Lincoln's Dilemma

Blair, Sumner, and the Republican Struggle over Racism and Equality in the Civil War Era

Paul D. Escott

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780813936208
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Bürgerkriegsgeschichte

The Civil War forced America finally to confront the contradiction between its founding values and human slavery. At the center of this historic confrontation was Abraham Lincoln. By the time this Illinois politician had risen to the office of president, the dilemma of slavery had expanded to the question of all African Americans' future. In this fascinating new book Paul Escott considers the evolution of the president's thoughts on race in relation to three other, powerful--and often conflicting--voices.

Lincoln's fellow Republicans Charles Sumner and Montgomery Blair played crucial roles in the shaping of their party. While both Sumner and Blair were opposed to slavery, their motivations reflected profoundly different approaches to the issue. Blair's antislavery stance stemmed from a racist dedication to remove African Americans from the country altogether. Sumner, in contrast, opposed slavery as a crusader for racial equality and a passionate abolitionist. Lincoln maintained close personal relationships with both men as he wrestled with the slavery question. In addition to these antislavery voices, Escott also weaves into his narrative the other extreme, of which Lincoln was politically aware: the virulent racism and hierarchical values that motivated not only the Confederates but surprisingly many Northerners and which were embodied by the president's eventual assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Sumner, Blair, and violent racists like Booth each represent forces with which Lincoln had to contend as he presided over a brutal civil war and faced the issues of slavery and equality lying at its root. Other books and films have provided glimpses of the atmosphere in which the president created his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Dilemma evokes more fully and brings to life the men Lincoln worked with, and against, as he moved racial equality forward.

A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era

1

Prejudice and Human Sympathy

CONFLICT OVER SLAVERY and “the proper status of the negro” caused the disruption of the Union. In the prewar decade, events related to race had unsettled the prejudice that dominated the nation. Many Northerners in the 1850s developed more sympathy for the slave without discarding their prejudice against black people.

Everywhere in the United States the deck was stacked against African Americans. Racism was part of life—the social norm in a white man’s country. Prejudice was in the air that people breathed. Few questioned it, and those few who did were ostracized. But an evolution was taking place in the North. Sympathy for human suffering was beginning to crack the monolith of racism, causing people to question slavery if not inequality.

In the South humanitarian impulses could merely chip away at a mountain of racial hostility. Slavery and racism became more entrenched with each passing year. Public criticism or even questioning of slavery had been banished since the 1830s. Violence or prison silenced the rare minister who spoke against human bondage.¹ Not only was slavery defended as God’s plan and a “positive good,” but it also was seen as the basis of white equality and democracy. Writers and physicians multiplied supposedly scientific theories about black inferiority.

In the North free black Americans faced a profoundly discouraging reality. Politicians in the Democratic Party regularly denied that an African American could be a citizen. Ninety-three percent of Northern blacks lived where they were denied the right to vote in 1840. Only Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine allowed black suffrage under the same rules that applied to whites; in New York a few black men voted who met certain property and residence requirements. Twenty years later there had been little progress. Rhode Island had joined the short list of states that allowed equal suffrage. But by then the percentage of black Northerners who could vote had shrunk to only 6 percent.²

Prejudice seemed strongest at freedom’s frontier—in the western states that were being added to the Union. In Oregon black people could not own real estate, make contracts, or bring lawsuits. Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and California prohibited black testimony in any case in which a white man was a party—thus giving license to any white man to commit a criminal act against a black person, so long as there was no white witness. Few African Americans ever served on an antebellum jury.³

New states and territories in the West—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Oregon—legally barred African Americans or demanded the posting of an expensive bond to guarantee good behavior. The percentage of voters in Illinois, Indiana, Oregon, and Kansas who supported measures to prohibit the entry of free black people reached almost 80 percent. And the western states were not alone. “Nearly every northern state considered, and many adopted, measures to prohibit or restrict the further immigration of Negroes.” Though not always strictly enforced, these laws discouraged black in-migration and aided harassment of black people.⁴

Cradle-to-grave discrimination was the rule throughout the free states. African Americans had their “place” in the North as much as in the South, and that place was everywhere an inferior one. Black people were sent to the “Jim Crow” section in railway cars, stagecoaches, buses, and steamboats. They had to sit in separate sections in theaters, lecture halls, and churches. If they were able to attend school, it was a segregated school. Most restaurants, hotels, and resorts were closed to them. Their jobs were the most undesirable and most poorly paid. Segregation followed them into prisons, hospitals, and even cemeteries. The specter of racial prejudice “haunts its victim wherever he goes,” even into “the graveyards.”⁵

Such realities drove black leaders almost to despair. James McCune Smith, a physician and reformer from New York City, lamented that whites were “ignorant of our capacity” and “laughed at us in our wretchedness.” He asked, “What press has not ridiculed and condemned us?” Samuel Ringgold Ward, who escaped from slavery and then fled from the United States, said that “ ‘American’ and ‘Negro-hater’ were nearly ‘synonymous terms.’ ”⁶

