The Heritage of The South / A History of the Introduction of Slavery; Its Establishment From Colonial Times and Final Effect Upon the Politics of the United States

by Jubal Anderson Early

The Puritan ministers of New England, successors of the Cotton-Mathers of religious persecution and witches-killing notoriety, abandoned the gospel of peace for dissertations upon the merits of Sharp's rifles, and under their auspices a considerable number of armed emigrants were sent to Kansas. In consequence of this movement some hot heads from the South imprudently went to Kansas for the purpose of disputing the settlement of that territory with the emissaries of the New England parsons. The result was that a very disorderly condition of things ensued in the new territories, as is always the case where reason gives way to passion. Many wrongs and acts of violence were committed on both sides and there was a tremendous howl about "bleeding Kansas" by the Northern parsons and agitators, but not one slave was carried into Kansas and no one thought of carrying any there.

The result of the agitation consequent on the theoretic extension of slavery to Kansas and Nebraska, and of the troubles in Kansas, was the appearance of John C. Fremont as the Republican free-soil candidate for the presidency in 1856. He was beaten, but his vote showed the existence of a formidable sectional party, in all of the free states, based on a solitary idea. The strength of this party was still further increased by an attempt to secure the admission of Kansas into the Union, under a Constitution liberating slavery and adopted by a convention held during the prevalence of the bitter feud there, but the most important result of the Kansas troubles was the development of the character of John Brown, a bold, desperate and fanatical Northern man, who made his appearance on the scene of action, and participated largely in the outrages committed by the free-soilers and abolitionists.

What gave the crowning stroke to the already over-heated animosity between the two sections, was the appearance of John Brown on a new theatre of action. The political parsons and the agitators of the North did not confine themselves to the denunciation of the Southern people and of slavery, but they lavished their anathemas upon the Constitution which tolerated slavery and the Union which gave it, as they alleged, protection. Nor were the denunciations confined to Northern pulpits and abolition or free-soil papers, but were heard in the Senate Chamber and on the floor of the House of Representatives, and were accompanied with the most atrocious libels on the Southern people, in which they were represented as barbarians who delighted in inflicting upon their slaves the most revolting cruelties, and who engaged in the most debasing immoralities. Encouraged by these open denunciations of the Constitution and the Union, and stimulated by the picture of Southern wrongs and cruelty to the slaves, which were constantly placed before his eyes, John Brown gave way to the wild conceptions of a fanatical mind and undertook to subvert the government of the United States and to redress the wrongs of the slaves by deluging the Southern states in blood.

In the year 1858, he held a secret meeting or convention of reckless fanatics like himself at Chatham, in Canada West, and devised a scheme for a provisional government of the United States, of which he was to be the head, with a cabinet appointed by himself, and he concocted a plan for putting his government in operation by raising a rebellion among the slaves and freeing them. All of these proceedings were kept from the public until the month of October, 1859, when John Brown, with a band of followers, made his appearance suddenly at Harper's Ferry, within the limits of Virginia, surprised and captured the United States arsenal at that place, which was without a guard; killed several citizens; captured and imprisoned others, and committed a number of depredations and robberies in the neighborhood. His pretended provisional government was proclaimed and the object of the movement declared, but failing to receive some expected re-inforcements, and not meeting with co-operation on the part of the slaves for whom he brought a supply of arms and expected to get others from the arsenal, he and his band of desperadoes were soon surrounded and the greater part captured or killed. John Brown himself was made a prisoner in a wounded condition and he and several of his followers were tried under the laws of Virginia, convicted and executed for treason and murder.

His plan of operations contemplated a servile insurrection in all of the Southern states with all of the horrors of blood and rapine, and his acts amounted to treason, not only against the state of Virginia, but against the United States; yet there was reason to suspect that some of the leaders of the Republican or free-soil party, were cognizant of his designs if they did not secretly favor them. Certain it is that very great sympathy was openly expressed for him by many individuals and by public meetings at the North, and that the legislature of Massachusetts, by an almost unanimous vote, adjourned over so as not to be in session on the day of his execution, avowedly as a mark of respect for him, and of condemnation at his execution.

When this desperate undertaking of John Brown to deluge the South with fire and sword, and the marked sympathy for him expressed at the North, were added to the failure of the Northern states to comply with their plighted faith in regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves—to their interference with the institutions of those states, the persistent libels upon the Southern people, the encouragement given to the slaves to revolt by incendiary publications, the attitude of hostility assumed by a great number of the Northern representatives to the South on every occasion in which anything had been proposed or done in regard to slavery, and to the rapid growth of the party now coming into the ascendency on the ground of enmity to the South and her institutions—it may be well conceived that a profound sensation was created in the latter section.

South Carolina then proposed some agreement between the Southern states, for the purpose of withdrawing from a compact, the obligations of which had been so disregarded, but Virginia discouraged this proposition, as she was exceedingly loth to take any step looking to the severance of a Union which she had done so much to establish, and for which she had made so many sacrifices.

By the commencement of the canvass for the Presidency in 1860, the Democratic party had become divided on the question of the construction of the slavery clause in the Kansas-Nebraska bill: that is whether the power to exclude or adopt slavery could be exercised by the people of the territories while in the territorial condition. Mr. Douglas and the greater portion of the Northern Democrats contended for the former view, while nearly all of the Southern Democrats advocated the latter. It was contended by the Southern Democrats with great force and justice that if Congress did not have the power to exclude slavery, the legislatures of the territories, which derived their powers from the acts organizing the territories could not have that power. This view was conclusive, for the territorial legislatures, being now temporary bodies deriving their sole powers from the acts of Congress, could not exercise greater powers than the body which created them, while the people, when they came to form constitutions, under that clause of the Constitution of the United States providing for the admission of new states on the same footing with the old, were necessarily vested with that sovereign power over this subject and all others which belonged to the original states.

The Northern Democrats contended for what was called "Squatter Sovereignty," that is, that this sovereign power of legislation vested in the settlers of the territories from the beginning, and to propitiate the free-soil sentiment, many of them contended that the clause in the Kansas-Nebraska bill secured the territories to the north and free-soil more effectually than could be done by Congressional legislation, as settlers from the North could more readily take possession of the territories and exclude slavery from them, than settlers from the South could introduce slavery there, while in Congress the Southern Representatives especially in the Senate where the sections were more nearly equal, could, with the aid of a few Northern men, prevent any interference with slavery. This view of the subject made the doctrine of squatter sovereignty even more offensive than what was called the Wilmot proviso, and Southern men contended that it was a trap to entrap them.

It was in fact not a question of construction of the clause in the Kansas-Nebraska bill but of the Constitution itself. If Congress had no power to legislate on the subject, then it could delegate none, and if there was such a thing as "squatter sovereignty" it extended to all other subjects as well as to slavery, and the settlers in the territories might set up for themselves without any authority from Congress, which would involve some very extraordinary consequences, including that even of disposing of the public lands. The squatter sovereignty view of the question was one not to be tolerated; and it applied to the Utah and New Mexico bills as well as to that in regard to Kansas and Nebraska.