How the Nineteenth Century Shaped Who We Are, Part Five, The Civil War (part two)

 The last time a civil war was fought in North America was the American Revolution. It was truly a civil war, with citizens rebelling against their government, both local and remote. The population was divided, with approximately one third against separation from Britain. Loyalists, as they were called, either served in Loyalist regiments and actively fought against the Continental forces, or they fled to Canada, sometimes returning after a century or more.

This civil war was different, however. Although the populations of the northern and southern states were hardly unified in their views on slavery and secession the war drew lines between regions, something that didn’t happen in the American Revolution.

The idea of secession had surged a couple of times previously. Near the end of the War of 1812 The Hartford Convention (December 1814-January 1815) met to air grievances about the conduct of the war. They also addressed the process for the admission of new states, but the main concern was the 1807 Embargo and the effect it had on the New England economy. Some ports such as Salem, Massachusetts never recovered fully. Secession was discussed but in the end didn’t go beyond discussion. The fact that it came up and was debated is in itself significant, however.

The second time secession came up in a big way was the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33. Tariffs on imported goods were imposed in 1828 and 1832. The state of South Carolina declared that the tariffs were null (ie not in effect) within their state. Secession was threatened under the leadership of John C. Calhoun. Eventually the federal government backed down and reduced the tariffs and the crisis was over. But, the specter of secession had been raised again.

This goes back to Shelby Foote’s comment about how the states saw themselves within the Union, as constituent parts. They still do, but there is a sense of unity that didn’t exist before the war.

The immediate cause for secession was the election of 1860. It is impossible to rehearse the political history of the country in the decades leading up to it. Suffice it to say that slavery was the elephant in the room in every political debate during that period. It dominated the admission of new states, the creation of territories, and the management of the economy. The compromises of 1820 and 1850 lowered the temperature for awhile but only added fuel to the fire in the long term. The issue of slavery and the admission of free vs. slave states came to a head with the bloody division of Kansas known as “Bleeding Kansas,” with two separate state governments in power at the same time.

Where was President James Buchanan? Doing the equivalent of Donald Trump’s watching tv during the January 6 insurrection. Nothing. He had already checked out.

After the election of 1860 Abraham Lincoln won by a minority. He wasn’t even on the ballot in a number of southern states. By February, 1860 seven states had seceded. Eleven in total seceded. The Confederate States of America was formed on February 4.

After the war the states were readmitted beginning in 1868 during Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877.

This is the most significant constitutional crisis the country ever faced. The process of admitting states was called into question. The definition of equality was called into question as well as the makeup of the voting franchise.

This is one way in which the nineteenth century shaped who we are. It raised the issues of voting and civil rights. It certainly didn’t resolve the issue but it put the issues in the public eye in a way that couldn’t be ignored any longer.

How the Nineteenth Century Shaped Who We are Now (Part five: The Civil War, part 1)

 It is impossible to encapsulate the American Civil War in one blog post. I will undoubtedly end up with two or three, maybe more, one of them a personal perspective. This war shaped every aspect of American life and still does today. It is essential to have a good working knowledge of the Civil War in order to understand the United States today.

To start with, the United States. Shelby Foote, the Southern author who has become somewhat out of favor lately, stated in the Ken Burns series “The Civil War” (itself somewhat dated in its assessment of Robert E Lee and his legacy) that before the war people said that “the United States ARE” but after the war they said “the United States IS.” His thought was that the war’s aftermath gave a sense of the unity of the nation that it didn’t have before.

How can I describe a war that took approximately 630,000 American lives on both sides? How? With a total population of 31 million that comes to two percent of the population. Put that into today’s population and you come up with a staggering 6.6 million people. The decisive Battle of Gettysburg, with 51,000 casualties on both sides, would amount to well over half a million losses in today's population. It is impossible to overstate the impact of this loss. Almost all families were touched by the war on either side. The phrase “the empty chair” became a common way of expressing the inexpressible loss of a loved one.

