USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 44
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ANTI-CATHOLIC ACTION (1855)
After electing Wilson to the Senate, the members of the legislature turned their attention to carrying out the presumed purposes of the voters who had sent them thither. Flotsam and jetsam they were, washed into power by a popular and radical wave, the like of which had never before been known in Massachusetts. Out of a total of over four hundred in the two branches of the legislature, all but three men were members of the Know-Nothing party. Uncorrupted and in- corruptible Americanism held full control! But it was the control of ignorance, for only thirty-four of them had had previous legislative experience. To their minds they were faced by two foes, the Pope and the Slave Power; and the leaderless mob that was for the time being the Great and General Court of Massachusetts proceeded to have at those foes in true mob fashion.
Convents and nunneries, as the chief bugbear of your true- blue American, were an early object of attack; but the in- vestigating committee appointed for this purpose soon turned itself to junkets with such lavish zeal that scandals arose, the details of which the Whig newspapers were only too glad to impart to their readers. Matters came to a head when it was found that one of the committeemen, Hiss by name, "Grand Worshipful Instructor" by title, had charged to the State the
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hotel expenses of "a Lady of easy virtue," in the language of the day. Hiss made a brazen defense, but was expelled from the legislature by the converging effect of three investigating committees.
ANTISLAVERY ACTION (1855)
"Nunnery committees" and similar activities of the legis- lature, while they offended intelligent and sedate citizens, did no serious damage to the power of Rome: Pio Nono remained undisturbed in the Vatican. Against the Slave Power, how- ever, the demonstrations of the Know-Nothings were more significant. After the election of Wilson to the Senate, the legislature passed a Personal Liberty Bill, designed to make the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law difficult. It prescribed penalties for State officers taking part in the rendi- tion of a fugitive, and provided that no one who was United States Commissioner under the Fugitive Slave Law should also hold an office within the gift of the State. This last sec- tion was directed at Edward Greely Loring, the commissioner before whom Burns had been brought, who was also judge of the State probate court. The attack on Loring was a ques- tionable piece of business, and brought to his defense Richard Henry Dana, who hoped thus "to save the anti-slavery cause from doing something it might regret." Governor Gardner, who before becoming a Know-Nothing had been a conservative Boston Whig, vetoed the Personal Liberty Bill and refused to act in the case of Loring. The legislature overrode his veto, but it was helpless to bring about Loring's removal.
In passing and sustaining the Personal Liberty Law, the legislators of Massachusetts were acting in response to the extreme antislavery sentiment of the State. Immediately after the rendition of Burns, the abolitionists had begun an agitation for the enactment of such legislation and for the re- moval of Loring. Garrison, with his genius for using every situation in a way to attract attention to his own cause and to forward it, publicly burned copies of the Fugitive Slave Law, Loring's decision in the Burns case, and the United States Constitution. Also, when the address for Loring's re- moval was being voted in the State senate, he occupied a seat beside the presiding officer. This act of the legislature was a
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retaliatory blow at the South; the consequences were bound to be portentous.
KANSAS AND SUMNER (1856)
Again, in the fall elections of 1855, the American party triumphed, the Whig organization being not yet fully dead, and the Republican not yet fully born. In the succeeding year, 1856, great events befell which, though outside the State, were a deciding influence in determining what was to happen within its boundaries. When Congress assembled in December, 1855, the new House of Representatives had ostensibly an anti-Nebraskan majority, but it was two months before it could choose a speaker. The election of Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts to this office was the first real victory of the antislavery forces in the field of national poli- tics, and the word Republican thereupon took on a new meaning and a new promise. The contest over the admission of Kansas as a State was the great issue of the session; and while Charles Sumner was assembling the material and polish- ing the periods of his oration on the "Crime against Kansas," the Free-State settlers in the new territory, with their modern breech-loading Sharps rifles, and the "border ruffians" from Missouri, with their old-fashioned Springfield muskets, were preparing for a trial of strength by arms.
The clash on the two fields of battle was almost simultan- eous. In the Senate, Sumner delivered his ponderous but powerful philippic, with its violent attacks upon Senator Butler, selected partly because he was a South Carolinian, partly because physically he might fit the Don Quixote of Sumner's fancy. Preston Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, defended his kinsman by striking Sumner down in the Senate Chamber from behind by the blows of his cane.
