Last week, the Cave of the Moonbat was decorated with all the accoutrements of
American Politics, ca. 1824-1848 - there was red, white, and blue bunting, "Old Hickory" canes, and little log cabins everywhere. Tonight, you'll see, the paraphernalia is still scattered about, but it's taken on a darker, meaner, more polarized tone. The colors have come to symbolize things other than purity, valor, and justice, the cane is the hands of a Senator who eyes his colleagues with bad intent, and the cabin belongs to Uncle Tom.
Join me, if you will, for a look at a period in U.S. politics marked by an abandonment of compromise, inept leadership, and a march to war punctuated by a growing hatred of one group of Americans for another. And no, I'm not talking about this morning's Op/Ed page...
The current Attorney General of the United States has defined the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," presumably because their antiquity (they were written in 1949 - way-pre-9/11) renders them too ponderous for the fast-changing,
24-like world of the modern counterterrorism professional. If that's the case, then Mr. Gonzales must believe the 1850s to be positively bucolic.
danger: gag link approaching...
Some people are saying that according to a law of neocon physics, people, things, and politics move more slowly the further one goes back in history; by the time you get to Ancient Egypt, one presumes, it would take hundreds of years to build a pyramid, and pharaohs would reign for almost as long as Methuselah lived. The corollary to this line of thinking is that people were stupider, less reasoned, in the past - since Julius Caesar never flicked on a light switch or ate a tomato, he's obviously dumber than anyone who has, right?
The answer, as is it with so many neocon presumptions about history, is "wrong." The decade preceding the Civil War was a time when politicians both cowering and colossal presided over crumbling parties and a fracturing union. It was a time when politics, events, and great orations (not to be confused with soundbites) about them were reflected in the actions of the common citizenry. Like our own time, the 1850s was an era of intense passion, belief, and principled stands - by some people, and not necessarily the nation's "leaders."
"the government of servants or slaves...being governed, through the medium of their fears . . . by threats of secession from the Union if they should not be allowed to rule"
- William Wilson
1848 was a big year. Revolutions burned across Europe, the Irish were fleeing their blighted potato crops in droves, gold was getting found in California, and a Presidential election was on. Mexico, already invested with rampaging American troops, was forced to relinquish an enormous tract of territory to the United States, and given that the issue of expansion of slavery into the newly-ceded land was instantly re-ignited by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, even a Faux News pundit would probably recognize 1848 as pretty much a political perfect storm.
Back in 1846, a little after President Polk screamed "American blood has been shed on American soil!," a Representative from Pennsylvania introduced a rider to an appropriations bill for establishing a new southern border, and it proved to be the Issue That Would Not Die after the war ended. The Wilmot Proviso flatly forbade slavery in any territory that might eventually be acquired from Mexico, and it passed in the population-apportioned (and thus Northern-state-favoring) House. Like many later antislavery bills passed in the House, the sectional balance maintained in the Senate allowed the Southern bloc to kill the measure before it ever reached the Oval Office.
The debate over the Wilmot Proviso ignored with Bushlike willfulness the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had (besides permitting the tandem statehood of Missouri and Maine) drawn a line along Missouri's northern border that extended westward into then-Mexican territory. According to the quaint negotiations of a quarter-century before, any future states carved out of territory south of the line would permit slaveholding, while those to the North would be free soil. Wilmot's little Proviso was received in the South with all the glee of the Bush Administration reading a new report from Amnesty International:
How To Not Take a Stand on the Issue of Slavery
In the mid-19th century, if you were a wuss who wanted to be all things to all people in order to get elected, then you probably supported the idea of "popular sovereignty." The discovery of this noodleback talking point must have seemed a godsend to those whose jobs presumably depended on their not taking a stand, as it allowed them to toss the slavery issue far away from the ostensibly-deliberative halls of Congress and out into the court of public opinion, where such matters "traditionally belonged." Popular sovereignty allowed presidential aspirants to cloak their ambition in the "will of the people," and gave them a chance to deflect debate on the matter in the face of national crisis. During the Wilmot Proviso debate, then-Senator from Michigan (and 1848 Democratic presidential nominee) Lewis Cass said:
"The present is no proper time for the introduction into the country, and into Congress, of an exciting topic, tending to divide us, when our united exertions are necessary to prosecute the existing war."
Library of Congress teacher resources
Centrist pols and their press lapdogs sold the hoipoloi the concept of popular sovereignty as being part of a proud, democratic tradition of self-determination, and it became the "reasonable" position of the day. It also meant that it would fall to the zealots on either side to rally supporters to their respective (or not) causes. In the North, hardcore abolitionists strove to inform their often-uninterested fellows of the need to populate new territories with folks opposed to slavery, to counter the sudden realization by southern "fire-eaters" that given enough determination and jingoistic drum-beating, popular sovereignty could actually be used to expand their "peculiar institution."
