Slavery; THE Cause?

[unionblue]

Tommy,

The people at the time did not see it as a separate or different issue, but as one of an ever expanding slave power and its desire to increase the power and spread of slavery. The idea was first you get slavery approved in the Free States by allowing slaves to be in transit, no matter what your State constitution or will of the people in that state desire. Then you get slaves declared as nothing but property and property of all kinds protected by the US Constitution by way of the US Supreme Court citing State precedence, such as Lemmon vs People, 1860, and then slaves and their masters can stay in transit or remain in a state, Free or otherwise, as long as they like with Federal protection, States rights be ****ed.

At least, that's how some in Congress, and outside of it, viewed the situation, and the idea that the South kept hammering at the issue that slavery could not and should not be restricted, in the territories or in the Free States via the Fugitive Slave Act. Just a few more steps by the Supreme Court and the Federal government and presto! Slavery permitted everywhere in the country, North or South, and protected by law.

Unionblue

Neil,
That may be how they viewed it but it just doesn't make sense. You can cross state boundaries with property, even if said property is illegal in said state. The state can always attach laws if they like, such as signing a bond accepting responsibility for the slave during the transit, which would also have a expiration date. You cannot stay in transit forever. The definition is: Conveyance of people or goods from one place to another.. Nothing about forever. By your logic if a dry county or state has an interstate running through it, no alcohol can be transited upon it through the county/state but must be rerouted. That makes no sense, especially in light of the commerce idea inherent in the constitution. If Missouri decided to stay slave but KY and TN did not then no way could they move.

[unionblue]

Tommy,

Back up and view the forest. I did not say this was 'my logic.' What I am reporting is the view of some with what they thought was a real concern about slavery spreading everywhere, no matter what people in a particular state thought or wanted. Where is your States Rights concern?

Plus, what is the Constitution's view on property? Does property have a higher value than the rights of a citizen or citizens in a state? Is property protected to the degree Southern slave owners said it was in the Constitution?

And remember, the whole thrust of the past few posts I have presented here concerns the idea of a judicial agenda whose purpose was to get the institution of slavery legalized throughout the entire country regardless of how the Free States felt or desired and does the information provided lend any credence to that supposed agenda?

Unionblue

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 07, 2005)

I'm not sure I see an agenda or a violation of State's Rights here. It is no more a case of State's Rights saying a citizen of another state cannot gamble in Vegas if his home state forbids gambling. Or forbidding the bringing the profits from winnings home. Or that if I live in Illinois but buy and sell slaves for a living in Tennessee being told that as a resident of a free state I cannot do so. It would have to go both ways.
As to agenda, I'm just not seeing it. It is a big leap. But if it was deemed unconstitutional, State's Rights is a moot point. I never said that State's Rights exceeded the constitution. I do not see how a State's constitution could forbid property on a train traveling through it's state.


(Message edited by aphillbilly on January 07, 2005)

[unionblue]

Tommy,

You see no agenda? Well, how about this quote by Jefferson Davis.

"Resolved: That it shall be declared, by amendment of the Constitution, that property in slaves, recognized as such by the local law of any of the States of the Union, shall stand on the same footing in all constitutional and federal relations as any other species of property so recognized; and like other property, shall not be subject to be divested or impaired by the local law of ANY other State, either in escape thereto or transit or sojourn of the owner therein; and in no case whatever shall such property be subject to be divested or impaired by any legislative act of the United States or any of the Territories thereof."

Georgia Senator Robert Toombs wanted something a bit more extreme as stated in his quote:

"That none of these provisions nor any other provisions of the Constitution in relation to slavery, (except the African slave trade), shall ever be altered except by the consent of each and all of the States in which slavery exists."

Are you sure you cannot see even the possibility of an agenda that those concerned with the spread of slavery to their Free States might have just a tad of concern over?

And Tommy! I am surprised at you! If a State, in your view, has a right to leave the Union, how can it be that it does not have a right to stop a train coming from outside its borders and seize countraband articles that are legal in another State but illegal in its own? Are you still the Tommy I know? Or has the late night lack of sleep combined with the medication given you another viewpoint?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 07, 2005)

[ole]

<font face="times new roman,times,roman">
Gentlepeople:

One small step for Bill, one giant leap for credibility. The speaker's fear of an "Africanized" nation may have reflected the near-universal belief in the inferiority of races, specifically in this case, the negro. However, in context, it doesn't appear that that was what he was talking about.

In any case, from a sentence in a cautionary statement, we leap to goose-stepping armies guarding pristine borders. Quite an achievement. Amusing and quaint, but a world-record broad jump has been made. (By the way, us Nordics would prefer you use Teutonic as there was little Scandinavian presence at the time and virtually none within your reference.)

