War Stories

These three great battles in the Civil War were all archetypes of the military thinking of the day. They have more in common than the fact that they all end in “burg”. They were all bloodbaths, and for the same remarkable reason; leaders sent their men marching across open fields against an enemy that was hiding behind rocks and trees, resulting in the loss of huge numbers of soldiers in a virtual turkey shoot.

Military scientists hadn’t yet learned to deal with the fact that the gun had matured and become the primary weapon of war, replacing the sword. Because of this change, the course of a battle no longer depended upon who had the greater volume of strong, brave men willing to charge the enemy. It depended instead on who was exposed to the murderous gunfire, or who could draw the other into such an exposure. This enormous change in the nature of warfare was fatally ignored, in military academia and in the field, until after World War I, in the next century. It is hard to understand how so many apparently bright people, whose primary purpose was the study and execution of warfare, could have missed such a vital fact for so long.

Antietam, also called Sharpsburg, was the first of these three illustrative battles. It was in September of 1862. It was the bloodiest day of fighting in American history, in any war. Twenty-three thousand soldiers died in about 14 hours. Confederate and Union soldiers met in a series of confrontations in an area around Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland. There wasn’t a lot of cover, and it was basically a turkey shoot for both sides. The magnitude of the one-day death toll in such an early battle, never again equaled, even at Gettysburg, suggests that the futility of “charging” an enemy who is shooting at you with guns may have been slightly learned – at least to the degree that there was some trepidation at the idea among some men in some battles.

There were fatal errors in the lead-up to the battle, especially on the part of Northern General George B. McClellan. Although he was popular with his men, he was an overly cautious General and he failed to take advantage of opportunities to move quickly when Southern General Robert E. Lee was still off-balance. He even wasted one of the most fortunate advantages in military history when his men intercepted a dispatch from Robert E. Lee to one of his Generals, outlining exactly where he intended to go with his armies and when. This dispatch could have been used to attack Lee when he was most vulnerable. Instead, McClellan moved deliberately and predictably to set up the inevitable confrontation of two armies marching against one another on an open field.

When the day of fighting occurred, Lee committed all of his men immediately, and despite being outnumber 2:1, he held his own, as McClellan cautiously kept large numbers in reserve. Only three-quarters of the men under McClellan were sent forward to the fight.

History says that the winner was “technically” the Union (Northern) troops, although they lost more men than the Confederates. In a battle of brute force the Union battered the smaller Confederate force till it withdrew during the night. Overly cautious General McClellan failed to follow up on the advantage, preferring to withdraw in the other direction and lick his wounds. For this and other uncertainties he subsequently lost his command.

This kind of open field warfare was more practical a half-century earlier during the Napoleonic wars, when guns were so hard to reload that after one or two shots the armies were at each other with swords and bayonets. But by the Civil War it was no longer necessary to load a gun by pouring powder down the barrel, then following that up by forcing the “ball” into place with a ramrod – a process that took as long as 20 seconds, even for an expert. With the new one-piece bullets it was much faster to reload guns, and some kinds of repeating guns were already in use – such as the Colt revolver. As a result, most of the major bloody battles never progressed to the point of pitting man against man with sword and bayonet. Instead the outcome pivoted on who had a better shot at the other guys and could kill more of them at a distance. Of course this paradigm favored armies that did not march men across open fields.

Quick success was available to armies that moved rapidly, gaining an element of surprise, taking the other army before they could form up, causing confusion and panic. This was proven time and again by effective cavalry soldiers like Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stewart. But this kind of strategy, which should have been embraced as the primary method of the war, was considered to be only an ancillary action, secondary to the main method of fighting, the attempt by one army to advance on the position of the other army and overrun them – a set-up for mass murder.

Southern military leaders had a better grasp of the guerilla method of battle, possibly out of necessity as they were severely outnumbered and undersupplied. Because of the use of guerilla tactics and superior management they dominated the early part of the war and hung on for much longer than they should have, given their distinct disadvantage in terms of men, weapons and materiel. Lee’s army was significantly smaller than the Union army in every major confrontation, and because the South was an agrarian economy and had no factories or manufacturing industry of any size, it was very difficult for Lee to obtain more guns, artillery, and supplies. But even Lee never really fully realized that his most successful actions were guerilla attacks. Many more of these actions and fewer frontal confrontations might have made the outcome different.

The power of guerilla warfare has never been more obvious than in today’s world, where in the minds of the general public the largest and most dominant military force in the world is no real defense against a very small band of dedicated terrorists, who seemingly “can’t be stopped”. Certainly they can be stopped, but not by using a modern army. The only terrorist that tried to stand up to the modern army was Saddam Hussein, and his inferior army was quickly sent running. But the few terrorists have an equal weight in the minds of many with this irresistible army, if only because no one has really looked to see that such an army isn’t a workable handling for terrorists.

The battle at Antietam was Lee’s first attempt to take the war across Northern lines. Prior to that point the conflict had taken place on Southern soil, and it could have been characterized as an attempt by the Confederate army to drive the Union soldiers out of the South. Lee thought that encroaching on Northern ground would support the anti-war groups in the North in their attempt to get Lincoln out of office. Instead it had an opposite effect. It galvanized resolve in the North and gave Lincoln the springboard he needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation – the statement that ordered the freeing of Southern slaves.

This is the point at which the Civil War became a war about slavery – it had previously been mostly about economic issues. In fact the Northern states counted amongst them at least two slave-holding states, including Maryland, which was a major battleground throughout the war. Adding the slavery issue to the mix gave the North a very high purpose, and discouraged foreign powers such as Britain and France from assisting the South.

The battle at Fredericksburg was next – only months later. Well-entrenched Confederate soldiers held a hill and sat behind a rock wall, picking off Union soldiers who tried to attack marching across an open field. Because the marching Union soldiers were exposed and the Confederates were not, the Union lost more than 12,000 men. The battle consisted of a number of smaller feints and skirmishes, but the main attacks were up the hill, with Fredericksburg and the river in the background, against Confederate soldiers well dug in behind a rock wall. Three major attempts were made to “charge” this hill. The carnage was immense. By the third attempt the attacking soldiers were hampered not only by the bullets of the confederates but also by the need to climb over the carpet of bodies on the field of action, stacked two high in some areas. How useful were the swords and bayonets? The answer lies in the fact that no Union soldier ever laid a hand on the rock wall.

