The Legacy Papers, No. 2 The Crisis of Slavery and Civil War (1854-1865)

In my Legacy Papers, No. 1, I described the two approaches I am taking on these Papers — first, that the entire history of the United States is presented in broad brushstrokes as an alternating series of Crises and Eras. Second, I attempt to set the stage at the beginning of each Legacy Paper in order to tell a story which hopefully adds drama and a bit of suspense, even though as history, what is coming next should be known to most Readers.

 

Legacy Papers, No. 1 was entitled the Era of Securing the American Revolution (1801-1854), which could be symbolized by the nearly seven decades of peaceful transitions of governing power — 14 presidents from four different political parties, the House of Representatives changing its controlling party ten times, and the Senate changing its controlling party six times — all of which stood the test of time as a tribute to the successful American Experiment in self-government. 

 

But the Crisis of Slavery and Civil War (1854-1865) is about to begin. Why do I use the year 1854 as the defining year of this next Crisis, and not the beginning of the Civil War in 1861? Read on, and you will see. 

 

It is the year 1854. The nation’s population is 20 million, with the state of New York becoming the most populous state with 3 million people. The continental United States had just been finalized, after the last purchase of border areas from Mexico. The nation now comprises 31 states, with California the lone state in the West, but several vast territories between it and the other western-most states of Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. Commodore Perry reaches Japan and signs a treaty to allow U.S. ships for trade into that far east country. The United States Naval Academy graduates its first class at Annapolis, Maryland. The U.S. participates in the first World’s Fair in London with 50 nations and 39 colonies. 

 

All in all, especially around the world, the United States is ascending to take its rightful place as a powerful nation. It seems like destiny. The successes and achievements are enough for many people to take their “eye off of the ball”, to forget about the single-most intractable problem of the United States, which is simmering on medium heat during this time. The problem, of course, is slavery.

 

It was not unexpected by the Founders. For they accepted the institution of slavery in the southern States as a matter of necessity — the nation needed to be secured first. Having built a strategy into the U.S. Constitution, they hoped slavery would slowly and eventually disappear from the nation’s life under the enlightened leadership of succeeding generations. Unfortunately, in 50 years slavery did not gradually fade away, despite the fact that in due time, the slave trade was banned in line with the expiration of the waiting period built into the U.S. Constitution.

 

And then in the fateful year of 1854 – and by a dubious act of Congress no less – the delicate balance established at the founding is turned upside down, a balance that Henry Clay and the Congress in 1820 had sustained with the Missouri Compromise. The fateful deed is called the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which, among other things, permits slavery in the northern territories. It becomes the pivotal first step to take the nation down the road to eventual civil war. And the second step, another egregious act, is taken by the Supreme Court. It makes an infamous ruling on a case to be known as the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, which will turn out to be, by unanimous acclamation of legal scholars and laymen alike, the worst Supreme Court decision in our two-plus centuries of American jurisprudence. 

 

Both abominable steps upset the delicate slavery balance and introduces the heightened threat that the institution of slavery could spread to all territories as well as to any State in the Union, including the North. These two acts treated African slaves, not as human beings, but as property. And coming from the Legislative branch and the Judicial branch, they create a joint force too strong for the Executive branch to overcome.

 

But there is an old adage that says that every Crisis has inherent in it an opportunity – for the bold. Such is the case here. For when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, that event should have rung bells of alarm all across the land. Though not everyone heard that ringing, it did awaken an ingenious, crafty country lawyer who had dabbled in politics, but had lost interest in it, and had turned back to his law practice for what he thought was the remainder of his quiet life. Kansas-Nebraska lit a fire under this humble man. His name is Abraham Lincoln.

 

Two years later, Mr. Lincoln helps birth a new political party called the Republican Party, which would lead to the eventual demise of the Whig Party. The new Republican Party’s overarching purpose is to prevent the spread of slavery in the territories – and thereby return the country to the previous path established at the founding. In 1860 and with civil war looming, Mr. Lincoln is elected the 16th President of the United States. 

 

As Mr. Lincoln travels by train from his home state of Illinois, in the western part of the former Ohio territory, to Washington, DC for his inauguration, he makes a not insignificant stop in Philadelphia. There, on Mr. Washington’s birthday, he pays a visit to the Pennsylvania State House, which by then had been given the ever so fitting name of Independence Hall. There in a speech, he declares that he “never had a feeling politically that did not spring up from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence”. In that hallowed hall, the birthplace of American independence and nationhood, Mr. Lincoln expresses a perspective and so dedicates his coming administration that he would raise up the sometimes overlooked words of Mr. Jefferson – the unalienable, self-evident truth that all men are created equal – to eventually become the nation’s indisputable creed.

 

But before Mr. Lincoln even takes the oath of office of the president, seven southern States secede from the Union. And when the war burst forth in April 1861 with cannons booming from southern forces, four more States, including the fair state of Virginia, immediately secede and join the others in what they called the Confederacy.

 

They say that war is hell, and the nation would certainly suffer through hell for four long years. More Americans would die in the Civil War than in all other wars put together in the nearly 250-year history of this nation. The country would lose 700,000 brave soldiers in this devastating, unimaginable war.

