IRONCLAD The Magazine of the American Civil War Museum Volume 2/ Issue 1 / Fall 2023
Abolitionist Roots | Thoreau's Brown | Secession Winter | CSA Provisional Constitution
IRONCLAD Volume 2/ Issue 1/ Fall 2023
CONTENTS
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Welcome: From the CEO
Abolitionist Roots of Civil War Constitutionalism
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The Impending Crisis: Symposium & New Exhibit
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Lincoln Prize Lecture and Tredegar Holiday Series
8 Transcendentalist Hero
Henry David Thoreau on John Brown
17 John Brown:
From the ACWM Collection
27 CSA Provisional Constitution
19 The Secession Winter
32 Shop: Featured Books ON THE COVER Portrait of John Brown, ca 1846. Quarter-plate daguerreotype. IMAGE: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
@acwmuseum
Magazine
FROM THE CEO
Publisher Rob Havers, Ph.D. ACWM President & CEO
Managing Editor Robert Hancock
Art Director/Designer John Dixon
Editorial Review Kelly Hancock Jeniffer Maloney
Museum Board of Directors Daniel G. Stoddard, Chair Claude P. Foster, Vice Chair Walter S. Robertson III, Treasurer Mario White, Secretary J. Gordon Beittenmiller Hans Binnendijk, Ph.D. Audrey P. Davis Sally Diggs Fletcher George C. Freeman III Stephen T. Gannon Hon. David C. Gompert Bruce C. Gottwald, Sr. Rob Havers, Ph.D. Richard S. Johnson Donald E. King John L. Nau III William R. Piper O. Randolph Rollins Kenneth P. Ruscio, Ph.D. Leigh Luter Schell Julie Sherman Roderick G. Stanley Ruth Streeter Jeffrey L. Wilt
PHOTO: CAROLINE MARTIN
Dear Friends Welcome to the Fall issue of Ironclad magazine, and a great edition it is too! In anticipation of our forthcoming exhibition The Impending Crisis—the first of three in our Remaking America series focusing on the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War—this edition looks at the origins of the war. Manisha Sinha, whom many of you will remember from our 2023 symposium, leads the way with her piece, "The Abolitionist Roots of Civil War Constitutionalism." Also of note is the piece by Ben Lovelace, one of our education specialists based at Tredegar, on John Brown and how transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau saw him. We are proud to feature the work of the foremost civil war historians in the pages of Ironclad magazine, and equally delighted to showcase the talented staff of The American Civil War Museum. Also, in a nod to staff past, we’re delighted to excerpt an article written by Dr. John Coski on the 1860-61 “succession winter.” Given the connection between this quarter’s Ironclad magazine and the forthcoming exhibition, The Impending Crisis, I would be remiss not to also mention the symposium of the same title to be held February 17, 2024. Examining the topic of America on the verge of civil war, this year’s event features lectures from Dr. Richard Blackett, Dr. Adam I.P. Smith, Dr. Edward L. Ayers, Dr. Gary Gallagher, and, as always, is held in partnership with The John L. Nau III Center for Civil War Studies at the University of Virginia. Dr. Caroline Janney, Director of the Nau Center, will once again join us as moderator for the panel discussion with the lecturers following their presentations. Building on the tremendous success of our inaugural Lincoln Prize Lecture in October, we have a host of engaging events and programs over the next few months, and I hope to see you at some or all of them either here in Richmond or at our superb facility in Appomattox. Please enjoy this edition of Ironclad, and thank you for all your support.
Foundation Board of Directors Jeffrey L. Wilt, Chair J. Gordon Beittenmiller David C. Gompert Donald E. King Walter S. Robertson III Kenneth P. Ruscio Ph.D.
Dr. Rob Havers President & CEO
Ironclad magazine is published quarterly by The American Civil War Museum. 490 Tredegar St., Richmond, VA 23219 The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of the American Civil War Museum.
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19th Annual Symposium and new exhibit
THE
IMPENDING
CRISIS Discussing America on the verge of civil war. In partnership with
Saturday, February 17th Symposium featured lectures Dr. Richard Blackett
Reserve your space today for this very special event!
Andrew Jackson Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
Dr. Adam I.P. Smith
This year’s ticket purchase includes Friday and Saturday.
Friday, February 16th Reception with the speakers, and an exclusive viewing of the new exhibit The Impending Crisis in advance of the public opening the following day! The reception and special viewing also provides an opportunity to talk with exhibit curators.
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Edward Orsorn Professor of U.S. Political History and the Director of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford
Dr. Edward L. Ayers
Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus, University of Richmond
Dr. Gary Gallagher
John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War Emeritus, University of Virginia
PANEL DISCUSSION “Was the Civil War Inevitable? “ Moderated by Dr. Caroline Janney
John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and Director John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, University of Virginia
The Abolitionist Roots of Civil War Constitutionalism
by Dr. Manisha Sinha Dr. Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American history at the University of Connecticut and the author of, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 (Forthcoming Liveright, March 2024).
Produced in Boston, MA, this illustration (above) exemplifies the antagonism between Northern abolitionists and supporters of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. William Lloyd Garrison is featured on the left protecting a slave woman and pointing a pistol toward a slave catcher. LITHOGRAPH, 1851. IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
On
the eve of the Civil War, when the success of the Republican party seemed imminent, most abolitionists felt that they and the Republicans, who were committed to the non-expansion of slavery, were part of a grand antislavery coalition. The relationship between the abolition movement, whose goal was immediate emancipation and black rights, and political antislavery was intimate and symbiotic. We cannot however collapse abolitionism into Republicanism or vice versa. The politics of abolition, like its constituency, was multi-faceted, diverse, and contentious. No one slogan or program can encapsulate it except perhaps “human rights,” a term abolitionists first popularized. Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner made it a touchstone for reconstructing American democracy after the Civil War. From the creation of the American republic to the sectional controversies over abolitionist petitions, fugitive slaves, and the extension of slavery, abolition and political antislavery were allied. Not only did the roots of antislavery constitutionalism lie in abolition, but radical free soilers were either political continued on next page
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abolitionists themselves or had close ties to the movement. If we were to draw a Venn diagram to represent abolition as a social movement and antislavery political parties, Radical Republicans would inhabit the middle of two overlapping circles. This antislavery platform, call it “freedom national” á la Sumner or the “denationalization of slavery” like Salmon P. Chase, was not abolition but it could lead or pave the way to abolition. Most abolitionists understood that as did most deep south slaveholders, who viewed the election of Abraham Lincoln as an existential threat and as good reason to secede from the Union.
over the District of Columbia, in which he argued that the constitutional power of the federal government to legislate for the District was so clear it “defies misconstruction.” Weld also researched the “rights of colored citizens under the U.S. Constitution,” insisting that the Constitution’s equal privileges and immunities clause applied to free African Americans, who were citizens of the northern states. Abolitionist ideas made headway when federal courts held that the southern states’ Negro Seamen Laws, which imprisoned all free black seamen visiting southern ports, violated the Constitution and American treaties. 2
Abolitionists’ rich debates over the nature of the Constitution and the use of law and state action to not just destroy slavery but also establish African American citizenship had fed into that outcome. If antislavery constitutional theory was the vehicle through which Republican politicians pushed the abolitionist agenda, its abolitionist roots deserve more attention. Sectional compromise and the desire to preserve the Union and reverence for the Constitution thwarted abolitionist aims.
