August 7, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in our 27th episode of The Story of America Series with Dr. Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope, Bill tells the story of how a deal struck to get the transcontinental railroad to run through the North (The Kansas-Nebraska Act) directly led to the rise of Abraham Lincoln and...the Civil War.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American People.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts up. Next, another installment of our series about Us,
the Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and
(00:33):
author of the terrific book Land of Hope, Bill McLay.
This episode the Rise of Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
If there was one issue more than any other that
led to the political rise of Abraham Lincoln, one issue
more than any other that led to America's seemingly inevitable
march towards Civil War, it was the issue of slavery.
Particularly was the Fugitive Slave Act. This law turned Northerners
(01:08):
into co conspirators with the South because it required Northerners
to cooperate and actively engage in supporting the practice of slavery,
requiring them to track, capture, and return escape slaves to
their owners, rather than allowing them to live as free
people with the rights of God gave Thom, and our
(01:30):
own declaration declared it was one thing to accept its
existence down there, as long as they weren't expected to
abide by the same laws protecting the rights of slaveholders
to hold slaves as property human beings as property. There's
(01:52):
another thing to be complicit in that institution. The Fugitive
Slave Law was a law that turned toleration of the
peculiar institution into participation, and that was a bridge too
far for Northern Nurse. One state Supreme court was consin
seemed the law unconstitutional.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Vermont essentially nullified.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
The Fugitive Slave Act through legislation of its own, and
just as importantly, very prominent critics, including writers like Ralph
Waldo Emerson, spoke out. And I should add here that
Emerson was very slow to come to the anti slavery
(02:37):
cause he was not congenitally political. He was interested in ideas,
but this act galvanized him to speak out. The last
year has forced us all into politics and made it
a paramount of duty to seek what it is offered
(03:00):
and a duty to shun. We do not breathe well.
There is infamy in the air. I have a new experience.
I wake in the morning with a painful sensation to
carry about all day, and which when traced home, is
the odious remembrance of that ignominy which has fallen on Massachusetts,
(03:21):
which robs the landscape of beauty and takes the sunshine
out of every hour. I have lived all my life
in this state and never had any experience of personal
inconvenience from the laws until now.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
What kind of legislation is this? What kind of constitution
which covers it?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
And yet the crime which the second law ordains is
greater than the crime which the first law forbids. For
it is a greater crime to re enslave a man
than to enslave him at first, when it might be
pretended to be a mitigation of his lot as a
captive in war. What shall we do, first abrogate this law,
(04:06):
then proceed to confine slavery to slave states and help
them effectually to make an end of it. Or shall we,
as we are all are advised on all hands, lie
by and wait the progress of the census.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
But will slavery libel? I fear not.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
She's very industrious, gives herself no holidays, No proclamation will.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Put her down.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
She got Texas and now will have Cuba and means
to keep her majority.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
The experience of the past gives.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Us no encouragement to lie by. Shall we call a
new convention, or will any expert statesman furnish us a
plan for this summary or gradual winding up of slavery?
So far as the Republic is its patron, Where.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Is the sound itself?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Since it is agreed by all saying men of all
parties there was yesterday?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
The slave is mischievous?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Why does the sound itself never offer the smallest counsel
of her own?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Let us hear any project with candor and respect?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Is it impossible to speak of it with reason and
good nature? It is really the project fit for this
country to entertain and accomplish. Everything invites emancipation. The grandeur
of the design, the vast stake that we hold the
national domain, the manifest interest of the slave states, the
(05:31):
religious effort of the free States, the public opinion of
the world, all joined to demand it. Very powerful words
from Emberson. Abolitionists. Pastor Luther Lee of Syracuse had these
simple words to describe the Fugitive Slave Act.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It is a war upon.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
God, upon his own law, and upon the rights of humanity.
To obey it or aid in its enforcement is treason
against God and humanity. It involves the guilt of violating
every one of the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It was in this.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Context and at this time, that Uncle Tom's Cabin was
published by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel, published in two volumes,
had a profound impact on attitudes towards slavery in the
United States, depicting in stark terms the cruelty of slavery
and the perils that freedom seeking slaves faced. At the
(06:41):
same time, the effort was underway to connect are two
coasts with a transcontinental railroad. There were two main proposals,
one by Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and another by Stephen A.
Douglas of Illinois. In short, a Southern and a northern proposal.
