9
The Civil War
Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet …
What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years?…
England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not to make war on cotton.
No power on the earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King.
— U.S. Senator James Henry Hammond, owner of Redcliffe Plantation, in a speech before the United States Senate, March 4, 1858.
The Civil War in the United States is often seen as being about states’ rights, and those rights, particularly for southern planters, clearly rested on the continuation of the enslavement of Africans. Religion played a major role in raising awareness about issues of equality and fair treatment, which challenged slavery, so it was other forms of knowledge, other ideas that people just accepted, that helped to support the continuing interest in enslavement, without guilt and aside from the reality that huge profits could be made by those who operated large plantations.
At this time, the United States’ southern cotton plantations produced 80 percent of the cotton used worldwide. What ideas, what concepts could be shared with people, those who had power, those who could vote, those who could ensure that there were not too many changes, to ensure that the “institution” of slavery remained intact? Who could voice those ideas in a broad public sphere? John Henry Hammond is an example of a powerful pro-slavery individual. Hammond was an educated teacher and lawyer, but substantially improved his holdings and his stature upon his marriage to an affluent southern belle. His wife, Catherine, had inherited much property — 7,500 acres of land and 147 enslaved Africans — which then came under his control. The land initially produced $600 in wealth, but increased to $21,000 with his highly controlling measures. He wrote down how enslaved children were to be fed and how they were to be named, what enslaved people were assigned to do, as well as the punishments to be administered to those who opted to flee from his plantations scattered along the Savannah River in South Carolina, including Redcliffe, which today is preserved as a historic site. He was a wealthy and influential South Carolina planter and politician who advocated for maintaining slavery through what he referred to as the Mudsill Theory.
In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves by the common “consent of mankind,” which, according to Cicero, “lex naturae est.” The highest proof of what is Nature’s law. We are old-fashioned at the South yet; slave is a word discarded now by “ears polite;” I will not characterize that class at the North by that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal. The Senator from New York said yesterday that the whole world had abolished slavery. Aye, the name, but not the thing; all the powers of the earth cannot abolish that. God only can do it when he repeals the fiat, “the poor ye always have with you;” for the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and “operatives,” as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South. We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation. Our slaves do not vote. We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositories of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than “an army with banners,” and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided, not as they have mistakenly attempted to initiate such proceedings by meeting in parks, with arms in their hands, but by the quiet process of the ballot-box. You have been making war upon us to our very hearthstones. How would you like for us to send lecturers and agitators North, to teach these people this, to aid in combining, and to lead them?
“The ‘Mudsill’ Theory,” by James Henry Hammond. Speech to the U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858.
While this “theory” is attributable to Hammond, it may well have informed and been informed by the Southern gentry, the eventual Confederate South, about what was important, about how to be religiously observant and a slave owner at the same time, and about how important and necessary their efforts were in moving American civilization forward. It was about the need for land, labour, and products, that is, for power to remain in the hands of those who were already powerful — that meant wealthy, white Southern men. With this type of entrenched view, how else but through war could there be a change in the United States at that time?
John Brown visited St. Catharines with J.W. Longuen in April 1858. John Brown arrived in Chatham on April 29, 1858, to recruit men to end slavery and overthrow the American government. As a white abolitionist, he envisioned surprise attacks being made against plantations from bases in the Appalachians. He felt that slaves freed in this manner would join his trained group, continue attacking plantations, and freeing other slaves until finally setting up a new provisional government. Brown recruited in Chatham, Buxton, Ingersoll, Hamilton, and Toronto and was feeling confident of his support when he met Harriet in St. Catharines. Brown found a black printer in St. Catharines and gave him the provisional constitution to reproduce. Brown asked Harriet to bring as many fugitives to join the pending battle as she could and to be the chief guide to Canada for the many who would want to settle there after the war was waged and won. Brown said that Harriet Tubman was “the most of a man naturally; that [he] ever met with.” Brown was greatly impressed with Tubman and referred to her in the male gender as a sign of his admiration for her proven military skill. He advised his son by letter that “General Tubman” had hooked her “whole team” to his cause — Harriett assured Brown of her support. However, when the time came to help, Harriet was unable to come to Brown’s assistance due to her illness. Harriet later realized that a recurring dream of hers seemed to mean that Brown and his sons would die in this conflict. Harriet later is known to have said that Brown died because he was too impatient.
With the failure at Harpers Ferry came the death of John Brown, and the heightening of the tensions between slave owners and abolitionists. From A Voice From Harper’s Ferry written by Osborne Anderson (and edited by Mary Ann Shadd), the only black from Canada to join John Brown on the raid and the only one to survive, we know that John Brown’s raid did not go according to plan. A white recruit from Chatham defected and told of the plans, which caused