The Era of Good Feelings

In 1819, the United States was experiencing what historians refer to as the "Era of Good Feelings." The political controversies of the early years of the Republic had passed, and been replaced by a period of political calm in the wake of the self-destruction of the Federalist party. The Federalists were annihilated politically when their role in organizing the Hartford Convention had become public. News of this gathering of representatives of New England states to discuss secession, and a separate peace with England in the War of 1812 had broke at the same time as news about the Battle of New Orleans. The resulting public outrage proved devastating to the Federalists, leaving the Democrats as the remaining national party.

This was also a time of strong nationalist sentiment. With "victory" in the War of 1812, the nation had begun to flex it's muscles. The Monroe Doctrine was promulgated during this period, and Americans--North and South--joined in this assertion of national power. If this were not enough, the Second Great Awakening had given the nation a common evangelical faith, and a renewed sense that God had some special purpose for the young nation that was emerging strong and vigorous.

For its part, the South had little or no reason to be dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs. The Virginia Dynasty was well in place. A succession of Southerners (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe) had occupied the White House, and there was little sign that this state of affairs would soon end.

But the seeds of sectionalism were already present. One of the reasons Jefferson had sought to limit the role of government during his administration was a concern for sectional nerves. In the North a manufacturing revolution was taking root, while the South was turning to the cultivation of cotton. As a result, the economic interests of the two sections was diverging. The North, for instance, called for the imposition of tariffs to assist manufacturing. This appeal to building the nation's industry resonated with the new nationalism. But such measures were widely viewed in the South as harmful because of the region's dependance on exports. Therefore anything that might create barriers to trade was seen as a threat to its prosperity. But this was an issue that most felt could be resolved through the existing political process. While tariffs stirred passions, they did not threaten to bring the Era of Good Feelings to an end.

With the Panic of 1819, the national zeitgeist began to change. Blame for the economic turmoil was placed at the feet of the Bank of the United States which had been supported by nationalists. But perhaps more importantly, there was a shift in political alignments. Where previously, the West and South had allied against the Northeast over the questions of tariffs and fighting the War of 1812, a new alliance threatened to undercut the dominate role that the South had played in national affairs. This realignment occurred over two issues. The first was the issue of internal improvements. Both the West and North wanted the federal government to take an active role in creating an infrastructure of economic development. The South, for it's part, did not believe it needed any such improvements, and opposed these measures. The second--and more important--issue was the Missouri Crisis which served to introduce slavery into national politics.

At issue in the Missouri Crisis was the future of slavery. In 1819, most Americans were embarrassed by slavery. It was contrary to the natural rights ideology upon which the nation had been founded, and most reasoned that it was one of many evils forced on the country by the English crown. Slavery existed in both regions of the country, and while some states had begun a gradual emancipation of slaves in their territory, both North and South were united in a common consensus that slavery was a necessary evil that would take time to eradicate.

But here too, there were regional differences. In the North, slaves were few, constituting only 2% of the population. There was no need to purchase a servile labor force to run the new manufacturing plants when immigration provided a plentiful and low cost labor force. In this new industrial order, many of these immigrants worked and lived in conditions worse than many slaves. In the South, slaves constituted one third of the population, and became the major component of the work force. In this new agrarian economy--built increasingly on King Cotton--the need for labor was intense, and slavery became the principle means of meeting the demand.

In those areas of the country where slavery not rooted in the financial structure, the tendency was to see slavery as a necessary evil, with emphasis placed on "evil." In the South where slavery became the foundation for the economy, slavery was still viewed as a necessary evil. Only in the South, the emphasis was on "necessary." This national consensus would remain in place until the 1840's when the South would break with it.

The Firebell in the Night

But in 1819 the South was unawakened to these differences. That began to change when Missouri presented itself for statehood. When the matter came before Congress, northern congressmen proposed that slavery be prohibited in the territory in keeping with the precedent established by the Northwest Ordinance (a provision the South had not objected too). Of course there was a sub-text to this proposal. Northerners had long thought that the South's political dominance owed to the "three-fifths" clause of the Constitution that gave the region more votes that it would otherwise have, and this was seen as a way to limit the advantage enjoyed by the South. But in making their argument for this restriction, supporters of this restriction choose to label slavery as evil, and morally wrong.

