The impending crisis symposium. It is a very great pleasure now for me to introduce dr. Adam ip smith, the edward osborn, professor of u. S. Political history and director of the Rothermere American Institute at the university of oxford with a specialism in the political history of the United States in the 19th century. Dr. Smiths perspective will be invaluable to our discussions today. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome dr. Adam smith. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, rob. And good morning, everyone. Its wonderful to see you all here. And its fantastic honor for me to have been invited to take part in this symposium. Its always great to have a reason to come back to richmond, which is a city that i like very much indeed. My talk this morning is going to build, i think, i hope very nicely on Richard Blackett talk, which you just heard, the fugitive slave act of 1850, which was obviously the centerpiece of what he was talking about this morning, was one of the most consequence pieces of legislation in american history. And its a fairly crowded field. But i think if we were having a kind of balloon debate about arguing about the most important piece of legislation, even in times of the coming of the civil war, the traditional answer would probably be the kansas nebraska act of 1854. Right. And that certainly is a good case to be made for that. But the fugitive slave act of 1850 was hugely consequential. And i will get on to it in a moment. But if i show you the question im going to be asking, maybe you can you can imagine where i may be going in terms of connecting this question to the issue that richard was talking about. What i want to understand here and by the way, this is a question actually that was central to the to the impending crisis exhibition that many of us had. The the privilege of oof previewing last night. What i want to understand is how did northerners in 1861, how had they got to the stage where they could conceptualize the use of massive military force against the south, against secessionists . How had they come to the point where they were a majority of them in the free states willing to vote for a president ial candidate . Abraham lincoln, of this new Republican Party who they knew because it was a low point of the Republican Party, was standing fundamentally against the interests of southerners who, for the whole period between the revolution and between the constitution and the and the civil war, southerners had effectively been in control of the federal government. So brief. John adams, period. There was a brief John Quincy Adams presidency. Otherwise president s whod sat in the executive mansion throughout that period had been slaveholders or effectively the supporters of slave holders in one way or another. That was obviously a big majority on the Supreme Court, which is also hugely consequential in the 1850s and was political the way that political alliances worked as the party system developed in the 1830s and forties, meant that effectively southern slave holders could exercise a veto in almost all circumstances over any attempt by the federal government to interfere with the rights of slave holders. And yet the Republican Party, the whole raison detre of the Republican Party in the 1850s was to stand up to that of northerners. The majority of them by 1860 had come to embrace that. And the question is a critical question for the coming of the civil war is why that was so, how, when and why did white northerners who had once been content, many of them, to tolerate the existence of enslavement, especially if it was elsewhere, come to see it as a threat, as a threat to the institution of the republic, a sufficient threat that they were willing to mobilize behind this new Republican Party, and ultimately to fight a war in order to assure, ensure that the objectives that the Republican Party had come to stand for, the idea that slavery should be at best the exception to the general rule of freedom, come to fight a war to ensure that that came to pass. Now, i think to to begin to answer this question, we we need to first understand the the parameters of american politics, the ideological parameters, the premises on which it was based in the antebellum period. And i think the essence of it is as follows. Its that the conception of the union, as was shared by northerners and southerners, but its particularly important to understand that northerners thought in this way in terms of the argument im going to make, that they conceived of the union of the American Republic as the vanguard in a global struggle between democracy and despotism, which required, first and foremost, the preservation of the revolutionary settlement of, as they might have put it, of 1776 or in general anyway, of the American Revolution and the constitution, as they understood it. In other words, americas future prosperity and freedom come on, americas future prosperity and freedom defended the freedom of the entire world, of the whole family of man as lincoln, once put it. Thats an extraordinary idea in global historical terms. Its the essence of the idea of american exceptionalism. Its the point. Its the case made by obviously, most famously, by lincoln at gettysburg, but in many other speeches and by many other people to that at stake eventually in the war against the rebellion was the whole future of popular government, the possibly lity that any republic conceived in liberty and based on the proposition of equality, could endure if they failed. If you failed, if we failed in this war, then human freedom everywhere would die forever. That darkness would descend. Thats one heck of a claim. And it carries with it an extraordinary obligation. Now, across the United States was not even in the 19th century. The only society built on revolution created out of revolution. But what was distinctive by the 