USA > Tennessee > History of the Twentieth Tennessee regiment volunteer infantry, C.S.A > Part 2
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In 1853 Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, became president, and during his term the old slavery question was renewed. A portion of our Western territory, that was called Nebraska, was divided into two portions, one was called Kansas and the other Nebraska. The old Missouri Compromise line of 36.30 ran to the South of this territory.
If this line had been in force the South would not have had any right to ask Congress to allow slavery to enter this territory. But on a proposition from Stephen A. Douglas, a Senator from Illinois, this line was repealed.
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So it seems as if this teritory was open for slavery or not, to be settled by the people both North and South, then be organized into a State, and be 'admitted into the Union, according to the vote of the people. This being especially the state of affairs in Kansas, the territory that lay nearest and adjoining slave territory.
The Anti-slavery people in the New England States lost no time in organizing emigrant societies to settle in Kansas, and they poured men of their faith into Kansas by the thousands.
Armed men from the North paraded the territory, while a number of men from Missouri and other Southern States had moved into it, with equally strong convictions on the other side.
These factions brought on contentions and bloodshed to such an extent that this territory was called " Bleeding Kansas."
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These disturbances were so great that the Federal Government had to interfere, the Anti-slavery party had gone so far as to elect a Governor, form a constitution, and set up a State Govern- ment, all in violation of Federal authority, which came along and indicted them for treason and they were compelled to take flight, to keep from being prosecuted by the laws of the land.
In 1857 James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, was inaugurated president, and his whole term of office was disturbed by heated discussions between the politicians of the two sections on the sub- ject of slavery, and the extension of slave territory.
Towards the latter part of his term the contest grew so bitter, that the people of the two sections took it up.
At the presidential election in 1860, the Northern States being in the majority elected Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, a known Abolitionist, to the presidency.
Although born on Southern soil, in the State of Kentucky, he afterward moved to the State of Illinois, and imbibed those prin- ciples that were so much at variance with the feelings and inter- ests of his native Southland.
Many of his own, and his wife's relatives, were subsequently in the Confederate State army.
The Southern people after having been in co-partnership with the North for 72 years, and viewing their constant encroachment upon their constitutional rights, thought it was time to separate.
The New Englander had by this time carried the slavery ques- tion into his pulpit and religion ; many of them had become fanatics. They had saturated their church and society meetings with papers, lectures, sermons, resolutions, memorials and pro- tests, attacking and condemning slavery, until their whole body politic believed that way.
The spirit and methods of the New Englander in and out of his church have been that of agitation.
Listen to what doctrines the Rev. Henry Wright, of Massachu- setts taught from his pulpit, he said :- "The God of humanity is not the God of slavery, if so, shame upon such a God. I will never bow at his shrine, my head shall go off with my hat when I take it off to such a God as that. If the Bible sanctions slavery, the Bible is a self-evident falsehood, and if God should declare
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it to be right, I would fasten the chains upon the heels of such a God and let the men go free,-such a God is a phantom."
Now, was not this horrible language of Rev. Henry Wright, taught by him from the pulpit, when his State, the State of Mas- sachusetts had bought more negroes on the African coast, paid for them in rum made from molasses, and sold them into slavery, aye, more than all of the United States put together. I say, this was as double, refined quintessance of gall, cheek, and religious fanatitism as could be found in any day.
No language ever threw out more defiance of civil authority and true religion than this politico-religious harangue.
It is a very common error that has been taught, that the Puri- tans persecuted themselves for opinion's sake, and sought liberty of conscience in the wilds of America, and there erected their altars.
To Sir George Calvert belongs this glory, of first establishing a Government of Universal tolerance of religious freedom in America, and this was done too, on the shores of Maryland,- and strange as it may seem, on the shores of Maryland, in the city of Baltimore, in 1861, the 'first blood was shed for the ex- tinction of political liberty and against our constitutional compact.