The next year the abolitionist Judge William Jay explicitly connected the powers of the federal government with black citizenship. Despite holding “our fathers,” here the son of John Jay was speaking literally, guilty of the constitutional compromises over slavery, he argued that the Constitution recognized no differences based on color, but the federal government “oppress[ed] and degrade[d] the free people of color” of the District of Columbia. A host of petty restrictions aided slaveholders “in trampling upon those great principles of human rights” by operating on the assumption that all free blacks were fugitive slaves. Jay listed the names and stories of blacks held in D.C. prisons and who at times were sold as they had no slaveholding claimants.
Abolitionists combined radical rhetoric with circumspect means, reviving early antislavery petition campaigns to Congress for abolition in the District of Columbia and against the admission of new slave states. Yet they were frequently the target of mob violence, north and south, as fanatics who threatened the Union and Constitution. Their “promiscuous” meetings, which included blacks and women, did not help. The lessons of the 1830s, made William Lloyd Garrison and his followers move towards a critique of the church and state and women’s rights. Garrison’s critics sought to purge the movement of his heresies that threatened to make abolition even more unpopular. 1 But far from being an extremist minority, abolitionism had an impact on the national political arena, leading southerners to make respectful enquiries of James Birney, secretary of the American Anti Slavery Society (AASS), founded in 1833, on the exact strength of its affiliates’ membership. In 1838 Theodore Weld published The Power of Congress
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Domestically and internationally, the U.S. government acted as the handmaiden of slavery, violating constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens, upholding the domestic slave trade and slavery. The federal government not only sustained but subsidized slavery, reimbursing its functionaries, particularly army officers in the frontiers, for employing slave labor. Implicit in Jay’s argument was the notion that northerners should redeem the federal government from being a tool of “the Slave Power.” In a companion pamphlet on the “Condition of the Free People of Color,” Jay listed the disabilities on black citizenship in the slaveholding republic, the lack of “elective franchise,” denial of rights of “locomotion,” “impediments to education,” susceptibility to enslavement, and “subjection to insult and outrage.” 3
Thomas Weld
William Jay
William Lloyd Garrison
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Unlike Weld and Jay who conceded that the federal government had no authority to interfere with southern slavery, some Liberty party (formed in 1840) constitutionalists went much further. A Liberty party founder, Alvan Stewart argued that the Constitution’s guarantees of citizenship, which were violated by slavery, allowed the federal government to abolish slavery in the southern states. He pronounced slavery unconstitutional on the basis of the Fifth Amendment, which stipulated that no person could be deprived of life, liberty, and property without the due process of law. In “A Constitutional Argument on the Subject of Slavery,” Stewart urged that the federal government ought to abolish slavery in order to fulfill the constitutional guarantee of republican government in the southern states, this reasoning would be invoked to justify Reconstruction after the Civil War, and in accordance with the general welfare. He died in 1849, and though free soilers rejected his constitutional views, Stewart influenced radical political abolitionists. 4 The emergence of political abolitionism forced Garrison and his allies to develop their own stance on politics, often mischaracterized as an outdated adherence to moral suasion or as apolitical. Rejecting electoral politics, Garrisonians developed the politics of agitation. The fugitive slave controversy played a crucial role in Garrison’s rejection of what he called a proslavery Union and Constitution. In 1842, Chief Justice Joseph Story in the Supreme Court case Prigg v. Pennsylvania declared northern personal liberty laws that gave free blacks and suspected fugitives certain legal protections, due process and trial by jury, unconstitutional. That year, Garrison announced his doctrine in The Liberator, “a repeal of the Union between northern liberty and southern slavery is essential to the abolition of one, and preservation of the other.” This was a concerted attack on slaveholders’ political power and not a retreat into inaction. By 1844, the official policy of the AASS became “no union with slaveholders.” The Union Garrison pointed out in his “Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States,” was bought “at the expense of the colored population of the country.”
Unknown to historians, Garrison derived his famous indictment of the Constitution as “a covenant with death” and an “agreement with hell” from the black abolitionist Reverend James W.C. Pennington. In 1842, at the height of the controversy over the fugitive slave George Latimer in Massachusetts, Pennington delivered a sermon to his Hartford congregation, Covenants Involving Moral Wrong are not Obligatory Upon Man, which began with a quotation from the Book of Isaiah, “And your Covenant with Death shall be Disannulled, and Your Agreement with Hell Shall not Stand.” He argued that “laws and compacts designed to legalize the system of human bondage” ought to be swept away as they involved disobedience to God. Pennington evoked a higher law, long before it became popular with antislavery politicians such as William Seward in the 1850s. Pennington ironically was associated with the anti-Garrisonian, Tappanite wing of the abolition movement. Garrison extended Pennington’s Biblical indictment of the fugitive slave clause and law to the entire Constitution when Anthony Burns was remanded back to slavery from Boston in 1854. 5 The abolitionist debate over the Constitution prefigured the Civil War and Reconstruction debates over the powers of the federal government, federalism and states’ rights, emancipation, and citizenship rights. Garrisonians’ and political abolitionists’ stances on the nature of the Constitution developed in response to each other but were united against proslavery constitutionalism. In 1844, Wendell Phillips, a lawyer by training, presented the full-blown Garrisonian argument in "The Constitution A Pro-Slavery Compact." Mining James Madison’s notes on the constitutional convention, first published in 1840, Phillips concluded that the Constitution was an “infamous” bargain that proved “the melancholy fact” that “our fathers bartered honesty for gain, and became partners with tyrants, that they might profit from their tyranny,” a radical abolitionist indictment of their sacrosanct liberty-loving reputation. The AASS published an expanded version of Phillips’ pamphlet with an endorsement from its executive committee. It went through three editions, meriting a response from abolitionists in the Liberty party. 6 continued on next page
James W.C. Pennington
Wendell Phillips
William Goodell
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William Goodell’s Views of American Constitutional Law in its Bearing upon American Slavery (1844) and Massachusetts lawyer Lysander Spooner’s The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845) were the most detailed expositions of the political abolitionist position. Goodell argued that slaveholders’ proslavery reading of the Constitution was based on their rejection of democracy, their defense of slavery, and contempt for the laboring masses, black and white. He refuted it with their own principle of strict construction arguing that the Constitution did not recognize slavery since it only alluded to “persons.” Even the three-fifths clause, Gerrit Smith argued, could not prevent a northern majority from voting in an antislavery government, which is exactly what happened in 1860 with Lincoln’s election. Similarly, according to Spooner, all law, especially constitutional law must be based on principles of natural rights and justice. The Constitution recognized all people including blacks as “citizens.” Furthermore, the preamble referred to all the people of the United States, not just whites or free people, as citizens of the country. The only guarantee in the Constitution concerned not slavery, despite the “arrogant” and “bombastic” claims of slaveholders, but a republican form of government, which slavery contravened. (The constitutional clause used to justify Reconstruction after the Civil War.) Spooner concluded that the Constitution guaranteed that all the children of slaves were born free and ought to be freed immediately by federal judges. 7 Antislavery politicians were able to distill the most effective constitutional strategy from this abolitionist debate. The person who best developed “Constitutional Antislavery” was the Ohio lawyer, politician Salmon P. Chase. Chase reassured northerners of the constitutionally legitimate nature of the antislavery political project. Conceding ground to the Garrisonians, he argued that the Constitution protected slavery in the southern states but made it the duty of the federal government to act against slavery in areas under it, the District of Columbia, the federal territories, the interstate slave trade, and the fugitive slave clause. His notion of the “divorce” of the federal government from slavery became incorporated into