General Ambrose Burnside, the Union soldier who replaced McClellan, turned out to have the same timidity about pushing an advantage. He arrived at the Fredericksburg site days before Lee’s main force, but ignored the advice of his own men to take the smaller Confederate force while they could – instead waiting for all of his men and supplies to slowly move into place, by which time Lee had assembled his full force and seized the high ground, making his position into a virtual fortress. So Burnside (whose voluminous facial hair on the sides of his head introduced the humorous term “sideburns” into our vocabulary) ignored opportunities to strike while the enemy was off balance and instead moved laboriously to set up the suicidal men-marching-across-fields scenario.

The Union lost the battle, and General Burnside lost his command.

Lincoln was aware of the fear and ineptitude in his series of second-rate Generals. At the time of the Civil War, the cream of the military crop was mostly Southerners – so when the South decided to secede, they took the good Generals with them. Lincoln finally found a bulldog later in the war, in the person of Ulysses S. Grant. Like his predecessors in the North and his opponents in the South, Grant didn’t fully grasp the nature of “modern” warfare, but he did know how to fight. He was at least able to take advantage of the huge Northern advantage in terms of men, arms and supplies. Under his leadership, the South finally folded. One time Lincoln was approached by politicians who had a moral issue with Grant’s incipient alcoholism. Lincoln reportedly told the critics to find out what brand of alcohol Grant preferred so he could send a case to each of his Generals, presumably in the hopes it would give them the courage and wisdom Grant had in leading the war.

Gettysburg was the most famous battle in the Civil War, not only because it was the major turning point, but also because it was the site of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address shortly after the battle – one of the most inspiring speeches in modern history.

It was Lee’s second attempt to bring the fight to the North. Pennsylvania was a solid Northern state. Lee was desperate to find a way to turn the tide. He was unable to replace soldiers and guns he lost through attrition, and the North was not only replacing their losses but increasing their force. At the beginning of the war, the number of able-bodied males in the North outnumbered the men in the South 3:1. The North had the factories, and could make shoes, guns and ammunition at a rate the South could only dream of. It was turning into a mismatch. Lee pinned his hopes on rattling the Northern populace, getting them to vote against Lincoln in the upcoming elections or demand an end to the war even if it meant recognizing the Confederate States of America as a separate country. In fact the sentiment against Lincoln and the war was growing by this time. One Union soldier who went home on furlough wrote in his diary that Lincoln’s main support seemed to be the army itself. The folks back home were anxious for the war to be over, regardless of the outcome.

Lee crossed into Northern territory and headed vaguely for Harrisburg, but word of Union troops coming in his direction caused him to pull up in the area of the small town of Gettysburg and begin making preparations.

The Union army arrived not all at once, but in sections, as different parts came different distances to come to the defense of Pennsylvania.

Prior to the action, the new Union chief was General Joseph Hooker, who had already been decimated by Confederate actions at Chancellorsville and in other confrontations. Like his Union predecessors, Hooker was too slow and uncertain for modern warfare. He disagreed with orders to move quickly with forced marches to meet the Confederate army, so he quit. The new leader was General George Meade, whose actions acquitted him better than those who went before him. Meade would be the first Union leader who still held a position of high authority at the end of the war.

The fighting at Gettysburg took place over three hot days in July, 1863. The fighting on the first day was inconclusive, as the two sides, not yet fully organized, skirmished across open ground. The fateful occurrence at the end of the day was when Confederate reinforcements arrived, pushing the Union corps into a fall-back position on a hill with a rock wall, called Cemetery Ridge. It is amazing that no one had already taken this natural defensive position and that Union occupancy occurred largely as a result of a retreat!

There was a great deal of complexity in the battle as it progressed over the next two days, but it was still inconclusive when the Confederate side made the classic mistake that had been made by the Union army at Fredericksburg: They decided to take Cemetery Ridge in a frontal assault, across an open field. The disastrous result is now known as Pickett’s Charge after General George Pickett, whose men were at the center of the attack.

The outcome in hindsight is boringly and sadly predictable. The Confederate troops were decimated. More than three-quarters of those in Picket’s Charge were killed. It was the beginning of the end for the Confederates. The Southern army went downhill from that point until the end of the war. More than 50,000 men were killed in the three day conflict, about 25,000 for the South and 23,000 for the North. The even numbers are deceptive however, as the South had no replacements for these men, and it severely decimated the number of 75,000 Confederate soldiers still remaining at the beginning of the battle, by about one-third.

Did anyone ever realize that marching unarmored men on foot across open fields toward an enemy shooting guns is simply homicide? Not for a long time. A study of the post-war writings of Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee’s better Generals and the one who held the middle of the hill against the Union assault at Fredericksburg, reveals a man who has pondered much on the details of that battle. After great deliberation, a sharp analysis of the details of the action, and a surprising recall of even the most intricate twists and turns that occurred, Longstreet states ingenuously that he doesn’t know what else Burnside could have done. He is almost sympathetic with the failed Union General, stating essentially that his plight was more or less unlucky.

But today it’s easy to see the first datum that would have assisted Burnside, and if fully understood and followed might have changed the course of the war much earlier and might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. That datum would be, “Don’t march unprotected men on foot across open fields against an enemy who is hiding behind rocks and trees shooting guns.”

By World War I a little more than 50 years later, military science still hadn’t learned the lesson. The result was trench warfare in which the two sides faced each other for years, neither able to move forward. Each time one side would decide to go “over the top” and charge the enemy, machine guns would kill them all, and everybody would go back to their trenches and think about it for a while – then the other side would try the same thing with the same result.

Finally, the British had a bright idea – they built a car with armor around it so that men could go forward against the enemy without getting shot. They called it the “tank”. The end of the war occurred soon after.

The old thinking still wasn’t fully put to bed, though. After that war, Britain and America stubbornly held on to the old paradigm in their training institutions. It took World War II to bring them both into the world of mechanized warfare – a concept that began, really, in the Civil War, which was the first war with repeating guns, railroad trains, machine guns, metal-clad ships, aircraft (balloons) and telegraph for long-distance communication.

The flaw illustrated here is an inability to look at see what is actually there instead of seeing only what one has been taught to believe is there. This flaw pervades more than just the military of those long-gone days. Is it still true today? Is it true in areas other than the military?

There is a tendency among men to suppose that there are experts who truly understand any given area. It is a foreign idea to most that there might be large and sweeping areas of knowledge and expertise that are not understood, poorly managed, and causing harm rather than good.

While legislatures enthusiastically pass laws requiring men to wear seat belts, they ignore many issues of much greater magnitude. (This is not a rail against the seat belt law. It’s only a comparison of magnitude.)

A case in point: After looking at Civil War photos of the dead lined up like cordwood at Antietam and Gettysburg, it comes as a shock to learn that more Americans died in mental institutions between 1950 and 1985 than have died in all wars combined since 1776 – and that since 1985, that number has doubled again. Is the field of psychiatry and the widespread use of psychiatric drugs another “killing field” that is being overlooked, like the one in front of Cemetery Ridge? Will future generations gape with horror when they learn what happens today in the field of mental health? It seems very likely.

