Why Did the Slave Beat His Master?

On March 22, 1861, the New York Times reprinted for its readers a story from Virginia that had appeared three days before in the Petersburgh Express. The story related an account of a slave in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, who had beaten his owner unconscious. It read:

Mr. SUTHERLAND was out on his plantation superintending the clearing of a patch of new ground, and directed NED, a robust fellow, to lift a log to a pile of burning brush. The negro replied that he would not do it, which Mr. SUTHERLAND interpreted to mean that the negro did not feel able to lift the log, and stooped to do so himself. While stooping, NED seized a big stick, and striking his master a powerful blow over the back, felled him to the earth. He then repeated his blows until the stick was broken in many pieces, and Mr. SUTHERLAND lay apparently lifeless. Thinking he had accomplished his purpose, he started off, and had proceeded about fifty yards when he saw his master attempt to rise. Seizing another stick, he returned, and striking Mr. SUTHERLAND another severe blow across the face, mashed his nose flat to the face, and then continued to beat him across the arms, breast and legs, until the flesh was pummeled to the consistency of jelly. Some small negroes were present when the beating commenced, but they were mere children, and dreaded the ferocity of NED as though he had been a tiger, and were therefore prevented from offering assistance. As soon as they could get to the house the intelligence was communicated to some of the neighbors, and all turned out en masse to hunt us the fiend, some three or four going to the assistance of Mr SUTHERLAND, and conveying him to his residence. Upon reaching the house he manifested indications of returning consciousness, and at last accounts, Sunday, was alive, though in a very precarious condition.

The search of the neighbors for NED proved unavailing, but the account of the outrage reached this city, and on Sunday night Mr. GEORGE ALSOP, who knew the scoundrel, succeeded in arresting him at the depot of the South-Side Railroad in this city, and lodged him in jail. He will be transferred to the County of Dinwiddle for trial.

While Ned was not the first slave to attack his owner and the article provides no insight into why Ned committed such a desperate act, the timing is interesting. Just as some bold slaves sought escape at outposts like Sumter and Pickens in March 1861, perhaps Ned felt the time was ripe to turn the tables on his owner. Certainly, Ned’s actions might have had nothing to do with crisis atmosphere in Virginia in Spring 1861. But with slaveholders in Virginia on edge (see Civil War Emancipation for February 26, 2011) no doubt the mood also affected their slaves.

Civil War Emancipation invites the thoughts of its readers on this incident.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/22/news/a-virginian-beaten-by-his-own-slave.html

Alexander H. Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech

When historians want to cite evidence of the Civil War being about slavery, they often make use of Alexander H. Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech. As Civil War Emancipation has demonstrated ad nauseum there is plenty of other evidence on this point.

So why the attention to Stephen’s speech, which he gave in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861? Well, for one thing, by then Alexander H. Stephens was Vice President of the Confederacy. He was never really active day-to-day in the Confederate government, but Stephens was still a high-ranking and influential figure. And since the speech was extemporaneous, Alexander Stephens was probably more candid than he might have been in a prepared address. Certainly, he was much more forthcoming on the connection between sectional conflict and slavery than Jefferson Davis ever would be, a man who already recognized the political need to distance the Confederacy from slavery in rhetoric if not in reality.

From Alexander H. Stephen’s rhetoric in the Cornerstone speech and the fact he clarified his remarks prior to publication with the journalist who took it down, Stephen’s clearly wanted to signal that the Confederate government need not soft pedal on slavery.  He stated concerning slavery in this address:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.” The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders “is become the chief of the corner” the real “corner-stone” in our new edifice. I have been asked, what of the future? It has been apprehended by some that we would have arrayed against us the civilized world. I care not who or how many they may be against us, when we stand upon the eternal principles of truth, if we are true to ourselves and the principles for which we contend, we are obliged to, and must triumph.

Ultimately, of course, Alexander H. Stephens would be proven wrong. The races really were equal and black Union soldiers would prove it on the battlefield during the war. The Confederacy also ultimately could not withstand northern military force when their system was being undermined on a daily basis by the slaves whose labor kept it functioning. Yet Stephens was correct that the looming conflict was about slavery. Even as he tried to distance himself in later years from his Cornerstone Speech, Stephen’s still had to admit “Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession.”

