USA > Iowa > Poweshiek County > History of Poweshiek County, Iowa: a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume 1 > Part 20
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Slavery was discussed when the constitution was adopted in 1787. Then and there Madison, "the father of the constitution," third president of the United States, and a native of Virginia, said he did not desire that the constitution should recognize "property in man." Benjamin Franklin was an active president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
In that convention of 1787 South Carolina and Georgia insisted on per- mitting the slave trade with Africa to continue twenty years longer on condition of their accepting the constitution. The states were exceedingly reluctant to con- cede much power to the general government. Those two states were unyielding. When the vote was taken seven states voted for it. They were all New England as then organized, making three states, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia, that is, four practically free states, three slave states. Those against the ex- tension were New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia. On this oc- casion the danger was not that the Union would be dissolved but that it would not be consolidated.
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MISSOURI COMPROMISE, 1820-1850.
Slavery was a national topic in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was adopted, and congress determined that no slave state should be admitted from south of the south line of Missouri extended. It was the storm center in con- gress about 1835 and again in 1850. If we look for the man who, more than any other, was the father of secession and the Civil war, we shall probably find him to be the man who wrote to a member of the legislature of Alabama in 1847: "It is a duty-due to ourselves, to the Union, and our political institutions, to force the issue (of slavery) on the north. Unless we bring on the issue, delay will be dangerous indeed. I would have forced the issue on the north in 1835, when the spirit of abolitionism first developed itself."
Thomas H. Benton of Missouri says that the plan here referred to "was to force the isstte upon the north, under the pretext of self defense, and to section- alize the south, preparatory to disunion."
That writer had seen that the action in congress in 1835 increased public op- position to slavery, and was intensifying the purpose to arrest its expansion, and thus limit its power. He had seen that the "delay was dangerous" and he was anxious that something conclusive should be done.
We may deny the justice of his premises and be shocked by the disaster in his conclusions, yet John C. Calhoun stands in the front rank of American men of honor. He believed that he owed supreme political allegiance to his state, that slavery was essential to the prosperity of that state, and, therefore, that it was his first duty to defend slavery from every attempt to limit its power in the nation.
We follow his history. An Irish-American; a thoughtful youth; a ready learner ; free lifelong from slanderous gossip; one of America's greatest men, his last important speech is read for him in the senate on his favorite topic, and, twenty-seven days later, the Webster of South Carolina, the greater than Web- ster in character, is no more. Those last words on the verge of the grave were forceful, radical, but not a tone of harshness, not a note of severity. It has been said that Webster's 7th of March speech was "the darkest spot" in his political life. In many respects, Calhoun's speech on the 4th of March was the noblest hour of his political oratory.
Calhoun died. His principles lived. They wrought powerfully and, in vari- ous directions, produced momentous results. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill opened Kansas to contending armies. Men of Georgia and Alabama met the men of Massachusetts in deadly conflict. Senator Atchison of Missouri led hundreds to violate the ballot box, and men chosen by fraud made the laws and framed con- stitutions until they had more than enough of war-making and law-defying. The Kansas contest made men more bitter, north and south, until it was admitted as a state.
A decade passed by after the death of Calhoun. The question of secession filled all the air. The feeling about it everywhere was intense, but most intense in the southern states. The slave-holders felt more and more that slavery was a blessing to them and to their "servants." to them because by it they could enjoy comparative leisure, to their slaves because they had been brought from brutal
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savagery into the kind treatment of humane masters, and were relieved from all anxiety about how they should live. They felt increasingly that the north had no more right or reason to interfere with their negro "property" than the south had to trouble itself about our horses.
