racial society. The concept of interracial marriage in particular would have seemed grotesque to these early emancipationists. In a very real sense, their mind-set was similar to that of the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals that emerged in the 1800s and which are still with us to this day.  Nobody thinks that when we seek to stop the abuse of animals, we are doing so because we regard them as our equals. A similar paternalism existed in the early antislavery movement. Starting around 1800 however, it became clear that in its original form, the movement was unlikely to win any further victories. The slave trade had been abolished in 1808, the final northern state had begun the process of eliminating slavery in 1804, and no further state seemed to be prepared to abolish it. Moreover, the rise of cotton had led to an increase in the number of slaves. The abolition of the slave trade had not led to the gradual strangulation of slavery, as anticipated, but rather to the creation of a new type of slave plantation in such eastern states as Virginia, in which humans were bred like animals for export to the cotton-growing states of the Deep South. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which will be discussed below, was the final straw for some of the more radical anti-slavers. It was now clear that the United States was prepared to tolerate the expansion of slavery, and that slavery was being treated by the federal government as a permanent institution. The most prominent member of the new, radical anti-slavers was William Lloyd Garrison of Boston, who in 1831 established a newspaper called The Liberator, in which the immediate abolition of slavery would be proposed. Garrison argued that slaves should be freed at once, not via the kind of gradual emancipation that had occurred up to that time. He maintained that freeing slaves without giving them a share in the property they had worked was a form of theft. And he was prepared to advocate the most radical measures to get his way. Garrison felt that by helping to enforce the fugitive slave law, the North had made itself as morally guilty as the South. More to the point, the elimination of the law would make it easy for slaves to escape, and if it became easy to escape, the costs of slavery would go up, rendering it uneconomical. As a result, slave-owners would be forced simply to free their slaves, even if this meant personal financial ruin for them. On this basis, he made his most famous and least popular appeal, that the Northern states ought to secede from the Union, in order to destroy the fugitive slave law. The mast-head of The Liberator therefore contained the words, "No Union with Slave-Holders." The very first issue of the newspaper contained an editorial that has since become famous for its clear statement of the goals of the new breed of radical abolitionist:            I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On             this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with             moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a             moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the             hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her             babe from the fire into which it has fallen;---but urge me not to             use moderation in a cause like the present. In 1831, Garrison helped to establish the American Anti-Slavery Society, which had grown to 2,000 branches and 200,000 members by 1840. Most members did not embrace Garrison's enthusiasm for secession, or his insistence that Blacks should be members of society equal in status to Whites. Nearly all, however, would have accepted his Christian pacifism. A crucial belief at this time was that slavery had to be eliminated peacefully. In the South, meanwhile, a radical defence of slavery began to emerge. Instead of regretting slavery as an evil that would be disposed of in the long run, it was increasingly defended as a necessary and positive good. This intellectual defence of slavery, which sounds so bizarre to contemporary ears, was spoken sincerely by its advocates. The new ideology had been made necessary by the following considerations: 1). The ownership of human beings was clearly inconsistent with the American ideal of an equal liberty for all. Some way of explaining away this contradiction had to be found---particularly in view of the increasingly shrill criticism coming from the North 2). Slavery was clearly permanent, not a temporary problem that would take care of itself. So a moderate, "wait and it will go away" response was now inadequate. The argument was relatively straightforward: 1). All free societies, from the time of ancient Greece forward, have contained slaves. The respectability of this institution is indicated by the many ancient philosophers, starting with Aristotle, who have argued in favour of its retention. As well, slavery was justified in the Bible (if you read it the right way---Garrison was equally certain that the Bible condemned slavery). 2). Not only has slavery been a component of all free societies; it is in reality the basis of freedom. As Senator James H. Hammond explained, "In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. . . . [this class] constitutes the very mud-sills of society and of political government . . . . [and needs] but a low order of intellect and but little skill." 