Certainly, his congressional friend and fellow former Whig, Abraham Lincoln, agreed with him on that point, when he wrote Stephens just before Christmas 1860, offering reassurances his incoming administration had no intention of interfering with slavery where it already existed. Lincoln concluded his letter of December 22, 1860, writing, “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.” No doubt Alexander H. Stephens would have agreed with his Lincoln’s characterization of the problem, even if he couldn’t believe his old friend’s reassurances of non-interference.

Source for the Cornerstone Speech: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76

Source for Alexander H. Stephen’s late clarification on the Cornerstone Speech: http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/cw/cw223.htm

Source for Abraham Lincoln’s leter to Alexander H. Stephens, dated December 20, 1861: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1073

Arkansas Makes Demands Concerning Slavery

Arkansas, like the entire Upper South, was torn on the issue of secession during Spring 1861. The state’s secession convention assembled on March 4, 1861, to consider the state’s future vis-à-vis the Union. It is clear that conditional unionists in Arkansas quickly took control of the gathering, as on March 20 rather than seceding, the convention issued a series of resolutions expressing its grievances and making constitutional demands to satisfy them. The March 2o resolution demonstrates that in Arkansas, like other southern states, the crisis that would shortly lead to the outbreak of the Civil War, centered on slavery.

Section 1 of the resolution statements criticized the Republican Party that the convention believed was an enemy of slavery.

“1. The people of the northern States have organized a political party, purely sectional in its character; the central and controlling idea of which is hostility to the institution of African slavery, as it exists in the southern States, and that party has elected a President and Vice President of the United States, pledged to administer the government upon principles inconsistent with the rights, and subversive of the interests of the people of the southern States.”

Section 2 expressed a number of grievances common to the southern states related to slavery, including the Republican Party’s intention of closing the territories to slavery and the refusal of northern states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

“They have denied to the people of the southern States the right to an equal participation in the benefits of the common territories of the Union by refusing them the same protection to their slave property therein that is afforded to other property, and by declaring that no more slave states shall be admitted into the Union. They have by their prominent men and leaders, declared the doctrine of the irrepressible conflict, or the assertion of the principle that the institution of slavery is incompatible with freedom, and that both cannot exist at once, that this continent must be wholly free or wholly slave. They have, in one or more instances, refused to surrender negro thieves to the constitutional demand of the constituted authority of a sovereign State.”

Section 3 exhibited the Arkansas convention’s fear the Lincoln administration would seek to end slavery in areas of exclusive federal jurisdiction.

“They have declared that Congress possesses, under the constitution, and ought to exercise, the power to abolish slavery in the territories, in the District of Columbia, and in the forts, arsenals and dock-yards of the United States, within the limits of the slaveholding States.”

Section 4 berated northern state legislatures for passing personal liberty laws to obstruct the Fugitive Slave Act.

“They have, in disregard of their constitutional obligations, obstructed the faithful execution of the fugitive slave laws by enactments of their State legislatures.”

Section 5 complained the northern states would not allow slaveholders temporarily to bring their slaves securely into free territory.

“They have denied the citizens of southern States the right of transit through non-slaveholding States with their slaves, and the right to hold them while temporarily sojourning therein.”

Section 6 manifested the contempt of white Southerners for those northern states that had given African Americans suffrage, clearing articulating a racialized view of citizenship.

“They have degraded American citizens by placing them upon an equality with negroes at the ballot box.”

The proposed changes to the U.S. Constitution of the Arkansas convention also demonstrated slavery’s centrality to their March 20 resolution.  The first proposed amendment stated:

“The President and Vice President of the United States shall each be chosen alternately from a slaveholding and non-slaveholding state–but, in no case, shall both be chosen from slaveholding or non-slaveholding states.”

The second proposed amendment, like the Crittenden Compromise, sought to apply the old Missouri Compromise line to the territories, allowing slavery below the line and prohibiting slavery above it.

