The Essence Of Freedom: The Political And Economic Precursors To The Civil War - Essay Example

Client The Essence of Freedom: The Political and Economic Precursors to the Civil War “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness….” (Addison 300). These words are within the Declaration of Independence, one of the most significant documents in United States history. Unfortunately, what was meant by the words “all men” was literally all males of Caucasian descent that may or may not include ethnicities that may immigrate into the United States. The only people assured liberty under these words were Anglo-American men: white men of British descent. All others would have to fight for their liberty, including women, the Irish, the Italians, and most notably, those who were brought to the United States as slaves from Africa. The man who penned the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson, himself a slave owner although his belief in this practice is in question. He owned a slave through whom he had children. There are some who believe he loved her genuinely; others who think he used her. Jefferson owned over 150 slaves (Finkelman ix). Regardless to his feelings on the matter, the Declaration espoused a belief that all men were created equal, despite the fact that the definition of a man was in question. Jefferson was referred to as the ’negro president’, not for a system of beliefs, but because of the way in which he won his 1800 presidential election. By this time the Three-Fifths Clause had been adopted that made it so that each slave was counted as three-fifths of a citizen, increasing the power of the southern states through increased representation in congress and in the electoral college. It has been theorized that through this methodology of counting the population for political advantages, Jefferson won the election over Adams through the electoral college vote (Willis 1). The same advantages of population that was experienced in the South which gained them numbers gave them problems where taxation was concerned. Great debates had arisen during the formation of the Articles of Confederation as to whether or not it was fair to tax property or personage, or whether land should be the value through which taxation was measured. For the South, land was the answer because if property was taxed, they would be taxed for their slaves (Jenson 146). This debate furthered the rift between the North and the South as did the eventuality of the Three-Fifths Clause. A line of demarcation was created through the Northwest Ordinance which was affirmed by Congress on July 13 1887. Territories within the boundaries of the Ohio, Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes could form from three to five states and when the populations reached 5000 white men, they could have a non-voting representative within the Congress. At this time, they could vote for statehood. One of the stipulations of this was that slavery would not be allowed within these territories (Phillips and Axelrod 50). This created a further divide between slave and non-slave interests through which the Southern states feared political domination of the North. The need for a new constitution provided an opportunity for laws to be invoked that could solve some of the issues between the slave owners of the South and the Northerners who did not economically depend on slavery so therefore tended towards the abolition of slavery. The results of the debate provided for a Constitution that supported the needs of slave owners. Article IV provided for the return of fugitive slaves and the denial of sanctuary in non-slave states (Mount). Therefore, a slave could not escape to a state that did not allow slavery and have his freedom. He would remain the property of his owner. This was further expounded when in the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, states were given the right to create their own laws in regards to public policy. In other words, however a state chose to interpret and police an issue would be valid in that state (Mount). This meant that concerning slavery, no real federal authority was established, but that all power regarding the issue was provided to the individual states. The Virginia Resolution, penned by James Madison , specifically addressed the issue of states rights, voiding the power of the federal government from enforcing crimes that the new Constitution deemed as under federal authority. Both Kentucky and Virginia passed resolutions that explicitly denied the federal government the powers that were expressed through the Alien and Sedition laws. This contributed to the feeling that the federal government was trying to impose a uniformity of power over the states, thus threatening the Southern states. This attitude was further supported when the Tariffs of 1828 and of 1832 were declared null and void within South Carolina, as the state attempted to declare its independence to the authority of the Federal government. The action escalated to the point where there was a consideration of military action against South Carolina (Ellis 12). The way in which the states were addressing and separating themselves from the federal government created a precondition for the event of the Civil War when the fortitude of the federal government would be tested when states tried to secede from the nation. This fear of the federal involvement in state issues was further challenged when in 1806 Thomas Jefferson stood up in Congress and declared that the end of the original term of the Constitution in 1807 was the right time to finally put an end to slavery within the United States. On January 27, 1808 a bill was put into law that stated that no slaves could be brought into the United States (Thomas 552). Thus, the slave import business was now dead leaving only the existing population of slaves. The federal government superseded the laws within the states that allowed for slavery by using the aspect of the national issue of trade. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed for the North and the South to come to an agreement concerning territories in which the United States was expanding. As more areas were brought into the nation, the issue of slavery and of the balance that was desired by Southern slave owners in order to provide political power was vital to maintaining their economic welfare. Therefore, the compromise allowed for the Missouri territories to be slave legal areas, while the rest of the territories in the northwest would not have legal slave ownership available. This provided a sense of equality for the states as Maine was being considered for statehood as a free state, while Alabama had been admitted as a slave state (Finkelman 108). The fight for the end of slavery became such that petitions were coming so frequently to Congress that ‘gag rules’ were implemented where the petitions were accepted, but immediately tables without consideration or discussion. This created a shift in concern from slavery to the rights of free citizens to voice their opinions and be heard. This general unrest contributed to the tensions between the Southern and Northern people of the United States (Zelizer 190). This was furthered during the annexation of Texas whereby it was admitted as a slave state with the provision that it could be carved into five slave states, thus adding ten slave state members to Congress. President Polk’s agenda in going to war with Mexico over Texas