The USA in the Time of Franklin Pierce
1853-1857
By Mike Donovan
“In truth, he is the candidate of the South” - NH - The Dems return to power – #14 – “Handsome Frank” – Episcopalian - Bachelor of Arts - ‘Bleeding Kansas’ and ‘Bleeding Sumner’ - VP Rufus R. D. King who died in office - Pierce closed his term with no VP– Fisherman
Pierce was the only President to retain his original cabinet from Inaugural to Inaugural.
“There is nothing left to do but get drunk.”
Pierce - November 1856
I performed at a stand-up comedy show at Franklin Pierce College. I got to the show early and began asking students, “Who was Franklin Pierce? – Who is this school named after?” – One student after another said, “I don’t know,” or “I don’t know, some guy from the 1800’s I think.” One student out of 20 knew that he was a former President of the United States and he couldn’t tell me anything about him.
I guess we can safely say that Franklin Pierce is one of our lesser-known Presidents. He's not even well known at his own college.
“We Polked ‘em in 44. We’ll Pierce ‘em in 52,” was the clever campaign slogan for the Dems. The man from New Hampshire defeated Whig Winfield Dave Scott in 1852. It was a contest between two heroes of the Mexican War. The score was 254-52 in the EC. John P. Hale of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party won no electoral votes.
When Horace Mann heard that Nathaniel Hawthorne (author The Scarlet Letter) was writing a campaign biography of Franklin Pierce he remarked that it would be his best work of fiction to date.
FP CABINET
Secretary of State---------------------William L. Marcy—1853-1857
Secretary of War----------------------Jefferson Davis-----1853-1857
Secretary of Treasury----------------James Arlo Guthrie-1853-1857
Attorney General---------------------Caleb Cushing------1853-1857
CABNOTES
Former New York Governor Marcy was the originator of the famous phrase, “To the victor go the spoils.” Secretary of War Jefferson Davis went on to become President … of the Confederate States of America. Guthrie at Treasury was the great great grandfather of leftist folk singer Woody Guthrie.
Bill Marcy was such a fierce partisan that it was said he would rather be wrong with his party than right without it. But Marcy’s selfishness stopped when it came to handling foreign policy. The Secretary of State served with the nation’s best interest in mind, not that of the Democratic Party.
“President” Davis and former President Pierce remained friends during the Civil War. If that isn't proof that Pierce was a “doughface,” what is?
BIO
On November 23, 1804 in cold hilly Hillsboro New Hampshire the 13th US President was born, a Jefferson baby. Franklin’s father had fought in the Revolutionary War and was active in local politics.
Franklin Pierce went to Bowdoin College in Maine because apparently Hillsboro NH wasn’t cold enough for him. He was a classmate of future literary giants Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nat Hawthorne.
In 1827, the same year that Pierce passed the bar, his dad was elected governor of New Hampshire. Young Frank opened a law office in Hillsboro. When dad won his re-election bid in 29, Franklin, running for state representative, was elected along with him. It was father and son in the New Hampshire capitol. Young Pierce was soon rose to speaker of the Hampshire House.
In 1833 the Pierce boy made the major leagues. Franklin Pierce was elected to the US Congress in Washington. At 32, he was America’s youngest Rep.
In 1834 Frank married Jane Means Appleton. Jane’s late father had been President of Bowdoin College.
Jane Pierce had health problems severe enough to keep her from moving to Washington with Frank. Alone in the big city, Congressman Pierce soon began running with a group of hard drinking bachelor politicians.
Pierce was re-elected in 1835.
While an active Congressman, the state legislature of New Hampshire elected him their US Senator. So Franklin just walked over to the other side of the Capitol Building to start his new career.
But Frank had other priorities. His wife asked him to return home and he did, resigning his Senate seat in 1842.
Pierce served in the Mexican War with some distinction, but unfortunately he fell off his horse during one battle, and then fainted. This story was revised and revived by his opponents during the election of 1852. Now Frank was seen fainting for no reason during every battle. They combined this with his drinking habits to create the joke that that in the Mexican War “Pierce survived many a hard fought bottle.”
EVENTS
ELECTION OF 1852
KOSZTA CITIZENSHIP
ERIE PEANUT WAR OF 54
BLEEDING KANSAS
RISE OF THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY
OSTEND MANIFESTO
THE FIRST TITANIC
TONY BURNS RIOT
BIRTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
FREEDOM FOR SOLOMON NORTHRUP
ATTACK ON SENATOR SUMNER
ELECTION OF 1852;
Buchanan was the front-runner but the Dem convention settled on the suave man from the Granite State, Franklin Q. Pierce. Although Pierce was a Northern man, he was considered by most knowledgeable voters to be “the candidate of the South.”
Both nominees for 1852 had been Generals in the Mexican War. The Whig Party nominated General Winfield Scott. The parties tried to avoid the issues, rather than debate them. There was little enthusiasm for the election. One newspaper quipped that the real front-runner in the race was General Apathy.
Big Whig Winfield Scott has been called ‘the founder of the modern American Army.’ Scott was a native of Virginia. His was a distinguished life of 50 years in the military service. He was nicknamed ‘Old Fuss and Feathers’ for his fastidious military dress. Scott fought hard in the War of 1812 and was badly wounded at the battle of Lundy’s Lane, near Niagara Falls. The six foot five Scott became a major general at the age of 28. In 41 Scott became a lieutenant general, the first one named since George Washington.
In the Mexican War Scott Scott marched famously on Mexico City and presided over the decisive ending of the conflict. Win Scott, with all his medals, became a household name and a hot politician.
If Whig Scott had beaten Dem Pierce in 52, the Republican Party probably never would have been created. But the 1852 defeat for the Whigs meant the practical end to the party. Remnants remained but it was from here on a declining power waving hello to the Republican Party as it passed by on the way up.
Lieutenant General Scott could not win the battle of 1852. Scott campaigned by making many speeches at the opening ceremonies of military hospitals around the land. It woul have been sound political strategy but for one little problem. Scott was a bad orator this was the oratory era. Winfield’s speeches backfired on his already struggling campaign.
He tried other tricks. Scott even had shills in his audiences asking him loaded friendly questions in Irish accents to help woo the immigrant votes.
The Whig won only four states out of the 31 in the Union. For the Whig Party and its line of General candidates it was unconditional surrender.
The parties in 1852 were not deeply divided on issues, except perhaps to say that both parties were so split from within on the key issue of slavery that the end result was that there was nothing to choose between them. The two parties entered into a virtual conspiracy to dodge not only slavery, but also all the important issues. It ultimately came down to a popularity contest between rival safe candidates.
For the Dems, Franklin Pierce ran with a little of the arrogance of youth. He was younger and better looking that the stodgy old general Scott. The Democrats exploited the “Handsome Frank” edge as they would later under Kennedy and Clinton. Hawthorne gloated over the age comparison between the candidates in his Pierce bio,
“[Scott] has already done his work, and has not in him
the spirit of the present or of the coming time – “
The people, said Hawthorne, should put their trust instead in Pierce,
“A new man whom a life of energy and various activity
has tested, but not worn out.”
The campaign slogan for the Democrats in this campaign is a helpful learning device for remembering two elections. “We Polked ‘em in 44, we’ll Pierce ‘em in 52.”
And they did.
“We Pierced ‘Em in ‘52”
Popular vote 1852 -------Pierce D) 1,601,000
Scott Whig) 1,386,000
John Hale FS) 155,000
Much of liberal New England considered Pierce to be a “doughface,” a Northern man with Southern sympathies. Franklin didn't carry neighbor Massachusetts.
INAUGURAL AND TRAGEDY
The Pierce family suffered a terrible tragedy while Franklin was President-elect. On January 6, 1853 Pierce was on a train from Boston to Concord, NH with his wife and son. The train jumped the tracks near the town of Andover Mass, and in the accident Benjamin Pierce Jr., 11 years old, was killed. The President and First Lady-elect witnessed the horror.
The parents were not hurt physically but were scarred for life. Benjamin was their only living child. Two other children had died at birth. Mrs. Pierce did not attend the Inaugural, nor did she make formal public appearances for the next two years.
Inauguration Day In Washington D.C. was bitterly cold and windy with a steady touch of snow. Pierce memorized his entire inaugural speech and delivered it without notes, a rare feat even for his era. In it he flatly stated that he believed slavery in the states to be ‘recognized by the Constitution’. He stood by the new laws known as the Compromise of 1850 and added some major-league wishful thinking on the slavery issue,
“I fervently hope that the question is at rest, and
that no sectional … or fanatical excitement may
again threaten … the light of our prosperity.”
Mrs. Pierce did not attend, but the outgoing Mrs. Fillmore did attend. She caught a severe case of pneumonia from the exposure to the cold and died one month later. 1853 was a most tragic Inaugural for two First Ladies.