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the Liberty Party platform of 1844 and his slogan the “denationalization of slavery” became the rallying cry of the Free Soil party, founded in 1848 after the Mexican war. It was perhaps fit that this adept theorist of antislavery constitutionalism succeeded Roger Taney, the avatar of proslavery constitutionalism and author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Sumner’s “Freedom National” concept was also based on the argument that it was the duty of federal government to promote antislavery. Sumner disputed the constitutionality of the federal Fugitive Slave law, which he always referred to as an illegitimate “bill.” 8 But the last word on antislavery constitutionalism belongs to the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In 1851, Douglass announced his conversion from the Garrisonian doctrine that the Constitution was a proslavery document to the argument that it was antislavery. Like most political abolitionists, Douglass insisted that constitutional guarantees of citizenship rights included African Americans. He went further. The original intent of its framers, many of whom he well knew were slaveholders, Douglass implied, was irrelevant. This claim was bold in the context of nineteenth century American constitutionalism when both slaveholding southern and antislavery northern politicians regularly sought to enlist the founders on their side of the sectional conflict. Anticipating modern constitutional theorists, Douglass argued that the Constitution was a living document whose democratic promise must be extended by subsequent generations. As he put it in his speech, which was published as a pamphlet, The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-slavery or Anti-Slavery, slaveholders had given the Constitution a “proslavery interpretation” but it “will afford slavery no protection when it shall cease to be administered by slaveholders.” Douglass did invoke the founding generation and their ideals, but he asked his and future generations to imagine black citizenship. By refusing to be held hostage to the original intent of the Constitution’s framers, as if that is even discernible, Douglass anticipated its remaking after the Civil War. 9
Lysander Spooner
Charles Sumner
Salmon P. Chase
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In the end, both the Garrisonians and political abolitionists were proven right. Slavery was abolished through political action but in the midst of the enormous bloodletting of the Civil War, a covenant with death indeed. Slaveholders’ armed rebellion uncoupled slavery from the Union and Constitution. For long, abolitionists, like modern political theorists, had debated whether the American government was a tool of the “Slave Power,” or whether it was an arena of conflict, susceptible to antislavery influence. Lincoln’s competing loyalties to the Union and Constitution had moderated his antislavery beliefs through much of his political career. During the revolutionary crisis generated by southern secession, Lincoln’s competing political loyalties became compatible. The war allowed a majority of northerners to align their commitment to the Union and, most importantly for a lawyer like Lincoln, to the Constitution, with emancipation in the southern states. 10 Abolitionist constitutional thought, based on a vindication of black citizenship rights, also bore fruit during the crisis of the Union. When Lincoln, criticized by abolitionists like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper for supporting the colonizing of free blacks out of the country, endorsed limited black suffrage before his death, he inhabited abolitionist ground. Harper wrote, Let the President be answered firmly and respectfully, not in the tones of supplication and entreaty, but of earnestness and decision, that while we admit the right of every man to choose his home, that we neither see the wisdom nor expediency of our self-exportation from a land which has been in large measure enriched by our toil for generations, till we have a
birth-right on the soil, and the strongest claims on the nation for that justice and equity which has been withheld from us for ages—ages whose accumulated wrongs have dragged the present wars that overshadow our head. Lincoln became the first American President to advocate black citizenship. Reconstruction, fueled by the refusal of former slaveholders to accept emancipation and Andrew Johnson’s restoration, had long roots in abolitionist constitutionalism. For it to triumph fully, new federal laws guaranteeing black civil rights had to be passed and the Constitution would have to be remade with the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The fight for black citizenship propelled American state formation during Reconstruction. Until today, reinforced by the events of the Civil Rights movement, the black view of the federal government as the guardian of citizenship rights stands in glaring contrast to conservatives’ states’ rights and anti “big government” views. 11 After 1877, the narrow reading and misreading of Reconstruction amendments and federal laws by the Supreme Court would eclipse Civil War constitutionalism, a counterrevolution completed in Plessy v Ferguson (1896) that legitimized Jim Crow. But it had been the long abolitionist struggle for equal black citizenship that flowered during Reconstruction, its promise cut short by racist terror, disfranchisement, segregation, debt peonage, and convict lease labor in the south that made a mockery of black freedom. END
Frederick Douglass
Abraham Lincoln
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ENDNOTES
1 Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, 2016). 2 Correspondence between the Hon. F. H. Elmore One of the South Carolina Delegation in Congress, and James G. Birney, One of the Secretaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society (New York, 1838); [Theodore Weld], The Power of Congress Over the District of Columbia (New York, 1838): 3, 15-16, 39-47. 3 William Jay, A View of the Action of the Federal Government, in Behalf of Slavery (Utica, NY, 1844): 3, 9-26, 55-72, 79;William Jay, Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery (New York, 1853): 209, 371-395; Bayard Tuckerman, William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1893); Stephen P. Budney, William Jay: Abolitionist and Anticolonialist (Westport, Conn., 2005): 44-53. 4 Alvan Stewart, “A Constitutional Argument on the Subject of Slavery,” in Jacobus TenBroek, Equality Under Law (New York, 1965): 281-295; Frederick J. Blue, No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics (Baton Rouge, La., 2005): Chap. 2. 5 The Liberator February 25, April 22, 29, May 13, September, 2, 1842, January 20, 1843, May 17, 24, 31, 1844, February 7, April 4, July 18, 1845; J.W.C. Pennington, Covenants Involving Moral Wrong are Not Obligatory Upon Man: A Sermon Delivered in the Fifth Congregational Church (Hartford, 1842): 4-7, 11; Henry Mayer, Christopher L. Webber, American to the Backbone: The Life of James W.C. Pennington, the Fugitive Slave who Became One of the First Black Abolitionists (New York, 2011). 6 Wendell Phillips, The Constitution, a Pro-Slavery Compact: or, Extracts from the Madison Papers, Etc. (Boston, 1844): 8; TAE No. 13 Can Abolitionists Vote or Take Office Under the United States Constitution? (New York, 1845): 4; James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty’s Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986): 123-5; Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery Federalism and Comity (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981); William M. Weicek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848 (Ithaca, NY, 1977); Staughton Lynd, “The Abolitionist Critique of the United States Constitution,” in Martin Duberman ed., The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists (Princeton, NJ, 1965): Chap. 10. 7 William Goodell, Views of American Constitutional Law, In Its Bearing upon American Slavery (Utica, NY, 1844): 10-11, 35-37, 63-65, 97-102, 149-151; Gerrit Smith’s Constitutional Argument (Peterboro, NY, 1844): 4-8; Lysander Spooner, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston, 1845); Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography (New York, 1878): 201-8; Hoan Gia Phan, Bonds of Citizenship: Law and the Labors of Emancipation (New York, 2013): 127-38; Sean Wilentz, No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery in the Nation’s Founding (Cambridge, MA, 2019). 8 Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase (New York, 1971): 115; Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York, 1970): Chap. 3; Albert Bushnell Hart, Salmon Portland Chase (Boston, 1899): 73-74, 80-83; Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio, 1987): 41-52; James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 18611865 (New York, 2014) 9 Philip S. Foner ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 4 Vols. (New York, 1950) II: 467-480; Nick Bromell, The Time is Always Now: Black Thought and the Transformation of US Democracy (New York, 2013); David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York, 2018). 10 Manisha Sinha, “The Other Francis Ellen Watkins Harper,” commonplace 16 (Spring 2016): http://common-place.org/ book/the-other-frances-ellen-watkins-harper/and “Abraham Lincoln’s Competing Political Loyalties: Union, Constitution, and Antislavery,” in Nicholas Buccola ed., Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy (Lawrence, 2016): 164-91; Compare Noah Feldman, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery and the Refounding of America (New York, 2021). 11 Eric Foner, “Blacks and the U.S. Constitution,” New Left Review 183 (September –October 1990): 63-74 and The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (New York, 2019); Jefferson Cowie, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power (New York, 2022).