boundary issues was to force the annexation of the additions of California and New Mexico. With the potential for expansion into these areas of slavery, Democratic freshman David Wilmot was given the floor to speak as he had so far supported all of the positions of the bill to appropriations to fund the negotiations with Mexico. He proposed an amendment stating that slavery would be barred from existing in any territory acquired from Mexico. Called the Wilmot Proviso, this created a cascade of issues from both the Southern and Northern political powers. The Southern powers began to talk of secession should the government continue to deny new territories the rights to own slaves (Zelizer 194). Despite great efforts on the part of the federal government and the politicians to reach compromises and to work toward a unified agreement on the way to handle slavery, Civil War was brewing throughout the 19th century. The Compromise package of bills of 1850 averted Civil War in that year, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 led to further issues between the North and the South. The intent was to provide for popular sovereignty which would allow for the states to vote for themselves on the issue of slavery. This repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened up the possibility for slavery in territories that previously did not have that opportunity (Boyer 309). In Kansas, however, there was a problem with people crossing the border with the purpose of voting in the elections in order to prohibit slavery within that territory. The issue of slavery began to provide for a great variety of actions that were volatile and dark. In the Dred Scott case of 1857, the Supreme Court decided that an African American did not have the right to bring a lawsuit to the courts as the right of citizenship did not apply to them. The volatile eruption of emotions from the abolitionists created deeper and darker reactions from their side of the argument. An abolitionist named John Brown led a massacre in 1856 against pro-slavery individuals who had raided a town in Kansas, tearing apart their ballot boxes. In an attempt to create a much larger protest and an action he hoped would lead to freedom for the slaves, he raided the Harper’s Ferry armory in 1859 with the purpose of creating a cascade movement of slaves running to his protection, using violence only as a means of defense, and creating an army that would sweep through the South gathering up followers and escaping slaves. The plan was thwarted at the armory where he and his compatriots were captures. However, the incident was one step closer to a full on conflict. In 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was voted in as President of the United States as the Democratic party suffered from division through Northern and Southern lines of ideology. The country was now fractured with belief systems and economic threats providing fuel to the volatile situation. The country was now prepared for a finality that would decide the issue of slavery in the country. Political power was being bounced between the factions and the economic structure that had evolved around slavery was now threatened. Popular sovereignty did not work. The reason it didn’t work was because the states that were intended to bring about a natural equality to the union did not depend on slavery for their economy. As well, the manipulations from those political entities that had an interest in the outcome of the votes in those districts created a lack of honesty to the way in which the elections found results. With elections that were not conducted through honesty or control, the results were slanted toward whomever had a mind to control them. Popular sovereignty didn’t work. However, the underlying reason it didn’t work is because in a country based on an ideology of freedom, the imbalance that slavery caused created a rift that the people could not of their own free will cure. The south had based its economy on the use of slaves. One of the reasons that much of what Jefferson said and did shows an ambiguity about the issue is that as much as he seemed to dislike the concept of slavery, he feared what would become of a population of freed slaves within the country (Addison). As well, the freeing of slaves meant that the work that they did would not get done, nor would those now free men, women, and children have a means to provide food and shelter for themselves. The upheaval would create a great deal of poverty and social adjustment that would be painful. This rational prolonged the debate and prevented real change from occurring outside of the ban on creating more slaves by bringing them into the nation. When the states of the South finally decided to secede, the peak of a century long problem had occurred. When Thomas Jefferson wrote those words to describe the ideology of the new nation, they inscribed upon the face of that nation a mandate to hold freedom above all other concepts. In such a state, slavery cannot co-exist with the freedom of men. While these words at that time would only apply to Anglo-white males, women, other ethnicities, and the entire imported population of Africans would have to fight to gain the benefit that this essential American document held. The economy of the South was based on the use of slave labor to support the primary crop which was cotton. However, the abolishment of slavery was also an affront to the ideology of states rights, requiring the states who depended on slavery to acquiesce to the power of the federal government to promote an agenda they believed ran contrary to their best interests. As in evidence through both the Virginia Resolution and the Nullification Crisis, the rights of states to determine their own set of laws was central to the debates of the time. The problems that arose as new territories became increasingly aligned with the North, whether by mandate or by vote, created a threat to the way of life that was established in the South. As power was leaking from their institutions, the South would secede and take up arms in order to protect its way of life. Works Addison, Kenneth N. "We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident ": An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Roots of Racism and Slavery in America. Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 2009. Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2010. Ellis, Richard E. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States Rights, and the Nullification Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001. Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution 1774-1781. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970. Jordan, Terry L. The U.S. Constitution: And Fascinating Facts About It. Naperville, IL: Oak Hill Pub. Co, 2007. Mount, Steve. The United States Constitution. 12 April 2010. 31 May 2010. Phillips, Charles, and Alan Axelrod. What Every American Should Know About American History: 225 Events That Shaped the Nation. Avon, Mass: Adams Media, 2008. Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440 - 1870. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. William, MacDonald. Documentary Source Book of American History, 1606 - 1913. New York: Bibliobazaar, 2009. Wills, Garry. "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. Zelizer, Julian E. The American Congress: The Building of Democracy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Read More