What the Hell Happened to William Seward? A Followup

In What the Hell Happened to William Seward? I explored William Seward's pre-Civil War reputation for anti-slavery radicalism in light of his surprisingly conciliatory approach in the years immediately before the war and particularly his frantic attempts to keep the upper South in the Union during the late winter and spring of 1860.  In brief, I wondered whether Seward's earlier radical reputation wasn't overblown:

So where does this leave me? I'm not sure. As this post suggests, I guess I'm inclined to see more continuity than disjunction - more conservatism and caution underlying a radical image from fairly early on. Most people become more conservative as they grow older, but the change tends to be moderate and evolutionary. The evidence, however, is fairly thin and ambiguous, and there's always the concern that I'm reading more in earlier events because I know what will come later.

In his book Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes comes at Seward from a somewhat different angle.  Oakes suggests that Seward was prepared to be conciliatory toward the South in the months immediately preceding the war because he, like many Republicans at the time, fervently believed that Lincoln's election meant that slavery was as good as dead.  Since the war against slavery was already won, why engage in needless antagonism?

Even more than most Republicans, Seward was convinced that the mere election of Lincoln signaled the overthrow of the Slave Power and with it the inevitable destruction of slavery. . . . Now that the hour of slavery’s demise was at hand, the only thing Republicans had to do was hold the Union together until Lincoln’s inauguration. There would be no need for any “overt act” against slavery because slavery was doomed anyway.

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Republicans in general, and Seward in particular, believed that slavery’s fate was already sealed by their electoral victory. Convinced that slavery could be abolished peacefully, the conciliators urged fellow Republicans to speak as softly as possible – perhaps say nothing at all. Why add fuel to the secessionist fire? . . . There was no need for war because the Slave Power had been dislodged and federal policy was about to shift in a dramatically antislavery direction.

Oakes emphasizes that, although Seward “assumed” a “conciliatory posture,” he steadfastly refused “to compromise basic Republican principles.” If anything, “Seward [was] willing to conciliate because [he was] not willing to compromise."

While Oakes’s broader point that Seward “believed that slavery’s fate was already sealed” may be correct, I do not think it fully explains Seward’s actions in the period. For one thing, although Seward may not have compromised “basic Republican principles,” he came perilously close to doing so.  As I pointed out in my earlier post, as early as November 1860, Seward seems to be have been in cahoots with Thurlow Weed when Weed floated a trial balloon proposing to strengthen the Fugitive Slave Act and extend the old Missouri Compromise line.

More broadly, Oakes fails to account for the frantic desperation that Seward displayed in dealing with the border states and the Confederate commissioners, desperation that was so frantic that he misled the all parties in one way or another - a fact to which Oakes briefly alludes in part but glosses over (emphasis added):

So fervently did Seward believe that war was unnecessary to destroy slavery that he made heroic but misleading efforts cultivate unionists in the Upper South in a desperate attempt to limit the scope of secession to the Deep South.

About the illustration, entitled The Abolition Catastrophe, Or the November Smash-up (1864):

 Lincoln's support of abolition is portrayed here as a liability in his race to the White House against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan. At top a smoothly run train "Union" heads straight for the White House. The engine is labeled "Democracy" and the first car, in which McClellan stands in the role of engineer, flies a flag "Constitution." The other cars are labeled "Union" and are occupied by happy, cheering Democrats. McClellan taunts, "Wouldn't you like to swap horses now? Lincoln?" (probably a reference to Lincoln's replacement of him as commander of the Army of the Potomac). Several of his passengers comment on the wreck of the Republican train below: "H-ll, H ll, I'm used to Railroad accidents but that beats Vibbards all to smash." New York governor Horatio Seymour: "I thought little Mac could take the train through better than I could." "It's no use talking Ben [Union general Benjamin F. Butler]! I told you I was on the right train . . . thunder there's John McKeon [prominent Democrat and New York lawyer ] with us." "Little Mac is the boy to smash up all the Misceganationists." "Politics does make strange bed fellows . . . the d . . . l if there aint Fernandy!" "Fernandy" is Fernando Wood, prominent Peace Democrat and mayor of New York. "Good-bye Horace [Horace Greeley]! Nigger on the brain flummoxed you." "Thus ends the Abolition Party!" "Be the powers the gintleman with his pantaloons in his bootleg is having a high time of it." "Good-bye old Greenbacks!" to Salmon P. Chase, who leaves with a satchel at right. Chase, who resigned his post as secretary of the treasury on June 29, says, "Thank God, I got off that train in the nick of time." In contrast, Lincoln's train, below, is far behind after having crashed on rocks "Confiscation," "Emancipation," "$400,000,000,000 Public Debt," "To Whom It May Concern," and "Abolitionism." Lincoln himself is hurled into the air, and says, "Dont mention it Mac, this reminds me of a . . ." This reference is to Lincoln's rumored penchant for telling humorous stories at inappropriate moments. (See "The Commander-in-Chief Conciliating the Soldier's Votes," no. 1864-30.) "Tribune" publisher and abolitionist Horace Greeley, also in the air, says, "I told you Abe that 'To whom it may concern' would be the death of us." (See "The Sportsman Upset by the Recoil of His Own Gun," no. 1864-31.) A black man crushed in the wreck accuses Lincoln, "Wars de rest ob dis ole darkey? Dis wot yer call 'mancipation'?" Another black man hurtles through the air, retorting, "Lor Amighty Massa Linkum, is dis wot yer call 'Elewating de Nigger'?" Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, hanging out of the train, moans, "Oh! dear! If I could telegraph this to Dix I'd make it out a Victory." Preacher and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher holds a black child to his breast and prays, "Oh! my brethering! Plymouth Church will try to save the Platform." The notorious Union general Ben Butler exclaims, "H--ll! I've Preyed $2,000,000 already!" The four clean-shaven men in the train are identifiable as Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, New York journalist and state political leader Thurlow Weed, Secretary of State William Seward, and John McKeon. Sumner: "Say Seward will praying save us?" Seward: "Oh! I'm a goner! Ask Thurlow, he's my spiritual Adviser." Weed: "Pray! yes, pray Brother, Butler will lead." At left Maximilian, puppet emperor of Mexico, confers with John Bull and Napoleon III of France, saying, "Oh Main Got'vi I vas send over to dis land of Greasers to pe chawed up py de Yankees." John Bull's opinion is ". . . This will never do. The Monroe doctrine must be put down." Napoleon III says, ". . . by Gar, if dat train gets to de White House, its all up with my Mexico." During the Civil War, Napoleon III tried to establish a puppet state in Mexico under Emperor Maximilian. At bottom left are prices and ordering instructions for obtaining copies of the print.

