Jim Remsen's Blog: The Slave as "Crushed Vegetable'' - Posts Tagged "abolition"

“MORE THAN SIX THOUSAND PRESENT! THE GREATEST ENTHUSIASMS PREVAILED.”

I just came upon that breathless headline while doing research for my next book, which will delve into 19th century black life in the section of northeastern Pennsylvania where I was raised. My hometown, the lovely hamlet of Waverly, north of Scranton, takes pride in the fact that it once harbored a settlement of fugitive slaves. I’ve been drilling down into that history, with a focus on the dozen remarkable black men from the settlement who served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

My goal in this latest round of road research was to find verification for a report I recently ran across online (thank you, newspapers.com!) about a rally in Waverly in October 1861, in the early stages of the war. According to the Adams Sentinel of Gettysburg, the rally was held in support of Lincoln’s policies, and it featured speeches by two gutsy officials of the opposition Democrats, representing the faction of “pro-war Democrats.” The article said ten thousand people attended and cheered loudly. Who else spoke, I wondered. Waverly’s black residents must have attended. Did one of their leaders perhaps get a spot on the platform as well? And where could such a massive event even be held in little Waverly?

I hoped the answer might pop up in one of the old Scranton newspapers, which would presumably have covered such a major event in its area. Unfortunately, the archived newspapers at the Scranton public library only go back to 1863, so that part of my search is thwarted for now.

Meanwhile, I dove into newly added microfilm for another Scranton newspaper, The Lackawanna Register, beginning in early 1863. The Register was a hard-core, Lincoln-hating Democratic house organ—and wow, the invective and racism! Its pages were filled with accounts of large antiwar demonstrations throughout the region in the summer of 1863. There was one in Greenfield, and in Scott, in Lenox, in Harford, in Dundaff, in Fleetville.

Wait a second. This picture runs directly counter to the impression I’d gotten before-- that the area was in Lincoln’s camp and that its Southern-sympathizing, abolition-loathing “Copperheads” were fringe crackpots who were few in number.

Even if you figure The Register was inflating the size of the turnouts and the level of enthusiasm, the events still must have been galvanizing. For instance, the June 6 “gathering of the yeomanry” in Greenfield drew many “in their four-horse teams, heavily freighted with the Democracy of their immediate neighborhoods. Others with two-horse teams; some in buggies, some on horseback, and hundreds came on foot…Flags and national music enlivened the occasion at intervals.” Resolutions were adopted that denounced both Lincoln’s war powers and abolitionist “fanaticism” (saying the abolitionists “may be hopelessly insane; still, they shall not be permitted to rule or ruin this great nation.”).

Similarly, several thousand in Harford cheered as the speaker blasted away. According to the Register, “the ‘Negro Equality’ doctrine, in connection with the Abolition policy of the Administration, received the largest share of his satire—the tremendous volleys of which frequently call out the most enthusiastic demonstration.”

Then came the one in Fleetville, just five miles north of Waverly, on July 4 (“More Than 6,000 Present!”). A hickory pole, symbol of Jacksonian Democracy, was erected, more fiery speeches were cheered, and “a committee of two hundred ladies presented the gentlemen who addressed them with a most beautiful bouquet.”

Also that day, the crowd affirmed an angry resolution written by Waverly lawyer Thomas Smith. This long manifesto denounced the federal government’s “negro fanaticism” and called for “a speedy deliverance from Abraham Lincoln’s bloody Abolition rule.” It declared the president guilty of treason—and said that “for his numerous wanton violations of the Constitution of the United States he ought to be impeached.”

Contrary to other accounts I’ve read, the so-called “Crackerbarrel Congress” manifesto was not merely the product of a handful of cranky men who met in the backroom of a Fleetville store. They were speaking for thousands of people in that region, dissidents who repudiated “King Abraham”--and also couldn’t stand black people and their white allies in places like Waverly.

Stay tuned for more updates.

If you saw the film Twelve Years a Slave or read the memoir it’s based on, you know that prior to the Civil War, free-born black people in the Northern states were at risk of being kidnapped and illegally sold into Southern bondage. Mercenaries were carrying out the horrific practice throughout the early decades of the 1800s, and they really upped their game once the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. The new law let slave-catchers come North to capture suspected runaways, with the Northern authorities and public required to cooperate. A quick hearing would be held at which the suspect couldn’t testify. If no one else would pay his bounty, he’d be ordered South with his captors.

This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I’m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined “Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.” It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I’d like to share it because it’s memorable. Here, from April 2, 1851:

"The operation of the Fugitive Slave Law seems to have opened a new market for the slavers of the South. This may sound strangely in the ears of some … A slaveholder wishing to realize a few hundred or a thousand dollars, instead of risking the uncertainties of a Southern market, has only to dispatch some special agent, equipped with a letter of Attorney, executed in due form of law, to the North, authorizing him to seize, apprehend and sell some poor negro, who may be unable to prove his freedom the moment he is arrested.

"The summary manner in which cases of this kind are required to be disposed of, almost necessarily prevent investigation into the character of such agent himself as a competent witness, to prove the identity of the fugitive, no difference what his character for truth really may be, for that, from the very nature of the case, cannot be inquired into. Thus is is rendered extremely easy to establish a claim of this kind.

"It is well known that there is strong sympathy here in the North in favor of freedom, and although our citizens are ‘law abiding,’ yet they would pay almost any price rather than see a man dragged from his home into perpetual bondage. In this way it is that those claimed as slaves are sold in Pennsylvania.” The article mentioned a Pittsburgh case in which people paid $800, and said, “Thousands of dollars have already been extorted from the North in this way, and yet this odious law has only been in operation a few months. … If this state of things is to prevail, but a few of our colored citizens are secure in their persons or property for a day, notwithstanding the vaunting boast that America is the asylum for the oppressed and downtrodden of all nations.”

What a racket: black suspects railroaded; slave owners win by getting a new field hand or by extracting a bounty payment instead; mercenaries cash in either way. It was a rotten system that helped turn much of the Northern public against Southern “Slave Power”--and that lurched the nation closer to war.