"The Top 100 Influential Figures in American History"

Apart from poor Millard, whom I didn't expect to make the new Atlantic list, several others immediately spring to mind as worthy of consideration. In more or less chronological order:

Andrew Jackson may have been the figurehead, but it was Martin Van Buren who invented the Democratic Party and the Second Party System, then abandoned the party he had created to serve as the presidential candidate for the first non-trivial anti-slavery party, the precursor to the Republican Party.

Daniel Webster's stirring oratory focused and inspired among a generation of Americans unionist sentiment that they would rise to defend when the crisis came.

Abolitionists get all the press, but it was David Wilmot who rose in the House in 1846 to move the famous Proviso that set the country on the road to Civil War.

After crafting and pushing through Congress the Compromise legislation of 1850 that averted civil war for ten years, Stephen A. Douglas's decisions to introduce the Kansas-Nebraska Act and later oppose the Lecompton Constitution gave birth to the Republican Party and placed it on the road to victory in 1860, sparking the war he sought to avoid.

Ann Althouse's musings on the list are worth your time.

About the illustration, entitled Marriage of the Free Soil and Liberty Parties (1848):

A comic portrayal of the alliance between Free Soil Democrats and Whigs and the more extremist abolitionist Liberty party interests during the election campaign of 1848. The factions joined to form the Free Soil party and nominated a presidential candidate in a convention at Buffalo in August. That union is lampooned here as the wedding of Free Soil presidential candidate Martin Van Buren (center left) and a ragged black woman (center right). Van Buren ally Benjamin F. Butler presides over the "marriage." Van Buren, reluctant to embrace the aged bride, is shoved forward by antislavery editor Horace Greeley (left), who says, "Go, Matty, and kiss the bride That is an indispensable part of the ceremony." Van Buren's son John (far left, here called "John Van Barnburner") also urges him on, "Walk up, dad. You can hold your breath till the ceremony is over, and after that you can do what you please." Van Buren says, "I find that politics, as well as poverty, make one acquainted with strange bedfellows." In contrast, the woman beckons with open arms, "Come here, my flower. You is a great stranger, and I want to get acquainted wid you." A black man behind her says of Van Buren, "I nebber hab berry good pinion ob the gemman; but if he ax pardon for all he hab done and said agin us, I will shake hands wid de genman." A black woman (further right) remarks, "Mercy on me! How bashful he is!" Butler, with arms raised and book in one hand, intones, "Who giveth this man to be married to this woman?"

David Wilmot Confers With President Polk

James K. Polk's diary entry for Wednesday December 23, 1846 describes a curious conversation that the president held with David Wilmot.

Four months earlier, as the Congressional session was expiring, Wilmot had lobbed his incendiary Proviso into the debate over the Mexican War. Now, shortly after the beginning of the new term, Wilmot made an appointment to see the president, arriving "[a]fter night" on December 23rd. By coincidence, Charles J. Ingersoll, another Democratic member of the House from Pennsylvania, showed up unannounced shortly after Wilmot did, apparently cramping the conversation somewhat. Nonetheless, the president was able to "hold hold a conversation with him [Wilmot] on the subject of slavery restriction, which had been attached upon his motion at the last Session of Congress to the Bill which proposed to appropriate two millions of Dollars, with a view to enable the Executive to make a Treaty with Mexico."

The strange part is that Wilmot had apparently scheduled the meeting to tell the president that he would not re-introduce his Proviso in the current session:

He expressed an entire willingness to vote for the appropriation without the restriction, and said he would not again move the restriction, but that if it was moved by others he would feel constrained to vote for it.

Polk attempted to reassure Wilmot that he was making the right decision. The Mexican War was not some conspiracy to extend slavery to New Mexico and California. Echoing arguments made by others, the president contended that it would be virtually impossible for slavery to take root in those places. At all events, the Proviso represented an improper attempt to restrict the Executive's power to negotiate a treaty, and as a practical matter would make any peace treaty with Mexico unratifiable by the Senate:

I told him I did not desire to extend slavery, that I would be satisfied to acquire by Treaty from Mexico the Provinces of New Mexico & the Californias, and that in these Provinces slavery could probably never exist, and the great probability was that the question would never arise in the future organization of territorial or State Governments in these territories. I told him that slavery was purely a domestic question, and to restrict the appropriation which had been asked for, so as to require the President to insert it in a Treaty with a Foreign Power, was not only inappropriate and out of place, but that if such a Treaty were made it must be opposed by every Senator from a slave-holding State, and as one third of the Senators could reject a Treaty it could not be ratified, though it might be satisfactory in all other respects. I told him that tramelled with such a restriction I could not use the appropriation at all and would not do so.