THE KING IS DEAD
On April 18, 1853 just a month or so after being sworn in, Vice President Rufus King died. He never even got a chance to preside over the Senate, which didn’t meet formally until much later in the year. Rufus King was the William Henry Harrison of the VP’s.
The Vice President’s seat remained empty for Pierce’s entire term and no one noticed the difference.
SLAVERY CRISIS; THE KANSAS NEBRASKA ACT
The Kansas-Nebraska Act legalized slavery north of the Missouri Compromise line all the way to Canada.
The slavery controversy was red hot in Pierce’s time and was the dominant issue in the nation from the time he was sworn in until the time he was sworn out. It was ultimate ostrich for the USA to ignore slavery as an issue in the 1852 election,as it did.
History generally does not think much of Pierce on the slavery issue. Harry Truman, the quasi-historian President, once referred to Pierce in print as a “nincompoop.” Like he knew the guy. Well I say Carter was a numbskull, how’s that?
Truman was mad at Pierce partly for approving the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened up the territories of the entire west and northwest to slavery.
Prior to KN, the Missouri Compromise had been in force, by which no territory could create a slave state above the compromise line. Below that, whip away! But above that line (see map), it was a no-go.
Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, later of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates in 58, was the primary author of the Kansas-Nebraska act and history has not been kind to him for it. I agree with history.
The primary motivation behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to influence the location of the long-desired transcontinental railroad. Everyone knew that a great railroad was going to be built sooner or later, one way or another, in one location or the other. Douglas wanted the eastern terminus to be located at a mid-western city, preferably one in his home state of Illinois. The Senator was hoping to build up the Midwest as the decisive makeweight in the close political balance between North and South. He needed to attract the railroad his way and then use it to build up his Midwest.
Southern Senators for equally selfish reasons wanted the long, long railroad to lay along a southern route with the eastern terminus in New Orleans or Memphis. They wanted Interstate 10.
Stevie D realized that the Southern men in the Senate could easily block his grandiose plans for a midwestern transcontinental railroad. He had to throw them a bone.
That bone was the de facto repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. To refresh our memories, The MC had had been a great King Solomon’s wand cutting a line through the belly of the country and declaring slavery illegal on one side and legal on the other. This Missouri Compromise had been a great victory for the anti-slavery forces even though it was a compromise. True, it had sadly sanctioned slavery in some very large areas, but it had also established the more important principle that the Congress could legislate on the slavery issue at all. The South was largely against this principle and had swallowed hard to take the Missouri medicine in 1820. Now Douglas was going to give pro-slavery forces back this earlier defeat, and on a platter.
If Congress approved the Kansas-Nebraska Act, it would be overturning its own work. The new law would supersede the old and slavery could now be re-instated in a place (Kansas) where it had once already been effectively banned. Kansas was above the Missouri Compromise line.
What was even more horrific to progressive Northerners, slavery was now legal in the west all they way as far north as the Canadian borderline. Just when the Yankees felt that they were beginning to at least stuff the slavery monster into an isolated Southern box, it snapped out if its cage and spread out over half a continent.
By the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act the Nebraska territory would be divided into two separate territories, Kansas and Nebraska. As for slavery, it would be up to the settlers of these territories to decide on slavery. “Popular sovereignty,” it was called. Instead of judicial, Congressional or executive decisions on slavery, the referendum would become the arbiter on this delicate problem in the new territories.
Judging from the map it is easy to see that this was in effect an open invitation to make Kansas a slave state, since Missouri, a slave state, was its dominant neighbor. The Douglas referendum system was a drunk fumbling with a cigarette lighter in a fireworks factory. Pro and anti-slavery settlers poured into Kansas for political battle.
Senator Douglas misread the American public. He thought that expansion was more important in the public mind than slavery. That might have been true in the early 1840,s but this was the fifties.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas Nebraska Act passed the House of Representatives 113-100, and the Senate by 37 to 14.
The Free-soilers, Republicans, and Abbies all his the roof. KN set off a firestorm throughout the North and cost Pierce whatever chance he ever had for a place in history as a good guy. Author Stephen Douglas took so much flak that he borrowed an old line from Jackie Jay that he could travel the country at night by the light of his burning effigies.
SOLOMON NORTHRUP’S ODYSSEY
In 1841 some lowlife slave-catchers kidnapped a free black man named Solomon Northrup on a the street in Washington D.C. The poor guy was sold into slavery in the Deep South. After 12 years in captivity, his northern friends learned of his whereabouts and arranged to purchase his freedom. Northrup then wrote a book, published in 1853 about his experience. It was called “12 Years as a Slave.” It was widely read in the North. The book is one of the most accurate descriptions of slavery ever produced, for Northrup was an educated man when he was kidnapped. Most slaves were forcibly left illiterate. There were few who could tell the story as well as Northrup.
It’s easy to feel for poor Solomon, and through him we can try and understand the pain of three million slaves in his time, not to mention the millions who suffered and died before these three million. From cradle to grave as a slave. It’s too creepy to contemplate. Slavery was the American Holocaust.
For the three million slaves there must be 300 million sad stories. How many ways did slavery hurt each and every person caught on the wrong end of it, each and every day, physically and emotionally? And through no fault of their own. The average slave saw 11 family members sold off to another plantation in their lifetime! One plantation owner put an ad in the paper for a runaway slave. The ad gave four locations for where they suspected he might be lurking. They were the four plantations where his wife, mother, father and mother were located respectively. They had a wild hunch he might be trying to see them.
Slavery is the worst thing that has ever happened in America and it is insane to hope to just put it in the past, as a lot of conservatives moan that we should. The damage is far from over. W.E.B. Du Bois said it best,
“The hurt to the negro in this era was not only his
treatment in slavery; it was the wound dealt to
his reputation as a human being.”
PERRY MISSION TO JAPAN 1853-54
In July of 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry sailed an American fleet into Tokyo Bay. It was called Yedo Bay back then. By any other name, Tokyo harbor was not usually open for visitors. But Perry's mission was commerce through strength.
Japan had closed its doors to foreigners for hundreds of years. American sailors fishing in deep Asian waters were mistreated when they were shipwrecked and landed in Japan. They were usually hacked to death like broccoli. By Pierce's time, the US had had enough.
The Japanese granted limited trading rights to the Dutch and Portugese at Nagasaki, and this limited monopoly was rubbing the big international trading nations the wrong way. England, France and the United States, to name but three, also wanted a piece of the Japanese pie. Why should those two little pipsqueak countries make all the money off Japan? An American fleet under Matthew Perry was organized and left for Japan. Perry's mission to open some doors in Japan was formulated under the Fillmore administration, and continued on under Pierce.
Matt Perry studied Japanese customs intensely. He wanted to be sure that the naval mission was a diplomatic mission first, a trade mission second, and a military mission third. The fleet would be large and heavily armed. The ships would be like polite bouncers who deter through impressive appearance. Perry wasn't going off to start a war, and he wanted to avoid any incidents that could lead to violence through misunderstanding or understanding too well.
A lot of civilian experts on Japan wanted to go along for the adventure, the pay, and the glory. Perry knew they would be useful, but he knew he had to keep a harness on these egoists. He allowed an entire flock of these bookworms to come along for the ride, provided they enlist in the United States Navy. He would listen to the pen-pushers advice only as their comanding officer. No one would have the option of being impudent.
The round-eyed fleet entered Tokyo Bay in July 8, 1853. For three days Perry parried with Japanese envoys who went out to meet him by boat. The Japanese officials finally agreed that the Vice Emperor (more or less - I’m naming him that) would come to met him at a special house on land, a house to be built for the occasion. The strange big ships could leave for now and come back after the house had been build. Perry accepted the compromise. The Vice Emperor suggested the special diplomatic house be built at Nagasaki, but Perry insisted that it must be constructed right here in Yedo.
This was agreed and Perry took his fleet back to the states for victuals. His last words to the Japanese were, “I'll be back.”
In February 1854 Perry was back. Perry and his comanders wined and dined with the Japanese for three weeks. Japan agreed to allow trade with the United States at two of its port cities. Japan said it would stop hacking shipwrecked foreign sailors to pieces like broccoli.
ERIE PEANUT WAR - FEBRUARY 1854
In 1853 Horace Greeley decided to go west on a trip to Cleveland to see an Indians game. His train across NY state had to stop at the little stripe of Pennsylvania between NY and Ohio. The width of the tracks of the NY line was not co-ordinated with those in Ohio, so there was a 22 mile gap in the Erie PA region. Passengers had to get off the train and schlep their way across Erie to get to the second line in Ohio. Greeley found himself in an overcrowded rickety horse-drawn sleigh battling a snowstorm over very dangerous roads and scary bridges in his top hat. HG sensed that this wasn't right. The other passengers told him this hell ride was routine on the Erie disconnection.
