American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Freehling’s portrait of planters]: Freehling, pp. 11-13.

  [Slaves’ lives]: Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross (Little, Brown, 1974), esp. pp. 202-9, 220-21.

  [Savannah River planter (Hammond) on slave mortality]: Freehling, p. 71,

  [Olmsted’s description of slave scene]: Olmsted, p. 388.

  [Patriarchal nature of planter families]: Michael P. Johnson, “Planters and Patriarchy: Charleston, 1800-1860,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 46, No. 1 (February 1980), pp. 45-72.

  [Mary Boykin Chesnut on planters and “their concubines ”]: quoted in ibid., p. 45.

  [On feeling “like a beggar”]: ibid., p. 51.

  [On “hideous black harem”]: ibid., p. 71. This diary was rewritten after the Civil War.

  [Columbia]: Freehling, p. 20; Wright, passim. [Intellectual life in Columbia]: Wright, Ch. 8.

  [Charleston]: George C. Rogers, Jr., Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys (University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), pp. 147-48 and passim; William Oliver Stevens, Charleston (Dodd, Mead, 1939), passim; Hayward, p. 321.

  [Death of cultural adornments during nullification crisis]: Rogers, p. 160.

  [Attempt to require test oath]: Freehling, pp. 310 ff.

  [Unique ideological solidarity and structure of government in South Carolina]: James M. Banner, Jr., “The Problem of South Carolina,” in Stanley M. Elkins and Eric McKitrick, eds., The Hofstadter Aegis (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 76-78 and passim.

  [Doctrine of “virtual representation”]: Kenneth S. Greenberg, “Representation and the Isolation of South Carolina, 1776-1860,” Journal of American History, Vol. 64, No. 3 (December 1977), pp. 723-43.

  [Weakness of local government]: Ralph A. Wooster, The People in Power (University of Tennessee Press, 1969), pp. 88, 92.

  [Definition of ideology]: James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 249-50.

  [Wiltse on Calhoun’s concept of liberty]: Charles M. Wiltse, John C Calhoun: Sectionalist, 1840-1850 (Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), p. 425. See also Charles G. Sellers, Jr., “The Travail of Slavery,” in Charles G. Sellers, Jr., ed., The Southerner as American (University of North Carolina Press, 1960), pp. 40-71.

  [Intellectual leaders in the defense of slavery]: William S. Jenkins, Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South (University of North Carolina Press, 1935); Drew Gilpin Faust, A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840-1860 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); David Donald, “The Proslavery Argument Reconsidered,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (February 1971), pp. 3-18; Kenneth S. Greenberg, “Revolutionary Ideology and the Proslavery Argument: The Abolition of Slavery in Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 42, No. 3 (August 1976), pp. 365-84; Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made (Pantheon Books, 1969); Clement Eaton, The Mind of the Old South (Louisiana State University Press, 1964); Jesse T. Carpenter, The South as a Conscious Minority (New York University Press, 1930).

  [Hammond on slavery as “cornerstone”]: letter to Thomas Clarkson, Jan. 28, 1845, printed in The Proslavery Argument (Walker, Richards, 1852), p. 109.

  [Calhoun on people not being all “equally entitled to liberty”]: John C. Calhoun, “A Disquisition on Government,” in Richard K. Cralle, ed., The Works of John C. Calhoun (D. Appleton, 1854), Vol. 1, p. 55. [Simms on liberty]: William Gilmore Simms, “The Morals of Slavery,” in The-Proslavery Argument, pp. 256, 258; Faust, pp. 84, 120.

  [Contradictions in states’ rights doctrine]: Greenberg, “Representation and the Isolation of South Carolina,” passim; William W. Freehling,’ “Spoilsmen and Interests in the Thought and Career of John C. Calhoun,” Journal of American History, Vol. 52, No. 1 (June 1965), p. 38.

  [Control of state legislature over local officials]: Wooster, pp. 88, 92.

  [Rejection of Jeffersonian moral philosophy]: Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (Harcourt, Brace, 1955), passim.

  [Fitzhugh on destructiveness of liberty and equality]: George Fitzhugh, “Sociology for the South,” in Eric L. McKitrick, ed., Slavery Defended (Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 40.

  [Bledsoe on slavery and liberty]: quoted in Jenkins, p. 113.

  [Hammond’s repudiation of Jefferson’s dictum]: letter to Clarkson, in The Proslavery Argument, pp. 109-10.

