UIL Social Studies Primary Sources and other Documents

"Farewell Address," George Washington (1796)

By 1796 Washington was in a position to retire gracefully. He had avoided war with Britain, pushed the British out of western forts, suppressed Native Americans in the Old Northwest, and opened the Ohio country to white settlement. In a farewell address, published in a Philadelphia newspaper in September 1796, Washington announced his retirement and offered his countrymen "the disinterested warnings of a parting friend." In his address, the president complained bitterly about "the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party," and warned his countrymen against the growth of partisan divisions. In foreign affairs, he also warned against long-term alliances. Declaring the "primary interests" of America and Europe to be fundamentally different, he argued that "it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world."

Among Washington's main themes were the danger that political demagogues would manipulate sectional passions and the importance of subordinating regional interests to the preservation of the Union.

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...A solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life...urge me...to offer..the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsels....

The Unity of Government which constitutes you one people...is a main Pillar in the Edifice of your real independence...your tranquility at home; your peace abroad.... But as it is easy to foresee, that, from different causes, and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth.... You should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness...indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our Country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts....

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South...finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise--and precious materials of manufacturing industry.--The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand....

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern, that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by Geographical discriminations--Northern and Southern--Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief, that there is a real difference of local interests and views....

Towards the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts....

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to founding them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you, in the most solemn manner, against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes, in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled or repressed; but in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate dominion of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which, in different ages and countries, has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism; but this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an Individual....

'T is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government....

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essentially that public opinion should be enlightened....

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all....

Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded.... The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest....

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence...the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republic Government....

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little Political connection as possible....

'T is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world....

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies....

Washington and the Republicans (1798)

Washington writes to James McHenry (1753-1816), his former Secretary of War (and Adams's then current war secretary) to express his concern about the integrity of the army about to be raised in preparation for a possible war with France in the wake of the XYZ Affair. The letter contains one of Washington's most outspoken statements of distrust of the Democratic-Republican Societies, which had arisen in support of the French Revolution and which the former President had already blamed for inciting the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Adams offered Washington command of the provisional army being raised in event of war with France. At first, the former president refused the post, but McHenry ultimately persuaded him to accept the appointment.

In this letter, the former President expresses hostility toward the Republicans and supports the Alien and Sedition Acts, an attempt by the Federalist-controlled Congress to suppress political opposition and stamp out sympathy for revolutionary France. These acts gave the President the power to imprison or deport foreigners believed to be dangerous to the United States and made it a crime to attack the government with "false, scandalous, or malicious statements." While the Alien and Sedition Acts represent a low point in the history of American civil liberties, Washington's anger toward the Republicans was in many respects well-founded: The Jeffersonians were extraordinarily naive and idealistic in their dealings with Revolutionary France and the Napoleonic regime that was just emerging.

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I have lately received information, which, in my opinion, merits attention. The brawlers against Government measures, in some of the most discontented parts of this state, have, all of a sudden become silent, and, it is added, are very desirous of obtaining Commissions in the army about to be raised.

This information did not fail to leave an impression upon my mind at the time I received it; but it has acquired strength from a publication I have lately seen in one of the Maryland Gazettes.... The motives ascribed to them are, that in such a situation they would endeavor to divide, & contaminate the army, by artful & seditious discourses, and perhaps at a critical moment, bring on confusion. What weight to give to these conjectures you can judge of, as well as I. But as there will be characters enough of an opposite description, who are ready to receive appointments, circumspection is necessary; for my opinion of the first are, that you could as soon scrub the blackamoor white, as to change the principles of a profest Democrat; and that he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country. Finding the resentment of the People at the conduct of France too strong to be resisted, they have, in appearance, adopted their sentiments; and pretend that, not withstanding the misconduct of Government have brought it upon us, yet, if an Invasion should take place, it will be found that they will be among the first to defend it. This is their story at all Elections, and Election meetings, and told in many instances with effect.

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor (1798)

In this document, Jefferson sends a letter to John Tyler to inform him about the need for unity in the Unity states even though there is a lot of arguing. There is also talks of their talks needing to be a secret unless they want their enemies to find a way to use this against them. Also, there is talk of a patent and a moldboard.

Washington on Political Partisanship (1799)

In this letter, written just five months before his death to his former personal secretary, former President Washington expresses his concern that the French government was interfering in domestic American politics. He also rejects Federalist pleas that he come out of retirement and run for the presidency in 1800. The growth of partisanship in American politics meant that the character of an individual candidate and reputation no longer matter. If he were nominated for the presidency, Washington was "thoroughly convinced" that he "should draw not a single vote from the anti-Federal side."

Early in the morning of December 13, 1799, Washington woke his wife, complaining of severe pains. Over the course of that day and the next, doctors arrived and attempted to ease his pain by applying blisters, administering purges, and bloodletting - removing perhaps four pints of his blood. Medical historians generally agree that Washington needed a tracheotomy (a surgical operation into the air passages), but this was too new a procedure to be risked on the former president, who died on December 14.

During the early weeks of 1800, every city in the United States commemorated the death of the former leader. In Boston, business was suspended, cannons roared, bells pealed, and 6000 people - a fifth of the population of the city - stood in the streets to express their last respects for the fallen general. In Washington, Congressman Henry Lee delivered the most famous eulogy. He described Washington as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

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No well informed and unprejudiced man, who has viewed with attention the conduct of the French Government since the Revolution in that Country, can mistake its objects, or the tendency of the ambitious projects it is pursuing. Yet, strange as it may seem, a party, and a powerful one too, among us, affect to believe that the measures of it are dictated by a principle of self preservation; that the outrages of which the Directory [the governing body in France] are guilty, proceed from dire necessity; that it wishes to be upon the most friendly & amicable terms with the United States; that it will be the fault of the latter if this is not the case; that the defensive measures which this Country has adopted, are necesary & expensive, but have a tendency to produce the evil which, to deprecate, is mere pretence in the Government; because War with France they say, is its wish; that on the Militia shd. rest our security; and that it is time enough to call upon these, when the danger is imminent, & apparent.

With these, and such like ideas, attempted to be inculcated upon the public mind (aided by prejudices not yet eradicated) and with art and sophistry, which regard neither truth nor decency; attacking every character, without respect to persons, Public or Private, who happen to differ from themselves in Politics, I leave you to decide the probability of carrying such an extensive plan of defence as you have suggested in your last letter, into operation; and in the short period which you supposed may be allowed to accomplish it in.

I come now, my dear Sir, to pay particular attention to that part of your Letter which respects myself....

Let that party [the Jeffersonian Republicans] set up a broomstick, and call it a true son of Liberty, a Democrat, or give it any other epithet that will suit their purpose, and it will command their votes in toto! Will not the Federalists meet, or rather defend their cause on the opposite ground? Surely they must, or they will discover a want of Policy, indicative of weakness & pregnant of mischief, which cannot be admitted. Wherein then would lye the difference between the present Gentlemen in Office, & Myself?

It would be a matter of sore regret to me, if I could believe that a serious thought was turned towards me as his successor; not only as it respects my ardent wishes to pass through the value of life in retirement undisturbed in the remnant of the days I have to sojourn here. Unless called upon to defend my country (which every citizen is bound to do), but on Public ground also; for although I have abundant cause to be thankful for the good health with which I am blessed, yet I am not insensible to my declination in other respects. It would be criminal therefore in me, although it should be the wish of my Countrymen, and I could be elected, to accept an Office under this conviction, which another would discharge with more ability, and this too at a time when I am thoroughly convinced I should not draw a single vote from the Antifederal side; and of course, should stand upon no stronger grounds than any other Federal character well support; & when I should become a mark for the shafts of envenomed malice, and the basest calumny to fire at; when I should be charged not only with irresolution, but with concealed ambition, which wants only an occasion to blaze out, and, in short, with dotage and imbecility.

All this I grant ought to be like dust in the balance, when put in competition with a great public good, when the accomplishment of it is apparent. But as no problem is better defined in my mind than that principle, not men, is now, and will be, the object of contention, and that I could not obtain a solitary vote from that Party; that any other respectable Federal character would receive the same suffrages that I should; that at my time of life, (verging towards three score & ten) I should expose myself without rendering any essential service to my Country, or answering the end contemplated; Prudence on my part must arrest any attempt of the well meant, but mistaken views of my friends, to introduce me again into the Chair of Government.

"Jeerson's First Inaugural Address" (1801)

Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States on March 4, 1801, after being elected in one of the nation's closest presidential contests. In this, his first inaugural address, Jefferson sought to reach out to his political opponents and heal the breach between Federalists and Republicans. Jefferson also strongly states his belief in the importance of religion in the address.

-Document: FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS,

Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye -- when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter -- with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.

Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.

John Quincy Adams on Slavery in the Early Republic (1804)

In 1804, Federalist Senator Timothy Pickering (1745-1829) called for a constitutional amendment apportioning each state's representation in the House of Representatives solely on the basis of the number of freemen. Such an amendment would have overturned the Three-Fifths Compromise and greatly reduced the number of slave state representatives.

While Federalists, during the first years of the nineteenth century, attacked the three-fifths clause as a source of Republican power, they hesitated to directly challenge the institution of slavery itself. Their descendants, however, would assume a leading role in the antislavery campaign. Nevertheless, it is striking that as early as 1804, Adams was already thinking in terms of a "Slaveholding power."The "Slave Power" or "Slaveocracy" was a term used by abolitionists and later the Republican Party to describe the perceived political power held by American slaveholders in the federal government, who they believed sought to expand and protect slavery

Document:...I have long thought it an important error, of many good and distinguished men among us, that they are too ready to indulge that love of ease and domestic comfort--Too ready to withdraw from the field of public action.... This love of retirement and domestic pleasures, has in this state kept in confinement to their chimney corners, numbers of men, who ought to stand forth the guardians of the public interest, and the guides of our public opinions--It is the only thing which can possibly hazard the steadiness of our politics--I hope they will even resist the dangers of this drowsy opiate....

You will have seen by the proceedings in our Legislature that a serious alarm has of late been so active at the seat of government to establish an impregnable rampart of Slaveholding power, under the false batteries of democracy--The Senators of the State in Congress are instructed to propose and endeavour to effect an amendment of the Constitution so that the representation in the National House of Representatives may be a representation of freeman--I believe this alteration must be made, and I have no doubt it will be effected whenever those states can be United in its favour.... If this great majority of the numbers, wealth, and strength of the Country can be made to harmonize in the pursuit of an object so obviously just in itself, and so clearly important to them I cannot doubt but they will obtain it--This however must be the work of Time and of chance perhaps more than of anything else.

The Hamilton-Burr Duel (1804)

On the morning of June 18, 1804, a visitor handed a package to former treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton. Inside was a newspaper clipping and a terse three-sentence letter. The clipping said that Hamilton had called Vice President Aaron Burr “a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.” It went on to say that Hamilton had “expressed” a “still more despicable opinion” of Burr—apparently a bitter personal attack on Burr’s public and private morality, not merely a political criticism. The letter, signed by Burr, demanded a “prompt and unqualified” denial or an immediate apology.

Hamilton and Burr had sparred verbally for decades. Hamilton regarded Burr as an unscrupulous man and considered him partly responsible for a duel in 1801 that had left his son Philip dead. Burr, in turn, blamed Hamilton for his defeat in the race for governor of New York earlier in the year. When, after three weeks, Hamilton had failed to respond to his letter satisfactorily, Burr insisted that they settle the dispute according to the code of honor.