Close upon this event came the news that Lawrence, the Free-State town, named for the treasurer of the Emigrant Aid Company, had been invaded by a proslavery sheriff's posse, which destroyed printing presses, the hotel, and other property. In swift retaliation came the Pottawatomie massacres in Kansas by John Brown and his sons, and the rule of violence prevailed throughout the territory.
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Here again were issues on which it was impossible for Massachusetts men and women not to take sides-moral issues of the first rank, which separated people sharply. They could not be discussed in cold blood, with nice discrimination. Every man must be "for" or "against." Sumner was ably defended in the Senate by Henry Wilson; in the House by Anson Burlingame, a fiery young representative from Massa- chusetts, whose intentionally provocative language resulted in a challenge to a duel from Brooks. Burlingame's accept- ance delighted many Northerners, who, though in theory op- posed to duelling, longed for some act by which their sense of outrage could be expressed. The meeting never took place, however, for Brooks proved prudent. As to Kansas, the officers of the Emigrant Aid Company redoubled their efforts. "Remember," wrote Lawrence to a Quaker in Lynn, "that there are thirty thousand Free State men, women, and children there. Take off your coat, my dear friend, and put on your best one; and take your overcoat and pantaloons; save only one suit for Sunday and week-days; and pack up the rest."
Under such stress of emotion, the new Republican party in this presidential year gained a cohesion and vitality such as the earlier antislavery organizations had never been able to attain. Nevertheless, so obstinately did the local political groups stand by their old colors that it was found inadvisable to nominate a Republican candidate for governor. Gardner, the Know-Nothing, was easily elected for a third term; but Frémont, the Republican candidate for President, rolled up in Massachusetts a vote of 102,000 out of a total of 170,000. If this confused state of things was inevitable in a time of political realignment, at least two things were now clear : that Human Rights and the Higher Law were winning to their side the majority in Massachusetts; and that the minority included many intelligent, vigorous, and patriotic men, de- voted to the preservation of the Union, who were by no means cowed by three years of Know-Nothing domination.
REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING (1858)
The session of the legislature in 1858 afforded a significant test of the strength of these two groups. The new Republican
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THE STAND OF ANDREW
party was in control of the State government for the first time, with Banks as governor, and its radical members in the legis- lature were clamorous for action on the long-delayed proposal for the removal of Judge Loring.
Here, as in so many other situations in this period of Mas- sachusetts history, it was an affair in which the personal quality of the leading men engaged played the most important part. The chief defender of Loring was Caleb Cushing, recently Attorney-General in Pierce's Cabinet and now repre- senting Newburyport in the lower house. Long a national figure, he was especially prominent as being at the moment one of the few northern Democrats with outspoken southern sympathies. He was a man of clear intellect and a domin- ating speaker, feared rather than trusted.
Opposed to this Goliath was an unknown David-John A. Andrew, a Boston lawyer of forty, holding office for the first time. An ardent humanitarian and a consistent antislavery men, with a gift of oratory, he took upon himself the task of preparing to meet Cushing when the right moment came. It proved to require delicate maneuvering to put the plan of re- moving Loring through the necessary stages. The governor, although he did not relish the issue, was a well grounded politician, and finally took his place at the head of the pro- cession with all the spirit of a true leader. As a sop to the conservative element, however, he sent a message to the legis- lature recommending the modification of some of the objec- tionable and even absurd provisions of the Personal Liberty Law.
Here was Cushing's opportunity to attack the statute, and to inveigh against the mischief-making antislavery men. When he had finished, his opponents sat exasperated and ap- parently helpless. Then Andrew, well prepared, rose, and in a speech full of the warmth and energy which were the characteristics of his nature, proved himself a match for his opponent. The personal triumph which Andrew achieved put him at once among the chief men of his party, and gave to the radical wing a new leader in State affairs.
THE STAND OF ANDREW (1858-1860)
Meanwhile, the pressure of such events as the Dred Scott
1
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PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
decision of 1857 and the proslavery policy of the Buchanan administration was having its natural effect throughout the North. The vigorous dissenting opinion of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis in the Dred Scott case had a profound influence in Massachusetts and in all the free states. Its assertion of the right of a Negro to citizenship was a "vindication of the Con- stitution from the reproach of imbecility and inhumanity." When, a few months later, he resigned from the Supreme Court and returned to private practice in Boston, his act was interpreted as a protest against the subserviency of the Court to political considerations as a result of which it could no longer maintain the high standard of its past.