On returning east Greeley's newspaper did an investigation. It turns out that the people of Erie were deliberately growing a local economy based on inconveniencing travelers. Erie was forcing them to buy things from the Erie vendors and stay at Erie hotels. The problem could easily be solved by continuing the railroad through the Erie area at the same gauge as the NY line, but that Erie just looked away and said 'our peanut vendors could not afford to lose their jobs.
Erie had a railroad but it had a special gauge which forced anyone in Erie take that line or take the longer route via the Mohawk trail.
The federal government got involved and negotiated with all the railroads. It was decided in the interests of progress that Erie had to co-operate with the railroads. Erie had to build a 22 mile railroad of the standard gauge and keep American travelers moving along in comfort and safety through the Erie stretch.
When the railroad and government officials showed up to start building they found mobs of Erie rebels resisting change for progress. Their jobs came first. The people of Erie and surrounding towns destroyed whatever the railroad people built. They attacked railroad officials and blocked their way. They destroyed bridges, tracks and railroad cars. They shot into “enemy” railroad cars. The eerie imbeciles tried to destroy one car with the railroad executives still in it. One Erie mobster shot into the car and just missed the Railroad boss and the bullet hit the wall behind him, after putting a hole through his hat.
They were like the nuclear missile facility workers in the 1980's and 1990's who were angry about achievements in arms reductions. It was all about the local job market. These modern Eries would all unite and vote hawk just to keep the local economy booming, even though two thirds of were registered Democrats.
The Erie saboteurs carried on for two months. The thing only settled down gradually and the good guys finally won. A train from Buffalo to Cleveland would run continuously through the Pennsylvania chimney (on a map it looks like a chimney) on the same gauge. Erie was compensated (paid off) to make up for the revenue it lost. Erie took in a lot of federal grants and favors to cease and desist. Terrorism was rewarded.
The Europeans who traveled through America in these times always came back with a mixed bag of praise and condemnation of the American character. The consistent negative is that Americans are not just greedy for money, they are just greedy. They are greedy to the point where they seem like they are under some spell and they can't even see how deranged they have become. The operative word of the time wasn't “greedy” but “acquisitive” but it meant the same negative thing. The Erie Peanut War of 1854 was named because of the peanut vendors who would lose their jobs if they fixed the railroad problem. The EPW showed the “acquisitive” trait of the American character.
TONY BURNS RIOT IN BOSTON
In February of 1854 a slave named Anthony Burns escaped from Virginia and made his way North to Boston because Boston was the center of Abolitionist strength.
In May Burns was apprehended in Beantown under the barbaric Fugitive Slave Law. Soon there was excitement in the city over the fate of Mr. Burns, a buzz spinning through the city unlike anything seen in Beantown since the Revolutionary War.
Richard Henry Dana, the famous literary figure and lawyer, interviewed the celebrity prisoner and found Tony timid, scared, confused, and injured. Tony had a big ugly brand on one cheek along with a broken hand with a bone showing to prove it. Burns only wanted to surrender as humbly as possible to his former master Colonel Suttle who was present at the interview between Dana and Burns. Burns felt that he was already going to be severely punished when he returned to Virginia and did not wish to resist his extradition and make his punishment all the worse when the appeal failed. Dana pleaded with Burns and the court for a couple of days delay before any legal decision was made. The delay was granted.
The next day Boston was buzzing with talk about a possible mob rescue of Burns, sort of the reverse of the Klan sallying forth to bust a black man out of prison to lynch him.
On February 26th of May a large angry meeting at Fanuel Hall addressed the Burns crisis. Even the ‘Compromise men of 1850’ were behind the movement to “Free Tony B.” Conservatives as well as radical abolitionists were demanding the release of Burns, and in effect demanding the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law. After the meeting broke up the mob marched down to the courthouse and tried to free Tony Burns by force.
The vanguard of rabble broke in the outer door and entered the building. Here several mob men were wounded. On the other side one official was killed, a Mr. Batchelder who had in recent weeks been assisting in several captures of fugitive slaves and was a known mark for the crowd. Many of the attackers were wounded, and when they retreated outside they found that the big crowd had deserted them upon hearing sounds of the battle inside. Tony Burns would not be freed this night.
Reverend T. W. Higginson of Worcester was one of the men who led the attack on the courthouse. A local Doctor immediately offered to lead 200 men to re-storm the courthouse. This mob was not a pack of college drunks that just emptied out the bars at closing time.
But after the first assault, the marshals had called out the military. The building was secured with volunteer militia, marines from Charlestown, and some cannon from Fort Independence in Boston harbor. Tony was now “safe” and the trial could begin.
Wealthy abolitionists paid for quality lawyers for Anthony. The Burns trial electrified the city in the last days of May 1854. More than a hundred of the despised ‘Marshal’s Guard,’ the army of federal fugitive slave catchers sat in the courtroom with loaded revolvers at the ready.
Outside the building huge crowds gathered during the trial. Armed soldiers with fixed bayonets had to charge the crowd more than once to teach it to keep its distance. When Colonel Suttle the slave-owner in pursuit of Burns went in or out of the courtroom he needed a special guard of Southern men to protect him.
On June 2 1854 the verdict was reached. Tony Burns was guilty of being positively identified as Tony Burns. A revenue cutter was waiting at the docks to sail him back to Virginia. “He looked the image of despair,” wrote Dana. His lawyers tried to cheer him up by telling Anthony that he was just a symbol for southern pride. He wasn’t going to be much of a worker with a severely broken hand. They promised they would buy his freedom as soon as he was back in the South.
To get the prisoner from the corner of State and Court St. to Long Wharf, 1,700 armed troops were needed to clear a path through the jeering and hissing mob of mad New Englanders. The commander of the slave-catchers, General Edmunds drew a line in the cement on two sides of the path to the cutter and ordered his troops to shoot right into the crowd if it crossed these lines anywhere. There was an incident when a unit saw a commotion and cocked their rifles to fire and was barely persuaded to desist from this re-enactment of the Boston Massacre of 1770. If they had fired into the crowd it would have happened within a thousand feet of that 1770 site and could have had similar incendiary consequences.
When Burns was taken out of the building, troops with swords and revolvers at the ready formed a square around him, and a cannon followed behind the moving square. The marshals looked trigger happy and very nervous as they walked their way to the dock while the crowd chanted “Shame! Shame! Shame.” As he was being taken on to the ship they switched to “Free Tony B! Free Tony B!”
A few groups of civilians were seen applauding the troops in racist support, but they were the minority. The mob was overwhelmingly with Burns, against Suttle, and a living reflection of the Northern side of coming Civil War. Their élan was the élan of Gettysburg. It didn’t matter if some of them wore bonnets or were elderly men. These civilians in this scene were a part of the coming conflict.
Anthony Burns sailed back to Virginia in chains, and slavery was the root cause of the Civil War.
JEFFERSON DAVIS SECRETARY OF SLAVERY
The Secretary of War was very influential personally with President Pierce. They were good buddies. Jefferson was a very very rich slave-owner from Mississippi, thanks only to a lucky break with a Bill Gates level rich older brother.
Secretary Davis was decorated veteran of the War with Mexico, and had contributed a winning plan to his superior officer at the Battle of Buena Vista.
Davis was a proponent of Southern nationalism at a time when even secessionist minded South Carolina was thinking only in terms of state sovereignty. The South Carolinians wanted a nation of South Carolina wheile Davis was clear in his own mind in thinking onl of a nation of the South.
In Southern nationalism the new Southwest of cotton and cattle was far ahead of the old South of tobacco and corn. This was the new South of Mobile and New Orleans, the South that wanted to expand and to re-open the slave trade, in spite of the fact the the Constitution of 1787 declared its gradual extinction. This new South was made up mostly of immigrants from other states and countries, so it didn't have the same kind of deep pride in its own state that a fourth genrration Virginian aristocrat would have. The new south stood for the new south. The old south stood for its own state.
Davis influenced Pierce's thinking about the South, convincing Pierce that the North was being a bully towards a great land with a great future. To know that Pierce was so helpful in defending slavery is very embarassing since I do gigs in New Hampshire a lot. Pierce's slavery record is even more depressing than when the state symbol, The Old Man in the Mountain crashed and disappeared forever overnight in a rainstorm.
The point being that a very pro-slavery and pro-Southern man years ahead of its time was knee deep inside the Pierce brain and the Pierce Administration. The South had a pro-slavery friend in the White House in Pierce. Franklin didn't own slaves and never spoke in actual praise of slavery, but if you'd become good friends with a powerful Mississippi slave-owner, then we know all about you from the company you keep.
Frank and Jeff had become friends back when Davis was a U.S. Senator from Mississippi, and Pierce was a member of the House of Representatives from New Hampshire. Davis had resigned his Senate seat to run for Governor of Mississippi and lost to a Whig named Henry S. Foote, a man who not only was a political opponent, but a personal one too. Senators Davis and Foote had engaged in a knock-down drag-out fightfight one night at a Washington barroom, after having argued politics on the Senate floor that afternoon. (I love those kind of stories!)