Wilmot then reiterated that he would be willing to vote for the so-called $2 Million Bill without any restriction attached. If others renewed the Proviso, he was in favor of non-binding sense-of-Congress language:

He said he would be satisfied with a simple legislative declaration in the Bill of the sense of Congress, without requiring it to be inserted in the Treaty, or, if it was not moved by others, he would be willing to vote for the appropriation without such a restriction in any form.

Ingersoll's presence then aborted the conversation, and Wilmot departed.

I, at least, was surprised to read of Wilmot's expressed flexibility. He had introduced his Proviso less than four months earlier with an intensity of expression that suggested no ground for compromise. To the best of my knowledge, his public pronouncements thereafter demonstrated an unrelenting resolve to bar slavery from previously free territory.

Did Wilmot have a temporary pang of regret that he he had inadvertently caused an earthquake? Was he cynically seeking to demonstrate party loyalty or obtain Polk's favor for a pet cause? Or was the performance nothing but a charade, since he knew that in all probability one or more of his co-conspirators would re-introduce the Proviso, making his pledge irrelevant? (In fact, Preston King gave notice that he would re-introduce the Proviso less than a week later, on December 29, 1846.) And if so, why? Your informed speculation is welcome.

"To keep it as the alternative would but render more certain . . . the conquest of the whole country"

Careful readers of my earlier posts concerning John C. Calhoun’s February 9, 1847 speech against continuation of the war against Mexico may have noticed an oddity in the position that Calhoun took. Calhoun made clear that one of his great concerns was that the acquisition of additional territory would trigger a bitter battle over the status of slavery in the region. In 1846, the Wilmot Proviso represented, in a sense, a hypothetical dispute. If it became a fight over land actually ceded to the United States, things could get ugly fast.

And yet, the position that Calhoun took in February 1847, and continued to advance in January 1848 – adopting a defensive “line” up the Rio Grande to El Paso, and thence due west to the Pacific coast – would not solve this problem. As we all know, this was the line (more or less) eventually established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the ensuing bitter debate over New Mexico and California dominated the halls of Congress for years, until resolved by the Compromise of 1850.

Why, then, did not Calhoun not take the Whig position: “No Territory”? He had been silent on the point in February 1847. In January 1848, however, he explained himself. “No Territory” was not, he believed, a politically realistic option. Worse, if “No Territory” were the only alternative presented, it made more likely the worst possible outcome, annexation of the entire country:

Now let me say, that in asserting that a defensive line was the only alternative to the plan recommended by the president, I have put out of the question the course which most of you [Whig opponents of the war] advocate – taking no indemnity of territory; because I believe that the voice of the country has decided irrevocably against it; and that to keep it as the alternative would but render more certain the adoption of the policy recommended by the Executive, and, in consequence, the conquest of the whole country.

***

The people will find it hard to believe that it was necessary to vote so much money for the purpose of getting territory for indemnity, which you intend to throw away when you get it. But, whatever may be the causes which have led to this state of public opinion, it has, beyond all doubt, decided against any conclusion of this war that does not involve territorial indemnity to some extent. Hence, I repeat, the alternative whether this war shall go on and consummate itself, is between taking a defensive line and adopting the course pointed out by the Executive, and that the decision must be made now; for if it be passed over until another session, the end will be, I doubt not, the subjugation of the whole country, thereby involving us in all the difficulties and dangers which must result from it.

"Zachary Taylor . . . is no more"

I have missed the anniversary by a day, but want to note it anyway. One hundred fifty-nine years ago yesterday, on Wednesday July 10, 1850, Millard Fillmore became the 13th president of the United States.

Fillmore had virtually no notice or time to prepare. Zachary Taylor had initially become ill late in the day on Thursday July 4, and his condition rapidly grew worse. On Sunday July 7, Taylor predicted that “In two days I shall be a dead man.”

However, early in the morning of Tuesday July 9 Taylor rallied, and people thought he was out of danger. John C. Waugh recounts the scene:

At 3:30 Tuesday morning – it was now July 9 – the crisis miraculously seemed to pass and the crowds were told he was out of immediate danger. Bells were rung and bonfires lit in celebration. Officials flocked to the White House with congratulations.

Daniel Webster saw the president at about noon. Satisfied with the president’s condition, he left to return to the Senate. Immediately thereafter, the president suffered a relapse. “[A]s [Webster] was returning to the Senate, word followed him that Taylor had abruptly plunged into a relapse and was unlikely to live through the day. The doctors had taken him off the medicine and said he was in God’s hands.”

Webster proceeded to the Senate, where Fillmore was presiding, and interrupted a speech by South Carolina’s Andrew Butler:

An hour into his speech, [Butler] abruptly stopped. A foreign visitor in the gallery described the scene. Daniel Webster, standing before Butler, was staring sadly at him out of those two cavernous eyes and “indicating with a deprecatory gesture that he must interrupt him on account of some important business.” Butler bowed and fell silent. “A stillness as of death reigned in the house, and all eyes were fixed upon Webster, who himself stood silent for a few seconds, as if to prepare the assembly for tidings of serious import. He then spoke slowly and with that deep and impressive voice which is peculiar to him.”

