BobbyLayne
Footballguy
Robert E. Lee referred to him as "my bad old man" because of his predilection for streams of profanity.
Robert E. Lee referred to him as "my bad old man" because of his predilection for streams of profanity.
There is no reason to use inflammatory language while you are making your point. Such tactics only weaken your argument.Once again, we see the South working within the confines of the Constitution to affect policy so long as they get what they want. The story repeats itself so much that sometimes I'm truly amazed that anyone tries to couch the actions of the rebels in terms other then criminal and traitor.
Yep. He was also the one person most responsible for the "Lost Cause" movement in the South after the war. Thanks Great, Great, Great, Great Uncle Jubal! (not)Robert E. Lee referred to him as "my bad old man" because of his predilection for streams of profanity.
Yup, that's the legacy.He was a hard hitter when he was a regiment/brigade leader under Ole Blue Light. Pretty decent at the Divisional command level as well. Like a few leaders, didn't shine in Corps or independent command. But by then ('64-65), they were up against some pretty long odds.Yep. He was also the one person most responsible for the "Lost Cause" movement in the South after the war. Thanks Great, Great, Great, Great Uncle Jubal! (not)Robert E. Lee referred to him as "my bad old man" because of his predilection for streams of profanity.
Yes to all of the above.My second favorite thing about 'ole Jube (after the habitual swearing) was that he was pretty incompetent when it came to figuring out where he was. Early in the war, Jubal would frequently get his troops lost and/or bogged down in dense woods while a battle was raging nearby. No wonder he was so free with the cuss words.Yup, that's the legacy.He was a hard hitter when he was a regiment/brigade leader under Ole Blue Light. Pretty decent at the Divisional command level as well. Like a few leaders, didn't shine in Corps or independent command. But by then ('64-65), they were up against some pretty long odds.Yep. He was also the one person most responsible for the "Lost Cause" movement in the South after the war. Thanks Great, Great, Great, Great Uncle Jubal! (not)Robert E. Lee referred to him as "my bad old man" because of his predilection for streams of profanity.
hehe....just remembered this...didn't Lewis Armistead break a plate over Jubal's head at West Point? Pretty sure he got kicked out for it.
One thing that makes the Confederate generals a more interesting study is they had so many characters. More than their fair share of lawyers, guys who loved to argue - and often ended up getting in petty disputes that resulted in court martial trials. Lee usually had his hands full (ditto for Bragg in the Western theater) with all that acrimonious quarreling.
Most are famaliar with the mural Bleeding Kansas, which depicts a crazed John Brown holding a gun in one hand, and a bible in the other, and today hangs in the state capital. The man on the left calmly holding his copy of the scriptures? Henry Ward Beecher.Beecher's Bibles" was the name given to the breech loading Sharps rifles that were supplied to the anti-slavery immigrants in Kansas.
The name came from the eminent New England minister Henry Ward Beecher, of the New England Emigrant Aid Society, of whom it was written in a February 8, 1856, article in the New York Tribune:
"He (Henry W. Beecher) believed that the Sharps Rifle was a truly moral agency, and that there was more moral power in one of those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles. You might just as well. . . read the Bible to Buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp's rifle."
Additionally, the arms were often shipped in wooden crates marked "Bibles" or "books." They were intended for the conflicts fought over slavery in the Kansas Territory leading up to its induction into statehood. As decreed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the issue of slavery in the new state was to be determined by popular sovereignty, thus unleashing a wave of bloody violence between pro- and anti-slavery forces throughout Kansas. The Beecher family were some of the foremost abolitionists in the country; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward's sister in 1852 had written the abolitionist classic Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Heh..... one of the more perfect uses of the phrase. This proxy war in Kansas was the Civil War on a smaller stage. A test track, if you will. Would have been nice if we could have just kept it in Kansas. Never make it a state, just a territory where people with different political ideas can go fight it out. Put a wall around the entire state and then let them at it. Who knows.....And all hell broke loose...
Reminds me of how some of the threads around here work.Heh..... one of the more perfect uses of the phrase. This proxy war in Kansas was the Civil War on a smaller stage. A test track, if you will. Would have been nice if we could have just kept it in Kansas. Never make it a state, just a territory where people with different political ideas can go fight it out. Put a wall around the entire state and then let them at it. Who knows.....And all hell broke loose...