Is it lost on everyone that the relatively new phenomenon of people walking into a school or workplace and indiscriminately shooting others and then themselves corresponds almost exactly with the introduction of psychiatric drugs such as Prozac and Ritalin on a large scale, along with the push for psychological involvement in education and the attempt to add psychiatric care to insurance policies?

Are there other holes in our modern body of knowledge?

One only has to look at the condition of the world in which we live to see that there are many illogical things going on, and many questions that have never been well answered. It does not do to suppose someone else has things well under control. It is the responsibility of each man to look at the world around him and determine what is true and what is not. Who knows which of these men or women, if only because he or she took the trouble to look, might solve one or more of society’s greatest problems? Go ahead and look. Despite the “experts” in the area, you might be the only one looking at what is actually there.

An interesting postscript to the last entry about slavery.

In 1950-1952, about 10 years before the Civil War, an opera singer named Jenny Lind from Sweden became a national sensation in the U.S. Nicknamed the Swedish Nightingale, she was hyped by famous showman P.T. Barnum, the founder of the Barnum and Bailey circus. A master at PR, Barnum built up Lind's reputation so effectively that her arrival in the U.S. wasn't unlike the tour of the Beatles in the early 1960s. 40,000 people showed up at the dock in New York when her boat arrived. Lind toured in the U.S. for two years, always to packed houses with high-priced tickets.

At one time, an editorial was placed in a Southern-leaning Washington newspaper asking P.T. Barnum if it was true that Lind had given $1,000.00 (a large sum in those days) to an abolitionist group. (Abolitionists were the political group that wanted to abolish slavery.) Barnum, sensitive to the fact that Lind was touring in the South at the time replied that it was of course not true and that Lind would think of no such thing, and that she respects our nation's customs and ways.

There was an immediate reaction from abolitionist groups, who wanted to know why she wouldn't help abolitionist groups, and for that matter, why wouldn't Barnum insist that she do so? Barnum learned the damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't problem of PR in a society with a split opinion.

The Civil War: Slavery In The Pre Civil War Era

When Abraham Lincoln went to war, almost immediately after taking office, it was primarily to defend the country against military attack by Southern separatists or “rebels”, who had raised a formidable force of men and arms, and were attacking United States military installations in the South. By the time Lincoln took office, a number of such attacks had already occurred. Entire United States Army forts and arsenals in the South were in the hands of rebel soldiers. The U.S. soldiers who had been there were either dead or had been sent packing back to the North. The President who preceded Lincoln, James Buchanan, was a notoriously bad leader and a closet Southern sympathizer who refused to even recognize, much less do anything about, these attacks. Buchanan stuck his head firmly in the sand and ignored the issue, leaving it for Lincoln to handle.

Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. The first overtly anti-slavery President ever elected, Lincoln offered an olive branch to the South in his inauguration speech by stating that he would not interfere with the institution of slavery where it already existed (implying that he would only oppose its spread to new states as they became a part of the Union). In his next breath, he made it very clear that he would defend the Union, and all possessions of the United States government, with military force if necessary.

Despite this attempt to assuage [lessen] Southern upsets regarding slavery, the ball was already rolling. South Carolina had already voted to secede the previous December, when it became clear Lincoln had won the election. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated, ten other states followed, and the Confederate States of America (the name the South used for the separate country they tried to set up) was already an organized group.

In April, barely a month after Lincoln’s inauguration, Confederate troops attacked U.S. Army Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. They took over the fort, driving the Union soldiers out.

In fact, this incident was like many that had preceded it. In fact, by the time Lincoln took office, Fort Sumter was one of only two Union installations left in the South that had not been taken over by Confederate soldiers. But unlike his weak predecessor, Lincoln drew a line in the sand, and the war began. The shots fired at Fort Sumter are considered the first military activity in the Civil War.

So given Lincoln’s willingness to compromise on the issue of slavery, and the widespread Southern contention that the main issue was the tariff taxes that were being levied on imports, how much did slavery have to do with the war? Was it really one of the causes of the war?

The tariff tax was definitely an issue that divided the nation. We will devote an essay to that issue. That tax ebbed and flowed from the early 1800s onward, and it was always hated by Southerners.

Slavery followed along right behind the tariff as an issue, though.

Different people supported the war for different reasons. Some of the people who fought for the North were there to free the slaves, even at the beginning. Some of them, probably the greater number at first, were there simply to preserve the Union. In the South, the upset with the North was total by the time of the war. Like a nattering person who has had a complete falling out with an old friend, their vituperatory [harshly critical] and strident [loudly expressed] complaints about the North were generalized very broadly, to the point they were upset with nearly all things Northern. Whole philosophical discussions about the evil of Northern ways were in order at town meetings.

But there is no denying that defending the institution of slavery was one of the primary issues for the South. It was the issue cited more often than any other for their problem with Abraham Lincoln. The most repeated statement I have found in speeches inciting [encouraging] the secession of the South immediately preceding the war was that Lincoln was going to “free our slaves”.

The history of slavery in the U.S. is an interesting study.

Many historians try to make a case that our founding fathers were pro-slavery and that slavery was originally condoned by the constitution. Others make a case that the constitution was designed to set the stage for the eventual demise of slavery. It would be convenient to say that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but the truth is more likely that slavery was hardly an issue at all. In the sweeping historical debate that led to the construction of the constitution, the vast bulk of the discussion was on other issues. Slavery was a footnote, at best.

Why was this? Probably because at that time, slavery was simply a fact of life to these people, and although some were “for” it and some were “against” it, the institution was well ingrained as a part of the economy and the society, and the men at the Constitutional Convention, whose very homes and families had so recently been threatened or even decimated by the British in the Revolutionary War, had their attention on designing a form of government that would stabilize their young country and make it work, not in fighting a philosophical battle that would have split the country down the middle.

As an analogy, we can imagine a convention in 1970 in which a group of people from various walks of life might have met to write up social conventions to live by. There would have been a lot of agreement on driving on the right side of the road, stopping at stop signs, and crossing in the crosswalks. In such a meeting, there would have been people smoking cigarettes at the table, without a doubt. There would have been others at the table who were offended by cigarette smoking, possibly even asking the person next to them to be more careful about where they blew the smoke. It wouldn’t have occurred to either side, given the solid institutionalization of smoking at that time, to suggest that smoking should be outlawed in public buildings. It certainly wouldn’t have been possible to pass such a rule at that time. Yet a concerted campaign by anti-smoking people in the years since then has given us just such a result, only 30 years later. Whether one is for or against the current ban on smoking in most public places, the analogy is good. For the men at the constitutional convention, the issue of slavery was one where most of them had an opinion one way or the other, but it wasn’t close enough to the surface to be an issue. One can even make the analogy that there were slave owners such as Washington and Jefferson and others, who privately had distaste for the institution, in spite of their own participation – like a smoker who half-heartedly would like to quit.