Shortly after 7 A.M., on July 11, 1804, Burr and Hamilton met on the wooded heights of Weehawken, New Jersey, a customary dueling ground directly across the Hudson River from New York. Hamilton’s son died there in a duel in 1801. Hamilton’s second handed Burr one of two pistols equipped with hair-spring triggers. After he and Burr took their positions ten paces apart, Hamilton raised his pistol on the command to “Present!” and fired. His shot struck a tree a few feet to Burr’s side. Then Burr fired. His shot struck Hamilton in the right side and passed through his liver. Hamilton died the following day. The popular view was that Hamilton had intentionally fired to one side, while Burr had slain the Federalist leader in an act of cold-blooded murder. In fact, historians do not know whether Burr was guilty of willful murder. Burr had no way of knowing whether Hamilton had purposely missed. Hamilton, after all, had accepted the challenge, raised his pistol, and fired. According to the code of honor, if Burr missed on his first try, Hamilton would have a second chance to shoot.

The states of New York and New Jersey wanted to try Burr for murder; New Jersey actually indicted him. The vice president fled through New Jersey by foot and wagon to Philadelphia, then took refuge in Georgia and South Carolina, until the indictments were quashed and he could finish his term in office.

-Document: Colonel Burr arrived first on the ground, as had been previously agreed. When General Hamilton arrived, the parties exchanged salutations, and the seconds proceeded to make their arrangements. They measured the distance, ten full paces, and cast lots for the choice of position, as also to determine by whom the word should be given, both of which fell to the second of General Hamilton. They then proceeded to load the pistols in each other's presence, after which the parties took their stations. The gentleman who was to give the word then explained to the parties the roles which were to govern them in firing, which were as follows:

The parties being placed at their stations, the second who gives the word shall ask them whether they are ready; being answered in the affirmative, he shall say- present! After this the parties shall present and fire when they please. If one fires before the other, the opposite second shall say one, two, three, fire, and he shall then fire or lose his fire.

He then asked if they were prepared; being answered in the affirmative, he gave the word present, as had been agreed on, and both parties presented and fired in succession. The intervening time is not expressed, as the seconds do not precisely agree on that point. The fire of Colonel Burr took effect, and General Hamilton almost instantly fell. Colonel Burr advanced toward General Hamilton with a manner and gesture that appeared to General Hamilton's friend to be expressive of regret; but, without speaking, turned about and withdrew, being urged from the field by his friend, as has been subsequently stated, with a view to prevent his being recognized by the surgeon and bargemen who were then approaching. No further communication took place between the principals, and the barge that carried Colonel Burr immediately returned to the city. We conceive it proper to add, that the conduct of the parties in this interview was perfectly proper, as suited the occasion."

Dr. David Hosack observed:

"When called to him upon his receiving the fatal wound, I found him half sitting on the ground, supported in the arms of Mr. Pendleton. His countenance of death I shall never forget. He had at that instant just strength to say, 'This is a mortal wound, doctor;' when he sunk away, and became to all appearance lifeless. I immediately stripped up his clothes, and soon, alas I ascertained that the direction of the ball must have been through some vital part. His pulses were not to be felt, his respiration was entirely suspended, and, upon laying my hand on his heart and perceiving no motion there, I considered him as irrecoverably gone. I, however, observed to Mr. Pendleton, that the only chance for his reviving was immediately to get him upon the water. We therefore lifted him up, and carried him out of the wood to the margin of the bank, where the bargemen aided us in conveying him into the boat, which immediately put off. During all this time I could not discover the least symptom of returning life. I now rubbed his face, lips, and temples with spirits of hartshorn, applied it to his neck and breast, and to the wrists and palms of his hands, and endeavoured to pour some into his mouth.

When we had got, as I should judge, about fifty yards from the shore, some imperfect efforts to breathe were for the first time manifest; in a few minutes he sighed, and became sensible to the impression of the hartshorn or the fresh air of the water. He breathed; his eyes, hardly opened, wandered, without fixing upon any object; to our great joy, he at length spoke. 'My vision is indistinct,' were his first words. His pulse became more perceptible, his respiration more regular, his sight returned. I then examined the wound to know if there was any dangerous discharge of blood; upon slightly pressing his side it gave him pain, on which I desisted.

Soon after recovering his sight, he happened to cast his eye upon the case of pistols, and observing the one that he had had in his hand lying on the outside, he said, "Take care of that pistol; it is undischarged, and still cocked; it may go off and do harm. Pendleton knows " (attempting to turn his head towards him) 'that I did not intend to fire at him.' 'Yes,' said Mr. Pendleton, understanding his wish, 'I have already made Dr. Hosack acquainted with your determination as to that' He then closed his eyes and remained calm, without any disposition to speak; nor did he say much afterward, except in reply to my questions. He asked me once or twice how I found his pulse; and he informed me that his lower extremities had lost all feeling, manifesting to me that he entertained no hopes that he should long survive."

"Message to Congress on the Burr Conspiracy," Thomas Jefferson (1807)

In this document, Jefferson reports on a situation with Arron Burr. At first they had little info and virginia tried to try him, but they had little evidence and ended up boosting his public image. Later they found that Burr had gathered a small army and wanted to ether seperate west america from the union or invade mexico, but then he focused on mexico. To do this, he tried to take over new orlean by sailing his forces to there using the cumberland river. Forces met him at New orleans and taking three of his partners.

Amendments to the Constitution Proposed by the

Hartford Convention (1814)

Many Federalists believed that the War of 1812 was fought to aid Napoleon in his struggle against Britain. Some opposed the war by refusing to pay taxes, boycotting war loans, and refusing to furnish troops. In December 1814, delegates from New England gathered in Hartford, Connecticut, where they recommended a series of constitutional amendments to restrict Congress' power to wage war, regulate commerce, and admit new states. The delegates also supported a one-term presidency (to break the grip of Virginians on the office) and abolition of the Three-Fifths Compromise, and talked of seceding if they did not get their way. In this message, Madison's Secretary of State, James Monroe, expresses concern over the Hartford Convention and fear that New England Federalists might seize the federal armory at Springfield, Massachusetts.

Documents: Confidential

...The proceedings at Hartford have excited much anxiety, as likely to embarrass the measures of the Government, and by the countenance they have afforded the enemy to prolong the war, if they should not lead into worse consequences. General Swartout has been authorised to take measures, in case they should be necessary, for the security of the arms at Springfield [Massachusetts].... I trust that any evil which may be contemplated, however great, will be defeated.

: James Monroe to an unknown recipient

Niles Weekly Register on Politics of the War of 1812 (1815)

1 A prominent national periodical in the early 19th century, the Register discussed several key topics related to war of 1812 such as the Hartford Convention: The convention where New England Federalists met to discuss their grievances and seek redress for the war's impact on their region. Britain's War Aims: Analysis of Britain's objectives and strategies during the war. New Orleans Defense: Coverage of American forces' efforts to repel a British invasion at the Battle of New Orleans. African American Participation: Recognition of the contributions of African Americans to the war effort.

James Madison Asks Congress to Support Internal

Improvements (1815)

After the War of 1812, Americans looked to strengthen their nation through government spending on infrastructure, or what were then called internal improvements. In his seventh annual address to congress, Madison called for public investment to create national roads, canals, and even a national seminary. He also called for a tariff, or tax on certain imports, designed to make foreign goods more expensive, giving American producers an advantage in domestic markets.

Document: Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

…Notwithstanding the security for future repose which the United States ought to find in their love of peace and their constant respect for the rights of other nations, the character of the times particularly inculcates the lesson that, whether to prevent or repel danger, we ought not to be unprepared for it. This consideration will sufficiently recommend to Congress a liberal provision for the immediate extension and gradual completion of the works of defense, both fixed and floating, on our maritime frontier, and an adequate provision for guarding our inland frontier against dangers to which certain portions of it may continue to be exposed…

In adjusting the duties on imports to the object of revenue the influence of the tariff on manufactures will necessarily present itself for consideration. However wise the theory may be which leaves to the sagacity and interest of individuals the application of their industry and resources, there are in this as in other cases exceptions to the general rule. Besides the condition which the theory itself implies of a reciprocal adoption by other nations, experience teaches that so many circumstances must concur in introducing and maturing manufacturing establishments, especially of the more complicated kinds, that a country may remain long without them, although sufficiently advanced and in some respects even peculiarly fitted for carrying them on with success. Under circumstances giving a powerful impulse to manufacturing industry it has made among us a progress and exhibited an efficiency which justify the belief that with a protection not more than is due to the enterprising citizens whose interests are now at stake it will become at an early day not only safe against occasional competitions from abroad, but a source of domestic wealth and even of external commerce. In selecting the branches more especially entitled to the public patronage a preference is obviously claimed by such as will relieve the United States from a dependence on foreign supplies ever subject to casual failures, for articles necessary for the public defense or connected with the primary wants of individuals. It will be an additional recommendation of particular manufactures where the materials for them are extensively drawn from our agriculture, and consequently impart and insure to that great fund of national prosperity and independence an encouragement which can not fail to be rewarded.

Among the means of advancing the public interest the occasion is a proper one for recalling the attention of Congress to the great importance of establishing throughout our country the roads and canals which can best be executed under the national authority. No objects within the circle of political economy so richly repay the expense bestowed on them; there are none the utility of which is more universally ascertained and acknowledged; none that do more honor to the governments whose wise and enlarged patriotism duly appreciates them. Nor is there any country which presents a field where nature invites more the art of man to complete her own work for his accommodation and benefit. These considerations are strengthened, moreover, by the political effect of these facilities for intercommunication in bringing and binding more closely together the various parts of our extended confederacy. Whilst the States individually, with a laudable enterprise and emulation, avail themselves of their local advantages by new roads, by navigable canals, and by improving the streams susceptible of navigation, the General Government is the more urged to similar undertakings, requiring a national jurisdiction and national means, by the prospect of thus systematically completing so inestimable a work; and it is a happy reflection that any defect of constitutional authority which may be encountered can be supplied in a mode which the Constitution itself has providently pointed out.

The present is a favorable season also for bringing again into view the establishment of a national seminary of learning within the District of Columbia, and with means drawn from the property therein, subject to the authority of the General Government. Such an institution claims the patronage of Congress as a monument of their solicitude for the advancement of knowledge, without which the blessings of liberty can not be fully enjoyed or long preserved; as a model instructive in the formation of other seminaries; as a nursery of enlightened preceptors, and as a central resort of youth and genius from every part of their country, diffusing on their return examples of those national feelings, those liberal sentiments, and those congenial manners which contribute cement to our Union and strength to the great political fabric of which that is the foundation….

It remains for the guardians of the public welfare to persevere in that justice and good will toward other nations which invite a return of these sentiments toward the United States; to cherish institutions which guarantee their safety and their liberties, civil and religious; and to combine with a liberal system of foreign commerce an improvement of the national advantages and a protection and extension of the independent resources of our highly favored and happy country.

Thomas Jefferson letter to John Holmes (1820

In this foreboding letter, former president Thomas Jefferson warned Representative John Holmes that the alarming issue of slavery could not be staved off forever. In words foreshadowing the Civil War, Jefferson predicted the issue once loosed would ignite the nation in violence and destruction.

Document:

I thank you, dear sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle[1] which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one state to another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of coadjutors.[2] An abstinence too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a state. This certainly is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them and given to the general government. Could Congress, for example, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other state?

I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.

James Madison’s Note to His Speech on the Right of

Suffrage (1821)

1 In his 1821 note, James Madison discussed the issue of suffrage (voting rights) in Virginia, where a debate was ongoing about extending the right to vote. Madison argued that while suffrage should be extended to as many citizens as possible, certain qualifications, such as property ownership, were necessary to ensure that voters had a vested interest in the stability and welfare of the government. He emphasized that a balance was needed between inclusivity and preserving the integrity of the political system.

Document:The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right exclusively to property, and the rights of persons may be oppressed. The feudal polity alone sufficiently proves it. Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property or the claims of justice may be overruled by a majority without property, or interested in measures of injustice. Of this abundant proof is afforded by other popular Govts. and is not without examples in our own, particularly in the laws impairing the obligation of contracts.