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John Brown
Henry David Thoreau’s
By Ben Lovelace
As John Brown awaited his fate following his failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, American philosopher and author Henry David Thoreau submitted into the public discourse an eloquent defense of Brown’s actions and legacy. He stated rather plainly, “I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character,–his immortal life.”
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Simply titled A Plea for Captain John Brown, Thoreau’s essay not only defended the efforts of Brown but also attacked fellow abolitionists who, alongside pro-slavery forces, were quick to denounce John Brown as a violent fanatic. Thoreau, a leader in the transcendentalist movement and a fervent abolitionist, endeavored to set the record straight regarding the way John Brown would be remembered. Perhaps most notably, Thoreau endorsed John Brown as a “transcendentalist above all” even though that is likely not a word Brown would have used to describe himself. Thoreau’s admiration of John Brown was not a universal attitude, and
nhoJ nworB
was founded in 1837. I imagine they often found themselves complaining about how the broader public and intellectuals alike misunderstood or misinterpreted their beliefs. As we will see, Thoreau found in John Brown someone that understood what it meant to be free of both literal and figurative societal chains and who strove to make that true for all men. Perhaps most importantly, Brown was someone who embarked on that noble cause without a concern for what organized political parties, governments, or religions had to say about his cause and the tactics he used. In the eyes of Thoreau, this was what it truly meant to be a transcendentalist. Before we can begin to understand John Brown the transcendentalist, we must first define transcendentalism, which can be an elusive concept. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a leading thinker within the movement, published an essay in 1842 simply titled, The Transcendentalist, in which he defined what the transcendentalist was and was not in approximately 6,500 words. Tackle that prophetic work if it pleases you. For everyone else, a summary is provided below for those who don’t
Transcendentalist Hero John Brown remains a controversial figure today for a myriad of reasons. But the exaltation Thoreau imparts on Brown, and the transcendentalist lens through which he viewed his life, gives us a unique look not only into John Brown himself but also transcendentalism, an ideology that came to define the moral stances of numerous contemporaneous movements, such as feminism and abolitionism. I have at times pondered the conversations and ideas thrown around by the men and women of the so-called “Transcendental Club” that
wish to venture into transcendental philosophical analysis, which is very messy at times. Basically, transcendentalists believed that man-made societal structures such as government, political parties, and religion corrupted the inherent good nature of human beings. Perhaps most importantly, transcendentalists believed that it was the duty of these good natured individuals to personally resist the corrupted institutions. In Thoreau’s Plea he characterized Brown as a man who “did not recognize unjust continued on next page
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I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. –Henry David Thoreau
Hudson River at Cold Spring Johann Hermann Carmiencke, 1861 Oil on canvas, 12 1⁄8 x 18 5⁄8 in. Carmiencke was part of the Hudson River School art movement in the mid-1800s. The serene and romantic landscape painting style of the movement illustrates Thoreau's relationship with nature — nature's connection with humanity — as a part of Transcendentalism. IMAGE: SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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human laws, but resisted them as he was bid.” Exactly how the transcendentalists were supposed to resist these corruptions was not clearly defined. Many, if not most, looked to nature. In the case of Henry David Thoreau, he retreated into nature as he grew uncomfortable with an ever expanding industrial society, driven by the labor of chattel slaves. In protest of that society, he refused to pay his taxes to a government that maintained such a system. As we well know, John Brown resisted the government and the man-made institution of slavery through violence and revolution. Most people, even those who shared John Brown’s disdain for slavery, were in opposition to the violent and murderous methods he used. In 1849, only a decade before John Brown’s raid, Thoreau himself expressed an inclination towards nonviolence in perhaps his most famous political work On Civil Disobedience. In that essay he argued that paying taxes to a government that protected and endorsed such corrupt institutions was itself an act of violence against those held in chains. Thoreau refused to Henry David Thoreau participate in such a system. “I IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually.” Between 1849 and 1859, civil disobedience had only accomplished so much. Over the course of ten years the institution of slavery, and those vested in its expansion, had secured victory after victory. Whether it was the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, or the Dred Scott decision, the institution of slavery was free to expand as far west as it pleased, Black people could not be citizens, and what few protections northern states had to “stand aloof” from slavery had been thoroughly eroded. Transcendentalism was an inherently fluid ideology. A transcendentalist did not need to be permanently violent or non-violent. They could, and in fact should, be fluid in their thinking, especially in the face of an institution antithetical to their ideology. The transcendentalist simply needed to be in search of justice and truth, led by nothing more than their own conscience. By the time of Thoreau’s 1859 Plea, he was ready to receive a violent radical like John Brown into a pantheon of true transcendentalists, a move indicative of his own radicalization, “even though he were of late the vilest murderer… the spectacle is a sublime one.”
deMoniacal eCrof The depth of Thoreau’s appreciation for John Brown as a transcendentalist, however, went far beyond Brown’s violent resistance to the institution of slavery, an institution protected and endorsed by a government Thoreau described as a “demoniacal force.” For Thoreau and many others, transcendentalism, while often rooted in resistance to injustice, was also a spiritual endeavor that sought to reconnect people with the natural world in the way they observed other living species, lived in harmony with nature as was intended, free from man-made corruptions. Returning to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The Transcendentalist, he put it rather simply, “the squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.” Using Emerson’s analogy, Thoreau equated the institution of slavery to a bee that instead of gathering honey, hoarded the nuts of the squirrel. Most John Brown people would agree that such a IMAGE: ACWM thing is unnatural and should cease for the betterment of both species. A bee that is hoarding nuts is distracted from its true purpose of gathering honey, leaving the squirrel unable to fulfill its own purpose of hoarding nuts. Slavery was an unnatural institution, created by the decisions of men who chose to act against their better nature. To combat it, even violently, was the transcendentalist returning the world to its natural state, returning the bee to its duty of gathering honey, leaving the squirrel to hoard its nuts in peace.
Divine erugiF For Thoreau, John Brown was even more than a transcendental radical restoring balance to the world. In fact, Thoreau would go so far as to suggest that Brown was a divine figure. This was a peculiar choice, given that transcendentalists often viewed organized religion as corrupted and rejected the divinity of their most important figures. They often saw organized religion as subverting people's attention from true religious experiences in nature. Thoreau however, saw an opportunity to continued on page 14
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"Tragic Prelude" John Steuart Curry 1942 11'4" x 31', Oil and egg tempra IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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Located inside the Kansas Capitol in Topeka, the mural "Tragic Prelude" depicts abolitionist John Brown, who, during the "Bloody Kansas" period of the 1850s, led the movement to defeat pro-slavery proponents in the fight to make Kansas a slave-free state. Curry explained the concept of using John Brown in the mural: "I think he is the prototype of a great many Kansans.
Someone described a Kansan as one who went about wreaking good on humanity." Describing the mural, Curry said: "In his outstretched left hand the word of God and in the right a 'Beecher's Bible.' Beside him facing each other are the contending free soil and pro-slavery forces. At their feet, two figures symbolic of the million and a half dead of the North
and South. In this group is expressed the fratricidal fury that first flamed on the plains of Kansas, the Tragic Prelude to the last bloody feud of the English-speaking people. Back of this group are the pioneers and their wagons on the endless trek to the West, and back of all the tornado and the raging prairie fire, fitting symbols of the destruction of the coming Civil War."