While wounded by these attacks, the South--interestingly enough--made no effort to defend its "peculiar institution" directly, perhaps because it recognized slavery wasn't morally defensible. Instead, the region resorts to a constitutional argument. Congress--Southerners argue--cannot bind a state in exchange for admission into Union. (This strategy of changing converting the debate about slavery into a debate on a constitutional issue would anticipate the line of argument the region would use in latter years.)

Although the national debate was emotional at times, eventually the Missouri Crisis was resolved peacefully. The Missouri Compromise, as if came to be known, admitted Missouri and Maine to the Union, and established 36' 30'' as the line to divide free from slave territory, an action that left much of the Louisiana Purchase in free territory. The significance of this crisis, however, is not to be found in the territorial division, but in the fact that the North in alerted that the West will stand with it on the issue of slavery. As a result, slavery becomes a wedge issue for the North to divide the alliance that had been forged by the South and West during the Era of Good Feeling, and end the South's dominance of national politics.

The Missouri Crisis was a firebell in the night. It not only anticipated the emotional arguments of mid-nineteenth century, it also served to warn both North and South that it would be impossible to keep the slavery out of national politics. Indeed, many politicians of the time were so frightened by this glimpse of the future, that they sought to "bury the issue."

Anti-Slavery versus Abolition

There is one point that we should be clear on. The issue at the time of the Missouri Crisis was not abolition. At this point in American history, the great majority of Northerners were anti-slavery. That is to say, they were against the institution of slavery, but were more than willing to tolerate it as long as it remained confined to the South, and as long as it was gradually being eliminated.

One of the organizations formed to eradicate slavery was the American Colonization Society. Among its founders were Francis Scott Key, Andrew Jackson, and John Marshall. Like other reform organizations, it was nurtured by the sense of disinterested benevolence spawned by the Second Great Awakening. Although it enjoyed a strong following--especially in the upper South--it would prove, ultimately, to be a failure. Most blacks did not wish to return to Africa, and the few who did helped demonstrate just how expensive a proposition this could be. By 1831 only 1,420 blacks had returned to Africa.

It would be a mistake, however, to equate anti-slavery organizations like the American Colonization Society with being pro-negro. The concern of many in the North was that slaves (blacks) might eventually compete with free labor. Not only did they wish to free the slaves, they also wished to purge the nation of their presence. Far from being pro-negro, most in the North were quite racist. When Lincoln, for instance, announced the Emancipation Proclamation riots broke out in the north. The fear driving these disturbances was that the newly freed slaves would flood North and take away the jobs of whites. Indeed, the Republican platform on which Lincoln ran and won was: "Free Soil, Free Labor, and Free Men" which envisioned a West and North that would be kept safe for whites mechanics, farmers and artisans. Such people, it was feared, would not be able to compete with slave labor.

In the beginning, Abolitionists were an extreme minority in the North. Unlike their anti-slavery peers, they insisted on abolishing slavery whatever the cost. They saw themselves involved in a moral crusade, and many Abolitionists were drew moral fervor from the revivals of the Second Great Awakening. They believed those who held slaves were moral reprobates, and were quick to say what they thought. It was this willingness to use stereotypes and to paint disturbing images of atrocities towards slaves that would lead Abolitionist writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe to become a major force in moving the nation toward Civil War.

These attacks on slavery were taken to heart in the South. By now the region was heavily evangelical. Believing they had been washed clean by the blood of the lamb, having enjoyed an emotional conversion, most Southerners tended to see themselves as fundamentally good and righteous. Not only did they express surprise at the suddenness of these attacks, as "evangelical" Christians they took offense at being called evil and morally deficient. And yet, they refused to defend slavery. They too saw it as a wrong. But in the course of responding to the Abolitionists attacks, something significant begins to take place. The South slowly evolves the idea that slavery is a positive good--breaking with the national consensus that existed in 1819--at the same time the North continued to place emphasis on the fact that slavery was a necessary evil. It is here, argues Robert Durden of Duke University, that we find one of the major tap-roots of the Civil War.

The Development of a Pro-Slavery Argument

In the decade that followed the Missouri Crisis, this cultural sectionalism slowly begins to emerge. Although many politicians sought to lower the volume of the public discussion of slavery, a number of events kept bringing the issue back to the forefront of public attention. In 1824, for instance, the Ohio legislature passed a resolution calling for the voluntary emancipation and colonization of slaves, with the costs to be borne by the federal government. This proposal was not well received in the South. The South Carolina Legislature passed a resolution that called for no change in an institution so intimately linked with Southern civilization. Here is the first sign that the South was in the process of deciding that Slavery was not evil.