There’s no point in rehearsing the history of the war. I could fill the volume of our entire house floor to ceiling with books written about it and still need more space. What we can think about, however, is the major themes of the period and its lasting effects on our society today.

To start with, race.

African Americans at the time were overwhelmingly in slavery. A small percentage were not but most were. White Americans always made a connection between people of African descent and slavery. The two went together. The hypocrisy of the North was that we felt we were not culpable in slavery yet we were. Our textile mills churned out coarse cloth from southern cotton that was sent back down south to clothe slaves.  Lots of money was made. We won’t even talk about the money that was made in the slave trade in New England prior to the abolishment of the slave trade.

The war still affects views of race today. The stereotypes of black men as lazy and shiftless go back to the era of slavery when black men resisted their captivity by doing as little as possible and still getting by. It wasn’t laziness. It was resistance.

Black women have sometimes been stereotyped as being more sexually aggressive than black men. This is another view that goes back to the time of slavery. Black women in slavery were regularly subjected to rape by their overseers and masters. They weren’t looking for sex. They were brutally raped.

White Americans, especially in the South, felt that they were doing Africans and their descendants a favor by enslaving them by bringing them Christianity and civilization. The two were inseparable in their minds. They drew the line, however, at teaching them how to read. Frederick Douglass and countless other enslaved people violated state laws and societal conventions by secretly learning to read. Who would think that reading was a subversive activity?

People in the North had a range of views about slavery. Some felt it was justified. Some were uneasy about bringing up the subject when talking with people from the South. And, of course, a good many were adamantly opposed to it but had different solutions to the problem.

The South and the North had differently based economies. In the North, industry was more prominent. Still, most people lived in small towns and worked on farms, but in cities industry was king. Foundries turned out products in cast iron, railroads crisscrossed the landscape, and deep pockets financed new ventures. This was easily converted to war production once the war started. In the South, on the other hand, there was some industry in the cities, but not as much as in the North, and therefore it did not form as large a part of the economic base. The foundation of the economy was cotton, and that was by nature a rural enterprise, an enterprise that cost countless lives.

White Southern society saw itself as more genteel as the money grubbing North, of course if you looked the other way in reference to slavery.

Northerners were not exactly sure what to do with escaped slaves once the war started. They coined the term “contraband” to refer to them. Frederick Douglass agitated for years to allow for black regiments in the Union Army. It eventually happened although it was far from perfect. They were paid less and often did not see battle, instead doing hard labor such as building temporary roads and tearing up railroads. They saw battle to an extent, and this increased as the war went on and the supply of soldiers became strained.

I guess that’s enough for now. It’s complicated. More soon.

How the Nineteenth Century Shaped Who We are Today: Part 4, the Industrial Revolution and Slavery

 The next obvious step in discussing the ways in which the nineteenth century shaped who we are today might seem to be the Civil War, having discussed slavery previously, but I will get to that later.

The next stop is the Industrial Revolution. With the improvements in textile machinery in Britain during the 18th century, the invention of the steam engine by James Watt, and the utilization of coal as a fuel to heat water and produce steam, it was inevitable that such improvements would eventually work their way to the colonies, later to become the United States.

During the eighteenth century and earlier products were made in small shops. For example, in my home town of Meriden, Connecticut, silversmiths worked in small shops to produce household items, and pewter shops making less expensive alternatives.

In 1793 Samuel Slater, a recent arrival from Britain, opened the first textile mill in the United States. He had worked in mills in Britain, and famously memorized the design of the machinery used to make cloth. He reproduced the machinery in his mill and started what was to become the Industrial Revolution in the United States. In the very early 19th century textile mills were established in Lawrence and Lowell, Massachusetts, producing cotton, wool cloth, and carpeting.

The revolution didn’t happen all at once. Initially these mils were supplied with yarn that was spun in local homes and delivered to the mills. Many households added income by having their daughters do this extra spinning. Eventually the machinery to spin yarn was developed and the whole production of cloth took place in the mill.

