Joshua Glover and

Breaking the Barriers of Slavery with State’s Rights

William McDowell Junior Division Historical Paper 2,464 words

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When escaped slavery from the south in 1854, the led him to Racine, as a free man. This ignited a political firestorm that would break the political barriers of slavery by fueling the abolitionist movement in the state of Wisconsin and across the northern . The fight was over slavery, but politically it was about state’s rights, a fight that led to the Civil War and the eventual freedom of American slaves.

Background and Barriers

The Fugitive Slave Act 1 was passed in 1850. The act allowed the slave owners from the southern states to travel up to Northern states and capture escaped slaves. This act infuriated the Northern abolitionists and caused them to refuse any form of assisting slave owners. The barriers of slavery were built by generations of tradition and may as well had been set in stone within the southern states. Many people in the southern U.S. states were reliant on slaves to work their large cotton fields and other plantations 2.

1The Fugitive Slave Law was a US law that allowed slave catchers to recapture escaped slaves 2 A plantation is an area of land where crops are grown like wheat fields

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Slaves became essential to building wealth in the southern states3 and eventually, slaves became the backbone of the south’s economy.

Influential groups dubbed as “” by abolitionists in the north strongly supported slavery. These slave-supporting parties often argued against abolitionists and made it quite difficult for them to try and abolish slavery. According to them, “ Slavery is a natrual and normal condition of a laboring man.” Below are comments by historian

Henry Brooks Adams, the grandson of "Slave-Power" theorist John

Quincy Adams, explaining how slave owners had gained too much power and their political will to own slaves was threatening America’s ideal of liberty. Adams makes the claim that the Fugitive Slave Act violated a state’s right of basic freedom’s: 4

“Between the slave power and states' rights there

was no necessary connection. The slave power,

when in control, was a centralizing influence, and

all the most considerable encroachments on

states' rights were its acts. The acquisition and

admission of Louisiana; the Embargo; the War of

1812; the annexation of Texas "by joint resolution"

3 “How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy.” National Geographic, 3 Jan. 2003, www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/1/how-slavery-helped-build-a-world-economy/. 4 Henry Adams, John Randolph (1882) pp. 178–79

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[rather than treaty]; the war with Mexico, declared by the mere announcement of President Polk; the

Fugitive Slave Law; the Dred Scott decision—all triumphs of the slave power—did far more than either tariffs or internal improvements, which in their origin were also Southern measures, to destroy the very memory of states' rights as they existed in 1789. Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy. Slavery in fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself, but it required to control the centralized machine; it needed despotic principles of government, but it needed them exclusively for its own use. Thus, in truth, states' rights were the protection of the free states, and as a matter of fact, during the domination of the slave power,

Massachusetts appealed to this protecting principle as often and almost as loudly as South

Carolina.”

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Joshua Glover was a slave who was forced to work in a cotton field in the slave state of . For many years he yearned for freedom and eventually one night he made his escape. After a few weeks of dangerous travel through the underground railroad 5, being sheltered in abolitionist houses, and taking a monumental 6 number of risks he finally made it to Racine, Wisconsin. Here he became a respected member of society. Unfortunately, a hired by Joshua's slave master kidnapped him, and had him arrested. He was quickly moved from Racine to a better reinforced prison due to the massive number of abolitionists within Racine.

Breaking Barriers

Joshua Glovers’s actions helped to break the barriers of slavery in a multitude of significant ways. Similar to the tale of the "midnight run" of

Paul Revere, an editor named Sherman Booth for the R acine Advocate

7 reportedly went on an early morning ride and inspired thousands of

Wisconsinite abolitionists to free the captured slave, Joshua Glover.

5 The underground railroad was a system developed by escaped slaves and other abolitionists to get escaped slaves to the slave-free states 6 Monumental means something huge or large 7 The Racine Advocate was a Wisconsin newspaper that many wisconsinite abolitionists read at the time

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The number of infuriated citizens grew swiftly from around 500 to over

5,000 people from all across southeastern Wisconsin within a matter of days. The crowd broke Joshua Glover out of prison. Abolitionist James

E. Angove broke down the jail door with a piece of timber that he found from a nearby church that was undergoing construction. Joshua Glover, shortly after escape, was hauled onto a streamer boat by some abolitionists and arrived in Canada where he became a free man and was able to make a life for himself.