Interestingly though, the two famous provisions in the constitution that did have to do with slavery moved in opposite directions. One was the provision that the importation of slaves would end in 20 years. This didn’t prohibit the continuing use of slaves, only the practice of herding them on ships and bringing them from Africa. The other provision had to do with the fact that in that early patriarchal [men-controlled as opposed to women-controlled] society, women did not vote, and the vote was reserved not only for men, but for men of property. Men were given a number of votes depending on the size of their holdings. In other words, it was believed that a man who had more property had more to lose, therefore should have a greater voting power. Slaves were assigned a value of 2/3 of a vote – giving a slave-owner more voting power by that increment for each slave. This latter provision, along with the balance in population between the North and South in those years, resulted in almost complete Southern domination of American politics from that time forward until the election of Abraham Lincoln. What finally broke the chokehold of the South on politics was the faster increase in population in the North because of immigration. By the time of Lincoln, the (White) population differential between the industrial North and the agrarian [farming] South had gone from 50-50 to 30-70 in favor of the North. But the South was still benefiting from their 2/3 of a vote per slave for white voters, and was still winning elections.

In the years following the Revolution, the issue of slavery began to emerge.

Washington and Jefferson are interesting to study on this issue. Both were born into a slave-based economy and culture in Virginia in the 1700s. Both inherited large estates with many slaves. In the case of Washington, he inherited his own slaves when his parents died while he was still a boy. When he married Martha, she came with her own inherited slave population. Together, they had about 200 slaves on a large plantation.

During his life, management of the slaves was a major occupation; in fact it was the primary job of managing any plantation in the South. Whether or not the workers were slaves, the management of hundreds of workers to run a large farm would have been a full-time job in any case. During Washington’s long life there are many anecdotes, some of which contradict others in terms of his attitudes regarding his slaves, and slavery as an institution. There are records showing that he bought slaves when he didn’t have enough to run the farm, and sold slaves he could not get along with. But it is clear that as he grew older, his distaste for slavery grew. In what was a rare and powerful gesture in those days, he freed his slaves in his will.

It is also clear that when he had some financial difficulty later in life, he could have solved it by selling a few of his slaves, but he refused to do so, because he didn’t want to break up families and friendships between them. Slaves had children, and the number of slaves on his plantation grew over time. He had more than he needed in his later years. In those days it would have been an expected action to sell some to balance the books. But Washington, whose careful financial planning was legendary, nevertheless refused to do it.

Like Washington, Jefferson’s attitudes can be seen to change over time. In his earlier years, he wrote a treatise that exposes an opinion very much in agreement with the general view in those days that Blacks were inferior to Whites. Through today’s lens, this view was incredibly Neanderthal for a man who was such a visionary in so many other areas. But in later years, there is evidence in the form of letters to and from friends that his view was considerably different. Whether or not he ever subscribed to the idea that Whites and Blacks were truly equals, he certainly expressed a view in his later years that they should have their freedom and not be slaves. He also expressed regret that this would probably never happen. He felt that the economic and social realities were so great that such a thing could never occur.

Both Washington and Jefferson became very close to some of their Black servants. Washington had a valet that served him throughout the Revolutionary war that was arguably his best friend. They remained close friends throughout his life.

Jefferson’s wife died as a result of childbirth at the age of 34. He never again remarried, but did take one of his slaves as a mistress for the rest of his life and had several children by her.

It was probably natural that men whose minds worked in the lofty philosophical range where they formulated documents stating the rights of men would eventually stub their toe on the issue of slavery and begin to question it, even if they were raised in a pro-slavery environment. The evidence shows that their ideas did in fact alter during their lifetimes. This evolution is a good case study for what must have been happening in the thinking of much of America during those early years.

Unfortunately, this tenuous breeze of sanity was met by an opposite reaction as well. As the anti-slavery awareness came to the surface, it panicked those who didn’t want to see slavery end. With their greater political power, they began to create a more and more evil pro-slavery environment. By the time Jefferson died, some time after George Washington, it was no longer legal to free one’s slaves in a will. The Southern-controlled government gradually began to accelerate pro-slavery legislation. By the time of the Civil War, it had reached a crescendo, as everything from legislation to Supreme Court decisions to executive action more and more enforced slavery.

However, suppressive societies usually self-destruct eventually. The in-your-face actions by slavery advocates in the decade preceding the Civil War created the explosive opinions in others that eventually led to the end of slavery.

As the issue began to heat up it first led to a series of accommodations and compromises. One of the areas of difficulty was that every time another State was admitted to the United States, the question would arise as to whether the territory would be a Free State or a Slave State. This ongoing battle occurred regularly in a nation that was expanding rapidly to the West.

This came to a head when Missouri applied for statehood. An early law had defined a certain part of the West as a non-slavery area. Missouri was partly in and partly out of that defined area. At the time, there were 11 Slave States and 11 Free States. Congress couldn’t resolve the battle, and Missouri twisted in the wind for nearly 10 years. Then Maine applied for statehood as well. Now the situation became tit for tat as Southern politicians opposed the entry of Maine as a Free State in the same way Northern politicians had opposed the entry of Missouri as a Slave State.

A compromise was crafted by famous statesman Henry Clay in 1820. Called the Missouri Compromise, it admitted Missouri as a Slave State and Maine as a Free State. But it went further and established a new line above which all new states would be Free States and the rest would be Slave States.

This agreement reduced the bickering for a while, until the 1840s. Texas entered the Union at that time, and the U.S. went to war with Mexico. After the Mexican war, the country became paralyzed again on this issue of letting in pro- versus anti-slavery states. This brought on another compromise, called the Compromise of 1850. This allowed California to enter as a Free State, but to get support from the South the compromise included egregious [very bad] fugitive slave laws. Southerners didn’t want their slaves running over the border and being free, so this law required Northerners to catch them and send them back. This angered Northern anti-slavery people.

Four years later, the situation worsened when the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska act, which changed the rules so each new state could decide whether it wanted to be a Slave State or a Free State. This law was based on greed, and was pushed through by amoral [having no morals] Democratic Congressman Stephen Douglas of Illinois – the famous member of the later Lincoln-Douglas debates. Douglas was backed by business people who wanted to have the continental railroad go through Illinois and other northern states rather than further south. By removing the restriction on the advancement of slavery, he was able to get support for his bill from the Southern Democrats as well, and it passed.