The genesis of this pro-slavery argument was in South Carolina in the 1820's. Thomas Cooper, the President of South Carolina College and a Deist, and Richard Furman, President of the State Baptist Convention in 1823 were both instrumental in this effort. Furman, for instance, developed a Biblical defense of slavery that had strong appeal in the evangelical culture that existed in the wake of the Second Great Awakening. (Ham, it was said, was the father of all Blacks. Abraham held slaves. Leviticus enjoins the children of Israel to take slaves from the heathens. Philemon is told to return to master by Paul. Jesus never attacked the institution of slavery.)

The pro-slavery argument took other forms. As mentioned last week, the pro-slavery position also was supported by Thomas Dew who drew on the teachings of Aristotle with its orders of existence to justify existing social arrangements. Dew painted a portrait of the South that bore a remarkable resemblance to Rome or Greece in which culture and higher thought were made possible by slave labor, just as had been true in the ancient world. Here again, slavery is seen as a positive good, rather than an institution to be apologized for.

But the pro-slavery argument also emerged from some surprising quarters. Despite the strong evangelical thrust in the South, some in the region were willing to entertain heterodox ideas in order to defend the "peculiar institution. Josiah Nott--for instance--argued that the races had different origins, and contended for a plural creation, an idea at odds with Genesis. The races, he contended, were in reality different species. (An interesting sidelight here is that this idea was popularized in Europe by a Frenchman named Gobineau. One of the admirers of Gobineau's ideas was Houston Stuart Chamberlain, a forerunner of Nazi racial theory.)

The pro-slavery position was further strengthened by David Walker's Appeal. This essay was published in 1829 in Savannah. Walker was a free black who published a pamphlet in which he declared that American slaves are degraded, their masters are cruel, and called for the destruction of these masters by armed insurrection. Not only did this provoke great fear in Savannah, copies of the pamphlet were found in other areas of the South where they produced widespread concern.

Reading this call for insurrection, many could not help but be reminded of the slave conspiracy of the Charleston mulatto named Denmark Vesey. A free black, Vesey had purchased his freedom after winning a lottery jackpot. A prosperous carpenter, he was deeply angered by the fact that his wives and children remained slaves, and that he--despite his freedom--continued to labor under the stigma of inferiority. Bright, well traveled, and well-read, he studied the debates over slavery during the Missouri Crisis, and concluded the time had come to rebel against the institution. Using his freedom to move about in Charleston, as well as the skills of his lieutenant, Gullah Jack, a witch doctor born in Angola, he organized a insurrection. Conspirators were given "parched corn and ground nuts to eat the morning of the rebellion, and a crab claw to carry at the moment of revolution. These tokens, the revered witch doctor promised, would invoke the aid of the African gods and protect rebels against capture." Most conspirators were trusted house servants. Eventually two slaves confessed to the rebellion, and it was stopped just hours before it was to be implemented. When the scale of the conspiracy became evident, 35 slaves were hanged and 37 banished.

In 1831, the insurrection Walker had called for came to pass. Led by Nat Turner, this rebellion resulted in 55 dead in Tidewater Virginia.

In this environment, Southerners stopped distinguishing between abolitionists and those persons who were anti-slavery. Taken together, the examples of Walker, Vesey, and Turner, demonstrated for White Southerners that both groups were not just attacking the morality of South, they were in fact threatening the physical safety of Southerners. As a result harsh new laws were passed that prohibited teaching of slaves to read or write, and restricting the movements of free blacks. In North Carolina free blacks were disenfranchised. In this atmosphere of growing defensiveness, Georgia passed it's Negro Seaman law which prohibited black seamen from venturing into the surrounding country side. When this law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Georgia continued to enforce it anyway defying the federal government and effectively nullifying the Court's ruling.

The Road Not Taken

Of course, there was another option open to the South. It could have chose another path besides reaction and the development of a pro-slavery argument. There were some Southerners who saw Nat Turner's rebellion as a chance to reexamine the institution of slavery.

These Southerners claimed that slavery was indeed a threat to the security of the region, particularly as the percentage of Blacks increased. Not did the institution of slavery undermine public safety, it had also made the South an economic backwater, they insisted. In 1831, a debate on slavery was undertaken in the state legislature of Virginia. This debate was widely reported on throughout the region. In the end, the effort to outlaw slavery was voted down 73-58. Following this vote, opposition to slavery across the region declined markedly.