In politics the consequences were seen in the death of the Whig and the American parties, making the way easy for their adherents to enter the Republican fold. Hence the new party made great gains throughout the North in the Congres- sional elections of 1858, winning very nearly a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives.
Before the new Congress assembled, however, John Brown had made his raid upon Harper's Ferry in October, 1859, and had been tried and hanged; with the division between North and South more sharply marked than ever before, men real- ized that they faced each other upon the brink of disaster. The division was not merely between the North and the South; throughout the North the difference of opinion as to Brown's act was as striking and as significant. In Massachusetts John A. Andrew from the first took a leading part in his defense, with important consequences to himself. As a humanitarian lawyer, it was a matter of course with him to do what he could to obtain for Brown suitable counsel; and at a meeting called to raise funds for the old man's family, at which Andrew was the presiding officer, he startled the audience by his ringing declaration : "I pause not now to consider . . . whether the enterprise of John Brown and his associates in Virginia was wise or foolish, right or wrong; I only know that, whether the enterprise itself was the one or the other, John Brown himself is right."
These last five words became the shibboleth for the testing of radicals and conservatives at the North, the aggressive ad- vocates of human rights and the higher law on the one hand,
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
and the defenders of the Constitution and all the obligations that made for Union on the other. It was not the utterance of a politician,-Andrew was a hard-working lawyer, devoted to his professional career; but the phrase rendered him per- haps the most talked-of man in Massachusetts and led directly to his nomination as the Republican candidate for governor in the fall of 1860.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS .- Richard Henry Dana (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1890)-A brilliant interpretation of the man and his times. Consult for fugitive-slave cases and Constitutional Convention. ADAMS, HENRY .- The Education of Henry Adams (Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin, 1918)-Good for social and political atmosphere of Boston. ANDREW, JOHN A., AND OTHERS .- Addresses by His Excellency John A. Andrew, Hon. Edward Everett, Hon. B. F. Thomas and Hon. R. C. Winthrop, delivered at the Mass Meeting in Aid of Recruiting, Held on the Common, August 27, 1862 (Boston, Farwell, 1862).
BEAN, WILLIAM GLEASON .- "An Aspect of Know-Nothingism-The Immi- grant, and Slavery" (South Atlantic Quarterly, 1924, Vol. XXIII, pp. 319-334)-The article is based on the author's thesis, Party Trans- formation in Massachusetts, 1848-1860, which is in the Harvard Library.
BLAINE, JAMES GILLESPIE .- Twenty Years of Congress: from Lincoln to Garfield. With a Review of the Events which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860 (2 vols., Norwich, Conn., Bill, 1884-1886).
BOWDITCH, VINCENT YARDLEY .- Life and Correspondence of Henry Inger- soll Bowditch (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1902)-Consult for fugitive-slave cases.
BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN .- Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler; Butler's Book (Boston, Thayer, 1892)-A review of his legal, political and military career ; but by no means the whole story.
CURTIS, BENJAMIN ROBBINS, editor .- Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, with Some of his Professional and Miscellaneous Writings (2 vols., Boston, Little, Brown, 1879)-Consult for the Whig view of the Coalition and the Fugitive Slave Law.
FROTHINGHAM, OCTAVIUS BROOKS .- Theodore Parker ; a Biography ( Boston, James R. Osgood, 1874)-Consult for fugitive-slave cases.
FROTHINGHAM, PAUL REVERE .- Edward Everett, Orator and Statesman (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1925)-Presents the Whig point of view. FUESS, CLAUDE MOORE .- The Life of Caleb Cushing (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1923)-Excellent study of a leading Democrat.
GARRISON, WENDELL PHILLIPS, AND GARRISON, FRANCIS JACKSON .- William Lloyd Garrison; the Story of his Life Told by his Children (4 vols., N. Y., Century, 1885-1889)-A standard work, presenting the abolition- ist point of view.