REPUBLICAN PARTY FORMED
1854 was a sad year for the racist right wing of America in 1854, and an equally sad day for the politically correct left wing of America today. In that year the Republican Party was formed.
The slavery advocates hated the Republicans right away, and began to call them the “Black Republicans,” This was a racist jab of course. They hated the Republicans since the number one issue for the new party was the eradication of slavery. The Republicans tried to avoid the word “abolition” and religiously avoided it with a capitol a, but their goal was the same as the Abilitionists. That goal was to stop the spread of slavery in the United States and to promote its extinction. The Abbies wanted to do it the fast way, and the Republicans wanted to do it the slow way, but both were on the same team. Some historians will try to tell you otherwise, as if Republicans weren't the radical liberals of antebellum America that they were.
Picking up the pieces of the broken Whig Party, the Republicans were similar to the Whigs in that their net picked up elements of many disgruntled groups who did not have enough political clout by themselves. The Republicans attracted Conscience Whigs, Democrats with a conscience, Free-soilers, ex Liberty Party followers as well as xenophobes of the eastern cities who happened to dislike the Democratic power, especially its Southern wing.
THE CRIMEAN WAR AND US-RUSSIAN RELATIONS
In 1853 a major war erupted in Europe between Russia and a coalition of its enemies. The issue was southeastern Europe and Russian ambitions to gain control either physically or politically of the region of the Straights of Constantinople. Russia’s quest for the straights and access to the Mediterranean was a long standing hot issue and would even play a large role in the outbreak of World War One in 1914.
In Pierce's 1853, Russia, an Orthodox Christian nation, used the role of protector of minority Christians within the Moslem Ottoman Empire as a pretext to make threatening moves in the direction of the Straights. The Tsar was going to play holy crusader and win the holy land for the good guys.
But France and England saw through the 'veneer of religion' plan and together would not allow Russian moves there.
Religious alliances were becoming twisted up with nationalist ones. Even though France and England were Christian and the Ottoman Empire was Moslem, the two western nations, one Protestant, one Catholic, allied themselves with the Ottoman Moslem Empire and the three of them went to war against Christian Russia in what was ostensibly a religious conflict. Sardinia also joined up to make it four against one. Russia wasn’t really worried about Sardinia’s 17,000 troops, but the other three were big powers with big armies and, worse, big navies. Russia did not have a big navy and in fact one of the reason Russia felt it had to win the war was to gain outlets to the high seas so that it could develop into the naval power it was not. It was a catch-22. Russia needed to win a major naval war to become a major naval power but it couldn't win a naval war because it was not yet a naval power.
The war lasted from 1853 to 1856. Crimea began and ended parallel with the approximate tenure of the Pierce Presidency.
The United States did have a dog in the fight. We were definitely on the side of Russia.
This was because Great Britian was the Great Satan at this time in the minds of most Americans. The War of 1812 was still fresh in the memory of all but the youngest American adults and even they listened to their bitter parents condemning the British at every turn. The British Navy was still the bully of the high seas and the issue of neutral rights for American traders had never been satisfactorily settled between the two English speaking peoples. The Americans had sets of sea trading rules they were always proposing with the backing of other have-not countries, while the UK always said ‘we will make the rules of the high seas as we see fit at any time whenever we feel like it because we have a navy that is as powerful as all the other navies of the world combined.’
Relations between Russia and America were at an all-time high at the time the Crimean War broke out. There had been some tensions over the Tsar’s trading and colonizing activities down the west coast in Russian Alaska, but this had been resolved amicably and now the two young giants had developed a warm diplomatic friendship because they both hated the British Navy and its dominance in all the world’s affairs.
Russia and Britian were the middle of a hundred year’s cold war long before the one that we know as The Cold War. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The American press and public were definitely supporting Russia in the Crimean War.
American bias was more than mere moral support though. The United States intended to continue to trade with Russia during the Crimean War. As long as we were trading in non-military items such as food, or household manufactured items, the United States felt that “neutral goods make neutral ships” and that Great Britian did not have the right to interfere and seize our ships.
But the United States anticipated that Britian would do just that. It was also felt likely in some circles that if this happened, there could be another war between the United States and Great Britain. Just like in the War of 1812, we would be dragged into a European War against Britian over the rights of our ships to trade on the high seas. Just as in 1812 we would find ourselves the only ally of a European power trying to fight a coalition led by Great Britian (the USA had been Napoleon’s only ally in 1812.)
To reinforce American defiance a treaty was signed on July 22, 1854 in Washington between the US and Tsarist Russia. It was called the Convention as to the Rights of Neutrals on the High Seas, and it was meant as a direct challenge to Britain’s right to seize and impound American vessels engaged in trade with Russia during the ongoing Crimean conflict. Two other nations signed on for good measure, Hawaii and Nicaragua. Even Sardinia laughed at that one.
As it turned out, there were no major incidents of Britian seizing American ships trading with Russia during the Crimean War. The theatre of war was too blockaded in the Black Sea for American ships to get even close so as to create a test case.
Russia fought for four long years and pretty much lost the Crimean War. The Tsar didn’t lose any real territory, but lost the political offensive in Southeastern Europe. England and France had helped to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against Orthodox Christian Russian expansionism, proving that religion was not the issue, raw power was.
Russian-American relations emerged from the war with vigorous strength and helped to maintain the balance of power in Europe. Russia had hoped for Austrian support during this war and was surprised and angry when this was not forthcoming. For Russia. the gain in Europe of the perceived alliance of the USA made up for lost Austria. Western Europe desired good relations with the United States for financial and political reasons, and so now had to think twice before starting up more trouble with Russia over some small affair.
WALKER WAR 1854
The Utes of the west went to war with the Mormons in 1853. The leader of the Utes was Walkara. The name has been better remembered as the anglicized 'Walker.'
The Mormons won the war. That's not saying too much for the Utes, who are represented by people like Donny Osmond and Danny Ainge.
The Utes surrendered abjectly in a formal ceremony held on July 27 1854 at Chicken Creek. Folks, I am not making that up.
THE FIRST TITANIC – SEPTEMBER 27 1854
In 1854 a sea disaster hit America so hard that the historian call it “The First Titanic.” The steamer Arctic went down off the coast of Newfoundland taking 350 lives down with it.
The Arctic was, like Titanic, the fancy state of the art steamship of its day. Two months earlier the Arctic had set a new world's record by taking passengers across the Atlantic in less than ten days. It had taken Columbus more than three months.
Arctic was in a deep fog when it collided with an older and smaller French ship, the Vesta. But Vesta had a steel ram for a bow and Arctic had a wooden hull. The collision tore the bow off the Vesta and tore a hole in the Arctic. Both ships went on their way hoping not to sink. Vest made it safely to France while the great ship Arctic went down.
The news reached New York a week later and the entire city went into official mourning. It was a horrible thing.
But what was more horrible was the fact that all the women and children died and all the crew members survived. It was the reverse of “women and children first” the famed cry on the Titanic. In this case it was, “to hell with the women and children!” - Yes, it's creepy to even type the joke but that was indeed about the size of it on the Arctic. The ship as it turned out, was named after the hearts of the crew.
The captain went down with the ship, standing at the wheel and bravely waving good-bye to all. But as soon as the ship went under, the bridge snapped off and popped up with some buoyancy and two days later the captain was rescued after clinging to debris.
The captain was hailed as a hero but the crew became scums and had to avoid letting anyone know they had been there. Many chose to flee to England like Lord Jim, looking for a new life to put a disgraceful incident behind them. (If you don't get the reference, see the movie Lord Jim with Peter O'Toole – it's pretty good.)
LEAVES OF GRASS PUBLISHED
In 1855 poet Walt Whitman published his most famous work, Leaves of Grass. Whitman could never know that a future President would use this book as a gift to win the heart of a bimbo. I’m sure it’s a great book. I’ve tried to read it. The problem with poetry is that everyone wants you to read his or hers and no one wants to read yours. Mine went through the shredder years ago. I hate it when historians quote poetry. I x it out with a marginate note, “bag the poetry!”
CONGRESS BUYS A PACK OF CAMELS - MARCH 3 1855
The 1855 Congress agreed to spend $30,000 to go ahead with enlisting camels in the US Army. The plan was sponsored by Senator Harmon Filters of Mississippi. It was called the Camel Filters Act of 1855.
The idea was to use these humpties in the arid U.S. Southwest, a region that would remind them of home.
The idea's most powerful spokesperson for the animals was Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, later of the Confederacy. A second lieutenant first came up with the humpty idea. Horses and mules had less durability than camels out there in the American Sudan. Horses had to be shoed, camels didn't. Camels could eat the most useless dry shrubs that other animals would not touch in their hungriest hour.
