Slave auction
The previous post in this year's series discussed Democratic Sen. Thomas Morris (1776-1844) of Ohio, an early proponent of the anti-slavery position in the US Senate. John Neuenschwander provided an account of Morris' career in Senator Thomas Morris: Antagonist of the South, 1836-1839 Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin 32/3 (Fall 1974). His account provides some important perspective on the more consistently democratic, pro-labor trend of Jacksonian Democracy that became antislavery.
Morris was elected to the Ohio state assembly in 1806, after building a career as a lawyer but also after serving time in debtor's prison in 1802, an experience which "made him a lifelong crusader against all such regressive legislation," writes Neuenschwander. He continued to serve in the legislature well into the 1820s, and published a reform-oriented weekly newspaper, the Benefactor and Georgetown Advocate. He supporter Andrew Jackson's campaign for the Presidency in 1824, then again in 1828, the one that resulted in Old Hickory entering the White House.
Morris was not just a passive or minor supporter. As Neuenschwander recounts, he played a major part in building the Jacksonian party in Ohio:
During the late 1820's Morris became one of the chief architects of the Jacksonian party and for a time was considered by some to be "the presiding genius of the Democratic Party in Ohio." Although few traces can be found of his political activities during this period, he was certainly one of Jackson's key supporters in Ohio. One of his most significant undertakings in 1828 was the assistance he provided Samuel Medary of Bethel in founding the strongly pro-Jackson Ohio Sun. Not only did Medary play an important role in Jackson's election but he soon became one of the President's most trusted Ohio lieutenants.After supporting Jackson again in the 1832 election, the Ohio legislature chose Morris as one of the state's two Senators in Washington. Morris began his Senate service in 1833, continuing through 1839. Upon his election, the Muskingum Messenger of 12/24/1832 wrote:
Mr. Morris is the only Senator we have had for a long time who firmly held the pure democratic faith, of a strict construction of the United States Constitution, and open war against all peculiar privileges and monopolies.He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Jackson administration in their fight against the Bank of the United States, which to Jacksonians represented the Money Power restricting the life and freedom of ordinary workers and farmers and limiting economic development. Morris also supported Jackson in the his successful stand against South Carolina's attempt to nullify federal law over tariffs, the nullification effort surreptitiously by Jackson's Vice President John Calhoun, who intended to use the crisis to establish the option of state nullification or secession in case of future federal antislavery enactments.
By 1835, Southern slaveowners were in a tizzy about Abolitionist literature being mailed to the South. The Jackson administration took the anti-libertarian position of backing the slaveowners and looked the other way as Southern postmasters illegally confiscated suspected Abolitionist material from the mails. But at the start of 1836, Morris made a routine motion to present an antislavery petition to the Senate, and Calhoun rose to object. This was the moment that Morris began to emerge as a Senate spokesperson for the antislavery cause. Neuenschwander writes:
The Senator from South Carolina had barely settled in his chair beside Morris, before the junior Senator from Ohio bolted up and answered the attack by affirming Congressional authority to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. "If you are to tell the people that they are only to petition on this or that subject, or in this or that manner," Morris warned, 'the right of petition is but a mockery. " After he had relinquished the floor, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and several other members registered their surprise at the position he had just taken. To them it seemed that the Senator from Ohio had broken the gentlemen's agreement to refrain from debate on the issue of slavery in order to avoid further inflammation of the public mind. Although Morris later disclaimed any such intention, in the months ahead the agitator's role was to be thrust upon him by default. At a time when Northern senators, almost to a man, were withholding their antislavery views to placate the South, he refused to accord the peculiar institution such preferential treatment. [my emphasis]Calhoun had in late 1835 started pushing for legislation to ban Abolitionist literature from the mails, an effort which Morris opposed. It was at this time that Morris began talking about the Slave Power concept, which Neuenschwander calls "an early version of the slave power conspiracy thesis."
Ohio was a free state, but there were pro-slavery elements in Ohio and their attacks on Abolitionists became increasingly violent. But Morris became increasingly active and vocal in the antislavery cause. In 1837, he introduced a series of resolutions in the Senate, including one to end the domestic slave trade, which would have been a crippling blow to the slave system. One of his resolutions declared:
That this Government was founded and has been sustained by the force of public opinion, and that the free and full exercise of that opinion is absolutely necessary for its healthy action; and that any system which will not bear the test of public examination is at War with its fundamental principles; ... poisons the very foundation of public justice, and excites mobs and other unlawful assemblies to deeds of violence and blood. [my emphasis]Southern Democrats were bringing more and more pressure on the Northern branch of the Democracy (as the Democratic Party was often called from the time of Jackson's Presidency to the Civil War) to support pro-slavery measures and candidates. His antislavery stance was at least partly responsible for the Ohio legislature not electing him to a second term for the Senate. His successor in the Senate was Benjamin Tappan. His brothers Arthur and Lewis were well-known Abolitionists, but Benjamin was willing to accommodate the Slave Power.
But Morris stuck to the antislavery cause, running as the Vice Presidential candidate of the antislavery Liberty Party in 1844.
Although Morris generally doesn't attract the attention in historical accounts that the House slavery critics of that period John Quincy Adams and William Slade do, Neuenschwander gives a good statement of the significance of Morris' stance against slavery in the Senate in the 1830s:
Morris, no less than his counterparts in the House, was responsible for pressing the Senate to consider what every politician feared was an issue that could have no victors. If he had not been in the Senate from 1836 to 1839 it is doubtful that any other man would have stepped forward to confront and provoke the likes of John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay. Moreover, he was an antislavery Democrat. This made him a more frightening dissenter simply because the national Democratic party rested on such strong Southern underpinnings. [my emphasis]And, I would add, he was a leader in applying Jacksonian principles to the issue of slavery. For a man praised as one "who firmly held the pure democratic faith," it was the right direction to go.
Tags: confederate heritage month 2010, slavery, thomas morris, us south
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