The Puritan said he fled from England on account of violent opposition, which amounted to persecution. The English at that time had an insight to his fanaticisms and tendencies.
Although the Puritans claimed that they were run out of the mother country on account of conscience sake, yet one of the first acts of their new colony was to establish a spiritual despot- ism and religious intolerance, that would put to shame the cruel and relentless Spanish Inquisition.
They said they were religious refugees, yet they pronounced banishment against all who did not conform to their religious faith.
Every student of American history is familiar with the sad story of Roger Williams.
He too was a fugitive from the Old World, but how different were his teachings from the laws enacted by the Puritans.
He taught that the civil magistrates should restrain crime but never control opinion ; should punish guilt but never violate the freedom of the soul.
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He contended for the repeal of all laws that punished the non- conformist ; he believed in the equal protection of all religious creeds.
He also believed that the peace and dignity of the State was like the vital fluid we breathe, that it should be disseminated alike over Mosque, Synagogue, Cathedral and the humble house of the Protestant, securing to its worshiper unmolested freedom of conscience.
For having this belief and teaching this doctrine, this gifted young minister was cruelly persecuted by the Puritans, forced to leave his home and often compelled to hide himself in the re- cesses of the wilderness.
See what Bancroft says of him, "Often in the stormy nights he had neither fire nor food, nor company, and wandered about without a guide and had no house but a hollow tree."
This Christian Martyr suffered all this because he would not conform to the religious ideas of men, who they said, left England for conscience sake. Why the savage of the forest, who knew not his God, was more tolerant than these narrow bigots, for they rescued Roger Williams from impending death, when he afterwards found a new home on the banks of the clear waters of the beautiful Narragansett.
A Mrs. Hutchison, a most excellent and pure woman, was treated in the manner as Roger Williams, and she too, was driven from home because she would not conform to some rites of pub- lic worship.
Did these narrow fanatics stop here? No; they hung Mary Dyer simply because she was a Quaker, and she died upon the gallows because she held a faith different from a people who they said, had devoted themselves a sacrifice on the altar of religious liberty.
When we see men exiling and hanging good, pure women be- cause they will not conform to their ideas of religion, we do not believe that the guiding star of returning light of midieval ages has ever shone in their self-sanctified hearts. We know that in all nations where men respect women, you find gentlemen; and where gentlemen inhabit, woman rules and lifts him above his groveling nature. He in return is her slave, and with life and limb, fortune and honor, he is devoted to her wishes.
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Oh, how different when you see a horde of whining New Eng- landers pelting and driving out a shivering and helpless woman into exile, and another one swung up by the neck until dead, all because they differed in religious faith from men and women who were run out of England for conscience sake.
We have already alluded to the Catholics having settled in . Maryland and establishing perfect freedom of speech, but in 1676 some few Puritans emigrated there and were soon elected to office, and among the first of their edicts was one prohibiting public worship to Papists and Prelates.
Many of the men who signed the Constitution soon discovered that the people were not inclined to dwell together in national harmony.
George Washington sincerely desired a perpetuation of the Union, but he died in the belief that in the course of time his tomb would be the property of the South.
John Adams, next to Alexander Hamilton, was perhaps the most influential man in the Federal party. He early had a clear vision of the great rupture that would some day come.
The following from Thomas Jefferson's diary, Dec. 30, 1801, when he was president in 1801, presenting the views of Mr. John Adams, shows what the sectional feeling was at that time : "The Rev. Mr. Coffin of New England, who is now here soliciting donations for a college in Greene County, Tennessee, tells me, that when he first determined to engage in this enterprise, he wrote a paper recommending the enterprise, which he meant to get signed by clergymen, and a similar one by persons in a civil character, at the head of which he wished Mr. Adams to put his name, he then being president."
"The application asking only for his name and not for a dona- tion, Mr. Adams reading the paper and considering it, said : - 'He saw no possibility of continuing the union of the states, that their dissolution must necessarily take place, that he there- fore saw no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote a literary institution in the South, that it was in fact, giving strength to those who were to be their enemies, and there- fore he would have nothing to do with it.'"