DENNIS FRYE ON JOHN BROWN Uncover the enigmatic figure of John Brown and his lasting impact on history as historian and former Harper's Ferry Park Ranger, Dennis Frye, navigates the public's opinions, from viewing him as a devil or martyr to questioning whether he was a terrorist or freedom fighter. www.youtube.com/@ACWMuseum
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confront and use the evangelical tendencies of his abolitionist audience in order to elevate the status and memory of Brown. Abolitionists were a large group of people with their own spectrum of beliefs. Their uniting characteristics were that they all believed in the emancipation of all enslaved people and in granting Black people some semblance of civil rights. They often disagreed on what avenues that noble pursuit should follow, however. John Brown paints one end of the spectrum. He not only advocated for, but organized violent resistance against slavery. On the other end of that spectrum might have been the Quakers, who were often pacifists that refused to engage in violence. People like William Lloyd Garrison occupied a middle ground, defending enslaved peoples' right to rebel against their oppressors but not advocating for mass
organized violence. Thoreau’s Plea sought to address the Quakers, Garrisonians, and the evangelicals, among others.
John Brown meeting the slave mother and her child Currier & Ives, 1863.
The Last Moments of John Brown Thomas Hovenden, 1885.
This allegorical print features Brown, far taller than the figures standing beside him, and looking with compassion at an enslaved woman and child. The woman brings to mind the Madonna with the Christ-child giving the scene a distinctly religious overtone. A statue of Justice is pushed off to the side – its arms and scales broken. IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The image is based on an article in the New York Tribune published December 5, 1859. Twenty years after the end of the war and the abolishment of slavery, prints of John Brown continued to be circulated and helped enhance Brown’s reputation as a martyr of the abolitionist cause.
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Thoreau had clearly grown frustrated with the fact that so many abolitionists jumped at the opportunity to cast aside John Brown’s more militant form of abolitionism. After all, who were they to judge and determine how slavery came to an end? Simply put, Thoreau was skeptical of the supposed devotion of his fellow abolitionists. He criticized their willingness to work within the political realms, as one might expect from an anti-establishment transcendentalist. He also went after their eagerness to discard John Brown and his efforts. At the same time he heralded Brown’s own Christian devotion when he said, “He has a spark of divinity in him… They talk as if it were
IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
impossible that a man could be “divinely appointed” in these days to do any work whatever; as if vows and religion were out of date as connected with any man’s daily work; as if the agent to abolish slavery could only be somebody appointed by the President, or by some political party.” The fact that Thoreau rejected Jesus Christ’s divinity but saw a “spark” of divinity in John Brown, speaks to his admiration of him not only as a person but as a being that had transcended humanity. He continued his Plea, “When I reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself, and how religiously, and then reflect to what cause his judges and all who condemn him so angrily and fluently devote themselves, I see that they are as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder.” It should come as no surprise that Thoreau finished his attack on his fellow abolitionists by saying, “You who pretend to
care for Christ crucified, consider what you are about to do to him who offered himself to be the savior of four millions of men… Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links.”
Natural etaTS While much of Thoreau's Plea was dedicated to defending John Brown and attacking his detractors, he didn’t want it to be lost on those who heard or read it that he was advocating for radical change. Thoreau was seemingly aware that his words would not inspire the radical change in his fellow abolitionists that would truly align them with John Brown the transcendentalist. As many do today, Thoreau saw John Brown as a catalyst that would bring about revolutionary change. Knowing this, he finished his Plea by reminding his audience of John Brown’s revolution. He reminded them of Brown’s noble cause. A cause that would drastically push the world towards its natural state, one where the bee no longer hoarded the nuts of the squirrel. A transcendentalist above all, remember? I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God… I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the better… We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge. - Henry David Thoreau, A Plea for Captain John Brown, October 30th, 1859
Albumen print ca. 1860-1880
Ben Lovelace is an Education Specialist at ACWM.
A girl looks at John Brown's headstone and grave in North Elba, New York. The headstone also includes an inscription for his son, Oliver, and Brown's grandfather, Capt. John Brown. Oliver and his brother, Watson, were both mortally wounded at the Harper's Ferry Raid. Watson is also bured in North Elba. IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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The inaugural Lincoln Prize Lecture was a tremendous success and we were pleased to welcome a capacity crowd to the signature event at Tredegar. We are grateful to our partners at Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History who inspired the event, and appreciate our on-going partnership as we continue our commitment to engage in national conversations. ACWM was delighted to host Dr. Jonathan White, Professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and this year’s Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Winner, for his book “A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House”. A special feature of the event was a discussion between Dr. White and 2018 Lincoln Prize winner and esteemed historian, Dr. Ed Ayers.
Cara Sisson, Cheryl Goode, and Barbara Brown
Dr. White's lecture in the Musuem lobby
Dan Stoddard, ACWM Board Chair, greets Dr. White
Aimee Guidera, VA Secretary of Education, with Dr. Havers and Dr. White
Morgan and Ian Hutter (center), Tredegar Society members
Dr. Jon White
Dr. Ayers and Dr. White
Hazel Trice Edney
Dr. White and Jackie Honeycutt
Dr. Rob Havers, Dr. Jon White, and Dr. Ed Ayers
JOIN US FOR OUR INAUGURAL
Tredegar Holiday Series 1st Annual Tree Lighting November 30
th
5:30–6:30pm
Usher in the holiday. Enjoy a performance by The James River Ringers, Virginia’s Premier Handbell Ensemble.
1st Annual Tredegar Tree Lighting Ceremony Victorian Holiday
Christmas
Reception
Santa Comes to Tredegar
12:00–1:00pm
5:00–7:00pm
11:30am–2:00pm
James River Ringers - Handbell Choir Performance
November 30 th
December 8 14th 5:30 PM - 6:30December PM Bring your lunch and hear Join Dr. Havers at a special accounts of Civil War reception for our ACWM Victorian Christmas Traditions Christmases with Kelly members. Catering and live Lunch & Learn with Kelly Hancock, Director of Programs Hancock. music included.
December 8
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Holiday Reception Exclusive ACWM Members & Donor Event
December 17th
A special Richmond experience: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” film, kids activities, and photos with Santa.
From the ACWM Collection
John Brown On October 16, 1859, John Brown led his small band of followers to Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, with the intent of capturing the U.S. arsenal and the thousands of weapons there and raising a slave rebellion in the surrounding counties. Overconfidence in his own abilities and incredibly poor planning doomed the endeavor almost before it began. Despite the financial backing by some prominent northern abolitionists, he was unable to fulfil his dream of ridding the country of slavery. John Brown was captured two days after his great rebellion began, was tried, and sentenced to hang. Republican politicians tried to publically distance themselves from Brown, condemning his methods while at the same time praising his ideals. Many abolitionists saw him as a martyr, while those in the slave states saw him as a dangerous example of things to come if the “Black Republicans” gained control of the White House at the next election. One of the approximate 950 pikes (pictured left) John Brown commissioned for use in his fight against slavery in Kansas, but ending up being brought to Harper’s Ferry. The pikes were intended to arm the slaves who rushed to join his rebellion but were left unused.