Crazy times...Brooks was accompanied by Keitt and Henry A. Edmundson of Virginia. Sumner was trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to bash Sumner until he ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he broke his cane, then quietly left the chamber. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who was brandishing a pistol and shouting "Let them be!" (Keitt would be censured for his actions and later died of wounds in 1864 fighting for the Confederacy during the US Civil War.)Sumner was unable to return to his Senate duties for more than three years while he recovered. He later became one of the most influential Radical Republicans throughout the conduct of the American Civil War, and on through the early years of Reconstruction.After the attack South Carolinians sent Brooks dozens of brand new canes, with one bearing the phrase, "Hit him again." The Richmond Enquirer crowed: "We consider the act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences. These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate must be lashed into submission." The University of Virginia's Jefferson Literary and Debating Society sent a gold-headed cane to replace Brooks's broken one.Brooks survived an expulsion vote in the House but resigned his seat, claiming both that he "meant no disrespect to the Senate of the United States" by attacking Sumner and that he did not intend to kill him, for he would have used a different weapon if he had. His constituents thought of him as a hero and returned him to Congress.
Makes today's Congress look downright civilized.So felt Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, a cousin of Andrew Butler. Two days after the speech Brooks walked into the nearby empty Senate chamber after adjournment and approached the desk where Sumner was writing letters. "Your speech", he told the senator, "is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner started to rise, the frenzied Brooks beat him over the head 30 times or more with a gold-headed cane as Sumner, his legs trapped under the bolted-down desk, finally wrenched it loose from the floor and collapsed with his head covered by blood.
Couple minor corrections to my prior post: Armistead resigned after he assaulted his fellow cadet; he managed to nonethelelss secure an Army commission, serving for more than 20 years before joining the Confedracy.Early did spend most of '62-63 under Stonewall Jackson (aka Ole Blue Light), but was not in the famous Valley campaign. He was wounded at Williamsburg in May '62 during the Pennisula campaign. As an aside, there are always ironic connections in these ACW battles: Armistead's closest friend in the pre-war army was Hancock, whose brigade it was attempting a flank attack when Jubal was wounded.Yes to all of the above.My second favorite thing about 'ole Jube (after the habitual swearing) was that he was pretty incompetent when it came to figuring out where he was. Early in the war, Jubal would frequently get his troops lost and/or bogged down in dense woods while a battle was raging nearby. No wonder he was so free with the cuss words.Yup, that's the legacy.He was a hard hitter when he was a regiment/brigade leader under Ole Blue Light. Pretty decent at the Divisional command level as well. Like a few leaders, didn't shine in Corps or independent command. But by then ('64-65), they were up against some pretty long odds.Yep. He was also the one person most responsible for the "Lost Cause" movement in the South after the war. Thanks Great, Great, Great, Great Uncle Jubal! (not)Robert E. Lee referred to him as "my bad old man" because of his predilection for streams of profanity.
hehe....just remembered this...didn't Lewis Armistead break a plate over Jubal's head at West Point? Pretty sure he got kicked out for it.
One thing that makes the Confederate generals a more interesting study is they had so many characters. More than their fair share of lawyers, guys who loved to argue - and often ended up getting in petty disputes that resulted in court martial trials. Lee usually had his hands full (ditto for Bragg in the Western theater) with all that acrimonious quarreling.
And this doesn't even get into the Lecompton Constitution and the moment of clarity that Stephen Douglass suffered.Kansas had about 4 actual Constitutions that were reviewed and voted on in some capacity and there were probably dozens more floating around the state throughout the various factions of mobs, lynching parties, outright criminals, and everything else running the gauntlet of groups in the state as the formation of the state government was contemplated. The Lecompton Constitution was the most important one however.timschochet said:Bleeding Kansas Continued
Free Soil Kansas had no intention of either obeying the slave code laws or the "bogus legislature" that had passed them. Northern settlers armed with new Sharps breechloading rifles from New England organized and called for a convention to meet in Topeka. They drew up a free state constitution and called elections for a new legislature and governor. Proslavery voters of course boycotted these elections. By January 1856 Kansas had two territorial governments: the official one at Lecompton and an unofficial one at Topeka representing the majority of actual residents.
