43. Hatfield, Vice Presidents, 143.
44. Lynn Hudson Parsons, John Quincy Adams (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 246.
45. George Washington had only four cabinet members: state, treasury, war, and the attorney general. Today, the cabinet is composed of fifteen executive department heads: state, treasury, defense, justice, interior, agriculture, commerce, labor, health and human services, housing and urban development, transportation, energy, education, veterans affairs, and homeland security. In addition, the following positions have the status of cabinet rank: chief of staff, environmental protection agency, management and budget, US trade representative, ambassador to the UN, chair of the council of economic advisers, and the small business administration.
46. Collins, William Henry Harrison, 118.
47. William H. Rehnquist, “Daniel Webster and the Oratorical Tradition,” 1989 Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society, 7.
48. Ibid.
49. Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 US 518 (1819).
50. 22 US 1 (1824).
51. S. W. Finley, “Constitutional Orator: Daniel Webster Packed ’Em In,” 1979 Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society, 59.
52. Herman Belz, ed., The Webster-Hayne Debate on the Nature of the Union: Selected Documents (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000).
53. The Daniel Webster Memorial is a bronze statue of Webster, located in Washington, DC, dedicated in 1900 with funds appropriated by Congress. The main inscription on the granite pedestal is: “Daniel Webster, Liberty and Union Now and Forever One and Inseparable.”
54. Gary May, John Tyler (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2008), 59.
55. Ibid., 123.
56. Edward P. Crapol, John Tyler: The Accidental President (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 8.
57. Daniel Webster’s elder son, Daniel Fletcher Webster, was colonel of the 12th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry, the “Webster regiment.” Fletcher was killed at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 30, 1862, at the age of forty-nine. Fletcher was named after his mother’s maiden name, Grace Fletcher Webster.
58. William G. Clotworthy, Homes and Libraries of the Presidents (Granville, OH: McDonald & Woodward: 2008), 84.
59. Hatfield, Vice Presidents, 144.
60. Ibid., 145, citing Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1876), 10:456–57.
61. This site is currently the location of the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the news media. The hotel had been the location of President Madison’s second inaugural ball in 1813, and also the site for both of President James Monroe’s inaugural balls in 1817 and 1821.
62. Collins, William Henry Harrison, 124.
63. Parsons, John Quincy Adams, 247.
64. Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855; Eastford, CT: Martino Publishing, 2010), 22.
65. Clotworthy, Homes and Libraries of the Presidents, 84.
66. See Forest McDonald, States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 124–26.
67. Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (New York: Norton, 1997), 529.
68. May, John Tyler, 74.
69. Hatfield, Vice Presidents, 148.
70. Remini, Daniel Webster, 530.
71. Ibid., 531.
72. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. and ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 191.
73. Wise had been a Jacksonian Democrat in the 23rd and 24th Congresses (1833–1837), but became a Whig in the 25th Congress (1837); in 1843, he became a Tyler Democrat.
74. The full title was “An Act Supplementary to the Act Entitled ‘An Act to Amend the Judicial System of the United States.’”
75. Mary Ann Harrell and Burnett Anderson, Equal Justice Under Law: The Supreme Court in American Life (Washington, DC: Supreme Court Historical Society, 1994), 42.
76. See Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 192–93.
77. 23 US (10 Wheat.) 66 (1825).
78. Jenny S. Martinez, The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 59.
79. Wirt still holds the record for the longest serving attorney general, 1817–1829, under Monroe and John Quincy Adams.
80. Galen N. Thorp, “William Wirt,” Journal of the Supreme Court Historical Society 33, no. 3 (2008): 242.
81. The Antelope, 23 US (10 Wheat.) 66 (1825), 121.
82. Martinez, Slave Trade, 64.
83. United States v. Skiddy, 36 US 73 (1837).
84. US v. Amistad, 40 US 518 (1841). The full caption is: The United States, Appellants v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad, Her Tackle, Apparel, and Furniture, Together with Her Cargo, and the Africans Mentioned and Describer in the Several Libels and Claims, Appellees. Much of the description of the complex judicial proceedings is taken from the excellent essay by Bruce A. Ragsdale, the director of the federal judicial history office in 2002, prepared for inclusion in the project Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History.
85. For an extraordinary account of the courageous Africans who rebelled, see Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Rebellion (New York: Viking, 2012). Professor Rediker correctly notes that the “heroes” of the Amistad affair have been popularized as the legal system, lawyers, and political figures, rather than the courageous Africans. His book tells their story.