10  Clearly it is dangerous to allow such a numerous class of drones to have the rights of free citizens, since they will represent a mob, easily swayed by demagogues and easily convinced that they should rise up and use the instruments of majority rule to redistribute property in their own favour. Such actions, however, would soon reduce society to a state of ungovernable anarchy, and a European-style monarch or tyrant would have to step in so as to save order at the expense of liberty. Therefore, democracy can be safely practiced only in a society where this group is disenfranchised (ideally by means of enslaving its members). It should be recognize that this argument is a radical version of the traditional conservative argument in favour of property qualifications for voting, for fear of the irresponsible nature of the crowd. 3). The need to build democracy upon the backs of a disenfranchised class of ignorant workers would be a genuine moral conundrum in an all-white society, since it would involve revoking the rights of a group of people who ought to be equal citizens. But the South has had the extreme good fortune to have within its territory a numerous population of subhumans who can carry out this drudge work. The subhuman status of the Blacks was demonstrated in various ways, but the most important was probably the argument that the Negro race was descended from Canaan, son of Ham, who in the Book of Genesis had been cursed by Noah in the following words: "Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall be unto his brethren." 4). Not only does the creation of a servile class ensure that liberty will not be destroyed by the ignorant masses; it also guarantees that free citizens will be freed from the need to perform the mindless tasks that have now been turned over to the slaves. Placed in a condition that John C. Calhoun described as "masterly inactivity," the free citizens of the republic would be free to engage themselves in non-remunerative activities such as philanthropic works, philosophy, or public affairs. In a sense, this is the same argument that might today be presented in favour of labour-saving devices like dishwashers or vacuum cleaners. 5). Slavery was good for the slaves themselves. Remember, these are subhuman, barely rational creatures. Therefore they are not able to look after their own best interests. A kindly master therefore will take care of the tasks that they are incapable of performing for themselves. This argument is not much different than the argument that modern zoo keepers or farm owners will present in favour of keeping their animals in captivity. They will point to the fact that their personal financial interest in the well-being of the animals is the guarantee that the animals will be well-treated. The only difference, of course, is that horses, sheep and zoo animals really are dumb brutes, where Blacks most certainly were not. In practice, this argument was not presented as if the Blacks were animals. Instead they were presented as being in a perpetual state of childhood. Slavery was presented as a kind of endless kindergarten, with the back-breaking work being as much for their own good as for any profit that it might generate. Sometimes slavery was even presented as what one group of prominent historians have described as "a practical form of socialism." They cite an article in the Charleston Courier from the era, in which the following formula is used to describe slavery: "Every plantation is an organized community . . . where all work, where each member gets subsistence and a home." 11  And, in truth, this is not so very far from the Marxist formula, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF SLAVERY FROM THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE TO THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN: Introduction: One of the chief assertions of postmodernist historians is that: History is context. We choose our history by selecting certain events to include in the narrative. Those events take their meaning in relation to other events, and these narratives make up the myths of our culture---myths that are changing all the time. 12 While I'm not sure that I accept this argument in its entirety, I do believe that a very important myth shapes the understanding that most Americans have of their own nation's past. Americans apply a mythological framework that could be called "triumphalism" to the past of their nation. No American imagines that his country is perfect, but they all believe that it is progressing along a course that leads it ever closer to its destiny of perfection. These words are entrenched in the Constitution itself, which speaks of the creation of "a more perfect union." And the process of periodic but rare amendments to the Constitution suggests a basic law that is relatively close to perfection, yet capable of being ratcheted, bit by bit, towards an ever-greater level of perfection, as the genius of the American people takes it forward. The Missouri Compromise: The first great clash over slavery occurred in 1820. By a tragic accident, the various compromises that had been worked out in 1787 in order to balance the power of the large and small states had produced a situation in which the slave states and the free states