Confederate "Heritage" Month 2018 for April 30: The Hamiltonian ideology

I referred in the last post in this series to a case in 2016 in which Hillary Clinton offered up a bit of Lost Cause history.

Matthew Yglesias picked up on that moment to talk about how the prevalent understanding of US history has evolved in recent years, How Hillary Clinton got on the wrong side of liberals' changing theory of American history Vox 01/26/2016.

Hillary's blooper was about how the Yankees were too mean to (white) Southerners after the Civil War:

The kind of politician Bill Clinton — supported by Hillary as, by all accounts, a genuinely trusted adviser and confidante — was at that time has gone badly out of style, and Hillary Clinton's reemergence as a Northern suburbanite is part of that process. But answering the question of which historical president she most admires, Clinton named Abraham Lincoln. That's a safe choice in almost any context. But she went on to espouse a theory about the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination that would have been banal for almost any 20th-century Democrat but that cuts sharply against the modern progressive view of American history. [my emphasis]

Yglesias describes the dominant view in the Democratic Party of 2016 this way, "Most liberals now believe that Reconstruction was a noble project to secure racial equality that was stopped by unjustified Southern racism and violence."

That also happens to be a view based on empirical reality. Whether that was desirable or not is to some extent a matter of judgment. White supremacists obviously don't agree with the desirability of Reconstruction's project to achieve racial equality before the law. But I would argue that value judgments can't legitimately be abstracted from empirical history, either.

I share the broad view of Reconstruction as a democratic project. But I think of my own outlook on American history as a left viewpoint or interpretation. And from my perspective, the general Democratic view of the Civil War period and Reconstruction is basically accurate from an empirical standpoint and is also consistent with a left, left-liberal, or even (theoretically) conservative perspective.

But the popular left and left-liberal versions of early American history and the antebellum period I find very problematic. HistoryNet's definition of antebellum: "The Antebellum Period in American history is generally considered to be the period before the civil war and after the War of 1812, although some historians expand it to all the years from the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 to the beginning of the Civil War."

Continuing with Matt Yglesias: "Modern-day liberals no longer feel the need to talk around the embarrassing fact that it was a Republican who saved the Union." So far, so good.

But he continues, "and are in the process of constructing an entirely new usable history in which Alexander Hamilton is a heroic Founding Father and the post–Civil War effort at Reconstruction was a noble failure, not a regrettable consequence of Lincoln's death." Reconstruction, I'm down with that.

But the idea of Alexander Hamilton as an admirable admirable historical model for the left and/or center-left, that's where I get off the train. Alexander Hamilton was a great American and a supporter of the American Revolution, which does make him a revolutionary, at least for part of his career. He also was one of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, along with James Madison and John Jay. The lazy left-liberal version of history right now is very jumpy about saying positive things about the American Revolution. Because, you know, "revolution" is a BernieBros thing.

At least we seem to be largely spared, for the moment, of a re-run of the old capital-p Progressive interpretation of the American Revolution as the real revolution and the Constitution as a counter-revolution (more or less) of self-serving rich white guys at the Constitution Convention. This was the famous theory of Charles Beard in An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). It has been thoroughly refuted on empirical and theoretical grounds in the ensuing 105 years. But it still pops up now and then. It's only a matter time, I'll pessimistically guess, before corporate Democrats discover Beard's theory, which set up the Revolution up as a good event and the Constitution as the bad one, and use it only in reverse: the Revolution as bad (BernieBros!!!) and the Constitution is good (Hamilton the "heroic Founding Father.")

BTW, it's been pretty common for a while to use "Founders" for "Founding Fathers," although all the Founders at the Constitutional Convention were men. But referring the the founders of the country in a more general sense, I tend to use the more inclusive version.

Before we leave Hamilton, the guy was a conservative at best later in his career and I would go with reactionary. He was a brand of monarchist, wanting to set up the American President as a de facto king. He believed that a popularly elective legislature could only function practically if they were being regularly bribed, preferably by the Executive or his allies. The Citizens United decision in that sense was a very Hamiltonian one. The Bank of the United States, which he is conventionally praised for advocating, eventually came to undertake that function by paying regular stipends to members of Congress. The Bank was a private institution given special approval by the federal government, paying members of Congress before whom it could advocate for policies favoring the very rich.