  [Southern abrogation of freedom of discussion]: Clement Eaton, Freedom of Thought in the Old South (Duke University Press, 1940); Russell B. Nye, Fettered Freedom (Michigan State University Press, 1963).

  [Hammond’s “one way” to silence talk of abolition]: Nye, p. 177.

  [Suppression of the True American]: Eaton, Freedom of Thought, pp. 185-93.

  [Chapel Hill professor (Hedrick) forced to leave]: ibid., pp. 202-5; Nye, pp. 92-94.

  [Eaton on southern intellectual blockade]: Eaton, Freedom of Thought, pp. 209, 316.

  [For a survey of other defenses of slavery]: see Donald, “Proslavery Argument.” See also Jenkins, passim.

  [Hammonds “mud-sill” address]: U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858, Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st session, Part I, pp. 952-62.

  [Trescot’s assertion that blacks were not fit for education]: Greenberg, “Revolutionary Ideology,” p. 372.

  [Donald on “pastoral Arcadia”]: Donald, “Proslavery Argument,” p. 16.

  [“A Carolinian” (Edward J. Pringle) on slave as compared to wage worker]: “A Carolinian,” Slavery in the Southern States (J. Bartlett, 1852), pp. 25-27, quoted in Greenberg, “Revolutionary Ideology,” p. 383.

  [Fitzhugh on “wage slavery”]: George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters, C. Vann Woodward, ed. (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960). See also Stanley M. Elkins. “The Right to Be a Slave,” Commentary, Vol. 30, No. 5 (November 1960), pp. 450-52.

  The Grand Debates

  The main source for the Dred Scott decision is Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case (Oxford University Press, 1978), and major works cited therein.

  [Chief Justice Taney]. Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B Taney (Macmillan, 1935); Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, LL.D (John Murphy, 1876). [Other Justices]: Carl B. Swisher, History of the Supreme Court of the United States, Vol. 5: The Taney Period, 1836-1864, (Macmillan, 1974), pp. 46-48, 53-55, 58-70, 229-40, 242-44.

  [Headlines reporting the Dred Scott decision]: cited in Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), Vol. 1, p. 92.

  [New York Tribune comment on Dred Scott decision]: quoted in Fehrenbacher, p. 3.

  [Procedural aspects of Dred Scott]: Walter Ehrlich, “Was the Dred Scott Case Valid?” Journal of American History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (September 1968), pp. 256-65; F. H. Hodder, “Some Phases of the Dred Scott Case,” Mississippi Galley Historical Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 (June 1929), pp. 3-22.

  [Buchanan informed by Justices as to probable nature and timing of Dred Scott decision ]: Fehrenbacher, pp. 311-14.

  [Importance placed on “massing the court” against Missouri Compromise]: David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis (Harper & Row, 1976), p. 274.

  [Taney’s rage against the antislavery movement]: Fehrenbacher, pp. 311, 388, 557, 561.

  [Taney’s legal errors in Dred Scott decision]: ibid., pp. 337-64, 367-88.

  [Everett’s hope for a “vigorous, and conciliatory administration”]:Edward Everett to James Buchanan, Jan. 19, 1857, Edward Everett Papers, Reel 16, Massachusetts Slate Historical Society.

  [Kansan on Lecompton constitution vote]: Nevins, Vol. 1, p. 236. Emporia Kansas News: ibid.

  [Douglas querying validity of Lecompton constitution]: Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (Oxford University Press, 1973). pp. 581-82.

  [Exchange between Buchanan and Douglas]: ibid., p. 586.

  [Douglas’ rejection of the Lecompton constitution and reaffirmation of popular sovereignty]: ibid., PP· 590-91.

  [Machinations of Republicans and Democrats concerning Douglas in 1858]: Potter, p. 331.

  [Herndon to Greel
ey on “selling out” Illinois Republicans]: William H. Herndon to Horace Greeley, April 8, 1858, Greeley Papers, New York Public Library. See also Abraham Lincoln to Elihu B. Washburne, April 26, 1858, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. 2, pp. 443-44; Abraham Lincoln to Elihu B. Washburne, May 27, 1858, ibid., p. 455.

  [Nomination of Lincoln at state party convention]: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the l850s (Stanford University Press, 1962), Ch. 3. [Herndon on wanting to see “old man Greely’s” notice of the convention]: ibid., p. 50.

  [Lincoln’s preparations for speech]: Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None (Harper & Row, 1977), p. 142.