were exactly balanced in power in the institutions of the federal government. In 1819 there were eleven slave states and eleven free states. This meant that there were 22 Senators from either section of the Union. I say that this is tragic, because each side began, starting in 1819, to regard the other as trying to tip this entirely accidental balance in its own favour, in order to gain control of the instruments of central government in order to either expand slavery to dominate the entire country (the fear of anti-slave Northerners) or else to gradually destroy slavery (the fear of the Southerners). As long as the balance was maintained, the cult of sectional equality grew and grew in psychological importance to either side, and each side's fear of what the other might do led to radical suggestions as to how to maintain a balance and as to how to react, should the balance be upset to the advantage of the other side. After forty years of this, when it became clear that the North had won the race, the South over-reacted by seceding. But, because attention in the South had previously been focussed upon maintaining the balance or even on tipping it in the South's favour, not much previous energy had been put into legitimising the secession option. Had the South been in a minority position from the start, one of two scenarios---either preferable to what really happened---would have taken place: 1). Secession would have been debated for years as a serious option, giving Northern opinion time to reconcile itself to the legitimacy of the proposal. In Canada, where such a process has been underway for decades, secession is far less likely to provoke an attempt to retain the seceding region (the province of Quebec) than was the case in the U.S. in 1860. 2). The South would have reconciled itself to its minority position, and the North's dislike of the "peculiar institution" (as slavery was sometimes called) would have led to its gradual elimination, probably on much the same (admittedly ungenerous) basis as had been achieved in New Jersey and elsewhere. In 1819, the territory of Missouri petitioned Congress for admission to the Union as a state. This was its right; it had just barely passed the 60,000 population mark (in Missouri's case, 50,000 whites, 10,000 Negro slaves) necessary to qualify as a state. However, when the necessary legislation came up for debate in the House of Representatives, a New York congressman, James Tallmadge, Jr., proposed that several conditions be attached to statehood for the region: 1). No new slaves would be permitted to enter the state. 2). The children of slaves already in the state upon the date it was admitted to the Union would gain their freedom upon reaching the age of 25. 3). All slaves already in Missouri in a state of servitude would remain slaves for life. This proposed amendment would have gradually transformed Missouri from a slave state to a free state. It produced a ferocious debate in Congress that lasted for a year, preventing the passage of the Missouri statehood law. The Senate, with its even split between slave and free states, refused to pass the legislation if it included Tallmadge's amendment. The Representatives, where the free states commanded a majority of 105 seats to 81 for the slave states, refused to pass the law without the amendment. The debate was so bitter and so protracted that some observers began to worry if it would lead to the break-up of the country. Thomas Jefferson, who was in retirement but still a keen observer of political events, wrote in a letter, "This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the Union." Finally, Henry Clay, who at the time was Speaker of the House, came up with a solution that was designed to recognize and carefully preserve what had until now been an accidental balance of power. 1). Missouri would be permitted to enter the Union as a slave state without any of Tallmadge's provisions added as conditions of entry. However, to balance the new state, another state would be created out of the District of Maine, which until this point had been a part of Massachusetts. By a happy coincidence, the residents of Maine had been holding referendum after referendum (a total of five since the 1780s) on separating from Massachusetts. They had finally achieved a majority in favour of separation in a referendum in 1819. Now, with the permission of the mother state, Maine was severed and then joined to the Union as a balancing act against Missouri. 2). To ensure that there would be an ongoing supply of future slave states and free states, the remaining federal territories would be divided along a line parallel with the southern border of Missouri. Territory to the south of this line would be open to slavery. Territory to the north would be closed to slavery. The Nullification Crisis of 1832: This crisis is dealth with in more depth in the previous lecture. Although the Nullification Crisis was nominally over the tariff issue, John C. Calhoun stated privately that he regarded slavery as being the real cause of the crisis. 