Those who tried to change this situation paid a severe price. Riots and mob violence had greeted the abolitionist campaigns of the 1830s, and the public applauded. The leaders of anti-abolition mobs were usually respectable men, upstanding pillars of their local communities. The murder of an abolitionist editor, Elijah Lovejoy, in Illinois underscored the extent of anger over threats to white supremacy. Even on the eve of the Civil War, hostility toward the abolitionists remained strong, and many saw criticism of slavery as an attack on the Constitution. To disturb the racial status quo was, as Southern leaders contended, to endanger the Union. Slavery was protected, and racism was patriotic.⁷

But politics repeatedly raised a troubling question: what was slavery’s role in the nation’s future? The war with Mexico had added vast new territory to the national domain. With every discussion of settling or organizing that territory, new controversies arose. Increasingly, Northerners worried about the influence Southern leaders had over national politics. Slavery certainly was legal and protected where it existed. But should it expand? How would its expansion affect non-slaveholders and Northerners? Could Congress limit slavery’s growth?

Arguments about the law and the Constitution could become theoretical, but human dramas had the power to grip people’s emotions and multiply the efforts of the abolitionists. A best-selling novel and a new federal law captured the emotions of many Northerners in the 1850s. They set in motion a slow but widespread emotional awakening. The novel was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It made ordinary people understand a mother’s pain when slave children were torn from their parents. The law was the fugitive slave law, a key part of the Compromise of 1850. It put the anguish of losing one’s freedom before the eyes of a previously indifferent public. Together, Stowe’s book and growing conflicts over fugitive slaves deepened Northerners’ awareness of the emotional cruelty that was inseparable from slavery.

Harriet Beecher Stowe began publishing Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851. It first appeared chapter by chapter in the National Era, an abolitionist newspaper. This serialized version of her story immediately struck a chord. Hearing about its popularity, a publisher contacted Stowe and convinced her to let him print it in book form. Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared between covers in March of 1852 and sold a remarkable 300,000 copies in the first year—“an unprecedented number for any book, except the Bible, in so short a period of time.” By mid-1853 sales were over a million. Bargain-priced editions extended the novel’s reach, and numerous theatrical groups adapted the novel for the stage. Countless people saw Uncle Tom’s Cabin performed as a stage play or read other novels imitating it.⁸

The scenes that most affected readers and audiences described human suffering that anyone could understand—parents protecting their children, mothers devastated by the sale of a child, slaves at the mercy of a cruel master. The highlight of most stage productions was the flight of Eliza, a slave mother. Learning that her little boy was going to be sold away from her, Eliza fled from Kentucky toward the free state of Ohio. Closely pursued by slave catchers and vicious dogs, she took an enormous chance. To cross the partially frozen Ohio River, she jumped from one block of ice to another, holding little Harry in her arms. A mother would do anything to protect her child as Eliza did; another slave in the novel, who had been separated from her child, wasted away from sorrow.

After Eliza reached Ohio, she remained in danger. Her encounter with a white family underscored the sacredness of family ties—vital to whites as well as blacks. In that chapter a state legislator in Ohio returned to his home after helping to pass a law to capture runaway slaves. He and his wife were still grieving over the death of their young son. Suddenly Eliza appeared on their doorstep with little Harry. When the senator’s wife saw Eliza, her heart immediately went out to her. “[T]he law … don’t forbid us to shelter these poor creatures a night, does it?” she asked her husband. Dutifully, the legislator affirmed that “that would be aiding and abetting.” But soon he relented, moved like his wife by Eliza’s love for her child and by his own love for the boy he had lost. Thus a lawmaker aided and abetted Eliza’s escape, contrary to law, because his heart compelled him. And his wife’s question remained in the mind of the reader: do “you think such a law as that is right and Christian?”⁹

Uncle Tom, the central figure of Stowe’s novel, was far from the spineless, submissive character that his name later came to represent. In what was a very religious nation, Stowe made Tom a man of religious courage and commitment. Otherworldly in his priorities, Tom dedicated his life to preparing for eternity. Rather than fighting against the injustices of slavery, he worked constantly to treat all those around him with love. Tom helped many, white as well as black, and in the novel he ultimately died a martyr’s death by refusing to betray two slaves who had escaped. As his vicious owner, Simon Legree, beat him to death, Tom pleaded for Legree’s soul. Before dying he converted two slaves to Christianity.¹⁰ Tom’s Christianity and Eliza’s devotion to her child showed Northerners that African Americans were human, even admirable at times, and could feel as they did.

Still, few considered that blacks might deserve equal treatment. Sympathy could remain in the realm of thought; prejudice affected daily realities and action. But outrage over the fugitive slave law convinced a small but growing number that no free person should lose his freedom. Especially troubling was the role of the federal government. How could the government of a nation dedicated to liberty be the agent of enslavement? A series of well-publicized events caused many Northerners to ask this question.

