Two Miserable Presidents Read online

  California will be admitted to the Union as a free state.

  Congress will pass the Fugitive Slave Act, which will make it easier for slave owners to catch escaping slaves.

  By 1850, though, a lot of people didn’t feel like compromising anymore. Senator John C. Calhoun from South Carolina declared that the Union could be saved only if the North met Southern demands: stop helping escaped slaves, stop the abolitionist movement, and promise to keep the balance between free states and slave states. He was too sick to give a long speech (he actually died a month later), but he sat in the Senate chamber, a blanket over his legs, while a fellow senator read his emotional words: “The South asks for justice, simple justice, and less she ought not to take.”

  Senator William Seward of New York rejected Calhoun’s demands. Slavery was going to end whether Calhoun liked it or not, Seward insisted. And there was no way he was going to allow slavery to spread into California or any other new territory. “I cannot consent to introduce slavery into any part of this continent which is now exempt from what seems to me so great an evil,” Seward said.

  This was all part of a months-long argument that included a few fistfights on the floor of Congress. At one point Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi actually pulled out a pistol and aimed it at Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton.

  “I have no pistols!” Benton shouted. “Let him fire! Stand out of the way and let the assassin fire!”

  Foote didn’t fire.

  In the end, most members of Congress agreed with Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Webster spoke passionately in favor of keeping the peace between North and South:

  Daniel Webster

  “I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American … I speak today for the preservation of the Union.”

  Congress eventually agreed to the compromise outlined by Henry Clay—the Compromise of 1850, as it was called. “The Union is saved!” shouted people in the streets of Washington, D.C.

  Unfortunately for the Union, the Compromise of 1850 made people madder than ever.

  Step 8: Chase Fugitives

  According to the tough new Fugitive Slave Act, any African American suspected of being a fugitive slave could be captured and dragged before a judge. The accused person had no right to testify, and no right to a trial by jury. The judge simply decided if this person was really a runaway slave. The judge got five dollars if he set the person free, and ten dollars if he sent the person into slavery!

  Many Northerners, even if they had not been abolitionists before, howled in anger at what they saw as a cruel and unjust law. And escaped slaves living in the North knew they were in serious danger. Just ask Henry Brown.

  A year before, Brown had escaped from slavery by packing himself into a small wooden crate in Richmond, Virginia, and instructing his friends to mail him to an abolitionist office in Philadelphia. The friends wrote “This side up, with care” on the crate. But the people handling the box didn’t pay much attention, and Brown spent several miserable hours upside down. After a twenty-six-hour train ride, Brown, dying of heat and thirst, heard people prying open the box. He had no way of knowing where he was. So as the top of the crate was lifted, it was with tremendous joy that he looked up and saw four fairly confused Philadelphia abolitionists staring down at him. Brown stood up and reached out his hand and said, “Good morning, gentlemen.

  Soon after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Henry Brown (now famous as Henry “Box” Brown) was attacked and nearly captured in Providence, Rhode Island. He managed to beat up the kidnappers, but he knew he could be grabbed at any moment. He got on a ship and sailed to Britain.

  Step 9: Write Books

  Henry Brown was lucky—most fugitives didn’t have rich friends to buy them tickets to Europe. Slave catchers stalked the streets of Northern cities, kidnapping escaped slaves and sometimes even African Americans born free in the North.

  A writer named Harriet Beecher Stowe was so mad, she had to do something. But what? Her sister-in-law gave her an idea: “Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that will make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.”

  Stowe began writing a book, working at night (after putting her six children to bed) at the kitchen table in her family’s house in Maine. In her novel, which she called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe tried to make readers feel the horrors of slavery. She forced parents to imagine what it would be like to see a slave trader coming to buy their only child.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be torn from you by a brutal trader, tomorrow morning,—if you had seen the man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had only from twelve o’clock till morning to make good your escape,—how fast could you walk? How many miles could you make in those few brief hours … ?”

  Published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin broke readers’ hearts, inspiring many in the North to hate slavery like never before. Offended Southern writers fired back with books of their own, arguing that slaves in the South were actually well treated and happy. They insisted that Northern factory workers were much worse off than enslaved African Americans.

  Step 10: Divide Nebraska

  With tensions between North and South reaching new heights, we now turn back to the most explosive issue: what to do with all that western land?

  Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois thought it was time to divide the huge Nebraska Territory into smaller territories that could become states. But there was a problem. All this land was north of the line drawn in the Missouri Compromise (see Step 3), so it could only be made into free states. Southern senators would never allow this, Douglas knew.

  Douglas proposed a solution: We’ll throw out the Missouri Compromise and make a new deal called the Kansas-Nebraska Act. We’ll divide the territory in two: Nebraska in the north and Kansas in the south. And we’ll let the people who settle in the territories vote on whether or not they want slavery.

  Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, and President Franklin Pierce signed it into law.

  The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

  Douglas really thought this would stop the North and South from fighting over slavery in the territories. After all, now it was up to the settlers themselves to decide the slavery question. That was democracy, right? Self-government? Who could be against that?

  Actually, lots of people. When Douglas went home to give a speech in Chicago, an angry crowd shouted at him for two solid hours, finally driving him off the stage. In Peoria, Illinois, people were calm enough to listen to Douglas’s defense of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Then a lawyer and former member of Congress named Abraham Lincoln rose to respond. Lincoln was so tall and skinny, people said it looked as if he unfolded as he stood up.

  Lincoln launched his attack based on one simple idea: “There can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.” Slavery was wrong, he argued, and they should not allow it to spread to new territories. Did white people really have the right to vote on whether or not they could own black people? Was this really self-government?

  “When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government—that is despotism.1”

  But whether Lincoln liked it or not, the people of Kansas were going to vote on the slavery question. Which side would win? That would depend on who got there first.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Step 11: Race to Kansas

  Supporters and opponents of slavery set off on a race to Kansas. New England abolitionist groups sent money and guns to anti-slavery settlers. But the pro-slavery side had an advantage: the slave state of Missouri was right next to Kansas. The Missouri senator David Atchison took a vacation from Congress to personally lead Missouri men into Kansas. “There are eleven hundred men coming over from Platte County [Missouri] to vot
e,” he said, “and if that ain’t enough we can send five thousand—enough to kill every *#$%! abolitionist in the Territory.”

  And sure enough, just as Kansas was about to elect its first government, five thousand Missouri men rode in and voted—illegally, since only real residents of Kansas were supposed to vote. The new legislature quickly legalized slavery in Kansas.

  Calling this government “the bogus legislature,” anti-slavery settlers held their own election. The anti-slavery settlers, also known as “Free-Soilers,” chose their own government, and, of course, banned slavery. So by the beginning of 1856, Kansas had two different governments meeting in two different cities. Both sides were storing up weapons and organizing armies.

  Luckily, that winter was bitterly cold, with temperatures dropping to twenty-nine degrees below zero. Most people stayed inside.

  But by May it was warm enough to fight. An eight-hundred-man pro-slavery army marched to Lawrence, home of the Free-Soilers’ government. The invading army chased out the Free-Soil leaders, dumped two newspaper printing presses into the Kansas River, and fired a cannon at the Free State Hotel.

  The hands of Northern readers shook with fury as they read the next day’s newspapers. “STARTLING NEWS FROM KANSAS—THE WAR ACTUALLY BEGUN—LAWRENCE IN RUINS—SEVERAL PERSONS SLAUGHTERED,” shouted the headlines of the New York Tribune . (Actually, no one was slaughtered, though one pro-slavery man died when a chunk of the Free State Hotel fell on his head.)

  Step 12: Insult Senators

  No one was angrier about events in Kansas than Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. In a speech he called “The Crime Against Kansas,” Sumner called the pro-slavery army “murderous robbers from Missouri … picked from the drunken spew and vomit.” He also slammed senators who supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act, saving his most personal attack for Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Sumner charged Butler with loving slavery—and also hinted that Butler stammered and spat when he talked. This was a low blow, since Butler had difficulty speaking due to a stroke that had left him partially paralyzed. Even Sumner’s friends were a bit offended. And Butler’s friends were exploding with rage.

  That brings us all the way back to the point where we began: with the caneswinging Congressman Preston Brooks.

  Step 13: Hit Him Again!

  Preston Brooks was Senator Butler’s cousin. Two days after Sumner’s speech, Brooks walked into the Senate chamber looking for revenge. He strode up to Sumner’s desk and declared: “I have read your speech twice over, carefully. It is libel [a false and harmful statement] on both South Carolina and on Senator Butler, who is a relative of mine.”

  Then Brooks began beating Sumner on the head with his metal-tipped cane. Blood flowed down Sumner’s face as he tried to wriggle his long legs out from under his desk, which was screwed into the floor. Sumner finally ripped up the desk, along with some of the floor, then stumbled to the ground. Brooks continued smacking Sumner until his cane snapped and he was yanked away by other members of Congress.

  Brooks was thrilled to find that his attack on Sumner made him a hero in the South. “Every Southern man is delighted,” he boasted. One Virginia newspaper commented: “The only regret we feel is that Mr. Brooks did not employ a horsewhip … instead of a cane.” Dozens of Southerners sent him new canes, some with cute sayings on them such as “Hit Him Again!”

  Northerners were stunned by this reaction. One member of Congress had beaten another nearly to death and was considered a hero!