A relic of the ‘John Brown war.' Half-plate ambrotype of Virginia militia who attended John Brown's execution. 0985.13.2042
Despite orders to the contrary, many of the pikes were taken as souvenirs by soldiers and civilians in Harper’s Ferry. Southern secessionists used them as propaganda, displaying them in public with such sardonic messages as: “Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Bretheren.” There was a strong military presence at Brown’s execution. In fear of a rescue attempt, the public was kept well away from the proceedings. The route from the jail to the scaffold was flanked with lines of riflemen, and two hollow squares of soldiers, standing shoulder to shoulder with fixed bayonets, surrounded the scaffold. The scene more resembled a military parade than an execution. The donor of this photograph (pictured left) described it as “a relic of the ‘John Brown war’ taken at Harper’s Ferry or Charles Town” in 1859. She identified the two seated figures and speculated on the identities of two others. Seated left is William B. Taliaferro, later to become a general in the Confederate army. Seated right is Samuel French who would serve as a volunteer aide-de-camp on “Stonewall” Jackson’s staff. Standing in the center is Alexander Taliaferro (brother of William Taliaferro), and to his left is Captain Obadiah Jennings Wise, son of Virginia’s governor, Henry Wise. The man in profile saluting is unidentified. continued on next page
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From the ACWM Collection continued from previous page
Members of the 1st Company, Richmond Howitzers (pictured right), believed taken in Charlestown, (West) Virginia in 1859, at the time of John Brown's execution. Soldiers in the photograph include George Wythe Randolph, John Camden Shields, Hugh Rose Pleasants, and William F. Watson. The scaffold for the execution of John Brown was erected in the middle of a large, nondescript field at the edge of Charlestown not far from the courthouse jail where Brown was incarcerated. The field was covered in rye and corn stubble and without any distinguishing landmarks. Such a barren site was chosen “so as to prevent any one being able to recognize it thereafter.” The authorities did not want the spot to become “hallowed ground” to those professing Brown’s martyrdom. The scaffold was erected one day and taken down the next. Members of the 1st Company, Richmond Howitzers. Sixth-plate ambrotype 0985.13.2056
A piece of wood taken as a souvenir from the John Brown scaffold. The inscription on the top gives the provenance. "Piece of the (?) of scaffold on which / Brown, Cooke, Coppock, Copeland, Green / Hazlett & Stevens were executed / Charleston Jeff Co. / Virginia / Presented by ? ? / Charleston Va. October 1860 …." FIC2009.5360. W-1.5 X L-6 X D-1.5 INCHES
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Wood carving in the shape of a coffin made from a piece of the scaffold on which John Brown was hanged. 0985.13.1786. W-3 X H-.75 INCHES
The Secession Winter By John Coski
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The Secession Winter By John Coski The now-famous headline of the December 20, 1860, Charleston Mercury Extra screamed: “The Union is Dissolved!” The South Carolina convention’s unanimous vote to approve an ordinance of secession a month after Abraham Lincoln’s election as U.S. president was no surprise; it was in fact the culmination of decades of discontent within the Union. The suspense of the moment was the anticipation of what would happen next. In its call for a secession convention, South Carolina’s legislature confidently invited other seceding states to meet in Montgomery, Alabama, in February. But would other states actually follow South Carolina’s lead, or would she find herself acting alone as she had on other occasions? The “Secession Winter” that South Carolina initiated was a time of decision not only for the states but also for individuals. People of every class, race, and gender had a stake in the crisis of the Union and would someday confront a decision of what to do if and when their state seceded. Others did not wait passively, but sought to help shape events. continued on next page
The Maxcy-Rhett House in Beaufort, South Carolina. The original structure was built circa 1810 for Milton Maxcy as a school for boys. Edmund Rhett bought the house in the 1850s and remodeled it in the Greek Revival style—the house's current architectural design—adding a second story and the two-story portico. Edmund and his brother, Robert Barnwell, were outspoken supporters of secession. In the 1850s, they entertained gatherings of like-minded people in the houseand is known to be some of the earliest secessionist meetings in the South. It is known today as the Secession House.
Cockade ACWM 0985.10.00230
A symbol of secession. ACWM has over 50 cockades from South Carolina in the Collection. They are made from the leaves of Palmetto trees—a symbol of South Carolina.
IMAGE: JOHN DIXON, ACWM
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BEN MCCULLOCH was born in Tennessee and followed his neighbor, Davy Crockett, to Texas and became one of the Lone Star Republic’s luminaries. He fought for Texas independence alongside his friend and commander, Sam Houston, fought with distinction in the Mexican War, and served as a Texas Ranger and U.S. marshal. As the political crisis deepened late in 1860, McCulloch and Houston parted ways. Houston adamantly opposed secession; McCulloch traveled through the South gauging political sentiment and whipping up enthusiasm for secession. On November 25, 1860, McCulloch wrote to his brother Henry from Columbia, South Carolina.
I wrote to you from the capitol of Ga. & enclosed you a copy of a letter I wrote Genl Houston asking him to call the Legislature of Texas together, fearing he would decline to do so, I have since written a letter to John Marshall the editor of the Gazette, urging him to call the people in each county in our State to call primary meetings and through them a convention, in the event of the Legislature not be[ing] convened by the Gov. This is the only way to have action, let no time be lost, or Texas will be behind every southern State that makes cotton.” “Great events are now about to transpire,” McCulloch reported from the epicenter of Secession. “The union will be dissolved. It is already dissolved. [T]his State needs but the formal action of a convention to consummate & give publicity to what has been done. There will not be a single voice in that convention (when it meets) raised in behalf of submission or the union….Other States will follow rapidly.
An adamant anti-secessionist, Sam Houston was forced out of the governor’s office in Texas in 1861 after the Texas convention decided to leave the Union. He told a crowd: “You may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it.” He died in 1863.
Benjamin McCulloch, an ardent secessionist before the war, was made a brigadier general in the Confederate army and was killed at the Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern) in Arkansas, March 7, 1862.
ALBUMEN PRINT, CARTE-DE-VISITE IMAGE: ACWM FIC2009.801
NINTH-PLATE AMBROTYPE IMAGE: ACWM FIC2009.65
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The storm clouds are gathering fast around us… – Barnard Bee
Great events are now about to transpire
SOUTH CAROLINA’S SECESSION on December 20 th and the expectation that other deep south states soon would follow her lead confronted southern-born U.S. military officers with the dilemma of loyalty. For some, the dilemma was vexing; for others, such as South Carolinian Barnard Bee, the choice was clear. On January 4, 1861, Bee wrote from Fort Laramie, Nebraska Territory (modern-day Wyoming) to his friend and fellow soldier, Henry Heth of Virginia.
The storm clouds are gathering fast around us and we will soon have to take our stands, either to resist this fury, or submit to their violence— I am sorry you are not with your company—I want the whole south to go together, having first stated firmly but courteously to the northern states their ultimatum on slavery—this being rejected the Southern Confederacy would embrace every southern state and would be magnificent—Then the Southerners in the Army and Navy should bring all they can with them….” If you are in Washington see Mr. Davis and get him to express an opinion as to the question whether or not the Secession of the Southern states is not de facto dissolution and absolves Army & Navy from Allegiance—Such is my view and I would like it to be sustained by high authority so as to aid me in bringing men and material South…. A former soldier from South Carolina, Daniel Harvey Hill, had a civilian’s perspective on the crisis of the Union. From his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, Hill on January 15, 1861, wrote to a northern creditor lamenting the unsettling effects that political events were having on everyday financial matters. continued on next page
– Ben McCulloch
How long would you people consent to a union with us… – Daniel Harvey Hill
South Carolinian, Bernard Bee, is seen here is his pre-war U.S. army captain’s uniform. Bee blamed politicians for bringing about a crisis that soldiers would have to resolve. He is probably best remembered for giving Thomas Jackson his sobriquet, “Stonewall.” Bee was mortally wounded at First Manassas.