Young, single women were recruited to work in the textile mills. They left the farms and moved into dormitories overseen by matriarchs who kept a close watch over their charges. In Lowell they were called the “Lowell Girls.
”https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/the-mill-girls-of-lowell.htm

The impact of this mechanized production made cheaper, better goods available to people far away from the mills. The production went far beyond textiles. The idea of interchangeable parts developed by Eli Whitney for firearms extended o a myriad of household items.

In 1858 in Monmouth, Maine, two brothers ran a successful dry goods store. Monmouth, close to Augusta, had a rail line going through town and it brought shipped goods from many places. One of the brothers died in his fifties and an inventory had to be done for the probate court. The inventory included a complete inventory of the contents of the store. This remarkable record preserves a thorough listing of the goods available to people in small towns, ranging from utensils to a wide variety of cloth and other manufactured goods. This was the case across the country.

I can’t possibly describe the Industrial Revolution in one blog entry, but it is possible to spin out the implications:

-household goods were available for lower prices
-employment in factories meant a gradual decline in agriculture
-improvements in transportation speed made it possible for goods to be shipped to faraway places

And, it created a greater demand for raw materials. With a burgeoning population the demand for cheap clothing skyrocketed. New England could meet the demand for wool, but it couldn’t produce the other material needed.

Cotton.

A steamship loaded with cotton bales during the Civil War.

Here’s the connection between slavery and the Industrial Revolution. All the tumblers fell into position to unlock a vast source of wealth. Tobacco had stripped the land in the south of nutrients. Cotton was one of the few crops that could grow in the impoverished soil, but

it was expensive and labor intensive work to separate the seeds from the cotton boll, until Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin which could do it mechanically. As a result, slavery expanded significantly. The politics of slavery dominated the first half of the nineteenth century. Even with the end of the importation of slaves in 1808 slavery continued to be a political force. And, slaves became a more valuable commodity (it is very difficult to write this part, thinking of human beings as a commodity) which led to a brisk trade in smuggling slaves throughout this period.

 

A famous photograph of an enslaved man named Gordon, taken in 1863, which was widely reproduced in the Union states and galvanized the fight against slavery.

Slavery was a brutal, inhumane system which turned people into commodities. If they refused to comply, their fate was Gordon's fate. Working in the cotton fields was back-breaking labor, and even children were required to help. The dirty secret of the Industrial Revolution in New England was that it was built on the backs of slaves. Literally.

The failed compromises of 1820 and 1850 gradually led to the dress rehearsal for the Civil War, the Border War, commonly called “Bleeding Kansas,” fought over the issue of slavery in Kansas.

I guess the Civil War is next

Why the Nineteenth Century Shaped Who Americans Are Today: Part 3, Slavery

 Before I begin, I need to say that slavery is without a doubt the most difficult and painful subject to address in American history. My wife and I are descended from slaveholders. My wife and I are both descended from Admiral John Hawkins, who started the British Atlantic slave trade in the 1570’s. We can’t escape it, so it’s important to discuss it.

As I noted last time, slavery was declining by the time the US Constitution was being drafted in the late 1780’s the subject of slavery was on the table. The Congress that passed the Declaration of Independence (which was and is not a legally binding piece of legislation, just a resolution) eliminated Thomas Jefferson’s citation of it in his draft of the Declaration. This was in order to bring the southern states on board. John Adams famously opposed the elimination of this sentence but to no avail.  The Constitution as passed contained a number of references to slaves as the property of their masters. It also contained the infamous 3/5 compromise, which allowed for each person in bondage to count as 3/5 of a person for purposes of apportioning Congressional districts. Note, of course, that these enslaved people were not counted as US citizens and could not vote.

The Constitution also made provision for the discussion about ending the slave trade, which could not happen before 1807, twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution. Those who were paying attention did so the minute it could be brought up, and the US’ participation in the international slave trade in 1808. This, of course, did not ban the sale of slaves in the United States. The separation of innumerable families, of spouses, parents, and children, continued mercilessly. Human beings were treated like cattle, all in the name of profit. People were beaten, murdered, and brutalized in the name of profit. The impact of this system of exploitation cannot be overstated. It is our nation's original sin, in tandem with the near eradication of the native peoples of this continent.