Then there's this. Yglesias writes about:

... the sensibilities of the modern-day Democratic Party, which includes very few white people with deep family ties in the South. But it's an institutional problem for the Democratic Party to the extent that admitting Republicans were right on racial issues in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s leads to awkward questions about why committed white supremacists from earlier periods (like Andrew Jackson) and later ones (like Woodrow Wilson) are celebrated as pillars of the party.

I'm not a particularly fan of Woodrow Wilson, though I'm a "fan" of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson. More specifically, they represent the trend in actual American history that successfully fought and won the American Revolution. Jackson at age 17 was a soldier in the American Revolution, so he can legitimately be counted as one of the Founders. They also represent the strain in American history that worked, with considerable success, to expand democracy among the American political community.

Today, we take a different view than at least white American males mostly took in, say, 1820, of the historical reality that the American political community was made up almost exclusively of white males.

But it's also true democrats all over the world looked to the United States of the Revolution and the early Republic and the antebellum period as a radical experiment in democracy. Which it was. So the movements that expanded democracy, as the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian period did, matters historically. Those were the people who were going in the direction that the Democratic Party celebrates in retrospect. The Abolitionist movement matters, the women's rights movement mattered, the growth and activism of labor union matters, advocates for immigrants' rights, Indian rights, and much more, they all matter. They don't erase the horrors of slavery or Indian dispossession. But they didn't drop down from Heaven in a divine intervention like Yahweh opening the earth to swallow up Korah and his followers, the Biblical event Walter Benjamin celebrated as sweeping away the old order to make way for an entirely new one. They happened in the process of real struggles by real people.

Real achievements in national independence for the American Republic are also important: the Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans. That doesn't make American policy toward the native peoples of North America moral or pure. It doesn't make imperialist wars acceptable. But it's part of real history. And to ignore real democratic advances or the flawed human beings who achieved them and came to symbolize them is also ahistorical. And not a meaningfully "left" approach to history.

It's foolish from a left or left-liberal perspective to celebrate a monarchist like Hamilton as a democratic hero but dismiss Jefferson and his democratic tradition entirely. It would be even more absurd to ignore the radical difference between John Calhoun and his followers, on the one hand, and Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian reformers, on the other.

As I've noted before, John Brown is the figure on which the half-baked Democratic historical view that Yglesias describes always founders. John Brown was an anti-slavery activist who took an active part in the guerrilla war between pro- and anti-slavery forces in "Bleeding Kansas." And his failed raid on Harper's Ferry was part of a serious plan to set up armed resistance units in the Appalachians to encourage runaways and harass slaveowners with guerrilla tactics. So his antislavery credentials are solid! He was also unusual among white men in not only opposing slavery but advocating for political and social equality for blacks. And for women. He's one of the few famous white men of pre-Civil War America that advocated racial and gender equality in a way that would today be considered mandatory for a Democratic politician, and to which even many Republicans politicians feel they need to make rhetorical nods.

But, oh, that guerrilla war against slaveholders and their armed supporters ... That makes him a "terrorist" by today's standards. Even though it was proslavery guerrillas he was fighting against in Kansas, i.e., also "terrorists," good egalitarian white liberals in the United States tend to shy away from taking him as any kind of acceptable model, symbol, or hero. Because people who quake at Republicans calling them "socialists" - or even "liberals"! - certainly don't want to be caught saying nice things about the "terrorist" John Brown. It doesn't fit into Hamiltonian narrative that venerates Alexander Hamilton and John Quincy Adams, also anti-slavery but as much of an advocate for the narrow class interests of the wealthy as Hamilton himself.

Any view of 19th-century US history that celebrates the liberation of the slaves at the hands of the Union Army but is too squeamish to acknowledge the democratic, political, and moral necessity of the anti-slavery guerrilla war against the Slave Power's supporters in Kansas is seriously lacking something.

Yglisas also comments, "Lincoln is, obviously, the president who freed the slaves and saved the Union. Alongside George Washington he's the conventional choice for greatest American president." Yglesias doesn't elaborate on the status of George Washington, although he seems to grudgingly concede his importance in American democratic history in that comment.

Which brings up another problem with the Hamiltonian corporate Democratic historical narrative. Lincoln the Great Emancipator had his own model Presidents. But his two main models were ... Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, both condemned to the dustbin of American history by the Hamiltonian outlook. How is it that the Great Emancipator took those two Presidents as the model for his own democratic project? The Hamiltonian view finds that very hard to explain. For a more straightforward democratic left view, it's fairly obvious.

Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 15: Charles Sumner on the Slave Power's assault on Kansas Territory

In 1856, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner made a speech on the floor against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which he referred to as the Crime of Kansas. Kansas Territory had become a violent political conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces. The national government during the proslavery Administrations of Franklin Pierce (President 1853-1857) and James Buchanan (President 1857-1861) strongly favored the proslavery side.

President James Buchanan, more dedicated to defending slavery than defending the Union and the Constitution

Two days after Sumner's speech a cowardly proslavery Congressman, Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, came into the Senate chamber and snuck up behind Sumner sitting at his Senate desk, and beat him nearly to death with a heavy wooden cane.

Sumner survived. But his health didn't recover sufficiently for him to return to the Senate until 1860. When he returned, he gave his Barbarism of Slavery speech to which I referred earlier this month. He began by returning to the theme of Kansas and the slavery issue which was the central controversy there.

The New York Times has the text of the speech online. I rely here on the text from the version published in 1863 as Barbarism of Slavery.

The crime against Kansas stands forth in painful light. Search history, and you cannot find its parallel. The Slave-trade is bad; but even this enormity is petty compared with that elaborate contrivance by which, in a Christian age, and within the limits of a Republic, all forms of constitutional liberty were perverted; by which all the rights of human nature were violated, and the whole country was held trembling on the edge of civil war while all this large exuberance, of wickedness, detestable in itself, becomes tenfold more detestable when its origin is traced to the madness for Slavery. The fatal partition between Freedom and Slavery, known as the Missouri Compromise; the subsequent overthrow of this partition, and the seizure of all by Slavery; the violation of plighted faith; the conspiracy to force Slavery at all hazards into Kansas; successive invasions by which all security there was destroyed, and the electoral franchise itself was trodden down; the sacrilegious seizure of the very polls, and, through pretended forms of law, the imposition of a foreign Legislature upon this Territory; the acts of this Legislature, fortifying the Usurpation, and, among other things, establishing the test oaths, calculated to disfranchise actual seltlers, friendly to Freedom, and securing the privileges of the citizen to actual strangers friendly to Slavery; the whole crowned by a statute - "the be all and the end all" of the whole usurpation - through which Slavery was not only recognized on this beautiful soil, but made to bristle with a Code of Death such as the world has rarely seen; all these I have exposed on a former occasion. And yet the most important part of the argument was at that time left untouched; I mean that which is found in the character of Slavery. This natural sequel, with the permission of the Senate, I propose now to supply.

Motive is to Crime as soul is to body; and it is only when we comprehend the motive that we can truly comprehend the Crime. Here the motive is found in Slavery and the rage for its extension. Therefore, by logical necessity, must Slavery be discussed; not indirectly, timidly and sparingly, but directly, openly, and thoroughly. It must be exhibited as it is; alike in its influence and in its animating character, so that not only its outside but its inside may be seen.

Confederate "Heritage" Month - April 11: The March 1855 election in Kansas (1)

The Howard Committe Report leaves no doubt about the systematic theft of the March 1855 election in Kansas by the Missouri Border Ruffians:

On the same day that the census was completed, the governor issued his proclamation tor an election to be held on the 30th of March, A. D. 1855, for members of the legislative assembly of the Territory. It prescribed the boundaries of districts, the places for polls, the names of judges, the apportionment of members, and recited the qualification of voters. If it had been observed, a just and fair election would have reflected the will of the people of the Territory, Before the election, false and inflammatory rumors were busily circulated among the people of western Missouri. The number and character of the emigration then passing into the Territory were grossly exaggerated and misrepresented. Through the active exertions of many of its leading citizens, aided by the secret society before referred to, the passions and prejudices of the people of that State were greatly excited, Several residents there have testified to the character of the reports circulated among and credited by the people. These efforts were successful. By an organized movement, which extended from Andrew county in the north, to Jasper county in the south, and as far eastward as Boone and Cole counties, Missouri, companies of men were arranged in irregular parties and sent into every council district in the Territory, and into every representative district but one. The numbers were so distributed as to control the election in each district. They went to vote, and with the avowed design to make Kansas a slave State. They were generally armed and equipped, carried with them their own provisions and tents, and so marched into the Territory.