In civilized communities, property as well as personal rights is an essential object of the laws, which encourage industry by securing the enjoyment of its fruits: that industry from which property results, & that enjoyment which consists not merely in its immediate use, but in its posthumous destination to objects of choice and of kindred affection.

In a just & a free, Government, therefore, the rights both of property & of persons ought to be effectually guarded. Will the former be so in case of a universal & equal suffrage? Will the latter be so in case of a suffrage confined to the holders of property?

As the holders of property have at stake all the other rights common to those without property, they may be the more restrained from infringing, as well as the less tempted to infringe the rights of the latter. It is nevertheless certain, that there are various ways in which the rich may oppress the poor; in which property may oppress liberty; and that the world is filled with examples. It is necessary that the poor should have a defence against the danger.

On the other hand, the danger to the holders of property can not be disguised, if they be undefended against a majority without property. Bodies of men are not less swayed by interest than individuals, and are less controlled by the dread of reproach and the other motives felt by individuals. Hence the liability of the rights of property, and of the impartiality of laws affecting it, to be violated by Legislative majorities having an interest real or supposed in the injustice: Hence agrarian laws, and other leveling schemes: Hence the cancelling or evading of debts, and other violations of contracts. We must not shut our eyes to the nature of man, nor to the light of experience. Who would rely on a fair decision from three individuals if two had an interest in the case opposed to the rights of the third? Make the number as great as you please, the impartiality will not be increased, nor any further security against injustice be obtained, than what may result from the greater difficulty of uniting the wills of a greater number.

In all Govts. there is a power which is capable of oppressive exercise. In Monarchies and Aristocracies oppression proceeds from a want of sympathy & responsibility in the Govt. towards the people. In popular Governments the danger lies in an undue sympathy among individuals composing a majority, and a want of responsibility in the majority to the minority. The characteristic excellence of the political System of the U. S. arises from a distribution and organization of its powers, which at the same time that they secure the dependence of the Govt. on the will of the nation, provides better guards than are found in any other popular Govt. against interested combinations of a Majority against the rights of a Minority.

The U. States have a precious advantage also in the actual distribution of property particularly the landed property; and in the universal hope of acquiring property. This latter peculiarity is among the happiest contrasts in their situation to that of the old world, where no anticipated change in this respect, can generally inspire a like sympathy with the rights of property. There may be at present, a Majority of the Nation, who are even freeholders, or the heirs, or aspirants to Freeholds. And the day may not be very near when such will cease to make up a Majority of the community. But they cannot always so continue. With every admissible subdivision of the Arable lands, a populousness not greater than that of England or France, will reduce the holders to a Minority. And whenever the Majority shall be without landed or other equivalent property and without the means or hope of acquiring it, what is to secure the rights of property agst. the danger from an equality & universality of suffrage, vesting compleat power over property in hands without a share in it: not to speak of a danger in the mean time from a dependence of an increasing number on the wealth of a few? In other Countries this dependence results in some from the relations between Landlords & Tenants in other both from that source, & from the relations between wealthy capitalists & indigent labourers. In the U. S. the occurrence must happen from the last source; from the connection between the great Capitalists in Manufactures & Commerce and the members employed by them. Nor will accumulations of Capital for a certain time be precluded by our laws of descent & of distribution; such being the enterprize inspired by free Institutions, that great wealth in the hands of individuals and associations, may not be unfrequent. But it may be observed, that the opportunities, may be diminished, and the permanency defeated by the equalizing tendency of the laws.

No free Country has ever been without parties, which are a natural offspring of Freedom. An obvious and permanent division of every people is into the owners of the Soil, and the other inhabitants. In a certain sense the Country may be said to belong to the former. If each landholder has an exclusive property in his share, the Body of Landholders have an exclusive property in the whole. As the Soil becomes subdivided, and actually cultivated by the owners, this view of the subject derives force from the principle of natural law, which vests in individuals an exclusive right to the portions of ground with which he has incorporated his labour & improvements. Whatever may be the rights of others derived from their birth in the Country, from their interest in the high ways & other parcels left open for common use as well, as in the national Edifices and monuments; from their share in the public defence, and from their concurrent support of the Govt., it would seem unreasonable to extend the right so far as to give them when become the majority, a power of Legislation over the landed property without the consent of the proprietors. Some barrier agst the invasion of their rights would not be out of place in a just & provident System of Govt. The principle of such an arrangement has prevailed in all Govts. where peculiar privileges or interests held by a part were to be secured agst. violation, and in the various associations where pecuniary or other property forms the stake. In the former case a defensive right has been allowed; and if the arrangement be wrong, it is not in the defense, but in the kind of privilege to be defended. In the latter case, the shares of suffrage allotted to individuals, have been with acknowledged justice apportioned more or less to their respective interests in the Common Stock.

These reflections suggest the expediency of such a modification of Govt. as would give security to the part of the Society having most at stake and being most exposed to danger. Three modifications present themselves.

1. Confining the right of suffrage to freeholders, & to such as hold an equivalent property, convertible of course into freeholds. The objection to this regulation is obvious. It violates the vital principle of free Govt. that those who are to be bound by laws, ought to have a voice in making them. And the violation wd. be more strikingly unjust as the lawmakers become the minority: The regulation would be as unpropitious also as it would be unjust. It would engage the numerical & physical force in a constant struggle agst. the public authority; unless kept down by a standing army fatal to all parties.

2. Confining the right of suffrage for one Branch to the holders of property, and for the other Branch to those without property. This arrangement which wd. give a mutual defence, where there might be mutual danger of encroachment, has an aspect of equality & fairness. But it wd. not be in fact either equal or fair, because the rights to be defended would be unequal, being on one side those of property as well as of persons, and on the other those of persons only. The temptation also to encroach tho' in a certain degree mutual, wd. be felt more strongly on one side than on the other; It wd. be more likely to beget an abuse of the Legislative Negative in extorting concessions at the expence of property, than the reverse. The division of the State into the two Classes, with distinct & independt. Organs of power, and without any intermingled Agency whatever, might lead to contests & antipathies not dissimilar to those between the Patricians & Plebeians at Rome.

3. Confining the right of electing one Branch of the Legislature to freeholders, and admitting all others to a common right with holders of property, in electing the other Branch. This wd. give a defensive power to holders of property, and to the class also without property when becoming a majority of electors, without depriving them in the mean time of a participation in the public Councils. If the holders of property would thus have a twofold share of representation, they wd. have at the same time a twofold stake in it, the rights of property as well as of persons the twofold object of political Institutions. And if no exact & safe equilibrium can be introduced, it is more reasonable that a preponderating weight shd. be allowed to the greater interest than to the lesser. Experience alone can decide how far the practice in this case would correspond with the Theory. Such a distribution of the right of suffrage was tried in N. York and has been abandoned whether from experienced evils, or party calculations, may possibly be a question. It is still on trial in N. Carolina, with what practical indications is not known. It is certain that the trial, to be satisfactory ought to be continued for no inconsiderable period; untill in fact the non freeholders should be the majority.

4. Should Experience or public opinion require an equal & universal suffrage for each branch of the Govt., such as prevails generally in the U. S., a resource favorable to the rights of landed & other property, when its possessors become the Minority, may be found in an enlargement of the Election Districts for one branch of the Legislature, and an extension of its period of service. Large districts are manifestly favorable to the election of persons of general respectability, and of probable attachment to the rights of property, over competitors depending on the personal solicitations practicable on a contracted theatre. And altho' an ambitious candidate, of personal distinction, might occasionally recommend himself to popular choice by espousing a popular though unjust object, it might rarely happen to many districts at the same time. The tendency of a longer period of service would be, to render the Body more stable in its policy, and more capable of stemming popular currents taking a wrong direction, till reason & justice could regain their ascendancy.

5. Should even such a modification as the last be deemed inadmissible, and universal suffrage and very short periods of elections within contracted spheres be required for each branch of the Govt., the security for the holders of property when the minority, can only be derived from the ordinary influence possessed by property, & the superior information incident to its holders; from the popular sense of justice enlightened & enlarged by a diffusive education; and from the difficulty of combining & effectuating unjust purposes throughout an extensive country; a difficulty essentially distinguishing the U. S. and even most of the individual States, from the small communities where a mistaken interest or contagious passion, could readily unite a majority of the whole under a factious leader, in trampling on the rights of the Minor party.

Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the Mass of Citizens should not be without a voice, in making the laws which they are to obey, & in chusing the Magistrates, who are to administer them, and if the only alternative be between an equal & universal right of suffrage for each branch of the Govt. and a confinement of the entire right to a part of the Citizens, it is better that those having the greater interest at stake namely that of property & persons both, should be deprived of half their share in the Govt.; than, that those having the lesser interest, that of personal rights only, should be deprived of the whole.

“The Rise of the Second Party System,” Henry Clay

(1823)

Over time, local and personal political factions coalesced into a new political party system. Three critical factors contributed to the creation of the second party system. The first was the financial panic of 1819, which resulted in demands for elimination of property qualifications for voting, new state constitutions, and political division over such issues as debt relief, banking and monetary policy, and tariffs.

A second source of political division was Southern alarm over the slavery debates in Congress in 1819 and 1820. Many Southern leaders feared that the Missouri crisis might spark a realignment in national politics along sectional lines. Many Southerners sought political alliances with the North. As early as 1821, Virginia Republicans opposed to high tariffs, a national bank, and federally-funded internal improvements had begun to form a loose alliance with Senator Martin Van Buren of New York and the Republican faction he commanded.

A third major source of political division was the selection of a presidential candidate. The Virginia dynasty of presidents, a chain that had begun with Washington and included Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, was at its end in 1824. Traditionally, the Republican party candidate was selected by a caucus of the party's members of Congress. At the 1824 caucus, the members chose William H. Crawford (1772-1834), a Georgian and Monroe's secretary of the Treasury. But not all Republicans supported this method of nominating candidates and therefore refused to participate.

When Crawford suffered a stroke and was left partially disabled, four other candidates emerged: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams; John C. Calhoun of South Carolina; Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and victor over the Creeks and Seminoles; and Henry Clay, the Kentuckian Speaker of the House.

In this letter, Clay assesses his chances for election and describes his stand on slavery and emancipation over the preceding 25 years. As the president and most famous leader of the American Colonization Society, Clay's views on slavery remained ambiguous.

Document: Certainly it would have been more auspicious to my interests that the popular demonstrations made in Pennsylvania in favor of Genl. Jackson should have been given my support! But the next best thing to have happened is that which has already occurred....

The papers at Cincinnati, the principal point of unavailing opposition to me in Ohio, have begun to assume a friendlier tone and do harmonize more with the residue of that State. In short, every where in the West my ground is not only maintained, but there is a sensible & sure progress making in my prospects. My cause, perhaps, feels the want of some well established democratic press in the large cities to sustain it, as suggested by you, but this disadvantage is less, in consequence of the very great division among the presses there, and the reciprocal abuse which is so copiously lavished upon their respective favorites. Will not the moderate portion of the community, disgusted with those who are, at the same time, the objects of unmerited calumny and undeserved eulogy, finally rather concentrate their votes upon one who has been held up neither to their delectation nor idolatry?...