Both major parties failed to produce a candidate of substance for the election of 1848, and neither took a stand on the slavery expansion issue outside of rah-rahing popular sovereignty. The Democrats picked Lewis Cass, a flaccid party loyalist increasingly out of step with his times, while the Whigs nominated recent war hero (and occasional military blunderer) Zachary Taylor, who had never even voted, much less held political office. Seeing no one in the field with the juevos to take a loud public stand, ex-President (and now ex-Democrat) Martin Van Buren organized into a coalition Free Soil Party some of the disparate factions of the old Liberty Party, industrialists pissed at Polk for reducing protective tariffs, northerners who hated the idea of sharing new territories with free blacks, and "conscience Whigs" who split with their party over this particular issue.
Weird Historical Sidenote: The fact that Lewis Cass' name rhymes with both "Gas" and "Jackass" created problems for his spinmeisters, and could be part of the reason Thomas Nast chose a donkey to represent a later incarnation of the Democratic Party
Hey, I Thought He Was On Our Side!
They might have colluded to suppress debate on the major issue of the day, but that doesn't mean that the Dems and the Whigs didn't try to get some spirited discussion going on other matters, like the exact source of Zachary Taylor's qualifications for office. To illustrate what they thought those attributes might be, the Democrats published this cartoon, among many others, depicting Taylor as a butcher of Mexicans.
Historiorant: For a little fun with speculative history, just imagine what the Freeperland echo chamber would have to say if this were a modern Dem cartoon and those skulls belonged to Iraqis.
The Free Soil Party won no states in the Electoral College, but it did play a Green role in the election by siphoning off enough Cass supporters to throw the election to the "Hero of Buena Vista" and his running mate, New Yorker Millard Fillmore. Taylor was one of our more uncouth Presidents (current resident of the White House included, which gives you some impression of how history has come to regard this tobacco-chewin' wolf in Whig's clothing). He was from Kentucky, owned more than 100 slaves, and made his residence in Louisiana, but to the great dismay of the rapidly-degenerating party apparatus that had put him in the White House, Taylor quickly repudiated virtually the entire Whig economic policy. He cemented his anti-Whigitude by quietly getting behind California's end-around application for statehood.
Gold, discovered in the year of Taylor's election, had spurred a massive migration of people to the Left Coast - so many that the next year, California had enough residents to bypass the standard stint as a territory and go straight to Congress with an anti-slavery Proposed State Constitution in hand. The Whigs wigged; adding a free state without a corresponding slave state would break the sectional balance in the Senate, and pretty much allow the North to run roughshod over what Southerners viewed as guaranteed Constitutional rights.
Weird Historical Sidenote: Taylor's term in office was slated to begin on March 4, 1849, but Taylor delayed his and Fillmore's oath-taking until the next day, as the 4th happened to fall on the Sabbath that year. This has led some hair-splitters to assert that the Presidency actually fell that day to the President pro tempore of the Senate, David Rice Atchison. If it actually existed, the Atchison administration is notable in that it lists as many accomplishments as the Bush Administration, only with fewer disasters.
Go Cheney Yourself
Taylor was a forty-year veteran of the US Army, but amazingly, this had some of the same results (personality-wise) as evading service while his countrymen fought in a war he supported did for George W. Bush. Both are often described as gruff, pompous, and obstinate, but the similarities between behavior do not seem to extend to the reasons behind that behavior: whereas Taylor's antisocial pathology probably stems from the autonomy of decades of frontier military commands, and Bush's from a childhood of indulgent privilege and backroom door-opening, the earlier President was definitely a more hands-on kind of prick. In a meeting with Southern fire-eaters in February, 1850, Taylor responded to threats of secession by promising that persons:
"taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang...with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico."
whitehousehistory.org
"Bring `em on" indeed. Their bluff called, the Southern bloc scrambled to cut a deal while they still had a little sectional leverage. The next seven months brought all the old names of all the old great out into the spotlight for one more attempt to patch the nation together, even as the hotheaded wolves of a younger generation circled, spoiling for a fight. A brief cast of characters:
The Great Pacificator - Henry Clay of Kentucky - 73 years old, wracked by a cough and enfeebled by disillusionment, proposes a series of conciliatory compromise measures; these include a fugitive slave law to be enforced in the North
The Little Giant - Steven A. Douglas of Illinois - 37 years old, calls attention to himself by seconding Clay's proposals; does a lot of the behind-the-scenes negotiating on behalf of the compromise measures
The Great Nullifier - John C. Calhoun of South Carolina - 68 and dying of tuberculosis, glowers as a colleague reads the nice things he has to say about Clay even as he rejects his ideas; supports old-guard sectional balance, possible co-presidency; dies before debate concludes, saying "The South! The South! God knows what will become of her!"