13  More significantly, the crisis eliminated nullification from the arsenal of the states, thereby causing them to dread federal intervention more greatly than before. With this option removed, it became clear that the only alternative to Southern control of the federal government was obedience to a hostile Northern-controlled federal government, or else secession. The Compromise of 1850: The Mexican War had been fought in order to increase the size of the United States, and it had been wonderfully successful in achieving this objective. By the end of the 1840s, the United States had grown to include the area now covered by the states of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. How to deal with this new territory led to a sectional crisis that nearly caused the break-up of the Union. By now it was clear that control over the federal government would ultimately be the factor that would determine whether slavery would continue to exist or would fail. Therefore each side was desperately anxious to add as much newly-annexed territory to its own section as possible. Texas, which had been an independent republic, had joined the U.S. as a slave state in 1845 amid considerable controversy. For several years its entry into the United States had been blocked by northern Senators, who were afraid that the new state (which had been promised the right to subdivide itself into as many as five states) might ensure a permanent slave-holding majority in the Union. Finally, Texas was admitted by means of a joint resolution of Congress in favour of annexation, rather than by a treaty of annexation. This required the approval of only a majority of Senators instead of two-thirds, and in this way the South's equal numbers in the Senate were able to prevail. In August 1846, three months after the war with Mexico had begun, Pennsylvania Representative David Wilmot added an amendment to a bill appropriating funds to conduct the war effort. This amendment stated that           [A]s an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of              any territory from the Republic of Mexico to the United States .              . . neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in              any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party              first shall be duly convicted. The Wilmot Proviso, as this amendment became known, was intended to ensure that the United States would not introduce slavery into the previously free territory of Mexico. It passed in the Representatives, where a free-state majority prevailed, but was defeated repeatedly in the Senate. Therefore it became impossible to even begin to engage in the process of creating new states or organized territories out of the vast new acquisitions (about half of Mexico) that had been acquired during the war. This state of suspension went on for years, becoming more and more untenable all the time. In California, an enormous gold rush took place in 1849, with the result that this part of the new territory now had a population of 100,000---larger than several existing states. The area was becoming increasingly vociferous in its demands for statehood. New Mexico had a border dispute with Texas, and a local civil war seemed likely. Meanwhile, a large and growing radical Mormon community, organized on military lines, had established itself in the northern part of the new territory and declared itself to be an independent republic. If it were not suppressed at once, there was a danger that it might actually be successful in gaining a permanent independence. The California situation was settled when the settlers simply presented a state constitution which banned slavery to Congress in November 1849. This fait accompli threatened to upset the sectional balance (15 free vs. 15 slave states). So for the first time, the entire South, not just South Carolina, began to discuss secession as a valid option. The Mississippi legislature called for a convention of the Southern states to meet in Nashville in June 1850, and it seemed possible that this convention might authorize secession and the drawing-up of a constitution for a new Southern federation. The words of Robert Toombs, a Representative from Georgia, summed up the sentiment of the radical Southerners, who were known as "fire-eaters":             I do not, then, hesitate to avow before the House and the             country, and in the presence of the living God, that if, by your             legislation, you seek to drive us from the territories of             California and New Mexico, purchased by the common blood and             treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in this             District [of Columbia], thereby attempting to fix a national             degradation on half the States of this Confederacy, I am for             disunion. 14 Into this supercharged atmosphere stepped Henry Clay, who proposed a five-part compromise: 1). California would join the Union as a free state. 2). New territories, including the lands claimed by the Mormon republic of "Deseret", would be created in the lands between Texas and California. They would be open to slavery. 3). Texas would give up its claim to part of New Mexico, but the federal government would give Texas $10 million in compensation. 4). The slave trade (but not slavery itself) would be banned in the District of Columbia. 