The above according to the diary, was the language of a man
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who had taken a solemn oath to be the president of all the people.
Now as Mr. Adams had proven himself not the president of the whole people, let us go into some historical facts. At the time of the first confederation, 1778, the amount of territory that the Southern States owned was 647,202 square miles, and the amount owned by the Northern States 164,081 square miles. In 1783, Virginia ceded to the United States for the common benefit, all of her immense territory north of the Ohio River ; and in 1787, the Northern States appropriated it to their exclusive use, whereby Virginia and her sister Southern States were excluded from using any part of this magnificent gift in the interest of the negro property they had bought from the New Englander.
When the Louisiana purchase was consummated in 1803, 1, 189, 112 square miles of territory was added to our domain, every foot of which was, at that time, slave holding territory, but by the passage of the Missouri Compromise Bill in 1821, 964, 667 square miles of this purchase was converted into free territory.
Although the Northern States opposed bitterly the Louisiana purchase, they came in and gobbled all of it for free territory except 224,445 square miles.
Again, with the treaty with Spain in Feb. 1819, Florida, with a territory of 59,268 square miles, and Oregon with an area of 341,463 square miles was added to the American Union. Of this vast amount of new territory, Florida alone was allowed to be slave territory, about one seventh.
Again, by the Mexican Cession the United States acquired 526,078 square miles of territory, and the North tried to appropri- ate the whole of it under the pretense of the Mexican laws, which was prevented by the compromise of 1850, and this cut off from Texas 44,662 square miles cf slave territory.
Now of all this territory that has been added, which amounts to 2,402,602 square miles, the South was only permitted to enjoy 283,713 square miles of this immense tract of country, when every foot of it was brought into the American Union while Southern men were presidents.
Can any fair minded man witness the constant encroachments upon the Southern people in violation of a signed and solemn
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compact before God and man, and say the Southern Soldier had no cause to fight?
There are other facts that we propose to rely upon for the just- ification of our cause. As far back as 1750, New England ships made regular voyages to England with tobacco, rice, rum, and 'cured fish, two of which were southern products, and there took on English goods for the Gold Coast. Here they would ex- change these commodities with the English Governors of her coast colonies for negroes, and return by way of the West Indies, and trade their cured fish for molasses, and bring the molasses and negroes to the American Colonies, sell the negroes to the South, and make the molasses into Yankee rum. They would then prepare for another trip.
This barter of the Yankee began to interfere so with English coast trade that Lord Sheffield in his report to Parliament in 1777, said, "that out of the slavers which periodically left Boston, thirteen of them were loaded with rum only, which was exchanged for 2,888 negroes with the governors of the Gold Coast Colonies, and these negroes were carried to the Southern States and sold.
This same report says that during the three years ending 1770, New England had sent to the Gold Coast 270, 147 gallons of rum.
To show that certain Southern States were anxious to stop the slave trade, Thomas Jefferson in 1777, introduced in the Virginia Legislature a bill which became a law, to prevent the importation of slaves ; but every law passed by any Southern State, looking to this end, exasperated the Eastern Yankee, for it interfered with his lucrative slave trade.
Mr. Jefferson at the same time introduced another bill which became a law, for the gradual emancipation of the Blacks. He also in 1784, in Congress, prepared a clause for the prevention of slaves being carried into the ceded territory north of the Ohio River, this was a part of the Southern scheme of emancipation which was meant as a check on the slave trade carried on by Massachusetts. This clause did not pass, but a clause was passed enjoining the restitution of fugitive slaves, and without this the compact of 1787 would never have been signed, and up to this time it never entered the minds of the people of the United States, but that the negroes were property, and that the master had
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a legal right to carry them unmolested to any part of the United States. ( See constitution. Art. IV, Sec. I.)
