"If those are Whig doctrines, I'm a Loco-foco"

I’m about half way through John C. Waugh’s On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American History, and it’s a delight.

You won’t find any shattering revelations about the Compromise of 1850 in this relatively brief book (195 pages of text and footnotes). But the book lays out clearly the issues, the players and the developments during the crisis. If you don’t know much about the Compromise, it seems to be a fine introduction.

But even if you know a good deal about the Compromise, the book is a lot of fun and well worth reading. Mr. Waugh is a journalist by trade, not a professional historian. What he excels at is providing vivid portraits of the people involved and the dramatic moments that peppered the year 1850. Using memoirs and published personal recollections of participants and onlookers, Mr. Waugh paints arresting pictures of (for example) Henry Clay rising in the Senate to give one of his great speeches, or Daniel Webster acknowledging John C. Calhoun with a bow during his Seventh of March speech.

I said earlier that the book contains no shattering revelations. But it does contain a number of vivid, colorful anecdotes, previously unknown to me, that shed light on the players, large and small, and bring them to life in a way that academic history often does not. On the theory that one example is worth a thousand words (or something like that), here is a vignette that I just finished reading.

To set the scene, William Seward has just given his famous “higher law” speech. Waugh then describes the usually affable Willie Mangum (Whig – North Carolina) storming into Zachary Taylor’s office, and Taylor’s reaction:

[Mangum] denounce[ed] what he saw as “monstrous declarations,” telling the president that “if such were the doctrines of the administration, I was its decided opponent henceforth, and if those were Whig doctrines, I was a Loco-foco.” Taylor hurried in alarm to see A.C. Bullitt, the editor of the Republic, and stammered, “A-aleck, this is a nice mess Governor Seward has got us into. Mangum swears he’ll turn Democrat if Seward is the mouthpiece of my administration. The speech must be disclaimed at once, authoritatively and decidedly. Don’t be mealy-mouthed about it, but use no harsh language. We can’t stand for a moment on such principles. The Constitution is not worth one straw if every man is to be his own interpreter, disregarding the exposition of the Supreme Court.”

Isn’t that wonderful? It really gives you a feel for Mangum and Taylor, and on top of that it’s a hoot!

The First Free Soil Party: Land monopoly and slavery are "combinations of wealth against the liberties of the masses"

In the fall of 1846, New Yorkers would vote for governor, lieutenant governor and congressmen, in addition to state legislators. Anti-Renters were determined to make their influence felt. However, in doing so, as I mentioned in the last post, they had a basic tactical decision to make. They could try to work through the existing Democratic and Whig parties, or they could nominate their own candidates.

As it turned out, the Anti-Renters were disorganized and divided as to how to proceed. As a result, efforts to hold an early convention – at which they could nominate their own candidates and then press one or the other of the major parties to endorse them – failed. The Anti-Renters wound up assembling only on October 6, 1846, after both the Whigs and the Democrats had made their nominations.

The Anti-Renters found much to dislike about the gubernatorial nominees of both major parties – Silas Wright for the Democrats and John Young for the Whigs. Both had expressed support in principle for the Anti-Rent cause, but both also had substantial negatives. Wright, the incumbent governor, had declared three Anti-Rent counties in rebellion in 1845 and sent in armed forces to suppress the “Indians.” As a legislator, Young had refused to back a bill authorizing court challenges to the Patroons’ titles, a central demand of the Anti-Renters. “Thus,” Reeve Huston has observed, “the major candidates held exactly the same position on the leasehold controversy: both supported the tenants’ least controversial demands and wished to destroy the leasehold system, but opposed doing so on the anti-renters’ terms.”

Faced with two unpalatable choices, the delegates’ other option was to forge ahead and nominate their own gubernatorial candidate. Unfortunately, the probable choice, Ira Harris, announced that if he were selected he would decline the nomination. In the end, therefore, the delegates reluctantly selected Young and the other Whig nominees as the Anti-Rent candidates. “Immediately, 7 of the 36 delegates, all of them National Reformers or Barnburners, walked out.”

Sixteen days later, the bolters and other dissident Anti-Renters reassembled at Albany City Hall, this time joined by National Reformers and Liberty Party activists, who had been eyeing each other as potential allies. As Professor Huston explains:

Reformers in both camps saw such alliances as a way to expand the influence of their movements. Abolitionists like [Gerrit] Smith and [Calvin] Pepper were also convinced by the National Reformers’ contention that access to land was a natural right; they endorsed the NRA’s program as an essential part of their struggle for human liberation.