  [Opening of Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech]: Basler, Vol. 2, p. 461.

  [On the “House Divided” speech]: Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, Ch.4; Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided (Doubleday, 1959), passim.

  [“Ultimate extinction ” or victory of slavery in “all the States”]: Basler, Vol. 2, pp. 461-62. [“Another Supreme Court decision” preventing a state from outlawing slavery]: ibid., p. 467. [Douglas, Taney, Pierce, and Buchanan conspiring “before the first lick was struck”]: ibid., pp. 465-66.

  [Lincoln following Douglas around the state]: Johannsen, p. 662.

  [Theatrics of the debates]: ibid., pp. 631, 655.

  [Douglas on Lincoln]: ibid, pp. 640-41.

  [Douglas on inequality of blacks]: Basler, Vol. 3, p. 10.

  [Douglas on diversity as the “safeguard of our liberties”]: Johannsen, p. 642.

  [Lincoln’s views on the rights of blacks]: Basler, Vol. 3, pp. 16, 145, 222.

  [Lincoln’s accusation that Douglas held a “care not” attitude]: ibid, pp. 233-34.

  [Audience participation in the debates]: ibid., passim.

  [Lincoln asking if Douglas could be “on all sides”]: Basler, Vol. 3, p. 298. [Republican party view of slavery as “a moral, social and political wrong”]: ibid., pp. 312-13. [Solution of providing that slavery “grow no larger”]:, ibid., p. 313.

  [Lincoln on “physical difference” between blacks and whites]: ibid., pp. 145-46.

  [On the equality of the black to “every living man” in right to fruits of his labor]: ibid., p. 16.

  [Lincoln on economic rights basic to liberty]: Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 10, 21, 32.

  [“Because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife”]:Basler, Vol. 3, p 146.

  [Lincoln on waiting for the harvest]: ibid., p. 334

  The Politics of Slavery

  [Intense trading on the New York Stock Exchange]: Nevins, Vol. 1, p. 181.

  [Verses on ladies’ trips to Paris]: ibid., pp. 179-80.

  [Emerson on American materialism]: The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Houghton Mifflin, 1911), Vol. 5, p. 285.

  [Vitality of American literary life in the 1850s]: Nevins, Vol. 1, Ch. 2.

  [Frederick Douglass’ refusal to join John Brown]: Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood (Harper & Row, 1970), p. 283.

  [Lydia Maria Child’s request to visit John Brown]: Lydia Maria Child to Henry A. Wise, Oct. 26, 1859, Lydia Maria Child Papers, Schlesinger Library.

  [Northern acclaim for John Brown]: Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood, p. 318; “A Plea for John Brown,” Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Houghton Mifflin, 1893), Vol. 10, p. 234; “Harper’s Ferry,” speech of Nov. 1, 1859, Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Negro Universities Press, 1968), p. 263.

  [Brown on his martyrdom]: Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood, p. 335.

  [On the need to purge “with Blood”]: ibid., p. 351.

  [Repudiation of Brown by Republican notables]: Nevins, Vol. 2, pp. 105-6; Oates, With Malice Toward None, p. 168; Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood, p. 353.

  [Unity of South in “sentiment and feeling”]: Nevins, Vol. 2, p. 110.

  [Background on the opening session of the 36th Congress]: ibid., Ch. 4.

  [Hinton Rowan Helper]: Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (Burdick Brothers, 1857), quoted at p. 120.

  [Democratic convention of 1860]: Robert W. Johannsen, “Douglas at Charleston,” in Norman A. Graebner, ed., Politics and the Crisis of 1860 (University of Illinois Press, 1961), pp. 61-90; Austin L. Venable, “The Conflict Between the Douglas and Yancey Forces in the Charleston Convention,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May 1942). pp. 226-41.

  [Dilemmas facing Republican party in shaping an identity in 1860]: Don E. Fehrenbacher, “The Republican Decision at Chicago,” in Graebner, pp. 32-60; Foner, Politics and Ideology, Chs. 1-3; Hans L. Trefousse, “The Republican Party, 1854-1864,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (Chelsea House, 1973), Vol. 2, pp. 1141-72.

  [Seward’s attempts to appear conciliatory at convention]: Potter, p. 420.

  [Lincoln on how to defeat the enemy]: Basler, Vol. 3, pp. 460-61.

  [Reaffirmation of the Declaration of Independence at 1860 Republican convention ]: Nevins, Vol. 2, p. 254.