HAYNES, GEORGE HENRY .- "Causes of Know-Nothing Success in Massa- chusetts" (American Historical Review, 1897-1898, Vol. III, pp. 67-82). HAYNES, GEORGE HENRY .- "A Know-Nothing Legislature" (American
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PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
Historical Association, Annual Report for 1896, 2 vols., Washington, 1897)-See pp. 177-187.
HOAR, GEORGE FRISBIE .- Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 vols., N. Y., Scribner's, 1903)-Consult for sketches of antislavery leaders, and the beginnings of the Republican party.
ISELY, WILLIAM HENRY .- "The Sharps Rifle Episode in Kansas History" (American Historical Review, 1906-1907, Vol. XII, pp. 546-566) .
LAWRENCE, WILLIAM .- Life of Amos A. Lawrence (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1888)-Consult for New England Emigrant Aid Company.
MERRIAM, GEORGE SPRING .- The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles (2 vols .. N. Y., Century, 1885)-Gives the comments of the editor of the Spring- field Republican on all phases of the struggle.
NICOLAY, JOHN GEORGE .-- The Outbreak of the Rebellion (N. Y., Scribner's, 1881).
NICOLAY, JOHN GEORGE, AND HAY, JOHN .- Abraham Lincoln; a History (10 vols., N. Y., Century, 1890).
PEARSON, HENRY GREENLEAF .- The Life of John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, 1861-1865 (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1904)- Consult for removal of Judge Loring.
PIERCE, EDWARD LILLIE .- Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (4 vols., Boston, Roberts, 1893)-A standard biography with a strong anti- slavery bias.
PIKE, JAMES SHEPHERD .- First Blows of the Civil War; the Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States. From 1850 to 1860 (N. Y., American News Company, 1879)-A contemporaneous exposition, shown by public records and private correspondence.
RHODES, JAMES FORD .- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 (8 vols., N. Y., Mac- millan, 1920)-Consult for general background of United States history.
ROBINSON, CHARLES .- The Kansas Conflict (N. Y., Harper, 1892).
ROBINSON, WILLIAM STEVENS .- "Warrington" Pen-Portraits (Privately printed, Boston, 1877)-Reminiscences from 1848 to 1876. Valuable comments of a brilliant antislavery journalist.
SCHOULER, JAMES .- "The Massachusetts Convention of 1853" (Mass. His- torical Society, Proceedings, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 30-48, Boston, 1905). THAYER, ELI .- A History of the Kansas Crusade (N. Y., Harper, 1889)- Rambling narrative by the originator of the plan of sending northern settlers to Kansas.
WEED, THURLOW .- Autobiography (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1884)-Vol. II consists of a memoir of Weed by T. W. Barnes.
WILSON, HENRY .- History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (3 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1872-1877)-Story of the antislavery struggle told by one of the participants.
WINTHROP, ROBERT CHARLES, JR .- A Memoir of Robert C. Winthrop (Boston, Little, Brown, 1897)-Excellent account of a man of high standing who represented the moderate Whigs.
CHAPTER XVII
MASSACHUSETTS TO THE FRONT (1860-1861)
BY HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON Professor of English, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
THE PRESIDENTIAL ISSUE OF 1860
1860 was a presidential year, and the part played by Massa- chusetts men in the nominating conventions of the different parties was illustrative of the transformations which the all- absorbing political issue had brought to pass in those organiza- tions. The Democrats, though nominally in power at Wash- ington, were already divided into northern and southern wings, and it was doubtful whether in the coming convention at Charleston, South Carolina, they could be held together.
Although the presiding officer, Caleb Cushing, was a Massa- chusetts man, he was known to have strong Southern sympa- thies; so also had another member of the Massachusetts delegation, Benjamin F. Butler, who voted steadily for Jeffer- son Davis as the candidate for President. When, after ad- journing and reassembling at Baltimore, the convention con- fessed failure, the Democratic party as a national organization came to an end, and Cushing and Butler went with the Southerners. When the Breckinridge Democrats, as they were called from the name of their presidential nominee, formed their State organization in Massachusetts, they made Butler their candidate for governor. Thus they had an ad- vantage in having names well-known in Massachusetts out of proportion to their actual numbers.