The Great Compromiser - Daniel Webster of Massachusetts - 68 and dying from long living the high life; supports Clay's compromises, including a toothy fugitive slave law; points out that much of the Mexican Cession land isn't really conducive to plantation farming; ends March 7 speech with, "Let us not be pygmies in a case that calls for men."
The Young Guard - William H. Seward of New York - freshman Senator opposes slavery and concession alike, on the basis of following God's path; proclaims that there is a "higher law" than the Constitution - wrenched out of context, the phrase will become the "I invented the Internet" of the 1860 election
The Dead President - Zachary Taylor of Louisiana - made it clear that he would go to war with rebellious Texans if they made good on their promise to march over to Santa Fe and take New Mexico in the name of slavery; died under strange circumstances in July, 1850, before the debate was resolved
Rough n'-Ready for Anything Except Milk and Cherries
On July 4th, 1850, President Taylor went over to the Washington Monument (which was still under construction, and would be for quite some time), and in the course of the festivities, ate some cherries and drank some milk. Five days later, he was dead.
Historiorant: The Daily Kos FAQ is quite specific with regards to the promulgation of conspiracy theories on this site - though a little less so regarding ones 150 years old - and I certainly don't want to be evicted from the Cave. Therefore, I'll just toss out the fact that the negative test results for arsenic in Taylor's remains from when his body was exhumed and tested in 1991 remain in a dispute over sampling technique, but, in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, also point out that the pro-slavery types would have had as little to gain by elevating the abolitionist-leaning Millard Fillmore to the presidency as we modern reality-based thinkers would by impeaching Bush and failing to remove Cheney. Then again, at least Fillmore wasn't promising to personally lead an army against potential rebels...
Millard Fillmore, former Representative and comptroller from New York (and guy who really did come from a log cabin), counted among the tasks of his most recent post the presidency of the Senate, scene of all the great debates. As such, he had intimated a few days before Taylor's death that he would support the compromise measures, should he have to cast a deciding ballot. He came fully out of the Compromise closet after ascending to the Presidency, and when Taylor's old cabinet resigned, he appointed Daniel Webster his Secretary of State and proclaimed alliance with the centrist Whigs.
95 years to the day before the United States became the first nation to drop an atomic bomb on another, President Fillmore sent a message to Congress that asked for a few mutual back-scratches and allowed northern Whigs to soften their stance on the hydra-like Wilmot Proviso. By the end of September, he had signed into law five separate bills introduced by Senator Steven A. Douglas - a package of legislation that came to be known as the Compromise of 1850.
You Can't Please Some of the People All of the Time...
It had taken months of debate, some of the most skillful - and public - negotiations in American legislative history, and the very lives of a couple of political giants, but in the end, a deal was struck. That it angered as many as it pleased is a measure of both its failure and its success:
1. California admitted as a free state - this had been a deal-breaker for President Taylor, and momentum was strong enough to keep it high on the agenda after his death. Advantage: North
2. Remainder of Mexican Cession to be formed into Utah and New Mexico Territories - which would then be open to popular sovereignty. Advantage: South
3. Disputed territory in Southwest awarded to New Mexico - but Texas was paid $10 million to keep quiet about it. Advantage: New Mexico, Texas; potentially the South in general
4. Slave trade banned in Washington, D.C - it had long been a point of serious moral outrage among abolitionists that there was an active slave market in our nation's capitol. The South had resisted shutting it down because they didn't want a little abolitionist enclave between slave-holding Virginia and slave-holding Maryland, but now gave up on the trade so long as they could keep their slaves - the practice wasn't repealed in D.C., only the market. Advantage: Neither; equally odious to both sides
5. The passage of a draconian Fugitive Slave Act - the piece of legislation that inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin, this act created a posse of federal "commissioners" to pursue "fugitive" slaves. Their job was made immeasurably easier by the fact that there was no statute of limitations on running away from one's master, and that the sworn statement of a single man was sufficient probable cause for arrest (see secret warrants). In addition:
The commissioners enjoyed broad powers, including the right to compel citizens to assist in the pursuit and apprehension of runaways; fines and imprisonment awaited those who refused to cooperate. A captured runaway could not testify on his own behalf and was not entitled to a court trial. The commissioners received a fee of 10 dollars for every slave returned; the fee was reduced to five dollars if the accused slave were released.