This description of events in the 2nd district gives an idea of the character of the gentlemen who came over from Missouri.  After stealing the poll books:

They then chose two new judges and proceeded with the election. They also threatened to kill the judges if they did not receive their votes without swearing them, or else resign. They said no man should vote who would submit to be sworn; that they would kill any man who would offer to do so, "Shoot him;" "Cut his guts out," &c. They said no man should vote this day unless he voted an open ticket, and was all right on the goose [i.e., pro-slavery]; and that if they could not vote by fair means, they would by foul means. They said they had as much right to vote if they had been in the Territory two minutes as if they had been there two years, and they would vote. Some of the citizens who were about the window, but had not voted when the crowd of Missourians marched up there, upon attempting to vote were driven back by the mob, or driven off. One of them, Mr. I. M. Mace, was asked if he would take the oath [which only legal residents who were Free State would be expected to agree to]; and upon his replying that he would if the judges required it, he was dragged through the crowd away from the polls, amid cries of "kill the damned nigger-thief," "cut his throat," "tear his heart out," After they got him to the outside of the crowd, they stood around him with cocked revolvers and drawn bowie-knives; one man putting a knife to his breast so that it touched him; another holding a cocked pistol to his ear, while another struck at him with a club.

The Missourians said they had a right to vote, if they had been in the Territory but five minutes. Some said they had been hired to come there and vote, and got a dollar a day, and by God they would vote or die there. (my emphasis)

Such was the slaveowners idea of "democracy". It's no wonder the Missouri Border Ruffians were also known as "Pukes".

In Missouri, US Senator David Atchison recruited Missourians to go vote illegally in Kansas.  James McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988) quotes the honorable Senator's lieutenant John Stringfellow as follows speaking to a crowd in St. Joseph, Missouri:

Mark every scoundrel among you that is the least tainted with free-soilism, or abolitionism, and exterminate him.  To those having qualms of conscience ... the time has come when such impositions must be disregarded, as your lives and property are in danger. ... Enter every election district in Kansas ... and vote at the point of a Bowie knife or revolver!

Obviously, the Missourians from the 2nd district followed that latter advice. Sen. Atchison himself led a band of Pukes into Kansas to vote illegally. He told them, "There are eleven hundred men coming over from Platte County [Missouri] to vote, and if that ain't enough we can send five thousand - enough to kill every God-damned abolitionist in the Territory". (Also quoted by McPherson)

This was obviously an intense situation.  And the pro-slavery forces had every intent of preventing a fair election by force and violence.  And did so. Throw away your qualms of conscience, this pro-slavery agitators said. We can "kill every God-damned abolitionist in the Territory," the distinguished Senator told his followers in election-stealing.

An Index to Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 postings is available.

Confederate "Heritage" Month - April 10: The November 1854 election in Kansas

The Howard Committee Report gives us a valuable resource to get something of the tenor of the times in the Kansas crisis, because they took testimony in Kansas relatively close to the time of the events they report. (The testimony is from the first half of 1956.) Their descriptions of the November 1854 elections and how the Border Ruffians from Missouri stole them are an example:

The election in the 15th district was held at Penseneau's, on Stranger creek, a few miles from Weston, Missouri. On the day of the election a large number'of citizens of Platte county, but chiefly from Westoa and Platte City, Missouri, came in small parties, in wagons and on horseback, to the polls. Among them were several leading citizens of that town; and the names of many of them are given by the witnesses. They generally insisted upon their right to vote, on the ground that every man having a claim in the Territory could vote, no matter where he lived. All voted who chose. No man was challenged or sworn. Some of the residents did not vote. The purpose of me strangers in voting was declared to be to make Kansas a slave State.  Your committee find, by the poll-books, that 306 votes were cast; of these we find but 57 are on the census-rolls as legal voters in February following. Your committee are satisfied, from the testimony, that not over 100 of those who voted had any right so to do, leaving at least 208 illegal votes cast. (my emphasis)

John Landis, who became a resident in Kansas just after this election, testified:

I moved into the Territory in December, 1854, and into the Doniphan precinct, fourteenth district, and have resided there ever since.  I cam from Buchanan county, Missouri.  At the time of the first election [Nov. 1854] I was solicited there by some of my friends to go over into Kansas and vote. The inducements held out was to make Kansas a slave State. I did not go. I knew a number crossed the river. They said they were going over to vote.(my emphasis)

John Scott of Missouri was apparently fairly frank, or perhaps openly cynical, about his general approach to that election:

Prior to the election in Burr Oak precinct, in the fourteenth district on the 29th of November, 1854, I had been a resident of Missouri and I then determined, if I found it necessary, to become a resident of Kansas Territory. On the day previous to that election I settled up my board at my boarding-house in St. Joseph's, Missouri, and went over to the Territory and took boarding with Mr. Bryant, near whose house the polls were held the next day, for one month, so that I might have it in my power, by merely determining to do so, to become a resident of the Territory on the day of election. I was present at Mr. Harding's when the polls were held on the morning of election prior to and at the time the judges were appointed. When my name was suggested as a judge of the election, no such suggestion had been made to or in regard to me that I was aware of, until the hour of opening the polls had arrived, when, by the absence of two judges appointed by the governor, it became necessary to select others ia their places. When my name was proposed as a judge of election, objections were made by two persons only, so far I knew, Messrs. Harding and Larzelere, in regard to my want of residence in the Territory.   I then publicly informed those present that I had a claim in the Territory; that I had taken board in the Territory for a month, and that I could at any moment become an actual resident and legal voter in the Territory, and that I would do so if I concluded at any time during the day that my vote would be necessary to carry that precinct in favor of the pro-slavery candidate for delegate to Congress, and that I knew of no law requiring a judge of that election selected by the voters to be a resident of the Territory. ... I did not during the day consider it necessary to become a resident of the Territory for the purpose mentioned, and did not vote or offer to vote at that election. (my emphasis)

And this guy was one of the judges presiding  over the election in that district!  On cross-examination, he said:

General Whitfield was regarded as the pro-slavery candidate, and had been selected as the pro-slavery candidate by the pro-slavery party. I regarded the the question of slavery as the primarily prominent issue at that election, and, so far as I know, all parties agreed in making that question the issue of that election.  ... It is my intention, and the intention of a great many other Missourians, now resident in Missouri, whenever the slavery issue is to be determined upon by the people of this Territory in the adoption, of the State constitution, to remove to this Territory in time to acquire the right to become legal voters upon that question. The leading purpose of onr intended removal to the Territory is to determine the domestic institutions of this Territory when it comes to be a State, and we would not come but for that purpose, and would never think of coming here but for that purpose. I believe there are a great many in Missouri who are so situated. This is one of the means decided upon by Missourians to counteract the movements of the [Free State] Emigrant Aid Society to determine the character of the institutions of this Territory when it comes to be a State.(my emphasis)

The Committee report describes the 1854 election in the 16th district as follows:

The election in the 16th district was held at Leavenworth. It was then a small village of three or four houses, located on the Delaware reservation.  There were but comparatively few settlers then in the district, but the number rapidly increased afterwards. On the day before, and on the day of the election, a great many citizens of Platte, Clay, and Bay counties, Missouri, crossed the river, most of them camping in tents and wagons about the town, "like a camp-meeting." They were in companies or messes of 10 to 15 in each, and numbered in all several hundred. They brought their own provision, and cooked it themselves, and were generally armed. Many of them were known by the witnesses, and their names are given, which are found upon the poll-books. Among them were several persons of influence where they resided in Missouri, and held, or had held, high official position in that State. They claimed to be residents of the Territory from the fact that they were there present, and insisted upon, the right to vote, and did vote. Their avowed purpose in doing so was to make Kansas a slave State. These strangers crowded around the polls, and it was with great difficulty that the settlers could get to the polls.  One resident attempted to get to the polls in the afternoon, but was crowded and pulled back. He then went outside of the crowd, and hurrahed for Gen. Whitfield; and some of those who did not know him said, "There's a good pro-slavery man," and lifted him up over their heads, so that he crawled on their heads and put in his vote. A person who saw, from the color of his ticket, that it was not for Gen, Whitfleld, cried out, "He is a damned abolitionist - let him down;" and they dropped him. Others were passed to the polls In the same way, and others crowded up in the best way they conld. After this mockery of an election was over the non-residents returned to their homes in Missouri. Of the 312 votes cast, not 150 were by legal voters.

An important part of the pro-slavery "heritage" is crooked elections like these.  The techniques used in that election would be employed again in 1855. And some of the election-stealing techniques employed by the Border Ruffians to keep legal voters from the polls would reappear during the mid-1870s during the overthrow of the democratic Reconstruction governments.

"This mockery of an election" is a good description for the 1854 Kansas vote as a whole, as well as for the one in March, 1855.