5). A stronger fugitive slave law would be enacted. The compromise was rejected when presented as a whole, and Clay returned to his Kentucky home in frustration. At this point, his mantle was assumed by a brilliant young Senator from Illinois, Stephen Douglas, who discovered that while it was not possible to pass the package as a whole, each individual item could attract a somewhat different majority. In this way, the disputes in the West were settled, and moreover both the abolitionists and the advocates of slavery had each gained a concession in the East (the fugitive slave law vs. the slave trade in the District of Columbia). Taken together, this had the effect of defusing the drive for a Nashville convention, and the secession issue died away. The Kansas-Nebraska Act: One of the unresolved matters emerging from the Compromise of 1850 was the question of where a transcontinental railroad would be built. This is a decision that might have been left to private enterprise to decide, but federal politicians from each Section were eager to provide subsidies to draw the railroad to their own part of the country. Partly this was because of the obvious profits that would come with a transportation hub passing through their own region. But another key reason was that a southern route would help to expand slavery into the west, while a northern route would help to move free settlers to the west, thereby closing off territory to slave expansion. Southerners had already cleared away one obstacle with the Gadsden Purchase. But the most spectacular and self-destructive manoeuvring came on the part of Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, who was, along with Henry Clay, one of the two great authors of the Compromise of 1850. His attempt to promote a route that would terminate in Chicago (which just happened to be in his home state) and that would pass through lands in which he personally had speculated, would help destroy the compromise that he had created a few years earlier. Douglas now proposed a law to organize two territories, called Kansas and Nebraska, in the unorganised lands lying north of the Utah and New Mexico territories. These territories would be a part of the process of clearing the way for institutions that would allow the area to be settled, which was of key importance if land grants issued to the railway along its route were to be of any value---and they had to be valuable if the railway was to be convinced to choose this particular route. But to gain the Southern support he needed in order for his bill to be passed by Congress, Douglas had to make concessions on the slavery issue. So he offered to allow the population of each of the two territories to decide for itself whether it would choose to be slave or free. This would be known as the doctrine of "popular sovereignty." Douglas defended it on the basis of federalism and local self-government, but in the North it was perceived as an attempt to expand slavery---which would now be capable of expanding, at least in theory, all the way to the Canadian border. Southerners of all parties were enthusiastic about the law, while northern Democrats in Congress supported the law with great reluctance. They had good reason to be reluctant. The Northern reaction was so fierce that 47 of the 54 northern Democrats who voted in favour of the Kansas-Nebraska Act were returned to office in the elections that November. The Dred Scott Decision: In 1857 the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to make a decision in the case of a slave named Dred Scott, whose master had taken him north on a six-year trip into the free state of Illinois and the free US Territories north of the Missouri Compromise Line. Back in Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom, arguing that residence in free territory had made him a free man. The Court rejected his claim. It made two judgments that were surprisingly harsh and one-sided: 1). Dred Scott had no right to sue in a federal court, because no Black could be a United States citizen. The Court had to use a particularly creative chain of logic to arrive at this conclusion, which had the effect of legally entrenching the racism that had come to be the basic intellectual support of the slavery argument. 2). Residence in a free territory had not made Scott free, because Congress had no authority to ban slavery on any federal territory. To do so would represent a federal violation of the Fifth Amendment's ban on confiscation of property. The significance of this ruling was that now slavery was to be permitted in all territories, including the ones that had been closed to slavery by the Compromise of 1820. It also meant that Popular Sovereignty was thrown out in the territories, for a territorial legislature was a creature of the Federal government, and therefore unable to violate the Bill of Rights (state legislatures were not regarded by the courts as being bound by the Bill of Rights in those days). When looking at the various compromises made over slavery, and the people who made it, it should be remembered that Clay, and Douglas were essentially run-of-the-mill politicians. Each one of them was perfectly happy to convince himself that his own personal political fortune was identical with the health and well-being of the Union, and therefore to sacrifice what might to outside observers have appeared to be the interest of the country when that interest conflicted with their own career advancement. In each of the three cases, the politician redeemed himself with a prominent act of genuine conviction when it