Partisans of both siddes in the territory were walking arsenals; it was only a matter of time before a shooting war broke out. The murder of a free-soil settler by a proslavery man in November 1855 set off a series of incidents that seemed likely to start the war. Some 1,500 Missourians crossed the border to march on the free-soil stronghold of Lawrence, where 1,000 men waited to receive them with Sharps rifles and a howitzer. Federal troops stood idly by because they had received no orders from the inert Pierce administration. Governor Shannon went to Lawrence and persuaded both sides to disband their forces. He told the Missourians: "If you attack Lawrence now, you attack a mob, and what would be the result? You could cause the election of an abolition president, and the ruin of the Democratic party. Wait a little. You cannot now destroy these people without losing more than you would gain."
This reasoning hardly encouraged prospects for a permanent peace. As the election year of 1856 progressed, Kansas erupted. Proslavery Judge Samuel Lecompte, who had been appointed by the proslavery legislature, instructed a grand jury to indict all members of the free-state government for treason. Since many of these men lived in Lawrence, the attempt to arrest them provided another opportunity for Missourians, now deputized as a posse, to attack this bastion of Yankee abolitionists. Dragging along 5 cannon, they entered the town on May 21, demolished its two newspaper offices, burned the hotel and the home of the elected free soil governor, and plundered shops and houses.
At this key juncture two men now entered into American history, bringing the country closer to Civil War than it had ever been: Preston Brooks and John Brown. I will now discuss each of these men and the impact of their actions (in the case of Brown, this was only the beginning.)
It is. It's too civilized.Black Box said:Makes today's Congress look downright civilized.timschochet said:So felt Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, a cousin of Andrew Butler. Two days after the speech Brooks walked into the nearby empty Senate chamber after adjournment and approached the desk where Sumner was writing letters. "Your speech", he told the senator, "is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner started to rise, the frenzied Brooks beat him over the head 30 times or more with a gold-headed cane as Sumner, his legs trapped under the bolted-down desk, finally wrenched it loose from the floor and collapsed with his head covered by blood.
It's remarkable that the kind of personal political attacks and questions of honor that we see in this moment in history didn't make anyone pause and remember the past. During the revolution and the Constitutional convention there were heated arguments, flaming speeches that mocked and ridiculued the opposition, all manner of professional debate and attack - but there was also a sense of something more with the men who did the arguing . The only thing I can call it is a spirit of togetherness that the common goal is too important. Sure, there were battles to get the country formed and then the Constitution ratified, but they were all arguing in the same or very close to the same language. And except for a small handful of personal incidents, the debates never boiled over the personal violence that the debates moving towards civil war brought. The closest thing we have to the Sumner caning was the duel between Burr and Hamilton, but the lesson of that duel was that it should never get that far and the code that gave rise to those questions of honor basically disintegrated after that when people finally realized what was going on. Basically, the founding generation learned from their mistakes.It seems the next generation was unable to. There was no reason for the violent reaction. Firestorm speeches - sure. Newspaper wars, fine. But a brutal attack like that was just almost a break with reality. The founders that built so much and worked so hard had to look down at their sons and grandson's in horror as they almost destroyed what was built. Very few if any revolutions turn into solid governments made up of the very laws the revolutionaries fought for. More often then not they turn into the French Revolution and despotism. The founders didn't suffer that fault but their children and grandchildren did.timschochet said:The Brooks-Sumner Affair Part Two
The caning incensed even those Yankees who had little use for Sumner. "Bleeding Sumner" joined Bleeding Kansas as a symbol of the slave power's iniquities. The South, declared one newspaper, "cannot tolerate free speech anywhere, and would stifle it in Washington with the bludgeon and the bowie-knife, Has it come to this," asked William Cullen Bryant of the New York Evening Post, "that we must speak with bated breath in the presence of our Southern masters? Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves? Are we too, slaves, slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we do not comport ourselves to please them?"