Jonathan H. Earle’s perspective is similar:

NRA anti-renters . . . found [new allies] among the state’s growing population of political abolitionists, including Gerrit Smith and William Chaplin. Smith, following a long correspondence with [George Henry] Evans, had come to believe that the eradication of land monopoly was a necessary first step to abolishing chattel slavery. Chaplin, the editor of the Albany Patriot, wished to move abolitionism beyond the Liberty Party’s “one idea” (abolition) and work for other reforms.

On October 22, 1846, this assembly of “land reformers, land-hungry farmers, and abolitionists forged their first political alliance” – a coalition they called the Free Soil party, “the first to use the name.” They nominated a National Reformer (Lewis Masquerier) for governor, an abolitionist (William Chaplin) for lieutenant governor, National Reformer and Anti-Rent editor Thomas Devyr for Congress, and two long-time anti-rent activists for the state legislature.

Perhaps more important for the future, the party platform sought to recognize the goals of the various groups participating in the coalition. Professor Huston characterizes it as follows:

[T]he platform . . . appealed to the anti-renters’ hopes of destroying both the leasehold system and the rule of professional politicians. At the same time, it sought to link these aims to broader land and labor reform. The delegates offered resolutions calling for the abrogation of all leasehold contracts, a homestead act, and an equalization of the rewards to labor.

Professor Earle adds that the “delegates labeled both land monopoly and slavery ‘combinations of wealth against the liberties of the masses.’”

Coming only twelve days before the election, the Free Soil nominations had no impact on the 1846 races. Young won the governorship handily. Reeve Huston reports, “The Free-Soil vote was so small that it was left out of the statewide tally; in Albany County, where support for the National Reformers was as strong as anywhere, the ticket garnered fewer than one hundred votes.”

As Professor Earle reminds us, however, the delegates had stumbled across a concept that would grow rapidly:

[T]he platform and resolutions presaged a larger political movement that would fare better in the near future. Linking the Free Soil parties of 1846 and the one christened in 1848 were commitments to two distinct yet complementary ideas: free homesteads on the public lands for needy settlers and hostility to the spread of slavery. What made 1848 so different from 1846 were two factors: the addition of thousands of square miles of territory to the United States as a result of the war with Mexico and a full-bore schism within the once mighty New York Democracy.

The First Free Soil Party: "Land . . . is the natural inheritance of every individual"

Most standard accounts of the Free Soil movement date the birth of the Free Soil Party to the Buffalo Convention held in August 1848. The Wikipedia entry, for example, states that, "In 1848, the first [Free Soil] party convention was held in Buffalo, New York . . .."

In fact, the Free Soil party that contested the 1848 national election was not the first to bear that name. That distinction goes to the Free Soil party that contested state elections in New York in the autumn of 1846.

The 1846 Free Soil party was born out of the convulsions of New York's Anti-Rent Wars, which roiled the state from roughly 1839 until the early 1850s (and beyond). The Anti-Rent Wars are fascinating in their own right and tremendously complex. Mercifully, for present purposes the most basic outline will suffice to set the stage.

In the 1600s and 1700s, Dutch and English authorities granted large tracts of undeveloped land in eastern New York to individual men. The properties, known as Patents or Manors, dominated large parts of what became Albany, Rensselaer, Columbia, Schoharie and Delaware Counties, which are shown in white on the map above. Smaller manors were scattered across a number of other adjacent counties, shown in pale blue on the map. Shortly after independence, the New York State legislature ratified the grants of those owners, known as Patroons, who had sided with the revolution.

Meanwhile, in the 1700s and early 1800s, the Patroons began leasing farm-sized plots of land within the manors to thousands of settlers and their families. The “leases” (technically, many or most of the conveyances were not leases, but that’s another story) were often perpetual, or at least extended over many generations. They typically required annual payment in kind (in, for example, in wheat and “fat fowl”). In addition, they contained provisions that permitted the lessees to sell the property. However, if they did so they were obligated to remit a portion of the price (often one-quarter, hence the term “quarter sale”) to the Patroon.

Over the decades, settlers cleared, fenced and farmed their plots and improved their parcels by building homes, barns, saw mills, grist mills and other outbuildings on them. Relations between the farmers and the Patroons were often unsettled and tense in a society where land ownership rather than rental was the norm. Individual farmers dragged their feet in making payment; Patroons generally used the carrot rather than the stick to encourage at least partial payment.