Seward, You Weeny!

Think the word "weeny" is of recent vintage? Think again. Amanda Foreman records its use by none other than Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the summer of 1861, referring to Secretary of State William H. Seward, whom Sumner detested. On July 3, 1861 The Times correspondent William Howard Russell

bumped into [Sumner] on the street [in Washington] and had to stand for an hour in the blistering heat while Sumner gleefully enlarged on "the dirty little mountebankism of my weeny friend in office."

So, was Sumner calling Seward a dick? Alas, probably not. A quick search around the internets suggests that the words "weeny" and "weenie" are of different origin. Weeny, an adjective, is a diminutive of "wee", small, and apparently dates to at least the late Eighteenth Century. Think "teeny-weeny." Weenie, a noun, apparently derives from wiener and is of later origin. Perhaps by association with weeny (I'm guessing here), "weenie" acquired a connotation of smallness (a weeny weenie, as it were) and thus the meaning of nerd.

About the illustration, entitled I'm Not to Blame for Being White, Sir! (1862):

Massachusetts senator and prominent antislavery advocate Charles Sumner is attacked here. The artist questions his sincerity as a humanitarian as he shows him dispensing a few coins to a black child on the street, while ignoring the appeal of a ragged white urchin. The scene is witnessed by two stylishly dressed young women. Though unsigned, the print has the relatively skillful draftsmanship and atmospheric quality found in the works of Boston lithographer Fabronius. See, for instance, that artist's "The Mower" (no. 1863-14). "The Secession Bubble" (no. 1862-12) also appears to be by Fabronius. Weitenkampf gives the 1862 date and publisher's imprint.

William Seward's Irrepressible Conflict

A while ago, I puzzled over What the Hell Happened to William Seward? How was it, I wondered, that the north's leading radical anti-slavery Whig during the 1850s - the guy whom the Republicans failed to nominate in 1860 because they perceived him as too radical, versus the more "moderate" Lincoln - became such a wimp during the secession crisis, frantically seeking to appease the south to the point that he had to mislead the president in the process?

What I discovered, to my surprise, was that Seward displayed many signs of moderation during the 1850s. In fact, it seemed that his "radical" reputation was based largely, and perhaps exclusively, on two speeches - one might say on two phrases: his "higher law than the Constitution" speech of 1850, and his "irrepressible conflict" speech of 1858.

In her wonderful (thus far) A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War, Amanda Foreman reaches a similar, but more pointed conclusion about Seward: he was a moderate with a radical veneer who, during the late 1850s, spent years positioning himself "as the moderate alternative to Charles Sumner."

Ironically, she maintains, Seward inadvertently sabotaged those efforts, and his bid for the presidency in 1860, with his October 1858 "irrepressible conflict" speech. Although the phrase was not all that different from Lincoln's "house divided" language, Seward's speech was perceived as more divisive. "Whereas Lincoln sounded as though he were giving a warning, Seward seemed to be laying down a challenge." The damage to Seward's image was immediate and lasting:

Seward later claimed that "irrepressible" was not the same as "unavoidable," but the damage could not be undone. The press dubbed him "Irrepressible Conflict Seward," fostering the sense that he was a divisive rather than a unifying figure and voiding three years of careful positioning by Seward to be perceived as the moderate alternative to Charles Sumner.

On the advice of his friend and manager, Thurlow Weed, Seward traveled to Britain in the Spring of 1859 "in the hope that the public would forget the unfortunate phrase" before the 1860 election season.

Alas, it was not to be. When Seward returned to the United States on December 28, 1859, southern hysteria following the John Brown raid was at its peak, and southerners repeatedly pilloried Seward as an instigator. In the Senate, James Murray Mason of Virginia, whose seat was next to Seward's,

harangued [Seward] for being the moral, though not actual, instigator of the action. Again and again, Seward's unfortunate phrase "irrepressible conflict" was hurled back in his face. Democratic newspapers denounced his as the "arch agitator who is responsible for this insurrection." One Virginia newspaper even went so far as to put a price of $100,000 on his head; the governor of Virginia urged the South to demand Seward's exclusion from the presidency.

About the illustration, entitled "The Irrepressible Conflict" or the Republican Barge in Danger (1860):

The cartoon reflects the considerable bitterness among New York Republicans at the party's surprising failure to nominate New York senator William H. Seward for president at its May 1860 national convention. The print was probably issued soon after the convention's nomination of Abraham Lincoln. The "Republican Barge" tosses on a stormy sea, precariously close to a rocky shore, with Lincoln (far left) at the rudder. "I'll take the helm. I've steered a "flat" boat before," says Lincoln. Also in the barge are (left to right) "Tribune" editor and powerful Lincoln supporter Horace Greeley, Missourian Edward Bates, an unidentified man, and former Washington "Globe" editor and influential Jacksonian Democrat Francis Preston Blair. The three men together heave Seward overboard. Greeley says, "Over you go Billy! Between you and I there is an "Irrepressible Conflict." Bates encourages him, "Over with him Horace never mind his kicking!" while Blair says, "He can't withstand my muscle for I once moved the Globe." The idea of an "irrepressible conflict" between slaveholding and free interests in the Union was taken from Seward's famous 1858 Rochester speech against slavery. The term became a catchphrase for radical antislavery factions in the North. Seward protests, "Dont throw "me" overboard, I built this boat, and I alone can save it." Further right are three unidentified men, two of whom are speaking. One cries, "I'm afraid this boat will sink." The other remarks, "If it had only been built in two sections instead of one we might be saved." A black wearing "Discord's Patent Life Preserver" notes, "If de boat and all hands sink, dis Nigger sure to swim, Yah! Yah!" In the bow sits New York "Courier" editor James Watson Webb, who warns, "Breakers ahead!!" Watching anxiously from the shore is Brother Jonathan, clad in striped trousers, coat with tails, and a tall hat. He admonishes the boat's crew, "You wont save your crazy old craft by throwing your pilot overboard; better heave that tarnal Nigger out."

William Seward's April Fools Memo: The Prequel

As you may know, in his somewhat wacky April 1, 1861 "April Fools Memorandum", entitled Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration, Secretary of State William H. Seward recommended to President Abraham Lincoln, among other things, that the United States declare war on Spain and France:

I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once.

I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention.

And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France,

Would convene Congress and declare war against them.