Adding insult to injury, the South lionized Brooks as a hero. Although some moderate southerners regretted the affair and warned of its galvanizing effect on the North, public approval of Brook's act far outweighed qualms. Newspapers in his own state expressed pride that Brooks had "stood forth so nobly in defense of the honor of South Carolinians." The Richmond Enquirer pronounced "the act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequence. The vulgar Abolitionists in the Senate are getting above themselves...They have grown saucy, and dare to be impudent to gentlemen! The truth is, they have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission." A Louisiana planter and former army officer by the name of Braxton Bragg (who sometime later will become one of the major characters in this narrative) wrote that the House should pass a vote of thanks to Brooks. Brooks himself boasted that "every Southern man sustains me. the fragments of the stick are begged for as sacred relicts." When the House voted 121 to 95 to expel Brooks, southern opposition prevented the necessary 2/3rds majority. Brooks resigned anyway and returned home to seek vindication by re-election. South Carolinians obliged; his re-election was unopposed and near unanimous. From all over the South, Brooks received dozens of new canes, some inscribed with mottoes such as "Hit Him Again!"
This southern response outraged northern moderates even more than the caning had done. "It was not the attack itself (horrible as that was) that excited me," wrote an old-line Whig who thereafter voted Republican, "but the tone of the Southern Press, & the approbation, apparently, of the whole Southern people." A Boston conservative who had previously defended the South now "must in sorrow concede a lower civilization than I would ever before believe, though Theodore Parker & those called extreme have often & calmly insisted upon this very fact, while I have warmly denied it." Republican organizers reported that they had "never before seen anything at all like the present state of deep, determined & desperate feelings of hatred & hostility to the further extension of slavery, & it's political power."
Brooks's only punishment was a $300 fine levied by a district court. Sumner's injuries, complicated by a post-traumatic syndrome that turned into a disability, kept him away from the Senate for most of the next 4 years. During that time the Massachusetts legislature reelected him as a symbolic rebuke to the "barbarism of slavery." A good many Yankees wanted to go beyond such passive protest. Now a 56 year old fanatic abolitionist in Kansas who believed in the Old Testament injunction of an eye for an eye decided he would do it himself.
"You lie!"It is. It's too civilized.Black Box said:Makes today's Congress look downright civilized.timschochet said:So felt Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, a cousin of Andrew Butler. Two days after the speech Brooks walked into the nearby empty Senate chamber after adjournment and approached the desk where Sumner was writing letters. "Your speech", he told the senator, "is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner started to rise, the frenzied Brooks beat him over the head 30 times or more with a gold-headed cane as Sumner, his legs trapped under the bolted-down desk, finally wrenched it loose from the floor and collapsed with his head covered by blood.
Will you be citing Thoreau's account of John Brown?Yankee's excellent summary has saved me time again. After John Brown in Kansas, I will go directly to Dred Scot.
Will you be citing Thoreau's account of John Brown?Yankee's excellent summary has saved me time again. After John Brown in Kansas, I will go directly to Dred Scot.
Nope. First time I heard that was Denzel in 'Remember the Titans'. You Carolinians are weird.Anyone else grow up using the expression "well I'll be John Brown!" ?
Nope, but heard it a few times when I was stationed in Charleston ('84-87).Anyone else grow up using the expression "well I'll be John Brown!" ?
Actually, Emerson did not initially own the female slave. Dred Scott and she met and fell in love at the fort, and Emerson purchased her from her owner so they could be together.I don't have links for anything I say here, but I took a class in college called Prelude to the Civil War, where a very well respected professor went into great detail, and I remember a lot of it.Dred Scott Part One
Dred Scott lived all but 2 of his 60 odd years in obscurity. The fame he acheived late in life was not for himself but for what he represented. Scott had been a slave of army surgeon John Emerson, who had taken him from Missouri to posts in Illinois and at Fort Snelling in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase (now Minnesota) for several years in the 1830s. At Fort Snelling, Scott married a slave also owned by Emerson. She gave birth to a daughter in territory made free by the Missouri Compromise while Emerson was returning the Scotts to Missouri.
Not sure what you find so funny, unless you have not read Thoreau's plea for John Brown. Which would not surprise me.LINKYWill you be citing Thoreau's account of John Brown?Yankee's excellent summary has saved me time again. After John Brown in Kansas, I will go directly to Dred Scot.