“A very great misfortune is now immediately impending over the country,” Webster said. “The President of the United States cannot live many hours.” “A thrill, as if from a noiseless electric shock,” the foreign visitor in the gallery later wrote, “had passed through the assembly.” She felt herself grow pale. Webster moved that the Senate adjourn, and it was immediately agreed to.

Zachary Taylor died at 10:30 that night. According to Robert J. Rayback, Vice President Fillmore was informed of Taylor’s death sometime before midnight. A messenger came to Fillmore’s room at the Willard Hotel and delivered a message from the cabinet: “Sir: The . . . painful duty devolves on us to announce to you that Zachary Taylor . . . is no more.”

“Reality,” Rayback recounts, “now burst upon Fillmore with terrible force.” Fillmore composed a message for the cabinet: “I have no language to express the emotions of my heart. The shock is so sudden and unexpected that I am overwhelmed. . . . I . . . shall appoint a time and place for taking the oath of office . . . [at the] . . . earliest moment.”

After a sleepless night, Fillmore formally assumed the presidency on Wednesday July 10, 1850. “At noon before a joint session of both houses, with cabinet present, Judge Branch of the district court administered the Presidential oath of office.”

It can be argued that Fillmore’s first day in office was as productive as any presidential first day in history. Although in shock, Fillmore promptly accepted the resignations of Taylor’s entire cabinet. He also met with Daniel Webster and determined to appoint him as the new Secretary of State. These key moves would lay the groundwork for the new president’s successful resolution of the crisis that had been building for almost four years, ever since David Wilmot first introduced his famous proviso on a hot night in August 1846.

Addendum:

After posting this, I realized that Ed Darrell, who never misses a significant Millard event, had almost certainly noted Millard's accession. And indeed he has: Historical anniversary: July 10, 1850, Millard Fillmore succeeds to the presidency

"Mexico is to us the forbidden fruit"

On May 15, 1846, three days after the Senate effectively authorized war against Mexico over his objection, John C. Calhoun wrote to fellow South Carolinian Henry W. Conner a letter in which he apparently alluded to the underlying source of his concern. "Mexico," Calhoun warned, "is to us the forbidden fruit; the penalty of eating it [is] to subject our institutions to political death."

Three months later, David Wilmot introduced his famous proviso.

Ultisols and Alfisols

Ten days week ago, I posted an entry on John Majewski’s new book, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation, focusing on Prof. Majewski’s discussion of land use and agricultural practices in the antebellum south, and in particular the fact that southern farmers placed only about one-third of their land in cultivation at any given time, versus two-thirds on average in the north. I left you hanging concerning Prof. Majewski’s conclusions as to why southerners retained the practice of shifting cultivation, which accounted for this discrepancy. This post continues and concludes that review.

In the antebellum period, northerners regularly made note of and denigrated the effects of shifting cultivation in the south: the large tracts of unimproved and worn-out land, interspersed with occasional farmhouses and small settlements. With equal regularity they assumed that the desolate appearance of much of the rural south was somehow attributable to slavery, which rendered the inhabitants slovenly and lazy:

David Wilmot . . . frequently associated slavery with soil exhaustion. “Sterility follows its [slavery’s] path,” he declared in 1846. A decade later, Representative Israel Washburn of Maine noted that “their [southerners’] lands are being worn out and exhausted. . . . [T]hey have not the enterprise, skill or means to renovate them.”

The contrast between the tidy, prosperous farms of the north and (in the words of William Seward) the “old and decaying towns, wretchedly neglected roads, and, in every respect, an absence of enterprise and improvement” in the south provided a powerful argument to Free Soilers. “No wonder,” Prof.Majewski observes, “that many northerners wanted to stop slavery spreading to the western territories. Shifting cultivation, they believed, was sure to follow.”

Modern historians have to a large extent adopted this analysis. “Historians have frequently pointed to some combination of slavery, cheap western lands, and ingrained traditionalism.” The relative abundance of land and mobility of slave labor, so the argument goes, allowed southerners to work a given piece of land to exhaustion, and then move on.

Prof. Majewski rejects all such explanations. Shifting cultivation persisted, he argues, because southern soil and weather made crop rotation impracticable or impossible. It turns out that most of the south has soil classified as part of the ultisol soil order. “Ultisols generally lack key nutrients for plant growth and tend to be highly acidic. The acidity makes it difficult for plants to fully utilize whatever nutrients are present, which means that fertilizing the soil will not raise crop yields unless the acidity is first neutralized.”

Shifting cultivation was ideally suited to this soil because the ash produced by burning “provided a quick infusion of important nutrients, and its calcium content helped neutralize the acidic ultisol soils.” Northern farms, in contrast, generally consisted of alfisol soils, which contained “an abundance of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and other essential plant nutrients.” The rotation systems that northerners successfully used on alfisol soils simply did not translate to the ultisols of the south.