became clear that his own career was at an end, but even this is hardly a genuine act of courage, is it? Abolitionism becomes respectable / Uncle Tom's Cabin: Racism was endemic throughout the United States (in De Tocqueville's opinion, it was worse in the North than in the South). Blacks were permitted to vote in only six states, and in one of them this right was only partial. Blacks were forbidden to serve on juries in any state. Some western states banned free Blacks from entering at all. Therefore, in the early days the radical abolitionists had faced tremendous popular opposition in the Northern states that might have been supposed to be their greatest source of support. One abolitionist editor in Illinois was killed by a mob when he tried to defend his printing press from being destroyed during a riot. On one occasion workers who feared competition from free Blacks rioted for several days on end in New York. Garrison was nearly lynched by a Boston mob on another occasion. David Walker, a free Black who lived in Boston and who authored the 1829 pamphlet, An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, which advocated slave rebellion, was murdered in the doorway of his shop in 1830. The Compromise of 1850, and even more the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 served to win a greater and greater respectability for the abolitionists, who by the end of the 1850s were regarded in the North as respectable participants in the slavery debate, if not yet quite representative of mainstream opinion. The fact which most powerfully affected Northern opinion was the enhancement of the powers of the Fugitive Slave Law. The law, passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, was shocking. It permitted the following practices: 1). A slaveholder could, upon producing an affidavit, enlist the help of a federal official, known as a commissioner, to help him seize anyone that he claimed was a runaway slave. Commissioners were empowered to compel any person to help them capture and return any escaped slave. Thus, compulsory slave patrols were expanded nationwide. 2). The commissioners were given an incentive to determine that any Black captured in this manner would be judged to be a runaway: They were paid $10 by the government for every captured Black who was judged to be a runaway, but only $5 for a judgment that the captured Black was not. 3). The captured Black enjoyed no right to testify in his own defence or to be granted a jury trial. Thus, it became possible, and even profitable, to attempt to enslave free Northern Blacks and ship them south. 4). Any citizen obstructing the law could be imprisoned for up to six months and fined up to $1000 dollars. It was as a result of this law that many Northerners were exposed to the shocking experience of seeing Blacks kidnapped right off the street in broad daylight, under protection of the federal government. The spirit of rising vexation at this situation was captured in a novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1851. This book gave a realistic portrayal of slavery (if anything, it was an understatement of reality), but it was a shock to many Northerners. Without any advertising other than word of mouth, her book became the best selling book in American history. Within a week it had sold 10,000 copies, and 300,000 copies had been sold in a year. Eight printing presses were kept running twenty-four hours a day to keep up with the demand for the book. The impact of the book on public opinion was profound. Black people told Mrs. Stowe that for the first time, they were being treated civilly by their Northern neighbours. Others reported a far greater willingness on the part of Whites to help protect escaped slaves. The fugitive slave law was now largely negated by state "personal liberty laws", which forbade the use of state facilities or personnel in the enforcement of the federal law. Nine states went so far as to pass state laws effectively invoking the doctrine of nullification by requiring jury trials and habeas corpus for Blacks accused of being runaway slaves (these laws were struck down in a Supreme Court decision in 1859). The Rise of Terrorism / Bleeding Kansas: As pacifist abolitionism became respectable, a more radical response to slavery was starting to emerge. A growing number of Northerners began to conclude that only force would stop the geographic expansion of slavery thanks to the Dred Scott decision and the growing strangulation of freedom in the Northern states due to the fugitive slave law. Frederick Douglass suggested that "the only way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter is to make half a dozen or more dead kidnappers." Starting in 1851, this is exactly what happened. A gun battle in the town of Christiana, Pennsylvania, left a bounty-hunter dead. In 1854 a mob in Boston tried to free an escaped slave named Anthony Burns who had been locked in the courthouse pending his removal to Virginia. A guard was killed in the riot and a military force of a thousand men had to be summoned to prevent the mob from freeing Burns as he was taken to a ship in the harbour. In 1854, the first settlers began to move into the newly-created Kansas Territory, which under the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act would have its status as a slave or a free territory