1850s in particular, at least in the minds of americans, was that theirs was the successful revolution the french had had a revolution, of course, and it had gone sour in the minds of many observers in this country and in britain. Very quickly, as the jacobins took over and the heads rolled and the guillotine fell in 1848, europe had been roiled by revolution. The springtime of the european peoples and american newspapers had great read the first signs of revolution in 1848 with huge enthusiasm in fact, the an editorial in the New York Herald speculated apparently entirely without any facetious coarseness at all, that the circulation of the annual messages to congress of of american president s must have helped to inspire the movement in the streets of paris that perception was that european were following in the american path in 1848. But of course, those european revolutions, with interesting and debatable exceptions like that in switzerland, which we could potentially talk about, if you want to do, but its one heck of a digression. And those 1848 revolutions largely failed, putting even more pressure, as it were, on the responsibility of american to maintain the promise of their revolution. So theres a conservative posture inherent in this just all postwar revolutionary societies, if theyre preserving what theyve created, are in a in some sense, in a conservative defensive crouch. Alexis de tocqueville, the great 1830s observer of american democracy, wrote of the americans that they love change, but they dread revolution and and by the time that tocqueville wrote that in the 1830s, the leaders of, say, of the original American Revolution, of course, it had passed away. And the rising generation of policies, politicians defined themselves as the inheritors of their fathers sacred trust, tied by a thread of gold to those who had gone before in the providential reading of the vast majority of 19th century americans, it was their fate as one of gods chosen peoples to bear this precious burden, their revolution had set in motion a Free Republic that was destined to do no less than redeem mankind and so theres this underlying consent us that defense of the revolution in a settlement of 1776 was a moral good. In fact, the highest moral good created the boundaries of political culture in the in the in the 1840s and fifties, the right in Nathaniel Hawthorne at one point wrote that all the greatest statesmen of america stand in the attitude of a conservative, by which he meant conserving the spirit of the original revolution. Daniel webster, the whig politician who wrote the whole progress of the american system, is marked by a peculiar conservatism, where it was peculiar because of its exceptional status only in the american antebellum republic, the argument went, was a conservative posture necessary in order to defend liberal enlightenment values . James Fenimore Cooper wrote here in america, the democrat is the conservative and thank god he has something worth preserving. And this perception, by the way, was was reinforced by radical rule. It was sometimes reinforced by radical european observers and immigrants to the United States. There were important chartist figures, and ill be referencing one later on that the radical Chartist Movement in britain, many of them saw all across the ocean the United States as the place which had put into effect the demands of the peoples charter. Already they had accomplished the Great Republic of the west. Everything that was being demanded by the working Class Movement for enfranchisement and more of transparent government and republicanism in britain. And so when after the failure of the chartist uprising and the important one being in 1848, when chartist moved in, in some numbers across to the United States, several of them became deeply conservative to the point of being staunch defenders of slavery. Now, if preservation of the revolutionaries settlement of the of the 1770s and eighties was the prerequisite for the unions expansion and onward progress, the question was the question was how was this best achieved . And the traditional answer through most of the period up to the civil war was to celebrate the practice and the ideal of compromise. So the idea was that the union was the First Republic in the world to extend over so great an area to contain such a multitude of people and consequently its maintenance required its people to be willing to develop and selfconsciously to inculcate in themselves a compromise size mindset and to conciliate one another. On the model, it was imagined of the Founding Fathers in philadelphia to exhibit a moderate temperament, to be calm and dignified and non dogmatic, nonideological, the temperamental embodiment of conservatism. Henry clay, the character on the on on the left here is the most famous figure associated with the compromise tradition. I go for honorable compromise whenever it can be made. Right. Henry clay in 1850, around about the time of the compromise, socalled compromise of 1850, all legislation, all government, all society, clay said at the end of his life, all legislation, all government, all society is formed upon the principle of mutual concession, politeness, comity, courtesy upon these everything. Everything is based. So for clay and the tradition that he represent noted the practice of compromise was itself a moral good and was essential to the preservation of the revolutionary promise of the United States. Now, of course, the issue that fatally divided antebellum americans in the end was slavery. But as you know, it did not it could not do so in a straightforward way. It is mislead to imagine that somehow american politics in this period was divided in any clearcut way between those who straightforwardly advocated slavery and those who didnt, because you couldnt address the moral problem of slavery. If, as most people did, you also wanted