Other environmental facts – heat and rainfall patterns – also conspired against the south to make rotation impractical. “Important fodder crops such as hay and clover that supported continuous cultivation failed to thrive in the warm and humid southern climate.” Southern cattle tended to be stunted and produced less manure – another important element of the rotation system in the north – both because they had to be raised on less nutritious substitutes and because they fell prey to tick-spread disease.

Prof. Majewski appears to do an excellent job supporting his thesis that these environmental factors constituted the principal reason that southern farmed stuck with shifting cultivation. The core of his analysis involves the use of “multivariate regressions” to assess the impact of numerous variables, which are summarized as follows:

In summary, the regressions indicate that the environmental factors (soil types, typography, and climate) greatly influenced levels of improved land; they show a particularly strong association between alfisol soils and high levels of improved land. Ultisols and rugged topography (such as the mountains of Appalachia or the marshes of the coastal regions), on the other hand, led to low levels of improved land.

The book includes a 17-page “statistical appendix”, which I invite those more statistically literate than I to pick at for holes or discrepancies. What I found most interesting about the more detailed analysis there was the discussion concerning the relationship between slavery and shifting cultivation. It turns out, according to Prof. Majewski, that there is “a strongly positive” and “statistically significant” relationship between more slaves and higher levels of improved land.

Prof. Majewski cautions that “it is impossible to tell . . . whether slavery caused more land to be improved or whether slaveholders simply preferred to locate in areas with the best soils and the best access to transportation.” However the correlation does discredit the contrary claim, that slavery “caused” less land to be improved. “Slavery (or its absence) did not ‘cause’ shifting cultivation, strengthening the point that environmental factors plaed the most important role.”

Post-Civil War (and therefore post-slavery) evidence further buttresses this conclusion:

What makes the statistical results for 1860 even more compelling is that the same basic relationship holds for 1890 as well. Despite the greater availability of fertilizers, farmers in counties with poor soils cultivated far less land than farmers in areas with more favorable soils. The 1890 results cast further doubt that slavery and cheap western land caused shifting cultivation. Shifting cultivation, simply put, outlived both.

Prof. Majewski’s findings, if correct, point to a profound irony. Obviously, northerners came to adopt Free Soil ideology for a variety of reasons. But images of decrepit southern agriculture and agricultural lifestyles caused by slavery were a powerful weapon in the Free Soil arsenal, as some of the above quotes suggest. Was the assumption that slavery was the source of those images simply wrong? It would seem so.

"The vastness of our country . . ."

In my last post, I reviewed a speech that David Wilmot delivered on the tariff in July 1846. This post continues and concludes that review.

Several weeks ago, I pointed out that in January 1847 Wilmot's colleague Preston King invoked the pioneer with his axe when he denounced slavery expansion. The same imagery appears in Wilmot's tariff speech six months earlier:

The bold pioneer, who with his axe fearlessly encounters our heavy forests and subdues our rugged soil, makes a valuable and permanent conquest over nature for the benefit of man. He has added something to the world’s stock, and made that which before was useless subservient to the happiness and support of his race.

Has he in his noble undertaking asked the bounties of Government in his behalf? Has he come with greedy and selfish grasp, demanding from the public treasury a premium upon the land cleared by him, or upon the wheat and corn raised as a product of his labor? Sir, this man asks only protection from rapacity and wrong.

“[T]he farmer,” Wilmot complained, “is fleeced.” “[T]hese enormous profits come from . . . the pockets of the people.” “Privilege and monopoly are ever selfish – ever grasping. Interest is the sole governing principle of all their actions.”

Later, Wilmot touched on the intersection between labor and land. The passage offers a tantalizing hint as to why Wilmot and other northern Democrats like him placed so much importance on Free Soil, both in theory and in fact. The continued existence of the United States as a republic, Wilmot suggested, depended on the continued availability of inexpensive land. Just look at Europe:

I solemnly believe, if this policy [of protection] could be permanently established, that not one century would pass away before the free and independent laborers of this country would be reduced to the degrading condition of the laborers of Europe. It would sap and undermine our republican institutions. The people would lose control over their own Government, and wealth become firmly intrenched in all the seats and high places of power.

The vastness of our country, and the cheapness of the unoccupied lands, have hitherto prevented the full development and workings of this system. Had our limits been confined between the Atlantic and the Alleganies [sic], we should ere this have witnessed the fruits of this system upon the labor of the country. We should have seen here, as in England, men, women, and children, working from fourteen to eighteen hours in the day for a mere subsistence. It is this accursed policy of legislation for the capital of the country, together with the paper-money system, that has contributed more than all other causes, to fasten upon the English laborer a slavery worse than that of the lash.