We get a deal done, Douglas fashion, and agreement that
(07:02):
would bring the Southerners on board. He proposed that the
land west of the Missouri be organized into two distinct territories,
the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory, and each would
be allowed to settle by popular vote a slavery issue
for themselves. It was a huge mistake.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
When we come back more of the Rise of Lincoln
here on our American stories. This is Lee hibib and
this is our American stories, and all of our history
stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors, including
Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the things
(07:45):
that are beautiful in life and all the things that
matter in life. If you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu. And
(08:09):
we returned to our American stories and with our Story
of America series with Hillsdale College professor and author of
Land of Hope Bill McLay. When we last left off,
to get his way for constructing a transcontinental railroad up north,
Stephen A. Douglas fashioned a deal in which territories in
the West would vote on whether they would become free
(08:32):
or slave states. His concept was called popular sovereignty. It
was a decision that would haunt the nation. Let's return
to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Now, this was a big deal because both new territories.
Both proposed territories were north of the line established by
the Missouri Compromise, thus opening up territory to slavery where
it had already been forbidden. Douglas's proposal led to furious
(09:08):
debate for months, but to get the railroad built, both
houses of Congress ended the debate with the passage of
the Kansas Nebraska Act of eighteen fifty four, and President
Franklin Pierre signed it into law. It was a huge mistake,
some might even call it recliffe. Soon violent conflicts erupted
(09:33):
in competing communities, with pro slavery mobs attacking the town
of Lawrence. Those attacks were answered by anti slavery attacks
by the abolitionist John Brown and his sons. This is
how Bleeding Kansas got its name, as this state would
be state state to be found itself, caught between competing
(09:56):
ideas about slavery and to competing governments and two competing constitutions.
It also revealed the sheer folly that somehow popular sovereignty
would settle these differences. The bitter differences in violence over
the issue of slavery was not confined to Kansas. He'd
(10:17):
managed to spill onto the floor of the US Senate itself.
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a bitter speech against
the Kansas Nebraska Act, and he needed to stop with
the legislation. He personally attacked Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina,
accusing him of having embraced quote the Pilot slavery as
(10:41):
his mistress. These insults were surely designed to prompt an
equally outrageous rebuttal, and it came just days later when
Congressman Preston Brooks, who was a cousin of Butler, confronted
Sumner at his desk, denounced his speech as a libel
on South Carolina and mister Butler, and then went on
(11:02):
to hit Sumner over the head with a heavy cane,
nearly killing him. Reaction to this fight between these men
revealed just how profoundly polarized the nation was. Northerners supporting Sumner,
while Brooks received adulation of all kinds from newspapers of
the South and hundreds of new canes from fans of his.
(11:25):
Want't even inscribed a cane with these words hit him again.
By the time Sumner gave his now famous speech, he'd
become a member of a new political party, the Republican Party,
a product of and direct response to the Kansas Nebraska.
(11:50):
Its membership was constituted of anti slavery advocates from the Democratic,
Whig and Free Soil parties and unified around opposing the
extension of slavery into the new territories. In short time,
it became the second largest party in the nation. At
the same time, the largest party, the Democratic Party, was
struggling to maintain unity as its northern and southern factions
(12:15):
became more and more divided. The Republican Party from its
inception was a party of the North, almost exclusively. Because
the Democratic Party was the only national party, it expected
a victory in the eighteen fifty six election. Their candidate
was James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who had experience as a
(12:35):
Congressman and a Secretary of State under James K. Polk.
The Republican Party campaign on what were classic Whig issues,
including what we today might call infrastructure and tariffs protectionism,
but it was also the first national party to declare
fully its opposition to slavery. Buchanan was a familiar face,
(12:58):
and he won with the hope he could maintain this delicate,
fragile status quo in America. But just days after his inauguration,
the Supreme Court handed down its momentous dred Scott decision.