This created so much bad blood with anti-slavery people it completely realigned the political parties, almost overnight. The Democratic Party, which had been half pro-slavery and half anti-slavery, split. Three other parties, the Whigs, the Know-Nothings (yes there really was a party by that name) and the anti-slavery Democrats, joined together to form the Republican Party. That set the political stage for the years to follow.

Things began to accelerate.

The Dred Scott decision in 1856 was a tragedy that even today causes revulsion in people reading it for the first time. Dred Scott was a slave for a master in Missouri. His master moved, with Scott, to Minnesota, which was a free territory. To make a long story short, Scott sued for his freedom, saying he had been willfully transported to a Free State by his owner, so he could no longer be owned.

The Supreme Court at that time was populated with appointees from pro-Southern administrations, and the Chief Justice was a man who must live in infamy, Roger Taney, a pro-slavery Southern sympathizer. Taney’s court ruled against Dred Scott, on the grounds that he was Black, and therefore was not a real person, so was not entitled to sue in a federal court.

Taney went further. In the same decision, he struck down any laws governing where slavery could or couldn’t be accepted among new states. He basically said slavery is okay anywhere in the U.S. territories.

This decision brought anti-slavery forces to a fever pitch.

Then the fruits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act began to spoil. The people of Kansas, under that law, were entitled to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be a Free State or a Slave State. They formed a convention in Topeka to create a constitution, and agreed they would be a Free State. However, a small group of pro-slavery Kansans met separately in Lecompton, and created a competing constitution making Kansas a Slave State. In spite of the fact that popular support in Kansas was behind the Topeka group, slimy President James Buchanan refused to present that constitution for ratification, and presented the Lecompton one instead. Congress realized it was a sham, and called for a popular vote in Kansas on the Lecompton constitution. It was voted down, but Buchanan still brought it back for ratification again. Congress wouldn’t go along with it, and Kansas remained a territory for the time being.

In the late 1850s, border wars broke out in Kansas between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Going back and forth into Missouri and Kansas, these wars were called the Bleeding Kansas wars, and in reality presaged the battles of the Civil War.

In 1856, the Republican Party ran their first candidate for the Presidency, famous Western explorer and California Governor John C. Fremont. Fremont was born and raised in Charleston, S.C., but he was a rabid abolitionist [anti-slavery person, from the idea they wanted to “abolish” slavery]. He lost the race, but carried the anti-slavery debate to the national, presidential level.

Europe had universally condemned the slave trade in the early 1800s. Britain especially was enforcing this, and the British Navy was policing international waters for slave traders. Nonetheless, enmity in Britain and in France for the new United States was causing these countries to sympathize with the South. At the beginning of the war, there was great expectation in the South that they might get assistance or even military support from France or Britain.

In the early part of the war, Lincoln didn’t press the slavery issue, because much of his support came from groups that were ambivalent about the issue or even pro-slavery. There were many who fought for the North for no other reason than to save the Union. He began to perceive, though, that there was a growing likelihood of intervention by Britain or France. On New Years Day in 1863, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation – the document that officially declared that the war was about slavery. This not only dropped the other shoe on the issue that would have eventually come up one way or the other – it also ended any likelihood of European intervention on behalf of the South. They couldn’t politically enter the war on the side of a slave government in a war that was to end slavery.

The Emancipation Proclamation said, in part, “…all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…

Lincoln’s proclamation cleverly applied to the States that were “in rebellion” – thereby not applying it to those States that were not “in rebellion”. This was undoubtedly to avoid loss of support from those areas where there was slave activity that were in support of the Union, such as the State of Kentucky, a Slave State that nevertheless supported the Union against the Confederacy, or Delaware, where despite the fact that slavery wasn’t in wide use, it was not in fact against state law. It also excepted those parts of the South that had already fallen to the Union, where he needed the support of the people to avoid difficulty for his soldiers as they occupied the area.

But within a short time afterward Lincoln and Congress constructed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, stating “"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The amendment had to be passed by the individual states. This finally happened, in December of the same year. Lincoln was gone, but deals were cut with the various States by his successor, President Andrew Johnson, to get their approval of the amendment. The era of slavery in the United States of America was over – at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, including that of Lincoln himself, murdered eight months before the amendment was finally ratified.

Making A Nation From A Collection Of States
Federalism is defined in The Encarta Dictionary as “a political system in which several states or regions defer certain powers, for example, in foreign affairs, to a central government while retaining a limited measure of self-government”. The most active group of people who worked to build the collection of states into a permanent united whole following the Revolutionary War of 1776-1781 was the Federalists. This group pushed forward the development of the Constitution and the uniting of the country under one central government. One sees in this period not only the origin of the United States of America as a single country, but some of the underlying pressures that boiled over 80 years later to cause the Civil War.

In the few years following the Revolutionary War, in which the original thirteen states banded together to defeat Britain as the “United States of America”, there was much concern as to whether this arrangement should be continued, or whether the states should go their own ways, now that freedom was won.

This was a period of time during which there was very little formal agreement to define how the states would work together as a single government. There was a document called the “Articles Of Confederation” that was hastily cobbled together at the time of the revolution, but it was insufficient to form a base for the young nation. The powers it granted to the federal government were very limited, and did not include any ability to raise money except by asking the individual states to donate some. Even armies were borrowed from the state militias.

There was a period of unrest after the war, and there were some riots and other difficulties during those early years. The most important was called “Shays’ Rebellion”. It was led by a Revolutionary War veteran named Daniel Shays. He was able to band together a group of followers who complained about the economic depression that followed the war, and the ruthless debtors’ prisons that awaited men who fell upon hard times.

Shay and his followers complained that they were victims of a hard economy brought on the by the government. The young nation was broke following the war. It had almost no income base at all. The economy was in very bad shape. The toothless federal government was in debt for the cost of the war. There was a significant sentiment for separation of the states into the individual entities that had existed before the war, and very little holding them together.

Shays’ Rebellion was put down. Many expected harsh treatment for the rebels from the young government, but in a moment of lucidity (clear thinking) the government was very merciful in handling the men, eventually pardoning them for their actions. One of the influences in this was Thomas Jefferson, who was in France at the time. He wrote to the U.S., counseling leniency. He said that unrest among these men, who were under great economic pressure, should not persuade those in charge to become vicious despots like the European monarchs we were trying to leave behind. Government by and for all the people was best, he said. “The mass of mankind under that, enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too; the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. [I prefer a dangerous freedom to a contented slavery.] Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing…”

By treating the problem in this way, and by other similar actions, the federal government avoided a danger that could have been its undoing in those early days – the perception that it was going to “throw its weight around” and oppress the very people who had so recently fought for their freedom from another oppressor.