86. One might question why the commander brought the schooner to Connecticut rather than New York. The answer may lie in the fact that slavery ended in New York in 1827, while it remained legal in Connecticut until 1848. The commander may have thought that his claim for compensation for slave property might be easier to make in a state where slavery was still legal. See Arthur T. Downey, Civil War Lawyers: Constitutional Questions, Courtroom Dramas, and the Men Behind Them (Chicago: ABA Books, 2010), 213.
87. Baldwin later became governor of Connecticut (1844–1846) and US senator from Connecticut (1847–1851).
88. US v. Amistad, 40 US 518 (1841), at 522.
89. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 521.
90. Harlow Giles Unger, John Quincy Adams (Boston: Da Capo, 2012), 288–89.
91. Parsons, John Quincy Adams, 237.
92. Allen Sharp, “Presidents as Supreme Court Advocates: Before and After the White House,” 28 Journal of Supreme Court History (no. 2, 2003), 121.
93. Fletcher v. Peck (1810) was a landmark case involving the Contract Clause. Adams had argued for the winning side. Adams argued in 1809, but the arguments continued into 1810, by which time Adams had left for Russia; Joseph Story took Adams’s place for the final argument.
94. Parsons, John Quincy Adams, 239.
95. Sharp, “Presidents as Supreme Court Advocates, 120.
96. Parsons, John Quincy Adams, 240.
97. In the 1997 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, Amistad, retired supreme court justice Harry Blackmun played Justice Story.
98. In 1855, Herman Melville published in serialized form his novella titled Benito Cereno, loosely modeled after the Amistad event. See also Mark S. Weiner, Black Trials: Citizenship from the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste (New York: Knopf, 2004), 133.
99. In 1844, Tyler asked Congress to consider the matter. A house committee proposed $70,000 for Spain, but Adams led the fight that defeated the measure. In 1847, at the request of Secretary of State Buchanan (under Polk), the Senate proposed a $50,000 payment to Spain, but the House killed the proposal (113–40) after Adams argued against it in his last House speech. Adams’s colleague Joshua Giddings forcefully argued against the bill in a House speech on April 18, 184
4. No reparations were ever paid, although Spain persisted in demanding them until the Civil War.
100. For a superb discussion of the interstate slave trade, including this Mississippi case, see David L. Lightner, “The Supreme Court and the Interstate Slave Trade: A Study in Evasion, Anarchy, and Extremism,” Journal of Supreme Court History 29, no. 3 (2004): 229.
101. 40 US 449 at 502.
102. Ibid., 506.
103. Ibid., 508.
104. Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed. (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1979), 408.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid., 510.
107. For a discussion of both the Prigg and the Groves cases, see Tony A. Freyer and Daniel Thomas, “The Passenger Cases Reconsidered in Transatlantic Commerce Clause History,” Journal of Supreme Court History 36, no. 3 (2011): 221.
108. The clause read: “No Person held to Service or Labor in one State, under the Law thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of other Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due.” For a full and interesting discussion, see Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2005), 256–63.
109. “An Act more effectively to protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnapped, or reduced to slavery,” chap. 375; May 14, 1840. The full text is found at Appendix A of Northup, Twelve Years a Slave. It was under this New York law that Solomon Northup was recused in Louisiana and returned to his home in New York State in 1853.
110. For an interesting discussion of slave life in western Maryland, see Constance M. McGovern, “‘Liberty to Them Is as Sweet as It Is to Me’: Slave Life in Allegany County, Maryland, 1789–1864,” Maryland Historical Magazine 107, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 405. Professor McGovern noted, “the southwestern Pennsylvania countryside . . . had numbers of slave catchers, a ‘despicable set’ who ‘drank whiskey, chewed tobacco, played cards, and loafed around village taverns, posted handbills and lay in wait for the runaways.’” Ibid., 421.
111. A clear and brief explanation of the case is available at Kermit L. Hall, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 669.
112. The most comprehensive treatment of this case can be found at H. Robert Baker, Prigg v. Pennsylvania: Slavery, the Supreme Court, and the Ambivalent Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012).
113. For a brilliant and riveting study of the problem of fugitive slaves in the decade before the Civil War, see Steven Lubet, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial (Cambridge: Belknap, 2010).
114. This curious story is detailed in Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 78–79.
Chapter 2
US-British Relations—At the Brink
After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Britain became the preeminent superpower. In 1841, Britain dominated the world well out of proportion to the size of its population, 18.5 million. (The US population was 17 million, and France’s was 34 million.)[1] The Royal Navy controlled the seas. It had almost 100 ships of the line, in contrast to about fifty each for Russia and France. The US Navy consisted of only about fifteen such warships. In November 1840, Britain achieved a brilliant naval victory over Egyptian forces occupying the Syrian coast (now northern Israel) that awed military strategists everywhere: this was the first time that steam warships had been successfully used in a coordinated sea and land campaign.
