Author’s Note: Earlier this year I began
what I expected to be a series on the history of the abolitionist movement and
the parallels to today’s current left-wing. Other series – some of which are
still unfinished – got in the way.
I have now decided to abandon it and look
at the issue from a different perspective: one that looks at the parallels to
both today’s far-left and far right political movements during that same period
and show how both have led to much of today’s current polarization. I will be
using much of the proposed material for the previous series but I will also be
looking at it from a more geographic scope.
Introduction:
The
Compromise of 1850
As 1850 began America
was on the first of a sectional crisis. That December the vote for Speaker of
the House had taken more than three weeks before a compromise had led to Howell
Cobb of Georgia finally becoming Speaker. The new President Zachary Taylor had
just sent a message to Congress insisting that California and New Mexico be
admitted to the Union and ignored the Southern Senators who were upset that the
states had been established with what seemed to be anti-slavery governments. The
conflict looked certain to destroy the Union.
Henry Clay of
Kentucky had proposed an eight part plan – what would be known as the
Compromise of 1850. Like all compromises it had something to infuriate
everybody. He had infuriated the southern wings of both parties (mostly the
Democrats) by proposing to abolish the slave trade in the nation’s capital. He
then followed it by agreeing to strengthening the fugitive slave act.
It was objected
to strenuously by the Southern Fire Eaters, most notably the new Senator from Mississippi
(and the President’s son-in-law) Jefferson Davis. The South waited to hear from
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Suffering from an illness that would kill
him within a few months, he nevertheless made an appearance in the Senate. Too
feeble to read the speech he had prepared, he handed it to one of his loyal followers
James Mason, who delivered his argument for ‘equilibrium’ – basically that the
South needed slavery to maintain its power against the North. In fact slave
states had provided the nation with eight of its first twelve Presidents and
the majority of both the Speakers of the House (including the current one) and
of all Secretaries of State to that point in the nation’s brief history. He
made it very clear that slavery was the center of the sectional crisis but as
far as he and the South were concerned it was up to the North to come to them
on the issue.
War seemed
inevitable. Then on March 7th, the third member of what was already
known as ‘The Great Triumvirate’ Daniel Webster of Massachusetts took to the
Senate floor.
His first words
showed he had not lost his gift for oratory:
I wish to speak
today not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but an American.
Webster’s speech
was designed more to try and convince the South to get onboard with the
compromise. In it he said one of the best lines I’ve ever heard in any
political speech in history – and one that resonates still today:
“In all such
disputes, there will sometimes be found men with whom everything is absolute;
absolutely right or absolutely wrong. They deal with morals as with mathematics
and they think what is right may be distinguished by what is wrong with the
precision of an algebraic equation. They have, therefore, none too much charity
towards others who differ from them. They are apt, too, to think that nothing
is good but what is perfect, and that there are no compromises or modifications
to be made in moderation of difference of opinion or in deference to other men’s
judgment….They prefer the chance of running into utter darkness to living in
heavenly light, if that heavenly light be not absolutely without any
imperfection.”
It is telling
that in a speech where Webster argued just how dangerous an absolute firmness
to principles can be that he was heard by the south and not his own North.
Despite the opening of his speech where he made it very clear he was speaking
as an American, given their reception to his entire speech Massachusetts and
the North made it very clear that they were expecting him to speak as those
first and only then as an American. And its just telling that when he finished
his speech – which argued that peaceful secession was impossible and that dismembering
the country was unthinkable to him – members
of his Congressional delegation denounced him and one of Boston’s leading abolitionists
compared him to Benedict Arnold and John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem saying
among other things “the soul has fled.” And Henry Clay’s abolitionist nephew
made it clear where he – and so many other abolitionists stood: “As much as the
Union is to be loved, it is not to be loved more than a national conscience.”
There is an
argument that only two states wanted the Civil War: Massachusetts and South
Carolina. This is not entirely true but there is an element of truth. The most
radical abolitionists of the movement operated out of Massachusetts and the
spark of the secessionist movement had its greatest fire in South Carolina.
William Lloyd
Garrison, creator of The Liberator, the most prominent anti-slavery
newspaper during the crisis was so devoted to the eradication of slavery that
he believed only immediate eradication
of slavery and full equality for blacks was the only answer. If that met
dissolving the Union and shredding the Constitution, he was fine with that. In
his mind God’s law superseded man’s law. He refused to even vote because ‘he
didn’t want to participate in what he considered a fallen nation’, considering
the Constitution which had accepted slavery as a reality of their time “a
covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” In the very first issue of the
Liberator he spoke for too many abolitionists when he said: “I will not
equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – AND I WILL
BE HEARD’.
The Liberator never made much
money for Garrison and there is a very solid argument that his inflamed rhetoric
isolated far more people then it won to his side. There were numerous Anti-Slavery
societies throughout the south in the early 1830s but by 1837, there were none
left in the south. Even devoted abolitionists admitted that Garrison’s rhetoric
did much to stir up acrimony and lead to the sectional crisis of 1850.
Garrison didn’t
care; as far as he was concerned his word was law and even political parties
that might change slavery such as the Free Soil Party, were not good enough because
they weren’t willing to go far enough. That a politician by necessity could not
walk the same tightrope that an activist could never seems to have crossed
Garrison’s mind. The fact that his revolutionary aspect involved a resolute
pacifism speaks to the real possibility that for Garrison and many of his
fellow abolitionists slavery and equal rights were purely academic to them:
they believed they were moral evils but were only will to call both the South
and North inadequate to handle the crisis. Even as the North continued to move
towards anti-slavery movement, it would never be enough for Garrison because
these men were loyal to the Constitution which in his mind was pure racism.
Just as one can
see the parallels with today’s left with the abolitionist movement and many of
the politicians who came from it, the parallels from today’s right and those in
South Carolina are more obvious. What is different from today is that by far
the most adamant secessionists in that state were never able to gain political
prominence because of their extreme views. What is similar is that, for many of
them, the men who embraced the movement they founded were not firm enough to
the cause From the start of the movement
to the actual secession even the most devoted Southerners though the absolutism
of the South Carolinians was too much for them to follow.
There is a strong
possibility that many of the crises we face in our political polarized society
have their roots in the kind of politicians that came to power in Massachusetts
and South Carolina while the Compromise of 1850 was being formed and who were
the loudest voices on both sides of the issue. In both cases, it should be
mentioned, the views of these extremists were always held by a minority in America
over all and an argument could be made both were held even after the 1860
election.
I’m not saying,
to be clear, that the Civil War was caused solely by either the abolitionists
of Massachusetts or the secessionists of South Carolina. There were many other
factors, not the least of which that America spent much of this critical decade
lacking in formidable leadership where it needed it the most: the White House. It
didn’t help that the three titans I’ve mentioned would all be dead by 1852 as
well as the fractures of the political system that had begun in the 1848
election and continued well until the Civil War was truly over. Strong
leadership was needed and no one from either region or any party had the
ability to show it until it was too late to stop the events that had been set
into motion. What is clear is that no major politician was willing to talk as an
American, certainly not ones from Massachusetts or South Carolina.
And it is clear
that a large factor in the crisis was in Webster’s words, that both sides
believes in their positions as an absolute right and an absolute wrong and had
no charity towards others than did not agree with them. That both sides were talking
about the original sin of our nation doesn’t change the fact that the loudest
voices on both sides believed firmly in their position and preferred the idea
of it no matter what – even if it meant the dissolution of the Union. That the
Civil War was inevitable can’t be denied. It also can’t be denied that, as we
shall see, too many people in both these states seemed to be all but hoping
that it would happen rather than facilitate their vision.
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