That decision would only add to the already deep divide
(13:20):
on slavery. Ironically, Justice Tawny, who authored the decision, was
hoping it would settle the issue. Far from that. Here's
some details of the case. Dred Scott was a man
who had been born a slave.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
He had been.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Sold to a surgeon who took him to Illinois, a
free state, and then to the Wisconsin Territory, which was
also free. Remember, the Northwest Ordinance proscribed slavery, and the
Wisconsin Territory as well as Illinois, were both part of
that covered by the Northwest Ordons, so in the Wisconsin
(13:59):
terror Scott married and had two daughters. After his master's
death in eighteen forty six, Scott sued in the Missouri
courts for his freedom on the simple grounds, or so
it seemed at the time that his residence in a
free state and free territory as a freeman made him
a freeman. The case made its way through the court
(14:22):
system to the U. S. Supreme Court, where it was
presided over by the aforementioned Justice Tawny, Roger B. Tawney,
a Democrat from Maryland, but the court ruled against Scott
and Tawny, who wrote the majority of the opinion took
his chance to stake his claim and resolve the issue
(14:43):
of slavery the territories once and for all. There were
three main components to the decision. First, the court dismissed
Scott's claims, arguing that he lacked standing to sue because
he he was not a citizen. Why was he not
a citizen? He was not a citizen because the Constitution
(15:04):
did not intend, the Court said, to extend the rights
of citizenship to blacks. It said openly racial argument Number two,
he also argued the court argued that Congress lacked the
power to deprive any person of his property without due process,
and because slaves were property.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Slaves were property, slavery could not be excluded from any.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Federal territory or state, so argued with the court. Finally,
number three, the Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise itself
was not just moved due to the passage of the
Kansas Nebraska hacked, but unconstitutional from the start. It had
been all along because it invalidly excluded slavery from Wisconsin
(15:55):
and other northern territories. So with the Missouri Compromise tossed
the side and thrown on the ash heap of history.
Everything was now up for grabs, and the radical Southerners
wasted no time calling for a federal slave code to
(16:16):
protect their property. As they thought of it. They were
emboldened by the dread Scott case and thought things were
churning their way. At last they even sensed, and with
good reason, that President Buchanan was on their side. Northerners, too,
believe Buchanan was a tool of the pro slavery South
at worst, and a man not willing to spend any
(16:38):
political capital on the issue of slavery at best. Leadership
on the issue of slavery would have to come from
some other source. So at last we come to one
of the great luminaries, one of the great figures of
American political history, a rising star at the Republican Party,
(17:03):
a very successful trial lawyer, a one term Whig congressman.
Who was This man is Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And you've been listening to Hillsdale College professor and author
of Land of Vote Bill McLay telling one heck of
a story, all of the elements political, cultural, leading straight
to a collision, and that would be the Civil War.
Up through this context rises a lawyer and a fairly
unknown man up till now named Abraham Lincoln. When we
(17:39):
continue more of the remarkable story of the rise of
Lincoln here on our American Stories, and we returned to
(18:09):
our American Stories and our final portion of our story
on the Rise of Abraham Lincoln is a part of
our Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and
author of Land of Hope Bill McLay Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Who was this man, this Abraham Lincoln? Well, his life
story became the stuff of legend. He was the uncommon,
common man born into a humble frontier life, who wrote
us to prominence through sheer, grit, determination and talent and
(18:48):
hard work. He was born in Kentucky, literally in a
log cabin. We know almost nothing of his early life
except that he was poor. He moved around from Kentucky
to Indiana from Indiana, Illinois as his father moved around,
which was not unusual in those days. We know he
(19:08):
hated the chores of farm life, endless work, plowing, harvesting,
chopping wood, hauling water. And although he had almost no
formal schooling, he was a voracious reader and had a
great love of words of rhetoric of oratory, and he
knew that books and his great capacity for the use
(19:32):
of the English language would be a ticket to his
rising in the world. He arrived as a very young
man in New Salem, Illinois, unknown to anyone. He got
a job as a clerk, and through his exertions became
(19:53):
a very popular member of the community.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
He was appointed.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Postmaster, and then ausis said and Try was elected to
the Illinois General Assembly, the state legislature. For Lincoln, this
success was the embodiment of the Declaration of Independence, a
document he revered and would repeatedly return to because it
so beautifully affirmed equal worth of all people, ordinary people,
(20:20):
and their equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
That love of.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Equality was not some passing affection. It was deep and profound.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
For Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
The words equality meant the rights of all people to
the fruits of their own labor, a principal grounded not
in the will of government or any human source, but
in nature itself, in God. And that's why Lincoln so
despised slavery from his earliest days, because he believed, deep
(20:55):
in his core that slavery was a form of theft
aft and allowed one class of men to steal from
another class of men. Well, some say that men make
the times, and others say the times make the men.