Years later, in 1897, Booth gave a speech in Madison, Wisconsin, and set the record straight:

"In riding through the streets of Milwaukee to call a

public meeting, I did not cry as was reported and sworn

to, 'Freemen to the rescue…’ I had invited the Racine

delegation to meet our committee at the American

House for consultation and was about to start when I

heard a shout and saw a rush for the jail and anticipated

the result… The only responsibility attaching to me for

the rescue of Glover is that I helped create a strong

public sentiment against the Fugitive Slave Act and

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called the meeting to protect the legal rights of Glover

and give him a fair trial. If, when assembled for peaceful

and lawful purposes, the course of the judge and his

bailiffs excited the people to take Glover out of jail

against my advice, I was guiltless of the rescue."8

His actions led to growing tensions between the southern half of the

U.S. and the rapidly growing number of abolitionists in Wisconsin.

Booth was arrested three and a half days after the Glover incident9 and led to the outraged Wisconsin abolitionists to resist the Fugitive Slave

Act. 10

The abolitionists began using three common strategies to fight slavery.

Abolitionist lawyers tried to undermine slave laws through “technical and procedural grounds,” challenged slavery on “principle and natural law,” and protested that slavery was simply unconstitutional. 11 Although most abolitionist 12 acts against slavery were peaceful, they sometimes

8 Schmitt, Jeffrey. “Rethinking Ableman v. Booth and States' Rights in Wisconsin.” Virginia Law Review , vol. 93, no. 5, 2007, pp. 1315–1354. JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/25050380. Accessed 4 Feb. 2020. 9 The Glover incident is when Joshua Glover was broken out of prison by furious abolitionists 10 The Fugitive Slave Act was a US act that allowed slave catchers to recapture escaped slaves 11 There are quotes in this section from State Power against Slave Power on the topic of how abolitionists attacked slavery 12 An abolitionist was someone who was against slavery

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resorted to violence to make their point. A good example of this was

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. 13

Abolitionists also started to seek political positions in order to do away with laws allowing or benifiting slavery. In 1844 an abolitionist candidate received 64,000 votes, but just twelve years later in 1856 a abolitionist candidate received an overwhelming one million, one-hundred, and forty thousand votes. Abolitionist political power caused the southern states to become quite nervous because if abolitionists could secure the presidency, then they would be able to protest slavery on a strong political front.

Joshua Glovers’s escape fueled the abolitionists movement in

Wisconsin. When Wisconsin joined the Union in 1848 they made a resolution to congress to stop slavery’s expansion. The final outrage was when “Slave Power” influence grew with the passing of the

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Booth’s newspaper, The Racine Advocate, reported that “We should resist the law in every way we could.'' 1 4

Abolitionists were prepared to fight the law and those who believed in it. Abolitionists were not going to rest until slavery was no longer legal.

13 This was a raid that was made to free slaves and inspire anti-slavery 14 This is a quote from the Racine Advocate which was a popular abolitionist newspaper in Wisconsin

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Attorney represented Booth. He argued that Booth was right in freeing Joshua Glover because the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional. “The act was repugnant to the constitution in that it denied fugitives 5th amendment due process, common law right to jury trial.”1 5

On the morning of March 11th, 1854, the same day as the Glover’s rescue, Booth was preparing for a meeting three days later in Ripon,

Wisconsin. This was the first of two meetings for the Wiaconsin

Republican party. The Republican helped the abolitionist movements because the Republican party supported anti-slavery, and immagrant and womens rights. This new Republican party was the very thing that many abolitionists like Booth, Paine, and their allies had been waiting for for a long time. Now that it was they were ready to continue on in their seemingly limitless battle to get rid of slavery. Shortly after founding the Republican party secured the majority of the political power in Wisconsin, by the year 1856 the Republican party held almost every high position in office there was to offer in Wisconsin. In 1859

Wisconsin was prepared to secede from the union.1 6 Just four months

15 This is a quote form State Power over Slave Power and is in a section on Booths Case 16 The Union was another name for the United States of America

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after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 and 11 years before the start of the Civil War, The Racine Advocate advocated such a dramatic move:

“To be right, we must become nullifiers from the outset. We must declare the government at an end, we must secede from the Union, and then we may disobey its laws