If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole body,--even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself,--the spectacle is a sublime one,--didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans?--and we become criminal in comparison.
GG, my discussion of Brown so far was restricted to his actions in Kansas. The statement you quoted was made after the events of Harper's Ferry, which we will get to later in the narrative.Not sure what you find so funny, unless you have not read Thoreau's plea for John Brown. Which would not surprise me.LINKYWill you be citing Thoreau's account of John Brown?Yankee's excellent summary has saved me time again. After John Brown in Kansas, I will go directly to Dred Scot.
If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole body,--even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself,--the spectacle is a sublime one,--didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans?--and we become criminal in comparison.
Yes, I had read it, and its a ridiculous defense of a terrorist. But we'll get to that, be patient.Gigantomachia said:Not sure what you find so funny, unless you have not read Thoreau's plea for John Brown. Which would not surprise me.LINKYBobbyLayne said:Gigantomachia said:Will you be citing Thoreau's account of John Brown?timschochet said:Yankee's excellent summary has saved me time again. After John Brown in Kansas, I will go directly to Dred Scot.
If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole body,--even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself,--the spectacle is a sublime one,--didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans?--and we become criminal in comparison.
I did not hear that, but there seems to be no doubt that Buchanan was aware of what was going to happen. What's astonishing to me, though, is this naive attitude on the part of Buchanan, Stephens, Taney, etc, that simply issuing a Supreme Court decision would settle the matter. Both abolitionists and fire-eaters had demonstrated already multiple times that obeyance of the law meant nothing to them. Why would an additional law, even established by the Supreme Court, make any difference? The other thing that surprises me is that Buchanan and the northern Democrat justice would go along with doing away with the Missouri Compromise.timschochet - have you come across the inauguration incident? Taney whispered something to Buchannon on the platform - of course, only two people ever knew what was said - and then in his speech the new President referred to the territorial question as "happily, a matter of but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court was about to settle it "speedily and finally." Two days later, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (a fellow alumnus of Dickinson College) delivered the Dred Scott Decision.
Agree, but I actually think that they (or at least Taney for sure) thought a SCOTUS ruling would move it beyond the politcal realm. Taney's life took some sad turns afterward.These were not reasonable times. Not to jump ahead, because we'll get there, but since GG alluded to and posted Thoreau's defense of Capt Brown...think about what would be the equivalent of the man who founded the idea of passive civil disobedience getting caught up in the times and advocating violent overthrow of injustice. That would be like Ralph Nader giving a drill, baby drill speech.I did not hear that, but there seems to be no doubt that Buchanan was aware of what was going to happen. What's astonishing to me, though, is this naive attitude on the part of Buchanan, Stephens, Taney, etc, that simply issuing a Supreme Court decision would settle the matter. Both abolitionists and fire-eaters had demonstrated already multiple times that obeyance of the law meant nothing to them. Why would an additional law, even established by the Supreme Court, make any difference?timschochet - have you come across the inauguration incident? Taney whispered something to Buchannon on the platform - of course, only two people ever knew what was said - and then in his speech the new President referred to the territorial question as "happily, a matter of but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court was about to settle it "speedily and finally."
Two days later, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (a fellow alumnus of Dickinson College) delivered the Dred Scott Decision.
The other thing that surprises me is that Buchanan and the northern Democrat justice would go along with doing away with the Missouri Compromise.
Upon reading a little more I have learned that these "whisperings" at the inaugural were actually very important as a conspiracy theory for Lincoln and Seward and played a role in leading up to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which we shall cover very shortly here.timschochet - have you come across the inauguration incident? Taney whispered something to Buchannon on the platform - of course, only two people ever knew what was said - and then in his speech the new President referred to the territorial question as "happily, a matter of but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court was about to settle it "speedily and finally." Two days later, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (a fellow alumnus of Dickinson College) delivered the Dred Scott Decision.