It was in the fervor of the eighteen fifties, with
(21:15):
slavery heavily weighing on the nation, that Lincoln emerged. Stephen Douglas,
the little giant from Illinois. He was out for reelection
to the Senate in eighteen fifty eight in what was
just going to be a warm up for a presidential
bid in eighteen sixty. Lecoulnd opposed Douglas from the very
(21:36):
beginning of this campaign that he was a natural choice
to compete for the Illinois Senate seat.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
So he had his.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Moment, and the Senate candency gave him a platform, a
moral platform to attack Douglas's ideas, his political skills expose
his lack.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Of principle when it came to the weightiest.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Moral issue of the day. In eighteen fifty eighty challenged
Douglas to a series of debates, seven in all, and
Douglas accepted. These debates were real classics of American oratory.
Of all oratory, Lincoln tried at every turn to make
Douglas appear to be a radical, pro slavery, progens God sympathizer,
(22:21):
which Douglas actually was not. Douglas, for his part, tried
to make Lincoln look like a dangerous abolitionist radical, which
Lincoln was not. Lincoln was anti slavery, but he was
not in favor of abolition, but the debates were substantive
and worthy of the state of Illinois, the Senate, and
the nation. Lincoln would go on to lose the election
(22:44):
to Douglas, but it was a competitive race, and Lincoln
emerged as a national figure, a possible and plausible Republican
candidate for president in eighteen sixty. So the Republican Party
came just a few seats short for to be exec
of an absolute majority in Congress. A growing and assented
(23:07):
Republican Party and a fracturing of the National Democratic Party
foreshadowed trouble ahead for the nation. The last dire warning
of things to come with the news of abolitionist John
Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry on the night of October sixteenth,
eighteen fifty nine, at the Federal Arsenal. Brown's hatred of
(23:32):
slavery had grown. He was convinced that God had called
him to do what he did that night, which was
to strike at the institution of slavery itself.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
His plan was simple.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
He and his men would seize guns from the Federal
arsenal and use them to arm slaves in the region
and begin an uprising which would lead to the creation
of a slave run state. This effort was doomed from
the start, and fourteen lives were long in the process
to being his own sons. Brown was hanged instead December
(24:08):
of that year, and these were some of his final
words before being put to death. In the first place,
I deny everything but what I have all along admitted
design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly
to have made a clean thing of that matter, as
I did last winter when I went into Missouri and
took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side,
(24:31):
moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada.
I designed to do the same thing again on a
larger scale. The court acknowledges, as.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I suppose the validity of the law of.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
God, I see a book kissed here, which I supposed
to be the Bible, or at least the new Testament.
That book teaches me that all things whatsoever I would
that men should do to me, I should do even
so to them. It teaches me further to quote remember
them that are in bonds as bound wisdom. I endeavored
(25:04):
to act upon that instruction.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I say, I am too young.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
To understand that God is any respector of persons. I
believe that you have interfered as I have done, as
I have always freely admitted that I have done in
behalf of his despised poor was not wrong. But right now,
if it is deemed necessary, that I should forfeit my
life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and
mingle my blood further with the blood of my children,
(25:30):
and with the blood of millions in this slave of country,
whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments,
I submit so that it be done. Southerners were horrified
by Brown's actions and took his violent rampage to be
an indication of what the North had in store. Northerners
(25:54):
saw Brown as a martyr of sorts, even a saint.
There was little room for moderates left on the issue
of slavery. By the election of eighteen sixty, the Democratic
Party had all become apart, not acceptable to Southerners and
Buchanan supporters. They dominated their own candidate, Vice President John
Breckinridge of Kentucky. Other Democratic dissenters would form a new party,
(26:17):
the Constitutional Union Party. In short, it was a mess.
It would make the likelihood of a Republican victory a probability.
Lincoln won one hundred and eighty electoral votes from all
eighteen Free states, and only from those states he didn't
get a single vote a single electoral vote from the South.
(26:40):
Douglas got an anemic twelve electoral votes and finished a
distant fourth. Lincoln's win was a turning point in American
life and a momentous victory for many reasons. In many ways,
it was the first time a president had been elected
on an entirely regional basis, and some Southerners warned that
such an impressed, such an outcome in this election would
(27:02):
leave the South with no choice but to secede from
the Union. Immediately after the election, the state of South
Carolina did precisely that war, it seems, was almost inevitable.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
The story of the rise of Lincoln here on our
American stories,
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American People.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts up. Next, another installment of our series about Us,
the Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and
(00:33):
author of the terrific book Land of Hope, Bill McLay.