An american ship was sent to the middle east to go buy a pack of camels. The USS Invisible docked in Cairo and went camel shopping. They found one store that had a sign that said, “Today's Special - Buy 25 camels, Get Five Camels Free!” The Invisible returned to New York with 30 camels ready for basic training in the US Army. In 1856 41 more camels to the ranks of American fighting humps.
The first Camel squad set out into New Mexico in 1856 and there were a few test expeditions in various places around the southwest.
The camels performed well but they weren't very likeable. They smelled worse than mules and horses put together. People would try to be nice to them and they would kick them down and bite them. They did the job, but no one liked to work with them. They weren't engaging. The camels didn't wag their tail and fetch the ball. They weren't very nice. They were the Bill Mahers of the animal kingdom.
During the Civil War the camels were put on hold and the experiment faded away in the desert sunset.
Along the way many camels were either released into the wild or escaped into the wild (Herman Hattaway says that someone let a herd of them out deliberately and that's why the experiment was discontinued, but I don't know what his sources are and don't see that anywhere else.) These camels roamed wild over the American southwest until the eve of World War II when the last of the died out.
There is an Aemrican legend based on a true story and it was featured on the TV Show hosted by Ronald Reagan, Death Valley Days. A strange big animal was terrorizing a frontier California community early in the 20th Century. The monster had killed two people and injured several others. It was strange. It was a legend, a monster.
A gang of settlers finally tracked it down this western Lochness Monster and sent in down in a hail of bullets like Clyde Darrow. When the Zekes examined the body they realized at last what science fiction creature had been stalking the village. It was one of those wild camels from the Camel Corps, one of the lone survivors of an experiment that went bad in 1855. This individual had apparently gone berserk and started stalking and killing humans. Camels are gnarly enough on their best days, but this one had been alone too long, and knew who was going to pay.
BLEEDING KANSAS;
Pierce shared an obsession with much of America; that was the dream building a transcontinental railroad, a goal not to be realized in America until 1869.
Like Kennedy who announced that we would send a man to the moon down the road and he would get the ball rolling, so too it was with Pierce and the railroad. It was a large part of his motive for signing the infamous Kansas Nebraska Act. Pierce reckoned that “popular sovereignty” (the deciding on slavery by ballot in the territories) would unleash a scramble to settle the Kansas region. With settlers pouring in by the day it would be a snap to have the transcontinental railroad mapped to run through Kansas. Pierce wanted the transcon badly enough that the slavery controversy could be put to practical political use if need be.
But the Pierce plan worked a little too well. Settlers arrived by the thousands from both the slave and the free states. There were some Northerners with slavery sympathies and Southern emigrants in favor of freedom invading Kansas as well. But the majority alignments were South=Pro-Slavery, North=Pro-Freedom.
In any case a great deal of murderous violence swept the territory, and the region became known as “Bleeding Kansas.” It was a one-state Civil War, a dress rehearsal of tragic hatred, a football practice for the great Civil War that was five years on the horizon. Bleeding Kansas was to the Civil War, what the Spanish Civil War was to WWII.
Kansas held elections, but they were overturned, accused of being fraudulent and worst of all, duplicated. There were dual sets of results, one for each side, of the slavery issue course.
Brown Turns Kansas Red - 1856
Slave state Missouri led the movement to populate Kansas with a pro-slavery voting bloc. More than 18,000 of these “Border Ruffians” poured into Kansas from Missouri.
The abolitionists countered with the New England Emigrant Aid Society. They tired to recruit settlers with a sense of decency to move to Kansas and they helped to finance them on their journey. But NEEAS couldn’t match the power and geographic advantage of the pro-slavery crowd from big MO. New England sent one settler to Kansas for every 15 sent by Missouri.
But the ruffians had an instinct of fear that led to an instinct for exaggeration. They projected their own fear into the power of NEEAS, and began to presume that countless thousands of anti-slavery Yankees were heading to Kansas. If the pro-slavery folks had kept their cool they might have won Kansas for slavery fair and square under the popular sovereignty formula. Instead they overreacted out of a sense of desperation that didn’t have to be. On May 21 1856 the Border Ruffians attacked and sacked the town of Lawrence Kansas, which had been established by anti-slavery immigrants. They established a pro-slavery state government by force, and set up the State Capitol in Lawrence at a saloon.
Abolitionist revenge came four days later. John Brown, an self-appointed crusader from upstate New York, led a band of anti-slavery ruffians into a pro-slavery camp at Pottawatomie Creek. Browns four sons were there with him. They murdered five unarmed pro-slavery men and boys to avenge the sacking of Larry Kansas.
Th escaltion continued. Brown’s deed was just what the pro-slavery people needed to recruit more ruffians for the battle. What was worse, the government in Washington D.C. recognized the pro-slavery state government of Kansas which had been written on the ashes of sacked Lawrence. The whole Kansas thing was ultra-ugly. The real troublemaker in all of this was the evil of slavery, not the overreaction of one man at Pottawatomie.
The history books used to just about blame the Abolitionists for starting the Civil War. Things have gotten better. There's been some proper revisionism, but most general histories will split the blame between the stubborn slaveocracy, and the Abolitionists.
And who wins when the blame is split? Those in the wrong.
When you split the blame the victim becomes the victim twice over. And the guilty always love to split the blame.
On the coming of the Civil War the fact that one side is on the side of right (anti-slavery) and the other on the side of wrong (pro-slavery) doesn’t seem to factor in for some eggheads. It’s offensive enough when redneck historians from 60 years ago split the blame. Its far more offensive and exasperating when up to date liberal history textbooks back up the same stinking thinking. The liberals, of all people, should know better that those who were against slavery were the good guys and those who supported it were the bad guys. It’s pretty simple.
We continue to read about the agitation of the abolitionists and the free-soilers causing the overreaction of the South, as if they should have spoken kindly of the south while denouncing slavery. The very left college schoolbook Enduring Vision criticizes the Kansas anti-slavery settlers for a lack of proper focus,
“By denouncing the Slave Power more than slavery
itself, Republican propagandists sidestepped the
issue of slavery’s morality, which divided their
followers, and focused on portraying southern
planters as arrogant aristocrats and the natural
enemies of the laboring people of the North.”
Oh really! So it's an error in judgement to judge badly the people who do bad things. We are only supposed to judge badly the things themselves.
This may be convoluted apologism whipped up so that certain southern schools won’t reject the textbook and block its national distribution. Why should a liberal textbook take such an illiberal position? Denouncing the slaveholder was the same position as denouncing slavery, just as denouncing the murderer is the same as denouncing murder. Asking the moral citizen to differentiate the criminal from the crime is like asking murder to go on trial for murder, while the murderer goes free. It’s easy to ask this of a dead generation. These same people would never ask this of themselves in a similar situation.
Charlie Sumner of Massachusetts was hampered by no such sophistry. He condemned the slave-owner with the same righteous virulence that he employed when he condemned slavery. For this his blood was spilled on the floor of the United States Senate.
ATTACK ON SENATOR SUMNER 1856:
On May 22 1856 a United States Congressman attacked a defenseless United States Senator in the Capitol Chamber with a baseball bat, leaving the Senator unconscious and rendering him incapable of serving for three years.
All right, it wasn’t a baseball bat, but it was the equivalent for the time, a heavy cane that you could easily use in a baseball game. The victim was a Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner and the criminal was a Representative from South Carolina. The dispute was over a personal insult, but the real issue was the boiling controversy over Kansas and slavery.
Liberal Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts had given a long speech in the Senate chamber a few days earlier in which he had supposedly impugned the honor of South Carolina Senator Butler. Senator Sumner had the audacity to condemn the Carolina senator for his continued support of slavery, and had even gone so far as to declare that Butler was married allegorically to “the harlot, slavery!”
This was the big line that started the violence, 'The harlot, slavery.'
Let us note that a hush did not fall over the Senate floor. It was just another vicious jab on the Senate floor and a part of yet another of Sumner’s legendary windbag speeches.
Today the historians support the idea that this was the most outrageous inappropriate arrogant and nearly unforgivable sort of speech that anyone could have ever made. They imply that the attack on Sumner was just about justified, even if it did go a little too far.
When I read the speech I just didn’t see what was so exceptionally vicious about it since its well known that all politicians have been beating each other with words pretty relentlessly in this country since about 1708. I was wondering how I could feel this way about it when the historians all seem to say the opposite.
Then I read an account written by a Sumner contemporary, the famous Carl Schurtz. Shurtz said that the ‘Crime Against Kansas’ speech was no more vicious than any of a dozen others one would hear on any given day in either the House or Senate. I felt vindicated and supported by an old friend.