Daniel Harvey Hill in his Confederate general’s uniform. He was brother-in-law to Stonewall Jackson and close friends with Generals James Longstreet and Joseph Johnston. ALBUMEN PRINT, CARTE-DE-VISITE IMAGE: ACWM FIC2009.762
ALBUMEN PRINT, CARTE-DE-VISITE IMAGE: ACWM FIC2009.415
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I am engaged in the holiest of causes. – Daniel Harvey Hill
This is a unique flag of the Florida Independent Blues which became Company B of the 3rd Florida Infantry. Made from cotton and silk, the stars list the secession date of the first seven states: South Carolina, December 20, 1860; Mississippi,January 9, 1861; Florida, January 10, 1861; Alabama, January 11, 1861; Georgia, January 19, 1861; Louisiana, January 26, 1861; and Texas, February 1, 1861. H-45.5 W-70 INCHES IMAGE: ACWM 0985.2.159
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I am very desirous to settle our account, but exchange is now enormous and I would rather pay interest than be subjected to the loss through discount. Will you take a check on one of our banks? If not, charge us interest, and wait until our new Republic is formed, or make some arrangements for the exchange. If the political situation had left the financial markets uncertain, Hill himself suffered from no uncertainty in his assessment. “I have told you all along that our people would not submit to Black Republican rule,” he went on to explain to his creditor, whom he addressed a “My Dear Friend.”
We will not have a party to reign over us, who have sought in every way in their power to foment insurrection & murder…How long would you people consent to a union with us, if we sent agents and emissaries to poison your families and incendiaries to burn your towns and villages? Bring these matters home to yourselves, and ask yourselves in the presence of God if the South is not right in her determination to resist to the last extremity. Although he betrayed an obsession with the Republican Party’s avowed hostility to slavery, Hill did not regard the issue about slavery, per se, but about defending his wife and children and resisting the domination of government by a party “whose avowed policy is murder.” By “taking up arms against the Black Republicans,” Hill explained, “I am engaged in the holiest of causes.”
BY THE MIDDLE of February 1861, six other states had passed ordinances of secession and their representatives has answered South Carolina’s summons to gather in Montgomery, Alabama. On February 8th, the convention transformed itself into the provisional congress of the new Confederate States of America, adopted a provisional constitution, and selected a provisional president, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. On February 9 th, a citizen of the new Confederate capital city wrote a letter to a northern business associate from what he called the “Republic of Alabama.” As had D.H. Hill, Mr. Lelland of the Montgomery Lumber Company noted how secession had disrupted the commercial relationships between southerners and northerners.
“[Y]our previous of the 4 th enclosing our account and requesting an immediate answer has just come to hand and I am very sorry that I cannot respond to your bill just now, and have to claim your indulgence for a while longer,” Lelland began. “Since the election of Mr. Lincoln, business of all kinds has been brought to a complete stand still here[.] We have an investment of $60,000, now doing nothing, I find that it is the next thing to impossibility to collect anything at all.”
Although he went on to state that he had not intended “to write you a disunion letter,” Lelland could not refrain from laying his political cards on the table. “Everybody is busily preparing to resist any attempt that may be made by the incoming administration of the Old United States to coerce us back into submission,” he wrote. “Let us go in peace all will be right if not, to the victor the spoils. As far as we are concerned, we prefer to be blotted out of existence rather than give up our rights or to be ruled by a sectional party, give us our rights that is all we ask, and to be let alone.” Unlike other men, south and north, Lelland expressed confidence that the obstacles to resumption of normal sectional relations were not insurmountable. “I am in hope that Mr. Lincoln will not attempt the folly of trying to whip us into the union, and that our difficulties will be settled on the 4th of March” —the day of Lincoln’s inauguration— “and that friendly relations shall again become established and that we will continue to trade with each other, as any other two foreign nations that are at peace with each other.” continued on next page
This illustration by Currier & Ives (1861) portrays the movement of several Southern states toward secession as a doomed enterprise. LITHOGRAPH. 30 X 42 CM IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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One person in Montgomery who was not as optimistic about peace arrived a week after Lelland wrote his letter, In a February 20 th letter to his wife, he described Montgomery as “gay and handsome town of some 8000 inhabitants and will be not an unpleasant residence—As soon as an hour is my own I will look for a house and write to you more[.]” That man was, of course, Jefferson Davis. He had received from the new Confederate Provisional Congress a summons to Montgomery to serve as the new nation’s provisional president. Davis described the audience for his February 18th inauguration as large and brilliant. “[U]pon my weary heart was showered smiles plaudits and flowers,” the new president wrote, “but beyond them I saw troubles and thorns insurmountable. We are without machinery, without means and threatened by powerful opposition but I do not despond and will not shrink from the task imposed upon me[.]” As Davis prepared to govern the Confederacy, and Abraham Lincoln prepared for his inauguration on March 4th, they and others knew that a Secession Winter was likely to thaw into a spring of armed conflict. That conflict began as Confederate batteries fired at Fort Sumner, where Major Robert Anderson had moved his small garrison on the day after Christmas. Other soldiers, including Ben McCulloch, Barnard Bee, and D.H. Hill, were preparing to fight that war. McCulloch and Bee were to die in action before the war was a year old.
Excerpted from an article by Dr. John Coski that appeared in the Winter 2011 edition of the museum’s magazine. Dr. John M. Coski served as the museum’s historian and director of the Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library for more than 30 years.
Several other examples of cockades in the museum's collection. They are made from Palmetto leaves in the shape of South Carolina's symbol—the Palmetto tree. IMAGES: ACWM COLLECTION
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“The Grand Secession March” was composed by Thomas J. Caulfield and published in Columbia, South Carolina, immediately after that state’s secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. LITHOGRAPH. 34 X 26 CM IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The Provisional Constitution of the Republic of Washington, Alleghenia, Confederate States of North America by Robert Hancock
The delegates of six of the seven southern states
that had seceded from the Union—South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (the delegates from Texas had not arrived yet)—who gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861, drafted a constitution for the new confederation they had agreed to form. For two intensive days, a committee of twelve men, chaired by Christopher G. Memminger, of South Carolina, drafted the document, using the U.S. Constitution as a model. The full convention debated, modified, and approved the Constitution on February 8. The Provisional Constitution was to remain in force for one year “or until a permanent constitution or confederation between the said States be put in operation….” After adopting the Provisional Constitution, the convention ordered that it “be enrolled on parchment.” The manuscript document, measuring 19 ½ inches wide and 10 feet long, was brought from Montgomery to the new capital in Richmond and, at the end of the war, accompanied the Confederate government in its flight southward in 1865. It was left in Chester, South Carolina, in April 1865. A newspaper publisher retrieved it from the railroad depot and sold it for $800 to Washington, D.C., merchant W. W. Corcoran in 1884. Corcoran presented it to the Southern Historical Society, which donated it to the Museum in 1907. continued on next page
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Constitution for the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America
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The convention of delegates resolved itself into the new nation’s unicameral (one house) Congress. Under the terms of the later Permanent Constitution, voters (adult white males) in November 1861 elected members of a new bicameral Senate and House of Representatives that replaced the Provisional Congress in February 1862.
Article I, Sect. 1. “All legislative powers herein delegated shall be vested in this Congress now assembled until otherwise ordained.”
The Preamble left no doubt about the character of the new union and the primacy of state sovereignty. It is a clear statement of states’ rights constitutional theory. The clauses (incorporating the IX and X Amendments to the U.S. Constitution) clarify that these rights belong to the people of the states, not the people of the Confederacy en masse. Amendments to the Constitution required fewer states to demand them and ratify them. Article I, sec. 2 (5) allows the state to impeach some Confederate officials, and during the war, a Georgia court actually invalidated a Confederate law.
Preamble. “We the deputies of the sovereign and independent States…”
As the Committee of 12 went to work, the name of the new nation was not certain. Suggestions included “Republic of Washington,” “Alleghenia,” “Atlanta,” and “Chicora.” The committee recommended the “Confederate States of North America.” Alexander Stephens, of Georgia (soon to be appointed vice president), recommended the omission of “North.”