What the writers of the Constitution did was to kick the proverbial can down the road.

They did so as a timid way to side step the issue, in order to not offend the South, and it didn’t work.

Why? Because of Eli Whitney (remember him?)

When slavery started in the colonies in 1619 it was primarily to provide labor for the growing of tobacco, to which Britain and other Europeans were hopelessly addicted. It was hugely profitable. For awhile it went well, until about the mid-eighteenth century. Cotton had been grown in the South for years but because it had to be processed by hand it was expensive. The  ball of cotton grew inside a boll, a hard exterior. This had to be picked off by hand, making it labor intensive. By the time the Constitution was written the production of tobacco had declined because the soil was depleted after 150+ years of agriculture. Once the cotton gin was introduced it made cotton a profitable crop and its agriculture exploded. This was because the gin mechanically separated the ball of cotton and the hard outer boll. An added factor was that cotton can grow in any type of soil, so the depleted soils of the South were fine.

The writers of the Constitution probably expected that slavery would die a natural death and they may as well not rock the boat by debating it. 

They were wrong.

“King Cotton” caused a massive increase in the need for labor, and slaves became more valuable. By the 1840’s cotton was the largest crop grown in the country, with huge exports supplying the British and French textile industries, and domestically, the textile industry in the Northeast. That means us. The cotton grown in the South went to mills in New England, and mill owners profited from slavery even they looked the other way.

This is how slavery and the Industrial Revolution were tied together. If you ever have the opportunity to see a piece of cotton clothing from pre-Civil War New England, that cotton was grown and processed by people who were forcibly held to work without compensation, enduring unspeakable abuse.

Once the growth of cotton increased after 1793 the South gained even more political advantage. Six of the first seven presidents were slaveholders, the exception being John Adams.

Every time the subject of abolishing slavery came up someone came up with a compromise. Because cotton could grow in the worst soil, it went west to Texas. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed for Missouri to enter the union as a slave state if Maine entered as a free state. Maine was a part of Massachusetts before them, or as some Mainers might point out, Massachusetts was a part of Maine.

The tensions increased as the pressure mounted for slavery to be extended further west. At the same time controls over slaves tightened even further out of fear of rebellion. The country was becoming a powder keg just waiting for someone to light the fuse. By 1850 tensions had continued to mount. The Compromise of 1850, much more complicated than the Missouri Compromise of 1820, defused tensions for awhile. The debate centered around the status of slavery in territory conquered during the Mexican American War (1846-1848). This postponed war for a time but it didn’t last.

How does this affect us today? In perpetuating slavery the President, Congress and the states created two cultures, each dependent on the other. The industrialized North depended on cotton from the South to supply its mills. The cultural differences ever deepened as time went on. We still wrestle with the implications of slavery today. White supremacists who celebrate the legacy of the failed Confederacy ask why African Americans often refer back to slavery, when they themselves hearken back to the Lost Cause and faithfully attend Civil War reenactments. African Americans were robbed of their heritage. That's the bottom line. Their heritage is one of brutality, rape, and inhuman servitude.

Why the Nineteenth Century Shaped Who Americans Are Today: Part 2, the Industrial Revolution

A coal clinker from a railroad bed

The Industrial Revolution transformed the world. Even the parts of the world that it never touched directly have been shaped by it. Our world today is a wholly shaped by the Industrial Revolution and its implications. It's important to take a look at the background.

In the late 18th century the British engineer James Watt developed the modern steam engine, which transformed the way products were made. Prior to this development machinery was run by water power or power generated by humans or animals. Watt’s engine made it possible to run machinery using a furnace to hear water, create steam, and power a steam engine which in turn could power looms, presses, and other industrial machinery. Initially steam engines burned wood, but by the later 1700’s the mining of coal took on a sense of urgency as Britain’s forests continued to disappear.

Coal has been a major source of fuel since this time, and for over a century concerns have been raised about the environmental effect of burning coal. Not only does it contribute to climate change but the mining process destroys the area in which the mining takes place. I’m not going to rehearse the environmental effects of the use of coal right now.