The Duke de Rochefoucault Lioncourt in his work on the United States in 1795, said, that " twenty vessels from the North were engaged in importing negro slaves into Georgia." They would ship one negro for every ton burden, so we see while Vir- ginia was trying to emancipate the Negro, New England was all the while enslaving him.
In 1793 President Washington recommended to Congress an act compelling the restitution of the fugitive slaves, and the same act provided that they should be taxed as property. In 1783 the treaty of peace with Great Britain contained a provision to pay for slaves and other property carried off during the war, and in the treaty of peace at Ghent in 1814, the British Government paid one and a half million dollars for slaves that had been carried away.
Mr. Andrew Stephenson conducted a negotiation with Great Britain, for slaves that were lost ashore by wrecked American vessels on the shores of Bermuda and set free by her authorities, and had England pay £23,500 indemnity.
In regard to the fugitive slave law, there was no trial by jury and no writ of haebus corpus proceedings, which would have been indispensable had the negro not been considered property.
It will naturally be asked : Where did the American colonies get their right to own slaves? It does not appear that any laws were ever enacted in Great Britain for the owning or trading in slaves as property. Nevertheless they were so regarded by the opinion of eleven crown judges sitting in council, which extended this privilege to the Navigation Act to the exclusion of Aliens, and this act extended to Great Britain's North American colo- nies. This is where the Southerner got his authority to own slaves, and this legal right like other common laws of Britain survived our revolution.
If we will take up the histories of our French and Spanish ter- ritory, we will find that they as colonies derived the right to own and hold slaves from their church as well as from their State.
The records will show that up to the time of Jefferson's admin- istration, the ownership of the negro was not profitable, but
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during his term the invention of the cotton gin took place, which greatly enhanced the value of the cotton staple and gave a broader field for the employment of the negro, and as the Louis- iana purchase took place about this time, these things very much embittered the New England people.
At the same time Governor General Craig of Canada knew this, and in February 1809 sent one John Henry as an agent to Bos- ton to treat with the leading Federalists there, to arrange for a secession convention, when Massachusetts was to declare herself independent and invite a congress of the other New England States, and set up a separate government
Mr. John Adams, in a letter to Mr. Otis in 1828 said, "that the plan had been so far matured as to ask a certain individual to put himself at the head of the military organization."
These schemes went on with these men who were rebels at heart, until this resulted in the Hartford Convention in 1814, which discussed secession in all its bearings, and raised the battle cry " The Potomac as a boundary line and the Negro states to themselves."
Peace with Great Britain soon came and business was good, the Yankee got to making money and this diverted him for a while, and prevented him from breaking up the American Union.
The Hartford secession Convention was held in 1814, and in 1818 a bill was introduced in Congress authorizing the people of Missouri to organize and form their state constitution prepara- tory to being admitted into the great sisterhood of states.
This Missouri territory was a part of the Louisiana purchase, and when owned by Spain, and by her ceded to France, and by France to the United States, all of this time it was slave terri- tory, and the moment that Missouri applied to be admitted as a slave state, the New Englanders, the very men who enslaved the negro, went into convulsions at the mere idea of any more slave territory, and the only antitoxine that could be administered, which was only temporary, was, that there should not be any more slave territory admitted north of 36.30 parallel of latitude. This was the famous Missouri Compromise Bill. New York did not abolish slavery until 1826. About this time Delaware, Maryland and Virginia were all moving in that direction. Also about this time, New Jersey, Ohio and Delaware passed resolu-
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tions asking Congress to appropriate the proceeds of the public lands to the gradual emancipation of the negro. Up to this time it was not thought of emancipating the negro without paying for him.
About this period of our history nearly all of the Southern States had a leaning that way. Societies in various parts of the South were formed to cooperate with the colonization society, whose duty was to free the Blacks and transport them to Li- beria.