Let us enter more fully into the southern mind and read the thoughts there. We will quote the words from Claiborne's "Life and Correspondence of General John A. Quitman," a man New York born, who became a Mississippian by adoption and died at Natchez just before the Civil war began openly to insist that it was a system of divine origin. He says :
"In the early stages of African slavery in the south, it was by many consid- ered an evil that had been inflicted upon the country by British and New Eng- land cupidity. The Africans were regarded as barbarians and governed by the lash. The very hatred of the 'evil' forced upon us was, in a measure, transferred to the unhappy victims. They were treated with severity, and no social relations existed between them and the whites. By degrees slavery began to be considered 'a necessary evil,' to be got rid of by gradual emancipation, or, perhaps, not at all, and the condition of the slave sensibly improved. The natural sense of justice in the human heart suggested that they had been brought here by compulsion, and they should be regarded, not as savages, but as captives, who were to be kindly treated while laboring for their ultimate redemption."
As slavery became increasingly profitable, it became increasingly evident to the south that it was a benediction to the slaves. But their efforts in its behalf in the nation were often temporarily successful to result in arousing in- creasing opposition. This had been eminently true in the treatment of anti- slavery petitions, in the compromise of 1850, in the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, in the Dred Scott decision, and now there was a possibility that the govern- ment itself would pass out of pro-slavery hands for a time.
The moral sentiment of the north was growingly hostile to the "peculiar institution," the world was condemning it in poetry and in prose, while pulpit and press, philanthropists and philosophers were uttering strong words against it, until now, in 1860, it was the master theme on the stump and in political conventions. It has divided churches, and now it was dividing political parties.
PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTIONS.
The first presidential convention of 1860 was democratic, and held April 23d at Charleston, South Carolina. Douglas and the moderates included nearly all of the northern delegates ; opposed to him were most of the southern dele- gates and the influence of the administration. Caleb Cushing was chosen to preside. The committee on platform were chiefly anti-Douglas men. The report of the majority was rejected; the report of the minority was accepted by 165 yeas to 138 nays. The delegates from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and a few others, withdrew. The members left in convention declared that it required the vote of two-thirds of a full convention to nominate. The result of fifty-seven ballots was always largely for Douglas, but never more than 1521/2 votes, while it required not less than 202 to nominate.
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The convention ultimately adjourned to Baltimore, and met there June 18. Here, too, the delegates were strongly for Douglas, and questioned cases de- cided in his favor. Again several most pro-southern delegates withdrew. The ballots showed 17312 for Douglas, but it was not two-thirds of a full conven- tion. They then decided that two-thirds of those present should nominate, and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia received the required number of votes.
The radical southern men who seceded from the former convention at Charleston and Baltimore and those who had held a meeting on June II, at Richmond, met at Baltimore on June 28. It was almost wholly southern. They very readily nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky and Joseph Lane of Oregon for the presidency and the vice presidency.
A third group of delegates assembled at Baltimore in May and called themselves "The Constitutional-Union" party. They ignored the territorial question, and simply announced their adherence to the constitution, the Union and the enforcement of the laws.
The fourth party that year to be named was the republican, the advocate of non-extension of the area of slavery. It met in Chicago, May 16, in "the great wigwam." Its candidates were numerous, either of their own choice or by that of their friends. Some had long been conspicuous in public life, but one bore a name scarcely known anywhere except in his own town and its vi- cinity some two years before. His arms were long enough to suggest that he was unusually near our prehistoric ancestry, the apes. But speak to him. His language is rich in unusual common sense, enriched by good nature, and spiced with quaint humor. In that conventon a rail, split by him, brought in on the shoulder of a fellow workman, sets the assembly wild and aided in nominating Abraham Lincoln for president and Hamlin for vice president.
Of these candidates for the presidency, the first and the last, perhaps, were most widely known.
Douglas was "the Little Giant," a popular speaker, a shrewd debater, between the extremes as to slavery in the territories, and cordially hated by the most radical pro-slavery men in congress who had taken pains many a time to insult him there.