Decades of neglect led to a crisis in the late 1830s. A new generation of Patroons inherited massive debts from their indulgent forbears, and they were neither willing nor able to use gentle persuasion to convince farmers to pay their debts. The farmers, for their part, were now faced with the fact that their debts had accumulated to point where many could not pay. Many were farming marginal land in mountainous terrain, and some were, in effect, squatters, having purchased their farms from sellers who had failed to pay the quarter sale.

To make a long story short, the Patroons began filing suits, and something close to a war developed on the manors. The farmers organized rent strikes, and young men in disguise formed themselves into bands of “Indians” (pictured below) that threatened and menaced any agent or sheriff who entered the manors seeking to execute on a judgment.

The farmers also organized politically, although different groups emphasized different tactics. Some concentrated on reaching out to the two existing political parties – the Jacksonian Democrats and the Whigs – to enlist their help. Others were more inclined to nominate their own candidates to the state legislature.

There was also a divergence of views over time concerning the underlying basis of the farmers’ complaints. The more conservative (for want of a better term) approach accepted, tacitly at least, the assumption that, if the Patroons owned the land, they were entitled to lease it, at least on reasonable terms. These more conservative elements adamantly maintained, however, that the original grants to the Patroons were legally void. For years they sought court rulings declaring that the Patroons had never had good title in the first place.

More radical elements did not disagree with the contention that the grants were void. But more fundamentally they rejected the premise that land was an article of commerce that could, or at least should, be bought and sold like wheat or a cow. They contended that each citizen had a natural right to the soil. In his fine book Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in New York, Reeve Huston describes an 1845 letter to an Anti-Rent newspaper that expressed the idea:

“Experience” of Columbia County argued that while equal laws “allow all, by their own honest exertion, to acquire as much wealth as they can, from the products of labor, they should not allow the more wealthy to seize and draw to themselves the main sources of such products. Land is the life blood of the community, and therefore, is the natural inheritance of every individual.” By defending the “natural right” of all to the “use” of the land, government would “make the success of the rich, as well as of the poor, depend upon their own exertions, and not upon partial or unjust laws.”

Because mainstream elements of both major parties firmly embraced the idea that land was a marketable commodity, neither endorsed “Experience’s” formulation. Instead, the “natural right” conception was spread among the Anti-Rent farmers primarily by Thomas Ainge Devyr, an Irishman who had fled from England to Brooklyn in 1840. In 1844, Devyr “helped found the National Reform Association, an organization led and supported by New York City craftsmen and dedicated to land reform.” Another founder of the NRA was George Henry Evans, described by Jonathan H. Earle as “a freethinker, mechanic, newspaper publisher, and land reformer [who] personified the radical tradition in antebellum America.”

In April 1845, Devyr “signed on as editor of the Albany Freeholder, the central organ of the statewide [Anti-Rent] movement.” Devyr used that pulpit to preach the doctrine that all citizens had a natural right to the land, and he drew many followers. When the publisher of the Freeholder, a conservative Democrat, fired Devyr for his radical views later the same year, Devyr simply “moved his office down the street and opened the Anti-Renter, a newspaper dedicated to the tenants’ cause and openly allied with the National Reformers.”

By mid-1846, the Anti-Renter and its “natural right” position had gathered a wide following among the Anti-Rent farmers:

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ordinary tenants became converts to National Reform. Devyr’s new newspaper enjoyed a circulation of 2,000. Scores of letters poured into the offices of the Anti-Renter and Young America, endorsing the notion that each citizen had a natural right to the land. Over a dozen local anti-rent associations held meetings to support the Anti-Renter and call for the freedom of the public lands.

These radical ideas did no go unchallenged. In particular, both Democratic and Whig politicians who were wooing the anti-rent bloc nonetheless urged the farmers to reject attempts to meddle with existing property rights. Many farmers adopted an amalgam of views, holding that the landlords’ titles, if valid, entitled them only to the value of the unimproved land; the value of the improvements rightfully belonged to the tenants whose labor had created them.

With this lengthy background, in the next post we’ll look at (finally!) the New York state elections of 1846 and the creation of the first Free Soil party.

Ugly Bat Boy!

"The cat's striking appearance is normal, for him."

Whose Lincoln?

Although I read The Corner regularly, somehow I missed this recent entry by Allen C. Guelzo. In just a few words, Guelzo says something important about Lincoln that torrents of ink often obscure. Thanks to Dimitri for noting it.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Readers may also want to take a look at Guelzo's review at Claremont entitled "Lincoln's Audition."