“In all the territory of the United States how [sic] held, or which may hereafter be acquired, situate north latitide 36 deg. 30 min., slavery, or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, is prohibited while such territory shall remain under territorial government. In all the territory now held, or which may hereafter be acquired, south of said line of latitude, slavery of the African race is hereby recognized as existing, and shall not be interfered with by Congress, but shall be protected as property by all the departments of the territorial government during its continuance. And when any territory, north or south of said line, within such boundaries as Congress may prescribe, shall contain the population requisite for a member of Congress, according to the then federal ratio of representation of the people of the United States, it shall, if its form of government be republican, be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, with or without slavery, as the constitution of such new State may provide.”

The third proposed amendment essentially would have tied the hands of Congress in regard to slavery, except to defend it.

“Congress shall have no power to legislate upon the subject of slavery, except to protect the citizen in his right of property in slaves.”

The fourth proposed amendment provided for compensation by the federal government for slaveholders unable to recover fugitive slave(s) in the free states when the owner was prevented by violence from doing so. It also tried to hold slave rescuers  responsible for financial losses of slaveholders on such occasions. (This amendment was similar to Section 7 of the proposed constitutional amendments of the Washington Convention of February 1861.)

“That in addition to the provisions of the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of the constitution of the United States, Congress shall have the power to provide by law, and it shall be its duty so to provide, that the United States shall pay the owner who shall apply for it, the full value of his fugitive slave in all cases when the marshal or other officer whose duty it was to arrest said fugitive was prevented from doing so by violence; or when, after the arrest, said fugitive was rescued by force, and the owner thereby prevented and obstructed in the pursuit of his remedy for the recovery of his fugitive slave under the said clause of the constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof. And in all such cases, when the United States shall pay such fugitive, they shall have the right, in their own name, to sue the county in which said violence, intimidation, or rescue was committed, and to recover from it, with interest and damages, the amount paid by them for said fugitive slave. And the said county, after it has paid said amount to the United States, may for its indemnity, sue and recover from the wrong doers or rescuers, by whom the owner was prevented from the recovery of his fugitive slave, in like manner as the owner himself might have sued and recovered.”

The fifth proposed amendment intended to prevent states from passing personal liberty laws to obstruct the recovery of fugitive slaves.

“The third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of the constitution, shall not be construed to prevent any of the States from having concurrent jurisdiction with the United States, by appropriate legislation, and through the action of their judicial and ministerial officers, from enforcing the delivery of fugitives from labor to the person to whom such service or labor is due.”

The sixth proposed amendment would guarantee slaveholders the right to bring securely their slaves temporarily or in transit through the free states.

“Citizens of slaveholding States when traveling through, or temporrially [sic] sojourning with their slaves in non-slaveholding States, shall be protected in their right of property in such slaves.”

The seventh proposed amendment would have prohibited African Americans from voting in any state, even in the North.

“The elective franchise and the right to hold office, whether federal, State, territorial or municipal, shall not be exercised by persons of the African race, in whole or part.”

The eighth and final proposed amendment would have prohibited changes to Arkansas’ proposed amendments and to the existing sections of the U.S. Constitution dealing with the three-fifths clause and the extradition of fugitive slaves, without the consent of all the states.

So it can be fairly said that slavery was integral to the grievances and remedies in Arkansas’ resolution of March 20, 1861. Obviously, conditional unionism in Arkansas would not be satisfied except by enshrining major protections for slavery into the U.S. Constitution. But the strength of unionism was such in Arkansas in March 1861 that the state refused to secede without giving the northern states a chance to meet its demands.

Source: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=7352

Not Knowing the Future

From the perspective of 150 years later it is possible to apply penetrating hindsight to Spring 1861. For example, the March 10 edition of Civil War Emancipation was able to look at a few instances of slaves seeking sanctuary at Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens soon after Lincoln’s inauguration, and know that the African Americans who acted so daringly were the harbinger of many thousands to come. The first stirrings, in other words, of nearly four million slaves who collectively by their actions would help destroy the peculiar institution in the United States.