This episode the Rise of Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
If there was one issue more than any other that
led to the political rise of Abraham Lincoln, one issue
more than any other that led to America's seemingly inevitable
march towards Civil War, it was the issue of slavery.
Particularly was the Fugitive Slave Act. This law turned Northerners
(01:08):
into co conspirators with the South because it required Northerners
to cooperate and actively engage in supporting the practice of slavery,
requiring them to track, capture, and return escape slaves to
their owners, rather than allowing them to live as free
people with the rights of God gave Thom, and our
(01:30):
own declaration declared it was one thing to accept its
existence down there, as long as they weren't expected to
abide by the same laws protecting the rights of slaveholders
to hold slaves as property human beings as property. There's
(01:52):
another thing to be complicit in that institution. The Fugitive
Slave Law was a law that turned toleration of the
peculiar institution into participation, and that was a bridge too
far for Northern Nurse. One state Supreme court was consin
seemed the law unconstitutional.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Vermont essentially nullified.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
The Fugitive Slave Act through legislation of its own, and
just as importantly, very prominent critics, including writers like Ralph
Waldo Emerson, spoke out. And I should add here that
Emerson was very slow to come to the anti slavery
(02:37):
cause he was not congenitally political. He was interested in ideas,
but this act galvanized him to speak out. The last
year has forced us all into politics and made it
a paramount of duty to seek what it is offered
(03:00):
and a duty to shun. We do not breathe well.
There is infamy in the air. I have a new experience.
I wake in the morning with a painful sensation to
carry about all day, and which when traced home, is
the odious remembrance of that ignominy which has fallen on Massachusetts,
(03:21):
which robs the landscape of beauty and takes the sunshine
out of every hour. I have lived all my life
in this state and never had any experience of personal
inconvenience from the laws until now.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
What kind of legislation is this? What kind of constitution
which covers it?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
And yet the crime which the second law ordains is
greater than the crime which the first law forbids. For
it is a greater crime to re enslave a man
than to enslave him at first, when it might be
pretended to be a mitigation of his lot as a
captive in war. What shall we do, first abrogate this law,
(04:06):
then proceed to confine slavery to slave states and help
them effectually to make an end of it. Or shall we,
as we are all are advised on all hands, lie
by and wait the progress of the census.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
But will slavery libel? I fear not.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
She's very industrious, gives herself no holidays, No proclamation will.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Put her down.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
She got Texas and now will have Cuba and means
to keep her majority.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
The experience of the past gives.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Us no encouragement to lie by. Shall we call a
new convention, or will any expert statesman furnish us a
plan for this summary or gradual winding up of slavery?
So far as the Republic is its patron, Where.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Is the sound itself?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Since it is agreed by all saying men of all
parties there was yesterday?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
The slave is mischievous?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Why does the sound itself never offer the smallest counsel
of her own?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Let us hear any project with candor and respect?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Is it impossible to speak of it with reason and
good nature? It is really the project fit for this
country to entertain and accomplish. Everything invites emancipation. The grandeur
of the design, the vast stake that we hold the
national domain, the manifest interest of the slave states, the
(05:31):
religious effort of the free States, the public opinion of
the world, all joined to demand it. Very powerful words
from Emberson. Abolitionists. Pastor Luther Lee of Syracuse had these
simple words to describe the Fugitive Slave Act.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It is a war upon.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
God, upon his own law, and upon the rights of humanity.
To obey it or aid in its enforcement is treason
against God and humanity. It involves the guilt of violating
every one of the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It was in this.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Context and at this time, that Uncle Tom's Cabin was
published by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel, published in two volumes,
had a profound impact on attitudes towards slavery in the
United States, depicting in stark terms the cruelty of slavery
and the perils that freedom seeking slaves faced. At the
(06:41):
same time, the effort was underway to connect are two
coasts with a transcontinental railroad. There were two main proposals,
one by Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and another by Stephen A.
Douglas of Illinois. In short, a Southern and a northern proposal.