u-s-history.com
Advantage: South. Indignant Anger: North
The Fugitive Slave Act was a direct assault on hitherto Northern tolerance for the Underground Railroad and tacit support for activist abolitionists, and it galvanized opposition to the South's insistence on enjoying its own special way of life. It basically obligated Northerners to become part-time slave-catchers; aiding and abetting runaway slaves or "railroad conductors" like Harriet Tubman was punishable by jail and/or hefty fines. That Northerners refused to enforce it was judged by Southerners to be clear evidence that they were un-American; after all, the law was a legitimate compromise, worked out exactly the way the Founders had intended (process-wise, at least) - who were individual Northerners to go off following "higher laws" of their own defining?
Who, indeed. In 1854, when a man alleged to be a runaway slave was paraded through Boston streets lined with a sullen throng, buildings draped in black, and upside-down flags, a prominent Bostonian would write:
"we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists."
For its part, a betrayed-feeling South Carolina newspaper proclaimed that it loathed the Union and hated the North more than Hell itself. Things were getting bad, and the man on the street was increasingly aware of it - even if the inside-the-carriageway-types pretended not to be.
The End of Whiggery
From a secessionist standpoint, the Civil War probably should have started in the early 1850s - their chances of winning would have been much better. Abolitionism was still a relatively small (but vocal, and very, very preachy) movement in the North; it took something like the "Bloodhound Bill" to truly define the issue for the Yankee on the cobblestones. Meanwhile, the North was using the wealth being placered out of California's rivers to rapidly industrialize - factories and railroads sprang up across the North throughout the decade, and proved instrumental in maintaining logistical support for the army once the war began. The South was a bit more like Rome, or Sparta. Ever wary of revolt and dependent upon a labor-intensive economy, Southern leaders spurned large-scale industrialization and sought to create a protected enclave in which they could continue forevermore to practice the traditions of their forebears.
Historiorant: It would almost be like we had troops deployed in a huge war overseas, and most Americans (including the Preznit) didn't really know much about the reasons behind it, how it was being conducted, or what the costs would eventually be - until the draft was reinstituted.
But you know us Americans: we have a collective ability to ignore an 800-pound gorilla in our midst that would put Rome at its most decadent to shame. The major parties, fearful of alienating supporters in either the North or South, lost segments of both when they failed to take a stand opposing the Fugitive Slave Law in the election of 1852. In what should have been a watershed moment - a time for a great leader to step into the breach - Americans were given a choice between "Old Fuss n'-Feathers" and "Young Hickory from the Granite Hills."
The Whigs should have nominated Webster or Fillmore, but decided to shoot themselves in the foot instead. Militant opposition in the North to the Fugitive Slave Law denied Fillmore the re-nomination (he'd resurface as the Know-Nothing candidate in 1856), and since they had only won with one kind of candidate, the Whigs went with what they knew: war hero Winfield Scott, hoping that the broad appeal of a victorious general would sidestep the more contentious issues of the day. The Democrats took the opposite route to Compromise equivocation: they nominated the second "dark horse" candidate, Franklin B. Pierce of New Hampshire, on the 49th ballot at their convention. A prosouthern northerner, Pierce came out emphatically in favor of all parts of the Compromise, which cost him votes in his home region, but won him support in the South.
You Get What You Vote For
Since there were no pressing issues on the national agenda except for the enslavement of human beings, the campaign logically progressed into name-calling. Pierce was portrayed as a drunk and the hero of "many a well-fought bottle" by Whigs; Dems countered with the crumbelievable line, "We Polked `em in '44; we'll Pierce `em in '52." The Free Soil Party was again present, siphoning off Whig votes, while Know-Nothing candidates made impressive, if quiet, inroads, and the election tallies gave Pierce a decisive victory. More importantly, the factionalization of the Whig Party augured the demise of national parties in general; when 1856 rolled around, things would be much more sectional in nature.
Pierce, with a Vice President who hailed from Alabama and a cabinet that included Jefferson Davis (future President of the Confederacy) as his Secretary of War, was a compliant tool of the expand-slavery crowd. Since the area of the Mexican Cession was more or less closed to them, even Floridians and Texans started looking further south for potential new candidates for slave-friendly statehood. So it was that while people in the North were reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel and starting to look at Canada in a way that countries of semi-sovereign virtue don't like to be looked at, Southerners were backing some wild schemes to acquire far-off patches of Spanish-speaking jungles and deserts.