In her beautifully written book, A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War, Amanda Foreman provides evidence that Seward had been contemplating the possibility of war as a means of diverting secession for almost two months before he delivered his memorandum to Lincoln. On the morning of February 3, 1861, "Seward paid a surprise call on Lord Lyons," the British envoy to the United States in Washington. In a confidential memorandum to his government, Lord Lyons reported that, during the meeting, Seward indicated that a foreign war would not displease him. Lyons reported that

Seward also repeated to him a recent conversation with the minister from Bremen (one of the smaller states of the German Confederation), "no doubt for my instruction." The hapless diplomat had complained about the Republican Party's election promise to place tariffs on foreign imports, saying that such a move would turn Europe against America at the moment when she most needed friends. Seward claimed to have replied that nothing would give him more pleasure, since he would then have the perfect excuse for an international quarrel, "and South Carolina and the seceding states would soon join in."

The Hampton Roads Peace Conference

At the beginning of February 1865, President Abraham Lincoln met with old friend, former fellow Whig, and then Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens of Georgia at a “peace conference” on board the River Queen at Hampton Roads, near Fort Monroe, Virginia. (Other attendees were Secretary of State William H. Seward with Lincoln and former United States Supreme Court Associate Justice John A. Campbell of Alabama and former United States Representative and Senator and Confederate Secretary of State and Senator Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia representing the Confederacy.) In America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield recounts the beginning of the Hampton Roads meeting:

The following morning, February 3, Stephens boarded the president’s steamer and greeted Lincoln warmly. Stephens seemed rather frailer than the last time the two former Whigs met, nearly seven years earlier. The Confederate vice president wore a thick gray overcoat that descended to his ankles and threatened to swallow him. He had always looked cadaverous, but the coat made his appearance even more ghostly. A Union soldier guarding the gathering exclaimed, “My God! He’s dead now, but he don’t know it.” Stephens doffed his overcoat, and Lincoln chuckled, “Never have I seen so small a nubbin come out of so much husk.” The atmosphere immediately relaxed, and the two men chatted amiably about the old days before settling down to business.

But that is amusing prelude. What I really wanted to focus on was Lincoln’s remarkable advice to Stephens concerning the Thirteenth Amendment, which had passed the House of Representatives just three days earlier, on January 31, 1865. Stephens’ home state of Georgia, Lincoln suggested, should ratify the amendment prospectively, “so as to take effect, say, in five years”.

During the conference, Seward told the southern representatives of the recent passage of the amendment, and “Lincoln saw that the announcement rattled the [southern] commissioners perhaps more than any other disclosure that day.” He therefore “offered some advice to Stephens”:

“If I were in Georgia, I would go home and get the governor of the state to call the legislature together . . . and ratify this constitutional amendment prospectively, so as to take effect, say, in five years. Such a ratification would be valid in my opinion.” That way, Lincoln explained, southerners “will avoid, as far as possible, the evils of immediate emancipation. Lincoln, according to Stephens, pledged “to remunerate the southern people for their slaves,” on the grounds that both North and South were responsible for slavery.

William C. Harris's article on the meeting, The Hampton Roads Peace Conference: A Final Test of Lincoln's Presidential Leadership, provides additional context:

Later, when the issue of emancipation was again raised, the president gave a lengthy explanation of his own antislavery history, beginning with his opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories and repeating his reasons for acting against the institution during the war. The president concluded his account, as Stephens later wrote, by maintaining that he had always favored emancipation but not immediate emancipation, even by the states, because of the "many evils attending" it. The Confederate vice president also wrote that Lincoln then declared that if he were Stephens, he would go home to Georgia, "get the Governor of the State to call the Legislature together, and get them to recall all the State troops from the war; elect Senators and Members to Congress, and ratify the Constitutional Amendment prospectively, so as to take effect—say in five years." "Such a ratification," the president allegedly said, "would be valid in my opinion." Lincoln went on to say, again according to Stephens, "that whatever may have been the views of your people before the war, they must be convinced now, that Slavery is doomed. It cannot last long in any event, and the best course, it seems to me, for your public men to pursue, would be to adopt such a policy as will avoid, as far as possible, the evils of immediate emancipation."

Harris expresses substantial doubt as to whether Lincoln in fact endorsed “prospective” ratification, both because the endorsement would have been inconsistent with other statements the president had made and because another participant, Campbell, did not mention the statement in his account of the meeting.

I am not so sure. Stephens published his account in 1868, only three years after the event. While it is possible that Stephens's memory was faulty, his recollection of the meeting and Lincoln's comments seems to have been quite distinct. The other statements that Stephens attributes to Lincoln (concerning his history of opposition to immediate emancipation and his belief that the north as well as the south was responsible for slavery and that southerners should be compensated for the loss of their slaves) are entirely consistent with Lincoln's known history. And there is no apparent motive for Stephens to have lied about this otherwise trivial detail of the conversation.

Moreover, as Harris himself admits in another context, Lincoln was clearly concerned at the meeting to convey the impression “that he did not seek a social revolution in the postwar South”:

One of the Confederate commissioners then mentioned "the evils of immediate emancipation," specifically, as Stephens later wrote, the hardships that many blacks "who were unable to support themselves" would face in freedom. The president "fully admitted" that the sudden end of slavery might produce severe dislocations, but, instead of elaborating on the point and describing his expectations for the former slaves, he illustrated his view with a rather crude anecdote. Drawing upon his reservoir of rural Midwestern stories, Lincoln told of an Illinois farmer who informed a neighbor that he had discovered a way to save time and labor in feeding his hogs. "What is it"? asked the neighbor. "Why, it is," said the farmer, "to plant plenty of potatoes, and when they are mature, without either digging or housing them, turn the hogs in the field and let them get their own food as they want it." "But," the neighbor inquired, "how will they do when the winter comes and the ground is hard frozen"? "Well," replied the farmer, "let 'em root."

This anecdote, which appears in both Stephens' and Campbell's accounts and which Lincoln later repeated to his portraitist, reveals a harsh side to Lincoln, perhaps caused by his desire to reassure the Confederates that he did not seek a social revolution in the postwar South. The story also belies Lincoln's earlier expressions of sympathy for black refugees from slavery and his approval, one month after the Hampton Roads Conference, of the Freedman's Bureau bill providing temporary aid for the former slaves (and white refugees) in their adjustment to freedom.