Still, the anti-federalists believed that big government would make for big graft and big corruption and big suppression of the individual.

Those who wanted to perpetuate the central government idea rather than devolving the United States into a group of separate countries pushed for the adoption of a new constitution that would properly define the role of federal government and its place vis-à-vis state government. In Philadelphia in 1787 the historic Constitutional Convention took place, and the United States Constitution was born. The convention was attended by most of the luminaries (eminent persons) of the time.

Because they believed that blow-by-blow press coverage of the proceedings would degrade the delegates’ ability to freely debate, consider and compromise, they kicked the press out. The Constitutional Convention was done in a press blackout.

The process of drafting the document was completed in September of 1787, and the issue of the constitution was put up for vote. The people who drafted the document decided to stack the deck, because there was a lot of opposition at the time to an all-powerful “central government” that had the power to trump state government. So they set up some odd rules for the voting that heavily favored the success of the vote, which took place over a long period of time in various states. The idea that this country should be a “union” was anything but a slam dunk in the eyes of the public. The most divisive issue was the idea of a huge central government. This worried many people who thought such a government might drown out the personalities of individual states and create a central superpower against which the individual citizen could never stand up.

A group that pushed hard for the acceptance of The Constitution called themselves The Federalists. They became a leading political party in the early years of the U.S. Three Federalists wrote a series of more than 80 papers on why the U.S. should be one country, not a collection of different countries. These essays were called The Federalist Papers. Most of these papers were written by Alexander Hamilton, who later became the first Secretary of the Treasury. (That’s Hamilton’s picture on your ten-dollar bill.) Some were written by James Madison, who is credited with being the primary drafter of the Constitution itself, and who subsequently became the fourth President of the United States. Others of these essays were written by John Jay, who became the first Justice of the Supreme Court.

These papers were such a powerful PR tool in support of the Constitution they are still studied today in a wide variety of venues. They have been quoted in Supreme Court decisions as a source of data for the real intentions behind those who framed the constitution. They are also used as a case study for PR and its ability to sway the masses.

In the eighth of these essays, written by Hamilton, the possibility of war between the states is addressed. In it, he points out that because Europe is made up of a number of small countries instead of one big one, each of these countries must maintain a standing army on its borders to avoid being overrun by its neighbors. The cost of maintaining such an army is a public burden, and the reason for its existence, mistrust of neighboring states and occasional war with them, is an even greater burden. If we were all one country, the cost and pain of ongoing wars between the various states would be removed, he said.

In other papers, a major theme was the way in which modern industry and commerce would benefit from a united nation. This of course proved to be true, as it was Northern industry that controlled and benefited from the Union, and it was Southern farmers and slaveholders that felt they did not benefit.

A popular current debate is the question of whether the Constitution, and the men who framed it, were pro- or anti-slavery. This argument has gone from one extreme to the other. There have been those who claimed that the men who wrote the Constitution intended it to result in the end of slavery. On the other hand, there are those even today who say that the original constitution is bogus and should be thrown out because it was written by a bunch of slaveholders.

A historical perspective is necessary to the understanding of this issue and the way it was addressed in the original Constitution.

The United States Constitution is remarkably similar to an earlier document that brought civilization to England, the Magna Carta, executed in the year 1215. This document was forced by a group of nobles on despotic King John (the same man earlier known as the evil “Prince John” in the Robin Hood stories). The Latin term Magna Carta means “big charter”. In the England where the Magna Carta was written and signed, it was the first major step toward anything other than a king-of-the-mountain philosophy of government. It brought trial by jury, the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, and it stated the government (the King in that case) could not take away lands or titles from nobles unless they were given a fair trial. It was the end of the “Off with his head!” theory of monarchy in England. The rest of Europe wallowed in mafia-style politics for the next several hundred years, and swam in blood while England became more and more stable and powerful as a result of this great document. But in the view of a purist, the Magna Carta was fatally flawed. It only offered its protection to nobles. Only Lords and Earls and such blue bloods were promised its protection. Nevertheless, it represented the first experiment in civilized government of any kind, and at the time it was signed by King John in the 1200s it was so radical it took about 100 years to get it completely accepted by the kings, who continued for some time to act the way they always had.

Without the Magna Carta, Western democratic government wouldn’t have gotten its start for quite a while longer. Other than England, there wasn’t another culture in sight that was a good candidate for putting in civilization and sanity as opposed to rule by might in the year 1200.

As the years went by, the guarantees of the Magna Carta that had so transformed England were offered to a wider and wider group of people. Today these basic rights, or modern versions of them, are more or less universal in England.

One of the reasons the American Revolution occurred was because America was populated at that time by Englishmen, who were used to the rights of Englishmen, but weren’t being afforded these rights as “colonists” in the British Empire.

The Continental Congress was in a comparable situation regarding the slavery issue as the framers of the Magna Carta were regarding the “common man”. Slavery was well established at the time of the Revolutionary War. About half of all Americans lived in “slave states” at that time. The best established and most prosperous of the original colonies was Virginia, a slave state. Of the Presidents that were elected from the time of the revolution until Abraham Lincoln, only two were not from slave states. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and other early presidents were slaveholders.

There were already pressures, especially from the Quakers, to abolish slavery at that time. But these pressures were still a voice in the wilderness, and couldn’t have been institutionalized in that environment.

What was so generally ignored as an issue in 1787 gradually emerged into public consciousness by the Civil War in 1861 and became law with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation during that war, and the subsequent passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution.

(Federal) Taxes, of course, were not yet an issue, so neither slavery nor taxes were much in evidence in the original arguments regarding federalization. Building a strong country that was at peace with itself and providing a common market and mutual support was the original purpose of federalization.

It was the Federalist Party that pushed through the Constitution and the establishment of a strong central government. Federalists dominated the political scene from the subsequent election of George Washington through until the early 1800s. Then they disappeared from the scene.

Ironically, they committed political suicide by later coming out in favor of policies that were starkly opposite the sentiment that had made the United States into a nation. Alexander Hamilton, a strong-willed individual, had helped to lead us to federalism. But he never really trusted the common man, and in the end, he and the party he led began more and more to push in the direction of the country being run by a wealthy elite few. This lost him the support of many, including former Federalist Thomas Jefferson, who was finally elected as the third president on a Republican-Democratic ticket – the first party that successfully opposed the Federalists for the presidential office. Madison – another former Federalist, succeeded Jefferson on the same Republican-Democratic ticket. This party is widely considered to have been the forbearer of the current Democratic party.