 

One battle would grow to such iconic proportions that the mere mention of the name would evoke tremendous pride in the hearts and minds of the people, not dissimilar to the name Valley Forge in the days of the Revolution. It would be known as the Battle of Gettysburg. The two places are only 100 miles apart in the same state of Pennsylvania. Valley Forge and Gettysburg. A town of 2400 would witness a battle involving 165,000 soldiers, and Gettysburg would symbolize the turning point of the war, shifting the advantage from the South to the North. The Battle of Gettysburg ends on the 3rd of July, 1863, giving the Union much to celebrate on that 4th.

 

Five months later, Mr. Lincoln propells the name Gettysburg into near mythical status in the nation’s and the world’s conscience with a remarkable speech that dedicates the Gettysburg battlefield for the cause of the nation as a new birth of freedom – and that government of, by, and for the people would not perish from the earth.

 

This Mr. Lincoln would come to embody the Constitutional system of the military coming under the authority of civilian leadership in the person of the president as Commander in Chief of the army and navy. Mr. Lincoln wants the best military general to head up the Union army, so he selects Robert E. Lee, a Virginian. But Mr. Lee declines, and he soon would become the general over the entire Confederate army. Fortunately, Mr. Lincoln quickly learns the intricacies and strategies of military warfare, and early in the war, he realizes the fundamental truth which Mr. Washington understood in the War for Independence – that the key to victory in the war is not to win the most battles or to conquer cities or to gain territory, but to simply defeat the opposing army. Eventually, a Northern general named Ulysses S. Grant who had the same mindset as Mr. Lincoln emerges, and aided immeasurably by a greater arsenal of men, arms, transportation, and supplies, the North is victorious and the Union is preserved. The story of Ulysses S. Grant is a remarkable tale, so I will reserve it for another time and place.

 

In December 1864, as the war is winding down and victory for the Union seems inevitable, Mr. Lincoln leads the way for Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment, which after being ratified by the requisite number of States, abolishes slavery in the United States for all time to come. The war finally ends in April 1865 and the 13th Amendment would be ratified by that December. Up to that point, it would have been 61 years since the Constitution was changed with an amendment. 

 

And in a double-edged twist of history, at the end of this Crisis, the nation witnesses and experiences a tumultuous, unprecedented act – the assassination of the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, by a southern sympathizer. Mr. Lincoln would go down in our history books as the man who abolished slavery. Mr. Lincoln would fulfill the duty and destiny the Founders left to future generations to rid the land of this detestable practice. 

 

And so America overcomes its Crisis and emerges a stronger nation as it enters its next Era. 

 

As I bring to a close this story of the Crisis of Slavery and Civil War, there are two observations which I believe are worth highlighting. First, in the history of the world, many nations have had one or more civil wars. Civil wars are not uncommon at all. Invariably, nearly all the world’s civil wars represent a battle for power — a battle between certain groups of people for who will control the nation, or a battle for the type of government to be used to run the nation. Often, both are true simultaneously. Thus, the underlying cause of humanity’s civil wars is usually and ultimately the human desire for power and control. 

 

But this civil war in the United States was uncommon. It was not so much for the control of the government by a certain group or party, or for a new type of government to run the nation. No, the underlying cause was a battle for liberty — a battle for the rights of Black Americans. 

 

My second observation worth dwelling on is the personal experience of one Black American’s deep struggle, which provides profound lessons for us — and for the story that is the American Experiment. This man’s name is Frederick Douglass.

 

Mr. Douglass was a slave in the South, but he successfully made a daring escape from bondage at the age of 20. As a new freedman, he dedicated his life to ending slavery. This quest led him to his mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, who was the foremost leader of the abolition movement. Mr. Garrison believed that the U.S. Constitution had a pro-slavery character, so he called for the northern, non-slaveholding states to dissolve the union with the slaveholding states in the South. Mr. Garrison’s battlecry was “No union with slaveholders!”

 

For 10 years, the young disciple Frederick Douglass was glad to work with Mr. Garrison. But Mr. Douglass’s core quality was his reason, and he came to realize the truth that the U.S. Constitution was actually, both in letter and in spirit, an anti-slavery instrument. After intense reasoning, he decided to break away from Mr. Garrison. So Mr. Douglass published his own anti-slavery weekly newspaper and grew to become a leading voice across the land for the abolition of slavery. He continued to proclaim that the Founders established the U.S. Constitution to effectuate the eventual elimination of slavery. In this, he was of the same mind as Abraham Lincoln, but he was a decade earlier than the President Lincoln who would later espouse the same doctrine.

 

Near the end of his life, Frederick Douglass came to believe that the root source of the evil in the South was the slavery system itself. It was the system that made both slave and slavemaster “a victim of the circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom”. It was the system that perpetuated both slave and slavemaster as prisoners. This belief, together with his Christian faith and belief in the fallenness of people, empowered Frederick Douglass to make peace with his former slavemasters after slavery was abolished in the United States.

 

And so, the story of the Crisis of Slavery and Civil War ends with mixed blessings. There is some cause for hope — the end of slavery, the saving of the Union, and enlightened Americans like Frederick Douglass. On the foreboding side, the nation will have to heal and move forward without its beloved President Lincoln to lead the way into America’s next Era and the continuing American Experiment as I tell it in Legacy Papers, No. 3.