Yet the people of 1861 did not know that slavery’s end in North America was just over the horizon. March 18, 1861, brought two articles in the New York Times that amply illustrate that reality.

The first article was a column by the Times‘ Washington, D.C., correspondent, writing as “Observer,” analyzing what the departure of the Lower South portended for the future of slavery in the remaining slave states of the Union. The columnist believed the Lower South’s secession had broken forever the power of slaveholder interests in Congress, and left the long-term survival of slavery in the Upper South in question although he refused to speculate how much longer it would survive.

Observer wrote:

If the States which have attempted to secede from the Union succeed in their enterprize, by the acknowledgment of their independence on the part of this Government, the bereavement will bring with it this consolation, at least, that we, at the same time, get rid of three-fifths of the slave population, while parting with only about one-eleventh of the white race. In round numbers, the fifteen Slave States have now 4,000,000 of slaves. Of these the seceding States contain 2,350,000, which leaves in the Union only 1,650,000. The extent of this relief can be appreciated if we consider that the slaves are now nearly an eighth of the population, whereas with this reduction they will constitute little more than a seventeenth. We shall have, after the aggregate population of the seceding States is taken away, more than twenty-seven millions, of which, as above stated, 1,650,000 will be slaves. In 1850, with only 23,191,000 population, we had 3,204,000 slaves. In 1820, when the aggregate population was 9,638,000, the slaves numbered 1,538,000, and the proportion of the latter to the former was as 1 to 5 and 11-hundredths.

The result of secession will be, therefore, to reduce the burden of Slavery to within manageable proportions From 1 to 5, the proportion of slaves to whites forty years ago, to 1 to 17 at present, is a consolation, at least, for the loss of South Carolina and the six States which adopt her barbarous and desperate policy; and when this deed of madness shall be accomplished, it may be doubtful if the Free States will be in a hurry to take back into the Union the enormous element of weakness and strife which secession will remove.

Whatever may now take place, great good will result from the folly of the Secessionists to the cause of freedom. Whether the Border and Middle Slave States remain in connection with the North, or go with the Cotton Confederacy, the champions of Slavery will find, when they come to their senses, that the institution has received a blow from which it will never recover. They themselves have dealt the death wound, and though it may stagger and reel for years, it can never regain its position or reinstate itself in the public confidence. Whatever time-servers may say, at present the oligarchy may put it in their pipes and smoke it, that Slavery will henceforth be regarded, North and South, as an institution full of peril, pecuniary, social and political; and the thought ever uppermost in the minds of the people will in future be, “How can this great evil, this curse, this night-mare of Slavery, be got rid of?” “What shall we do with it?” will now become the puzzling problem for the Southern people. The demagogues have ridden the hobby until it has broken down under them, and can never be brought into the field again.

I expect to be able to show in a few days that the slaves in the States which adhere to the Union have only increased at a rate of some six or seven per cent. in ten years, while the aggregate increase in all the States has been about 29 or 30. It cannot be doubted that in the next decade the number of slaves in the eight adhering States will decline, in consequence of the removals to the South.

The talk of compelling the Northern Slave States to join the Southern Confederacy by passing laws prohibiting importations, is all gammon.Such laws have heretofore existed, but they were ever dead letters on the statute books in consequence of the demand for slaves. On the contrary, the Northern Slave States have it in their power to compel the Southern Confederacy to receive their surplus, or even to come back into the Union, by threatening the Abolition of Slavery. The Free States will gladly assist in the emancipation of the 1,650,000 now in the Union, whenever they are called upon by their Southern neighbors. So let King Cotton beware.

Another article on March 18, 1861, exemplifying the uncertainty over the future of slavery was a reprint by the New York Times of a piece in the London Times, dated March 1, bemoaning Great Britain’s failure to suppress the African slave trade and convince other nations, including the United States, to free their slaves as the British Empire had decades before.