We get a deal done, Douglas fashion, and agreement that
(07:02):
would bring the Southerners on board. He proposed that the
land west of the Missouri be organized into two distinct territories,
the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory, and each would
be allowed to settle by popular vote a slavery issue
for themselves. It was a huge mistake.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
When we come back more of the Rise of Lincoln
here on our American stories. This is Lee hibib and
this is our American stories, and all of our history
stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors, including
Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the things
(07:45):
that are beautiful in life and all the things that
matter in life. If you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu. And
(08:09):
we returned to our American stories and with our Story
of America series with Hillsdale College professor and author of
Land of Hope Bill McLay. When we last left off,
to get his way for constructing a transcontinental railroad up north,
Stephen A. Douglas fashioned a deal in which territories in
the West would vote on whether they would become free
(08:32):
or slave states. His concept was called popular sovereignty. It
was a decision that would haunt the nation. Let's return
to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Now, this was a big deal because both new territories.
Both proposed territories were north of the line established by
the Missouri Compromise, thus opening up territory to slavery where
it had already been forbidden. Douglas's proposal led to furious
(09:08):
debate for months, but to get the railroad built, both
houses of Congress ended the debate with the passage of
the Kansas Nebraska Act of eighteen fifty four, and President
Franklin Pierre signed it into law. It was a huge mistake,
some might even call it recliffe. Soon violent conflicts erupted
(09:33):
in competing communities, with pro slavery mobs attacking the town
of Lawrence. Those attacks were answered by anti slavery attacks
by the abolitionist John Brown and his sons. This is
how Bleeding Kansas got its name, as this state would
be state state to be found itself, caught between competing
(09:56):
ideas about slavery and to competing governments and two competing constitutions.
It also revealed the sheer folly that somehow popular sovereignty
would settle these differences. The bitter differences in violence over
the issue of slavery was not confined to Kansas. He'd
(10:17):
managed to spill onto the floor of the US Senate itself.
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a bitter speech against
the Kansas Nebraska Act, and he needed to stop with
the legislation. He personally attacked Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina,
accusing him of having embraced quote the Pilot slavery as
(10:41):
his mistress. These insults were surely designed to prompt an
equally outrageous rebuttal, and it came just days later when
Congressman Preston Brooks, who was a cousin of Butler, confronted
Sumner at his desk, denounced his speech as a libel
on South Carolina and mister Butler, and then went on
(11:02):
to hit Sumner over the head with a heavy cane,
nearly killing him. Reaction to this fight between these men
revealed just how profoundly polarized the nation was. Northerners supporting Sumner,
while Brooks received adulation of all kinds from newspapers of
the South and hundreds of new canes from fans of his.
(11:25):
Want't even inscribed a cane with these words hit him again.
By the time Sumner gave his now famous speech, he'd
become a member of a new political party, the Republican Party,
a product of and direct response to the Kansas Nebraska.
(11:50):
Its membership was constituted of anti slavery advocates from the Democratic,
Whig and Free Soil parties and unified around opposing the
extension of slavery into the new territories. In short time,
it became the second largest party in the nation. At
the same time, the largest party, the Democratic Party, was
struggling to maintain unity as its northern and southern factions
(12:15):
became more and more divided. The Republican Party from its
inception was a party of the North, almost exclusively. Because
the Democratic Party was the only national party, it expected
a victory in the eighteen fifty six election. Their candidate
was James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who had experience as a
(12:35):
Congressman and a Secretary of State under James K. Polk.
The Republican Party campaign on what were classic Whig issues,
including what we today might call infrastructure and tariffs protectionism,
but it was also the first national party to declare
fully its opposition to slavery. Buchanan was a familiar face,
(12:58):
and he won with the hope he could maintain this delicate,
fragile status quo in America. But just days after his inauguration,
the Supreme Court handed down its momentous dred Scott decision.