to maintain the existing Constitutional Order at which, at least for now, and within bounds slavery was in some sense unarguable, protected. The American Revolution in the constitution and this is an issue that is still debated and discussed today. But the American Revolution and constitution left a legacy that was neither straightforwardly proslavery or antislavery. Antebellum. Antebellum americans could find plausible political agreements and pieces of legislation and speeches and judicial decisions from the from the period of the founding, all the way through that provided precedent both for a highly proslavery white supremacist reading of the revolution. And that, of course, infamously was what chief Justice Tawney did in the dred scott decision. And also for a far more egalitarian reading of the Constitutional Order, as Frederick Douglass did, douglass, one of douglasss key, written, vocal and political accomplishments in the decade before the civil war, was to embrace the idea that there was an emancipate True Potential in the American Revolution and to kind of push that and to turn that, as it were, on on on his audience. What douglass understood it was that unless you could harness the the moral value of what douglass understood was that by harnessing the moral value of the revolution and that instinct to preserve it, he could most effectively advocate for the end of slavery. So really, the question then about preservation of the revolutionary settlement was not really about whether the federal constitution, the revolution was pro or antislavery, but about how much slavery it tolerated or unknown what in what circumstance says. So a lot of the debate in the in the period were talking about in the run up to the civil war was about what had been the nature of the compromises that had been made back in the 7080s. Now, of course, there were people and the guy on the right is is perhaps the most famous example who rejected this entire conversation, who stood outside this constitutional consensus. This, of course, is William Lloyd garrison. There must be no compromise with slavery. Garrison once wrote. He wrote many things like this. There must be no compromise with slavery, none, whatever. Nothing is gained ever. Thing is lost by subordination in principle to expediency. And the constitution in garrison famously once said, was a covenant with death and an agreement with how, because of the protections it gave to slave holders. So the compromise was made at philadelphia, celebrated by most white antebellum americans in the north and in the south was immoral for garrison precisely because it was a compromise, precisely because it enabled slavery to survive in the new union. The antithesis versus the the the the antithesis is of the case being made by the slave Holding Henry clay on the left hand side of the slide. Garrison was an example of a new kind of threat that was perceived in the minds of antebellum americans in the 1840s, and especially after 1848. And that was the threat of what they called one idea ism, one idea ism. Its a form of jacobin ism radicalism. It was a minister. In 1848, gave an address to a young mens lyceum in upstate new york on this theme, which illustrates what i mean by this the greatest challenge to the stability of the union for this minister came when, quote, an ardent, selfappointed, united, perhaps ambitious man has strongly imbibed one idea or enlisted himself to effect one particular object, quoting the strict scriptural injunction from st pauls epistle to the philippians, let your moderation be known to all men. The minister warned his young man, the young man in his and his audience, that one idea fanatics think and act as though he believed that the only one in the world worthy of pursuit and would say to others who disagreed, like the pharisee of old stand you by i am holier than thou. It was a kind of. 1840s denunciation of what some people might now call wokeism. So by the 1850s, clays compromise tradition was increasingly associated with northern democrats. Clay had, of course, been awake, but democrats like James Buchanan in the middle there, for whom the greatest threat to the republic, to the republic, came precisely from these. One idea is the obsessive radical reformers with their restless quest for perfection, with their obsession not always with abolition. Sometimes it was with well, sometimes with the abolition of Capital Punishment that was regarded as a kind of mad cause. Sometimes it was free love, which doesnt mean necessarily what my students always think it means. When i raised the subject, but simply meant that people should be allowed to marry whomsoever they wished or for womens rights. Of course, most particularly for the ideas that women in bloomers would be given public platforms and speaking and speaking in public that they that the gendered order would be so susceptible to disruption just as the racial order would be all these forms of fanaticism for the northern democrats, like the pennsylvanian, James Buchanan, by the 1850s had become the thing to worry about. When buchanan was a young man and he first got into politics in the jackson nine era, his preoccupations are very different now. Hes preoccupied. Nations were with building and creating things in the in the jacksonian tradition with taking down the money power with with challenging the power of the central bank and an aristocrats who aristocrat in inverted commas, who accumulated illicit enmeshed amounts of power by the 1850s, as were buchanan, saw the threat coming from urban elites, overeducated middle class reformers infuse it with dangerous, radical european ideas as one pennsylvanian near buchanan supported in pennsylvania newspaper editorial put it. In 1856, just before the president ial election of that year. In making the case for buchanans election, the editor wrote that the one idea ists did not