And what if Carl and I are both wrong? What if it was a particularly hostile speech? So? Sumner was attacking slavery for God’s sake. This wasn’t Sumner getting nasty over the tariff or internal canal construction costs. This was the enslavement, whipping and murder of millions of human beings. This was a holocaust! A million times a da on talk radio today, someone says something a hundred times more intemperate and incendiary and unfair, and we think nothing of it. But let a gullible student get instructions from doughfaced historians like Catton and Foote, and they come away thinking Sumner was almost as guilty as Brooks! Charlie's allegedly uncalled for moment was 871 thousand times less of an offense as the offense against which he was speaking.
A few days after this now famous “Crime Against Kansas” speech, Senator Butler’s nephew, a Congressman by the name of Preston Brooks of South Carolina, snuck up from behind Senator Sumner as he was working quietly at his desk in the recessed Senate Chamber.
Congressman Brooks beat Senator Sumner over the head with a heavy cane, a ‘gutta-percha’ model, the Ryan Howard 44 of his time. He beat him severely. For a long time. Other pro-slavery Senators blocked the entrance doors so no one could interfere. Sumner tried to get up from his seat but his legs were deep beneath the desk and he rose with wich force that he tore the dest from its moorings. But it was not enough to defend himself. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he collapsed into bloodied state of semi-consciousness. A referee would have stoppped the fight after the first blow.
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was severely injured. He would be absent from his senate seat for years while convalescing.
The Sumner Cane was a hurricane on the horizon, an early shot in the Civil War, and fair warning of things to come. If Congressmen are beating each other over the head, what can be expected of the regular population?
The North was inflamed upon hearing the news of the dastardly attack. Mass meetings were held throughout northern cities demanding the arrest of Brooks, the end of slavery, and the recognition of the pro-slavery State government in Kansas.
The South protected Brooks from civil prosecution and he was celebrated as a hero throughout the south. Hundreds of top quality canes were sent to him in Washington from throughout the south with letters of approval and congratulations.
In spite of his autographed cane collection, Congress had to come down on him. They politely asked him to resign and he did. But in a special election, he replaced himself in a landslide victory. Congress gladly took him back, its honor satisfied.
Brooks attacked Sumner with a cowardly lack of a fair challenge, which he justified by saying that since Sumner was a ‘social inferior’ the proper punishment was a whipping, not a duel. Supposedly only a ‘social equal’ was entitled to the dignity of a challenge to a duel. Brooks was saying that in defending the Negro, Sumner placed himself too in that inferior category.
People bought Preston's ridiculous “social inferior” explanation for sucker-caning Sumner and some historians still accept that explanation at face value.
Even a slave is not snuck up on and beat without an explanation as Sumner was. Congressman Brooks should have been put behind bars for first-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. He more than richly deserved his historical nickname, “Bully Brooks.”
Today, visitors to the Massachusetts Historical Society may sit in the same chair that Sumner tore from its moorings.
Southern newspapers praised Brooks as a hero. Beatings as punishment were already part of everyday Southern lifestyle, so the incident did not come as much of a shock down there. The Autauga Citizen of Alabama wanted more:
“Let our Representative in Congress use the
cowhide and hickory stick (and, if need be,
the bowie knife and revolver) more
frequently, and we’ll bet our old hat that it
will soon come to pass that Southern
institutions and Southern men will be
respected.”
A recent cheap-shot regarding the Brooks-Sumner incident came from the typewriter of Michael Lind in 1999 when he wrote that Sumner was showing “his consistent pacifist tendencies” when he chose not to defend himself. Lind should do more homework before making these false charges against dead people who can’t defend themselves. Sumner was not a wimp as Lind is implying. He was attacked from behind without warning with a heavy cane and showed strength in ripping the desk from the floor.. In a fair fight he might have beaten Mr. Brooks to a pulp for all we know. Sumner was a husky man. Brooks commits the ultra- yellow deed and Sumner gets called wimpy by Michael Lind? Life isn’t fair.
In sum, Sumner on 5.22.56 was half-assassinated for suggesting in the middle of a four-hour speech that a South Carolina Senator was figuratively married to a harlot named slavery. The assailant was a South Carolina nephew who felt he should beat the Senator nearly to death in order to restore the family honor.
TRANSPORTATION
Railroad building continued its phenomenal growth in Pierce’s time. Accidents were frequent, bridges collapsed, and fires broke out. Safety rode the caboose while greed powered the engine. Crews that were tired and underpaid often treated customers rudely. By today’s standards, train travel was a terror. But since it was novel and exiting and a large step above horses and canal boats, few people agitated for increased safety regulations.
The most important new railroad for US history in Franklin’s time was not built in the US. The Panama railroad was completed in 1856. It crossed the Isthmus of Panama. This was far short of the dream of a canal linking the great oceans, but it was a huge upgrade nonetheless. Transporting goods to eastern Panama by ship, then across Panama by rail and then by ship to the west coast was shorter, cheaper and safer than cross-continent by land. The Panama railroad gave the USA a greater sense of its future as a world power, and increased the scope of national aspirations.
The completion of the Panama railroad made the future of the country a naval future. Bridging the oceans by rail increased the importance of the Caribbean as a region of American national security interests.
EDUCATION RE-FORMS
The Pierce era was a sad time for American education. It was during the Pierce administration that the "Prussian education system" was first installed in the states.
And what exactly is the so called "Prussian" education system? It means you have to go to school until you're 16. Your parents can't keep you of of the school. It means compulsory education. Prison for children. But hey, its for their own good and for the good of the state.
I am so against this I have to back off and not go into it for 49 paragraphs of anger. The state forces your children to go to state schools more than half the days of the year, teaching you state controlled curriculum by teachers paid for by the state. Individualism is suppressed much more than it is encouraged, the national clone is manufactured, and the peer stresses lead to violence and a completely competitive and ruthless mindset replaces a gentler soul that could have ben. All gentility is removed from the American child at compulsory school. The parents who want to shape a child to be beautiful inside as well as out cannot do this because of compulsory education.
Horace Mann of Massachusetts was one of the main culprits. Mann had done much for education. Massachusetts was the vanguard of progress in education in the American school system for most of the 19th century. Mann had seen to it that flogging was no longer a standard punishment, and we have to give him credit for that one, and thanks to Mann's reforms, all ages weren't taught in the same single classroom. We have to thank him for that too.
But we have to "thank" him only in sarcasm for making us go to school against our desires all our childhood and well into our teens. Was I not entitled to have desires when I was 13? I don't like it here. The other kids are mean to me. I'm not learning. I hate math and algebra and french. I don't want to learn this stuff. I'd rather work as an apprentice at a place I like with people who like me and I them. I want to quit school and study on the side while I work and learn a trade.
No!
You have no say in your own life. You have all the same rights as a slave or a POW when it comes to what you much do for 7 hours a day for 200 days a year. This time does not belong to you. It belongs to the states. I think its fascist and completely barbaric that in this day and age with this technology for a child to learn on at home, that we still have compulsory education. If I ran for Congress I would include a pledge to reduce compulsory education to grades one through eight. I would eliminate compulsory high school education and I would keel the high schools open for those who wanted to send their kids to school there. I'd let the state pay the schools to operate and keep teachers well compensated. But no child over the age of 13 should be forced to go to school. Not even by their parents! The job market should be gradually expanded to include younger workers who could still be made to show some self-education results if necessary.
The compulsory educational system was designed to promote the national welfare and to reduce the threat of leftist agitation. For most of the poor people in 1853 a state sponsored school was the only way a child could be educated. there were no TV's radios or computers. Heck, there weren't even libraries worth mentioning. The library itself was constructed as a state school for all ages to learn at their leisure. Most of us readers love the library but we wouldn't care much for it if we were forced to go there five days a week, even if we could read whatever we wanted and didn't get a quiz. All this and we haven't even got to the grading system yet.
What a horrible oppressive structure. Why should children be held to such regular cruel judgements on their school performance, especially when they aren't even getting paid for all their work, when adults don't get judged as harshly for a mediocre week's work and they get paid too. reminds me of a bit from comedian Tom Gilmore about the pressures of childhood.
"Say son, If Bobby Sullivan next-door can get straight A's, so can you."
"Say dad, if the Rockefellers can make millions of dollars, so can you."
In 1952 Mann convinced Massachusetts governor Everett to adopt the Prussian model. None of the other states had compulsory education. Beginning in 1853 every child in Massachusetts had to go to school. Soon New York thought it was a good idea. By the time Pierce drank his way out of the White House, almost every kid in the east was being forced to go to school five days a week. Its ben the American way of life ever since.
There are few things less fun than being forced to read entire books, then being quizzed on it as if to doubt that you read it and then having your conclusions declared wrong as to what you thought of what you read.
Everybody hates school. Doesn't that send up any red flags in the common sense department? Everyone hates school except for two or three twits in every thousand students. Sure there's a minority that like it and they can have it. But if you ask a crowd of American adults if they hated school there arises a great cheer. Ask a crowd of teenagers and the ovation is out of control.