That decision would only add to the already deep divide
(13:20):
on slavery. Ironically, Justice Tawny, who authored the decision, was
hoping it would settle the issue. Far from that. Here's
some details of the case. Dred Scott was a man
who had been born a slave.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
He had been.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Sold to a surgeon who took him to Illinois, a
free state, and then to the Wisconsin Territory, which was
also free. Remember, the Northwest Ordinance proscribed slavery, and the
Wisconsin Territory as well as Illinois, were both part of
that covered by the Northwest Ordons, so in the Wisconsin
(13:59):
terror Scott married and had two daughters. After his master's
death in eighteen forty six, Scott sued in the Missouri
courts for his freedom on the simple grounds, or so
it seemed at the time that his residence in a
free state and free territory as a freeman made him
a freeman. The case made its way through the court
(14:22):
system to the U. S. Supreme Court, where it was
presided over by the aforementioned Justice Tawny, Roger B. Tawney,
a Democrat from Maryland, but the court ruled against Scott
and Tawny, who wrote the majority of the opinion took
his chance to stake his claim and resolve the issue
(14:43):
of slavery the territories once and for all. There were
three main components to the decision. First, the court dismissed
Scott's claims, arguing that he lacked standing to sue because
he he was not a citizen. Why was he not
a citizen? He was not a citizen because the Constitution
(15:04):
did not intend, the Court said, to extend the rights
of citizenship to blacks. It said openly racial argument Number two,
he also argued the court argued that Congress lacked the
power to deprive any person of his property without due process,
and because slaves were property.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Slaves were property, slavery could not be excluded from any.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Federal territory or state, so argued with the court. Finally,
number three, the Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise itself
was not just moved due to the passage of the
Kansas Nebraska hacked, but unconstitutional from the start. It had
been all along because it invalidly excluded slavery from Wisconsin
(15:55):
and other northern territories. So with the Missouri Compromise tossed
the side and thrown on the ash heap of history.
Everything was now up for grabs, and the radical Southerners
wasted no time calling for a federal slave code to
(16:16):
protect their property. As they thought of it. They were
emboldened by the dread Scott case and thought things were
churning their way. At last they even sensed, and with
good reason, that President Buchanan was on their side. Northerners, too,
believe Buchanan was a tool of the pro slavery South
at worst, and a man not willing to spend any
(16:38):
political capital on the issue of slavery at best. Leadership
on the issue of slavery would have to come from
some other source. So at last we come to one
of the great luminaries, one of the great figures of
American political history, a rising star at the Republican Party,
(17:03):
a very successful trial lawyer, a one term Whig congressman.
Who was This man is Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And you've been listening to Hillsdale College professor and author
of Land of Vote Bill McLay telling one heck of
a story, all of the elements political, cultural, leading straight
to a collision, and that would be the Civil War.
Up through this context rises a lawyer and a fairly
unknown man up till now named Abraham Lincoln. When we
(17:39):
continue more of the remarkable story of the rise of
Lincoln here on our American Stories, and we returned to
(18:09):
our American Stories and our final portion of our story
on the Rise of Abraham Lincoln is a part of
our Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and
author of Land of Hope Bill McLay Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Who was this man, this Abraham Lincoln? Well, his life
story became the stuff of legend. He was the uncommon,
common man born into a humble frontier life, who wrote
us to prominence through sheer, grit, determination and talent and
(18:48):
hard work. He was born in Kentucky, literally in a
log cabin. We know almost nothing of his early life
except that he was poor. He moved around from Kentucky
to Indiana from Indiana, Illinois as his father moved around,
which was not unusual in those days. We know he
(19:08):
hated the chores of farm life, endless work, plowing, harvesting,
chopping wood, hauling water. And although he had almost no
formal schooling, he was a voracious reader and had a
great love of words of rhetoric of oratory, and he
knew that books and his great capacity for the use
(19:32):
of the English language would be a ticket to his
rising in the world. He arrived as a very young
man in New Salem, Illinois, unknown to anyone. He got
a job as a clerk, and through his exertions became
(19:53):
a very popular member of the community.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
He was appointed.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Postmaster, and then ausis said and Try was elected to
the Illinois General Assembly, the state legislature. For Lincoln, this
success was the embodiment of the Declaration of Independence, a
document he revered and would repeatedly return to because it
so beautifully affirmed equal worth of all people, ordinary people,
(20:20):
and their equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
That love of.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Equality was not some passing affection. It was deep and profound.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
For Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
The words equality meant the rights of all people to
the fruits of their own labor, a principal grounded not
in the will of government or any human source, but
in nature itself, in God. And that's why Lincoln so
despised slavery from his earliest days, because he believed, deep
(20:55):
in his core that slavery was a form of theft
aft and allowed one class of men to steal from
another class of men. Well, some say that men make
the times, and others say the times make the men.
