Our author Levi Coffin remembers, “Perhaps no case” regarding “fugitive slaves attracted more attention and aroused deeper interest and sympathy than the case of Margaret Garner, the slave mother, who killed her child rather than see it taken back to slavery.” This is a troubling story. I do not wish […]
General Grant remembers: “The North had become very much discouraged. Many strong Union men believed that the war must prove a failure. The elections of 1862 had gone against the party which was for the prosecution of the war to save the Union if it took the last man and the last dollar. Voluntary enlistments had ceased through the greater part of the North, and the draft had been adopted to fill up the ranks. It was my judgment at the time that to make a backward movement from Vicksburg to Memphis, would be interpreted, by many of those yet full of hope for preservation of the Union, as a defeat, and that the draft would be resisted, desertions ensue, and the power to capture and punish deserters lost. There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory.” […]
How did Henry Box Brown escape from slavery? Simple, in 1849 he “had himself boxed up and forwarded to Philadelphia direct by express.” The box was “made to fit him most comfortably,” it was “two feet eight inches deep, two feet wide, and three feet long.” With him were “one bladder of water and a few small biscuits,” with but one hole for breathing.
After he “entered his box, it was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops and was addressed” by a friend to William Johnson in Philadelphia marked, “This side up with care.” The box was transported right side up, but for many miles it was transported upside down, which “had him on his head for miles.” This box went from steamboat to wagon to railroad, the delivery time was a little more than a day. […]
Had the law surrounding this issue had not continued to evolve, this indeed would be a troubling precedent. But the issue did evolve, and in 1969 the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren decided that Congress could not deny any duly elected Representative their seat in Congress unless they did not meet the qualifications for office listed in the Constitution, that they be at least twenty-years-old, have been a citizen for seven years, and live in the district they represent. The House of Representatives had attempted to refuse to seat Adam Clayton Powell, a controversial black congressman who was embroiled in credible financial scandals. There was only one justice who dissented on technical grounds. […]
Webster knew that “the question of paramount importance in our affairs is likely to be, for some time to come, the Preservation of the Union, or its Dissolution; and now power can decide this question, but that of the People themselves.”
South Carolina not only set bad precedent, but she had also enacted a state law that stated that state militia could resist federal forces sent in to enforce the laws passed by Congress under the Constitution. Thus, you could argue that the Civil War did not start in 1864, that it really started in the 1830’s. […]
After spiriting so many slaves to freedom, a massive bounty of $40,000 was placed on Harriet Tubman’s head, which is equivalent to many hundreds of thousands in today’s money, enough to buy hundreds of slaves. If she had been caught, she likely would have been lashed with a hundred lashes bleeding out, she likely would have died from the punishment. She was bold, she would go to the market pretending to be an old woman, once she brushed past one of her former masters!
Before the Civil War, she made nineteen trips to Maryland to rescue more enslaved relatives, and slaves on other plantations. In this account she remembers she rescued three hundred souls from slavery, other accounts say less than a hundred. […]
The slave catchers were searching for her. “In the evening, she discovered pursuers nearing the house, and with desperate courage, she determined to cross the river, or perish in the attempt. Clasping her child in her arms, she darted out the back door and ran toward the river, followed by her pursuers, who had just dismounted from their horses when they caught sight of her.”
“No fear or thought of personal danger entered Eliza’s mind, for she felt that she had rather be drowned than to be captured and separated from her child. Clasping her babe to her bosom with her left arm, she sprang on to the first cake of ice, then from that to another and another. Sometimes the cake she was on would sink beneath her weight, then she would slide her child onto the next cake, pull herself on with her hands, and so continue her hazardous journey. She became wet to the waist with ice water and her hands were numbed with cold, but as she made her way from one cake to ice to another, she felt that surely the Lord was preserving and upholding her, and that nothing could harm her.” […]
Lyndon wrote in the school paper: “What you accomplish in life depends almost completely upon what you make yourself do.” “Perfect concentration and a great desire will bring a person success in any field of work he chooses. The very first thing one should do is to train the mind to concentrate upon the essentials and discard the frivolous and unimportant.” […]
In her 1861 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs recounts her experiences, spreading the awful truth about slavery. “I can testify,” she writes, “from my own experiences and observations, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.” […]
Rehnquist notes that during the campaign, Hayes released a statement “recognizing the need for Southerners to control their own affairs but calling for respect for the constitutional rights of all citizens,” a promise made by Southerners that they never intended to keep. Hayes tried waving the bloody shirt during the campaign, but not only was Tilden a New York Democrat, he was over the mandatory draft age, as he was in his mid-forties during the Civil War. Everyone expected that the vote would be close in this Presidential election. […]
Copyright 2017