The same was true of the Constitutional Union party, a remnant of the old Whigs, whose platform was "the Con- stitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws." Its vice-presidential candidate was Edward Everett; its candidate for governor, Amos A. Law-
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rence. Neither of these men could be accused of caring only for property interests and of being dead to moral issues. Lawrence, in particular, in what he had done for Kansas and John Brown, had gone as far as any abolitionist. They repre- sented a section of the community that had always possessed a strong influence; though temporarily eclipsed, the Constitu- tional Union party stood for a principle to which, in the course of a few months, every one in the North, including Cushing and Butler, was glad to rally. The group of northern, or Douglas, Democrats, though the largest of the three, was not nearly so fortunate in the matter of leadership as the other two.
The fourth group, the Republicans, though distinctly a sectional party, were, in Massachusetts as elsewhere in the North, full of the enthusiasm and vitality that comes with lusty growth and the belief that power is almost in the hand. "The stars in their courses" seemed to be "fighting for Sisera." It was not so much a question of whether they could win in Massachusetts in the coming election; with a divided Democ- racy, victory for the Republicans was almost certain. The essential question was whether they could use their success wisely.
Thus the problem of the Republican convention which met in Chicago in June, 1860, was to find a candidate whose lead- ership would further unite and strengthen the party. The Massachusetts delegation, of which John A. Andrew was chairman, fully sensing this need, favored Seward merely as a first choice. Indeed, even on the first ballot, some members voted for Lincoln. When, after the third ballot, his nomi- nation was assured, it was Andrew who seconded the motion to make the vote unanimous.
THE CAMPAIGN IN MASSACHUSETTS (1860)
In the campaign that followed, the major interest in Massa- chusetts was perhaps in the candidacy of Andrew for the governorship. The radical element among the Massachusetts Republicans was strong; in the cause of harmony throughout the party, it had accepted Lincoln; but when it saw an oppor- tunity to make its own favorite and leader the State standard-
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bearer, it would not be denied. After a tumultuous convention at Worcester, distinguished by the presence of Sumner for the first time since his illness and also by his stirring plea for Andrew, a man after his own heart, Andrew's nomination was made by a triumphant majority. The dazed conservatives were left to find out as best they might how it was that their plans had gone awry.
A friend of the Negro, a man who had said in ringing tones that "John Brown himself is right," such a man as candidate for governor was alike the object of abuse and the rallying point of enthusiasm. Not only did men like Win- throp, Everett, and Lawrence warn the community against his dangerous radicalism; members of his own party-such a sound judge of politics as John G. Whittier, for example- deplored his John Brownism. On the other hand, all those who, believing slavery to be morally wrong, desired to place in the governor's chair a man who would express their con- victions in action, felt that in Andrew they had found a champion. When they cheered him, the cause of union became for the moment secondary to the cause of human rights; the threats of the Southerners, the menace of secession, seemed distant and unreal.
Thanks to this excitement over Andrew's radicalism, it may well have seemed to that unyielding conservative minor- ity, which always had-and still has-to be reckoned with in Massachusetts, that his election as Governor would be a greater peril than the election of Lincoln as President. Since these men took in all seriousness the disunion threats of the South, they must perforce believe that if Massachusetts elected as Governor a man deemed to hold such extreme antislavery views the South was sure to make the act one of its excuses for secession. Strive as vigorously against him as they might, however, the best that they could do was to cut down his vote so that it was two thousand less than Lincoln's. Both won by a large majority, as the following table shows.
Republican
Lincoln 106,000
Andrew 104,000
Northern Democratic
Douglas
34,000
Beach
35,000
502 MASSACHUSETTS TO THE FRONT
Constitutional Union
Southern Democratic
Bell 22,000
Breckinridge 6,000
Lawrence
24,000
Butler
6,000
Total Vote
All parties, for state and national offices
337,000
The voters of the Commonwealth were willing to commit it to Andrew's guidance because they liked him for his courage, his manifest sincerity, and his warmth of heart. Above all, they trusted him. With the same sense of trust in the man, they voted for Lincoln. In so doing they were affirming their allegiance to the principle that slavery was abnormal and must not be allowed to spread-that it was destined to ultimate extinction. But were the Constitution and the Union likewise destined to ultimate extinction ? That question was yet to be answered.
GOVERNOR ANDREW IN OFFICE (1861)
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