Robert J. Breckinridge was from a leading family of Kentucky. Jefferson Davis, who ought to know, says of him: "Mr. Breckinridge had not antici- pated, and, it may safely be said, did not eagerly desire the nomination. He was young enough to wait, and patriotic enough to be willing to do so if the weal of the country required it." He was ready to withdraw if Messrs. Bell and Douglas would do so and if a person more acceptable than either to the three parties they represented should be found. When I made this announcement to Mr. Douglas he replied that the scheme proposed was impracticable, because his friends, mainly northern democrats, if he were withdrawn, would join in the support of Mr. Lincoln rather than of any one who should supplant him (Douglas).
The campaign was entered upon with vigor. Bell and Everett made little figure in it, and it is said that Bell eventually favored the Confederacy. and Everett became a republican. Men thought of secession and talked about it,
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and it was a great thought in the minds of all voters, especially after the state elections, held a month or so before the national, foreshadowing the choice of the republican candidate. Indiana and Pennsylvania gave special encourage- ment, and because they chose unusually able men and the latter by 32,000 majority.
THE SECESSION, TALK AND ACTION.
But the cry of "secession if Lincoln is elected," seems to have been at par in South Carolina and somewhat discounted in other slave states. In the north we could not believe the rabid fellows meant what they said. It was without sufficient cause, and would be ruinous. In Iowa we must resist it to the death if any were insane enough to attempt it, for we want the Mississippi open to the gulf under one flag, in one nation. Before the Louisiana Purchase we saw what men from the middle Mississippi and from the Ohio suffered below from fines, arrest and prisons from the foreign masters there. The same thing must come again and continue, too, until we should gain the right to sail over the lower part of the river by purchase or by conquest. Even then collisions would con- stantly recur unless we should be "your most humble servant" to those who should hold it. Obviously we were stronger in 1860 than we would be when custom houses and forts and troops should be located all along the way to the gulf.
The nation was ready for the conflict of ballots. The Bell and Everett ticket received 590,631 votes ; Douglas and Johnson, 1,375,157; Breckinridge and Lane, 847,953 ; and Lincoln and Hamlin, 1,866,452 votes.
In the electoral college the poll was: Lincoln, 180 votes; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; Douglas 12.
The ballots cast for Douglas were largely in Lincoln states, and consequently chose only a few electors. For Lincoln the free states cast 1,840,022 votes; the slave states, 26,430; for Breckinridge, the free states, 277,082; slave states, 570,871 ; for Douglas, free states, 1,211,632 ; slave states, 163,525 ; for Bell, free states, 74,658; slave states, 515.973.
South Carolina was ready and resolute. Her legislature was in session awaiting the result of the election.
November 5th Governor Gist sent his message to that body, saying: "I would earnestly recommend that, in the event of Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency, a convention of the people of this state be immediately called to consider and determine for themselves the mode and measure of redress." He also recommended the immediate acceptance of the services of 10,000 volun- teers and "a thorough reorganization of the militia, so as to place the whole mil- itary force of the state in a position to be used at the shortest notice and with the greatest efficiency."
The convention was called. It adopted an ordinance of secession on Decem- ber 20th and this action was taken because, as it declared, "An increasing hostil- ity on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations." "For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing until now it has secured to its aid the power of the common government." It also put the South Carolina militia on a war footing.
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Buchanan's message to congress in December was wittily and keenly criti- cised by John P. Hale, when he summed it up as follows: "(1). That South Carolina has just cause to secede. (2). That she had no right to secede. (3). That we had no right to prevent her." Perhaps some will like Seward's way of putting it better. "It shows conclusively that it is the duty of the President to execute the laws-unless somebody opposes him !- and, that no state has a right to go out of the Union-unless it wants to!"
Doubt and anxiety prevailed everywhere. Peace conventions were in vain. Seven states had taken themselves out of the Union by their vote when Lincoln was inaugurated and had formed a Confederacy with Jefferson Davis at their head. The president-elect of the old Union passed through crowds of would-be assassins to his capital to take the oath of office. Men and papers in the north had opposed "coercion," had maintained that a seceded state should not be ren- dered loyal by force, that we should not try to have a Union "pinned together with bayonets."
BUCHANAN GOES OUT; LINCOLN COMES IN.