From this point on, politicians began to get in the act, undertaking to out do one another in their defense of slavery. Thus began the great intellectual effort of the antebellum South: the development of a full-blown defense of slavery. Within six years time, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina would become the first to publicly characterize slavery as a "positive good."

Why did the South choose to view slavery as a positive good? I would suggest that it was out of concern that the Abolitionists might be right: that Blacks and Whites might in fact be brothers under the skin. This was one of the principle reasons some plantation owners were so resistent to Christianity being preached to their slaves. There was real concern during the early years of slavery that if a black became a Christian, he became a brother in Christ. This raised the interesting issue of how one could keep a fellow brother or sister in Christ enslaved. If the slave was really a brother, one must set him free. As a result, there was strong opposition to the efforts of evangelical groups like Methodists to mount a "Mission to the Slaves."

Of course, scholars have offered a variety of other theories about why the South became so defensive where slavery was concerned. Was this defensiveness a response to abolition? Not entirely. Both North and South were opposed to the efforts of the abolitionists. Was it a desire to reap the economic benefits of the Cotton Gin? Again, not entirely. The majority of Southerners were not getting rich from Cotton. Was it the crisis of fear that arose out of Vesey and Turner's rebellions? Not entirely. There had been slave uprisings in the 18th century. Was it because individuals like John C. Calhoun developed a doctrine of states rights. Not really. Such ideas weren't limited to the South. Was it the tariff? Again, that would be doubtful. The principle reason the South opted for pro-slavery seems to have been that whites were determined to see the South as a land where the white man would always be supreme. Slavery, was not just a labor system, but was also very much about the arrangement of the races. (Oakes, The Ruling Race.)

The Impact of the Wilmot Proviso

Into this volatile brew a spark falls: the opening of hostilities with Mexico. Abraham Lincoln first comes to the national spotlight by arguing that the war was a slave holder plot to extend slavery into the West. He and others push forward the Wilmot Proviso to prohibit slavery in any of the territories seized by war. This proviso had an appeal that abolition did not have. It promised to check the spread of slavery into the territories. Mechanics and farmers and others who felt threatened by the possible economic competition of slaves could support this proviso, because it promised to save the west for whites. Almost immediately, the Wilmot Proviso draws support from all groups in the North including abolitionists and anti-slavery supporters, as well as capitalists, agrarians and others.

The strength of this anti-slave (anti-black) sentiment can be seen in Lincoln's home state of Illinois. There a law was passed to prohibit free blacks from entering the state. It was passed out of fear that the West might become a slave economy instead of following the free labor model that the North had pioneered.

With the North now unified in opposition to the extension of slavery, and in support of free labor, the South is labeled a moral pariah eager to dominate the national life. Faced with such attacks, the South fights back. If slavery can be limited in the territories, it argues, that stamps the institution of slavery as an evil. And if slavery is evil, then it will next be attacked in the states where it presently exists, threatening the Southern way of life, and the existing arrangement of the races.

In such an environment, the argument that slavery is a positive good comes to dominate Southern thinking. Instead of seeing itself as a moral pariah, the South chooses instead to view itself in light of ancient Greece possessing a noble civilization made possible by slaves. In such a society all whites could be truly equal. Indeed, the South choose to paint itself as a society close to perfection, if not perfect. Not only did Southerners think of themselves as being highly moral, they believed themselves rightly related to God. They were--they argued--a model of civilization.

Of course, Southerners could have looked around themselves and seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. But in the wake of the Wilmot Proviso, they had started down a road to self-deception that would eventually lead them to go to war against a far superior foe. By 1848, a majority in the South are ready to do just that: to go to war. Hostilities would be averted by the Compromise of 1850, but had they come about at this point, the South would probably could have successfully seceded. Ten years latter, when the South ultimately acted, the economic strength of the North had outstripped that of the South, leaving the outcome of the war largely predetermined.

What often goes unrecognized, however, is that both North and South wanted the West to be the white man's country. Where they differed was in their understanding as to what this involved.

A Concluding Observation

During the Civil War, the idea of Southern Perfection took symbolic form. Perhaps the best representation of the belief that Southern society was close to perfection is to be found in the second national flag of the Confederacy (rendered below). It was known as the "Stainless Banner," a designation that says a great deal about how the South viewed itself. The religious imagery used in this description is also striking.