The fact that the union was created in those days, and that it survived the Civil War, made the strongest country on earth, and the greatest voice for freedom in the world. The freedoms promised in the original Constitution have continued to evolve and are now universal to people of all colors. But it is necessary to continue to watch out for corruption of that great force into the kind of despotic power that was feared by so many during those early years.

I wonder whether any of the Federalists would not have changed the color of his coat in a trice (instantly) if he had been shown in a crystal ball the oppressive income tax system that has recently evolved in America. It extorts a high percentage of all the production in the country and has the power to imprison anyone who refuses to pay. The taxes that were the object of the “Boston Tea Party” that started the Revolutionary War, and the taxes the Southern States objected to that started the Civil War, were peanuts compared to today’s taxes. It is especially suppressive to the poor, because although they supposedly “don’t pay” taxes, they nevertheless must buy products that have been marked up to include the taxes paid by everyone in the production and distribution of the product. It has been estimated that half the cost of a loaf of bread is taxes paid by the entities that produced and distributed the bread. Even as recently as the 1950s, a normal income in America was sufficient to support a family with a mother at home with the children. Now to maintain a good standard of living, the husband and the wife must both work, and the children are being raised by the school system instead.

Already there are those who object to the tax system and propose alternatives. (See http://www.cats.org/) But like the Quakers who cried for the freedom of the Black man in the 1700s, tax reformers are still a voice in the wilderness. The huge federal income tax wasn’t even legal until the early 1900s, and it wasn’t much of a tax until World War II. The federal tax collection ability was popularized by its use to suppress criminals such as Al Capone who were not susceptible to successful prosecution under local laws in the areas where they “owned” the judges. By arresting them for breaking a federal law (income tax evasion) they could be arrested and tried in a federal court that was not part of the corrupted local system. But even though the PR was in on suppressing the original gangsters with this legal maneuver, was it really wise for the U.S. to pull out its superpower trump card and play it on its own citizens, rather than letting local justice correct itself, or helping to break the gangsters in some other way? And was it right to exact a tax that would send men straight to prison for evading it? In the case of other kinds of taxes, there is no such power. Non-payment of property tax can eventually cost a man his property, but not his freedom. Refusal to pay a sales tax simply results in not being able to buy the goods. But no other type of tax will send a man off to prison. Regardless of the fact that it brought down mobsters like Al Capone, this law is now available for use on anyone, and it is tied to a tax code nobody understands. It is a deadly law, and not easy to follow. That is a formula that could cost the government its support in the long run.

It was a good thing that the Civil War came along and forced the proper settlement of the slavery issue. But it is also true that the South had grievance with the taxes they had no choice but to pay. These people were not far removed from the ones that had fought the British for the same reason.

No government can subsist on force. Many have tried, and one by one they have all failed. Only a country where the power comes from the agreement of the people can survive. As the federal government resorts to force with its own people, it hurts only itself. In many cases in recent years, it has “trumped” local and state rule in various areas, usually in the name of good causes, but often with bad results. As an example, in a country where everyone is supposed to be innocent till proven guilty, a man’s possessions, including his cars, his home, and his bank account, can be confiscated without recourse if it is suspected that he has been involved in racketeering or dealing drugs, and his own assets are not available to him for his own defense. Done in the name of the “War On Drugs”, this draconian measure is a small step toward tyranny. It is always easy to popularize an evil law by using it first on an evil person. But it is up to us to protect the precious liberties that have been bought at so dear a price by so many over the centuries. While some men complain that the original founding fathers weren’t careful enough of our liberties and rights, we must realize they created the freest environment in the world. It is good to improve on a good thing. But it isn’t wise to attack or attempt to reduce the reverence and respect people do and should have for the country or for its founding fathers. They did a bang-up job in the environment they had. Are we doing as well with ours?

BUCHANAN

The administration of President James Buchanan immediately preceded that of Abraham Lincoln. The situation leading to the Civil War worsened greatly during his presidency.

Buchanan is characterized in the encyclopedia as a good statesman who was victimized by adverse circumstances in his unsuccessful attempt to bring peace between the South and North prior to the Lincoln administration. The actual statistics of his political career suggest otherwise. He was embroiled in one scandal after another, repeatedly accused by others at the time, including people in his own party, of bad faith and back-room deals.

Buchanan is described in the history books as a “life-long bachelor”, which was a polite euphemism for his gay lifestyle. The feminine details of the White House were handled by a niece. However, early in his life, Buchanan was engaged to be married. This fact is often used to argue that he was not always, or not entirely, homosexual. However, the young woman did break off the relationship very suddenly and with great acrimony. Although her exact reason is not clear, the intimation was that she caught him, or others caught him and reported to her that he was engaged in actions which she considered despicable. She promptly fell ill and died months later. Her still-outraged family refused to allow Buchanan to attend the funeral.

Buchanan then took up a relationship with Alabama Senator William Rufus DeVane King. The two of them lived together and were inseparable until the death of King in 1853. King was referred to as “Miss Nancy” or “Buchanan’s wife” by people in Washington. After King’s death, Buchanan wrote a friend that “I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone…” His claims to have been opposed to slavery appeared to be hypocritical in view of his close relationship with King, a slave owner who supported the South and advocated secession.

By the presidential election of 1854, the Democratic Party, which had ruled Washington for a long time, had become split on the issue of slavery. Most of the members of the party had gone one way or the other on the divisive Kansas-Nebraska act, which opened new parts of the unsettled American West to slavery. Buchanan, a Democrat, had been fortunate enough to be out of the country during that debate, and was not associated with either side. He enjoyed the full support of his home state Pennsylvania, which was the second most populous state in the Union at the time, and was identified as a “Northern” state. His lack of action on the Kansas-Nebraska act made him acceptable to Southern Democrats, so he was nominated for and elected to the presidency, beating John C. Fremont, an anti-slavery man, and the first Republican candidate for that office.

Buchanan’s reputation for double-speak is clearly supported by his actions regarding the slavery issue during his reign as president. Never missing the opportunity to state publicly that slavery was immoral, he persistently tried to maintain support amongst the anti-slavery camp. But his actions contrasted with his words as he consistently supported slavery and the slave states. His excuse was that these “compromises” were to avoid war and confrontation between the two sides. But his actions never failed to outrage Northern abolitionists and embolden the Southern secessionists .

