Existing comment:
I hold that in the present state of civilization the relation now existing in the slave-holding states between the two [races] is, instead of an evil, a good -- a positive good.
-- Senator John C. Calhoun, South Carolina
The cry of states' rights reverberated across the South in the decades preceding Civil War. Proponents argued that the Federal Government represented a voluntary union of the individual states. Any state had the constitutional right to separate from this union if the central government overstepped its authority. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina asserted that any infringement on a Southerner's right to own property (slaves) warranted the ultimate exercise of states' rights -- secession.
Whenever a law, legislative compromise, or congressional or Presidential election threatened the South's position with the Union, "states' rights" became the rallying cry of Southern leaders. Ironically, maintaining power in the Federal Government was the South's best strategy. Through its leverage on the President, the Supreme Court, and the Senate, the South had protected its interests.
Engravings from the pamphlet Bible Defense of Slavery, 1853:
As Northern abolitionists hurled vitriolic attacks against the South, the slave aristocracy argued that it had rescued the infidel African from barbarism and cannibalism. Senator James Hammond of South Carolina declared: "In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life ... It constitutes the very mudsill of society." Without it, Hammond concluded, you would not have the class "which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."
Brooks caning Sumner:
Heated arguments over slavery stained the Capitol floor with blood on May 22, 1856. South Carolina congressman William Brooks clubbed the outspoken abolitionist Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner after Sumner verbally assaulted the South in a two-day speech. "Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves?" asked the New York Evening Post. Responded the Richmond Enquirer, "[Abolitionists] have been suffered too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission."
Abolitionists' notice, 1851:
Capturing escaped slaves north of the Mason-Dixon Line further inflamed passions. In the Compromise of 1850, California entered the Union as a free state, but Congress strengthened a federal law that required the return of fugitive slaves from anywhere in the country. With a slave's value averaging between $1,200 and $1,800, the South trumpeted the law as a legal means of protecting property. Northerners defied the action, exercising their own "states' rights" by passing additional personal liberty laws and organizing vigilante groups to prevent the recovery of escaped slaves. |