An Index to Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 postings is available.

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 - April 9: The troubles in Kansas (2)

The major events in the Kansas controversy can be easily defined. Over the period from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854 to late 1856, a mini-civil war took place in Kansas, with an illegitimately elected pro-slavery government, pro-slavery settlers and Border Ruffians from Missouri fighting in sporadic guerrilla warfare, and sometimes in regular military engagements, with the Free States settlers.

It is this period in particular that is remembered as "Bleeding Kansas". (The title of the linked article says "Bleeding Kansas 1853-1861", but the text makes it clear that 1854-6 was the key period of violence.) Although Kansas remained a point of contention between North and South up until the Civil War began in 1861, the Free State forces had clearly gained the upper hand by 1857, despite pro-slavery administrations in Washington. Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861 after the Confederate states seceded.

The historical and political significance of events can't be easily quantified. But some numbers will help put the Kansas conflict into some context. First of all, something like 55 people are said to have lost their lives in the 1854-6 conflict there. Since it's not unusual these days to hear about that many people or more being killed in the combined insurgency and civil war in Iraq, it would be easy for present-day readers to brush the Kansas conflict off as an insignificant set of skirmishes. Particularly when the "butcher's bill" for the Civil War came in at over 600,000 dead.

But this was 1854, and the armed rebellion of the Slave Power was still years ahead in an uncertain future.

The Howard Committee Report provides several tables that give us some valuable figures. In a table showing the number of votes on November 29, 1854, showed the number of eligible voters at 2,905. The settlements in Kansas were clustered near the Missouri border, which made it convenient for the Border Ruffians from that slave state to interfere in Kansas affairs, as they surely did.  That same table shows that 1,114 legal voters participating in the election, along with 1,729 illegal ones, probably all from Missouri.

Immigration was active at this time. So by January-February of 1855, as a subsequent table shows, a total of 8,601 settlers were in Kansas, of which 3,383 were female, 3,469 were children and 192 were slaves. To do a gruesome piece of math to put things in perspective, if we think of present-day Iraq levels of civil war deaths at 50 a day or so, with a population of 9,000 in February of 1855, a number equal to the entire population of Kansas would have been wiped out by the end of August, 1855.

The political significance of the Kansas events can't be measured in absolute numbers of casualties. One final example for comparison. It's not unusual for large American cities to have 55 murders in a year from family fights or crime. But, for all the venom in American politics, how many people have been killed lately in partisan political shootouts in the United States? And think about California, with upwards of 30 million people, and imagine that there had been 55 partisan political killings in violent clashes in the last two years. It would be regarded as a terrifying trend.

So with a few thousand people in Kansas in 1854-6, that level of violence seemed like intense conflict. And the partisans of both sides in the rest of the country regarded it so, as well.

With that for context, the major events of 1854-6 in Kansas can be summarized as follows. The first election in November, 1854, is stolen by the Missouri Border Ruffians. The same happens with the elections in March, 1855, known as the "Shawnee Mission" government and then in 1856 and thereafter as the "Lecompton" government. The pro-slavery legislature then passes draconian laws against any sort of abolitionist activity. The Free State partisans organized their own state government in the fall of 1855, known as the "Topeka" government but whose real stronghold was Lawrence. In November, 1855, an armed group of 1,500 pro-slavery men surrounded Lawrence, where about 500 Free State men prepared to give battle. A peace agreement, known rather grandly as the "Wakarusa treaty", averted the clash, which was even more grandly called the Wakarusa War.

In March, 1856, the Free State legislature met in Topeka and petitioned Congress to admit Kansas as a free state. The pro-slavery government moved against the Topeka government by another attack on Lawrence on May 21. The Topeka forces decided not to fight at that point, and the "sack of Lawrence" occurred. As coincidence would have it, on Thursday, May 22, the thuggish Southern gentleman Preston Brooks assaulted Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate with a cane and beat him badly after Sumner had given a fiery speech about the conduct of the pro-slavery forces and the Franklin Pierce administration in Kansas. That weekend, the Kansas conflict was intensified when a small group headed by John Brown killed five pro-slavery settlers, in what would be known as the Pottawatomie massacre.