On the matter of fact, respecting the part which I asked on the question of Gradual Emancipation, debated in this state [Kentucky] many years ago, on which you desire information, I am sorry that I am not able to transmit you any from the record. All that I can communicate is preserved now by tradition, but is known to hundreds within and without this state. In 1798 and 1799 the question of a new Convention to amend and alter our State Constitution afflicted & divided this State. One of the grounds upon which it was supported and approached was that of introducing a provision similar to what is contained in your Abolition act, for the gradual emancipation of slaves. I took the side of a new Convention, and that of gradual emancipation. We carried the question of Convention, and then came on, in the year 1799, the election of members to it. Emancipation & antiemancipation tickets were formed. The greatest animation every where prevailed. I was then about 23, too young to be a member of the Convention; but I zealously supported the emancipation ticket, in all circles, public descriptions and news papers....We were opposed by...John Breckenridge, then the most powerful & prominent Citizen of this State.... The slave interest was too predominant for us and we were beaten at the elections, but in several important ones, we lost by very small majorities. My opinion is unchanged. I advised the Delegate from Missouri to strive to get a provision inserted in the Constitution of that State for gradual emancipation. The expediency of the measure, I think depends, in some degree, upon the relative proposition of the two races existing in any State in which it may be proposed. Here my opinion was and is that the African portion of the community is not so large as to make any hazard to the purity & safety of Society by a gradual and prepared emancipation of the offspring. However, should my friends think it useful to make any public allusion to the incident I have been relating, in my early life, perhaps it would not be proper to refer to present opinions, lest it should be said that these result from sinister motives.

Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute

Additional information: Henry Clay to Thomas J. Wharton

Increasing Restrictions on African Americans (1824)

The antebellum period, which witnessed the extension of the right to vote and hold public office to all white men, was also a period when free blacks faced increasing restrictions on their freedom.

After the Revolution, slaveowners had freed thousands of slaves, while other slaves freed themselves by fleeing to freedom in the midst of wartime disruption. In Louisiana, a large free black creole population had emerged under French rule, and in South Carolina a much smaller creole population had arrived from Barbados. The number of free blacks in the Deep South increased rapidly with the arrival of thousands of light colored mulattoes from Haiti.

Free blacks varied profoundly in status. Most lived in poverty, but in a few cities such as New Orleans, Charleston, and Baltimore, some worked as skilled carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, and millwrights. In the lower South, a few free blacks achieved high occupational status and actually bought slaves. One of the wealthiest was William Ellison, the son of a slave mother and a white planter. Ellison learned how to make cotton gins and at the age of 26 bought his freedom with his overtime earnings. At the time of his death he owned 63 slaves worth more than a $100,000. In the South, free people of color occupied an uneasy middle ground between the dominant whites and the mass of slaves. Some distanced themselves from blacks who remained in slavery; other identified with slaves and took the lead establishing separate black churches.

Although free blacks comprised no more than 3.8 percent of the population of any northern state, they faced mounting legal, economic, and social discrimination. They were denied the right to serve on juries or testify against whites. They were prohibited from marrying whites, were relegated to segregated jails, cemeteries, asylums, and schools. All but four New England states denied them the right to vote. By the 1830s, they began to suffer heightened competition from white immigrants in the skilled trades and even in such traditional occupations such as domestic service.

Whether African Americans were legally citizens of the United States was a controversial issue in the decades before the Civil War. The following document, issued by the state of Massachusetts, formally recognizes the citizenship rights of John Harris, a free black, who currently lived in the city of Salem, and as a black sailor faced the danger of being imprisoned if his ship landed in South Carolina, where, following the exposure of the Denmark Vesy conspiracy, all free blacks were seen as a threat to public security.

Document: ..John Harris...is a Citizen of the United States of America, born in the City of Alexandria State of Virginia, that he is a free colored man, now residing in said Salem and never has been under allegiance to any foreign Prince or States. He is five feet six inches high, thirty two years of age, black complexioned.... And I do hereby Certify, that the Act of the Congress of the United States, "for the relief and protection of American Seamen" not having made provision for Persons of Colour to obtain Certificates of Citizenship at the Custom Houses; this is granted to show that the said John Harris is a Citizen of the United States of America, and ought to be respected accordingly, in his Person and Property, at all times by Sea and Land in the Prosecution of his lawful concerns.

Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute

Additional information: Ezekiel Savage, Certificate of citizenship by Massachusetts, for John Harris a black man

John Quincy Adams Calls for a Vigorous Role for

Government (1824)

John Quincy Adams was one of the most brilliant men to occupy the White House. A deeply religious man, he read the Bible at least three times a day--once in English, once in German, and once in French. He was fluent in seven languages, including Greek and Latin.

But Adams, like his father, lacked the political and personal skills necessary to win support for his programs. His adversaries mockingly described him as a "chip off the old iceberg." But his problems did not arise exclusively from his temperament. His misfortune was to serve as President at a time of growing partisan divisions. The Republican party had split into two distinct camps. Adams and his supporters, known as the National Republicans, favored a vigorous role in promoting economic growth, while the Jacksonian Democrats demanded a limited government and strict adherence to laissez-faire principles.

In this letter, Adams observes that throughout his political career he believed that the central government was responsible for maintaining what has come to be called the nation's infrastructure.

Document: Certainly it would have been more auspicious to my interests that the popular demonstrations made in Pennsylvania in favor of Genl. Jackson should have been given my support! But the next best thing to have happened is that which has already occurred....

The papers at Cincinnati, the principal point of unavailing opposition to me in Ohio, have begun to assume a friendlier tone and do harmonize more with the residue of that State. In short, every where in the West my ground is not only maintained, but there is a sensible & sure progress making in my prospects. My cause, perhaps, feels the want of some well established democratic press in the large cities to sustain it, as suggested by you, but this disadvantage is less, in consequence of the very great division among the presses there, and the reciprocal abuse which is so copiously lavished upon their respective favorites. Will not the moderate portion of the community, disgusted with those who are, at the same time, the objects of unmerited calumny and undeserved eulogy, finally rather concentrate their votes upon one who has been held up neither to their delectation nor idolatry?...

On the matter of fact, respecting the part which I asked on the question of Gradual Emancipation, debated in this state [Kentucky] many years ago, on which you desire information, I am sorry that I am not able to transmit you any from the record. All that I can communicate is preserved now by tradition, but is known to hundreds within and without this state. In 1798 and 1799 the question of a new Convention to amend and alter our State Constitution afflicted & divided this State. One of the grounds upon which it was supported and approached was that of introducing a provision similar to what is contained in your Abolition act, for the gradual emancipation of slaves. I took the side of a new Convention, and that of gradual emancipation. We carried the question of Convention, and then came on, in the year 1799, the election of members to it. Emancipation & antiemancipation tickets were formed. The greatest animation every where prevailed. I was then about 23, too young to be a member of the Convention; but I zealously supported the emancipation ticket, in all circles, public descriptions and news papers....We were opposed by...John Breckenridge, then the most powerful & prominent Citizen of this State.... The slave interest was too predominant for us and we were beaten at the elections, but in several important ones, we lost by very small majorities. My opinion is unchanged. I advised the Delegate from Missouri to strive to get a provision inserted in the Constitution of that State for gradual emancipation. The expediency of the measure, I think depends, in some degree, upon the relative proposition of the two races existing in any State in which it may be proposed. Here my opinion was and is that the African portion of the community is not so large as to make any hazard to the purity & safety of Society by a gradual and prepared emancipation of the offspring. However, should my friends think it useful to make any public allusion to the incident I have been relating, in my early life, perhaps it would not be proper to refer to present opinions, lest it should be said that these result from sinister motives.

Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute

Additional information: John Quincy Adams to John McLean

Anonymous letter to the Columbian Observer, (1825)

1 Accused Henry Clay of making a corrupt deal with John Quincy Adams during the 1824 presidential election. According to the letter, Clay used his influence as Speaker of the House to secure Adams' victory in exchange for being appointed as Secretary of State. This accusation became known as the "Corrupt Bargain" and was a significant political scandal of the time.

Document:

Thomas R. Dew on the Virginia Legislative Debate following Nat Turner's Insurrection (1832

During the late eighteenth century, the South was unique among slave societies in its openness to antislavery ideas. In Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina, Quakers freed more than 1500 slaves. Scattered Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist ministers condemned slavery as a sin "contrary to the word of God."

By the 1830s, however, the South's openness to antislavery ideas had ended. State legislatures adopted laws suppressing criticism of slavery. White Southerners stopped referring to the institution as a necessary evil, and instead began to defend slavery as a positive good. By the 1840s, a new, more explicitly racist rationale for slavery had emerged.

Only once, in the wake of Nat Turner's insurrection, did a southern state openly debate the possibility of ending slavery. These debates in the Virginia legislature in January and February 1832 ended with the defeat of proposals to abolish slavery. In the following selection, Thomas R. Dew (1802-1846), an influential profesor of political economy at the College of William and Mary, discusses the legislative debate. Dew's predecessors at William and Mary, George Wythe (1726-1806) and St. George Tucker (1752-1827), had abhorred slavery.

Document: .In our Southern slave-holding country, the question of emancipation has never been seriously discussed in any of our legislatures, until the whole subject, under the most exciting circumstances, was, during the last winter, brought up for discussion in the Virginia Legislature, and plans of partial or total abolition were earnestly pressed upon the attention of that body. It is well known, that during the last summer, in the county of Southampton in Virginia, a few slaves, led on by Nat Turner, rose in the night, and murdered in the most inhuman and shocking manner, between sixty and seventy of the unsuspecting whites of that county. The news, of course, was rapidly diffused, and with it consternation and dismay were spread throughout the State, destroying for a time all feeling of security and confidence; and even when subsequent development had proved, that the conspiracy had been originated by a fanatical Negro preacher, (whose confessions proved beyond a doubt mental aberration,) and that this conspiracy embraced but few slaves, all of whom had paid the penalty of their crimes, still the excitement remained, still the repose of the Commonwealth was disturbed,--for the ghastly horrors of the Southampton tragedy could not immediately be banished from the mind--and Rumour, too, with her thousand tongues, was busily engaged in spreading tales of disaffection, plots, insurrections, and even massacres, which frightened the timid and harassed and mortified the whole of the slave-holding population. During this period of excitement, when reason was almost banished from the mind, and the imagination was suffered to conjure up the most appalling phantom, and picture to itself a crisis in the vista of futurity, when the overwhelming numbers of the blacks would rise superior to all restraint, and involve the fairest portion of our land in universal ruin and desolation, we are not to wonder, that even in the lower part of Virginia, many should have seriously inquired, if this supposed monstrous evil could not be removed from our bosom. Some looked to the removal of the free people of colour by the efforts of the Colonization Society, as an antidote to all our ills. Some were disposed to strike at the root of the evil--to call on the General Government for aid, and by the labors of Hercules, to extirpate the curse of slavery from the land. Others again, who could not bear that Virginia should stand towards the Central Government (whose unconstitutional action she had ever been foremost to resist,) in the attitude of a suppliant, looked forward to the legislative action of the State as capable of achieving the desired result. In this state of excitement and unallayed apprehension, the Legislature met, and plans for abolition were proposed and earnestly advocated in debate.

Upon the impropriety of this debate, we beg leave to make a few observations. Any scheme of abolition proposed so soon after the Southampton tragedy, would necessarily appear to be the result of the most inhuman massacre. Suppose the Negroes, then, to be really anxious for their emancipation, no matter on what terms, would not the extraordinary effect produced on the legislature by the Southampton insurrection, in all probability, have a tendency to excite another? And we must recollect, from the nature of things, no plan of abolition could act suddenly on the whole mass of slave population in the State. Mr. Randolph's was not even to commence its operation until 1840. Waiting then, one year or more, until the excitement could be allayed and the empire of reason could once more have been established, would surely have been productive of no injurious consequences; and, in the mean time, a Legislature could have been selected which would much better have represented the views and wishes of their constituents on this vital question. Virginia could have ascertained the sentiments and wishes of other slave-holding States, whose concurrence, if not absolutely necessary, might be highly desirable, and should have been sought after and attended to, at least as a matter of State courtesy. Added to this, the texture of the Legislature was not of that character calculated to ensure the confidence of the people in a movement of this kind.... It appears...that the Legislature was composed of an unusual number of young and inexperienced members, elected in the month of April previous to the Southampton massacre, and at a time of profound tranquility and repose, when of course the people were not disposed to call from their retirement their most distinguished and experienced citizens.

Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832 (Richmond, 1832)

Source: Thomas R. Dew, Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832 (Richmond, 1832)

South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification (1832)

1 The South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification (1832) declared that the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and void within the state. South Carolina threatened to secede if the tariffs were enforced. President Andrew Jackson opposed this, asserting federal authority and pushing for the Force Bill to use military power if needed. The crisis was resolved in 1833 with a compromise that gradually lowered the tariffs, and South Carolina repealed its ordinance, though it symbolically nullified the Force Bill. The event deepened tensions between the North and South, foreshadowing the Civil War.

Document: An ordinance to nullify certain acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws laying duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities.

Whereas the Congress of the United States by various acts, purporting to be acts laying duties and imposts on foreign imports, but in reality intended for the protection of domestic manufactures and the giving of bounties to classes and individuals engaged in particular employments, at the expense and to the injury and oppression of other classes and individuals, and by wholly exempting from taxation certain foreign commodities, such as are not produced or manufactured in the United States, to afford a pretext for imposing higher and excessive duties on articles similar to those intended to be protected, bath exceeded its just powers under the constitution, which confers on it no authority to afford such protection, and bath violated the true meaning and intent of the constitution, which provides for equality in imposing the burdens of taxation upon the several States and portions of the confederacy: And whereas the said Congress, exceeding its just power to impose taxes and collect revenue for the purpose of effecting and accomplishing the specific objects and purposes which the constitution of the United States authorizes it to effect and accomplish, hath raised and collected unnecessary revenue for objects unauthorized by the constitution.

We, therefore, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities, and now having actual operation and effect within the United States, and, more especially, an act entitled "An act in alteration of the several acts imposing duties on imports," approved on the nineteenth day of May, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight and also an act entitled "An act to alter and amend the several acts imposing duties on imports," approved on the fourteenth day of July, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens; and all promises, contracts, and obligations, made or entered into, or to be made or entered into, with purpose to secure the duties imposed by said acts, and all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void.

And it is further ordained, that it shall not be lawful for any of the constituted authorities, whether of this State or of the United States, to enforce the payment of duties imposed by the said acts within the limits of this State; but it shall be the duty of the legislature to adopt such measures and pass such acts as may be necessary to give full effect to this ordinance, and to prevent the enforcement and arrest the operation of the said acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States within the limits of this State, from and after the first day of February next, and the duties of all other constituted authorities, and of all persons residing or being within the limits of this State, and they are hereby required and enjoined to obey and give effect to this ordinance, and such acts and measures of the legislature as may be passed or adopted in obedience thereto.

And it is further ordained, that in no case of law or equity, decided in the courts of this State, wherein shall be drawn in question the authority of this ordinance, or the validity of such act or acts of the legislature as may be passed for the purpose of giving effect thereto, or the validity of the aforesaid acts of Congress, imposing duties, shall any appeal be taken or allowed to the Supreme Court of the United States, nor shall any copy of the record be permitted or allowed for that purpose; and if any such appeal shall be attempted to be taken, the courts of this State shall proceed to execute and enforce their judgments according to the laws and usages of the State, without reference to such attempted appeal, and the person or persons attempting to take such appeal may be dealt with as for a contempt of the court.

And it is further ordained, that all persons now holding any office of honor, profit, or trust, civil or military, under this State (members of the legislature excepted), shall, within such time, and in such manner as the legislature shall prescribe, take an oath well and truly to obey, execute, and enforce this ordinance, and such act or acts of the legislature as may be passed in pursuance thereof, according to the true intent and meaning of the same, and on the neglect or omission of any such person or persons so to do, his or their office or offices shall be forthwith vacated, and shall be filled up as if such person or persons were dead or had resigned; and no person hereafter elected to any office of honor, profit, or trust, civil or military (members of the legislature excepted), shall, until the legislature shall otherwise provide and direct, enter on the execution of his office, or be he any respect competent to discharge the duties thereof until he shall, in like manner, have taken a similar oath; and no juror shall be impaneled in any of the courts of this State, in any cause in which shall be in question this ordinance, or any act of the legislature passed in pursuance thereof, unless he shall first, in addition to the usual oath, have taken an oath that he will well and truly obey, execute, and enforce this ordinance, and such act or acts of the legislature as may be passed to carry the same into operation and effect, according to the true intent and meaning thereof.

And we, the people of South Carolina, to the end that it may be fully understood by the government of the United States, and the people of the co-States, that we are determined to maintain this our ordinance and declaration, at every hazard, do further declare that we will not submit to the application of force on the part of the federal government, to reduce this State to obedience, but that we will consider the passage, by Congress, of any act authorizing the employment of a military or naval force against the State of South Carolina, her constitutional authorities or citizens; or any act abolishing or closing the ports of this State, or any of them, or otherwise obstructing the free ingress and egress of vessels to and from the said ports, or any other act on the part of the federal government, to coerce the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass her commerce or to enforce the acts hereby declared to be null and void, otherwise than through the civil tribunals of the country, as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union; and that the people of this State will henceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States; and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.

Done in convention at Columbia, the twenty-fourth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and in the fifty-seventh year of the Declaration of the Independence of the United States of America.

Jackson’s Proclamation Regarding Nullification, (1832)

President Andrew Jackson issued a strong proclamation against South Carolina's ordinance of nullification, which declared federal tariffs null and void within the state. Jackson asserted the supremacy of federal law and warned that secession was illegal. He emphasized the need for national unity and stated that the federal government would use force if necessary to uphold the law.

Document: Whereas a convention assembled in the state of South Carolina have passed an ordinance, by which they declare "that the several acts and parts of acts of the congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities, and now having actual operation and effect within the United States, and more especially "two acts for the same purposes, passed on the 29th of May, 1828, and on the 14th of July, 1832," are unauthorised by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null and void, and no law," nor binding on the citizens of that state or its officers: and by the said ordinance it is further declared to be unlawful for any of the constituted authorities of the state, or of the United States, to enforce the payment of the duties imposed by the said acts within the same state, and that it is the duty of the legislature to pass such laws as may be necessary to give full effect to the said ordinance: ...

The ordinance is founded, not on the indefeasible right of resisting acts which are plainly unconstitutional, and too oppressive to be endured, but on the strange position that any one state may not only declare an act of congress void, but prohibit its execution—that they may do this consistently with the constitution—that the true construction of that instrument permits a state to retain its place in the union, and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional. It is true, they add, that, to justify this abrogation of a law, it must be palpably contrary to the constitution; but it is evident, that to give the right of resisting laws of that description, coupled with the uncontrolled right to decide what laws deserve that character, is to give the power of resisting all laws. For as by the theory there is no appeal, the reasons alleged by the state, good or bad, must prevail. If it should be said that public opinion is a sufficient check against the abuse of this power, it may be asked why it is not deemed a sufficient guard against the passage of an unconstitutional act by congress. There is, however, a restraint in this last case, which makes the assumed power of a state more indefensible, and which does not exist in the other. There are two appeals from an unconstitutional act passed by congress – one to the judicary, the other to the people and the states. There is no appeal from the state decision in theory: and the practical illustration shows that the courts are closed against an application to review it, both judges and jurors being sworn to decide in its favor. But reasoning on this subject is superfluous when our social compact in express terms declares, that the laws of the United States, its constitution, and treaties made under it, are the supreme law of the land: and, for greater caution, adds, "that the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." And it may be asserted, without fear of refutation, that no federative government could exist without a similar provision. Look for a moment to the consequence. If South Carolina considers the revenue laws unconstitutional, and have a right to prevent their execution in the port of Charleston, there would be a clear constitutional objection to their collection in every other port, and no revenue could be collected any where; for all imposts must be equal. ...

If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the union would have been dissolved in its infancy. ...

If the doctrine of a state veto upon the laws of the union carries with it internal evidence of its impracticable absurdity, our constitutional history will also afford abundant proof that it would have been repudiated with indignation, had it been proposed to form a feature in our government. ...

I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNION, CONTRADICTED EXPRESSLY BY THE LETTER OF THE CONSTITUTION, UNAUTHORIZED BY ITS SPIRIT, INCONSISTENT WITH EVERY PRINCIPLE ON WHICH IT WAS FOUNDED, AND DESTRUCTIVE OF THE GREAT OBJECTIVE FOR WHICH IT WAS FORMED.

After this general view of the leading principle, we must examine the particular application of it which is made in the ordinance.

The preamble rests its justification on these grounds: It assumes as a fact that the obnoxious laws, although they purport to be laws for raising revenue, were in reality intended for the protection of manufactures, which purpose it asserts to be unconstitutional;—that the operation of these laws is unequal;—that the amount raised by them is greater than is required by the wants of the government;—and, finally, that the proceeds are to be applied to objects unauthorised by the constitution. These are the only causes alleged to justify an open opposition to the laws of the country, and a threat of seceding from the union if any attempt should be made to enforce them. The first virtually acknowledges that the law in question was passed under a power expressly given by the constitution, to lay and collect imposts; but its constitutionality is drawn in question from the motives of those who passed it.—However apparent this purpose may be in the present case, nothing can be more dangerous than to admit the position that an unconstitutional purpose, entertained by the members who assent to a law enacted under a constitutional power, shall make that law void; for how is that purpose to be ascertained? Who is to make the scrutiny? How often may bad purposes be falsely imputed? in how many cases are they concealed by false professions? in how many is no declaration of motive made?—Admit this doctrine, and you give to the states an uncontrolled right to decide, and every law may be annulled under this pretext. If, therefore, the absurd and dangerous doctrine should be admitted, that a state may annul an unconstitutional law, or one that it deems such, it will not apply to the present case.

The next objection is, that the laws in question operate unequally. This objection may be made with truth to every law that has been or can be passed. The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality. If the unequal operation of a law makes it unconstitutional, and if all laws of that description may be abrogated by any state for that cause, then indeed is the federal constitution unworthy of the slightest effort for its preservation. ...

In vain have these sages [the framers of the Constitution] declared that congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises—in vain have they provided that they shall have power to pass laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry those powers into execution; that those laws and that constitution shall be the "supreme law of the land; and that the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." ... Vain provisions! ineffectual restrictions! vile profanation of oaths! miserable mockery of legislation! if a bare majority of the voters in any one state may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free from its operation— ...

The constitution declares that the judicial powers of the United States extend to cases arising under the laws of the United States, and that such laws, the constitution and treaties shall be paramount to the state constitutions and laws. The judiciary act prescribes the mode by which the case may be brought before a court of the United States, by appeal, when a state tribunal shall decide against this provision of the constitution. The ordinance declares there shall be no appeal; makes the state law paramount to the constitution and laws of the United States; forces judges and jurors to swear that they will disregard their provisions; and even makes it penal in a suitor to attempt relief by appeal. It further declares that it shall not be lawful for the authorities of the United States, or of that state, to enforce the payment of duties imposed by the revenue laws within its limits.

Here is a law of the United States, not even pretended to be unconstitutional, repealed by the authority of a small majority of the voters of a single state. Here is a provision of the constitution which is solemnly abrogated by the same authority.

On such expositions and reasonings, the ordinance grounds not only an assertion of the right to annul the laws of which it complains, but to enforce it by a threat of seceding from the union, if any attempt is made to execute them.

This right to secede is deduced from the nature of the constitution, which, they say, is a compact between sovereign states, who have preserved their whole sovereignty, and, therefore, are subject to no superior; that, because they made the compact, they can break it when, in their opinion, it has been departed from by the other states. Fallacious as this course of reasoning is, it enlists state pride, and finds advocates in the honest prejudices of those who have not studied the nature of our government sufficiently to see the radical error on which it rests. ...

The constitution of the United States, then, forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact between the states, or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a government in which all the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the states: they retained all the power they did not grant. But each state having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute, jointly with the other states a single nation, can not from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation; and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense against the whole union. To say that any state may at pleasure secede from the union, is to say that the United States are not a nation; because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connexion with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms; and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent on a failure.