understand that politics is compounded of many calculate patterns and considerations and comprehends a variety of subjects. So buchanan was the man who did understand that the old public functionary, the man whod been in office for many, many years, hed seen it all. He was the safe pair of hands. Again, there may be people in the audience who are kind of hearing contemporary residents in resonance, in making this kind of case for a president that he was the man whod seen it all safe, pair of hands, precisely because he understood that moderate nation in the henry clay sense, that the spirit of moderation and compromise was what recommended him to the public as president. But in the context of the rising skill, then over the moral and political challenge of enslavement, antiwar radicalism, of the kind that the buchanan ive been illustrating there represent, it could itself become a source of instability. Now, im flipping back in time now to to tabout this man here, Abraham Lincoln, 29 years old, in 1838. New relatively newly minted lawyer, state legislature, state legislator in illinois, and in one famous speech, famous now not famous at the time that his address to another young mans lyceum in springfield, illinois, his first big public address in january 1838. Lincoln. Lincoln speech to the young men of springfield was called the perpetuation of our institute. As a more conservative sounding title, impossible to imagine a and this is what he said in part let every an swear by the blood of the revolution never to violate in the least particular of the laws of the country. Let every man remember that to vile he law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own his childrens l. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American Mother to the lisping babe that pr on her lap. In short, let it become the cal religion of the nation and let the young and the old, the rich and the pheve and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. Now, that sounds and has sometimes been represented, then used by scholars to indicate a staunchly conservative defense of the state as quote and up to a point, it was. But what we really see here, i think, is lincoln taking a conserver tive position, using the argument for the defense of the institutions, the defense of the revolutionary heritage in a way which turned out to have revolutionary potential. Thats the paradox. And he knew that, i think, when he said this, because on closer examination, the context in which lincoln was talking tells us a lot about how and why he lincoln began his Journey Towards the recognition that radical means might be necessary in order to preserve the highest good the republic, the last best hope of earth as lincolns audience in springfield in 1838 knew all too well three months earlier in alton, illinois, an abolitionist editor, elijah lovejoy, had been murdered. Altons town leaders had offered lovejoy, whod been using his Printing Press to print abolitionist tracts. Altons town leaders had offered lovejoy what they called a compromise. Compromise as a moral good. Right. This was the compromise he needs to stop producing his newspaper and get out of town, and in return they wont kill him. Lovejoy refused the deal, and four days later, he was dead. And his Printing Presses were tossed into the mississippi river. And that mob action seemingly at least tacitly sanctioned by the town authorities, was widely covered in newspapers across the United States just the previous year. In 1837, Abraham Lincoln as a young whig member of the state legislature, had opposed the motion, declaring that the right of property in slaves was sacred. And as the motion said, we disapprove of the formation of abolitionist societies among us in the state of illinois. Lincoln had opposed that motion, but it was nevertheless passed by 77 votes to six. Lincoln was only one of six legislators opposing it. And so when lincoln, just a few months later, turns up to the young mens lyceum in springfield and spoke so passionately about the need for reverence, for the law every body in that audience knew why he was making that point for the Young Lincoln slavery, at least in the case of of alton, illinois, had it was slavery that approved dangerous to the perpetuation of republican institutions not only because it was unjust and wrong, but also because it inspired mob violence. The people who had been the people had been violating the laws were doing so in defense of slavery. And lovejoy, that lincoln was not himself would certainly not at the time by any means have identified himself as an abolitionist, but he was, as it were, forced to the position that if if if what lovejoy is doing is inspiring this kind of disregard for the laws, then lincolns perception of what a conservative defense of of institutions meant was beginning to shift. If the basis of the political order was compromised, and if the hardest issue by far to compromise was a moral question like slavery, then lincoln was subtly signaling in his address in his lyceum address, that that compromise idea was under strain, severe strain. The republican political order was both precious and precursor righteous. And in 1838, lincoln was laying the groundwork for what was, in effect, a conservative antislavery case paradox, physical as that may perhaps sound to you, a conservative anti slavery case which identified radicals threats to the republic from the tyranny and the violence of slavery. Now, there were a small minority of white northerners who responded to the increasing violence over slavery, such as the murder of lovejoy by, as it were, following the example of garrison and abandoning any commitment to the existing Constitutional Order. Lincoln would not have known this at the time, but among those radicalized in that way, by specifically by the murder of elijah lovejoy, was john brown, who on hearing of the death of the