The Platform of the South

[Hawk1981]

There was a perception in the 1840s and 1850s that a disproportionate and corrupt influence over the federal government was held by slave owners, and their supporters in the 'free states'. Antislavery campaigners complained bitterly about this "Slave Power" or "Slaveocracy" that used the federal government to expand and protect slavery in the United States. This perception was built on a series of events following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War.

The annexation of Texas as a slave state and the acquisition of new territories from Mexico led to renewed debate about whether or not slavery would be allowed to move into the new western territories. A series of resolutions passed by the Virginia legislature in 1847 came to embody a doctrine called the "Platform of the South." Stating that slavery followed the United States flag, automatically, wherever it was planted. Countering an argument raised in Congress that slavery should not be extended to the new territories, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina proposed a theory that the territories were held in partnership by all of the states and that every partner had an equal right to protection of his property on his territory. Calhoun further maintained that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which marked the southern border of Missouri along latitude 36.30, as a line to the Pacific where slavery was allowed south of the line, but not north, was unconstitutional.

Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina

 

[Hawk1981]

The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act

The rapid increase of population in California led to a petition for admission as a state. The population of California was overwhelmingly antislavery and even though part of the state extended below the Missouri Compromise line, petitioned to be admitted as a 'free state'. Calhoun and other southern leaders were opposed to the admission of California as a free state fearing that it would tilt the balance of power in Congress toward antislavery. The balance of slave and free states had been maintained since the Missouri Compromise where a state from each category was admitted to the union together to keep the balance intact.

A series of compromises was worked out by Senators Henry Clay of Kentucky and Stephen Douglas of Illinois that made concessions to the south in return for admission of California as a free state. The most important concession was the adoption of a harsh new Fugitive Slave Law. Under the new law, law-enforcement officials everywhere were required to arrest people of being a runaway slave on as little as a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. Suspected slaves had no rights to trial and could not defend themselves in court. Officials who detained runaways were rewarded under the law, while officials who did not arrest runaways and people who aided them were subject to heavy fines. Many free blacks were kidnapped and taken into slavery as a result.

Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky

Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois

 

[Hawk1981]

Attempts to Acquire Additional Territory for Slave States

Several attempts were made in the 1850s to acquire new territories in the Caribbean and from Mexico that would be reserved as slave territory. The Gadsden Purchase of land from Mexico that became part of southern Arizona and New Mexico was designed to guarantee a southern transcontinental railroad route and automatically allowed slavery as part of the deal. Additional purchases of Mexico's northwest provinces was proposed but failed to gain enough support in Congress.

The US minister in London, and future President, James Buchanan negotiated and intrigued furiously to have Cuba purchased and annexed. Part of an effort to create an all-American, all-slave Caribbean which included 'filibuster' expeditions in Nicaragua and Honduras. These efforts were also stymied by lack of support in Congress.

President James Buchanan

 

[Hawk1981]

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

This law was drafted by Senator Douglas and President Franklin Pierce as a way to open new territories to settlement and provide a path for a transcontinental railroad. The law included a clause for "Popular Sovereignty" where actual residents of the territories would decide whether or not to allow slavery. This clause effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise and, in theory, allowed for the possibility of slavery to exist anywhere in the territories. The act unexpectedly resulted in open warfare between pro-slavery and antislavery forces along the Kansas frontier.

President Franklin Pierce

 

[Hawk1981]

The Dred Scott Decision

Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom and the freedom of his family on the grounds that they had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin for several years where slavery was illegal. Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote the decision for the US Supreme Court against Scott stating that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could bring a case to federal court because they could not be US citizens. Moreover, Scott's residency in free territory could not bring about his emancipation because it would "improperly deprive Scott's owner of his legal property."

Taney and President Buchanan hoped to settle issues related to slavery and Congressional authority with this decision. It also gave hope to the South that the constitutional history of the country could be rewritten in a way that would make slavery safe forever. Southern militants were given hope that abolitionism could be made illegal and that slavery would be opened not only to new US territories but also outside the current US borders. Their hopes even included reopening and relegalizing the slave trade.

Chief Justice Roger Taney

 

[Pogo]

Whoa, this is a lot. Good to see the interest in history.
Can't tarry right now but just to quickly note, Slave Power was set up by the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise at the nation's inception, not sometime later in the next (19th) century. More later when I can catch up.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Whoa, this is a lot. Good to see the interest in history.
Can't tarry right now but just to quickly note, Slave Power was set up by the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise at the nation's inception, not sometime later in the next (19th) century. More later when I can catch up.