From the observations, it is clear that the South (Don't you hate those short-cut words that drag the tarry brush over everyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line? Or north of it, for that matter.) was manipulating for additional legal recognition of the rights of slave owners.

I have to agree with Aphillbilly (may I please use Tommy? It flows so much more tinkly through the fingers.). They wanted the right to travel through states with slaves. The devil is in the details. (Trite. But it will have to do until I find my dictionary.) What constitues travel? Stops? Length? Quantity?

Most of that particular quarrel would seem to be flexing muscles, roaring, and pounding the ground. Clearly, constitutionally, the right to transit was sacrosanct. But the abolitionist faction saw that as an attempt to force recognition of slavery in states that forbid it. So what to do? Pound the ground and scream.
</font>

[unionblue]

Ole,

Therein lies the fear, I think. The South never had backed down before when it came to the issue of slavery, why should it now? This is where the fear of the Northern Free States seemed to be mostly coming from. Not, 'if slavery will spread to the Free States,' but more like, 'if not now, when?'

Unionblue

[ole]

Neil:

You said it much better than I. Thanks.

Ole

[unionblue]

Ole,

Found a newspaper article of the time that seems to voice the concern also:

"Thirty years ago they rubbed out part of the line, and said to [the Slave Trader], 'You may go into the lands of the South, but not into the lands of the North.' This was the Missouri Compromise. Five years ago they rubbed out the rest of the line, and said to him, 'We leave it to the Settlers to decide whether you shall come in or not.' This was the Nebraska Bill. Now they turn humbly to him, hat in hand, and say, 'Go where you please, the land is all yours, the National flag shall protect you, and the National Troops shoot down whoever resists you.' This is the Dred Scott decision."

Pennsylvania newspaper, 1859.

And a quote from Salmon P. Chase, Senator from Ohio, on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, August 24, 1855:

"You may pass it here. You may send it to the other House. It may become law. But its effect will be to satisfy all thinking men that no compromise with slavery will endure, except so long as they serve the interest of slavery."

Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

Neil,

I’m afraid I cannot take the concept of the “Slave Power” at all seriously. Political paranoiacs tend to believe that their opponents are highly organized and pursuing a Machiavellian agenda of long standing. And the belief generally turns out to be a fantasy.

And, when it comes to paranoia, the Northern states in the 1850s had something of a track record. They weren’t merely suspicious of Southerners but also of anyone whose national origins or religion displeased them. And so the Chicago Tribune boasted that the Republican party would not cater to “the grog shops, foreign vote, and Catholic brethren”. It accused the Democrats of pandering “to the lowest class of foreign citizens” and of combining the “forces of Jesuitism and Slavery, of the Pope and the Devil.” According to the Tribune, the Chicago Democratic organization was the “Irish Roman Catholic and Whiskey party of the city.”

Was the “Slave Power” any more real than the anti-American alliance between the Vatican and The Devil conjured up by the fevered imagination of the editor of the Tribune? Personally, I don’t think so.


Ole,

I enjoyed your gentle fun at my expense. I made no mention of goose-stepping armies, of course, and the truth is that the racial attitudes of many ante-bellum Republicans are beyond parody and require no additional satire on my part. A New York Times editorial of 1858 stated that the Republicans had “uniformly and most emphatically repudiated the idea that they had anything whatever to do with negroes or negro rights….and declared, always and everywhere, that they aimed at the good of white men of the country, and had nothing to do with negroes….” It concluded that the North “was not prepared to sacrifice or subordinate the interests of the nation to an abstract love of the negro.”

Lyman Trumbull declared that “We, the Republican party, are the white man’s party.” The Hartford Courant opined that the Republicans intended “to preserve all of this country that they can from the pestilential presence of the black man.” In 1858 the Illinois State Journal praised the Republican state platform as “the basis of the white man’s party” and endorsed Abraham Lincoln as “the representative of the white man”. In 1860 a Republican meeting in Pittsburgh displayed a banner which read “With Lincoln nails and Old Abe’s rails we’ll fence out the N----- Democracy”. And Seward declared that the Negro “is a foreign and feeble element, like the Indians incapable of assimilation.” Finally, the New York Times stated that “the great body of our Northern people prize their political privileges much too highly….to think of sharing them with three or four millions of emancipated blacks.”

So if the Northern people had no intention at all of sharing their political privileges with emancipated blacks, what are we to make of their opposition to slavery? That is something to ponder long and slowly. For 140 years this opposition has been routinely interpreted as a creditable thing, when the truth is exactly the opposite.

Bill