abolitionist ed publicly vowed here before god in the presence of these witnesses. From this time, i consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery. So as the sectional struggle intensified over the 20 is following this episode, northerners were pushed into making political choices, taking positions that most would prefer to have avoided. They were forced by circumstances, by events, to make calculations about what course of action will be most likely to preserve the political order. The legacy of the revolution, the highest moral good without making more concessions to evil than were necessary. Heres a kind of very rough breakdown of four types of northern a four loose groups that that one can identify in this antebellum period in terms of how they reacted to that challenge. So at one end of the spectrum was john brown and others like him. These were the true believers, the true jacobins, as they were, as their critics called them, for whom the end justified any means in browns case, as it turned out in kansas and at harpers ferry, really any means, literally any means. He was willing to meet diabolical violence with righteous force. And i use those religious words, diabolical and righteous, deliberately so. John brown resolved the, as it were, the dilemma of how to reconcile the preservation of the revolution to the Constitutional Order with an antislavery posture in the same way that garrison did by saying, if its a choice. Well, clearly the end of slavery trumps any other moral objective of other extreme. So ive said there are four groups, so the brown knights, as it were, or one of them. But the other extreme, a few northerners was resolved for themselves that the problem of reconciling slavery with the Constitutional Order in the opposite direction by the expedient of embracing new racial theories that justified slavery. And an example of trial this earlier was a former chartist, an irish born chartist, john campbell, a physical force chartist as they were known. In other words, those willing to to use physical force in order to achieve the objectives of the Chartist Movement in britain. He was exiled and for political organizing in manchester and moved to philadelphia in 1843. So hes one of the earliest of the chartist radical british chartist emigres. Fundamentally committed to advancing the cause of white working men by the early 1850s, campbell was, an excitable advocate of apollo genesis, the idea that black and white peoples separate species, literally separate species, which he used to defend as the appropriate condition for black people in pamphlets like t o shown here, campbell, had satisfied himself th slavery for black people did not in any way contradict the freedom and uaty promised in the American Revolution, which was intended, as tony wasater to argue in the dred scott decision 17, was intended only andoni ever been intended for white people. This was there are increasing numbers of northerners as the civil war comes close who embrace proslavery position and avowedly proslavery position. Not all of them come from the same political background as john campbell. Another, for example a former whig wants an antislavery advocate was nathan lord, who was the president of dartmouth college, who was finally ejected by dartmouths board of trustees in 1863 for continuing to advocate the righteousness of slavery. But in and in fact not lord is an interesting, very, very interesting figure in himself and his movement away from his previous sympathy for the Antislavery Movement. More than sympathy, his activism in the Antislavery Movement towards a proslavery position was driven by a reaction to what he saw as the zealousness of the of the Antislavery Movement against which he he reacted very badly. But whatever the route in to a proslavery position, this remained fringe position. A third group, a larger number of northerners in the antebellum period. How they respond to this dilemma. James buchanan being a again is as as emblematic as anyone and especially so since by the end there were mostly Democratic Party voters. I tried to have it all ways, right . So they double down on the idea that whatever concessions were necessary to appease the souths needed to be made because. The alternative was disunion, and disunion was so catalyst, gothic, so catastrophic, that almost anything, almost anything in the end was justifiable. If it prevented that possibility. Now, functionally, at buchanan and the democrats, other northern democrats who who supported him, both elites in the state legislatures and in congress and Democratic Party voters, functionally, these people could be said to be proslavery. They made choices. They cast votes which emboldened and strengthened the slaveholding constituency in the United States that functionally strengthened their hold over the federal government. I mean, buchanan, i mean, one perhaps most obvious example is, is that buchanan obviously didnt write the dred scott decision, but he knew about an advance. He approved of it. He genuinely hoped that the dred scott decision, extraordinary as it may seem to us, would somehow resolve by judicial fiat the problem over slavery. So they were functionally slaves, proslavery and yet and yet none of them they were not John Campbells nathan laws they were never advocating the expansion of slavery into the north. They were never they never quite could bring themselves to make a positive case for slavery. It was simply an acknowledgment of the reality of enslavement in much the same way. And they were correct in a way to say this in much the same way that their that previous generations going back to the original compromise of philadelphia in 1787, had done. And then finally the fourth group of northerners. Were those who ended up in the republican camp and again, is is is the is the obvious emblem of this, for whom the moral calculus was just so