Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Cash does not appear to have read the Dred Scott Decision. He certainly misrepresents it.
Wrong on both counts.
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Originally Posted by RebProf
Any basic history of the period shows that the Scott Decision ruled the Missiour Compromise unconstitutional and stated that only states could end slavery; the president and congress were ruled to have no power in the matter. There is no need to play semantic games--if the president and congress could have ended slavery there would have been no need for the 13th Amendment.
If you find a text on Constitutional Law, see what it says about obiter dictum.
Once the Court has ruled on a case, the case is over. Everything after that is obiter dictum and not law.
Once Taney ruled that Dred Scott was not a citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in a Federal Court, the case was over. Nothing that followed was necessary for that ruling. It was all obiter dictum.
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Originally Posted by RebProf
I stand by my position on Cooper Union and Cash's quotation from Lincoln proves my point.
No, it proves you misrepresented what Lincoln said.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
Look at the last lines of Lincoln's remarks. If the Republican Party's Moderate branch does not prevail will the number of John Browns be increased or decreased?
You're still misrepresenting what Lincoln said.
"And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization?"
Not just the moderate Republicans prevailing, but actually breaking up the Republican Party--destroying it so it no longer exists.
"Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling---that sentiment---by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it."
Again, not just the prevailing of the moderate Republicans, but the actual breaking up of the Republican Party so it no longer exists.
"You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?"
Again, if they can't use the ballot box, what will they turn to?
Not just the moderate Republicans prevailing, but antislavery people having no one to vote for because the Republican Party no longer existed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
Lincoln argued that "my way is best and more abolitionist violence is the alternative." I suggest that you go read Sutherland, et al., on Lincoln and his attitude toward John Brown.
Is that Daniel Sutherland? Which book are you referencing in particular? I suggest that you go read Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
I have cited numerous instances of abolitionist violence.
Now you're misrepresenting your own writing. You've cited Free State violence in Kansas, which was in retaliation for proslavery violence," and you've cited John Brown and his followers. The retaliatory violence in Kansas does not support your assertion about abolitionists turning to terrorism, since it was done in retaliation for what the proslavery thugs were already doing. Everyone here has conceded John Brown and his followers as an isolated incident. You haven't shown any other violent acts by abolitionists.
I'd forgotten about you asking this question the other night. I wish to know the answer or I'm coming to do a sit in on one of your classes until you tell me!! :-)
Were my hints broad enough? I thought that some others would know this stuff.
In September, 1851, a Charles Gorsach left his plantation in Maryland to recover four escaped slaves. He was accompanied by his two adult sons, a federal marshal and half a dozen supporters. On Sept. 11, he approached the house of William Parker in
Christiana, Pennsylvania. Parker had escaped slavery himself several years before and was sheltering Gorsach's four slaves in his house. Parker met the posse at his door and refused to let them enter or recognize the marshal went the warrent was read to him.
Verbal threats ensued, a crowd of neighbors began to assemble. Parker's wife blew a horn as a signal, and more men, both black and white began to arrive, carrying guns, or clubs. Shots were fired both ways, everyone missed. More threats, weapons were brandished. One quaker neighbor tried to warn Gorsach away unsuccessfully, while another tried to placate the crowd. A violent grapple between Parker, Gorsach, one of Gorsach's son, and marshal and others. Gorsach was killed by a shotgun blast(shooter unknown), his son wounded. The posse scattered.
Parker and the four slaves left for Canada the next day, and eventually ended up in Toronto. Some of the crowd were arrested and tried for treason in federal court. It took the jury fifteen minutes to acquit them.
Strange note: John Wilkes Booth was a playmate of Dickinson Gorsach, the one of the dead man's sons who was wounded in the melee. Thaddeus Stevens was one of the defense lawyers for the men tried in the riot.
There you have it: the federal government invading a sovereign state to enforce a law that benefited only one section of the country. As a strong advocate of state's rights, you must be appalled.
By the way the reason I have for much time to post today is Mother Nature has dropped a foot of snow of Eastern Mass. No School!
The book I got this from is: "Bloody Dawn" by a guy named Slaughter. Should be easy to remember.
Matthew.
That story -- thank you for it by the way -- doesn't sound like an abolitionist act of terrorism. It sounds like an armed invasion was repelled.
Gorsach was probably within his rights and legal, given that he had a Federal Marshall with him. However, six supporters and two sons makes an intimidating armed force of 10 -- sounds a bit provocative. The marshal and sons would have been less a threat.