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These clauses are the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Bill of Rights—that were the cornerstone of Southern Constitutionalism.
Article I, Sect. 7 (9-18)
Also, since the debate over the expansion of slavery into the new western territories and the responsibility to return fugitive slaves were the immediate cause of the rupture between South and North, the Confederate Constitution made clear that slavery was protected not only where it existed but in any new territory that the Confederacy might acquire.
This slave trade prohibition perpetuated the similar 1808 clause in the U.S. Constitution. The ability of Congress to prohibit importation of slaves from states not in the Confederacy was an obvious ploy to persuade the Upper South states to join the Confederacy or risk losing the lucrative Deep South slave market.
Article I, Sect. 7. (1-2). “The importation of African negroes from any foreign country other than the slave-holding States of the United States, is hereby forbidden…” / “The Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of this Confederacy.”
The Confederate Constitution gave the Confederate President something that modern U.S. Presidents have always wanted: the “line-item veto.”
Article I, Sect. 5 (1). “The President may veto any appropriation or appropriations and approve any other appropriation or appropriations in the same bill.”
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Article VI, Sect. 2. “The Government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them….”
The Confederate Constitution allowed for a Supreme Court, but the government never established it. Similarly, the government was authorized to create a new capital city or “federal district” (like Washington, D.C.) but never did so.
Article III, Sect. 1 (1 & 3). “The judicial power of the Confederacy shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as are herein directed…”
President Jefferson Davis was first elected by the Congress, then, in November 1861, elected by the voters (adult white men) for a single sixyear term that began on February 22, 1862.
Article II, Sect. 1.1 & 2. “The Executive power shall be vested in a President… He, together with the Vice President, shall hold his office for one year, or until this Provisional Government shall be superseded by a Permanent Constitution…” / “The President and Vice-President shall be elected by ballot by the States represented in this Congress, each State casting one vote, and a majority of the whole being requisite to elect.”
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T HE A MERICA N CIVIL WA R MUSEUM
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Robert Hancock is the museum’s Director of Collections and Senior Curator.
The delegates from South Carolina – the first state to secede from the Union – were the first to sign their names. Texas seceded on February 1, but its delegates arrived in Montgomery after the first six states signed the document. By the time four other states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the Confederacy in the spring of 1861, the Confederacy’s Permanent Constitution had replaced the Provisional Constitution.
Signatures
As the crisis over Fort Sumter threatened to erupt into war, the Confederate Congress optimistically hoped for a smooth transfer of public property and a resolution of issues with the United States.
Featured Books Shop online @ ACWM.ORG
A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House by Dr. Jonathan White This book illuminates why Lincoln’s unprecedented welcoming of African American men and women to 2023 the White House transformed the trajectory of race Gilder Lehrman relations in the United States. From 1862, Lincoln began Lincoln Prize Winner inviting African Americans of every background into his home, from ex-slaves to champions of abolitionism. More than a good-will gesture, Lincoln conferred with his guests about the essential issues of citizenship and voting rights. Drawing from primary sources, White reveals how African Americans used the White House to amplify their calls for equality. Lincoln’s inclusion of African Americans remains a necessary example in a country still struggling from racial divisions today.
Hardcover: 288 pages Member: $23.40; Retail: $26.00 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (February 2022)
SKU: 154531
Author signed (limited quantity)
Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
John Brown's Raid: Harpers Ferry and the Coming of the Civil War, October 16-18, 1859
by Tony Horwitz
by Jon-Erik M. Gilot & Kevin R. Pawlak
Plotted in secret, few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band, on October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale."
The first shot of the American Civil War was not fired on April 12, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina, but instead came on October 16, 1859, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia—or so claimed former slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Brown led a band of nineteen men on nighttime raid that targeted the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. There, they planned to begin a war to end slavery in the United States. But after 36 tumultuous hours, John Brown’s Raid failed, and his subsequent trial further divided north and south on the issue of slavery. Herman Melville and Walt Whitman extolled Brown as a “meteor” of the war. Richly filled with maps and images, it includes a driving and walking tour of sites related to Brown’s Raid so visitors today can follow the path of America’s meteor.
Paperback: 384 pages Member: $19.80; Retail: $22.00 Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (August 2012)
Paperback: 192 pages Member: $15.26; Retail: $16.95 Publisher: Savas Beatie (March 2023)
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SKU: 638
SKU: 155100
Featured Books Shop online @ ACWM.ORG
Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade
American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860 by Edward L. Ayers
Historian Jonathan W. White tells the riveting story of Appleton Oaksmith, a sea captain whose life intersected with some of the most important moments and individuals of the mid-19th century. White takes readers into the murky underworld of New York City, where federal marshals plied lower Manhattan in search of evidence of slave trading. Oaksmith was arrested and convicted, but he escaped from jail and became a Confederate blockade-runner in Havana, spending the next decade in exile until he received a presidential pardon from U.S. Grant. Through a fast-paced story, this book will give readers a new perspective on slavery and shifting political alliances during the turbulent Civil War Era.
The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the expansion of slavery, Native dispossession, and wars with Canada and Mexico. Mass immigration and powerful religious movements sent tremors through American society. As the powerful defended the status quo, others defied it: voices from the margins moved the center; eccentric visions Author signed altered the accepted wisdom, and acts of (limited quantity) empathy questioned self-interest. Edward L. Ayers examines the visions that moved Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, the Native American activist William Apess, and others to challenge entrenched practices and beliefs. Lydia Maria Child condemned the racism of her fellow northerners at great personal cost. Melville, Thoreau, Joseph Smith, and Samuel Morse all charted new paths for America in the realms of art, nature, belief, and technology. It was Henry David Thoreau who challenged a hostile crowd "Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong?"
Hardcover: 336 pages Member: $26.96; Retail: $29.95 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (August 2023)
Hardcover: 368 pages Member: $29.95; Retail: $32.50 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (October 2023)
by Dr. Jonathan White "The astonishing stories in Shipwrecked ... [offer] a fresh perspective on the mess of pitched emotions and politics in a nation at war over slavery." - New York Times
SKU: 155224
Constitution of the Confederate States
Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves
by Alexandre DeClouet The Confederate States adopted their Permanent Constitution on March 11, 1861. The original document consisted of five vellum sheets pasted together to form a scroll over twelve feet long. The original document, along with many other documents of the Confederacy, was found at a train station in 1865 by a war-time correspondent, Felix DeFontaine. In 1883, he sold the manuscript to Mrs. George Wymberley Jones DeRenne. In 1939, the DeRenne family sold the document to the University of Georgia, where it now resides.
Hardcover: 36 pages Member: $11.66; Retail: $12.95 Publisher: Applewood Books (July 2005)
SKU: 155226
SKU: 1902
Edited by Brian Matthew Jordan & Dr. Jonathan W. White Final Resting Places brings together some of the most important and innovative scholars of the Civil War era to reflect on what death and memorialization meant to the Civil War generation―and how those meanings still influence Americans today. In each essay, a noted historian explores a different type of gravesite―from makeshift markers on battlefields to neat rows of military headstones to small family plots. Each burial place tells a unique story of how someone lived and died—how they were mourned and remembered. Together, they help us reckon with the most tragic period of American history.
Paperback: 384 pages Member: $32.36; Retail: $35.95 Publisher: University of Georgia Press (September 2023)
SKU: 155223
T HE A MERICA N CIVIL WA R MUSEUM
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NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID RICHMOND, VA PERMIT NO. 2399
490 Tredegar St., Richmond, VA 23219
The American Civil War Museum presents
THE
IMPENDING
CRISIS An exhibition that explores America on the verge of civil war.
OPENING FEBRUARY 2024