Indeed, earlier in the meeting, when Seward first mentioned the Thirteenth Amendment, Lincoln raised no objection to Seward's incredible suggestion that the confederate states should rejoin the Union in order to defeat the amendment:

At this point, Seward produced a copy of the proposed Thirteenth Amendment, which had not been seen by the commissioners. He declared that if the South abandoned the struggle, the amendment probably would fail to receive the necessary approval of three-fourths of the states for ratification. Seward inferred [sic, should be “implied”], according to Stephens's account of the conference, that if the Southern states quickly rejoined the Union, they could assist in voting down the amendment.

I find Lincoln's statement on prospective ratification, if true, fascinating for at least two, maybe three reasons. First, there is the abstract legal question. I suppose it is possible for a proposed constitutional amendment to provide by its terms that, upon ratification, it will not go into effect until some time thereafter. But can a state ratify “prospectively”, in the sense described by Lincoln, an amendment that contains no such limitation? And what if an amendment were ratified by three-quarters of the states, but one-third of those votes in favor included “prospective” provisos specifying various different periods (e.g., one year, three years, five years, ten years) before the amendment would become effective? Whose period, if any, would control? Or could opponents maintain that a state’s ratification subject to such a proviso was no ratification at all, much as Federalists argued in 1788 that conditional state ratification of the Constitution would be equivalent to rejection?

Second, the incident is remarkable because it suggests that Lincoln was prepared to send the slaves and freedmen back into captivity, at least for a period. Lincoln no doubt understood that the Emancipation Proclamation, as an exercise of war powers, would lapse following the cessation of hostilities. And what if southern states then began demanding the return of slaves who had fled to Union lines and thence to northern states under the Fugitive Slave Clause? The mind reels.

Finally, one wonders what light this incident sheds on the hypothetical actions of a Reconstruction Abe. Lincoln defenders generally sheepishly admit that his actions and words before his death indicated that he was planning a relatively quick and gentle (and Andrew Johnson-like) Reconstruction, but tend to emphasize the president’s flexibility and capacity for growth, leading them to claim that southern intransigence would have quickly moved him toward a firmer and more “radical” policy. Ironically, Harris in his article provides a perfect illustration of this mode of thought. After recounting Lincoln's “harsh” Illinois farmer story (described above), Harris immediately proceeds to suggest that he would have changed his mind. I provide the complete paragraph for context (emphasis added):

This anecdote, which appears in both Stephens' and Campbell's accounts and which Lincoln later repeated to his portraitist, reveals a harsh side to Lincoln, perhaps caused by his desire to reassure the Confederates that he did not seek a social revolution in the postwar South. The story also belies Lincoln's earlier expressions of sympathy for black refugees from slavery and his approval, one month after the Hampton Roads Conference, of the Freedman's Bureau bill providing temporary aid for the former slaves (and white refugees) in their adjustment to freedom. Still, Lincoln, like most Americans at the time, optimistically expected emancipation itself to be "the king's cure" for blacks in the South. Lincoln believed that a free person, now including blacks, should be able to make his way in America through his own ability and effort without the assistance of the state. Though he had admitted the difficulties of the white and black races living together in freedom (his earlier support for black colonization reflected this concern), the president envisioned a limited role for the federal government in protecting and aiding blacks after the war. Had he lived to witness the postwar threat to black freedom, Lincoln might have changed his mind regarding federal responsibility for black liberty.

Abe might have arrived at a more radical position on Reconstruction. But the fact remains that if, two months before his death, Abe was prepared to send the slaves back into slavery, he sure had a long way to go before he got there.

Russell McClintock on "Seward's Folly"

I rarely have anything good to say, here or anywhere else, about the New York Times, but it's been doing a nice job with its Disunion series, which "follows the Civil War as it unfolded." I believe I've read just about every piece, and they've been of uniformly high quality.

I mention this now to highlight one of the most recent articles, Seward's Folly, tracking the back-room maneuverings of that most enigmatic of figures, New York Senator and incoming Secretary of State William Henry Seward. The piece is written by Russell McClintock, the author of a fine book on the North during the secession crisis, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession. If the Disunion series or other sites that have sprung up to follow the Secession Winter 150 years after the fact, such as The Long Recall, have piqued your interest in this fascinating period, Dr. McClintock's book would be an excellent starting point.

The hanging nature of the piece suggests that Dr. McClintock will be contributing more articles on Seward's machinations to the Disunion series. If so, I look forward to them. For a prequel, I invite you to try my What the Hell Happened to William Seward?

About the illustration, entitled Letting the Cat Out of the Bag! (1860):

A figurative portrayal of the rift within the Republican party resulting from the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860. Here New York senator and would-be nominee William H. Seward watches as the radical antislavery senator from Massachusetts Charles Sumner releases a snarling cat, the "Spirit of Discord," from a "Republican Bag." The cat bolts toward New York "Tribune" editor Horace Greeley and Lincoln, who wields a rail in his defense. Greeley exclaims, "What are you doing Sumner! you'll spoil all! she aint to be let out until after Lincoln is elected,--" Lincoln, also alarmed, rejoins, "Oh Sumner! this is too bad!--I thought we had her safely bagged at Chicago [i.e., the Republican national convention at Chicago], now there will be the old scratch to pay, unless I can drive her back again with my rail!" Sumner replies, "It's no use talking Gentlemen, I was'nt mentioned at Chicago, and now I'm going to do something desperate, I can't afford to have my head broken and be kept corked up four years for nothing!" The mention of his broken head refers to the widely publicized 1856 beating inflicted on Sumner by South Carolina congressman Preston S. Brooks. (See "Arguments of the Chivalry," no. 1856-1.) Seward warns, "Gentlemen be cautious you don't know how to manage that animal as well as I did, and Im afraid that some of you will get "scratched." Henry J. Raymond, editor of the "New York Times," stands in background shouting, "Scat!--scat!--back with her, or our fat will all be in the fire."

The Inside Track

Here's another great illustration from the Gettysburg College Civil War Era Collection commenting on William Seward's role during the Secession Winter. Entitled The Inside Track, the illustration appeared in Vanity Fair on March 2, 1861, according to the site.

This time, the College's description is just a little bit off:

Lincoln stands between Weed and Seward as they address him. A man with a paper labeled Chicago Platform tries to get in the door. Seward and Weed tried to convince Lincoln that a conservative war effort was the best way, rather than the strong war the Chicago Platform Republicans advocated.

The question at that point was not what sort of "war effort" to wage. Seward was urging the president-elect to do anything to avoid a confrontation.

