Transcript
A Beautiful Country
December 2, 1859
Charles Town, Virginia. December 2, 1859. Some fifteen hundred soldiers guard a field. The governor has kept civilians out.
The prisoner rides in on his own coffin, beside his jailer. He looks around and says it's a beautiful country.
Before leaving the jail, he handed a guard a note.
John Brown I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood.
A Virginia Military Institute professor, Thomas Jackson. Edmund Ruffin, who wants the South out of the Union. And an actor in a borrowed uniform, John Wilkes Booth.
Eighteen months later, the country he called beautiful was at war with itself.
In between came an election. Seven states left the Union before Lincoln took office. Why? Four of them wrote it down.
Harpers Ferry
October 16 – December 2, 1859
In October 1859, John Brown and twenty-one followers seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Five were Black.
The plan: arm enslaved people, then spread a revolt south through the mountains.
The first person the raiders killed was Heyward Shepherd, the railroad’s baggage master. He was a free Black man.
The first raider killed was Dangerfield Newby, who was trying to free his wife and children. His wife, Harriet, had written to him that spring.
Harriet Newby oh Dear Dangerfield com this fall with out fail monny or no money I want to see you so much that is one bright hope I have before me
No uprising came. Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee stormed the engine house where Brown held out.
Virginia tried him for treason against Virginia. At his sentencing, he spoke.
John Brown …mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country… I submit; so let it be done!
On the day he died, church bells tolled across the North. Republican leaders disowned him.
White Southerners heard the bells, not the denials.
Edmund Ruffin sent Brown’s pikes to Southern governors, each with a label. “Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren.”
Four Candidates
April – November 1860
In April 1860 the Democrats, the last party with voters in both North and South, met in Charleston. Southern delegates demanded federal protection for slavery in every territory. Douglas's men refused. About fifty Southerners walked out.
57 ballots Charleston · April 23 – May 3, 1860
The rest voted fifty-seven times and adjourned without a nominee.
The party split in two. Northern Democrats nominated Douglas. Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge.
Old Whigs formed the Constitutional Union Party. Its platform began by condemning party platforms. Its fans rang hand bells, for John Bell.
In Chicago the Republicans passed over their best-known man, Senator William Seward. On the third ballot they chose a safer one: Abraham Lincoln.
Their free-soil platform: no slavery in the territories, and no touching it in the states. Plus a tariff, free homesteads and a Pacific railroad.
Lincoln made no campaign speeches; candidates weren't supposed to. Douglas broke the rule and toured the South, warning against secession.
He grew them anyway.
In the Deep South, the fire-eaters made a promise: elect Lincoln, and we leave.
The Line
November 6–7, 1860
Lincoln spent election night in the Springfield telegraph office.
In ten Southern states, Lincoln’s name wasn’t on the ballot. In South Carolina, the legislature chose the electors.
He won every free state, though New Jersey split its electors, four to three. He won no slave state. One hundred eighty electoral votes.
But he took only about forty percent of the popular vote. So didn’t the Democrats’ split hand him the presidency?
Test it yourself.
In December, South Carolina described what you just saw.
Reading clerk A geographical line has been drawn across the Union,
Reading clerk and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man
Reading clerk to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.
Now the free states could elect a president without the South, if they held together.
The Union Is Dissolved!
December 1860 – February 1861
December 20, 1860. South Carolina’s convention voted 169 to nothing to leave the Union. That night they signed in Institute Hall, where the Democrats had split.
By February 1, six more states had followed: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.
In six of the first seven, more than two people in five were enslaved. Texas was the exception.
Nearly four million people were held in slavery. The law counted them as property, worth more than all the country’s railroads and factories combined.
Elsewhere, it wasn’t unanimous. In Georgia, Alexander Stephens argued against leaving.
Alexander H. Stephens In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause for any State to separate from the Union.
Georgia voted to go anyway, 208 to 89. Alabama split 61 to 39.
In Washington, President Buchanan had called secession revolution, and said he had no power to stop it.
Senator John Crittenden offered a last deal: restore the thirty-six thirty line. South of it, slavery would be protected, even in land taken later.
Lincoln had already sent word to his party.
Abraham Lincoln Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery.
Abraham Lincoln If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.
The deal died.
In Their Own Words
December 1860 – March 21, 1861
Lincoln and Stephens had been friends in Congress. In December 1860, Lincoln wrote to him privately.
Abraham Lincoln You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted.
the only substantial difference between us
Abraham Lincoln That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.
By February, Stephens was in Montgomery, Alabama, as vice president of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis was its president.
Four seceding states wrote down why they left. Here are their words.
Their constitution banned protective tariffs. It also protected slavery by name, in every state and every new territory.
Ten days later, in Savannah, Stephens explained the new government. He said the founders had thought slavery wrong, and called that an error.
Alexander H. Stephens Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.
After the war, Stephens described secession twice. In his private prison diary, he wrote:
Alexander H. Stephens Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession.
Three years later, in a book for the public, he called people who blamed slavery for the war "superficial observers." Who was each written for, and when?
Most historians today begin where the seceders began: with their own words.
4:30 A.M.
March 4 – April 14, 1861
March 4, 1861. Lincoln took the oath under a Capitol dome that was still half built.
Abraham Lincoln I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.
Congress had just proposed an amendment protecting slavery in the states forever. Lincoln said he had no objection. It changed nothing.
Abraham Lincoln In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
Major Robert Anderson's garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of food. Lincoln told South Carolina he'd send food only, no troops. Now the choice was theirs.
At 3:20 a.m. on April 12, Confederate officers handed Anderson a note. In one hour, the guns would open.
The war had begun.
After thirty-four hours and more than three thousand shots, Anderson surrendered. Nobody on either side had been killed.
The next day, as Anderson's men saluted their flag, a cartridge went off too soon. Private Daniel Hough was killed, usually counted as the war's first death.
Mary Boykin Chesnut People talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. They make no sign.
Mary Boykin Chesnut Are they stolidly stupid? or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?
The Border
April – July 1861
On April 15, Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand militia to retake the forts and enforce the laws.
Governors of the slave states still in the Union wired back.
Rather than fight other slave states, four more left: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee. The Confederate capital moved to Richmond.
Robert E. Lee, who had captured John Brown, resigned from the U.S. Army and went with Virginia.
On April 19, eighty-six years to the day after Lexington, a Baltimore crowd attacked a Massachusetts regiment. Four soldiers and twelve civilians died.
Four slave states stayed: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. Lincoln needed every one.
Abraham Lincoln I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.
Virginia's western counties refused, and broke away.
The new border ran between slave states. Stephens called slavery the cornerstone. Lincoln called it the only substantial difference. They meant the same thing.
By July, Massachusetts soldiers were marching through Boston to that old hymn tune, with new words about John Brown. Almost everyone expected a short war.