About the illustration:

A pro-Breckinridge satire on the 1860 presidential contest. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln (right) and Democrat Stephen A. Douglas (left) appear as boxers squaring off in a ring before a small crowd of onlookers. Douglas is seconded by an Irishman (left), presumably representing Douglas's Democratic constituency. Lincoln is coached by a black man, who kneels at right, armed with a basket of liquor bottles, and signifies Lincoln's antislavery leanings. In the background a third candidate, John C. Breckinridge, thumbs his nose and points toward the White House. He is encouraged on his way by a number of men who cheer and doff their hats to him. Weitenkampf cites a version of the print signed by F. Welcker of Cincinnati. Whatever his identity, the artist of "The Undecided Political Prize Fight" was probably also responsible for "The Political Quadrille" and "Dividing the National Map" (nos. 1860-23 and 1860-24), judging from the strikingly similar handling of the candidate portraits in all three prints.

Millard Fillmore, Bankruptcy Reformer

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to "establish . . . uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States." This power went largely unused, however, until 1898. Congress passed a bankruptcy act in 1800, only to repeal it three years later. A second federal bankruptcy act passed in 1841 lasted eighteen months.

Faced with congressional inaction, some states stepped into the breach, most notably New York. Young Millard Fillmore was first elected to the New York State assembly as an Anti-Mason in 1828. In 1831, he was serving his third one-year term. At the time, New York retained a debtors' prison law that authorized creditors to have defaulted debtors sent to jail.

In 1831, Fillmore engineered the passage of New York's first bankruptcy law, which eliminated debt imprisonment (and freed debtors already in jail) and established rules for discharge of debtors. As Millard's biographer Robert J. Rayback tells it, Fillmore maneuvered himself into the chairmanship of a special committee, carefully drafted a bill, with help from a fellow Anti-Mason in the state senate, that would appeal to both debtor and creditor interests, and pushed the bill through the legislature by allowing the Democrats -- who had a three-to-one majority -- to take credit for it.

Rayback comments:

The artistry of the actor and demand for the limelight seldom guided Fillmore's behavior but his understanding of the role of public officials frequently did. The American scene required harmonization of its discordant groups, and responsibility for the task belonged to the practitioners of politics. Twenty years later, when he truly became a statesman, few men understood better than he this highest purpose of politics. Yet even here . . . in the youth of his career, he was beginning to appreciate and accept the role.

"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.)

Silly, But Fun

The Sedition Act of . . . 1801?

You probably know about the Sedition Act of 1798, which expired in 1801. Did you know the Federalists attempted to enact a sequel in 1801, when it would have protected the newly-elected Democratic-Republican President and Congress? I didn't.

David W. Blight

Sorry. I know David Blight is an icon, but I've got to get this off my chest.

I've listened to the first two of Professor Blight's course lectures and, you know what, he's annoying me no end. I've been trying to figure out why. A good part of it is that his voice and vocal mannerisms make him a dead ringer for Garrison Keillor. Has anyone else noticed this? At any rate, the problem is, I've always hated Garrison Keillor. And Blight has all of his worst traits, particularly the condescending snarkiness that he tries to mask by slathering it with bucketfuls of treacley empathy. On top of that, I've been underwhelmed by the content. He made his name on memory and perception, and he's milking it for everthing it's worth. The man is obsessed with perceptions. Before getting to perceptions it would be helpful to discuss what actually happened.

That is all.

The Seventeenth Amendment

A recent post by Jonathan Adler Zywicki at Volokh reminded me that I never recommended Todd J. Zywicki's excellent articles on the Seventeenth Amendment -- that's the one that provided for the direct election of Senators by the people, rather than by state legislatures, as Article I, Section 3 originally provided: History of the Seventeenth Amendment and Its Implications for Current Reform Proposals and Senators and Special Interests: A Public Choice Analysis of the Seventeenth Amendment.

"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).