Didn't know you needed me to but there are a few points of the Election of 1856 that should be given some notice.John C. Fremont was the first Republican party candidate for PResident. His platform was the first of its kind in the nation as it openly attacked slavery, slavery power of the deep south and condemned outright the Kansas-Nebraska Act and ensuing pro-slavery events. James Buchanan ran as a tempered Democrat that called the Republicans extremists and his platofrm favored a popular sovereignty attitude towards the territories. Former President Millard Fillmore took the reigns of a third party - the Know Nothings (very apt name) - and ran a campaign that virtually ignored slavery all together. They didn't garner much votes.Incumbant Franklin Pierce, a democrat, failed so much in his time in the White House that the slogan of the official Democratic Party at their convention was , Anyone But Pierce. He didn't garner enough votes in convention to be a serious contended for renomination or reelection. The fissure that attacked the democratic party in 1860 was beginning to show some signs here, as Stephen Douglass entered the race and made his name available as against Pierce. Given that Pierce was being hit from all sides, the party began to encircle around Buchanan and not Pierce. It was becoming obvious that votes from Pennsylvania and other western leaning states were becoming more and more important. At the convention, Buchanan was the early favorite with Pierce in second and Douglass a distant third but as they went to more and more ballots Douglass took away basically all of Pierce's support in an effort to stop Buchanan. It's interesting that the battle for the nomination erased the sitting President and ended up being between two "northern" democrats. Between 1854 when the Whigs died and the Republican Party was formed, and the election of 1856, the GOP had already gained seats in Congress and even some capital buildings. They managed to absorb most of the 3rd parties and anti-democratic groups in the country to become a party of a collection of different thoughts and policies, although the overriding central policy was anti-slavery. Fremont got the nomination rather easily, but the nomination for Vice-President began the national campaign volleys of a really tall lanky attorney from Illinois. Lincoln finished second in the VP vote but his presence was obvious.The Whig Party, what was left of it, couldn't find their own candidate and endorsed Fillmore. They were already dead but this sealed their fate.Unlike their inability to keep the party together in 1860, the Democrats managed to get in line behind Buchanan and the result was his election, where the GOP got close to zero votes in slave states - not a percentage close to zero, but a nmuber actually close to zero. I checked wiki and they count the vote for the GOP in the south as 0 except for Delaware and Maryland who gave him a combined 500 votes. That's probably right. In the end, thw writing was on the wall. A party that campaigned openly against slavery as the GOP did would not get a single vote in the south. And if the democrats could stay together and united they still had enough power in 1856, and probably 1860, to keep their party in the White House.But the party that thought Buchanan could lead them better then Pierce got a rude awakening. Meanwhile, the GOP who was just 2 years old was immediately a force and the clear enemy of the pro-slavery movement. And While Fremont was their first choice, the first convention allowed the movers and shakers in the party to meet and come to terms with a rising star that they would lean on in Illinois in 1858. And his performance there made them give him a key note speech in Cooper Union. And that speech gave him the nomination for PResident in 1860.timschochet said:Yankee has covered Lecompton, which concludes Bleeding Kansas. (Although the struggles went on there between the two sides all the way into the next decade). Yankee did not cover the election of 1856, but it's not crucial to detail that in this narrative. Basically the colorless 65 year old bachelor Democrat James Buchanan won out over the first Republican candidate, Fremont, because many Northerners still believed a compromise with the South was possible and desirable. The key events that would cause enough of these to change their minds and elect a Republican four years later all had yet to occur: the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and Harper's Ferry. These are three of the most important events in American history, the three key events of the Buchanan years, and they paved the way the inevitable split between North and South and Civil War. It is now time in the narrative to cover these three events, each of which will require many posts to describe accurately. Bear with me.
Taney had some bad ones, that is for sure.I know the popular interpretation of the reasons for the decision, but there is more to it that I think never gets reported. Buchanan and many democratc like him wanted the Supreme Ccourt to give them legal standing to protect slavery. It was something they didn't have for the most part. A case such as this where the Court could say once and for all the answer to many of the questions that plagued the daily political battles would go a long way to add legitmacy to the cause. I truly believe that Buchanan had more of a hand in this then simply getting one justice to back down a little. I think he worked with Taney to get this done. And I think Taney wanted to do this and was happy to find an excuse to do it.timschochet said:Dred Scott, Continued
There still remained the problem of cajoling a concurrence from at least one Northern justice to avoid the appearance of a purely sectional ruling. Nelson could not be persuaded- he had already written his opinion and was probably miffed by his colleagues' intent to bypass it. But Grier was pliable. He was also from Buchanan's home state. The president-elect was anxious to have the territorial question resolved. In response to a suggestion from Justice John Carton of Tennessee, Buchanan brought highly improper but efficacious influence to bear on Grier, who succumbed. Taney had his northern justice and could proceed with his ruling.