The graffiti many of us inscribed in magic marker on our algebra book says it all, "In case of fire ... throw this in."
The Prussian education system. The militarist hell of Prussia, lets adopt their school system. Great idea!
You know Horace, since we adopted their compulsory educational system, those wacky Prussian started three major wars (if we include the Franco-Prussian) and tried to conquer the entire world for a lunatic racist leader. Maybe its time we rethink this "Prussian compulsory educational system." Now that they've been proven to be really bad role models, maybe we could rethink our blind copying of their compulsory educational system. I will always be angry about how I was forced to go to school for so long when I hated it. I almost got sent to a reform school for juvies because of truancy when I was in actuality a studious boy who was spending most of his truant days at the Boston Public Damned Library.
CUBA AND THE OSTEND MANIFESTO:
The outgoing Fillmore was a cautious man and had warned that if the US acquired Cuba it might lead to trouble with Spain and more troubles over slavery.
But the new guy, President Franklin Pierce was an unabashed expansionist. He very much wanted the United States to annex Cuba. Pierce saw Cuba as a giant naval base through which he could enforce the Monroe Doctrine more effectively, and the President was attracted to the financial benefits of Cuban sugar production.
Pierce was not greatly concerned about the slavery issue there. As far as he was concerned, if Cuba became a territory it could vote on slavery under the popular sovereignty concept, just like any other territory. In his inaugural address Frank slipped in a subtle jab at Fillmore for “timid forebodings of evil from expansion.” The address included a warning of American imperialist intentions bold enough to make a George W. Bush cringe,
“It is not to be disguised that our attitude
as a nation and our position on the globe
render the acquisition of certain
possessions not within our jurisdiction
eminently important for our protection.”
Whoa.
‘Not within our jurisdiction.’ The eagle has its wings, claws and beak wide open for the entire world to see.
France and Britain in 1852 had proposed to the USA that the three of them agree to a treaty whereby all promised not to acquire Cuba.
Fillmore responded both ways. He asserted that the US had no designs on acquiring Cuba (a lie), and that the US was a growing country that could not make such a promise (a hint of honesty.) The Secretary of State informed the Euros that the idea of a tripartite treaty was absurd since the issue was lopsidedly the concern of only one side of the triangle. So even a Whig (the party that was red in the face mad at the US role in the Mexican War) like Fillmore was keeping our options open and powder dry.
Franklin did not have to worry about Britain and France for the moment. They were tied up in the Crimean War over in Russia. But Pierce had a different obstacle in the way of his quest for Coova. The Northern, anti-slavery wing of his own Democratic Party, already very mad at him for the Kansas Nebraska Act, was not about to support him on gaining Cuba. They would surely be obstructionists if he purchased Cuba or took it by other means. While there was some liberal sentiment for the plight of the oppressed Cubans, this was more than off set by the fearful thought of Cuba becoming a large new American slave state. The majority of Democrats were pro-slavery and pro expansionist but party unity was not complete and these obstructionist DINO’s (Democrats in name only) were a serious roadblock.
An incident took place that seemed a good pretext on which to invade Cuba, but just then the Ostend Manifesto scandal pulled the rug out from under the scheme.
A merchant ship the Black Warrior had stopped in to Havana on its way to New Orleans when local police demanded a manifest list. In all of its previous stops, no such list had ever been demanded. Captain Bulloch of the BW was not given any time to prepare one and the ship was seized and fined with a lot of international publicity. It was a manifest injustice.
At about the same time a former Southern governor, a man who never knew when to quit, was planning a new piratical filibustering expedition against Cuba from the mainland. Cuba was going to be invaded to preserve white supremacy and the muscle and brains behind the operation was no less a personage than former Mississippi Governor John Quitman.
Pierce had deliberately named expansionist-minded men to the top ministerial posts in Europe. Secretary of State William Marcy asked three of these ministers in Europe to meet and formally discuss the Cuban ‘problem.’ The ministers to Spain (Soule), Great Britain (James Buchanan) and France (McLashua) met in Aachen, Germany and then at Ostend Belgium. They drafted the document that became known as the Ostend Manifesto. It was never anything more than a summary of the results of two meetings between three foreign ministers and their report back to their Secretary of State. The US was prepared to offer $130,000,000 to Spain for Cuba. The most controversial part was that the ministers were in agreement with each other and with the Administration that Cuba should be taken by force if Spain refused to sell.
Another part of the Ostend report would create trouble. The South was afraid that Cuba might emancipate its slaves and the spirit of freedom might spread to the mainland. To head freedom off at the pass, we had to get Cuba and get it now. It was a shameful passage on why we had to buy or conquer Cuba and helped make it impossible for the US to get Cuba.
The report was supposed to be for Secretary of State Marcy’s and the President Pierce’s piercing eyes only but, administration opponents in Congress got their hands on a copy of the Ostend Foreign Ministers report and leaked it to the press. The fallout was entirely negative.
Pierce was forced to repudiate the so-called “manifesto” which he himself had authorized and instigated. He pretended he knew nothing about it. Soule was understandably injured by this and proffered his resignation.
If not for the Ostend letter, Cuba might have been acquired by the USA. But the Ostend Manifesto blew the plan up. The United States was correctly seen as being a thug.
The North was alarmed that the Southern slave empire might find itself with a whole new world of sugar and cotton, from which to expand slavery and along with it, the Southern voting bloc in Congress. Maybe two or three new slave states could have been carved from Cuba, but the Cuba ‘by funds or by force’ plan was dead in the Caribbean water.
A majority of history books seem to believe that the Ostend Manifesto was presented or was going to be presented to the Spanish government at Madrid, and that it was a policy devised by the three men who drafted it. In reality it was a private report giving an informal rubber stamp from some trusted advisors to a policy devised initially in Washington, not Madrid, Ostend or Aix-la Chappelle.
PINEAPPLE SLAVERY
In 1854 the USA almost acquired Hawaii. Annexation to the US
was viewed
favorably by many Hawaiians, but the Brits warned the Hawaiians
that they should not agree to join the United States unless
there was a specific clause in the annexation treaty guaranteeing immediate statehood. Most of the effort to acquire Hawaii was based on a desire to turn it into a pineapple paradise of slavery. Hawaii said no to the United States, but not before careful deliberation.
No one I spoke to at Franklin Pierce College knew who he was.
THE SECOND OPIUM WAR IN CHINA 1856
In world affairs, the Second Opium War in China broke out on Pierce's lame duck watch. Chinese officials had boarded a British owned vessel, the Arrow flying a Chinese flag that was full of opium. The Chinese government arrested the Chinese crew and seized the ship. The British demanded that the Chinese government release the boat and the prisoners. The Chinese government already had its hands full with the Tai Ping Rebellion so they backed down and released the prisoners. The British Navy then bombarded chinese government buildings along the shorelines as punishment.
This is known as the Arrow Incident, and is the first major step for the War that would go full-scale on the watch of President Buchanan.
Russia and France would join Britian in a punitive war against China for the right to export opium into China. The United States did not join the coalition of imperialism.
AFTER OFFICE;
Franklin was a rare bird in that he remained an unrepentant doughface throughout the Civil War. He never supported the Northern military effort to suppress the rebellion and stated that the Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional. For this he lost most of his friends and became a target of severe criticism. This caused Franklin to hit the booze more than ever.
Pierce was known to drink alcohol all his adult life. On the night of his defeat for re-election he reportedly said, “There is nothing left to do but get drunk.”
As to whether or not Pierce had a ‘drinking problem,’ (and some historians say he did) well I think the fact that he made President of the United States would indicate that he could handle his alcohol.
‘Alcoholic behavior’ is a matter of just that, behavior. Someone in AA said the following, and it’s been often repeated. I think it is the most profound thing I have ever heard about alcoholism,
“Its not how much you drink,
Its not how often you drink,
Its not what kind of booze you drink,
Its now who you drink with or whether you drink alone,
Its not even why you drink,
Its what booze does to you when you drink it.”
By this standard, I would say that Franklin Pierce was not an alcoholic.
There is no record of Pierce making himself into a fool on the job.
Pierce died on October 8 1869. He is buried in Concord New Hampshire, about a half a mile north from the Holiday Inn. His last words were, “The party’s over.” I stop by there to say hello every time I have a gig at the Holiday Inn. They should have pictures and stories there to see and read. It looks like any other upper middle class gravesite.
CONCLUSION
Presentism got its mitts on Pierce after the Civil War and has been slapping him senseless ever since. There’s a new TV show out where a famous movie star gives a humorous lecture on American history. “You have to see it!” I’ve been told, “Since you study history.”
I watched once and saw the movie star host at work. He was bashing Franklin Pierce for 30 minutes. The hyper host was singling out the fact that Pierce’s friend Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his campaign biography. That was good for a hundred laughs at Franklin’s expense. They cut to shots of students in Arab dress laughing in the classroom at the pitiful Franklin Pierce.