Because the union was formed by compact, it is said the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it: but it is precisely because it is a compact that they cannot. A compact is an agreement or binding obligation. ... An attempt by force of arms to destroy a government, is an offense, by whatever means the constitutional compact may have been formed; and such government has the right, by the law of self-defence, to pass acts for punishing the offender, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed, by the constitutional act. In our system, although it is modified in the case of treason, yet authority is expressly given to pass all laws necessary to carry its powers into effect, and under this grant provision has been made for punishing acts which obstruct the due administration of the laws. ...

This, then, is the position in which we stand. A small majority of the citizens of one state in the union have elected delegates to a state convention: that convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of the United States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member of the union. The governor of that state has recommended to the legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect, and that he may be empowered to give clearances to vessels in the name of the State. No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended, and it is the intent of this instrument to PROCLAIM not only that the duty imposed on me by the constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," shall be performed to the extent of the powers already vested in me by law, or of such other as the wisdom of congress shall devise and intrust to me for that purpose; but to warn the citizens of South Carolina, who have been deluded into an opposition to the laws, of the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and disorganizing ordinance of the convention,—to exhort those who have refused to support it to persevere in their determination to uphold the constitution and laws of their country, and to point out to all the perilous situation into which the good people of that state have been led,—and that the course they are urged to pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very state whose rights they affect to support. ...

If your leaders could succeed in establishing a separation, what would be your situation? Are you united at home—are you free from the apprehension of civil discord, with all its fearful consequences? Do our neighboring republics, every day suffering some new revolution or contending with some new insurrection,—do they excite your envy? But the dictates of a high duty oblige me solemnly to announce that you can not succeed. The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject—my duty is emphatically pronounced in the constitution. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you—they could not have been deceived themselves. They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion; but be not deceived by names; disunion, by armed force, is TREASON. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences,—on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment—on your unhappy state will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. ...

Having the fullest confidence in the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties which has been expressed, I rely with equal confidence on your undivided support in my determination to execute the laws—to preserve the union by all constitutional means—to arrest; if possible, by moderate and firm measures, the necessity of a recourse to force; and, if it be the will of heaven that the recurrence of its primeval curse on man for the shedding of a brother's blood should fall upon our land, that it be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the United States.

Fellow citizens, The momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your government depends the decision of the great question it involves, whether your sacred union will be preserved, and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. ...

May the Great Ruler of nations grant that the signal blessings with which He has favored ours, may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost: and may His wise Providence bring those who have produced this crisis, to see the folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife: and inspire a returning veneration for that union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire.

In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, having signed the same with my hand.

Done at the city of Washington this 10th day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two and of the Independence of the United States the fifty-seventh.

ANDREW JACKSON.

By the President.

“The Constitution is not a Compact,” Daniel Webster

(1833)

The “compact theory” of the Constitution first announced in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions ultimately became the basis of far more radical theories of state rights. In 1832, for example, the state of South Carolina relied on the constitutional compact theories of John C. Calhoun in its Ordinance of Nullification which declared the federal Tariff of 1828 to be “null and void.” South Carolina insisted that each state, as an independently sovereign member of the original compact, had the authority to “nullify” federal laws the state believed to be unconstitutional. In one of the most famous congressional speeches in American history, Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster rejected Calhoun’s compact theory and denied that states retained the sovereign right to nullify federal law. The Constitution, Webster declared, was not a compact among the states but an agreement between the sovereign people of the United States, a national people who pre-existed the creation of state governments. Whether a federal law violated the people’s Constitution was a matter left to the federal courts and not to the individual states. Webster’s nationalist understanding of the federal Constitution deeply influenced the constitutional theories of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican members of the Reconstruction Congress.

Document:

“An Addresses the People of Rhode Island,” Thomas Dorr (1834)

The most significant political innovation of the early nineteenth century was the abolition of property qualifications for voting and officeholding. Following the English principle that voters had to have a stake in the community, the American colonies generally required citizens to own a certain minimum amount of land in order to qualify to vote. Aspirants for public office were required to meet higher property qualifications. In South Carolina, a representative had to own at least five hundred acres of land and ten slaves. A number of colonies also imposed a religious test. In Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont, no atheist, Jew or Roman Catholic could hold public office.

By 1860, however, only two states, Rhode Island and South Carolina, still imposed property qualifications for voting, while another five states--Delaware, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island--restricted voting to male taxpayers. All other states and territories had adopted universal white manhood suffrage--a sharp contrast to England, which only with Reform Bill of 1832 gave most middle-class men the right to vote.

In most states, the transition from property qualifications to universal white manhood suffrage occurred gradually, without violence and with surprisingly little dissension. In Rhode Island, however, the issue provoked an episode known as the "Dorr War." In the 1830s, Rhode Island still operated under a royal charter granted in 1663, which restricted suffrage to landowners and their eldest sons. The charter lacked a bill of rights and grossly underrepresented growing industrial cities, such as Providence, in the state legislature. By 1841, just 11,239 out of 26,000 adult males were qualified to vote.

In 1834, Thomas W. Dorr (1805-1854), a Harvard-educated attorney launched a campaign to draft a new state constitution and repeal voting restrictions. In 1841, Dorr organized an extra-legal convention to frame a new constitution and abolish voting restrictions. The state's governor declared Dorr and his supporters guilty of insurrection, proclaimed a state of emergency, and called out the state militia. Dorr tried unsuccessfully to capture the state arsenal at Providence. He was arrested and found guilty of high treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. To appease popular resentment, the governor then pardoned Dorr and Rhode Island adopted a new constitution.

Document:

Annotation:

The most significant political innovation of the early nineteenth century was the abolition of property qualifications for voting and officeholding. Following the English principle that voters had to have a stake in the community, the American colonies generally required citizens to own a certain minimum amount of land in order to qualify to vote. Aspirants for public office were required to meet higher property qualifications. In South Carolina, a representative had to own at least five hundred acres of land and ten slaves. A number of colonies also imposed a religious test. In Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont, no atheist, Jew or Roman Catholic could hold public office.

By 1860, however, only two states, Rhode Island and South Carolina, still imposed property qualifications for voting, while another five states--Delaware, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island--restricted voting to male taxpayers. All other states and territories had adopted universal white manhood suffrage--a sharp contrast to England, which only with Reform Bill of 1832 gave most middle-class men the right to vote.

In most states, the transition from property qualifications to universal white manhood suffrage occurred gradually, without violence and with surprisingly little dissension. In Rhode Island, however, the issue provoked an episode known as the "Dorr War." In the 1830s, Rhode Island still operated under a royal charter granted in 1663, which restricted suffrage to landowners and their eldest sons. The charter lacked a bill of rights and grossly underrepresented growing industrial cities, such as Providence, in the state legislature. By 1841, just 11,239 out of 26,000 adult males were qualified to vote.

In 1834, Thomas W. Dorr (1805-1854), a Harvard-educated attorney launched a campaign to draft a new state constitution and repeal voting restrictions. In 1841, Dorr organized an extra-legal convention to frame a new constitution and abolish voting restrictions. The state's governor declared Dorr and his supporters guilty of insurrection, proclaimed a state of emergency, and called out the state militia. Dorr tried unsuccessfully to capture the state arsenal at Providence. He was arrested and found guilty of high treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. To appease popular resentment, the governor then pardoned Dorr and Rhode Island adopted a new constitution.

Document:

Fellow Citizens,

We desire...to disclaim, in the outset, any design or desire of offering the slightest disrespect to the memory, or the character of our predecessors, who first established that scheme of government, into which we are now anxious to carry the work of reformation. If any pride of ancestry may be indulged in this country, the people of Rhode Island may honorably exult in those noble forefathers, who abandoned their native home, and again, their adopted land, and encountered the dangers of a savage wilderness, for the sake of that great experiment of Religious Liberty, in the blessings of which we all participate....

Nor is the business, fellow-citizens, in which we are engaged, a mere narrow party-affair, got up to promote the sordid views of personal aggrandizement. The aspect of our assembly, composed, as it is, of men of all the political divisions in the State, affords sufficient evidence to the contrary....

We begin by inquiring whether it be consistent with the spirit of the Declaration of American Independence, and becoming the character of Rhode Island Republicans, any longer to acknowledge the charter of a British King as a Constitution of civil government?...

The Charter is farther essentially defective in having affixed a certain Representation to each town for all time to come; thus making no provision for the changes that might happen.... The town of Jamestown, for instance, sends one Representative to every 18 freemen...and the city of Providence but one Representative to every 275 freemen.... An inequality of representation like this is too unjust to be much longer tolerated.... This inequality of representation has had the effect of placing the majority of the qualified voters in this State, under the control of the minority....

Strange as it is, the State of Rhode Island, so far famed for Religious liberty, seems to have become insensible to the claims of Political liberty. It is the only State in this great Republican Confederacy in which the People have not limited the power of their Legislature by a written Constitution; the only State in the Union in which the People suffer a fair and equal representation of their interests to be defeated by a rotten borough system....

We contend then That a participation in the choice of those who make and administer laws is a Natural Right; which cannot be abridged nor suspended any farther than the greatest good of the greatest number imperative requires....

It is...objected to the doctrine of a natural right of suffrage, that Minors and Females are excluded from political privileges.... The restriction upon minors does not conflict in the least with any natural right; it acknowledges their rights, and only decides the period at which they shall commence and be exercised....

With regard to the exclusion of women from the exercise of political power, we are far enough from denying to them the possession of natural rights. It is well known that they formerly exercised the elective franchise in one of the States of this Union--New Jersey; and now that they have ceased to do so, the suspension of their rights rests, not upon any decree of mere force, but upon a just consideration of the best good of society, including that of the sex itself. Their own assent, it should be added, confirms this arrangement of their natural protectors; and being fully aware that the dignity and purity of their sex, character and example would be soon impaired in the conflicts of party strife, they have wisely consented to forego the nominal exercise of political power, and to rule mankind by the only absolute authority which is consistent with their greatest happiness....

Are those citizens who by an extension of suffrage would be admitted to vote, such a class of persons as are unfitted by their character to participate in the political privileges which they claim? We wish this question to be fairly met. Enough has been said in vague and general terms, about "unwholesome citizens," "persons not to be safely trusted," "without property and vicious"--about "protecting the sound part of the community against those who have nothing at stake in society".... Let those who use this language come out and say, if they will venture the assertion, that the body of traders and mechanics, and professional men, and sons of landholders, are the base and corrupt persons who are aimed at in these sweeping denunciations.

Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute

Additional information: Thomas W. Dorr, "An Address to the People of Rhode Island"

“Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United

States,” Samuel Morse (1835)

1 In 1835, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, expressed concerns about what he saw as a Catholic conspiracy to undermine American values and institutions. In his book "Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States," Morse argued that European Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, were part of a deliberate plot by the Vatican to gain political control in America. He feared that Catholic influence would lead to the erosion of Protestant values and the establishment of papal power in the United States. Morse's views reflected the growing nativist sentiment of the time, which was suspicious of immigration and Catholicism.

Document:

“ From Antislavery to Women's Rights,” Angelina Grimké (1838)

During the 1830s, a growing number of female abolitionists became convinced that women suffered legal and economic disabilities similar to those facing enslaved African Americans. Not only were women denied the right to vote and hold public office, they had no access to higher education and were excluded from most professional occupations. American law accepted the principle that a wife had no legal identity apart form her husband. She could not sue, she could not make a legal contract, nor could she own property. She was not permitted to control her own wages or gain custody of her children in case of separation or divorce.

In this selection, Angelina Grimké explains how the struggle against slavery sensitized female abolitionists to other, more subtle forms of bondage and coercion.

