On Aug 27, 6:21 pm, "F~A~R~V~A: Morning \(The Death of Night\)"
<flyhighfreeeb...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> it was not the main topic of national or even new england conversation
> before or during the civil war.
>
<snip>
Well, golly, Farva, I pulled up some random issues from the latter
half of 1860 of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (a Democrat paper, btw) and
here's what I found in the very first issue I pulled up...
October 10, 1860:
(Under the headline "Local Politics")
"Republican Meeting
The Banner Republican Club held a meeting last evening at the Wigwam,
opposite the City Hall. There was a large attendance...Mr. E.D.
Smith, of New York, was the first speaker introduced:
'Fellow citizens of Kings county - I need not tell you how deeply I
feel the honor of being permitted to come before you to address you at
this time. The city of churches, of schoolhouses and academies owes
such a vote to free labor as was never before case, and sucha vote it
will give. That the Republican Party is right, any man can convince
himself by looking at the statutes and history of our country. In the
first volume of the statutes it will be seen that Mr. Jefferson
drafted an ordinance for the government of all the territory of the
United States - an ordinance which provided for the extinction of
slavery except for crime after 1800. In 1784 it was lost by a vote of
6 to 3, and among the opponents were the leading Democrats. In 1787
an ordinance providing for the extinction of slavery except for crime
in the territory northwest of the Ohio river was passed by Congress -
the very words of Jefferson except the words 'northwest of the Ohio
river.'
'Then I say this, that the Republican party is right in favoring
the inhibition of slavery..."
The speaker continued at length about the issue of slavery for a
couple more paragraphs.
Let's pull up another random issue...
Well, a skim of the July 18th, 1860 issue doesn't seem to directly
discuss the issue but it does talk about the fragmentation of the
Democratic party and makes some veiled references to slavery (comments
about plantation owners, "southern interests", etc).
So let's try another...how about, say, November 1st, 1860?
Under the headline "The Demands of Duty", we find the following...
"It is quite evident that there is a probability of the Democratic
Party being defeated at the approaching election and that disaster it
can only meet with in the house of its friends..."
The article proceeds to trash the Republican party in various ways,
but very quickly gets to the following:
"[The Republican Party] is not yet strong enough to disenfranchise or
degrade any class of citizens in the North, except in a few New
England States, and there we find, in Massachusetts, the elevation of
the negro to the political level of the most favored whites,
accompanied by a law reducing white men of foreign extraction below
the level of the negro. Should they succeed now in admitting negroes
to the right of equal suffrage with our own race, and so open the way
for a large influx of runaways from the South, they might feel strong
enough, by the aid of their colored friends, to imitate the example of
Massachusetts and exclude from the polls that class of citizens whose
crime is a refusal to vote for the Republican ticket..."
Another paragraph further on the article states:
"...Let [the Democratic Party] be broken up and there is no
organization left whereby to combat the hosts now rallying under the
Abolition banner..."
Hmmm...wonder where these "hosts now rallying under the Abolition
banner" were coming from, if no one was talking about slavery?
Let's try another random issue...let's see what's in there post
election, hmm? How about say, December 12, 1860?
And here we find, under the headline "A Spurious Sentiment", the
following -
"...A more irrational and senseless crusade than that of abolitionism,
never was started. Nobody ever doubted but that at least seven of the
southern states which now produce the cotton which constitutes the
core ex****t of the country, must become howling wildernesses unless
cultivated by slave labor. White men could not endure the climate,
and the emancipation experiment of the West Indies suffices to prove
that the negro will not work unless compelled, but will relapse into
his native state of savage indolence, whenever the restraints
established by white men are removed. The cotton raised at the South
is the basis of the ****pping and commercial interests of the North.
And it is proposed to destroy all this, and for what? To benefit the
condition of the negroes? It is admitted on all hands that if the
destruction of slavery at the South did no lead to the slaughter and
annihilation of the whole black race on this continent, they would
have reason to thank their stars...
"...And yet a large pro****tion of the Northern people have listened to
the rant and vituperation of truculent demogogues, and got their
animosity worked up to a pitch of insane blindness against Southern
slavery, without looking ahead to see what must be the result of its
abolition...
"...If the Union is to be preserved, if the nation is to exist at all,
there must be no more truckling to this disgusting and contemptible
negro wor****p..."
So....in four randomly selected issues of a northern Democrat
newspaper, three had direct discussion relevent to slavery, abolition,
or "negro equality". In the fourth I did not see direct reference,
but there were references that could be taken as indirect references
to slavery.
So, either I was extremely lucky in my random picks...or it was more
of a topic of conversation than you think.
Aw, heck, let's pull another... for kicks let's try one from about a
year before the 1860 election...how about November 4, 1859?
Oh, my, oh my...what do we have here...
"Mr. Beecher in 1856 and 1859
Rev. Mr. Beecher delivered a remarkable sermon on last Sunday
evening on the Harper's Ferry outbreak. The leading ideas of the
discourse were wonderfully conservative; all attempts to interfere
with slavery at the South were condemned; no other agencies than
loving kindness should ever be brought to bear on slave-holders,
acrimonious discussion of slavery was denounced; John Brown was
pronounced a mad man, and any violent interference with slavery under
any cir***stances was vehemently disclaimed.
That the exigencies of the Republican party should induce Mr
Beecher to assume such a sudden and complete change of front, to
undergo such a perfect and instantaneous transformation from the
outspoken anti-slavery orator of the Fremont campaign, to a very
malleable "doughface" is proof of the jeopardy in which his party
stands and the sacrifices he is prepared to make in its behalf..."
Just for fun, in case you want to argue this particular newspaper was
an aberration, let's try another paper, from another part of the
country...
Again, issue chose at random from the last half of 1860, I give you
this from the September 1, 1860 edition of "The Border Star", a Kansas
City area weekly:
"Who Are The Disunionists?
The Atlanta 'Confederacy' is the leading Douglas organ in the South,
and the editor of that paper has time and again declared for a
disruption of the Union if the compromise of 1850 be not repealed, if
the law declaring the slave trade piracy be not rescinded, or if
Lincoln be elected..."
Elsewhere on the page...
"More Disunionism - Mr. Bell, the 'Union' candidate for the
Presidency, in a speech to the Senate during the pendency of the
Kansas question, said that the application of the doctrine of 'no more
slave states' would 'afford a pretext with which the South might with
some reason and with some assurance of the approval of the civilized
world and of posterity, seek to dissolve the Union.'"
So even a randomly selected 1860 issue from a paper halfway across the
continent talked about it.
And that's just newspapers. There are plenty of letters and diaries
that discuss it, too.
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