(Emphasis added)

About the illustration:

A virulent attack on Vice-President George M. Dallas, charging the former Pennsylvania attorney and senator with duplicity in his stand on the tariff of 1846. "Jesuitism" was a strong contemporary term for deception and intrigue, and the artist portrays Dallas's support of the 1846 tariff as a reversal of his campaign pledge to support the popular tariff of 1842. In 1846, the Polk administration introduced and passed (Dallas's own vote as president of the Senate being a deciding factor) the Walker Tariff. The 1846 tariff involved a reduction of the tariff of 1842, which had been supported by the Democratic platform in the 1844 election. The later measure, a revenue tariff rather than a protectionist one, was reviled by the considerable industrial interests of Pennsylvania and other northeastern states. In the print, Dallas (right) addresses a crowd in the street from the steps of his law office. He displays a large banner reading, "Polk, Dallas, Shunk [successful Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francis M. Shunk] And The Tariff of 1842." Dallas: "Friends & Fellow Citizens, the Tariff of 1842 is a democratic measure & as such will be supported by Mr. Polk & Myself! I am, as my friend Joel B. Sutherland [former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania] says, a man of principle according to my interest!" Various comments from the crowd: "Go it George We all want Protection!" An Irishman with shillelagh: "That's the way to talk! Dan [i.e., Whig senator and champion of protectionism Daniel Webster] himself couldn't bate that be Jasus!" "Hurah! a true Pennsylvanian every inch of im." In the lower left a conversation among several gentlemen: "I told you that Polk & Dallas were more in favor of the Tariff of 42 than [1844 Whig presidential candidate Henry] Clay!" "I'll believe it when I see it!" "who does he [i.e., Dallas] remind you of?" "He's very much like Talleyrand in hair & Principles--in all else wanting." A Pennsylvania German with a clay pipe remarks, "I says noding but I dinks so much!" Francis Shunk enters from the left with arms full of papers with the names of western Pennsylvania counties on them. He announces to Dallas, "Hold on till I bring some big Democratic Guns from the west--to bear on the question! When it come to the point then I'll talk, For I'm the real Simon "Pure!""

"I will war against it while I have breath"

I’ve suggested before that David Wilmot seems to be a ghost. In most narratives he appears out of nowhere, tosses his famous Proviso like a stick of dynamite onto the floor of the House, and then vanishes again. Who was this guy? To get a better feel for him, I thought I’d take a look at another speech he delivered in the summer of 1846, a speech unrelated to the Proviso that bears his name.

In mid-summer 1846, the House of Representatives was sitting “in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union.” More particularly, the House was debating the Polk administration’s proposed bill to reduce duties on imported goods from the levels set by the Tariff of 1842. The administration bill ultimately resulted in the Walker Tariff of 1846.

On July 1, 1846, Democrat David Wilmot was recognized. Although only a freshman (he had been elected in the fall of 1844), Wilmot delivered a speech that left no doubt where he stood. Defying the other members of the generally protectionist Pennsylvania delegation, Wilmot bitterly criticized the 1842 Tariff as unjust and oppressive. More generally, he denounced protectionism in general.

Wilmot approached the issue from a radical Jacksonian perspective. The 1842 Tariff was partial legislation that unjustly favored a privileged class and special interests:

I believe [the 1842 Tariff] unjust and oppressive; imposing heavy burdens upon the labor and industry of the country, for the purpose of building up a monopolizing and privileged class. I believe it at war with the spirit and genius of our institutions, and dangerous to the equal rights and liberties of the people. This Government was established for the equal benefit and protection of all its citizens. . . . When it . . . seeks to build up one interest, (which can only be done by depressing others,) it ceases to be a just Government – it becomes a tyranny, unworthy of the confidence or support of the people.

Wilmot’s brand of Jacksonian analysis emphasized protection of labor and the laborer. Some of the rhetoric sounds almost proto-Marxist:

Again: all wealth is labor. If, by any system of legislation, you enhance the profits of a particular department of labor beyond what they would otherwise be, you must of necessity draw those increased profits from the labor of some other. If this proposition be correct, the subject would seem to resolve itself into an answer of the single question: Do high protective tariffs increase the profits of the manufacturer? If so, it follows that those increased profits are drawn from some other department of industry.

The answer to that question was self-evident, Wilmot maintained:

Who is it that year after year clamors so loudly for protection? Is it the farmer – the industrious and enterprising artisan – the day-laborer? No, sir; these men are never seen about your halls, asking the special legislation of this Government in their behalf. They rely upon their industry and economy to obtain for themselves and their families a livelihood. It is the manufacturers who come here asking bounties and protection for the particular business in which they have chosen to embark their capital. Do they ask this in order to lessen their prices and diminish their profits? It is too absurd for serious argument.

The struggle over “this protective policy,” Wilmot maintained, was “a contest between capital and labor – the former struggling to perpetuate its privileges, and the latter for its rights and just rewards.”