very much harder. They couldnt bring themselves to take the john brown line. They couldnt bring themselves to allow that the concession is being made by buchanan and the Democratic Party in the 1850s were acceptable in order to preserve the union. And so they tried to draw line at a different place. These were the people who, on the eve of the civil war, constituted what one republican supporting newspaper in new york described as a conservative but silent majority in the free states. These were the people, to a certain extent, the kind of nixonian paraphrase there. These were the non abolition, the non radicals, the non shouters. They never doubted that slavery was wrong, right . I cant prove this proposition, but if you did, thered been an opinion poll, a survey conducted in 1858 in the free states. The overwhelming majority of northerners and everybody in the group im talking about now, if you ask them direct question, slavery, right or wrong, they say slavery is wrong. Question that is. So what the question then is, okay, its wrong. So what you can do about it, what follows from that . Because these people, these lincoln ends, the people who ended up most of them in the Republican Party, they also unquestionably thought that the survival of the union was a moral good of at least equal importance to their opposition to the principle of property, and then, in fact, for them, the two things should not be balance against one another, because what gave the American Union its providential purpose . Thats what made the American Revolution the worlds only to date successful revolution. What gave the United States its status as the last, best hope of earth was the advance ment of freedom throughout the world. And so slave re was antithetical to that idea. They were developing and more and more articulating an idea of the american nation that was at its core profoundly and unapologetically anti slavery. It still didnt follow that you had to get slavery, get rid of slavery immediately. That was the john brown position. But it did mean, as lincoln said again and again and again, that you had to put slavery on the course of ultimate extinction. You can tolerate it, but only tolerate it so long as everybody understands. Thats an its an exception to the general rule of freedom. So for these people, the answer to the question of how much slavery should the Constitutional Order protect was therefore no more than it absolutely has to, for no longer than is absolutely necessary. Now, i said at the beginning that at that that fugitive slave and law of 1850, that richard was talking about was key part of the story. So and and indeed, i think that this is a major turning point. The 1850 fugitive slave, it was a major turning point for these kinds of people. Richard. Didnt mention perhaps the the most notorious case of one of the most notorious cases, which is that of Anthony Burns in boston. In 1854, burns was working in a Clothing Store in brattle street when he was arrested by slave catchers in may 1854. And it was highly traumatic, highly traumatic for burns, first and foremost, that highly traumatic for the people of boston, including for people who are self conceptualized conservatives who had supported many of them, the fugitive slave act as pt the compromise of 1850, but now saw the brutal reality of the federal government coming in and capturing someone and marching them down to the harbor in chains. Handbills were posted around the city. The city of boston urging, quote, the yeomen of new england as the chief conservative element of the republic to come to burns aid in defiance of federal authority, sons of liberty groups were formed to preserve the freedom of fugitive slaves, to resist the encroachment of the federal government on liberty. Gentlemen, richard, earlier on, how southerners reconciled their states rights with their increasing demands for national debt. The stronger federal government power and its is a great question. I mean, what what i was trying to emphasize when im talking about this is that the real advocates of states rights in the late forties and certainly in the 1850s were not southerners. They were northerners, the northerners who were passing personal liberty laws, effectively, as it were, trying to nullify federal law. It was northerners who were mobilizing themselves, using the language of the American Revolution, talking about the the yeoman of new england coming to the aid of in defense of freedom, in opposition to a federal government that as, in the case of Anthony Burns was acting in, it seemed as least as egregious away as the british redcoats had done in boston in the 1770s. And then, of course, in 1857, the dred scott decision seemed to ratify this idea that the federal government had fallen finally and completely into the hands of what was then generally known as the slave power. So this is where we get to this idea of the slave power. Its in the title of my talk. Its a long brewing idea. Its a jacksonian idea. Originally, jackson is already mentioned this in talking about James Buchanan. Jacksonian had critiqued the money power they had been they had been the opponents. The whole idea of jacksonian politics is to advocate the rights of the ordinary white working man against those sinister groups who were taking power away from you. Its about taking back control for ordinary people. The slave power is just another version of that. Its this idea that there is a conspiracy with a lot of evidence to support the idea of the conspiracy of their people who do not have your interests at heart as ordinary white northerners. So the Republican Party was the party that that that captured that idea of the slave power as a political mobilization device. The slave power was, in effect, a counter revolutionary force. It was attempting to subvert the institutions of the republic and replace them as the people of boston