It was an opinion Roger Taney had long wanted to write. 80 years old, the chief justice was frail and ill. The death of his wife and daughter two years earlier in a yellow fever epidemic had left him heart-stricken. Yet he clung to life determined to defend his beloved South from the malign forces of Black Republicanism. In his younger days Taney had been a Jacksonian committed to liberating American enterprise from the shackles of special privilege. As Jackson's secretary of the treasury he had helped destroy the Second Bank of the United States. His early decisions as chief justice had undermined special corporate charters. But the main theme of his 28 year tenure on the Court was the defense of slavery. Taney had no great love of the institution for his own sake, having freed his own slaves. But he did have a passionate commitment "to southern life and values, which seemed organically linked to the peculiar institution and unpreservable without it." In private letters Taney expressed growing anger toward "northern agression." "Our own southern countrymen" were in great danger, he wrote; "the knife of the assassin is at their throats." Taney's southern colleagues on the Court shared this apprehension; Justice Peter Daniel of Virginia was a brooding proslavery fanatic, and the other three were unreserved defenders of slavery.
Because of this emotional commitment so intense that it made perception and logic utterly subservient, the Dred Scott decision was essentially visceral in origin, a work of unmitigated partisanship, polemical in spirit with an extraordinary, cumulation of error, inconsistency, and misrepresentation. It is, in fact, quite simply the worst Supreme Court decision in American history. My next few posts will contain a full synopsis.
He had to start there to get his holding to come close to logicial. If they ahd any rights as citizens the rest of holding bears little legitimacy. What Taney wanted to do was get the question not only settled but unable to come back by removing the right of blacks to come before the court. The question also had practical implications for the time because if you remove black sfrom the federal system then the only place they can find redress is in the state system, if at all. No southern state was about to allow a black man before the court so that wasn't an issue, but in the Kansas Nebraska fight it was important. The state courts in Missouri could deal with the question on their own, and we've seen what happened in that area when those states were left to their own actions regarding slavery.He tried to kill 3 or 4 birds with one rhetorical stone. It only made him look like a fool.timschochet said:Dred Scott, Continued
Taney's opinion took up first the question whether Dred Scott, as a black man, was a citizen with the right to sue in federal courts. Taney devoted more space to this matter than anything else. Why he did so is puzzling, for in the public mind this was the least important issue in the case. But southern whites viewed free blacks as an anomaly and a threat to the stability of slavery; Taney's own state of Maryland contained the largest free Negro population of any state. The chief justice's apparent purpose in negating U.S. citizenship for blacks, wrote Fehrenbacher, was "to launch a sweeping counterattack on the antislavery movement and...to meet every threat to southern stability by separating the Negro race absolutely from the the federal Constitution and the rights that it bestowed." To do so, however, he had to juggle history, law, and logic in a "gross perversion of the facts."
Negroes had not been part of the "sovereign people" who made the Constitution, Taney ruled; they were not included in the "all men" whom the Declaration of Independence proclaimed "created equal." After all, the author of that Declaration and many of the signers owned slaves, and for them to have regarded members of the enslaved race as potential citizens whould have been "utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted." For that matter, wrote Taney, at the time the Constitution was adopted Negroes "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order...so far inferior, that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect."
This was false as Curtis and McLean pointed out in their dissents. Free blacks in 1788 and later had many legal rights (to hold and bequeath property, make contracts, seek redress in courts, among others). In 5 of the 13 states that ratified the Constitution black men were legal voters and participated in the ratification process. No matter, said Taney, these were rights of state citizenship and the question at issue was United States citizenship. A person might "have all of the rights and privileges of the citizen of a State," opined the chief justice, and "yet not be entitled to the rights and privileges of a citizen in any other State"- a piece of judicial legerdemain that contradicted Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution: "The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states."