The small body of abolitionists assailed the fugitive slave law soon after its passage in 1850. Several provisions of the legislation were questionable. If a slave ran away and escaped to freedom, his owner could go before a U.S. magistrate and file a description of his escaped “property.” Then, when the owner or his detectives located a runaway, that description would serve as sufficient evidence to identify the fugitive. A U.S. magistrate in the free states had to decide whether the living, breathing person, arrested and standing before him, matched the descriptive words on a page. The magistrate’s decision could send a free person into bondage. But no contrary evidence could be presented; no challenge to the supposed facts was allowed; no jury trial was to take place. In addition, the magistrate was paid more for his work when he condemned a man to bondage than when he preserved his freedom. The reason for this, ostensibly, was that the former required more paperwork. Yet this strange feature made the law suspect and more objectionable.

Almost immediately several cases attracted great public attention. In October 1850 hundreds of blacks gathered and threatened to free a slave captured in Detroit. In Boston early in 1851 Frederick Jenkins, whose slave name had been Shadrack, was taken into custody. Shadrack had escaped from slavery in Virginia and found work in a Boston restaurant. During a break in the legal proceedings for his return to slavery, a mob (consisting mostly of African Americans) burst into the courtroom and carried Jenkins away. Before federal agents could seize him again, he made his escape to Canada. Later that year a slave owner tried to claim a fugitive in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where many Quakers lived. African Americans and others assembled to resist the sending of a human being into slavery. A gunfight occurred, the fugitive was rescued, and the slave owner and three black people died. These events sparked widespread publicity, and the United States charged forty-five people with treason—unsuccessfully. In Syracuse, New York, abolitionists twice rescued William Henry, whose slave name was Jerry. William Henry made it to safety in Canada, but twenty-six people were indicted for riot and one was convicted. These well-publicized events aroused concerns, and “each year thereafter until the Civil War, Syracuse commemorated the Jerry rescue on its anniversary date.”¹¹

These cases were the first cracks in the wall of racial indifference, but after 1854 Northern opposition to the fugitive slave law increased exponentially. A major catalyst was the Anthony Burns case in Boston. Anthony Burns had escaped from slavery in Virginia by stowing away on a ship. Once in Boston he found a job and made a new life for himself. Then an understandable human error put him in jeopardy. He wrote a letter intended for an enslaved member of his family, but the letter was intercepted, and his former owner learned where to find him. Federal marshals arrested Burns and put him under guard in Boston’s federal courthouse. Alarmed abolitionists organized meetings in protest, and a mob tried to rescue Burns by breaking into the courthouse. Their attack failed, and one guard was killed.

At this point the actions of the federal government took center stage. President Franklin Pierce moved decisively to enforce the fugitive slave law. “Incur any expense to insure the execution of the law,” he telegraphed to local officials. The government sent marines, cavalry, and artillery to Boston and alerted ships in the harbor. The legal proceedings against Anthony Burns moved inexorably forward. At one point his former owner was ready to sell his human property to abolitionists, but the U.S. attorney blocked the sale. The federal government seemed absolutely determined to return this man to bondage. And it succeeded. Facing huge public protest, the army sent in troops from Rhode Island and New Hampshire. One thousand five hundred militia also were ordered to help maintain order. All business came to a stop in the heart of Boston as troops marched Burns to the harbor. “Most offices were draped in mourning, a coffin covered with black cloth hung suspended across State Street,” and American flags “union down and edged in black” hung from windows. As spectators cried “Shame! Shame!” Burns “held his head up, and marched like a man” toward bondage.¹²

The government had succeeded in ending a man’s freedom and returning him into slavery. To execute the law in this one case, it had spent more than $2 million in today’s currency. Anthony Burns suffered, while many felt that a government dedicated to liberty had betrayed its values and paid far too high a price to appease slaveholders. One conservative-minded Bostonian wrote, “When it was all over, and I was left alone in my office, I put my face in my hands and wept. I could do nothing less.” Amos A. Lawrence, a textile manufacturer, summed up the impact on public opinion in Boston. “We went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”¹³

Though less intense, the reaction was similar throughout the North. Resistance to the law by antislavery people grew. After the Anthony Burns case not a single runaway slave was returned to bondage from New England. More slaves were rescued successfully, and new cases in Wisconsin and Ohio attracted enormous publicity. In all, federal courts remanded 191 fugitives in the 1850s. This represented more than 82 percent of all the legal cases initiated. But public opinion had turned against the government’s efforts. In almost half the cases, federal marshals had to become involved in transporting someone into bondage. Increasingly, citizens were troubled by the return of fugitive slaves and criticized the federal authorities who did their duty as slave catchers. Northern states passed personal liberty laws to try to give some protections, such as trial by jury, to fugitives. And far more slaves escaped than were captured. An estimated eight thousand to fifteen thousand slaves “stole themselves” during the prewar decade.¹⁴

White Northerners, in general, were still mired in racial prejudice. They did not want to associate with African Americans. They did not want them to have equal rights or greater opportunities. But a feeling was growing in the Northern public that slaves were people and that slavery was wrong and un-American.

2

Founding the Republican Party

THE POLITICAL PARTY that grew from these concerns over slavery was the Republican Party. In turn, it nourished and carried forward the public’s antislavery feelings. But the party was an amalgam of strangely different elements. It contained men from different political backgrounds, and it combined antislavery convictions and antiblack prejudices.

“He was more nearly the founder of the Republican Party than any other one man.” So declared Alexander K. McClure, ...