Who was supposed to write Franklin Pierce’s campaign biography, his enemies? Did they think their angle was edgy? Taking a man who has always been bashed by history and then laughing it up and bashing him some more?
Several Presidents who did everything they could to try to avoid the Civil War are blamed by history for causing it. The fact that war didn’t happen while they were president counts for nothing. Pierce is one of American history’s goats. There’s nothing we can do about it except get drunk.
SOURCES
12 Years as a Slave, by Solomon Northrup, c) 1853
An American History, by David Saville Muzzey – c) 1933
A small but rich hardcover general history for high school seniors, or so I estimate. Extremely well-written. Muzzey is a Columbia professor and he seems to be generally liberal except when it comes to race. It is scary how racist he is against the blacks. He takes the Dunning low road on Reconstruction and blames the Abolitionists for the Civil War.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford University – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
The debunker book Lies My Teacher Told Me goes after this book as a conservative pack of chauvinist lies. I'd pick Bailey over his critics any day.
The American Spirit, edited by Thomas A. Bailey provided the Autauga quote.
Black Reconstruction in America, by W.E.B. Du Bois – This amazing book is primarily about the post Civil War era, but his quote cited on slavery is cited here.
A Century of American Diplomacy, by John W. Foster, c)1901 Riverside Press. This book is an oldie but goodie. Foster was a US Secretary of State.
The Compact History of the United States Navy, - 1962 - by Fletcher Pratt
The Complete Book of US Presidents, c)2002 - by Ernest DeGregorio
If not for this book I would never have known that Pierce was a dedicated fisherman.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University – c) 1934 Henry Holt
If you never heard of Sam Bemis you are obviously not a serious student of American diplomatic history. 'The Beemer' (as the Yale students nicknamed him) doesn't get too opinionated about individual presidents, but does about individual historical precedents. He sees the history of the US nation as a flowing tapestry whose river runs stronger than the desire of any one president to change it.
The Enduring Vision
Facts About the Presidents, by Kane – That’s all I can tell you about the author and I can’t give you the copyright year. This old paperback is missing the first two or three pages plus the cardboard cover page.
The Graphic Story of the American Presidents, by David Whitley – I thought there might be some shocking racy tales in the text, but the title means it has a lot of great photographs.
The Great Republic – All star lineup of famous historians.
Hats in the Ring, by Cornog – Modern history of Presidential elections. Cornog has limited space for text with all the pictures, but nails it.
A History of the American People, by Woodrow Wilson
History of a Free People by Henry W. Bragdon of Phillips Exeter Academy and Samuel P. McCutchen of NYU – c) 1954 MacMillan
High School history hardcover - The text is fine but these drillmasters make learning a sizzling hell with 90 homework assignments at the end of every 9 pages. It's incredibly cruel.
A History of Presidential Elections. By Roseboom
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
If I had my way, if I were the Mayor of Boston, I would make every effort to have the statue of this man on Commonwealth Ave removed and melted down. This is a racist at work on American History.
I had read his other history of the United States, the one he wrote with Henry Commager, and my marginal notes call them racists about 100 times with exclamation marks and impolite words.
I was almost disappointed to read that they got called out on this and were even forced to re-write some especially offensive passages. I thought I was offering a startling take on Sam and Henry, but I'm obviously in the caboose on the charges. At least my instincts are validated by others.
Yet Morison is still a respected God if the history profession.
For starters he does the good ol' innocently quote someone else innocently dropping the n-word. That' slick and sick, and all the racist historians do it. If Howard Zinn quotes Mark Twain and includes the n-word, it might be acceptable, but Zinn's conscience wouldn't allow him to edit that in in the first place because the modern reader isn't going to read the Twain passage in the spirit of 1860. The racist like Truslow Adams or Bowers or Morison edits in the n-word in casual passing quotation of something or other and gets his psychotic sickness slipped in with impunity under the guise of culture. Like if they mention that one of the finest pieces of literature was Joseph Conrad's novel “The Nigger of the Narcissus.” The point is not the great writing of Joseph Conrad, the point is the n-word slipped in. Like if someone interviewed me about stand-up and I mention out of nowhere without blinking that the best book I ever read on the subject is “Nigger” by Dick Gregory.
Life is editing.
The other trick of course is to quote a Northern Republican dropping the n-word, allegedly proving that they were no real friend of the Negro.
That's the Morison touch. Morsion will also mention now and then that there were some things about slavery that were undeniably wrong, and pretend to be high and mighty about condemning it. But that is so obvious that no one deserves any brownie points for it, but the racists act as though they are going out on a limb when they “admit” to the wrong of slavery. That's another dead give-away.
But you're lucky to get even that out of this bum. Most of the time he ears his racism on his sleeve and I just have to wonder what racist editor at Oxford allowed it all to go into print as late as 1965. Five years later it never would have made it to public sale.
On page 503 he is describing the life and mind-set of the southern white slave-owner,
“Such a life was a continuous exercise of tact, self-control and firmness: yet the condition of unlimited power over a race with exasperating habits was a constant temptation to passion.”
Exasperating reading. Now here's more from page 505 revealing the inner Morison,
“What did the Negro himself think of this system? On the one hand, (as stated by Jefferson Davis), these 'several millions of human beings of an inferior race' were 'peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere.' The pampered domestic servant, the happy, carefree, banjo-playing 'darkey',
theme of countless post-Civil War novels, were all that many upper-class travelers saw of the South's 'peculiar institution,' as her statesmen like to call it. On the other hand it is the fashion for Negro intellectuals to describe their forebears as the most oppressed and exploited labor force in modern history, held down by fear and force, constantly striving to escape from slavery. It has often been said that the Negro understands the white man better than the other way around; but it is also possible that the colored intellectual of the 1960's knows less about the plantation Negro of the 1840's than did many of the white masters of that era.
It should not be forgotten that the African slave trade began among the Negroes themselves in Africa; that to be reduced to slavery was a common expectation in the Dark Continent, and that victims of the system who were shipped to America, provided they survived the passage, were better off, in fact, than many thousand poor workers and peasants in Europe. John Randolph's slave valet who accompanied his master to Ireland in 1827, 'looked with horror upon the mud hovels and miserable food' of the Irish peasantry.' “
You'll have to analyze this passage yourself. Its too exasperating for me to tackle right now.
Rise of the American Nation, by Todd and Merle Curti c) 1961– My High School History hardcover of Mr Power's afternoon class.
South Boston High in 1972 wasn't the richest school in the country. This book was originally published in 1950. They printed a revised edition on 1961 with a little chapter about the Ike years. But it was essentially a textbook written at the height of the anti-Communist hysteria sweeping the country.
While the entire nation was swimming in a left-wing long-haired anti-establishment heat-wave, my high school textbook was antiquated in tone, and way behind on the times. Its not really a happy book.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia University– c) 1966 Harper & Row
I'm almost done reading the revised fourth edition from 1977. It is a 521 page abridged oversized paperback of the original hardcover The American Nation. Garraty passed away in 2007. He taught at Columbia for 31 years.
Professor Garraty blames the Abolitionists way too much for my taste. I think he has a white supremacy streak a mile wide, but the history profession has never called him on it, so what do I know?
Solomon Northrup’s Odyssey. - 1984 - A film starring John Saxon as the bad guy and Avery Brooks as Solomon Northrup. Ice T plays Northrup's brother.
SNO is is one of the best historical films ever made. The story is told without exaggeration or subtle bias. It only tells the story accurately tell the story as it was told in the book. How rare in the film industry! There were moments where we see some amity and compassion between the master and the servant, but the more important overall picture is the cruelty and sadness of slavery.
The Story of America, by Hendrick Van Loon, - c) 1959 – An informal history of the United States by an opinionated writer. This lunatic alternates between emotional jingoism and emotional anti-jingoism. Hendrick drew original political cartoons for the book. My abridged paperback, unfortunately, is falling apart.
The United States to 1865, by Michael Kraus of CCNY – c) 1959 University of Michigan Press, Volume 4 of the University of Michigan History of the Modern World
A very good book and part of a very good enterprise. These uniform designed hardcovers of short modern histories of various nations and regions are a great add to any library. I doubt if many librarians throw these out when pruning.
Kraus wrote a famous book back in 1937 called The History of American History. In that same year a faculty member named Claude W. Kraus was expelled for organizing left-wing demonstrations at the university. And I do mean 1937, not 1967. That is not a typo. What I'd like to know is, were they related?
The United States: The History of a Republic – by Richard Hofstadter, Columbia, Willaim Miller, co-author of The Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College – c) 1957 Prentice Hall
Aaron was one of the first persons ever to graduate with a degree in “American Studies.” The course at Harvard was a brand new concept when he went there in the mid-1930's. He went on to write three books about extreme left wing writers in America in the 20th Century and how they were treated.
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