Modern scholars do their best to protect the integrity of the Court. I have no doubt that Taney's reason for the remaining aspects of the holding were more dicta in the sense that he wanted to pen his thoughts regardless of what was actually required. He couched them in legalisms to be sure and in the end it probably was proper to address the points.Dred Scott, Continued
Having established to his satisfaction that blacks were not citizens, Taney could have stopped there and refused jurisdiction because the case was not properly before the court. That he did not do so rendered the remainder of his decision, in the opinion of many contemporaries and the earliest generation of historians, obiter dictum- a statement in passing on matters not formerly before the Court and therefore without force of law. But Taney insisted that because the circuit court had considered all aspects of the case and decided them "on their merits," the whole case including the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise restriction upon which Scott based part of his suit for freedom was properly before the Court. Modern scholars agree. Whatever else Taney's ruling was, it was not obiter dictum.
Taney and 6 other judges (with only Curtis and McLean dissenting) concurred that Scott's "sojourn" for two years in Illinois and for a similar period at Fort Snelling, even if the latter was free territory, did not make him free once he returned to Missouri. To this matter Taney devoted only one of the 55 pages of his opinion. The constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise received 21 pages of labored prose arguing that Congress never had the right to prohibit slavery in a territory. That the Constitution (Article IV, Section 3) gave Congress the power to "make all needful rules and regulations" for the territories was not relevant, said the chief justice in a typical example of hair-splitting, because rules and regulations were not laws. The Fifth Amendment protecte persons from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without the process; slavery was no different from other propery. "And if Congress itself cannot do this," continued Taney in what he intended as a blow against popular sovereignity, "it could not authorize a territorial government to exercise" such a power. This clearly was obiter dictum, since the question of the power of a territorial government over slavery was not part of the case.
So here was the Dred Scott decision, declaring that blacks were non-citizens, and that Congress could not make slavery illegal anywhere. Before I get to the dissents and the effect that the decision would have on the nation, I want to add as a side note that, ten weeks after the decision was released, Scott's owner manumitted him. Scott died a year later.
He inherited them from his father's estate andprobably knew many of them growing up. I don't know the main reason but it was either economical or emotional. He didn't need an abundance of slaves given his profession so he could have looked at it as a thing to do to ensure he family wasn't saddled with the burden of caring for them. Who knows. Trying to understand most of these guys is maddening.Great stuff Yankee. I'm fascinated by the fact that Taney freed all of his own slaves, but I'm unable in my sources or on the internet to find anything more about this: the reasons why, whether Taney himself had moral trouble with slavery, etc. Do you know anything more?
Lincoln is known to have stated his intent was to preserve the Union. Do you think Fremont's position in the '56 election branded the party as anti-slavery and regardless of what Lincoln said 1860 he was running as a Republican and therefore anti-slavery in the eyes of Southerners?John C. Fremont was the first Republican party candidate for PResident. His platform was the first of its kind in the nation as it openly attacked slavery, slavery power of the deep south and condemned outright the Kansas-Nebraska Act and ensuing pro-slavery events.
That just seems odd.Meanwhile, the GOP who was just 2 years old was immediately a force and the clear enemy of the pro-slavery movement.
1. Lincoln became nationally famous as a result of his debates with Douglas, which we are about to get to. In those debates, he defined himself and the South knew what they were getting. As to what his real intentions were in 1860, and what the South perceived they were, these are both issues that we need to discuss in depth when the narrative reaches the 1860 election.2. Fremont was a glory-hunter who's primary purpose in life was his own ambition, and he was joined at this by his wife, who had the same purpose. We will get to them a little later, they both played a role in some of the early battles out west.Lincoln is known to have stated his intent was to preserve the Union. Do you think Fremont's position in the '56 election branded the party as anti-slavery and regardless of what Lincoln said 1860 he was running as a Republican and therefore anti-slavery in the eyes of Southerners?John C. Fremont was the first Republican party candidate for PResident. His platform was the first of its kind in the nation as it openly attacked slavery, slavery power of the deep south and condemned outright the Kansas-Nebraska Act and ensuing pro-slavery events.That just seems odd.Meanwhile, the GOP who was just 2 years old was immediately a force and the clear enemy of the pro-slavery movement.