There are four main types of coal—anthracite, bituminous, subbituminous, and lignite. Anthracite is the hardest, and most desirable because it produces more heat. It is also low sulfur. Bituminous has more sulfur and is softer but still produces a good amount of heat. Subbituminous is softer yet, and lignite is sometimes compared to hardened peat because it hasn’t undergone the same level of development under the ground.

When coal is burned it is not completely consumed by fire. Instead, impurities such as coke, slag and grit are left behind and coalesce into chunks called ‘clinkers.”  My father remembered his first job in the early 1930’s sifting clinkers in people’s basements to sort out any good pieces of coal.

Clinkers are actually a useful byproduct. When crushed they are often called “cinders” and they make a good pavement material.

Coal was also used to heat homes, the effects of which made the air in large cities in Britain and elsewhere toxic to breathe. Coal mining also necessitated (and still does) unsafe working conditions.  A black pall would constantly hang over cities.

The clinker pictured here came from an old railroad bed in New York where I lived a number of years ago. It is a reminder for me of the impact this mineral had on the development of industry.

It is clear that the goal of industry was to make inexpensive products that would create a ready market, an advantage over handmade products that were more expensive. We’ll get back to this in a minute.

What industry did in Britain, and later in the United States and Europe during the nineteenth century was to create the modern city. People left farms to work in a city in a factory. Public transportation did not exist until the advent of the railroad in the 1830’s and 40’s so workers had to live near the factories. Some factory owners built affordable housing nearby for workers to live in. What nobody took into account was the effect this had on society. People lived in close proximity to one another, and when disease made an appearance it tor through poor sections of a city. The 1854 cholera outbreak in London led to the development of the science of epidemiology, the study of how infectious disease spreads.

Many took notice of the effects of poverty and hardship on the poor laboring class in Britain. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels co-wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). They, and many other authors, wrote of the working conditions of factory workers which endangered their health and contributed to an early death. In addition, there were no laws regarding the employment of children, and children who started work in factories at an early age did not develop properly, and they suffered the loss of extremities because their smaller hands made them useful in particular jobs.


The manufacture of inexpensive cloth in the United States required the technology to make it. Robert Slater, a mill worker in England, memorized the plans for mill machinery and fled to Rhode Island with the plans in his head. He built a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793, the same year as an important invention appeared in Connecticut.

Two of the most significant developments in the American Industrial Revolution came from the same person—Eli Whitney (1765-1825). Whitney ingeniously developed the idea of interchangeable parts, and famously demonstrated to government agents how he could put together a musket from parts picked out of barrels of identical parts. He also invented the cotton gin in 1793 which made it possible to grow cotton profitably. I have no idea if he understood the implications of this invention for the revival of the institution of slavery. The institution of slavery in its second phase was a violent and brutal partner to the Industrial Revolution. More on that next time.

Why the Nineteenth Century Shaped Who Americans Are Today (Part 1)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the major influences that have made us who we are in the present day. There are a lot of them—recently, World War II, Vietnam, the rise of immigration to the United States, the development of the automobile and the building of the interstate highway system, the advent of computer technology and the Internet, all of those and more. But there is one period of time that laid a foundation for all of the above.

I enjoy playing chess against my computer. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. I notice a phenomenon that often happens in live games. One square becomes the focal point. Everything builds up until something breaks. American history, like the history of the rest of the world, tends to act in the same way.

The nineteenth century. Nineteenth doesn’t mean 1900-1999. Remember the first decade after the supposed birth of Christ (which actually happened around 5-4 BCE) there were only three digits in the years. In the first century there were only two. So the first century was 1-99, second 100-199, etc. The nineteenth century is by common acceptance 1800-1899, although technically it is 1801-1900 but we’ll not quibble about that.