It was in the fervor of the eighteen fifties, with
(21:15):
slavery heavily weighing on the nation, that Lincoln emerged. Stephen Douglas,
the little giant from Illinois. He was out for reelection
to the Senate in eighteen fifty eight in what was
just going to be a warm up for a presidential
bid in eighteen sixty. Lecoulnd opposed Douglas from the very
(21:36):
beginning of this campaign that he was a natural choice
to compete for the Illinois Senate seat.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
So he had his.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Moment, and the Senate candency gave him a platform, a
moral platform to attack Douglas's ideas, his political skills expose
his lack.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Of principle when it came to the weightiest.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Moral issue of the day. In eighteen fifty eighty challenged
Douglas to a series of debates, seven in all, and
Douglas accepted. These debates were real classics of American oratory.
Of all oratory, Lincoln tried at every turn to make
Douglas appear to be a radical, pro slavery, progens God sympathizer,
(22:21):
which Douglas actually was not. Douglas, for his part, tried
to make Lincoln look like a dangerous abolitionist radical, which
Lincoln was not. Lincoln was anti slavery, but he was
not in favor of abolition, but the debates were substantive
and worthy of the state of Illinois, the Senate, and
the nation. Lincoln would go on to lose the election
(22:44):
to Douglas, but it was a competitive race, and Lincoln
emerged as a national figure, a possible and plausible Republican
candidate for president in eighteen sixty. So the Republican Party
came just a few seats short for to be exec
of an absolute majority in Congress. A growing and assented
(23:07):
Republican Party and a fracturing of the National Democratic Party
foreshadowed trouble ahead for the nation. The last dire warning
of things to come with the news of abolitionist John
Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry on the night of October sixteenth,
eighteen fifty nine, at the Federal Arsenal. Brown's hatred of
(23:32):
slavery had grown. He was convinced that God had called
him to do what he did that night, which was
to strike at the institution of slavery itself.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
His plan was simple.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
He and his men would seize guns from the Federal
arsenal and use them to arm slaves in the region
and begin an uprising which would lead to the creation
of a slave run state. This effort was doomed from
the start, and fourteen lives were long in the process
to being his own sons. Brown was hanged instead December
(24:08):
of that year, and these were some of his final
words before being put to death. In the first place,
I deny everything but what I have all along admitted
design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly
to have made a clean thing of that matter, as
I did last winter when I went into Missouri and
took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side,
(24:31):
moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada.
I designed to do the same thing again on a
larger scale. The court acknowledges, as.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I suppose the validity of the law of.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
God, I see a book kissed here, which I supposed
to be the Bible, or at least the new Testament.
That book teaches me that all things whatsoever I would
that men should do to me, I should do even
so to them. It teaches me further to quote remember
them that are in bonds as bound wisdom. I endeavored
(25:04):
to act upon that instruction.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I say, I am too young.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
To understand that God is any respector of persons. I
believe that you have interfered as I have done, as
I have always freely admitted that I have done in
behalf of his despised poor was not wrong. But right now,
if it is deemed necessary, that I should forfeit my
life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and
mingle my blood further with the blood of my children,
(25:30):
and with the blood of millions in this slave of country,
whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments,
I submit so that it be done. Southerners were horrified
by Brown's actions and took his violent rampage to be
an indication of what the North had in store. Northerners
(25:54):
saw Brown as a martyr of sorts, even a saint.
There was little room for moderates left on the issue
of slavery. By the election of eighteen sixty, the Democratic
Party had all become apart, not acceptable to Southerners and
Buchanan supporters. They dominated their own candidate, Vice President John
Breckinridge of Kentucky. Other Democratic dissenters would form a new party,
(26:17):
the Constitutional Union Party. In short, it was a mess.
It would make the likelihood of a Republican victory a probability.
Lincoln won one hundred and eighty electoral votes from all
eighteen Free states, and only from those states he didn't
get a single vote a single electoral vote from the South.
(26:40):
Douglas got an anemic twelve electoral votes and finished a
distant fourth. Lincoln's win was a turning point in American
life and a momentous victory for many reasons. In many ways,
it was the first time a president had been elected
on an entirely regional basis, and some Southerners warned that
such an impressed, such an outcome in this election would
(27:02):
leave the South with no choice but to secede from
the Union. Immediately after the election, the state of South
Carolina did precisely that war, it seems, was almost inevitable.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
The story of the rise of Lincoln here on our
American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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