had witnessed. When Anthony Burns was carried off by federal forces with the tyrannical methods of despots. And so consequently the Republican Party pledged, at a minimum to prevent the further expansion of slavery. And since in the wake of the dred scott decision, this position was now contrary, it seemed, to the constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. You could fairly call it a radical position. And yet republicans repeatedly and emphatically emphasized that they were the true conservatives, theirs was the only true conservatism, wrote one party member in 1859, because it proposes to restore the administration of Public Affairs to the principles and policy established by the founders of our political system. So clearly this was a language of the language of preservation was a source of legitimation. You know, if youre being accused, as republicans were after the dred scott decision by their political opponents of being dangerous radicals for taking on the Supreme Court, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of a Supreme Court decision, they naturally responded by saying not in a way are the real conservatives. This Supreme Court has gone off the rails and is now embracing radical ideas. So the Republican Party saw their mission as being to save the republic by imposing on the south their deeply felt, implausibly articulate antislavery version of the political order which, as they saw it in retrospect, had been created in the 1780s. As one republican ed put it during the 1860 election campaign, we seek to conserve and perpetuate the original principle on which our republican government is based, that freedom is the rule and slavery the exception. And lincoln, who you know, one of his the reasons for his success eventually as a politician was that he had a he had just a few lines that he repeated again and again and again with devastating and that notion that slavery should be the exception to the general rule of freedom was was of them. And you can see lincolns language in 1860 being repeated and repeated and through newspaper editorials. Right. Okay. So be it. Im im being jested. Thats so im i am im coming to end. Bye bye bye. Showing you this painting of the by frederickdw church, a connecticut born artist which was inspired by the flag which had flown over fort sumter an which of course, was hold down tattered after surrender of fort sumter in 1861. And i end with this slide to say that in in some sense, the war that northerners begun to wage in 1861 was literal as well as metaphorically to kind of restore flag and to restore that flag above fort sumter. The the choices made by what that newspaper called the silent majority of northerners. But these known then as for whom slavery is wrong. But the union was the ultimate moral objective. The choices these people made were, i think, are, i think, critical to understand in terms of the coming of of the civil. They were trying to make political judgments that would preserve their free in institutions. The political order in which theyd grown up and which they believed was the most perfect the world had ever seen. And they were trying and trying to preserve these things. They stumbled eventually into a situation where they felt compelled to use the immense force, immense force to preserve the union and to destroy the of slavery, not just for themselves, but to quote lincoln once again, for the whole family of man. Thank you. Right, fair. Right. Im im im afraid im sorry. We have some time for questions. So as a question there. Yes, sir. Yes, just a question one. One person i didnt hear you talk about. I was wondering where you fit into all this. Were just Stephen Douglass fit into this whole it almost sounds like hes with lincoln, but yeah. So the question is about Stephen Douglass, lincolns great opponents in illinois. Well, i mean, lincoln thought that i mean, douglass thought that lincoln was a nobody right up until he won the election 1860. They certainly didnt see themselves as equals. Yeah. I mean, Douglass Douglass is an absolutely fascinating figure to understand in terms of the coming of the civil war. Right. So he of course, i mean, i sketched out there for sort of big groups of known this. Now, douglass, the most of the time in the 1850s is closest to the buchanan position, of course. Right. So he is he is all i mean, douglass tried to take the line, and this is partly whats exposed in the lincolndouglas debates in 1858. Douglass is trying to take the line that slavery is just another issue which needs to be in and can only be compromise has to be compromise in order for the union to stay together, which is the greatest moral good, lincolns line, of course, is that is that slavery is this insidious threat to the union and that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And we must, in the end, become all one thing or the other. And we said we better make sure we become all free, because otherwise well be all slave. Thats lincolns position. In the lincolndouglas debates, douglass is saying, look, come on, you know, weve weve managed like this for 70 years. Why couldnt we manage for another 70 years . No biggie. Right. Its just not a big deal. Now, the problem for douglass comes when you know his solution to this is what he calls popular sovereignty. And what a great term to use because hes against popular sovereignty. The people decide and his problem comes when the reality of how the decision about whether slavery should exist or otherwise in is so clearly corrupted and the methods used to elect a proslavery legislature in the state Constitutional Convention in kansas are, you know, borne out of violence and corruption. And at that point, douglass breaks from the the Buchanan Administration and thats a traumatic thing for to have to do in some ways. Right. And so in the end, douglas, you know, douglass is kind of left adrift and