The London Times article seethed with frustration, in part reading:

… there was enough of vehemence in our old convictions to urge us not only to persuade but to coerce all the rest of the world to feel as we felt and to be penitent as we were penitent. We lavished our money, we concentrated our efforts, we exerted all our influence, we compromised our political relations, we coerced the weak, and we went to the verge of making war upon the strong, in order to bring the rest of the world to join with us in our crusade against the traffic in mankind. Never was there in the history of our race so magnificent and so disinterested an enthusiasm. When the great book of history shall become so vaat that far-off generations shall be unable to seize any other than the tallest events in the great vista from which they emerge, this work of England must stand out and challenge admiration, as something to which the story of past ages has no parallel. We English alone have been hearty in the cause. We have shamed some by our example, we have bought others by our largesses, and we have deterred others by our power; but of all the peoples of the earth we alone have labored, with gold and with arms, for no other object than for that point of conscience which is to us our “idea” — to put down Slavery and the Slave-trade. Yet we nave not succeeded. While we have been starving our own colonists and suffering our West Indian possessions to return to jungle in very fanaticism, [???] that Slavery must lurk under every contract for labor, other countries have eluded their engagements, or have openly resented our interference. Portugal has required all our attention to keep her at all up to the mark; Spain has impudently repudiated all her promises; France has changed the name, but not the substance; and America has continued the odious traffic at sea under the pretext of a jealousy of her national honor, and has, to her misfortune, nursed Slavery at home and acknowledged it as a domestic institution.

Great as we are, we are not powerful enough to coerce the world. Strong as we are, we must submit to the laws which universally influence human conduct. After all our vain efforts, we are reduced at last to admit that we must be content to attract mankind by their interests, and not pretend to govern them by fear. France claps her hand upon her sword if we presume to ask whether she has slaves or free laborers in the hold of the Charles-et-Georges. Spain laughs at us if we pretend to prevent her from importing as many slaves as she may want in Cuba. America threatens war if we attempt to liberate the live cargo of a vessel covered with the Stars and Stripes.

So from the perspective of March 1861, slavery still appeared so entrenched that not even mighty Great Britain could by its will completely suppress the African slave trade or persuade other nations to abandon slavery. Slavery seemed, while embattled, quite stubbornly alive. We would do well, celebrating the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War and the coming of emancipation, to remember that in Spring 1861 the peculiar institution appeared to have a future (however uncertain) and that the events soon to transpire were by no means foreordained.

Lincoln and the 13th Amendment (1861 version)

Disunion in the New York Times recently described Abraham Lincoln early in his presidency as a “Rookie Executive” and it was true. Lincoln had no real executive experience before becoming president, and even in his law partnership he tended to concentrate on litigation and not administration.

Yet despite his inexperience, early on Lincoln demonstrated he would be diligent in handling his executive duties. A good example is the 1861 version of the 13th amendment–or the Corwin amendment as it is often called–that had passed Congress on March 2, just before his taking office. On March 16, 1861, Lincoln dutifully forwarded this proposed constitutional amendment to the states to consider its ratification.

The Corwin amendment was dealt with in an earlier edition of Civil War Emancipation. But since it is short and simple, here again is the text: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

The Corwin amendment would have given constitutional force to Abraham Lincoln’s pledge not to interfere with slavery where it already existed. When Lincoln’s letters forwarding it to the states resurfaced several years ago, some people tried to sensationalize the discovery, asserting it showed Lincoln was not the “Great Emancipator.” However, to anyone with a factual knowledge of the Civil War, it was not inconsistent with the position on slavery held by Lincoln in March 1861. To whit, that he merely wanted to prevent the institution from expanding, and even if he had opposed the amendment he still had a duty as head of the executive branch to forward it to the states for consideration.

In any case, the letters forwarding the Corwin Amendment, and the controversy that emerged when they resurfaced, are a useful reminder of where Lincoln stood on emancipation early in his first term as president. However much Lincoln found slavery personally distasteful and saw its long-term survival as inconsistent with American ideals, he was willing to continue tolerating the institution where it already existed and  was not going to obstruct a constitutional amendment that might tie the federal government’s hands about slavery. Which is not to say Lincoln was enthusiastic about the Corwin amendment and neither was the nation. It was only ratified in three states (arguably two) and never came close to entering the U.S. Constitution. It would take a bloody Civil War to achieve a just resolution of the slavery controversy, even as in March 1861 some people must have hoped but not have been enthuiastic that the Corwin Amendment would settle the matter.

