And the War Came:
Slavery & Disunion
“An authority of a somewhat higher
character”
(Political Science 565)
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The self
Sex & death
The body
Freedom
Democracy & solidarity
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• I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid
and self-contain'd,
• I stand and look at them long and long.
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They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania
of owning things,
• Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
• Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
3
God & Death
• 43
– I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,
• Religious universalism & romantic religion
• The sacred
• 48
– God & man
– Pantheism
• 49
– Affirmation of death
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There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.
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Wrench'd and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep—I sleep long.
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I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
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Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
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Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
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Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.
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• 51
– Do I contradict myself?
– Very well then I contradict myself,
– (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
• 52
– The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he
complains of my gab and my loitering.
– I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
– I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
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Slavery in the US
• 1620-1865
• Chattel slavery
• 1860 US Census:
31,443,321 persons
3,953,761 of them
slaves
– 12.7%
• Philosophical
abstraction &
concrete suffering
– Power & empathy
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John C. Calhoun
• 1782-1850
• "the Union, next to our liberty, the
most dear."
• From South Carolina, endorsed SC’s
position in nullification crisis.
• Federal gov’t becoming tyrannical,
infringing on Const’l rights of the states
• Champion of the South, states’ rights in
Senate, 1st half 19th C. Major figure in
antebellum Democratic party
– VP Under J.Q. Adams, Jackson; Sec. of
War under Monroe
“Slavery a Positive Good” – Feb. 6, 1837
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John C. Calhoun
• Strong states’ rights
– “The subject [slavery] is beyond the jurisdiction of
Congress - they have no right to touch it in any shape or
form, or to make it the subject of deliberation or
discussion. . . .”
• Exactly what powers were and were not ceded to the Federal
government in the Constitution?
• Right to secession
• People in non-slave states soon “will have been taught to
hate the people and institutions of nearly one-half of this
Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation
ever entertained towards another. It is easy to see the end.
By the necessary course of events, if left to themselves, we
must become, finally, two people.”
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John C. Calhoun
• Southern partisan:
– “We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our institutions.”
– The South feels that the federal government is a tool of the
Northern, anti-slave faction. They see it as hostile and
oppressive.
• Slavery: something for everyone
• For (elite) whites: freedom from labor leads to greater
accomplishments:
– “there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in
which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact,
live on the labor of the other.”
• (While other figures also believed in the supremacy of whites, it did
not play as central a role in their vision of power & government)
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John C. Calhoun
• Benefits of slavery to slaves:
– “Never before has the black race of Central Africa,
from the dawn of history to the present day, attained
a condition so civilized and so improved, not only
physically, but morally and intellectually.”
– John Hubbard, AR House of Representatives (2012): “The
institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to
be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a
blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those
conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded
with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon
the face of the Earth.”
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John C. Calhoun
• “in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer,
and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind
attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age.”
– Better than being an industrial laborer, a more gentle, paternal
form of power
• Thus, slavery stabilizes society:
• “There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth
and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The
condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders
and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why
it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has
been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North. . . .”
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Background Issues
• Dred Scott decision (1857)
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Slaves & descendents not, can never be citizens
Federal gov’t can’t prohibit slavery in Western territories
Slaves cannot be taken w/o due process (they are legitimate property)
Fugitive slaves can be retrieved from free states
• Slavery to expand or be contained?
– Missouri Compromise
• Series of laws starting 1820 limiting slavery to southern part of US, reached
between pro- and anti-slavery congressmen
• Kansas-Nebraska Act
– Overturns MC, each state now able to vote whether there will be
slavery w/in its borders (Popular Sovereignty)
– “Bleeding Kansas”
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Abraham Lincoln
• 1809-1865
• Main themes:
– Equality the defining
characteristic of American
thought
– National identity prioritized over
state identity
– US points beyond itself to
something higher
– The law and American political
institutions make political
freedom and equality possible
• Union politically inseparable from
freedom
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House Divided
• “We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was
initiated with the avowed object and confident
promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.
– Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not
only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my
opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been
reached and passed.
• "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe
this government cannot endure permanently half slave
and half free.
– I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect
the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be
divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
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Popular Sovereignty
• “Squatter sovereignty”: Illegitimate for Congress
to restrict slaveholding in territories
• Prior to statehood, no one may interfere w/an
individual’s right to own slaves
– While people of a territory may vote to allow slavery,
they may not vote to permanently ban it
• Would allow slaveholders to populate a territory,
shaping public opinion & making free state less
likely
• Dred Scott decision effectively projects
slaveholding throughout free state & territories
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Lincoln-Douglas Debates
• Senate campaign of 1858
• Senators appointed by state legislatures, so
Lincoln & Douglas were more directly
campaigning for their parties to dominate
there.
• Drew big crowds, press interest intense
• Format: 1: 60 min, 2. 90 min, 1. 30 min
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A House Divided?
• “Mr. Lincoln, in the extract from which I have
read, says that this Government cannot endure
permanently in the same condition in which it
was made by its framers---divided into free and
slave States.
– He says that it has existed for about seventy years
thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot
endure permanently on the same principles and in the
same relative condition in which our fathers made it.”
• Lincoln’s position cast as revolutionary,
subverting plans of Founders
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Douglas’ Argument
• “They knew when they framed the
Constitution that in a country as wide and
broad as this, with such a variety of climate,
production and interest, the people
necessarily required different laws and
institutions in different localities.”
– Lincoln anti-democratic, refusing to recognize rich
cultural diversity of US and looking to homogenize
it via gov’t force
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White Supremacy
• “I believe this government was made on the
white basis. I believe it was made by white men,
for the benefit of white men and their posterity
for ever, and I am in favour of confining
citizenship to white men, men of European birth
and descent, instead of conferring it upon
negroes, Indians and other inferior races.”