Document:The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have fought the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school of morals in our land--the school in which human rights are more fully investigated, and better understood and taught, than in any other....Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated.... Now if rights are founded in the nature of our moral being, then the mere circumstances of sex does not give to man higher rights and responsibilities, than to women.... To suppose that it does, would be to break up utterly the relations, of the two natures...exalting the animal nature into a monarch, and humbling the moral into a slave....

The regulation of duty by the mere circumstance of sex, rather than by the fundamental principle of moral being, has led to all that multifarious train of evils flowing out of the anti-christian doctrine of masculine and feminine virtues. By this doctrine, man has been converted into the warrior, and clothed with sternness...whilst woman has been taught to...sit as a dollar arrayed in "gold, and pearls, and costly array," to be admired for her personal charms, and carssed and humored like a spoiled child, or converted into a mere drudge to suit the convenience of her lord and master.... This principle has given to man a charter for the exercise of tyranny and selfishness, pride and arrogance, lust and brutal violence.... Instead of being a helpmeet to man, as a companion, a co-worker, an equal; she has been a mere appendage of his being, an instrument of his convenicence and pelasure, the pretty toy with which he whiled away his leisure moments, or the pet animal whom he humnored into playfulness and submission....

Dost thou ask me, if I would wiswh to see woman engaged int he contention and strife of sectarian controversy, or in the intrigues of political partizans? I say no! never--never. I rejoice that she does not stand on the same platform which man now occupies in these respects; but I mourn, also, that he should thus prostitute his higher nature, and vilely cast away his birthright.

Angelina Emily Grimke, Letter XII (October 2, 1837), Letters to Catherine E. Beecher (Boston: I. Knapp, 1838)

Additional information: Angelina Grimke, Letters to Catherine E. Beecher, 114-21.

Black Philadelphians Defend their Voting Rights (1838)

1 In 1838, Black Philadelphians defended their right to vote in response to a movement to disenfranchise them. In a public petition and speeches, they argued that as free citizens and taxpayers, they should have the same political rights as white men. They pointed to their contributions to society and the injustices of being excluded from voting based on race. Their defense of voting rights was part of a broader struggle for civil rights and equality, highlighting the ongoing fight for African American participation in the democratic process.

Document:FELLOW CITIZENS:— We appeal to you from the decision of the “Reform Convention,” which has stripped us of a right peaceably enjoyed during forty-seven years under the Constitution of this commonwealth. We honor Pennsylvania and her noble institutions too much to part with our birthright, as her free citizens, without a struggle. To all her citizens the right of suffrage is valuable in proportion as she is free; but surely there are none who can so ill afford to spare it as ourselves…

To us our right under the Constitution has been more precious, and our deprivation of it will be the more grievous, because our expatriation has come to be a darling project with many of our fellow citizens. Our abhorrence of a scheme which comes to us in the guise of Christian benevolence, and asks us to suffer ourselves to be transplanted to a distant and barbarous land…. We love our native country, much as it has wronged us; and in the peaceable exercise of our inalienable rights, we will cling to it. The immortal Franklin, and his fellow laborers in the cause of humanity, have bound us to our homes here with chains of gratitude. We are PENNSYLVANIANS, and we hope to see the day when Pennsylvania will have reason to be proud of us, as we believe she has now none to be ashamed. Will you starve our patriotism? Will you cast our hearts out of the treasury of the commonwealth? Do you count our enmity better than our friendship?…

We were regarded as citizens by those who drew up the articles of confederation between the States, in 1778…On the adoption of the present Constitution of the United States no change was made as to the rights of citizenship. This is explicitly proved by the Journal of Congress….

We ask your attention, fellow citizens, to facts and testimonies which go to show that, considering the circumstances in which we have been placed, our country has no reason to be ashamed of us, and that those have the most occasion to blush to whom nature has given the power.

By the careful inquiry of a committee appointed by the “Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery,” it has been ascertained that the colored population of Philadelphia and its suburbs, numbering 18,768 souls, possess at the present time, of real and personal estate, not less than $1,350,000. They have paid for taxes during the last year $3,252.83, for house, water, and ground rent, $166,963.50. This committee estimate the income to the holders of real estate occupied by the colored people, to be 7½ per cent. on a capital of about $2,000,000. Here is an addition to the wealth of their white brethren. But the rents and taxes are not all; to pay them, the colored people must be employed in labor, and here is another profit to the whites, for no man employs another unless he can make his labor profitable to himself. For a similar reason, a profit is made by all the whites who sell to colored people the necessaries or luxuries of life. Though the aggregate amount of the wealth derived by the whites from our people can only be conjectured, its importance is worthy of consideration by those who would make it less by lessening our motive to accumulate for ourselves.

Nor is the profit derived from us counterbalanced by the sums which we in any way draw from the public treasures. From a statement published by order of the Guardians of the Poor of Philadelphia, in 1830, it appears that out of 549 out-door poor relived during the year, only 22 were persons of color, being about four per cent. of the whole number, while the ratio of our population to that of the city and suburbs exceeds 8¼ per cent…

That we are not neglectful of our religious interests, nor of the education of our children, is shown by the fact that there are among us in Philadelphia, Pittsburg , York, West Chester, and Columbia, 22 churches, 48 clergymen, 26 day schools, 20 Sabbath schools, 125 Sabbath school teachers, 4 literary societies, 2 public libraries, consisting of about 800 volumes, besides 8,333 volumes in private libraries, 2 tract societyes, 2 Bible societies, and 7 temperance societies….

Are we to be disfranchised, lest the purity of the white blood should be sullied by an intermixture with ours? It seems to us that our white brethren might well enough reserve their fear, till we seek such alliance with them. We ask no social favors. We would not willingly darken the doors of those to whom the complexion and features, which our Maker has given us, are disagreeable. The territories of the commonwealth are sufficiently ample to afford us a home without doing violence to the delicate nerves of our white brethren, for centuries to come. Besides, we are not intruders here, nor were our ancestors. Surely you ought to bear as unrepiningly the evil consequences of your fathers’ guilt, as we those of our fathers’ misfortune. Proscription and disfranchisement are the last things in the world to alleviate these evil consequences. Nothing, as shameful experience has already proved, can so powerfully promote the evil which you profess to deprecate, as the degradation of our race by the oppressive rule of yours. Give us that fair and honorable ground which self-respect requires to stand on, and the dreaded amalgamation, if it take place at all, shall be by your own fault, as indeed it always has been. We dare not give full vent to the indignation we feel on this point, but we will not attempt wholly to conceal it. We ask a voice in the disposition of those public resources which we ourselves have helped to earn; we claim a right to be heard, according to our numbers, in regard to all those great public measures which involve our lives and fortunes, as well as those of our fellow citizens; we assert our right to vote at the polls as a shield against that strange species of benevolence which seeks legislative aid to banish us—and we are told that our white fellow citizens cannot submit to an intermixture of the races!…

We would not misrepresent the motives of the Convention; but we are constrained to believe that they have laid our rights a sacrifice on the altar of slavery. We do not believe our disfranchisement would have been proposed, but for the desire which is felt by political aspirants to gain the favor of the slave-holding States. This is not the first time that northern statesmen have “bowed the knee to the dark spirit of slavery,” but it is the first time that they have bowed so low!…

Firm upon our old Pennsylvania BILL OF RIGHTS, and trusting in a God of Truth and justice, we lay our claim before you, with the warning that no amendments of the present Constitution can compensate for the loss of its foundation principle of equal rights, nor for the conversion into enemies of 40,000 friends.

In behalf of the Committee, ROBERT PURVIS, Chairman.

 

Robert Purvis, Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: 1838), 1-18.

“The Rights of Colored Men,” William Yates (1838)

In 1838, abolitionist William Yates published the first legal treatise on the rights of free black Americans. Yates insisted that all free Americans were citizens who were entitled to the “privileges and immunities” guaranteed to citizens in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution. Yates’s call for the equal rights of citizenship relating to “persons and to things; his acquisitions of property by contract, and by inheritance; and even the soil which no alien inherits” became law in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and became one of the fundamental principles underlying Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.

Document: In regard

to citizenship, this is a subject of great importance—an exclusion from suffrage is a withholding

of political rights only, but the question of citizenship strikes deeper; deny a man this, and his

personal rights are not safe. He may be hindered from going into a State—or, if he enters it, he

may be expelled, or treated as an alien. On this principle Missouri attempted to prohibit free

colored men from coming into, or settling in the State, on any pretext whatever.The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the

privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” Const. U. S. Art. iv. Sec. 2, clause 1.These are important and valuable privileges. Do they belong to free persons of

color? If they were white it is conceded they would. The point then turns on a distinction of color.

But such a distinction, as the basis of fundamental rights, is not recognized by the common law

of England, or the principles of the British constitution; nor by our own declaration of

independence.Free persons of color are human beings, natives of the country—for such of we

speak—and owe the same obligations to the State, and to its government as white citizens.

They have an equal right to liberty—to the enjoyment and security of home and family—and of a

good name and character as white men; so, to all the rights of conscience—to read, write, and

print—to speak, teach, and debate—to preach, and worship God according to its dictates—their

title as the same as that of white men. They have the same right to the rewards of their industry,

as white men.—They may buy, hold, or sell real or personal estate, the same—and they are as

fully entitled to the protection of the law—have a right to sue—to jury trial—to a verdict and

judgment—to execution—to habeas corpus, and in some of the States to the writ of homine

replegiando, or writ of personal replevin, as white men.—For them all our courts, from the

highest to the lowest, are as open, and the officers as much bound to issue, to obey, and

execute process, as for white men; and they equally, as white citizens, enjoy the advantages of

the public mail.Thus we see the colored man is not of an intermediate

class—his relations to society are the same as others; his absolute and relative rights; his rights

of persons and to things; his acquisitions of property by contract, and by inheritance; and even

the soil which no alien inherits, are the same. Every favor or right conferred on the citizens by

general legislation, reaches him, and every requisition demands his obedience.

James Buchanan on the Presidential Election (1840)

During the 32 years following Andrew Jackson's election to the presidency, the Democratic party controlled the White House all but eight years. It would be a mistaken, however, to assume that the Jacksonians faced no effective opposition. Although it took a number of years for Jackson's opponents to coalesce into an effective native political organization, by the mid-1830s, the Whig Party was able to battle the Democrats on almost equal terms throughout the country, especially on the state and local level.

The Whigs, a coalition united by their hatred of Jackson and his "usurpations" of congressional and judicial authority, took their name from the seventeenth century English Whigs who had defended English liberties against the pro-Catholic Stuart Kings.

In 1836, the Whigs ran three regional candidates against Martin Van Buren. The party strategy was to follow the example of 1824 and throw the election into the House of Representatives, where the Whigs would unite behind a single candidate. But Van Buren easily defeated all his Whig opponents.

In 1840, William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), who had crushed an Indian coalition at the Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana in 1811, received the Whig's united support. The 1840 presidential campaign was one of the most exciting and colorful in American history. Although Harrison was college educated and brought up on a plantation with 200 slaves, his Democratic opponents had dubbed him the "log cabin" candidate who was happiest on his backwoods farm sipping hard cider. Harrison's supporters enthusiastically seized on this image and promoted it a number of colorful ways. They distributed barrels of hard cider, passed out campaign hats and placards, and mounted log cabins on floats.

The Whig campaign brought many innovations to the art of electioneering. For the first time, a presidential candidate spoke out on his own behalf. Harrison's backers also coined the first campaign slogans: "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," "Van, Van is a used up man." While defending their man as the "peoples'" candidate, the Whigs heaped an avalanche of personal abuse on his Democratic opponent. They accused President Martin Van Buren of eating off of golden plates and lace table cloths and drinking French wines.

The Harrison campaign provided a number of effective lessons for future politicians, notably an emphasis on symbols and imagery over ideas and substance. Fearful of alienating voters, the political convention that nominated Harrison adopted no party platform. Harrison himself said nothing during the campaign about his principles or proposals. He followed the suggestion of an adviser that he run on his military record and offer no indication "about what he thinks now, or what he will do hereafter."