Disunion – A Moment of Unintentional Candor

Yesterday’s Disunion in the New York Times has a fascinating piece by Ben Tarnoff discussing the frustrating problems of the Confederate government in financing its war effort. Failed efforts at taxation and limited capital for borrowing in the South meant the Confederacy largely financed its war effort literally by printing money, a method that paid bills in the short run at the price of causing devastating inflation in the long run.

The central figure in Tarnoff’s piece is Christopher Gustavus Memminger, who became the Confederate’s first Secretary of the Treasury. Memminger attempted to institute a taxation system for the Confederacy principally based on real estate and slave property, the South’s two most important forms of wealth.

According to Ben Tarnoff:

Memminger wanted slave-owners to bear the brunt of the taxes. “The origin and character of the war in which we are engaged,” he declared, “would seem to make this species of property more particularly bound for its support.” After much foot-dragging, the legislators finally complied in August. They didn’t tax one kind of property more than another, however. Instead, they adopted a uniform rate — of one-half of one percent.

The tax turned out to be a fiasco. Sentiment against it ran high, contributing to delays in collection and resistance among the states. Relatively little revenue came into Memminger’s coffers as a result. The Confederacy had been founded on the principle of the sovereignty of the states; any attempt by the central government to assert itself, even to support a war fought for its survival, would be met with mistrust.

While the failed effort to collect taxes helped to doom the Confederacy, in attempting to justify the taxes Secretary Memminger offered a moment of unintentional candor about the South’s real reason for secession. In arguing that slaveholders were obliged to help pay for the war because it was being fought to preserve their property rights, Memminger  explicitly acknowledged the Civil War really was about slavery. And the failure of slaveholders to pay taxes to the Confederate government, based on their land and slaves, besides demonstrating the aversion to taxes and central authority, demonstrates the beginning of a culture of denial in the South that the Civil War was about slavery that persists to the present day.

Roger Taney Does a Good Deed

Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1861, is probably best remembered for writing the majority opinion in the infamous Dred Scott decision and its atrocious statement that black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Yet on March 14, 1861, he delivered the majority opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court in Kentucky v. Dennison considerably friendlier to African Americans, by implication if not by design. The case involved extradition law and whether federal courts could compel state governors to honor warrants of extradition from other states.

The case had begun in October 1859 when Willis Lago, a free man of color, helped a slave named Charlotte to escape from her Kentucky master. Lago was indicted by a grand jury in Woodford County, Kentucky, for assisting in the escape which was a crime under Kentucky law. By the time Kentucky authorities tried to bring Lago into custody, he was in Ohio. So Kentucky sought to extradite Willis Lago by applying to William Dennison, the Governor of Ohio. Dennison, an avowed opponent of the fugitive slave law (which wasn’t applicable because Lago was free), refused to honor the extradition request. Kentucky took Dennison to federal court to compel him to deliver up Willis Lago for prosecution.

Roger B. Taney, writing for a unanimous court, indicated that Governor Dennison had a duty to honor a request for extradition, but federal authority could not compel Dennison, or any other state governor, to do so. Chief Justice Taney wrote, “It is true that Congress may authorize a particular State officer to perform a particular duty, but if he declines to do so, it does not follow that he may be coerced or punished for his refusal. . . . if the Governor of Ohio refuses to discharge this duty, there is no power delegated to the General Government, either through the Judicial Department or any other department, to use any coercive means to compel him.”

While Kentucky v. Dennison was a victory for states’ rights, in this case it prevented Kentucky from prosecuting a free man of color for helping a slave to escape to freedom and by implication made the federal Fugitive Slave Act harder to enforce. Certainly this was not Roger Taney’s intention, who no doubt saw the case in light of the larger issue of federalism. Nonetheless, it was an important blow against slavery on the eve of the Civil War.