William Seward: The Senatorial Tapster

When I was preparing my recent post on William Seward, I looked for, and failed to find, contemporaneous political cartoons commenting on Seward's role during the Secession Crisis. In the comments to that post, captainrlm rectified that omission by pointing out the wonderful illustration that appears above.

Taken from the Gettysburg College Civil War Era Collection, the illustration is entitled The Senatorial Tapster. The Gettysburg College site indicates it appeared in Vanity Fair on "1860-03-10". In it a customer comments, "I notice you draw your ale very mild now, William." The proprietor, Seward, replies, "Yes, this is a new tap, some I brewed myself last Wednesday; my customers thought the Rochester ale was rather too strong."

The site explains, "Two men draw beer from tapped kegs; the keg on the far right says, '1860 Senate.' After Seward lost the presidential nomination, he dropped his stronger antislavery views in favor of the more moderate Republican platform."

This description appears to be wrong, however. Assuming "1860-03-10" is March 3, 1860, the cartoon must refer to the softening of Seward's rhetoric before, not after, the 1860 Republican Convention. Sure enough, a Google search turned up a book entitled Abraham Lincoln: The Year of His Election (1929), by one Albert Shaw, that asserts that the cartoon was referring to Seward's pre-Convention activities:

As Senator Seward's pre-convention campaign for the presidential nomination progressed it was noted that his utterances in the Senate became less radical than the famous "Irrepressible Conflict" speech at Rochester in 1858.

What the Hell Happened to William Seward?

Can somebody tell me what the hell happened to William H. Seward? After entering the Senate in 1850, he quickly established himself as a radical on the slavery expansion issue. But by the Secession Winter he had turned into a quivering mass of jelly. What's the deal? Was he never really a radical at all? Was the radicalism just for show? Or did he have a profound change of heart when he perceived that threats of secession were more than mere bluster, and later became reality?

Seward's maiden Senate speech, delivered during the Crisis of 1850, established his radical credentials. "But there is a higher law than the Constitution," he declared, "which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator if the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness."

When the Omnibus Bill collapsed at the end of July 1850, a jubilant Seward "danc[ed] about" the Senate chamber in celebration.

Eight years later, Seward burnished his reputation for radicalism with his 1858 irrepressible conflict speech:

Hitherto the two systems [the slave-labor and free-labor systems] have existed in different States, but side by side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is a confederation of States. But in another aspect the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended network of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact and collision results.

Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton and rice-fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men.

If you read these paragraphs carefully, however, they are not necessarily as radical as the sound bite "irrepressible conflict" suggests. Seward is not saying that war is inevitable. He is asserting only that the two labor systems are incompatible, and that one system or the other must eventually predominate. In this, he was saying nothing more than Lincoln affirmed at the beginning of the latter's house divided speech, delivered June 16, 1858:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new - North as well as South.

But even if the "Irrepressible Conflict" speech is taken as a "radical" statement, other events and statements suggest a tendency toward conservatism and hesitation. There are, I think, several hints that Seward might have been a more cautious soul all along.

For one thing, Seward was no early adopter of the Republican party. One might have expected that Seward, as a "radical", would have led the charge to form a sectional anti-Nebraska party. In fact that was not the case. As Michael F. Holt explains, Seward and his patron, Thurlow Weed, began to plan their exit from the Whigs only in mid-1855, some time after most others had recognized that the party was moribund, and only when they realized that they had no other option:

Discomfited by their isolation from antislavery men elsewhere and aware after New England's spring [1855] elections that even hostility to slavery expansion could not preserve northern Whiggery, Seward, Weed, and their various lieutenants began to plot in May and June [1855] to merge their forces with New York's Free Soilers and anti-Nebraska Democrats in an anti-Know Nothing Republican party. Seward made no public statement until the fall, but the key decisions came in July.

There were extenuating circumstances, to be sure, that explain why Seward "stubbornly . . . shun[ned]" the Republicans until then: in February 1855, the New York legislature reelected Seward to the United States Senate. Weed and he pretty clearly calculated that retaining the Whig label would bolster Seward's chances. But even so, the fact that Seward made that calculation suggests that he was a politician with an instinct for caution and not simply an ideologue.

Next, consider this passage from a Senate speech delivered March 3, 1858, during the debates over the Lecompton Constitution. In it, Seward made the remarkable concession that, for Kansas at least, he would abandon the bedrock Republican doctrine of no slavery in the territories - essentially the Wilmot Proviso - for Popular Sovereignty - the monstrous doctrine embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act that created the Republican coalition:

But I shall not insist, now, on so radical a measure as the restoration of the Missouri prohibition. I know how difficult it is for power to relinquish even a pernicious and suicidal policy all at once. We may obtain the same result, in this particular case of Kansas, without going back so far. Go back only to the ground assumed in 1854 [in the Kansas-Nebraska Act], the ground of popular sovereignty. Happily for the authors of that measure, the zealous and energetic resistance of abuses practiced under it has so far been effective that popular sovereignty in Kansas may now be made a fact, and liberty there may be rescued from danger through its free exercise. Popular sovereignty is an epic of two parts. Part the first presents freedom in Kansas lost. Part the second, if you will so consent to write it, shall be freedom in Kansas regained. It is on this ground that I hail the eminent Senator from Illinois [Mr. DOUGLAS] and his associates . . .. The late Mr. Clay told us that Providence has many ways for saving nations. God forbid that I should consent to see freedom wounded, because my own lead, or even my own agency in saving it, should be rejected. I will cheerfully cooperate with these new defenders of this sacred cause in Kansas, and I will award them all due praise, when we shall have been successful, for their large share of merit in its deliverance.

Again, there were extenuating circumstances. In the speech, Seward maintained that the Wilmot Proviso approach was preferable. The context clearly supports James L. Huston's assertion that "Seward was obviously trying to tempt [Stephen A.] Douglas and his followers into the Republican coalition. After all, the slavery extension issue had cracked the Democratic Party twice before, in 1846-48 and in 1854, and one more time would seal the antislavery victory." But isn't that precisely the approach of a cautious and moderate politician - attempting to build a coalition with more "conservative" (for want of a better term) elements, rather than throwing down the gauntlet and taking a doctrinaire approach?

Two years later, on February 29, 1860, Seward delivered a major speech in the Senate on the admission of Kansas. Although Seward did not back down from his core conviction that slavery was wrong, the bulk of the speech was remarkably conciliatory to the South. At the outset, the discussion of slavery took on an abstract, almost academic tone, combining history, economics and sociology. The division over slavery, for example, was not between the North and the South, but between "capital States" and "labor States":

An economical question early arises out of the subject of slavery - labor either of freemen or of slaves is the cardinal necessity of society. . . . In the one case capital invested in slaves becomes a great political force, while in the other labor thus elevated and enfranchised, becomes the dominating political power. It thus happens that we may, for convenience sake, and not inaccurately, call slave States capital States, and free States labor States.