In 1840, voter turnout was the highest it had ever been in a presidential election: nearly 80 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. The log cabin candidate won a landslide victory in the electoral college. In the following selection, James Buchanan (1791-1868), a future Democratic President, comments on the 1840 presidential campaign.

Document: We are now in the midst of a higher political excitement than I have ever yet witnessed; and it extends over every portion of the Union. The Whigs are perfectly confident of electing Harrison, & they even begin to talk about who shall be the members of his Cabinet. Their exertions have been prodigious, and at one period many of our friends began to be alarmed for the result. The opposition at one time confidently hoped to carry Pennsylvania, in consequence of the threatened division in our ranks in relation to the indulgence given to the Bank. This division has been entirely healthy, at least so far as regards M[artin] Van Buren, & the Democracy of the Keystone will move in solid & irresistible column at the Presidential election.... I cannot see how it is possible to defeat Mr. Van Buren. We calculate with much confidence that he will receive every vote south of the Potomack & Ohio, with the exception of Kentucky & possibly Louisiana. We have at least an equal chance for New York & Ohio. Instead of avowing any great principles for the regulation of their conduct, the Whigs endeavored to raise a hurrah all over the Country in favor of their military chieftain. They have built Log Cabins & drunk hard cider every where. This senseless clamor of Log Cabins & hard cider is an insult to the understandings of the people & is everywhere beginning to react with tremendous force against its authors. The hard cider will become sour vinegar, unless I am greatly mistaken, before the end of the dog days. Still it cannot be denied that the hard times & low prices have done their cause much good. I repeat, I entertain little fear of the result.

Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute

Additional information: James Buchanan to Henry A. Muhlenberg

The Liberty Party (1840)

Annotation:

Antislavery agitation provoked a harsh public reaction in North as well as the South. States debated "gag" laws to suppress antislavery agitation, and the U.S. Postmaster General refused to deliver antislavery tracts to the South.

Abolitionists never expected such a reaction. "When we first unfurled the banner of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison wrote, "we did not anticipate that...the free states would voluntarily trample under foot all order, law and government, or brand the advocates of universal liberty as incendiaries." This harsh response produced division within the antislavery movement.

At the 1840 annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, abolitionists split over such questions as women's right to participate in the administration of the organization and the advisability of nominating abolitionists as independent political candidates. Garrison won control of the organization, and his opponents promptly walked out. From this point on, no single organization could speak for abolitionism.

Some abolitionists, led by Garrison, moved in a radical direction. They questioned whether the Bible represented the word of God, withdrew from membership in established churches that condoned slavery, refused to vote, and called for voluntary dissolution of the Union. In 1854, Garrison attracted widespread notoriety by publicly burning a copy of the Constitution, which he called "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell."

Other abolitionists looked to politics as the answer to ending slavery and in 1840 founded the Liberty party for that purpose. Under the leadership of Arthur and Lewis Tappan, wealthy New York businessmen, and James G. Birney, a former slaveholder, the Liberty party called on Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, end the interstate slave trade, and cease admitting new slave states to the Union. The party also sought the repeal of local and state laws in the North which discriminated against free blacks. The Liberty party nominated Birney for President in 1840, but gathered fewer than 7100 votes in its first campaign.

Gerrit Smith (1797-1874), a leading abolitionist and a wealthy New York landowner, gave away thousands of acres of land to African American and white workers, to allow them to set up farms. In this selection, he reports on the 1840 campaign.

Document: Election Day is past!--and now, in behalf of the friends of the slave in the County of Madison and State of New-York, I declare to you, that we "have fought a good fight--have kept the faith." We have "fought" earnestly, strenuously, untiringly. We have "kept" the whole antislavery "faith." We have stood up for all its righteous and glorious principles; and have stood by each other. We have pursued slavery, hotly and unsparingly, into all its hiding places, whether in the Church or in the State. We have dealt impartially with proslavery demagogues, and proslavery ministers, and proslavery schools, and proslavery churches--and unmasked them all.

At an early day, the duty of voting for the slave was felt by a few persons in this County. Our first systematic effort to get votes for him was in 1837. By means of much toil--of much riding, and writing, and speaking--we induced about fifty of the inhabitants of the County to vote that year upon anti-slavery principles.

In the year 1840, the year of the organization of the Liberty Party, about 230 anti-slavery votes were cast in this county....

In common with the great body of abolitionists, I had not, at this time [1839], given up my reliance on the interrogation-system [of asking Democratic and Whig candidates their stand on slavery]. But, very soon after, a train of thought passed through my mind, leaving the conviction that this reliance should be given up.... I saw now, for the first time, and I was surprised that I had not seen it before, that no National party in this country, whether ecclesiastical or political, is, so long as the system of American slavery endures, to be trusted on the question of slavery. It was now evident to me, that every such party is necessarily proslavery--and that it is so from the simple reason that the South, making slavery her paramount interest, will abide in no party, will come into no party, save on the condition that such party shall not attack slavery. Some may say that the Liberty Party is a National Party, and is, therefore, involved in my condemnation of all National Parties. To this I reply--that it is, in its hopes and objects, a National Party: but that, until the South has come into it, which cannot be until she has let go of slavery, it cannot be an actual National Party....

Additional information: Gerrit Smith, Report from the County of Madison [New York]

"Address to the Slaves," Henry Highland Garnet (1843)

In Buffalo, New York, Henry Highland Garnet gave his famous “An Address to the Slaves of the United States.” He called for the slaves of the South to refuse to work, to approach their masters and demand their freedom, and to resist their oppressors with force if necessary. Because it is such an influential “text,” it is easy to forget that Garnet’s 1843 address was spoken, not written, and rejected twice by the committee that heard it.

"Address Delivered at Seneca Falls," Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848)

In 1848, Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (181-1902) organized the first women's rights convention in history at Seneca Falls, New York. Participants drew up a declaration of sentiments that opened with the phrase "All men and women are created equal." Modelled after the Declaration of Independence, the document proclaimed that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." After listing a long string of inequities--including the double standard of sexual morality and the denial of the right to vote, to enter the professions, and to obtain a college education--it held that man "has endeavored in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life."

Among the resolutions adopted by the convention, only one was not ratified unanimously--that women be granted the right to vote. Of the 66 women and 34 men who signed the declaration of sentiments (including the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), only two lived to see the ratification of the women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution 72 years later.

Stanton, who had married the abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840 in a ceremony without the word "obey," insisted that the Declaration of Sentiments include a demand for woman suffrage. Portions of her address to the women's rights convention follow.

Document: We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed--to declare our right to befree as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and in case of separation, the children of her love; laws which make her the mere dependent on his bounty....

And, strange as it may seem to many, we now demand our right to vote according to the declaration of the government under which we live... To have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rumselling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized,w hle we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to the dignity fo woman to be longer quietly submitted to....

One common objection to this movement is, that if the

principles of freedom and equality which we advocate were put into practice, it would destroy all harmony in the domestic circle. Here let me ask, how many truly harmonious households have we now?... The only happy households we see now are those in which husband and wife share eqully in counsel and goverment." There can be no true dignity or independence where there is subordination tot he absolute will of another, no happiness without freedom.

The Free Soil Party (1848)

In 1848, antislavery Democrats and Conscience Whigs (in contrast to Cotton Whigs) merged with the Liberty party to form the Free Soil Party. Unlike the Liberty Party, which was dedicated to slavery's abolition and equal rights for blacks, the Free Soil party narrowed its demands to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and exclusion of slavery from the federal territories. The Free Soilers also wanted a homestead law to provide free land for western settlers, high tariffs to protect American industry, and federally-sponsored internal improvements.

The Free Soil Party nominated Martin Van Buren as its presidential candidate, even though Van Buren had supported the Gag Rule that had quashed consideration of abolitionist petitions while he was President. In the following letter, Gerrit Smith discusses Van Buren's nomination. In the election of 1848, Van Buren polled 291,000 votes, enough to split the Democratic vote and throw the election to the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor.

Document: I hardly need say, that I am deeply interested in the present movement against the extension of slavery; and that I infinitely prefer the election of the candidates, who are identified with it, to the election of the Whig and Democratic candidates. Gen. [Zachary] Taylor and Gen. [Lewis] Cass are proslavery candidates. Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Adams are antislavery candidates. The former are the shameless tools of the slave-power. The latter bravely resist it.

It is true, that, among all the persons, whom there was the least reason to believe the Buffalo Convention [of the Free Soil Party] would nominate for President, Mr. Van Buren was my preference. He was my preference, because I believed he would obtain a much larger vote than any of the others; and, that his nomination would go much farther than that of any of the others toward breaking up the great political parties, which, along with the ecclesiastical parties, are the chief shelters and props of slavery.

But it is not true that I shall vote for Mr. Van Buren. I can vote for no man for President of the United States, who is not an abolitionist; for no man, who votes for slaveholders, or for those, who do; for no man, whose understanding and heart would not prompt him to use the office, to the utmost, for the abolition of slavery. And, let me here confess, that I am not of the number of those, who believe, that the Federal Government has no higher power over slavery than to abolish it in the District of Columbia, and to abolish the inter-State traffic in human beings. On the contrary, I claim that this Government has power, under the Constitution, to abolish every part of American slavery, whether without, or within, the States; and that it is superlatively guilty against God and man for refusing thus to use it. The still higher ground do I take, that no man is fit for President of the United States, who does not scout the idea of the possibility of property in man, and who does not insist, that slavery is as utterly incapable of legalization, as is murder itself. Why is it not? Is it not as bad as murder? Is not, indeed, murder itself one of the elements in that matchless compound of enormous crimes?...There should be no surprise, that, from the day this Nation came into being until the present day, no white man has, in any one of the Southern States, been put to death, under the laws, for the murder of a slave.…

Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute

Additional information: Gerrit Smith to J.K. Ingalls

"Seneca Falls Declaration," Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848)

The first American Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19-20, 1848. Over the course of two days, convention members discussed and ultimately adopted a “Declaration of Sentiments,” which described the unjust and unequal treatment of women and presented twelve “resolutions” demanding legal and cultural reform. Initially drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Declaration echoed the language and cadence of the Declaration of Independence.  It then included a long list of grievances:  the restrictions that coverture placed on married women; the denial of other rights, particularly the vote, to all woman, be they married or unmarried; and structural inequalities that limited women’s opportunities generally. Most of these inequalities were not addressed until the twentieth century.  Although Black suffrage was secured by the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, women’s suffrage would not be obtained until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The Fourteenth Amendment’s protections of civil rights did not extend to questions involving discrimination on the basis of sex or gender until the 1970s.  Even then, the long history of legal restrictions noted in the Declaration of Sentiments continued to shape women’s claims to constitutional protections.

Document: When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankindrequires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer. while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

• He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

• He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men_both natives and foreigners.

• Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

• He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property. even to the wages she earns.

• He has made her, morally. an irresponsible being. as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband.

• In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master, the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty. and to administer chastisement.

• He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women, the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

• After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

• He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

• He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

• He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

• He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

• He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

• He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.

2. resolutions

WHEREAS, The great precept of nature is conceded to be, that "man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness." Blackstone in his Commentaries remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. and such of them as are valid, derive all their force. and all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,

Resolved,

That such laws as conflict, in any way with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other."

Resolved,

That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved,

That woman is man's equal, was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved,

That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want.

Resolved.

That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superionty. it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach. as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies

Resolved,

That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved,

That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert. Or in feats of the circus.

Resolved,

That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved,

That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Resolved,

That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, therefore.

That, being invested by the creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking. by any instrumentalities proper to be used. and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self- evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.

Resolved,

That the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit. and for the securing to women an equal participation with men in the various trades. professions. and commerce.