Interestingly, Kentucky v. Dennison remained the controlling U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether the federal government could compel governors to honor extradition requests until 1987, when the court overturned it in the case of Puerto Rico v. Branstad, granting federal courts the authority to compel extradition.

For the full text of Roger B. Taney’s opinion in Dennison v. Kentucky visit the website of Legal Information Institute at the Cornell University Law School at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0065_0066_ZO.html

Slavery in the Permanent Confederate Constitution

On March 11, 1861, the Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, adopted a permanent constitution for their new nation to supersede the provisional constitutional they had hastily adopted a little over a month before. Civil War Emancipation has already dealt with the latter document as it pertained to slavery. Today, it will deal with the permanent constitution on the same issue.

Like the provisional constitution, it was largely based on the U.S. Constitution, but with significant differences. As Stephanie McCurry writes in yesterday’s Disunion in the New York Times, “They purged the text of all of the ambivalences, compromises and hedges about slavery, representation and the power of the federal government that had plagued the republic since the founding.” Also, like the provision constitution, the permanent Confederate Constitution dealt with slavery directly, not obliquely and by implication as in the U.S. Constitution. Clearly, the Confederate States of America was to be a slaveholders’ republic and felt no need to fudge that fact in its highest law.

The permanent Confederate Constitution also added to the provisions dealing with slavery in the provisional document.  In addition to the sections in the provisional constitution on fugitive slaves (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) and the ban on the foreign importation of slaves except from the United States (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 and 2), four new clauses in the permanent Confederate Constitution dealt with peculiar institution.

Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 dealt with the taxation and enumeration of slaves, interestingly retaining the three-fifths clause from the U.S. Constitution. “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States, which may be included within this Confederacy, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all slaves.”

Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 made slaves a sancrosanct type of property within the Confederacy, with special protection under law. “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”

Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 guaranteed the right of slaveholders to freely transit and stay with their slaves unmolested within any state of the Confederacy. “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.”

Article IV, Section 3, Clause 3 established that in any new territories gained by Confederacy, slaveholders would enjoy the same property rights to their slaves as in the existing states. “The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”

Clearly, slavery was a more important part of the permanent Confederate Constitution than in the U.S. Constitution. It constitutes one of the most significant differences between the two documents. And slavery would not have been such an important part of the permanent Confederate constitution had slavery not been the raison d’etre for the founding of what amounted to a slaveholders’ republic.

The Slaves Begin to Act

In yesterday’s Disunion in the New York Times, Adam Goodheart wrote a highly significant piece related to emancipation. Goodheart relates the story of a young fugitive slave who on March 11, 1861, sought sanctuary by making his way across Charleston Harbor to Fort Sumter.

A day later, more slaves took the same action at another federal outpost in the Deep South, Fort Pickens, near Pensacola, Florida. The officer in charge of the post, Lt. Adam Slemmer, reported:

On the morning of the 12th instant four negroes (runaways) came to the fort entertaining the idea that we were placed here to protect them and grant them their freedom. I did what I could to teach them the contrary. In the afternoon I took them to Pensacola and delivered them to the city marshal to be returned to their owners. That same night four more made their appearance. They were also turned over to the authorities next morning.

Although the escapees did not find the refuge they sought (Major Anderson at Fort Sumter also returned his young fugitive), that slaves hundreds of miles apart were taking the same desperate step is quite significant. They were the vanguard of many thousands of African Americans that would seek sanctuary in Union lines during the Civil War. They demonstrate the slaves’ awareness that their status ultimately underlay the escalating conflict between North and South and showed their willingness to act on that belief.

It also was probably no coincidence that slaves began to flee to Union lines within days of Abraham Lincoln taking office as President of the United States. They no doubt overheard whites talking bitterly about Lincoln and calling him a “Black Republican” or worse, and decided that if this man was so hated by white Southerners, the new President and the federal soldiers that represented him at isolated outposts like Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens must be their friends.