Two Articles

These two articles look interesting:

Seth Barrett Tillman, The Puzzle of Hamilton's Federalist No. 77: It Turns out that Hamilton was Right After All:

The Founders, the authors of the Constitution of 1787, much like you and me, were flesh-and-blood human beings. As a result, we expect to find errors and exaggeration in their written works. There is nothing new about that insight. But one alleged error has always struck me as somewhat different from other alleged errors. I am speaking of Hamilton's 1788 publication: The Federalist No. 77. There he wrote:

IT HAS BEEN MENTIONED as one of the advantages to be expected from the co-operation of the Senate, in the business of appointments, that it would contribute to the stability of the administration. The consent of that body would be necessary to displace as well as to appoint. A change of the Chief Magistrate, therefore, would not occasion so violent or so general a revolution in the officers of the government as might be expected, if he were the sole disposer of offices. Where a man in any station had given satisfactory evidence of his fitness for it, a new President would be restrained from attempting a change in favor of a person more agreeable to him, by the apprehension that a discountenance of the Senate might frustrate the attempt, and bring some degree of discredit upon himself. Those who can best estimate the value of a steady administration, will be most disposed to prize a provision which connects the official existence of public men with the approbation or disapprobation of that body which, from the greater permanency of its own composition, will in all probability be less subject to inconstancy than any other member of the government.

This is the enigmatic great white whale among Founding-era documents.

Partisans of Senate (or congressional power) agree with Hamilton (or, at least, they think they agree with Hamilton). These commentators look back to the Tenure in Office Act and to any number of statements made on the floor of the House when statutory removal was first debated in 1789 -- all purportedly consistent with Hamilton's statement here. Partisans of presidential power disagree with Hamilton (or, at least, they think they do). They affirm that Hamilton erred. These commentators look to Myers v. United States and to statements made by Madison on the floor of the House during the statutory removal debates. The consensus view, nay - the universal view, is that Hamilton was speaking to the issue of the "removal" of federal officers.

However, this understanding of The Federalist No. 77, the standard view, the view that Hamilton was speaking to "removal," creates as many problems as it might resolve. And this is true without regard to whether or not you think Hamilton correct or erred. First, the standard view is puzzlingly inconsistent with everything we know about Hamilton, the premier Founding-era spokesman for energy and unity in the Executive. How is it that he would concede a role for the Senate in regard to the removal of federal officers, if a contrary view were even remotely tenable? Second, Hamilton's opining on the scope of the removal power is inconsistent with his plan for and the purpose of The Federalist. His plan for The Federalist was to discuss the defects of the then-current regime, the government under the Articles, the need for a more energetic government, and finally, to provide an article-by-article, clause-by-clause defense of the newly proposed Constitution of 1787 as consistent with the principles of Republican government, liberty, and property. Removal is simply not expressly addressed in the Constitution. To bring up "removal" is just bad tactics - why open up that can of worms, particularly where one's conclusion lacks direct textual support or any closely reasoned argument. Was Hamilton really such a poorly skilled tactician and propagandist? There is a third problem with the standard view .... This problem is not historical, but textual. If you read Hamilton's statement, you will notice that he does not actually use the word "removal" or any variant on "removal." Rather, he uses the word "displace." And that is the key to this ancient intellectual puzzle. Hamilton was not speaking to the power of removing federal officers, rather he was speaking to who had authority to displace federal officers. The two words are akin, but they are not at all times and for all purposes the same.

Lawrence B. Solum, Incorporation and Originalist Theory:

Does the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution incorporate the Bill of Rights contained in the first eight amendments? And how should an originalist answer that question? This paper focuses on the latter question-the issues of originalist theory that are raised by judicial and scholarly debates over what is called "incorporation."

The inquiry proceeds in six parts. Part I answers the questions: "What is incorporation?" and "What is originalism?" Part II examines the theoretical framework for an investigation of incorporation that operates within the narrow confines of interpretation of the linguistic meaning text based on the assumption that the original meaning of the text is solely determined by the public meaning for ordinary citizens at the time of framing and ratification. Part III relaxes the assumption that "original meaning" is determined solely by the linguistic practices of the whole community and considers the possibility that the phrase "privileges or immunities" was a term of art with a technical meaning for those learned in the law. Part IV relaxes the assumption that the incorporation debate must be resolved solely by interpretation of linguistic meaning and considers the possibility that incorporation doctrine might be viewed as a construction of an under determinate constitutional text. Part V considers the implications of the possibility that the "privileges or immunities clause" instantiates what might be called a failure of constitutional communication, considering the possibility of a saving or mending construction of the clause. Part VI concludes.

Academic Earth

At Wig-Wags, Rene Tyree has a fantastic tip on a site called Academic Earth, which has downloadable lectures by leading academics. Since Rene focuses on David Blight's course on the Civil War Era and Reconstruction, let me recommend another: Donald Kagan's course on Ancient Greek History.