Sir, I am in favor of protection. I here avow myself a protectionist in the highest and truest sense of the word. I demand protection for labor, against the cruel exactions of capital. I demand protection for the equal rights of the people, against a privileged and monopolizing class, upheld and sustained by partial legislation. I claim protection for the hard earnings of the poor, against an insidious system that plunders by stealth, and eats out his substance. Why, sir, in the name of humanity, seek to heap burden after burden upon the back of labor? Is not the lot of the poor already sufficiently hard? Has not wealth already sufficient advantages over poverty?

At the same time, Wilmot emphasized the limited nature of the remedy he was seeking (and in the process demonstrated that he was no proto-Marxist after all). He was not demanding affirmative protection for labor, simply that capital and wealth not receive artificial advantage:

The poor toil in heat and in cold for a plain and homely subsistence, suffering many reverses, enduring many privations. His children toil by his side, or leave home at an early age to toil in the fields or workshop of the stranger.

Against this, Democracy [i.e., the Democratic Party] makes no complaint. Democracy seeks not to deprive wealth of any of its legitimate advantages; it asks not to take from the rich one farthing of his riches; but it does demand that these advantages shall not be increased by the partial enactments of the Government; that no system of direct or indirect bounties be established, by which a portion of the earnings of the poor be taken to swell the already overflowing coffers of the rich.

The protective tariff was precisely such a system, Wilmot asserted. “I will war against it while I have breath.”

About the illustration:

Whig presidential candidate Winfield Scott and his party pursue an abolitionist course leading toward Salt River and political doom. New York senator and antislavery advocate William Seward appears as a poodle which leads the blindfolded Scott and his entourage of three asses with the heads of prominent abolitionists David Wilmot, Joshua Reed Giddings, and Horace Greeley. They pass a signpost pointing toward Salt River (ahead) and Washington (in the opposite direction). Seward: "Place the utmost confidence in me gentlemen asses . . . for when was I ever known to betray those with whom I was associated!" Scott: "It seems to me that I scent a strange saltness in the air!" Wilmot carries a "Free Soil" burden and is ridden by a black man. The slave exclaims, "Whew Massa Scott! up here you can see de riber shining in de sun!" Ass Giddings bears a sack marked "Abolition," while behind him Greeley carries a load marked "Higher Law." Greeley complains, "Here I am again upon my winding way. I would be glad to get off on my own hook, but this is my only chance for office, and I should like to get hold of another short term." A man on a hill in the background points toward Washington, exclaiming, "Ho there! Ho there! yonder lies your course! you're going astray! They are deaf as a post, or a set of obstinate jack asses!" (Under the man's feet the name "Seward" was inscribed but later obliterated.)

"Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil"

Having posted several quibbles concerning minor inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Jonathan H. Earle’s Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854, I thought I should make sure that the record is clear: this is an eye-opening book.

The growth of the anti-slavery (or more properly anti-slavery extension) movement in the north in the decades before the Civil War is generally thought of as a Whiggish phenomenon. Whiggish types, absorbing via the Second Great Awakening the evangelical morality that also gave rise to the temperance campaign, increasingly came to regard slavery as a sin and moral blot on the body of the Republic. Yes, there may have been a few oddball Democrats who saw the light and ultimately tagged along, but for the most part northern Democrats seemed to be amoral at best: Lewis Cass inventing popular sovereignty, Franklin Pierce, Stephen Douglas and James Buchanan generally toadying to the south and the southern wing of their party.

Professor Earle sets out to correct this misimpression. In fact, a number of Democrats led the way in identifying slavery and the slave power as enemies. One of the delights of the book lies in meeting and getting to know previously unknown or indistinct political figures: Thomas Morris of Ohio and Preston King of New York (both of whom I have discussed before); John P. Hale, who unexpectedly precipitated a dramatic political realignment in New Hampshire, previously the “South Carolina of the North”; Marcus Morton of Massachusetts; and even David Wilmot, otherwise a vague figure who in most narratives mysteriously appears out of nowhere, only to disappear again into the mist.

More importantly, Professor Earle explores why there seems to have been a correlation between radical, hard-money, anti-Bank Democrats and opposition to the expansion of slavery. One key, he argues, was the tendency of radical democrats to perceive conspiratorial coalitions of interests that threatened to dominate yeoman farmers and urban proletariat: manufacturers who clamored for high tariffs, monopolistic corporations that shielded capitalists from ordinary rules of individual liability, and most famously the Monster Bank.