  Now you know why Brooks attacked Sumner—and you can see that the events leading to this attack were splitting the country apart. The conflict between the North and South was bitter, personal, and a little bit bloody.

  It was about to turn seriously violent.

  John Brown Lights the Fuse

  John Brown was in Kansas to fight slavery. When this emotional abolitionist heard about the attack on Lawrence, he “became considerably excited,” witnesses said. And when he learned of the beating of Senator Sumner, he “went crazy—crazy.” Brown told his small band of supporters to sharpen their swords and grab revolvers and rifles. They set out after dark, as Brown put it, to “strike terror in the hearts of the pro-slavery people.”

  Blood Flows in Kansas

  John Brown was fifty-six years old, the father of twenty children. He had spent much of his adult life helping slaves to escape—and starting businesses that failed (he was sued twenty-one times, usually for not paying his debts). Now he and his sons were in Kansas, determined to win this land for the cause of freedom.

  After the attacks on the town of Lawrence and the head of Sumner, John Brown decided it was up to him to get revenge on pro-slavery forces in Kansas. “Something must be done to show these barbarians that we too have rights,” he said.

  “I hope you will act with caution,” said a Free-Soil man.

  “Caution, caution, sir. I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice.”

  John Brown

  On May 24, 1856, just before midnight, John Brown knocked on the door of the cabin of a pro-slavery settler named James Doyle. Behind Brown stood four of his sons and three other men, all with guns and swords.

  “What is it?” asked James Doyle from inside the cabin.

  Brown said he needed directions to a neighbor’s house. But when Doyle opened the door, Brown charged inside, announcing himself as “the Northern Army” and demanding the surrender of Doyle and his family. Doyle’s wife, daughter, and three sons jumped out of bed to see what was going on. Brown ordered Doyle and his two older sons, ages twenty and twenty-two, to step outside. He left the rest of the family inside.

  Brown’s men marched Doyle and his two sons about a hundred yards down the dark road, threw them to the ground, and cut open their heads with swords. Brown and his crew visited other cabins that night, killing two more pro-slavery men and leaving their sliced-up bodies in the dirt.

  When the bodies were found the next morning, it was the South’s turn to be furious. “WAR! WAR!” declared a Missouri newspaper. A pro-slavery paper in Kansas called the killings an “abolitionist outrage” and demanded immediate revenge.

  Pro-slavery forces went on the attack, burning Free-Soilers’ cabins, stealing their horses, and searching for John Brown. Free-Soil armies struck back, and all-out war erupted in Kansas—or as newspapers now called it, “Bleeding Kansas.”

  More than two hundred men were killed in Kansas in 1856. And the issue of slavery was still far from settled.

  Dred Scott Denied

  Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court was about to give the North and South something else to fight about.

  Here are the facts of the case: A black man named Dred Scott was enslaved, owned by a white army surgeon from Missouri, Dr. John Emerson. In the 1830s Emerson had taken Scott with him to a few army bases in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory—areas where slavery was illegal. In 1846 Scott had sued for his freedom from John Emerson’s wife, Irene (John had recently died). Scott told the judge that he had lived for years in a free state and free territory, and therefore he should be free:

  “Believing that under this state of fact, that he is entitled to his freedom, he prays your honor to allow him to sue said Irene Emerson in said Court, in order to establish his right to freedom.”

  After more than ten years in court, Scott’s case reached the United States Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland was a proud defender of the South and saw this as his big chance to strike a blow for Southern rights. (Maybe his last chance: he was eighty.)

  Dred Scott

  In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott was still a slave. Why? Because blacks were not citizens of the United States, wrote Chief Justice Taney, and they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” In other words, Scott had no right to bring his case to court in the first place.

  But since he had, Taney went on to rule that there should be no free territory,
because Congress has no right to ban slavery in territories. Slaves are property, Taney said, and the government cannot tell citizens where they can and cannot take their property.

  Southern slave owners cheered that their rights had finally been protected. But opponents of slavery were shocked—and scared too. What next? Would the Supreme Court rule that slavery was legal everywhere in the United States?

  Senator Lincoln?

  Abraham Lincoln was one of many Northerners upset by the Dred Scott decision. To Lincoln, the Court’s decision demonstrated that supporters of slavery had too much power in the national government. He planned to help change that. “I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator,” he told friends.

  His wife, Mary, agreed that Abe could be a senator—she only wished he would act like one. Lincoln had the embarrassing habit of answering their front door in his slippers. And he wore baggy, sloppy clothes, and a tall black hat in which he kept notes and letters. One day some kids knocked off Lincoln’s hat and his important papers fell out and scattered all over the sidewalk. As Lincoln calmly bent down to gather the papers, the laughing kids jumped onto his back.