CONFLICT IRREPRESSIBLE—“A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND.”

 

“Dred Scott,” in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, June 27, 1857.

            Did Missouri slave Dred Scott become a free man when he was taken into free territory?  No, the Supreme Court ruled in a wide-ranging opinion.  Expanding on the narrow issue, the Court ruled that blacks, free or slave, were not entitled to the rights of American citizenship and slave property was permissible in any American territory.  With the right of Congress to control slavery in the territories now declared unconstitutional, critics worried that, with equal logic, the Court might one day strike down antislavery laws in the free states.  In an inversion of a popular Republican slogan, slavery was becoming national and freedom sectional.

 

 

The Lecompton Constitution & Democratic Dissent

The Buchanan administration's heavy-handed efforts to impose the proslavery Lecompton Constitution on the territory set off a backlash among Democrats who were offended by this violation of popular sovereignty. A mass meeting of Democratic opponents was held in Philadelphia on February 8 to protest the imposition of the Lecompton Constitution and in favor of a free state constitution drafted by another Kansas convention. Of particular importance was Stephen A. Douglas's break with the administration, presaging the division of the Democrats into competing factions in the 1860 election. Many Republicans were heartened by Douglas's opposition and favored abandoning their new party in a fusion with Douglas Democrats

Constitution of the State of Kansas.  Adopted December 21st, 1857 (Philadelphia, 1858). 

United States Senate, Constitution of Kansas.  . . . Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories, submitted the following Minority Report (Washington, 1858).

 

 Democratic Protests Against the Lecompton Fraud (Philadelphia, 1858).

 John Brown’s Blessing, Chromolithograph after the painting by Thomas Satterwhite Noble (n. p., ca. 1867).

            Denounced as a mad fanatic, Brown’s dignified bearing at his trial and execution made him an antislavery martyr.  The cries of denunciation were soon replaced by choruses of Union soldiers singing “The John Brown Song” as they marched to war against slavery.

 

 

William Henry Seward, The Irrepressible Conflict.  A Speech  . . . Delivered at Rochester, Monday, Oct. 25, 1858 (New York: Horace Greeley & Co., 1860).

            American political life in the late 1850s was, Seward argued, a conflict between slavery and freedom.  “It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.” 

 

 

TWO VOICES FROM THE SOUTH

 

George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!  Or, Slaves Without Masters

(Richmond: A. Morris, Publisher, 1857).

 

Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It  (New York, Burdick Brothers, 1857).

            Proslavery philosopher George Fitzhugh argued that all labor was servile and destined to be enslaved either to

heartless capitalists or to benevolent masters whose self-interest would assure workers’ well-being.

            Hinton Rowan Helper, of North Carolina, spoke for the non-slaveholding whites of the South.  Slavery was the cause of southern backwardness and the impoverishment of white laborers. Republicans hoped to nurture southern antislavery sentiment and, in 1859, published a pamphlet edition of Helper’s work for free distribution.

 

 

Francis P. Blair, Jr., Colonization and Commerce.  An Address Before   the Young Men’s Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati, Ohio, November 29, 1859 (n. p., 1859).

 

 

Proceedings of the National Emigration Convention of Colored People; Held at Cleveland, Ohio . . . the 24th, 25th and 26th of August, 1854 (Pittsburgh: A. A. Anderson, 1854)

            This Missouri free soil Democrat was, with his father and brother, an early Republican.  Addressing fears of emancipation, Blair argues for the colonization of freed slaves to homesteads acquired in Central America or the Caribbean islands, where they would promote American values.  “It is this race of men, Christianized in our churches, civilized

by our firesides, and educated in government by hearing our political discussions, through whom I would extend our laws, our power, and our influence to the tropics of America, and make its wealth tributary to our commerce.”

            Some African Americans agreed, like the 141 delegates at this first National Emigration Convention of 1854.  These black nationalists saw racism and slavery triumphant in America, and felt blacks must establish themselves elsewhere to achieve any degree of political liberty.  They looked to settling in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Central America, or the now-free British West Indies.  “Our attention must be turned in a direction towards those places where the black and colored man comprise, by population, and constitute by necessity of numbers the ruling element of the body politic.”

 

 

John Brown, Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for

the People of the United States (St. Catherines, Ontario: William Howard Day, 1858).

            Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid was planned in part at a convention of black nationalist exiles of the fugitive slave communities of lower Canada.  This constitution, ratified by the group, outlines the plan for an antislavery guerrilla army operating in slave territory.  It was printed by the African American printer William Howard Day, an Oberlin College graduate and publisher of the first African American newspaper in Ohio.

 

 

James Redpath, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry (Boston: Thayer & Eldridge,  1860).

            Though Brown’s raid was widely denounced by respectable public opinion, many northerners were inspired by his principled stand and bold action against slavery.  Radical abolitionist James Redpath collected essays, poems, meeting notices, and other sentiments by Brown’s northern admirers.  Shown here are resolutions in support of Brown by a mass

meeting of his many friends in Kansas. 

 

 

Stephen A. Douglas & Abraham Lincoln, Political Debates

Between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, In the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois . . . (Columbus: Follett, Foster and Company, 1860).

            Illinois Republican Abraham Lincoln, a recent Whig convert, gained wider reputation in his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas in the Senate contest of 1858.  Lincoln’s argument against the domination of the slave power was met by incessant race baiting by Douglas, who kept up the Democratic drum beat against Republicans as abolitionists and supporters of equal rights for blacks who would destroy the Union.  Though Lincoln lost, his arguments brought him national attention, helped define Republican philosophy, and prepared the way for his victory in 1860.