It is certainly true that the 3/5 Compromise in the original Constitution weighed the scales in favor of slaveholders. Many early religious abolitionists in the 1830s and 1840s saw the U.S. Constitution as “a slaveholders’ Constitution” ... and wanted nothing to do with it.

But when the Constitution was written even many Southern planters like Jefferson and Washington imagined that slavery would fade away, that it was just a “peculiar institution” that would eventually die out. So slavery was forbidden in the new territories that included what was to become Missouri and Kansas, Washington in his will freed his own slaves, and in Northern states slavery did gradually disappear.

But the migration of slavery to the Deep South, and the development of “King Cotton” based on slave labor, turned the peculiar institution into a “Slave Power” determined to remake American civilization in its own image, even as the North and West gradually themselves changed and became more hostile to slavery (but often just as hostile to black equality). “Free labor, free land, and free men” in the West in alliance with Northern industry and commerce (and ultimately political abolitionism) on one side found itself in what seemed like an “irrepressible conflict” with a pugnacious slave oligarchy used to outsized influence in the nation on the other: The Republican Party Program vs. the “Platform of the South” — more or less. But as you say, there is a lot to consider, and history can never be categorized as just “this vs. that.”

 

[Pogo]

Whoa, this is a lot. Good to see the interest in history.
Can't tarry right now but just to quickly note, Slave Power was set up by the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise at the nation's inception, not sometime later in the next (19th) century. More later when I can catch up.

It is certainly true that the 3/5 Compromise in the original Constitution weighed the scales in favor of slaveholders. Many early religious abolitionists in the 1830s and 1840s saw the U.S. Constitution as “a slaveholders’ Constitution” ... and wanted nothing to do with it.

But when the Constitution was written even many Southern planters like Jefferson and Washington imagined that slavery would fade away, that it was just a “peculiar institution” that would eventually die out. So slavery was forbidden in the new territories that included what was to become Missouri and Kansas, Washington in his will freed his own slaves, and in Northern states slavery did gradually disappear.

But the migration of slavery to the Deep South, and the development of “King Cotton” based on slave labor, turned the peculiar institution into a “Slave Power” determined to remake American civilization in its own image, even as the North and West gradually themselves changed and became more hostile to slavery (but often just as hostile to black equality). “Free labor, free land, and free men” in the West in alliance with Northern industry and commerce (and ultimately political abolitionism) on one side found itself in what seemed like an “irrepressible conflict” with a pugnacious slave oligarchy used to outsized influence in the nation on the other: The Republican Party Program vs. the “Platform of the South” — more or less. But as you say, there is a lot to consider, and history can never be categorized as just “this vs. that.”

The cotton gin hadn't yet been invented in the 18th century and when it was it certainly caused a boom in slavery particularly in that area misnomered as the "Mississippi Delta" (the triangle formed in northwest Mississippi by the Yazoo River, Mississippi River and Tennessee state line). And that inflated Slave Power or at least the role of it. But I count the beginning of Slave Power, regardless what anyone expected at the time, from the disproportionate power allotted to the slave states, even then shifted to the south while northern and (mid)western states where abolishing, on account directly of that disproportionate power.

Slaveholders from slave states after all made up four of the first five Presidents and eight of the first nine administrations, all of them specifically from Virginia, the state with the largest electoral vote pool, which it enjoyed as a direct result of that Three-Fifths Compromise. We learn in our youth schooling about our first several Presidents but they never really explained why they were over and over from Virginia. I think the answer is significant.

Your point that the north remained hostile to black equality is well taken. That has to do with racism rather than slavery, which of course was a social concept relentlessly hammered for centuries by slave traders to justify their human trafficking. Such attitudes got deeply entrenched. I seem to remember in the election of 1860 one of the states also had a ballot referendum on the question of whether black people should be allowed to vote; the vote came back as a decisive "No", and the name of the state was New York.

 

[whitehall]

Today we blame everything on the President but back then Lincoln received high praise from the media when the Union fell apart under his watch.

 

[Pogo]

Today we blame everything on the President but back then Lincoln received high praise from the media when the Union fell apart under his watch.

Oh? And when was that?