More clashes followed. In the Battle of Black Jack in early June, Brown's band captured a much larger band of Missouri Border Ruffian militia. Another Missouri invasion followed in August, and they defeated Free State fighters, again including John Brown, at Osawatomie. Brown was nevertheless regarded as a hero in that battle, and was nicknamed "Osawatomie Brown". In September, John Geary arrived as the new governor of the territory. He soon succeeded in discouraging the guerrilla fighters on both sides, assisted by the US Army which intervened with 2,700 troops to prevent another attack on Lawrence by the Lecomptom partisans that same month. The territory calmed down after that. Neither the political conflict nor the violence was over, but it's most intense period was done.

An Index to Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 postings is available.

Confederate "Heritage" Month - April 8: The troubles in Kansas (1)

In last year’s post for April 13, I gave a brief overview of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas crisis.

The Compromise of 1850 was an important turning point for Northern opinion.  This undated PBS summary (The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act) talks about the impression that the Fugitive Slave Act in particular made on the North.

Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act made abolitionists all the more resolved to put an end to slavery. The Underground Railroad became more active, reaching its peak between 1850 and 1860. The act also brought the subject of slavery before the nation. Many who had previously been ambivalent about slavery now took a definitive stance against the institution.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier years’ posts, the Fugitive Slave Act included strong federal regulations that overrode any consideration of “states rights”. It’s a key fact about the prewar period that in the 1850s, Northerners felt themselves increasingly pressured by the Slave Power, while the Southern slaveowners and their supporters became increasingly hysterical about real and imagined threats from the North.  And also that, as in the case of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the slaveowners were always ready to override states rights in defense of slavery.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act made Kansas Territory into a literal battleground between pro- and antislavery forces.

Kansas was not finally admitted to the Union as a free state until 1861.  But the most intense period of conflict, the period of “Bleeding Kansas”, was 1854-6.  In 1854, the New England Emigrant Aid Company sponsored the migration of antislavery settlers to Kansas.  While the Southern slaveowners encouraged proslavery immigration.

In particular, groups of proslavery partisans from the neighboring slave state of Missouri were ready to intervene with force and violence in the Kansas Territory.  Known as “Border Ruffians” and also as “Pukes”, in November of 1854 and again in March of 1855, they poured across the border to vote illegally in Kansas elections and also to prevent Free State voters from going to the polls.

The illegitimate proslavery government was initially known as the Topeka government because of where it was seated, and in 1856 it moved to the city of Lecompton and became known as the Lecompton government.

Thanks to the Internet, we can quickly see an important contemporary document about the events in Kansas. Formally known as the Report of the special committee appointed to investigate the troubles in Kansas,: with the views of the minority of said committee (July 1856), it is usually referred to as the Howard Committee report, after Congressman William Alanson Howard who chaired the Committee.

The majority report describes the immediate result of Stephen Douglas’ misbegotten Kansas-Nebraska Act:

The testimony clearly shows that before the proposition to repeal the Missouri compromise was introduced into Congress, the people of western Missouri appeared indifferent to the prohibition of slavery in the Territory, and neither asked nor desired its repeal.

In other words, despite Douglas’ claims that his “popular sovereignty” notion was democratic rather than proslavery, its practical effect was a great encouragement to advocates of the extension of slavery.

When, however, the prohibition was removed by the Action of Congress, the aspect of affairs entirely changed. The whole country was agitated by the reopening of a controversy which conservative men in different sections believed had been settled in every State and Territory by some law beyond the danger of repeal. The excitement which has always accompanied the discussion of the slavery question was greatly increased by the hope, on the one hand of extending slavery into a region from which it had been excluded by law; and, on the other, by a sense of wrong done by what was regarded as a dishonor of a national compact. This excitement was naturally transferred into the border counties of Missouri and the Territory, as settler favoring fee or slave institutions moved into it. ...

Within a few days alter the organic law passed, and as soon as its passage could be known on the border, leading citizens of Missouri crossed into the Territory, held squatter meetings and then returned to their homes.  Among their resolutions are the following:

"That we will afford protection to no abolitionist as a settler of this Territory."

"That we recognise the institution of slavery as already existing in this Territory, and advise slaveholders to introduce their property as early as possible."

Similar resolutions were passed in various parts of the Territory and by meetings in several counties of Missouri.  Thus the first effect of the repeal of the restriction against slavery [pursuant to Douglas’ “popular sovereignty” slogan] was to substitute the resolves of squatter meetings, composed almost exclusively of citizens of a single State [Missouri], for the deliberate action of Congress acquiesced in for thirty-five years. (my emphasis)

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