Now to sustain the good faith of the Southerners in this eman- cipation movement, Virginia in March, 1825, passed an act to furnish the colonies in Liberia with implements of husbandry, clothing etc.
Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri passed laws about this time prohibiting slaves being brought within their borders for sale, and those that were brought in, should not be sold for two years.
While the good feelings were manifesting themselves strongly in the South ; Ohio, Illinois and other Northern States passed acts prohibiting free blacks under any pretense from entering these states ; any white person who brought a negro into their territory was required to give a $500 bond. Did not these Yankees love the negro? They did not regard them as citizens of the United States, and said on account of their idle habits they were a nuisance.
To show still further that the South was in earnest about emancipating her slaves, Mr. Tucker, of Virginia, in 1825 intro- duced a bill in Congress to set aside the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, as a colony for free blacks, but it failed.
About 1825, the seeds of abolition had begun to be sown in New England. Not gradual emancipation and moderate re- numeration, but straight abolition.
This could not have been from any love the Yankee had for the negro, for it had been but a few years since Massachusetts was forced to give up her slave trade. The idea of the Yankee falling so desperately in love with the negroes of the South in so short a time is one of those inconsistencies of his that has fol- lowed him ever since he set foot on Plymouth Rock.
The seeds of abolition that were sown in 1825, begun to be
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cultivated in 1828, when Mr. Arthur Tappan, of Boston, a city that bought and sold more slaves than all the rest of the country, subscribed, with the aid of some friends, enough money to estab- lish a newspaper in New York, called the Journal of Commerce, and the avowed purpose of the paper was to promote abolition views. The editor was another importation from the self sancti- fied city of Boston, by the name of David Hale. He was an auctioneer by profession, and a Presbyterian Sunday School Teacher by pretense.
Soon after this, a paper in Baltimore fell into the hands of William Lloyd Garrison and was called the " Genius of Emanci- pation." Now, who was Wm. Lloyd Garrison? He was the · grandson of a tory during our revolutionary war, who, when peace was declared was compelled to flee the country to Nova Scotia, where this grandson was brought up, and in after years came back to Boston to seek a livelihood. The virus of abolition- ism took deep in this foreigner who was a young enthusiast. On assuming the editorship of his paper he attacked all of the colo- nization and emancipation societies as being in the way of the great move of abolitionism, and farther said; "that the union of the States was also an obstacle."
Some people though these sentiments were treason, and others thought they were in accord with the tory sentiments of his grandfather, who had done all he could to prevent our indepen- dence.
In the year 1830 this same Garrison founded a new journal in Boston, and called it the Liberator. It was in this bitter sheet that he spread broadcast his most extreme views.
In 1831 the New England Anti-slavery society was formed, and in a short time the American Anti-slavery society was . brought into existence under the management of that great triumvirate, Viz, Garrison, Tappan, and Berney.
The Sunday schools of New England now took up the aboli- tion question, and sent out by the thousands their inflamatory appeals and highly colored engravings of blacks, undergoing all kinds of punishments inflicted by the Southern people.
All such stuff as this was sent through the Federal mails, and disciples of these men became so obnoxious in New York in 1832, that the dwelling of Arthur Tappan and the church of Dr.
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Cox were both demolished by a mob, and this action was ap- proved by Mr. Jas. Watson Webb, in his great paper, The Courier and Enquirer.
Garrison was sent by the Anti-slavery Societies to England in 1834, to obtain money for their cause and he soon returned, bringing home with him one Geo. Thompson, who was a mem- ber of parliament and a lecturer on abolitionism. This led to such an outcry that Thompson became alarmed for his safety and soon returned to England.
South Carolina had a law to detain all free blacks who came into her ports. Massachusetts claimed that all those that were detained were her citizens and as such South Carolina had no right to detain them.
While Massachusetts objected to South Carolina detaining her free blacks, she did not say a word about Ohio, Illinois and other Northern States for keeping them out of their territory, or giving a $500 bond for bringing a negro into these States.
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