most democrats, i mean, the Democratic Party is, of course, divided. In 1860. I mean, douglass never gets to the point where he recognizes understands the moral question of slavery in the way that lincoln does. But but he is clearly by the time he dies and he dies, of course, in 1861, douglass is clearly by the end, increasingly really, really, really uncomfortable with the compromises that are being demanded of him. So hes kind of hes sort of tortured. I mean, hes one of the many people who he you can see him kind of, you know, agonizing about how how to accomplish his goals. And he makes them. You know, i think we can say in retrospect, some really bad choices and maybe on some level, even douglass recognized that after secession. Yes, campbell was a pamphlet there on the inequality, the races, his investigation based on the investigation, and it lists out about 20 different people, authors, presumably the last one is jefferson is that jefferson . And if so, where . Where in jefferson does he find the argument now thats so thats thats a great question. Yeah. And i im so i cant account of the problem i had remember the bit in the pamphlet where he but yes it is as it was you would put it your jefferson so jefferson is Everyone Wants a bit of jefferson. Right. So say lincoln. Lincoln elevates jefferson as the author of the declaration of independence and but for for someone like campbell, whats critical about jefferson is that he is the brilliant advocate of the as campbell sees it, as the kind of politics he wants, which is a highly, you know, based on the overt principle of white supremacy. But for the for full, for white, for or at least for white men, its absolute an egalitarian vision. Its really, really egalitarian, radical vision. Its everything he was always advocating in britain. Right. The only difference when comes to the United States is that he cannot cope with the idea that black people can be incorporated into his kind of emancipate, honest, egalitarian vision. And you can see why for him. Jefferson. Jefferson worked perfectly all right, because jefferson said all men wrote all men are created equal, while enslaving, you know, 200 or have many. It was people in monticello. So thats how he did it that way of time. For one more question. As to slavery crisis intensified. Lincoln came to believe for and fully talked of that there was an attempt to nationalize his slavery throughout the country, and he pointed to the dred scott decision the fugitive slave law and, popular sovereignty. Was he able to to effectively communicate this to the republican ranks and to northerners in order to galvanize his against slavery . Yeah, thats what you just said. There is some is is the core of it. Thats exactly right. Thats thats thats the case being made by the Republican Party. The that that the project the slave power project is to nationalize slavery as you say. And theres lots of evidence they point turns dred scott decision is obviously an import and piece of evidence and that if we dont defeat this attempt nationalize then the only alternative to that is that we, as it were, renationalize as he would put it, renationalize, the idea of freedom, which doesnt necessarily mean, as ive said, that you need to extirpate because of course, you cant extirpate slavery within South Carolina or virginia or anywhere because its governed by state law. Short of war, people talking about war, is there any situation in which you could in in which the nation as a whole of the federal government could interfere with slavery, but what you can do is to proscribe nationally. So what you you know, in the 1860 election, the most radical, dangerous thing that the democrat thats not douglass wing of the Democratic Party, but the wing of the democratic thats supporting breckinridge for president the most thing they advocate is is a is a slave code for the federal territories. So the formal official recognition by the federal government that in federal owned territory, slavery is going to exist. Its totally legitimate as a form of property as the dred scott decision has. As already said, and that therefore its a national, federally acknowledged institution. So lincoln is not wrong. I mean, i think it is right to say that the project is to nationalize slavery. I as as i see things and it is that fear. You know what ive really been trying to say in this talk is that that fear of what that will do to the liberties of white northerners, that is a key thing to understand in terms of explaining why those people were willing to fight and die for the union. It was not necessary. Of course, there were there were, you know, hundreds of thousands of northerners who were deeply and principled antislavery people, who cared deeply about the plight of, enslaved people. There were lots of those people and they are massive. Dont get me wrong, im not trying to write them out of story. They are massively important to the story youre trying to tell. But its also important to understand why people who didnt feel like that right, who werent mobilized by or motivated by the plight of enslaved people or care, particularly when weather did become engaged by the idea that the slave power, these alien rich people, you know, aristocrats, authoritarians were coming for their liberties as ordinary white northerners, you know, requiring them to was the fugitive slave act of 1850 required them to do to take part in slave catching patrols, for example, you know, taking away the ability of state courts to adjudicate on whether a and a fugitive person should be returned to their their alleged owner or not. I mean, that was thats an extra an intrusion into the ordinary, ordinary white northerners sense of their own liberties. What they understood their country to be. Good evening and welcome to the american antiquarian societys public program. The rise and fall of the second American Republic