Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (19 page)

It seemed only a matter of time before real blood would be shed. When the time came the place was Christiana, a Pennsylvania village near the Maryland border, about halfway between Philadelphia and another village named Gettysburg. A Quaker community that had extended a welcome to fugitives, Christiana was anything but peaceable or friendly on September 11, 1851. That morning a Maryland slaveowner accompanied by several relatives and three deputy marshals came seeking two fugitives who had escaped two years earlier and were reported to be hiding in the house of another black man. They found the fugitives, along with two dozen armed black men vowing to resist capture. Two Quakers appeared and advised the slave hunters to retreat for their own good. The owner refused, declaring that "I will have my property, or go to hell." Shooting broke out. When it was over the slaveowner lay dead and his son seriously wounded (two other whites

11
. Philip S. Foner,
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass
, 4 vols. (New York, 1950–55), II, 207; Foner,
History of Black Americans
, 29–30.

and two blacks were lightly wounded). The blacks disappeared into the countryside; their three leaders sped on the underground railroad to Canada.
¹²

The "Battle of Christiana" became a national event. "Civil War—The First Blow Struck," proclaimed a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, newspaper. The
New York Tribune
pronounced the verdict of many Yankees: "But for slavery such things would not be; but for the Fugitive Slave Law they would not be in the free States." The conservative press took a different view of this "act of insurrection" that "never would have taken place but for the instigations which have been applied to the ignorant and deluded blacks by the fanatics of the 'higher law' creed." Southerners announced that "unless the Christiana rioters are hung . . .
WE LEAVE YOU!
. . . If you fail in this simple act of justice,
THE BONDS WILL BE DISSOLVED
."
¹³

This time Fillmore called out the marines. Together with federal marshals they scoured the countryside and arrested more than thirty black men and a half-dozen whites. The government sought extradition of the three fugitives who had escaped to Ontario, but Canadian officials refused. To show that it meant business, the administration prosecuted alleged participants not merely for resisting the fugitive slave law but for treason. A federal grand jury so indicted thirty-six blacks and five whites. The government's case quickly degenerated into farce. A defense attorney's ridicule made the point: "Sir—did you hear it? That three harmless non-resisting Quakers and eight-and-thirty wretched, miserable, penniless negroes, armed with corn cutters, clubs, and a few muskets, and headed by a miller, in a felt hat, without arms and mounted on a sorrel nag, levied war against the United States." The government's efforts to discredit resistance produced increased sympathy for abolitionists, one of whom reported that "the cause is in a very promising position just now. . . . These Treason Trials have been a great windfall." After the jury acquitted the first defendant, one of the Quakers, the government dropped the remaining indictments and decided not to press other charges.
¹⁴

12
. The fullest account is Jonathan Katz,
Resistance at Christiana: The Fugitive Slave Rebellion, Christiana, Pennsylvania, September 11, 1851
(New York, 1974); quotation from 96.

13
. Foner,
History of Black Americans
, 54, 57; Rhodes,
History of the United States
, I, 223; Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, 152; Katz,
Resistance at Christiana
, 138.

14
. Katz,
Resistance at Christiana
, 156–243; quotations from Foner,
History of Black Americans
, 62, and from J. Miller McKim to William Lloyd Garrison, Dec. 31, 1851, Garrison Papers, Boston Public Library.

While this was going on, another dramatic rescue took place in Syracuse, New York. In that upstate city lived a black cooper named William McHenry, popularly known as Jerry, who had escaped from slavery in Missouri. His owner's agent made the mistake of having Jerry arrested when an antislavery convention was meeting in Syracuse and the town was also crowded with visitors to the county fair. Two of the North's most prominent abolitionists, Gerrit Smith and Samuel J. May, organized a plan to rescue Jerry from the police station. May, a Unitarian clergyman, told his congregation that God's law took precedence over the fugitive slave law, which "we must trample . . . under foot, be the consequences what they may." A large group of blacks and whites broke into the police station on October 1, grabbed Jerry, sped him away in a carriage, and smuggled him across Lake Ontario to Canada. A grand jury indicted twelve whites and twelve blacks (this time for riot, not treason), but nine of the blacks had already escaped to Canada. Of those who stood trial only one was convicted—a black man who died before he could appeal the verdict.
¹⁵

Northern resistance to the fugitive slave law fed the resentment of fire-eaters still seething over the admission of California. "We cannot stay in the Union any longer," said one, "with such dishonor attached to the terms of our remaining." South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi held conventions in 1851 to calculate the value of the Union. The fire-eater William L. Yancey toured Alabama stirring up demands for similar action. The governor of South Carolina assumed that "there is now not the slightest doubt but that . . . the state will secede."
¹⁶

But already a reaction was setting in. The highest cotton prices in a decade and the largest cotton crop ever caused many a planter to think twice about secession. Whig unionism reasserted itself under the leadership of Toombs and Stephens. Old party lines temporarily dissolved as a minority of Democrats in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi joined Whigs to form Constitutional Union parties to confront Southern Rights Democrats. Unionists won a majority of delegates to the state conventions, where they advocated "cooperation" with other states rather than secession by individual states. As the Nashville convention had demonstrated,

15
. Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, 154–57; Foner,
History of Black Americans
, 42–46.