determined by the people themselves when they voted on the territorial constitution. Each Section was aware that if Kansas was settled by supporters of slavery, it would probably become a slave state. If it were settled by anti-slavers, it would become a free state. Thus, the natural land rush was supplemented, and complicated, by some ideologically-based immigration to the territory, and determined efforts to arm the advocates of either side. When the territorial governor called elections in late 1854 and early 1855 to choose a territorial delegate to Congress and to elect a territorial legislature, pro-slavery advocates from Missouri rushed across the border and stuffed ballot boxes. The legislature now passed a brutal slave code, including the death penalty for helping a slave to escape. Despite the composition of the legislature, the territory probably held more supporters of freedom than of slavery. This group now elected its own legislature. Soon the state had two legislatures, two governors, and two constitutions. Before long, the two sides had begun to turn on each other in acts of local terrorism and violence. Dozens were killed. John Brown, an anti-slavery extremist, executed a raid in May 1856 in which five pro-slavery settlers were killed. One of Brown's sons was killed in a retaliatory raid. Finally, federal troops were called in to stop the bloodshed. All of this prompted a violent confrontation on the floor of the Senate, where a South Carolina Congressman, Preston Brooks, beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner senseless with a wooden walking stick in the middle of proceedings, for having insulted South Carolina. Sumner was so badly injured that he could not return to work for two years. Brooks was sent new walking sticks by fans from all over the South, to replace the one he had damaged in beating Sumner. The culminating act of this heated period was a raid, conducted in October 1859, when John Brown led a group of rebels to seize the federal armoury at Harper's Ferry in Virginia, with the idea of fomenting and then arming a slave rebellion. A few people were killed in the raid, but it was suppressed by a military detachment led by Colonel Robert E. Lee, and Brown was hanged for treason two months later. The Collapse of uniting institutions: The pressures caused by the dissolution of the ideology of freedom that had previously united the country started to lead to the dissolving of the informal ties that had done much to hold the country together. The arguments both for and against slavery were based on widely differing interpretations of Scripture, so the churches were the first institutions to split. The Methodists split into Northern and Southern factions in 1844, and the Baptists in 1845. The party system, which had been formed in Jackson's day, was the next institution to splinter. A small one-issue antislavery party, the Liberty Party, was established in 1839. The Whig and Democratic Parties were gradually tearing themselves apart over slavery, and skilled organizers from the Liberty Party drew dedicated members of the antislavery factions of the two parties together in a new antislavery coalition, just in time to contest the 1848 election with former president Martin Van Buren as its candidate. The new Free-Soil Party won 291,000 votes (out of three million cast) in 1848 despite having been in existence for only three months. Thirteen Free-Soil party Representative were elected to Congress. After this, there was an antislavery party in every federal election. The Kansas-Nebraska Act drove the internal wedges in the Whigs and Democrats even deeper, and more defections occurred. The Whigs collapsed altogether, and out of its ruins emerged the new American Party. 15   Unlike the Free Soilers, the American Party attempted to avoid the issue of slavery (it had hopes of attracting votes in both the North and the South) and it focussed instead on anti-immigration and anti-Catholic rhetoric. At the same time as the American Party was emerging, many anti-Kansas-Nebraska groups spontaneously came into being across the North. They now united with many veterans of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties to form a new group, the Republican Party. Because this party was willing to take a strong stand against slavery (the American Party was not), it greatly outperformed the American Party in the 1856 election. Its candidate, former explorer Charles Fr‚Mont, came close to winning the presidency, and many members were elected to Congress. Of course, all this activity was in the North. The South was appalled by the Republicans, and stayed loyal to the Democratic Party, which was starting to take on the characteristics of a sectional party of the South, as Northern defections continued to take place. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Suggested Readings: Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997, pp. 255-270, 328-332, 345-347, 351-361. Page 255-270 are about the rise of the slave system in the South, and the Missouri Compromise. Pages 328-332 deal with the Compromise of 1850. Pages 345-347 tell the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The collapse of the party system and the rise of the Republicans is described in pp. 351-361. Aaron, Daniel, Richard Hofstadter, and William Miller, The United States. Third edition. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972. (pp. 314-376) A solid, factual account of the period, and a good supplement to Johnson's livelier but more opinionated version. Pages 314-337 deal with the South, agriculture and the slave economy. Pages 338-360 deal with early industrialization in the North and the beginnings of immigration. Pages 361-376 deal with political events leading up to the election campaign of 1860. Billington, R.A., B.J. Loewenberg, and S.H. Brockunier, The Making of American Democracy: Readings and Documents. Volume 1. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960. The following documents are of interest: Chapter X, documents #10 (excerpts from George Fitzhugh's book, Sociology for the South), #11 (an 1854 poem justifying slavery), #12 (an excerpt from an 1857 book describing the economic colonialism of the South by the North), #16 (the 1857 "Lecompton Constitution" for the State of Kansas), & #18 (an 1857 speech by Abraham Lincoln reacting to the Dred Scott decision). John Calhoun, "On the Veto Power," in Russell Kirk (ed.), The Portable Conservative Reader. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1982, pp. 155-180. This is an 1842 speech delivered in the Senate, which summarizes some of the themes that Calhoun develops at greater length in his Disquisition on Government. John Calhoun, Excerpts from A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution, in Bernard Brown (ed.), Great American Political Thinkers, vol. II. New York: Avon, 1983, pp. 11-40. Commager, Henry Steele (ed.). Documents of American History, Seventh edition, vol. I. New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1963. The following original documents are of interest: #121 (documents relating to the Missouri Compromise), #149-151 (contemporary articles and resolutions relating to abolitionism from the mid-1830s), #158 (an 1842 decision of the Supreme Court that led to the creation of numerous state-level "personal liberty laws"), #174 (documents relating to the compromise of 1850), #175 & 176 (documents relating to the "Georgia Platform" and the Nashville Convention of 1850, which show the Southern reaction to the Compromise of 1850), #178 (transcript of a trial in which a Virginia woman was convicted of teaching Black children to read), #179 (1854 platform of the Independent Democrats), #180 (the Kansas-Nebraska Act), #182 (1855 Massachusetts Personal Liberty Law), #185 (text of the Dred Scott Decision), #186 & 187 (Lincoln's 1858 "House Divided" speech and excerpts from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates), #188 (A court decision regarding enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law), #189 (John Brown's speech to the court, prior to his execution, 1859). Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Numerous editions are available. First published in 1845, this is the classic first-hand story of life as a slave. Douglass, Frederick. Selection from a speech on slavery, 1852, in Bernard Brown (ed.), Great American Political Thinkers, vol. II. New York: Avon, 1983, pp. 68-74. Douglass offers his views on the American system of government that perpetuates slavery. Garrison, William Lloyd. Selection from The Liberator, in Bernard Brown (ed.), Great American Political Thinkers, vol. II. New York: Avon, 1983, pp. 9-11. A typical selection from the pre-eminent voice in early abolitionism. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Numerous editions are available. This best-selling novel of the antebellum period did more than any other work to turn Northerners against slavery. It's still an entertaining read, 140 years later. Make sure to find an annotated edition, in order to read about its popular impact, and the accuracy of Stowe's fictionalised account. ---------------------------------------------------------------- References: 1). I will be basing my argument and organization of the facts almost entirely on the discussion of antebellum slavery presented in Jeffrey Rogers Hummel's book, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. 2). Ibid., p. 40. 3). Ibid., p. 48. 4). Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, p. 55. 5). Woodward, "The Price of Freedom," in David Sansing (ed.), What was Freedom's Price?, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1983, p. 93. 6). Hummel, p. 52. 7). The practice of outright, immediate emancipation took place in those jurisdictions where chattel slavery was already so rare that there were virtually no slave-owners to lobby for solutions less damaging to their economic interest. 8). Hummel, p. 30. 9). Ibid., p. 12. 10). Senator Hammond was addressing the Senate on March 4, 1858. See Ibid., p. 23. 11). Blum, Catton, Morgan, Schlesinger, Stampp and Woodward, The National Experience: A History of the United States, p. 257. 12). Judith Nies, Native American History. New York: Random House, 1996, p. 1. 13). See Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, p. 19. 14). Toombs is quoted in Ibid., p. 91. 15). The American Party is better known by its derogatory nickname, the Know-Nothing Party. This name was adopted because much of its support came from highly secretive Protestant lodges; when asked about their membership in such lodges, members were required to respond that they knew nothing about them.