Historically, when we’re talking about centuries it’s not necessarily about a strictly defined period of 100 years. Arguably, the end of the English Renaissance is with the death of Queen Elizabeth ! In 1603.  Similarly, it could be argued that in terms of historical trends and culture the nineteenth century ended in Europe in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I, when the world that had gradually come into being was destroyed—the world of empires, free trade, open borders, and pacifism, all the while below their feet a massive arms buildup was growing that would explode in 1914.

What is it about the nineteenth century? We’ll look at it in at least a couple of blog entries. I’m not sure how long it will take. I will include thoughts about a variety of historical artifacts.

In Western history the nineteenth century begins, to a degree, with the treaties of Paris (1814-15) ended the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon’s urge to conquer all of Europe was a culmination of the philosophical and military advances of the eighteenth century, a century that saw nearly constant warfare in Europe over a variety of issues including territory, claims to various thrones, etc.  Napoleon took over France in 1799 at the lowest point in the French Revolution.

The first artifacts are two pieces of paper money from Revolutionary France. They come from different periods in the Revolution but represent the same thing. The revolutionary government confiscated huge tracts of land from the nobility and also from the Roman Catholic Church. They may not have know what they were going to do with all that wealth in real estate but somebody came up with a seemingly brilliant idea (at the time). Let’s issue paper money based on the value of the land. The government held the land, and wasn’t going to sell it right away, so why not? The problem was inflation. It didn’t take long for hyperinflation to set in. Series after series of notes were issued to stay on top of the hyperinflation but it didn’t work. It didn’t work because real estate value fluctuates. You can ask any real estate agent about that.

What was supposed to be a source of stability for the Revolutionary government became a huge source of instability.

So, what does this have to do with today? Lots. Empires fell during this time. Not all, but some. More fell at the end of World War I. But this was the start. The map of Europe was redrawn for the better part of a century by the outcome of this period and set up Europe for another century of warfare, which in turn set up Europe for another half century of warfare.



Politically the United States tried as hard as possible to stay out of European wars but didn't entirely succeed. No troops were sent, but this period strongly influenced American politics and the economy, such as the Embargo during the War of 1812 that killed New England's trade with Britain. Jefferson's audacious Louisiana purchase in 1803 was brokered because Napoleonic France was broke. We were influenced by European politics and warfare in a way that we don't even know.

Next we'll look at the Industrial Revolution. After that, the advances in communication, slavery, the Civil War, and anything else that comes to mind. Put your hat on, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

An Encounter with the Past

I've read Frederick Douglass' first autobiography and am reading the second, an expansion of the first. I recalled the experience below today as I was reading.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Frederick Douglass

First Parish Church, Brunswick, Maine

About 20+ years ago when my family and I were in Maine I had the opportunity to go to an all day meeting for clergy at First Parish Church in Brunswick, Maine, where Bowdoin College is. The meetinghouse of First Parish dates from 1845. During a break the associate  pastor asked if anyone wanted a tour of the sanctuary, and many of us took her up on the offer. We all sat in the pews as she talked about the sanctuary. She was in the pulpit, and described how Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist and orator, had spoken at the same pulpit, as well as General Grant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow read one of his poems from the pulpit. You get the idea.

She then talked about some of the famous parishioners there, and mentioned Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her husband, Calvin Stowe, was a professor at Bowdoin. She then said that it was during a worship service in the church that she had the vision that

inspired her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which enlightened Northerners about the evils of slavery. She pointed in my general direction and said that in the pew where she was sitting there was a plaque commemorating the occasion. I looked down and saw the plaque. Ok, that made my year.





I have always been fascinated by historical places--places where important events happened. Not just the site of where something happened. Places like the above. As in, "Harriet Beecher Stowe sat in the exact place you're sitting, on the same pew, where she had this vision."

Historic buildings have a great appeal. A good example is the Old State House in Boston, famous of course for its connection to activities leading up to the American Revolution. And outside the front door is a circle of brick in the square that is the site of the Boston Massacre. The guards were posted right outside that building. 

It always saddens me when historic places are demolished to make way for a shopping mall or something else. When they are gone they are gone, never to return. They are sometimes our only physical link with events of the past that continue to shape our present and will shape our future.