Inauguration dawns, a perfect day. A crowd of unfriendly roughs throng the streets ; a greater crowd of friendly strangers are there. President Buchanan leaves the White House in his carriage; he takes in the president-elect from Willard's. Five hundred armed men escort them to the nation's capital. Through a solemn, silent crowd passes Abraham Lincoln with a few friends to the front of the great platform, beside a waiting table. General E. D. Baker of Oregon speaks with silvery voice: "Fellow citizens, I introduce to you Abraham Lin- coln, the president-elect of the United States of America."
Slight applause followed. It was a solemn hour, none so solemn there had ever been known before, none would ever come again. A tall, solemn man stepped to the side of the table, hat in hand, hesitating what to do with it. His magnanimous competitor on more than one occasion sat just behind him. He caught the situation in an instant and sprang forward and caught the hat and in a low tone said to one of the presidential party: "If I cannot be president, I can at least hold his hat."
No man loved a joke better than that tall, grave man, but none then dropped from his lips. He began to read solemn words. They revealed a strong intel- lect, a great, generous heart. He has captured his audience. He closes. "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may be strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection.
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Never before did such a glad cheer burst from that center of national pride. The orator's words were profoundly eloquent. His homely face was lit into positive beauty by this glow of patriotic emotion. The national danger of the hour was forgotten for a moment under the spell of patriotic consecration.
The affairs of the Confederacy and of the nation moved steadily onward until April, when Beauregard battered and burned down Fort Sumter in Charles-
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ton harbor. That meant war, and war to the end. The republican party would sustain the Union of course; the government of it was placed in their hands. But would the other parties do so? Those in the south were not expected to aid the north. The Bell and Everett party of the north was divided.
DOUGLAS MAGNANIMOUS. HIS PARTY, LOYAL.
The Douglas party of the north went very largely, almost altogether, with the party of the Union. Douglas did so very cordially. He did not always ac- cept Lincoln's methods of saving the country, but he devoted himself heroically to the purpose. His addresses were clear and forcible in defense of the Union. Lincoln lost his ablest supporter at the death of Stephen A. Douglas, June 3, 1861, three months after that inauguration. From that deathbed, however, there issued an earnest appeal to all patriots to support the Union. It had a powerful influence, as he intended that it should have.
Douglas and Lincoln had been keen competitors before 1860. In 1858 Lin- coln had asked Douglas a question, whose answer must either win the senate, for which they were then contending, or prevent him from gaining the presi- dency for which Lincoln expected him to ask. As Lincoln anticipated, Douglas gained the senate in 1858, and lost the presidency in 1860. No man can ask for that high office and be denied it, without the keenest pain. But his competitor is in the seat he sought. The Union is crumbling in his competitor's hands. What an opportunity for an ignoble revenge! Ah! and what an opportunity for magnanimous, patriotic service! Douglas chose the grander part. In that hour of trial to him, his country was first, and to it he gave his best and his last thought. He reared a monument for himself in human admiration more beau- tiful and more abiding than the marble his happy countrymen erected in Jackson Park, Chicago.
If the democrats had commenced "a fire in the rear" when Beauregard be- gan it in front, the Union would have been quickly "shot to pieces," but such men as Benjamin Butler, John A. Logan, and their long time sympathizers were for "the Union forever" through the nation, and such men as N. B. Baker in Iowa, and J. C. Bennett were towers of strength, and yet N. B. Baker joined the others in January, 1860, in opposing the printing of Governor Kirkwood's inaugural on the ground that it was unjust to the south and "tended to kindle anew that blind fanaticism, north and south, which has already shaken the foun- dation of the Union." Governor Baker's eyes were wide open to the events of the next few months, and he became Governor Kirkwood's most efficient ad- jutant general in suppressing the "fanaticism" of the south. He had served the democratic party faithfully as governor of New Hampshire, before coming to Iowa, and again in the Iowa senate, and he was an honest and an honorable man, firm in what he conceived to be his duty.