Or did I wrongly assume you meant this as an equivalent to abolitionist terrorism.
Resistance to the Fugitive Slave laws is completely understandable. People can understand that they "must not" do thus or such; but they are universally hard put to agree that they "must" do something -- especially when that something is as abhorrent as slavery was to many northerners.
The Underground Railroad has been given far more "feel good" press than it deserves. Actual numbers may have been around 1,000 per year. As a percentage, even annually for 10 years -- you do the math. As to the slaveholders directly involved in the offense....
The great outcry and gnashing of southern teeth was over a very, very insignificant offense. Do you suppose that there was another purpose behind the overloud protests?
Ole
I get it. Invasion. Technically, it wasn't the government but an agent of the government acting in a lawful capacity. From the Pennsylvania side, it must have looked like an invasion.
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Interesting, this incident. I suppose it may qualify as a 'violent act' of an 'abolitionist', but Matt's quotes indicate that it was uncertain who shot who, and that the 'others' were acquitted, so I am not convinced that it qualifies as a verifiable example of a "violent act of an abolitionist". (I need to ponder this.)
Also, I think there is a somewhat significant difference here, tho, in that William Parker was not what was commonly thought of as an 'abolitionist' (that is a Yankee Black Republican, etc. ....?). He was a former slave.
Don't know enough about this to agree that J. Brown was the only 'abolitionist terrorist', but I'd be interested to learn about the other of your 2 'incidents'.
Respects, Sam
__________________ -
"It was a very peculiar time." - Franklin D. Cossitt
Ancestors in USA Army: 6th IA Inf, 11th IL Cav, 1st AL Cav; 122nd NY Inf; 6th MI Cav; 35th MA Inf; 100th IL Inf; 1st CO Inf/Cav; 22nd IN Inf
Obviously Parker was an abolitionist. He abolished his own slavery, and he was busy abolishing slavery for as many other fugitives as he could.
He was in favor of violence, organized a minute man like group among local blacks to resist slave catchers, and was quite a threat to white slaveowners, killing at least one more than William Lloyd Garrison ever did. Of course you had to go to his farm to get shot at.
Ole that's an interesting point. Mr. Gorsach "looked like an invasion" from the Pennsylvania side. I imagine John Brown "looked like an invasion" too. So who's right and who's wrong?
Parker and the four fugitives for resisting Gorsach and the marshal?
Parker's friends and neighbors for helping him?
Gorsach for wanting to get 2000 dollars worth of human flesh back? According to the source I read, he was a nice guy, but was royally teed off that these guys had runaway and embarassed him.
Having a Fugitive slave law, which produced these situations? Having slavery in the first place?
OK, OK you've twisted my arm. The other case of deadly abolitionist violence.
Anthony Burns, escaped from slavery by stowing away on a ship in Alexandria, VA. in March, 1854. He moved to Boston, where he found a job in a clothing store. In May, he was seized by slavecatchers and detained in the federal courthouse in Boston. An angry mob composed of whites and blacks, armed with clubs, axes, and at least one revolver, rushed the courthouse, defended by police and federal marshals. Two men, one white and one black pushed their way inside, when the mob's improvised battering ram cracked open the courthouse door, but were pushed back outside into the crowd, by the marshals. During the melee, one of the marshals were stabbed, and eventually bled to death.
President Pierce sent marines, a revenue cutter(modern equivalent, coast guard cutter), more federal marshals, cavalry, artillery and state militia companies. June 2, this force took Burns aboard ship and back into slavery.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was the white man who broke into the courthouse. Later of course he became one of the Secret Six who supported Brown. Wonder what his motivation was? Tariffs, maybe. Later in the war, Higginson, apparently still concerned about state's rights, led a regiment of black troops. Still later, evidently satisfied whether the Constitution allowed secession or no, he became Emily Dickinson's editor.
A committee of Bostonians, as part of the plot to dominate the South, raised 1300 dollars to buy Burns' freedom. His new owner, who had brought him for 900 dollars made a tidy profit, soothing the cruel sting of the tarriff on ketchup.
Burns became a minister of his own church, when the church he used to belong to in Virginia cast him out for disobeying God's will by running away. Burns wrote an angry letter to his old Church, saying he hadn't broken any "real laws" since he had been kidnapped at birth into slavery. Burns died, still a young man, of TB in 1862.
One New Englander said, after seeing Burns marched by federal troops through the streets of Boston, that he had been a good conservative Whig, but now he was a "stark, raving abolitionist."
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