– References to “the people” imply white people. They
alone are the legitimate actors and audience of
American, democratic politics.
• The country belongs to whites. Everyone else is external to
the American polity
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White Supremacy
• “For thousands of years the negro has been a
race upon the earth, and during all that time, in
all latitudes and climates, wherever he has
wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to
the race which he has there met. He belongs to
an inferior race, and must always occupy an
inferior position.”
– Blacks are inferior to whites in every way. They are to
be treated as such not because they are themselves
bad, but because whites are in every way superior.
• Racial equality as a slur. “Black Republicans
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Lincoln’s Argument
• “My understanding is that Popular Sovereignty, as now
applied to the question of Slavery, does allow the people of
a Territory to have Slavery if they want to, but does not
allow them not to have it if they do not want it.”
– Popular sovereignty extends slavery everywhere.
– Slaves remain slaves wherever they go. There can therefore be
no truly “free” states
• “This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real
zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate.” (1st
debate)
– Popular Sovereignty not neutral, but in fact a conspiracy to see
slavery expand
• Does this mean that Lincoln thinks most people would vote for
slavery?
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Our Republican Example
• “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery
itself.
– I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its
just influence in the world---enables the enemies of free
institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites--causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity,
• “and especially because it forces so many really good
men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very
fundamental principles of civil liberty
– —criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting
that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”
• US especially accountable to egalitarian ideal (Winthrop)
• Self-interest not an appropriate basis for American gov’t
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Lincoln’s Ambivalence
• “Free them, and make them politically and socially, our
equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if
mine would, we well know that those of the great mass
of white people will not.
– Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound
judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part
of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can
not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them
equals.”
• Lincoln here is ambivalent on racial equality. His true
feelings are difficult to determine.
– Is he being sincere? Bowing to public opinion?
Acknowledging a political reality?
– This position changes across his career
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The Declaration
• “there is no reason in the world why the negro is
not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated
in the Declaration of Independence, the right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I hold
that he is as much entitled to these as the white
man.
• I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many
respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral
or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the
bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own
hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge
Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”
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Plan of the Founders
• “Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place
it where Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison
placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate
extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty
years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction.”
– The Founders actually meant for slavery to eventually be
extinguished. It is part of their plan.
• Capturing the past
• Equality the telos of the United States
– Even if the Supreme Court rule otherwise, this telos provides a critical
dimension
• Defenders of slavery work to hinder, not preserve, the plan of the
Founders
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God’s Will
• “I will dwell a little longer upon one or two of these
minor topics upon which the Judge has spoken. He has
read from my speech in Springfield, in which I say that
"a house divided against itself cannot stand." Does the
Judge say it can stand?
– I don't know whether he does or not. The Judge does not
seem to be attending to me just now, but I would like to
know if it is his opinion that a house divided against itself
can stand. If he does, then there is a question of veracity,
not between him and me, but between the Judge and an
authority of a somewhat higher character.”
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The “Mudsill” Speech (1858)
• James Henry Hammond, Senator from South Carolina
• The South is a mighty, vast, populous, economic powerhouse
• “The population of the North is fifty per cent. greater than ours. I
have nothing to say in disparagement either of the soil of the
North, or the people of the North, who are a brave and energetic
race, full of intellect.
– But they produce no great staple that the South does not produce;
while we produce two or three, and these the very greatest, that she
can never produce. As to her men, I may be allowed to say, they have
never proved themselves to be superior to those of the South, either
in the field or in the Senate.”
• “All the enterprises of peace and war depend upon the surplus
productions of a people. They may be happy, they may be
comfortable, they may enjoy themselves in consuming what they
make; but they are not rich, they are not strong.”
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Cotton is King
• “It is commerce that breeds war. It is manufactures that require to be
hawked about the world, and that give rise to navies and commerce. But
we have nothing to do but to take off restrictions on foreign merchandise
and open our ports, and the whole world will come to us to trade.
– They will be too glad to bring and carry us, and we never shall dream of a war.
Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war except with the North.
Every time she has drawn her sword it has been on the point of honor, and
that point of honor has been mainly loyalty to her sister colonies and sister
States, who have ever since plundered and calumniated her.
• But if there were no other reason why we should never have war, would
any sane nation make war on cotton? Without firing a gun, without
drawing a sword, should they make war on us we could bring the whole
world to our feet.”
– “No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make
war upon it. Cotton is king.”
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Social Harmony
• But, sir, the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony
of her political and social institutions.
– This harmony gives her a frame of society, the best in the world, and
an extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, such as
no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth. Society
precedes government; creates it, and ought to control it; but as far as
we can look back in historic times we find the case different; for
government is no sooner created than it becomes too strong for
society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls it.
• A mismatch between society and gov’t “brought on the American
Revolution. We threw off a Government not adapted to our social
system, and made one for ourselves. The question is, how far have
we succeeded? The South, so far as that is concerned, is satisfied,
harmonious, and prosperous, but demands to be let alone.”
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Mud-Sill
• “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties,
to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low
order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility,
fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that
other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.
– It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government;
and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build
either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for
the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A
race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in
docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes.
We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves.”
• “I will not characterize that class at the North by that term; but you
have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal.”
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Slaves North & South
• “The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for
life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no
begging, no want of employment among our people, and
not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the
day, not care for, and scantily compensated, which may be
proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any
street of your large towns.
– Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of
the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the
whole South. We do not think that whites should be slaves
either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and
inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an
elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God
first created them, by being made our slaves.”
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