Professor Kagan has been a leading scholar on Ancient Greece for the past thirty plus years. His four-volume study of the Peloponnesian War, first published in the 1970s, remains the leading work on the subject. To top it all off, Professor Kagan has been known on the Yale campus for decades as one of the school's finest and most entertaining lecturers. Over the years, his introductory Greek History course has routinely been packed to the rafters -- and that despite the subject matter, the professor's rigorous grading, and his outspoken conservative political views, which have sometimes been controversial in Yale's left-wing culture.

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!"

Lincoln and the Laws of War

An article in Slate entitled Lincoln's Laws of War has generated some interesting commentary by Volokh conspirators Eric Posner and Ilya Somin. Glenn Reynolds adds to the mix this post at Kenneth Anderson's Law of War blog.

It's unfortunate that Professor Posner ruins some otherwise decent points by buying into the Sherman/Total War nonsense:

For many historians of the laws of war, Lincoln was no hero. It was under Lincoln, and with his approval, that the modern concept of total war was invented—this was Sherman’s march through Georgia. It would be perfected by the Nazis and reach its apotheosis at Hiroshima.

As I've pointed out before, the idea that Sherman's march through Georgia was akin to, or even a precursor of, the Nazi devastation of Poland or Russia is ludicrous.

About the illustration:

An angered response to false Confederate peace overtures and to the push for reconciliation with the South advanced by the Peace Democrats in 1864. (See also "The Sportsman Upset by the Recoil of His Own Gun," no. 1864-32.) Confederate general Robert E. Lee and president Jefferson Davis (center) stand back-to-back trying to ward off an attack by Northern officers (from left to right) Philip H. Sheridan, Ulysses S. Grant, David G. Farragut, and William T. Sherman. Sheridan points his sword at Lee, saying, "You commenced the war by taking up arms against the Government and you can have peace only on the condition of your laying them down again." Grant, also holding a sword, insists, "I demand your unconditional surrender, and intend to fight on this line until that is accomplished." Lee tries to placate them, "Cant think of surrendering Gentlemen but allow me through the Chicago platform to propose an armistice and a suspension of hostilities . . . " The 1864 Democratic national convention in Chicago advocated "a cessation of hostilities with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means" to restore the Union. Davis, unarmed with his hands up, agrees, " . . . if we can get out of this tight place by an armistice, it will enable us to recruit up and get supplies to carry on the war four years longer." Farragut threatens with a harpoon, snarling, " rmistice! and suspension of hostilities'.--Tell that to the Marines, but sailors dont understand that hail from a sinking enemy." Sherman, with raised sword, informs Davis, "We dont want your negores or anything you have; but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States."

Favorite Presidents

In honor of Presidents' Day, National Review has solicited fourteen commentators to identify their favorite presidents and briefly explain their choices.

What is interesting is the variety of opinions. The usual suspects -- George Washington and Abraham Lincoln -- appear: Lincoln gets 2 1/2 votes and Washington gets 1 1/2. As you might expect, Ronald Reagan gets a vote, and William Henry Harrison gets two tongue-in-cheek nods (for dying before he could do any harm). But serious arguments are made in favor of no fewer than seven other candidates: Chester Alan Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding, James K. Polk, Teddy Roosevelt and . . . wait for it . . . none other than Millard Fillmore!

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.

Guess the Legislator!

In the the latter half of the 1840s, a United States Congressman (Senator or Representative) took the floor of his chamber and delivered an impassioned speech, during the course of which he expressed the sentiments delivered below. Use the poll below to guess who it was. I won't tell you the subject of the speech, except that it had nothing to do with Texas, Mexico, New Mexico, or slavery.

I deeply regret the course of a portion of my southern political friends upon this question. . . .

Sir, I am no croaker against the South. I have suffered abuse for the defence of her constitutional rights. My home is in the North. I love its green hills and quiet valleys. I would not exchange its rugged soil, that invites to labor, and begets a noble spirit of self-dependence, for the fertile and luxuriant plains of the sunny South. I would not exchange systems of labor, nor those stern and quiet virtues of the North, for all the chivalry and nice honor of the South.

Yet, sir, I am not insensible to the claims of the South upon my affection and respect. She has contributed largely to fill up the measure of our national glory. Her blood and her treasure has been freely poured out in the day of peril and of our country’s greatest need. I hold in profound respect the names of her great statesmen, living and dead. I have drawn largely from their teachings in the building up of my political faith. I cherish and respect them for their able vindication of the great doctrines of the republican school, their fearless defense of the rights of the States, and their watchful jealousy against the encroachments of Federal power. When the North and the East were rushing on towards consolidation, the South stood like a wall of fire in their path. The South, sir, has done much for the cause of republican principles, and of constitutional government.