16
. Avery O. Craven,
The Growth of Southern Nationalism 1848–1861
(Baton Rouge,1953), 103; Potter,
Impending Crisis
, 128.

cooperation was another word for inaction. Unionists won the governorships of Georgia and Mississippi (where Jefferson Davis ran as the Southern Rights candidate), the legislatures of Georgia and Alabama, and elected fourteen of the nineteen congressmen from these three states. Even in South Carolina the separatists suffered a setback. This denouement of two years of disunion rhetoric confirmed the belief of many northerners that secession threats had been mere "gasconade" to frighten the government into making concessions.
¹⁷

But a closer analysis would have qualified this conclusion. Unionists proclaimed themselves no less ardent for "the safety . . . rights and honor of the slave holding states" than Southern Rights Democrats. In several states unionists adopted the "Georgia Platform" which declared that while the South did "not wholly approve" of the Compromise of 1850 she would "abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy"—so long as the North similarly abided. BUT—any action by Congress against slavery in the District of Columbia, any refusal to admit a new slave state or to recognize slavery in the new territories would cause Georgia (and other states) to resist, with secession "as a last resort." Above all, "upon a faithful execution of the
Fugitive Slave Law
. . . depends the preservation of our much beloved Union."
¹⁸

Southern unionism, in other words, was a perishable commodity. It would last only so long as the North remained on good behavior. This truth did much to neutralize the apparent triumph of southern Whig-gery in these 1851 elections. For while Whigs provided the bulk of unionist votes, the Democratic tail of this coalition wagged the Whig dog. The Georgia platform held northern Whigs hostage to support of the fugitive slave law and slavery in the territories. With Fillmore in the White House, the situation seemed stabilized for the time being. But northern Whigs were restless. Most of them were having a hard time swallowing the fugitive slave law. The party was sending a growing number of radical antislavery men to Congress: Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and George W. Julian entered the House in 1849; Benjamin Wade of Ohio came to the Senate in 1851. If such men as these gained control

17
. Potter,
Impending Crisis
, 122–30; William J. Cooper, Jr.,
The South and the Politics of Slavery 1828–1856
(Baton Rouge, 1978), 304–10; Craven,
Growth of Southern Nationalism
, 103–15; Nevins,
Ordeal
, I, 354–79; J. Mills Thornton III,
Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800–1860
(Baton Rouge, 1978), 188–200; John Barnwell,
Love of Order: South Carolina's First Secession Crisis
(Chapel Hill, 1982), 123–90.

18
. Potter,
Impending Crisis
, 128.

of the party it would splinter along North-South lines. Southern Whigs had barely survived Taylor's apostasy; another such shock would shatter them.

After the rescue of the fugitive Jerry in Syracuse, furor over the fugitive slave law declined. Perhaps this happened because the legions of law and order finally prevailed. Or perhaps nearly all the eligible fugitives had decamped to Canada. In any event, fewer than one-third as many blacks were returned from the North to slavery in 1852 as in the first year of the law's operation.
¹⁹
Democrats, conservative Whigs, mercantile associations, and other forces of moderation organized public meetings throughout the North to affirm support of the Compromise including the fugitive slave law.

These same forces, aided by the Negrophobia that characterized much of the northern population, went further than this. In 1851 Indiana and Iowa and in 1853 Illinois enacted legislation barring the immigration of
any
black persons, free or slave. Three-fifths of the nation's border between free and slave states ran along the southern boundaries of these states. Intended in part to reassure the South by denying sanctuary to fugitive slaves, the exclusion laws also reflected the racist sentiments of many whites, especially Butternuts. Although Ohio had repealed its Negro exclusion law in 1849, many residents of the southern tier of Ohio counties wanted no part of black people and were more likely to aid the slave catcher than the fugitive.
²⁰

Nevertheless, resentment of the fugitive slave law continued to simmer among many Yankees. Even the heart of an occasional law-and-order man could be melted by the vision of a runaway manacled for return to bondage. Among evangelical Protestants who had been swept into the antislavery movement by the Second Great Awakening, such a vision generated outrage and activism. This was what gave
Uncle Tom's Cabin
such astounding success. As the daughter, sister, and wife of Congregational clergymen, Harriet Beecher Stowe had breathed the doctrinal air of sin, guilt, atonement, and salvation since childhood. She could clothe these themes in prose that throbbed with pathos as well as bathos. After running serially in an antislavery newspaper for nine months,
Uncle Tom's Cabin
came out as a book in the spring of 1852. Within a year it sold 300,000 copies in the United States alone—

19
. Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, 207.

20
.
Ibid.
, 49–62; Leon F. Litwack,
North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States 1790–1860
(Chicago, 1961), 64–74.

comparable to at least three million today. The novel enjoyed equal popularity in Britain and was translated into several foreign languages. Within a decade it had sold more than two million copies in the United States, making it the best seller of all time in proportion to population.

Although Stowe said that God inspired the book, the fugitive slave law served as His mundane instrument. "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," said her sister-in-law after Congress passed the law. "I will if I live," vowed Harriet. And she did, writing by candlelight in the kitchen after putting her six children to bed and finishing the household chores. Unforgettable characters came alive in these pages despite a contrived plot and episodic structure that threatened to run away with the author. "That triumphant work," wrote Henry James, who had been moved by it in his youth, was "much less a book than a state of vision."
²¹
Drawing on her observance of bondage in Kentucky and her experiences with runaway slaves during a residence of eighteen years in Cincinnati, this New England woman made the image of Eliza running across the Ohio River on ice floes or Tom enduring the beatings of Simon Legree in Louisiana more real than life for millions of readers. Nor was the book simply an indictment of the South. Some of its more winsome characters were southerners, and its most loathsome villain, Simon Legree, was a transplanted Yankee. Mrs. Stowe (or perhaps God) rebuked the whole nation for the sin of slavery. She aimed the novel at the evangelical conscience of the North. And she hit her mark.