FIRST CALL FOR MEN IN THE NORTH.
When Governor Kirkwood received the telegram announcing the first call for a "regiment" from Iowa it was brought to him on his farm near Iowa City, as the telegraph was in operation only to Davenport.
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"Why, the President wants a whole regiment, Mr. Vandever. Can I raise so many?" said the astounded governor to the gentleman who brought the tele- gram.
That regiment was raised before their clothing could be prepared, and ten regiments were soon offered the government. Soon the governor wrote the president : "Ten days ago there were two parties in Iowa. Now there is only one, and that one for the constitution and the Union unconditionally."
Money must be had at once. The next morning after Sumter was fired on, the Graves Brothers of Dubuque said: "Draw on us for $30,000." W. T. Smith, a leading democrat of Oskaloosa, Ezekiel Clark, of Iowa, Governor Kirkwood, himself, and too many others to be named, practically turned their pockets wrong side out for the benefit of the state, while the young Dutch colony of Amana sent the governor $1,000. Cloth for uniforms was bought, and the women, al- ways as loyal, or more so, than their husbands, made them up in short order. The women of Burlington, headed by Mrs. ex-Governor Grimes, made up three hundred soldiers' coats and haversacks in six days.
Everybody seemed to be doing such things. If asked the question put to a northern wholesale dealer by a southern planter, "How many people of your town are interested in this crusade on the south? We purchasers of dry goods are interested in knowing." The wholesaler in reply expressed his inquirer a copy of the town directory. Nearly all Iowa would have done the same.
This outflow of men and money was all the more remarkable since the state was only just beginning to recover from the "panic of 1857" which reached us only in 1858 or 1859. Something of a reaction occurred in a few weeks. It appeared even in the legislature, when one proposed to send a committee to confer with a rebel governor, or as another would have it, suspend hostilities at once. Of course they are ashamed of it now whether dead or alive!
The state did its full duty. Although there was a draft in certain sections, there would have been none if there had been no error in our military credits.
When the first cannon was fired in South Carolina the war was begun. Gov- ernors were asked for their state quotas to raise 75,000 men. Some answered with refusals, insults and defiance, but Ohio replied, "We will furnish the largest number you will receive." Indiana said in a reply to a call for 5,000, "10,000 are ready." "Zach." Chandler telegraphed from Michigan: "We will furnish you the regiments in thirty days if you need them, and 50,000 men if you want them." That call secured the direct promise of about 92,000 soldiers at once, and six days after it was made, Massachusetts troops were in Washington.
But the vastness of the war to be was not realized until the fearful disaster at Bull Run on July 9th. A few days later congress authorized the enlistment of 500,000 men; half a million were called from the fields and the workshops, and the counters of trade, to the battle-field, the hospital and the soldiers' grave.
Not a soldier from Iowa was at Bull Run, hence not one was a competitor in the race for Washington on that occasion. They had not then learned how to "skedaddle."
Poweshiek county was in a sorry plight to leave for the battlefield. Two- thirds of the population had been here less than six years, on new farms, still in the pioneer period, just merging from the panic that struck us in 1858 and
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later. Nevertheless the "war fever" prevailed. Men abandoned their business, students dropped their books, bridegrooms of yesterday today left their families to enlist. Some joined regiments in neighboring counties, others waited to draw neighbors and friends into companies of intimates that they might be in closer and more varied touch with their families and friends while absent.
POWESHIEK COUNTY IN THE WAR.
THE TENTH INFANTRY.
The Tenth Infantry was organized at Iowa City, in August, 1861, mustered September 6, and embarked for St. Louis eighteen days later, where they re- ceived their arms and clothing. October Ist they pushed on to Cape Girardeau to defend that point against the prospective attack of Pillow and Hardee.
This county was represented in five companies, mainly from Montezuma and the vicinity, although many enlisted from all parts of it. John Delahoyde was adjutant and Mahlon Head quartermaster sergeant. Albert Head was captain of Company F and led his troops bravely.
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