Britain was The Superpower, “involved” all over the world. The Empire was a sprawling affair, a conglomeration of many parts: white colonial settlements (North America, Australia, New Zealand), the Indian Raj, and a collection of naval bases (Malta and Gibraltar), trading centers (Hong Kong and Singapore), and slave colonies in the Caribbean. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823,[2] designed to stop European colonization in the Western Hemisphere, did not stop the British from occupying the Falkland Islands in 1835. Beginning as a dispute over British sales to China of opium from India, the Anglo-Chinese Opium War erupted in November 1839, when the British blockaded the mouth of the Pearl River. By 1841, the British forces controlled Canton and Shanghai, and occupied Hong Kong.
On the other hand, the British were not always successful. The relevant blemish on its enormous power related to Afghanistan. That centered on the rivalry between Britain and Russia for influence in central Asia, known in Britain as the “Great Game” and in Russia as the “Tournament of Shadows.” Britain invaded Afghanistan in 1839, because it thought that Russia was about to get there first, and Britain was worried about access to, and control of, India. The British (and Indian) force that invaded Afghanistan was massive. It included thirty thousand camels to carry baggage, three hundred of which were earmarked to carry the military’s wine cellar.[3]
Only later did the British realize that they had misjudged the war’s cost. By early 1841 there was serious resistance to the British.[4] By the fall, Afghan religious leaders began calling for jihad against the British. In November 1841—at about the time that the Creole entered the harbor in Nassau—an insurrection broke out in Kabul, and a British diplomat, Sir Alexander Burns, was murdered. It was clear that the British had to leave, and within a couple of months, the British retreated from Kabul. The retreat became a massacre, a humiliation for the British: “the retreating army of [8,000] British officers, Indian soldiers and a multitude of camp followers was slaughtered almost to a man as it struggled back through the Khyber Pass in January 1842.”[5] The British force “battled through biting cold, knee-deep snow and apoplectic tribesmen. Some died from the extreme cold. But most died at the hands of Afghan sharpshooters, who picked apart the force from behind rocks, on horseback, and through daring ambushes and raids.”[6] This disaster alone, one might imagine, probably was a factor in the desire of the British government to settle the outstanding controversies it had with the Americans—to cut some deal with the Americans—rather than face another distant military conflict.
The British had other worries, as they consolidated their influence and rule in south Asia, from the Middle East to China. The Ottoman Empire was Britain’s chief barrier against Russia’s southern expansion, but the Ottoman Empire seemed to be on the verge of collapse from within. At about the same time, Persia had entered into an alliance with Russia, seeking to recover parts of Afghanistan; this arrangement would also give Russia a road to British India.
Ever since the independence of the Republic of Texas in 1836 (recognized by the United States in March 1837), Britain had been negotiating British diplomatic recognition of the new and large republic. The two governments would have much to gain: Texas was interested in Britain as a potential protector against a threatened counterattack by Mexico; the British were interested in Texas cotton in order to break the American cotton monopoly, and an independent Texas would balance American power and lessen the threat of attack by the United States against British Canada. From the American perspective, Southerners were worried about the possibility of Britain allying with Texas as part of Britain’s perceived interest in emancipating Texas’s slaves. Thus, it was not surprising that in October 1841, President Tyler, the Virginia slaveholder, asked his secretary of state about the possibility of acquiring Texas by treaty, and whether the Northern states would tolerate that. Secretary Webster let it be known that the North would not reconcile itself to the concept of more land for the slave power.[7]
During the War of 1812, the British encouraged American slaves to escape from their masters and to cross over into British hands; thousands of slaves in Virginia alone crossed British lines. As one historian noted: “Slaveholding Virginians loathed the British for encouraging the runaways, which was not only potentially economically ruinous but also perceived as a direct attack on their homes and way of life. Whites lived in a constant ‘cocoon of dread’ of slave revolt.”[8] A genera
tion later, and viewed from the American South, London was the center of evil, or at least misguided, abolitionism, which was a part of sinister British Imperial designs. By getting the Americans to abolish slavery, the British would undercut Southern production of staples, destroy the US economy, and expand British domination of world commerce and manufacturing. Southerners were sure that the British were plotting revolution among the slaves of Cuba, and planning to incite the Mexicans and Indians against the United States. One distinguished scholar summed up the situation this way:
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