With a little squinting, Professor Earle suggests, slaveholders could look a lot like an aristocratic special interest. In an earlier post, I quoted from an 1839 speech by Senator Thomas Morris (Dem – Ohio), in which he not only drew the parallel but argued that the Bank Power and the Slave Power had joined forces:

But all will not do; these two powers must now be united; an amalgamation of the black power of the South with the white power of the North must take place, as either, separately, cannot succeed in the destruction of the liberty of speech and the press and the right of petition. Let me tell gentlemen that both united will never succeed. As I said on a former day, God forbid that they should ever rule this country. I have seen this billing and cooing between these different interests for some time past; I informed my private friends . . . that these powers were forming a union to overthrow the present [Van Buren] Administration . . ..

* * *

[T]he assertion has gone forth that we have twelve hundred millions of slave property at the South; and can any man so close his understanding here as not plainly to perceive tht the power of this vast amount of property at the South is now uniting itself to the banking power of the North, in order to govern the destinies of this country? Six hundred millions of banking capital is to be brought into this coalition, and the slave power and the bank power are thus to unite in order to break down the present Administration. There can be no mistake, as I believe, in this matter. The aristocracy of the North, who, by the power of a corrupt banking system, and the aristocracy of the South, by the power of the slave system, both fattening upon the labor of others, are now about to unite in order to make the reign of each perpetual. Is there an independent American to be found who will become the recreant slave to such an unholy combination? Is this another compromise to barter the liberties of the country for personal aggrandizement? “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

Almost ten years later, Pennsylvania Democrat David Wilmot spoke in similar terms:

“The gallant and true men who fought the battle of popular rights against privilege and monopoly – who aided in crushing the monster bank, and wresting from the grasp of eastern capital the hard earnings of labor, will never fight the battles of slavery propagandism” [Wilmot declared]. Again investing the rhetoric of antislavery with an older brand derived from the pen of William Leggett, Wilmot insisted that since southern capital had “a thousand millions of dollars invested in slaves,” the current struggle, like the bank war in the 1830s, was best viewed as one between “capital and labor.”

But what seems to given urgency to the threat presented by the Slave Power was the concept of Free Soil, which Professor Earle asserts is the crucial and overlooked component of the “free soil, free labor, free men” trilogy. Free Soil was not, Professor Earle argues, simply a “synonym for [the] more developed concept of free labor, an ideology . . . closely linked with the rise of capitalism in the North. . . . [M]any Free Soilers . . . came from remote rural areas or radical labor backgrounds and felt nothing but contempt for Whiggish free-labor views.”

The term originally referred to land reform: “the free distribution of the public lands to poor settlers, in the form of inalienable homesteads.” Although containing slavery was an incidental benefit, the scheme also enhanced democracy (more of those Jeffersonian yeoman farmers), reduced unemployment and raised wages, and attacked privileged land monopolists and speculators.

In time, however, “the Free Soil ideology [evolved] from a program for land reform to a bulwark against slavery expansion.” It was precisely the elusiveness of the phrase that made Free Soil so politically potent:

During the 1840s and 1850s, homesteads became unalterably fused with the issue of slavery expansion . . .. This link underscored Free Soil’s rhetorical elusiveness and ambiguity. The potent term was appropriated by a host of other groups, movements, and political parties, including the Free Soil Party and, later, the Republicans. No matter who appropriated it, however, Free Soil always potentially implied the double meaning . . .: land free of charge and at the same time free of slavery. Free Soil managed to speak directly to the anxieties of poor or vulnerable northern whites, creating a new source of support for limiting slavery’s expansion.

The radical Democratic critique of slavery was thus very different from the moral and religious foundations of abolitionism and abolition-based political organizations such as the Liberty Party. The emphasis on Free Soil and the Slave Power also focused the political debate squarely on the territories.

The genius of the Free Soil and Republican parties was to incorporate the double meaning of Free Soil – and its radical Democratic message – into their platforms. By doing so they were able to broaden their base to include large numbers of Democrats who became convinced that their former party had become “a tool of the slaveholding oligarchy.” These Democrats, moreover, often came from hardscrabble rural districts that had consistently resisted the lure of the Whigs -- areas such as New York's "Passed-Over District" and the Wilmot District of Pennsylvania. It is no accident that in 1862 the Republican Party produced the Homestead Act as well as the Emancipation Proclamation.

Quibbles and all, Professor Earle's book is excellent. Highly recommended.

About the illustration:

An election-year satire favoring Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren in the 1848 presidential contest. A long-legged John Van Buren carries his father piggyback through Salt River, heading toward the White House on the far shore. "Matty" says, "Thanks to your long legs, John, I believe that I shall pass over this Jordan dry shod." The younger Van Buren assures his father, "Hold on Dad & I'll put you through." Meanwhile, abolitionist editor Horace Greeley and candidates Taylor and Clay are having a more difficult time fording the river. Clay is immersed head first, leaving only his legs visible. Taylor is neck-deep in the water. Greeley yells to Kentucky Whig leader Cassius M. Clay, seated on the near bank, "Help, Cassius, or I Sink." Clay replies, "Can't come there, Horace, I risked my life in Mexico, & I don't like to do it again." (Cassius Clay was a hero of the recent Mexican War).