Seward also addressed the fact that, even then, people were hearing "menaces of disunion. louder, more distinct, more emphatic than ever, with the condition annexed, that they shall be executed the moment that a Republican Administration, though constitutionally elected, shall assume the Government." Again, his response was the soul of conciliation. Although secession was plainly "unconstitutional" "mad work", Seward pledged to listen to southern complaints:

Hitherto the Republic party has been content with one self-interrogatory - how many votes it can cast? These threats enforce another - has it determination enough to cast them? This latter question touches its spirit and pride. I am quite sure, however, that as it has hitherto practiced self-denial in so many other forms, it will in this emergency lay aside all impatience of temper, together with all ambition, and will consider these extraordinary declamations seriously and with a just moderation.

Even more surprising was Seward’s clumsy attempt to persuade southerners that Republicans shared their values. Denying the southern accusation that Republicans intended “to introduce negro equality among you,” Seward asserted that the free labor system promoted the very “equality of white men” that southerners held out as their ideal:

Suppose we had the power to change your social system; what warrant have you for supposing that we should carry negro equality among you? We know, and we will show you, if you will only give heed, that what our system of labor works out, wherever it works out anything, is the equality of white men. The laborer in the free States, no matter how humble his occupation, is a white man, and he is politically the equal of his employer. . . . Is it then in any . . . [of the free States] that negro equality offends the white man’s pride? . . . Did Washington, Jefferson, and Henry, when they implored you to relinquish your system and accept the one we have adopted, propose to sink you down to the level of the African, or was it their desire to exalt all white men to a common political elevation?

Seward attempted to blunt southern suspicions by going out of his way to vigorously condemn John Brown and his associates for their “unlawful” attempt “to subvert slavery in Virginia by conspiracy, ambush, invasion, and force.”

While generous and charitable natures will probably concede that John Brown and his associates acted on earnest though fatally erroneous convictions, yet all good citizens will nevertheless agree, that this attempt to execute an unlawful purpose in Virginia by invasion, involving servile war, was an act of sedition and treason, and criminal in just the extent that it affected the public peace and was destructive of human happiness and human life.

Finally, noting the shared heritage of (white) Americans, north and south (“We are of one race, language, liberty, and faith”), Seward laid out an oddly mechanical vision of the Constitution, which at least had the virtue of emphasizing its perpetuity:

Mr. President, we are perpetually forgetting this subtle and complex, yet obvious and natural, mechanism of our Constitution; and because we do forget it, we are continually wondering how it is that a Confederacy of thirty and more States, covering regions so vast, and regulating interests so various of so many millions of men, constituted and conditioned so diversely, works right on. We are continually looking to see it stop and stand still, or fall suddenly into pieces. But, in truth, it will not stop; it cannot stop; it was made not to stop, but to keep in motion – in motion always, and without force. For my own part . . . I expect that it will stand and work right on until men shall fear its failure no more than we now apprehend that the sun will cease to hold his eternal place in the heavens.

In the end, Seward maintained, the present “winds of controversy” would subside and the Union would stand more firm than ever:

The earth seems to be heaving beneath our feet, and the pillars of the noble fabric that protects us [seem] to be trembling before our eyes. But the appointed end of all this agitation comes at last, and always seasonably; the tumults of the people subside; the country becomes calm once more; and then we find that only our senses have been disturbed, and that they have betrayed us. The earth is firm as always before, and the wounded structure, for whose safety we have feared so anxiously, now more firmly fixed than ever, still stands unmoved, enduring, and immovable.

David M. Potter writes off Seward's February 29, 1860 speech as simply an attempt to shed his radical image and "convert[] himself into a moderate" in order to bolster his chances of being nominated for the presidency at the Republican convention that summer:

By 1860, it began to appear that these phrases ["a law higher than the Constitution" and "irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery"] had succeeded too well [in establishing Seward as an antislavery leader], and on February 29, Seward delivered a major speech in the Senate appealing for "mutual toleration" and "fraternal spirit." Even the dualism of "free states" and "slave states" disappeared, and "labor states" and "capital states" replaced them. But Seward's conciliatory gestures were too patently opportunistic to win the confidence of the moderates. For more than a decade he had been building an image of himself as the antislavery leader. Southern fire-eaters, who had accepted the image literally, were not going to let him escape from it now. Almost the only people influenced by the speech were some of the radical antislavery men, who were antagonized.

Even so, I cannot help but wonder whether Seward's speech, however politically convenient, did not reflect a fundamental moderation underlying a radical veneer. Salmon P. Chase, for example, would never have delivered such a speech, no matter how advantageous it might have been. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of Seward's subsequent trajectory it is fair to see in the speech both political positioning and a tendency to draw back from the brink.

Now it is pretty well known that, shortly before and after he became President Lincoln's Secretary of State (basically from late February 1861 through Sumpter), Seward struggled desperately to hold Lincoln to a course that would keep the middle and upper South in the Union. But to end this post I'd like to focus on a less well known incident that demonstrates just how early in the Secession Crisis Seward displayed an extremely pacific stance.

On November 24, 1860 - fewer than three weeks after Lincoln's election, and well before even the most conservative Republicans began wondering whether they shouldn't propose some sort of conciliatory gesture to the South - Thurlow Weed, Seward's "alter ego", publicly advocated gutting the core tenet of the Republican party: no slavery in the territories. Russell McClintock tells the story in his fine book Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession:

But the earthquake that truly shook [Republican] party confidence came from an entirely unexpected quarter: Thurlow Weed, the undisputed ruler of the New York State organization and alter ego of Senator William H. Seward. On November 24 [,1860], Weed's Albany Evening Journal flouted Republican dogma by proposing not just a strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Law but also a re-extension of the old Missouri Compromise line . . .. Although it had been the Kansas-Nebraska Act's repeal of that line six years earlier that had led to the founding of the Republican coalition, from early on the party had rejected its reinstitution, insisting on nothing less than barring slavery from all federal territories. But now, Weed explained, the Republicans' accession to the White House marked the end of the controversy over slavery in the territories. There was no need to legislate against slavery in federal territories because the lands remaining would not support a slave-based economy anyway.