It also was significant that in mid-March 1861, the numbers of slaves seeking sanctuary with Union forces was small. It wasn’t just that federal-controlled installations were few by this time in the Lower South. Most slaves, who could reach outposts like Pickens and Sumter, wisely held back waiting to see if the prospect of freedom emerging from the developing conflict was real or illusory. It is not surprising then that the slave who showed up at Fort Sumter on March 11, 1861, as Adam Goodheart relates in Disunion was a juvenile. Actually fleeing to federal troops at that point was a rash action–something a youth might be expected to do.

But no doubt by mid-March 1861, many slaves were thinking of how they might take advantage of the looming conflict to gain their freedom and not just escape was on their mind. Adam Goodheart writes in Disunion that South Carolina authorities eventually refused to allow to return to Fort Sumter, a slave named James, who the federal troops had hired as a servant, because “It seemed that James, who was apparently literate, had exchanged letters with his mother about a possible uprising in which Charleston’s slaves would attack their masters as soon as the first shots were fired between Union and Confederate forces.” No such revolt developed when the Confederates finally attacked Sumter the following month, but it cannot be doubted some slaves in and around Charleston contemplated such a move.

So, as the secession winter gave way to spring, the slaves thought about how they might take advantage of developing events and a bold few even began to do something about it.  Those that acted showed that African Americans would not be passive bystanders as the nation descended into Civil War. They would be joined by thousands of others in the months to come.

Disunion – A Jewish View of American Slavery

Yesterday’s Disunion in the New York Times has a noteworthy essay by Adam Goodheart on Morris J. Raphall, rabbi of New York City’s B’nai Jeshurun synagogue during the Civil War era. In January 1861, Raphall had delivered and published an address entitled, “The Bible View of Slavery.” In it, Raphall reluctantly concluded the Torah justified slavery. Goodheart writes:

The learned sage delved deep into the Hebrew Bible – citing the books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Job and even Exodus – before concluding that “slaveholding is not only recognized and sanctioned as an integral part of the social structure … [but] the property in slaves is placed under the same protection as any other species of lawful property.”

To be fair to Morris J. Raphall, while he justified slavery scripturally he affirmed the humanity of the slave. Goodheart relates:

To be sure, Raphall also found reason to chastise American slaveholders. According to the Bible, he said, “the slave is a person in whom the dignity of human nature is to be respected; he has rights. Whereas, the heathen view of slavery which prevailed at Rome, and which, I am sorry to say, is adopted in the South, reduces the slave to a thing, and a thing can have no rights.” Still, in the end, abolitionists who tried to meddle with slavery were opposing the Lord’s will.

Raphall’s address might have gone unnoticed but for the fact he was in 1861 one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in the United States. Morris J. Raphall had been the first non-Christian to give an opening prayer in the U.S. Congress. Not surprisingly then, he attracted criticism in the North with his defense of slavery. Goodheart explains:

Rabbi Raphall’s sermon . . . sparked a firestorm of controversy among Jews and Christians alike. Another Jewish scholar, Michael Heilprin, weighed in quickly with an erudite discourse attacking Raphall’s justification of slaveholding. The Hebrew word that Raphall had translated as “slave” actually meant “servant,” he said. And Heilprin noted that the servants in the Bible, far from being descendants of Ham, were racially similar to the Jews themselves – and therefore, if anything, God sanctioned “Semitic (not African) Slavery.”

Many critics – especially non-Jewish ones – pointed out the hypocrisy of a rabbi whose forebears had been slaves in Egypt but who endorsed slavery in America.

No doubt in the South, Christian clergymen like Joseph R. Wilson, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia, and Benjamin Morgan Palmer, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, who had and would deliver pro-slavery sermons, would have looked more favorably upon Raphall’s message. It also might have prompted the attack on using the Old Testament to defend slavery made the following month by Joseph Eldridge, pastor of the Congregational Church in Norfolk, Connecticut. In any case, in the highly religious America of the early 186os, as sectional conflict escalated during the secession winter, it is not surprising to see leaders of the faithful marshaling scripture for and against the institution at the heart of the disagreement.