The following years were marked by duplicity and consistent concession to the South, excused by a supposed interest in avoiding war. His history in politics, however, shows that in other situations he was not so squeamish about the potential for military conflict. He was a hawk in the situation leading to the Mexican-American war, and one of his biggest scandals was the exposure of a document called the Ostend Manifesto which he had negotiated with foreign powers, stating his intention to take Cuba from Spain by force if they refused to sell the island to the U.S. for a certain price. This move was blocked by Republicans because Cuba would have been annexed as a slave territory, since the institution of slavery was already in force there.

When Kansas was attempting to become a state, it was divided into two camps, the pro-slavery group and the anti-slavery group. The anti-slavery group met in Topeka to propose a state constitution that would outlaw slavery. The pro-slavery group met in Lecompton. In spite of the fact that the popular majority in Kansas supported the Topeka group, Buchanan supported the Lecompton group. He pressed for the acceptance of the Lecompton constitution even after a public vote in Kansas went against it. Supporters in Congress called for another public vote on the matter in Kansas, and once again the Lecompton constitution was turned down, so Kansas remained a territory instead of a state for a while longer.

In his last annual message to Congress, December 3, 1860, the president blamed the abolitionists and the North's unrelenting agitation against the South for the critical condition of the nation. He contended that the South asked only to be let alone to manage its own affairs. Secession, he insisted, was not a remedy. However, the condition of the country had long since passed the point where it would be settled peacefully.

Within a short time after Lincoln took office, he seized upon a Confederate attack on the United States Army Fort Sumter in South Carolina as an act of aggression and the Civil War began. However, by the time Buchanan left office, many other American forts, supply depots and naval yards had already been taken over in the South by secessionists – in fact there had already been a previous shooting confrontation at Fort Sumter. But Buchanan did nothing, allowing the situation to worsen to a boiling point. Many Army personnel had already joined the secessionists, and Buchanan’s cabinet members were resigning like rats leaving a sinking ship.

When Buchanan handed the reins to Lincoln, he said in the White House that, “If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this country.”

ANTI-SLAVERY: THE BIRTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

The Republican Party was born in the middle 1800s, and its primary platform was anti-slavery. The first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860. But the first Republican Presidential candidacy was one presidential campaign earlier -- in 1856. Explorer John C. Fremont, the first Governor of California, was nominated for the presidency on the Republican ticket that year, and lost the election.

Fremont was a talented man, whose contributions to our culture were numerous. As a boy, he grew up in the Deep South, and in high school had a Black girlfriend, which was considered an outrage in that time and place. She was not a slave. She and her family had migrated from the Caribbean, and were not “owned”.

Fremont was a quick student and an adventurous man. He became an explorer with the U.S. Army, and helped map the West as a surveyor. He was part of the party of surveyors who located the mouth of the Mississippi River, and he was largely responsible for the first surveys of much of the West. He consorted with men like the famous guide Kit Carson.

In the 1840s he and his soldiers were in California on a surveying mission, and they heard that the U.S. had gone to war with Mexico (in the Mexican-American War – 1846-1848). At that time, California was owned by Mexico.

This was before there was any very fast form of communication in that part of the world. The telegraph already existed, but would not come to California for another 15 years. It took many months to get from the East Coast to California, either by land or by sea. Soldiers in the field could wait months for orders. Fremont and his men decided that although they were in California as surveyors, if the country was at war with Mexico, they should fight. Although California was Mexican, there was very little Mexican Army presence there. So Fremont and his small band of men began attacking and taking all the little forts up and down the territory, picking up additional support from Americans as they went. The climax battle was with a few hundred soldiers on each side, in the Cahuenga Pass in the middle of what is now the Los Angeles area, near the famous Universal Studios and Universal City. When the battle was won, Fremont immediately announced to the Mexicans who lived in the area that he would not take away their land and property, but that they were now Americans, and California was now part of the United States, not Mexico. This was a complete surprise to the Mexican “Dons” who lived in the area, who thought their property would be taken away and given to Americans. This humane treatment led to a very peaceful transfer of power. Fremont, coordinating with an American Navy Admiral who was in the area named Stockton, made himself the first Governor of California. All of this occurred without any knowledge or participation by the government in the East. When an expedition of soldiers under Colonel John Kearney arrived in California to fight the Mexicans, they were shocked to find that the territory had already been taken and the war was over.

Fremont’s bid to become President on the Republican Anti-Slavery ticket was unsuccessful, but four years later, Abraham Lincoln did win the presidency, and put Fremont in charge of the state of Missouri, which was a frontier state at the time. Fremont immediately pronounced Missouri a “Free State” and started arresting people who owned slaves and wouldn’t give them up. At the time, Lincoln was still trying to avoid an all-out war, and Fremont’s actions were very abrasive to the Southern faction in congress. So Lincoln removed him from his position and put someone else in charge. However, within weeks, Lincoln had a war on his hands, and the issue of slavery in the U.S. was settled on the battlefield over the next five years.

JOHN BROWN AT HARPER'S FERRY

Prior to the advent of the Civil War, there were a number of flash points that presaged the eventual collision of cultures. One of these was the John Brown incident at Harper's Ferry.

John Brown was by all accounts a loser. He was a financial failure again and again. He had a stormy home life. He considered himself to be a minister, but he never really presided over a real congregation for any period of time.

At one point he went "out West" with a couple of his boys, and they set up housekeeping in Kansas, across the border from Missouri. At that time, Kansas was slated to become a "free" state (no slavery) and Missouri was to become a "slave state". Brown is one of those interesting characters in history that stood for the right thing in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. It's hard to fault him for being an abolitionist (in favor of abolishing slavery) and his dedication to this principle seems to have been ordained by God, at least in his mind. But his actions were far less sane than that hallowed cause. He started a group of militant Kansan anti-slavery people that called themselves the Jayhawkers, and they raided across the border into small towns in Missouri, shooting and killing, in the name of abolition. Needless to say, the Missourians that were raided were less than enthusiastic about this terrorist activity, and it started a little mini-war on the border between Kansas and Missouri.

Eventually Brown migrated back to the East to the Massachusetts area. In that part of the U.S., which was heavily abolitionist by this time, he was something of a hero.

Then he hatched a hare-brained plan: Take over the federal weapons storage facility at Harper's Ferry, take all the guns and ammunition, and distribute them to Negroes in the South, who so armed would rise up and overcome their masters. Poorly conceived and planned, the takeover of the Harper's Ferry armory was achieved, but within a very short time turned into a siege. John Brown and his followers were bottled up by federal troops that had the place surrounded. Eventually he was captured, and hung a few days later.

The insanity of Brown's method is obvious in retrospect. But at the time, he was a martyr -- a folk hero for the cause of abolition. It's still hard to tell whether he did the cause of abolition more good than harm. But there is no question he upped the militant frenzy for Northern abolitionists, and helped move the nation toward war.