Shades of Stephen A. Douglas! Both Dr. McClintock and Kenneth M. Stampp emphasize how outraged mainstream Republicans were at this apostasy, deriding "Granny Weed" for his weakness. Kenneth M. Stampp describes the reaction as follows:

Most sensational was the "backing down" of Thurlow Weed, who began to advocate concessions, especially the restoration of the Missouri Compromise line, in his Albany Evening Journal. "Poor Weed," mocked a critic [identified in a footnote as the New York Herald]. "His glory has departed - his metal is broken - his pride is humbled - his self reliance is gone . . ." And the "knowing ones" had no trouble in finding the cause. "They easily traced the wonder to Wall Street. They found in the condition of the stock market a perfect means of explanation."

And here is Dr. McClintock surveying the Republican response:

The abandonment of the [Republican] party's central plank by the boss of its most important state organization and political manager of the party's most powerful national leader, came as a shock to Republicans across the country. It sparked a vehement reaction against the idea of concessions - especially concessions like Weed's, which struck at the very heart of Republicanism. "We dont take the Evening Journal or Times for our guide," a local party activist from western New York insisted. "We are here utterly opposed to have the principles of the Republican Party compromised away." Junior New York senator Preston King protested to Weed, "It cannot be done. You must abandon your position. . . . You and Seward should be among the foremost to brandish the lance and shout for war."

Senator King assumed that Seward was complicit in Weed's shocking retreat - and correctly so. Dr. McClintock reports that Seward was convinced that concessions were necessary but knew that they "would challenge party orthodoxy." Weed and Seward therefore decided jointly "that Weed would publish a compromise proposal as a sort of trial balloon." When "Republicans reacted harshly to Weed's editorials," Seward was able to "den[y] that he had any part in them."

So where does this leave me? I'm not sure. As this post suggests, I guess I'm inclined to see more continuity than disjunction - more conservatism and caution underlying a radical image from fairly early on. Most people become more conservative as they grow older, but the change tends to be moderate and evolutionary. The evidence, however, is fairly thin and ambiguous, and there's always the concern that I'm reading more in earlier events because I know what will come later. Your thoughts are welcome.

About the first illustration, entitled A Big Blue Bottle Fly in the Web:

Another swipe at Whig candidate Winfield Scott's manipulation by antislavery Whigs Seward and Greeley. Here, Scott is a fly caught in a large web, spun by spiders Greeley (left) and Seward (right). Scott exclaims, "I think I've got myself into a hobble!" Greeley, hanging from a thread, decides, "I must hurry up & cover him with our slime as fast as possible!" Seward adds, "I hope he won't break through before I get him secured!" At lower left, Massachusetts Whig Daniel Webster and New York editor James Watson Webb look on. Webster remarks, "What an extraordinary web, Webb!" Webb replies, "Yes it's one of that crafty old spider Seward's and he has caught a large fly who wont get out Scot free--Can't you stir it up a little, Webster!"

About the second illustration, entitled A Magnificent Offer to a Magnificent Officer:

A cartoon ridiculing Whig nominee Winfield Scott as the pawn of New York antislavery senator William Seward. A member of the "Whig Committee" kneels before Scott and offers him a crown and a bag of money marked "50,000,000." The man says, "Behold us at your feet great General, tired of the insolence of our democratic rabble, we, the Whig Party, have made a Coup d'etat, proclaimed an Empire and herewith offer you the Crown, and with the Crown $50,000,000 per annum!! Long live the Emperor!!! Huzza!!" Scott, holding his plumed hat and sword, leans against Seward. He asks his supporter, "Why thats a magnificent offer Seward, shall I accept it?" Sharpening his quill, Seward replies, "Certainly! by all means, you take the Crown and I'll take the $50,000,000 and the Pickings and the Stealings." In the right background stand other members of the "Whig Committee." On the left is Seward's writing table.

The Missouri Compromise: Rufus King and the Higher Law

Compare and contrast:

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator if the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness.

William Seward, 1850

I have yet to learn that one man can make a slave of another -- if one man cannot do it, no number of individuals can have any better right to do it, and I hold that all laws or compacts imposing such a condition upon any human being are absolutely void because contrary to the law of nature, which is the law of God, by which he makes his way known to man, and is paramount to all human control.

Rufus King, 1819.

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 Barnburners: Fons et Origo

Herbert D.A. Donovan identifies 1842 as a key year in the developing divisions within the Democratic Party in New York.

During the last gubernatorial term of Democrat William Learned Marcy (who left office on December 31, 1838) and particularly during the administration of his successor, Whig William Henry Seward (who assumed office January 1, 1839), the state debt mushroomed. Conservative Democrats and Whigs sponsored ambitious canal projects while refusing to lay taxes to pay for them, maintaining that the income generated from the projects would ultimately pay off the debt.

As previously discussed, by 1842 the state was an economic disaster area. The Radicals finally gained enough support to pass the Stop and Tax Act of 1842, aided by more conservative Democrats “who consented to it only on the ground of temporary necessity.” The Radicals then beat back attempts by Conservatives to undermine the Act through the passage of bills that would have authorized work on specific projects.

“[T]he proceedings of the Democratic members of the [New York] Senate [in which Conservatives proposed to fund projects and Radicals thwarted them] . . . are worthy of particular notice, because they afforded the first public demonstration in our state legislature of the difference of opinion between that portion of the Democratic party called the Barnburners or radicals, and those that were afterwards called conservatives, or ‘Hunkers.’” From this time forward, the Radicals had a concrete platform on which they could stand together and seek to dominate the will of the party.

***

Thus it may be seen that the ramifications of the canal question were the ultimate source of division, the “fons et origo” from which sprang the dissentions in the Democratic party at that period.

Governor Bouck Sets the Barn on Fire

I was taking a look around to see what I could find on the origins of the dispute between the Barnburners and the Hunkers in New York. Interestingly, there isn’t that much on the details, rooted as they are in the Byzantine intricacies of New York politics. Wikipedia, for example, says only that “The Barnburners were the more radical faction of the New York state Democratic Party in the mid 19th century. . . . The Barnburners opposed expanding the public debt, and the power of the large corporations; they generally came to oppose the extension of slavery.”

In his excellent The Anti-Rent Era in New York and Politics, 1839-1865, Charles W. McCurdy dates “the famous Barnburner-Hunker split in the New York Democracy” to 1843, when circumstances exposed a divide between New York Democrats over economic policy. To understand how it arose, we must go back several years.