  [The convention in general]: Fehrenbacher, “Republican Decision at Chicago,” passim.

  [“Lincoln ain’t here … ”]: Henry C. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen (Current Literature, 1907), p. 288. The authenticity of this quotation is questionable, however.

  [Lincoln informed of nomination]: Oates, With Malice Toward None, p. 179.

  [Friend on Lincoln’s view of southern “political game of bluff”]: Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union (Belford, Clarke, 1887), pp. 28-30.

  [William Cullen Bryant on maintaining Lincoln’s image]: Nevins, Vol. 2, p. 278.

  [Douglas’ presidential campaign]: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, Ch. 29

  [Douglas in the South]: Robert W. Johannsen, “Stephen A. Douglas and the South,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 33, No. 1 (February 1967), pp. 26-50.

  [Douglas’ attempt to “save the Union”]: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, pp. 797-98.

  [Election results of 1860]: Ollinger Crenshaw, “Urban and Rural Voting in the Election of 1860,” in Eric F. Goldman, ed., Historiography and Urbanization: Essays in American History in Honor of W. Stull Holt (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941), pp. 43-63; Peyton McCrary, Clark Miller, and Dale Baum, “Class and Party in the Secession Crisis: Voting Behavior in the Deep South, 1856-1861,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Winter 1978), pp. 429-57; cf. Robert P. Swierenga, “The Ethnic Voter and the First Lincoln Election,” in Frederick C. Luebke, ed., Ethnic Voters and the Election of Lincoln (University of Nebraska Press, 1971), pp. 129-50; Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892 (University of North Carolina Press, 1979), passim; Walter D. Kamphoefner, “St. Louis Germans and the Republican Party, 1848-1860,” Mid-America, Vol. 57, No. 2 (April 1975), pp. 69-88.

  [South Carolina secession ordinance]: quoted in French Ensor Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, 1859-1861(Harper & Brothers, 1907), p. 138.

  [Douglas on America as the “last hope of freedom ”]: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, p. 789.

  [Explanations of advent of the Civil War]: Swierenga; McCrary, Miller, and Baum;

  Crenshaw; Albert C. E. Parker, “Beating the Spread: Analyzing American Election Out comes,” Journal of American History, Vol. 67, No. 1 (June 1980), pp. 61-87.

  [Theories of causes of the Civil War]: Foner, Politics and ideology, Chs. 1-2.

  [The southern ideology]: Carpenter; Craven; David M. Potter, The South and the Sectional Conflict (Louisiana State University Press, 1968), Part I; Rollin G. Osterweis, Romanti- cism and Nationalism in the Old South (Yale University Press, 1949); Foner, Politics and Ideology, passim; cf. C. Vann Woodward, American Counterpoint (Little, Brown, 1964), esp. Ch. 5; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union (Oxford University Press, 1980), esp. Ch. 4.

  [General sources on
the politics of slavery]: Foner, Politics and Ideology, Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1970); Potter, The South and the Sectional Conflict; Potter, Impending Crisis; Woodward, American Counterpoint; Craven; Don E. Fehrenbacher, “Comment on ‘Why the Republican Party Came to Power,’ ” in George H. Knoles, ed., The Crisis of the Union (Louisiana State University Press, 1965), pp. 21-29; Carpenter; Staughton Lynd, Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution (Bobbs-Merrill, 1967); James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy (Prentice-Hall, 1963), Chs. 3-4; Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (Simon and Schuster, 1970); William J. Cooper, Jr., The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-1856 (Louisiana State University Press, l978);James A. Rawley, Race and Politics (Lippincott, 1969); Edward

  Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War (D. C. Heath, 1973); Harold S. Schultz, Nationalism and Sectionalism in South Carolina, 1852-1860 (Duke University Press, 1950).

  17. THE BLOOD-RED WINE

  [Davis’ journey to Montgomery]: Shelby Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville (Random House, 1958), p. 17; Hudson Strode, Jefferson Davis, American Patriot: 1808-1861 (Harcourt, Brace, 1955), pp. 401-7.

  [Montgomery convention]: Ellis M. Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (Louisiana State University Press, 1950), pp. 19-26.

  [Confederate Constitution]: text in Edward A. Pollard, The First Year of the War, reprinted from the Richmond corrected edition (Charles B. Richardson, 1863), pp. 363-78.

  [Public “approbation” of Davis]: Jefferson Davis to Varina Davis, Feb. 20, 1861, in Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches (Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History, 1923), p. 54.