Some Thoughts on the Compromise of 1850

I was struck by this observation by Jonathan H. Earle:

Without the lifeblood of constant agitation to nourish its ranks, the Free Soil movement languished in the years between the compromise [of 1850] and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

* * *

When the 1852 votes were counted, the Free Democrats were pummeled in every quarter, even where they had done well four years before. With the exhausted David Wilmot in retirement, voters in Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District voted overwhelmingly for [Franklin] Pierce . . .

* * *

For fourteen months after the 1852 election, Free Soil -- as a movement, an ideology, and a party -- was practically moribund. Then on January 4, 1854, the diminutive Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill . . ..

The quote highlights the fact that, in many ways, the Compromise of 1850 was a striking success. 150 years later, a combination of hindsight and the tendency of events to get telescoped together makes it appear that the Compromise was doomed from the start. The history of the late 1840s and 1850s is often portrayed as a series of waves cresting ever higher as the flood tide of discord rushes in and eventually envelops the country (or, as David M. Potter has put it, "a kind of a vortex, whirling the country in ever narrower circles and more rapid revolutions into the pit of war"). But the men who crafted the Compromise did not, and could not, know that.

Even so great an historian as Professor Potter, who repeatedly emphasizes the contingency of history, sometimes falls into the trap. While admitting that "[a]ntislavery men were profoundly discouraged" after the Compromise, and that "outward appearances all indicated that the national yearning for harmony would banish the slavery issue from politics," he also refers to "the futility of the Compromise" and "the shibboleth of 'finality' as a slogan."

Professor Potter contends "that the sectional rapprochement" during the post-Compromise years "did not rest on broad or deep foundations." But if that is so, it only emphasizes the remarkable job done by those who constructed the Compromise. For ten crucial years the Compromise withstood a series of unforeseen and unforeseeable blows -- from Bloody Kansas and Lecompton to the caning of Sumner and Dred Scott -- that would have felled a less sturdy structure.

About the illustration:

A crudely drawn satire bitterly attacking Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Pierce and appealing to the "Freemen of America." The print, possibly executed by a free black, criticizes the Democrats' platform, as established by the Baltimore Convention, which in the interest of preserving the Union endorsed the Compromise of 1850. More specifically the artist condemns Pierce's pledge to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, included in the compromise as a submission to southern slaveholding interests. In the center Pierce prostrates himself before a "Slave holder & Peace Maker," a bearded man in wide-brimmed hat and striped trousers holding a cat-o-nine-tails and manacles. The upper half of Pierce is over the Mason Dixon line, his face in the dirt on the "Baltimore Platform." The slaveholder says: "Save the Union, / And with the "meanest" Yankee grease / Smear the hinges of your knees / And in "silence" pray for peace." Pierce, dubbed "one of the Southern "dirt" eaters "Saving" the Union," replies, "I accept this cheerfully." The Democratic platform is labeled "Southern pine" and is inscribed with reference to the compromise, "Fugitive Slave Law and nigger catching, and resist agitation on the Slavery question &c." On it lie a skull and crossbones, manacles, and a serpent. At far left is "the Devil come up to attend his revival," who commends, "Well done my faithful servants!" On the right is the infamous Hungarian general Julius von Haynau, who carries a whip and wears a "Barclay's Brewery" pitcher on his head. (Haynau was assaulted by Barclay employees while in England.) The Hungarian extends his hand toward the slaveholder, saying, "I feel quite at home in this company give me your hand my good fellow." Further to the right are Lewis Cass and Stephen A. Douglas, disappointed aspirants for the 1852 Democratic nomination. Cass says, "We are down Douglass, "Pierce" has bid lower than either of us." Douglas: "There is nothing impossible for a New Hampshire "Hunker" [i.e., conservative] Democrat to do in that line." On the ground nearby are the words, "the "slave&1ocratic miscalled the Democratic party, how they obey the "crack" of the slaveholder's whip!"

The Wandering Wilmot District

In a recent post, I included a map identifying David Wilmot's congressional district as covering the three counties in white above. I did so based on Jonathan H. Earle's description of the district as "including all of Bradford, Tioga and Susquehanna counties in the northeast corner of the state."

Fifty pages later, however, Professor Earle appears to contradict himself:

The Free Soil votes in the Wilmot district's counties of Bradford, Potter and Tioga came overwhelmingly from Democrats but made little difference in the statewide race (see map 5).

Map 5 in fact identifies the "Wilmot District" as consisting of Bradford, Potter and Tioga counties, like this:

Now I'm guessing that the Wilmot District may have covered all four counties. But such imprecision is annoying and frustrating.

As an addendum, I was horrified to discover that Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District is now a gerrymandered monstrosity in the southwest portion of the state, and is currently represented by the loathsome Jack Murtha.