After years of Democratic domination, New York somewhat unexpectedly elected Whig William Seward as governor in the fall of 1838. Seward took office on January 1, 1839.

The Panic of 1837 was then in remission (temporary, as it would turn out), and the new governor proposed a bold and aggressive spending program. The legislature should abandon the Democrats’ pay-as-you-go policy for canals and railroads. He urged it instead “to accelerate progress on the public works by authorizing the [state] to borrow $4 million a year for the next decade.” The governor argued that these expenditures would pay for themselves:

Each $500,000 increment of revenue from canal tolls, Seward pointed out, would pay the interest on another $10 million of debt. As a result, “taxation for purposes of internal improvement is happily unnecessary as it would be unequal and oppressive.”

The Panic of 1837, however, laid waste to Seward’s aggressive program. The initial contraction in 1837 had eased somewhat during late 1838 and much of 1839, but an even more severe downturn followed at the end of that year. Seward was reelected to a second two-year term in the fall of 1840. However, by 1841-42, the New York economy was a disaster – and the state budget was too.

As of January 1842, when the state legislature met (annual sessions started at the beginning of January and usually went into early May) the state debt had climbed to $26.8 million from $11.9 million three years earlier. Canal tolls and other sources of revenue expected to fund the building program had dried up. No help could be expected from the federal government; the Whigs, who had surged to power in the national elections of 1840, were now at war with their own president, John Tyler.

New York voters went to the polls in the fall of 1841 to elect a new state legislature, and they punished the Whigs with a vengeance. The Democrats won control of the state senate and “rolled up an astonishing majority of 95-33 in the lower house. Governor Seward pronounced the result ‘a disastrous overthrow of the Whig party in this state.’”

When the new, Democratic legislature met at the beginning 1842, it was determined to bring the governor’s spending spree to a halt. To this end, it passed what was known as the Stop and Tax Act, which Governor Seward reluctantly signed into law on March 29, 1842:

The act provided for the suspension of all canal construction, except that essential to navigation or “necessary to preserve the work already done from destruction by ice or floods.” It also provided for a one-mill [real] property tax. Every dollar generated by the tax and an amount from canal tolls “at least equal to one third of the interest of the canal debt remaining unpaid” were “sacredly” pledged to debt retirement.

Nationwide, the year 1841 had been a grim one economically. Four states – Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi and Illinois – had defaulted on their debts. The next year was even worse. “Almost every index of economic activity plunged to a record low in 1842.” Amidst this economic carnage, the Stop and Tax Act proved stunningly effective. It “immediately restored confidence in the New York financial system.” State bonds rose to par by September 1842.

New York banks, their reserves buoyed by the rising market for government securities, soon eased credit and injected new money into the stream of commerce. The depression was not yet over. But conditions improved even in the canal counties, and Democrats were quick to claim credit for having saved New York from the battery of [debt] repudiation, suspension and stay laws that had deranged the economics of so many other states.

The New York electorate agreed. Recognizing that he could not win, Seward chose not to seek a third term as governor in the fall of 1842. The voters elected William C. Bouck, “a colorless Democrat,” who took office January 1, 1843. But in the Democrats’ electoral success lay the seeds of future division, for the Stop and Tax contained an ambiguity.

As noted above, the Act “pledged to debt retirement every dollar generated by the [new] property tax and an amount from canal tolls ‘at least equal to one third of the interest of the canal debt remaining unpaid.” The Act did not, however, specify what would happen if revenues unexpectedly increased. “Did the Stop and Tax Act authorize the use of surplus funds on suspended construction projects?”

The Democratic party in New York at the time was more fiscally conservative than former Governor Seward and most Whigs, but within their ranks it was still possible to find a range of opinion. More “radical” hard money men took the position that there should be no further state spending until the existing debt was paid off. In 1841, these radicals had championed a “People’s Resolution,” a proposed constitutional amendment designed to thwart future state spending. It had proposed

that the constitution of the state be so amended, that every law authorizing the borrowing of money . . . shall specify the object for which the money shall be appropriated; and that every such law shall embrace no more than one such object, which shall be singly and specifically stated; that no such law shall take effect until it shall be distinctly submitted to the people at the next general election, and be approved by a majority of the votes cast for and against it.

Other, more “conservative” democrats were prepared to be a bit more flexible when it came to state spending. In part, this reflected their pragmatic understanding that upstate voters depended heavily on the Eric Canal system and would likely punish politicians who dogmatically rejected all funding schemes. Back in 1841, these more conservative legislators had killed the People’s Resolution:

[The] proposed amendment caused an uproar in the New York Democracy [in 1841]. Democratic assemblymen with districts along the Erie Canal, the unfinished “feeder” canals, and the New York & Erie Railroad regarded the People’s Resolution as a kiss of death. Standing for reelection on the Stop and Tax Act, which suspended construction temporarily, would be hard enough. Defeating Whig opponents on a platform that was likely to result in the abandonment of internal improvements by state government would be virtually impossible.

In 1843, Governor Bouck proved to be of the latter, somewhat more moderate, persuasion. As a former member of the State’s Canal Board, he may have been sensitive to the importance of maintaining the canal system, or at least to its political importance. Whatever the reason, in his first annual message on January 3, 1843, the new governor anticipated increased revenues and urged the legislature to authorize spending on renewed canal projects:

“I am convinced that the completion of the unfinished work . . . [on the Erie Canal enlargement] would be essentially useful, and some of it may be indispensably necessary,” Bouck proclaimed. “The speedy completion of the Black River Canal . . . and the Genessee Valley Canal . . . is doubtless anxiously desired by the friends of these improvements. I do not feel that I should faithfully discharge my duty did I not recommend for your careful consideration these portions of the public works.”

Governor Bouck's message “stunned the New York Democracy.” What Martin Van Buren termed “a ruinous schism in our ranks” led to bitter intra-party conflict and legislative stalemate. Excerpts from a report written by William McMurray, a radical Democrat, give some feel for the rancor:

“It was from unjust taxation that our forefathers were impelled to throw off the British yoke,” McMurray wrote; “but not more oppressive or unequal were British impositions than that system which taxes a man in one section of the state for improvements made in another, not only without benefit to him, but frequently to his direct or consequent injury.” In his view, even the phrase internal improvement was a misnomer: “It should rather be called, as it really is, robbery and plunder, inflicted by the strong arm of a bandit government upon the weak, miserable abject and defenseless victims, not of its fostering care, but of its peculation and avarice.”

All quotes are from Professor McCurdy's highly-recommended book.