Nicaragua - exploiting reduced Anglo-American tensions secured by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 (and hoping to exploit the canal-building desires of those who didn't want a round-trip to California to take a year or more) a 5'2", 120-lb adventurer named William Walker - really, you should click the link and read up on this guy - led a small armed force into Nicaragua. There he backed some rebels, won, and installed himself as President of a new, slave-legal republic that wanted statehood. A southern newspaper reported the he "...now offers Nicaragua to you and your slaves, at a time when you have not a friend on the face of the earth."
Pierce's administration initially recognized Walker's government, but it was withdrawn when a coalition of Central American forces marched against him and he was forced to abdicate back to the States. Walker's enemies were being armed by none other than Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had trans-Nicaraguan canal schemes that differed from Walker's, and private efforts to resupply him were harassed by the British; Pierce's support was limited to the verbal realm. Walker later returned to Central America, where the "grey-eyed man of destiny" bought the farm in front of Honduran firing squad in 1860.
Weird Historical Sidenote: Walker is way more well-known in San Jose than he is here. Costa Rica has a National Park, Santa Rosa, commemorating the battle in which Walker's army was turned back, and Juan Santamaria, a drummer boy who set fire to Walker's camp, is still honored as a national hero.
Cuba - William Walker was only one of several thousand filibusteros (Spanish: "Freebooter" or "pirate") who were launching schemes and raids around the Caribbean; others were setting their sites on Cuba. Two "filibustering" (read: "Viking") expeditions failed in 1850-51, and after the survivors were shot or strangled at the hands of the Spanish, an angry mob sacked Spain's consulate in New Orleans. Unwisely upping the ante in 1854, the Spanish seized an American steamer, the somewhat-ironically-named Black Warrior, leading Pierce to his own Downing Street Memo moment.
Since Europe was about to be distracted by the Crimean War, Pierce told his ministers in Europe to draw up a plan that eventually became known as the Ostend Manifesto. Basically, it told Spain to accept $120 million in payment for Cuba, or else the U.S. would "be justified in wresting" the tropical paradise away. When the contents of the Manifesto leaked out, Northern outrage was so great that the Pierce administration was forced to abandon the scheme altogether.
Northern Mexico - despite attempts to import camels (and a drover nicknamed "Hi Jolly") from the Middle East to navigate the deserts of the Southwest, it was becoming increasingly apparent that what was needed was a railroad. Competition between backers of northern and southern routes was fierce; each side knew the economic benefits at stake. Owing in part to one of William Walker's (yeah, same guy) earlier conquests - in which he briefly styled himself "President of Lower California" and later, "Republic of Sonora" - James Gadsden (of South Carolina railroad-building fame) was able to persuade the eternally-impoverished Santa Anna (in control of Mexico for the sixth and final time) to sell a cactus-intensive swath of land nearly the size of his home state for the low, low price of $10 million. Northern outrage was great, but insufficient to stop the deal; the South got its rail route. The text and a history of the Gadsden Purchase can be found here - worth a click if only to chuckle at the mutual ass-kissing in the Preamble.
Weird Historical Sidenote: There are several explanations for why the survey team in charge of the maps didn't include some beachfront property on the Sea of Cortez, which would have made a great deal of long-term sense. One local legend I'm familiar with says they got drunk and gambled away all their money in Nogales, and were forced to make a most expeditious beeline to California, but other theories abound (including a pretty reasonable one about the map they were working from misrepresenting El Paso's true location). Heard any good ones?
Japan - while not a potential target for slave-state status, it was under Pierce's administration that Commodore Perry was sent to open Japan's ports. This he did, initiating in a cloud of Dickensian smoke and strong-arm statecraft relations between the Land of the Rising Sun and the modern world she would join with such rapidity - though he might not have been flattered to realize what sort of impression he made on the Japanese artists and chroniclers of the time.
Historiorant:
Damn, it happened again. Your resident historiorantologist got so wrapped up in the context of the story that this diary is only 8 years long (6, if you consider that I'm going to have to start the next one with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854). That's down about 75% from Part I - hey, maybe history does move more slowly if you go back far enough!
In other Views from the Cave, I've noticed that ever since the Great Lamont Usurpation, there's been a marked rise in the number of diaries about the ebb and flow of party power in contemporary politics. For a really interesting look at the implosion of one of the heavyweights of not so long ago, check out PsiFighter37's The decline of the Christian Coalition. Also highly recommended in the historiorant category are a pair of new series from aphra behn: Canadian History for Americans and Forgotten Founding Mothers, a companion to mkfox's Forgotten Founding Fathers series (the one with the highly sought-after trading cards!). As always, rserven's Teacher's Lounge continues to bring valuable resources to teachers of Social Studies (and, ahem, other fields).