If we have no State rights, we have no government agreed to by the people.” 17

Wisconsin abolitionists took a strong position to take up arms and fight for their cause of anti-slavery. In 1859 the Republican party was on the very edge of an election that would put Abraham Lincoln into office and further continue the the semmingly undying fight against slavery. Then on August 1st, 1860, a group of armed abolitionists from Wisconsin broke Sherman Booth out of a federal custom house 18 in Milwaukee, this caught the attention of the federal government and caused them to try and rearrest Booth. Shortly after Sherman Booth's escape the federal government continued to try and rearrest Booth but failed due to his escort of two-hundred armed abolitionists. In 1860, August 5th,

Shortly after Sherman Booths first time trying to be rearrested he was seen at a meeting in Racine with a visible revolver, this revolver 19 did

17 This is a quote from the Racine Advocate threatening secession 18 This is where Sherman Booth was kept 19 A revolver is a small handheld pistol made of metal

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nothing it seemed to discourage federal agents who attempted to rearrest Booth a second time and were dragged away by nearby abolitionists at the meeting and were then sent directly out of Wisconsin by an escort of Wisconsinite abolitionists who were armed with muskets and revolvers. Following the second attempted rearrest of

Sherman Booth in Racine, a Wisconsinite militia called the Wide

Wakes was formed by the Wide Wakes Captain Heg. It was formed in order to keep slave-hunters out of Wisconsin, buth this military action frightened southern states. By the late 1860s Wisconsin was on the verge of war with the union. Their militias 20 had already fought against federal troops in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry, and just when

Wisconsin was ready for full fledged war Lincoln won the presidency.

Wisconsin quickly resolved matters with the union seeing that they were now partially in control of it. Lincoln winning the election led to the southern slave states to secede 21 from the union and then proceed to attack Fort Sumter 22, which was a fort in the confederates territory.

10,753 of the 91,376 Wisconsinite troops at the battle of Fort Sumter died that day.

20 A militia is a local unit that is often not part of the army 21 This is when a state or something similar, like a satrap, leaves their country or alliance 22 Fort Sumter was a key military base in the South but had Northern troops in it

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Conclusion

Joshua Glover’s actions ignited a political firestorm with abolitionists that led to the Civil War and eventual end of American slavery. Sadly, many people do not know about the morning ride of Sherman Booth, the Glover incident, or any of these other important historical events.

While many know the false claim that the Civil War was fought over

“state’s rights” they don’t know the true story that Wisconsin protected a fugitive slave because of “state's rights”. Mark Twain once said that

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” The Joshua Glover incident, where people took justice into their own hands, is similar to crossing of the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. On the 50th anniversary of that day, President Barack Obama said:

“What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

These are not just words. They are a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape our own destiny.” 23

23 Obama, Barack. “President Obama Marks the 50th Anniversary of the Marches from Selma to Montgomery”. The White House Briefing Room. March 8, 2015. White House Archives.

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These brave rebels challenged a culture, the court system, and the country in order for our country to live up to its ideals “that all men are created equal”. This is a story that every American should know.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Helped save Glover Newspaper

This resource is a newspaper from the year 1900 and is on the topic of the escape of Joshua Glover. It has an interview with James E.

Angove in it and dives deep into how the angry crowd of abolitionists led by

Sherman Booth managed to break the wrongly captured Joshua

Glover out of jail.

This newspaper was written by the Milwaukee sentinel and was

focused on the growing abolitionist movements throughout Wisconsin.

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Secondary Sources:

State Power against Slave Power: How Wisconsin warred on slavery, and Won

This resource is a paper on the topic of how Wisconsin fought against

slavery and won, it goes into great detail on how the abolitionists

in Wisconsin responded to the ever growing threat of slavery.

This paper is written by Ben Manski.

Joshua Glover and The End of Slavery

Joshua Glover and The End of Slavery is a video about the escape of

Joshua Glover. It talks about how he fled up to Wisconsin through the underground railroad only to be captured in Wisconsin and thrown in a

Milwaukee prison. This video was written and animated by the

Wisconsin public broadcasting system.

Abolitionist Storm Jail to free Captured Slaves

This is an article about the rescue of Joshua Glover. It is a few

paragraphs of rich information, and it is written by the Wisconsin

State Journal.

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Rescue of Joshua Glover, a Runaway Slave

This article is about Joshua Glover and talks a good amount about him

being freed by a crowd of furious abolitionists. The article is by

Henry E. Legler.

Interview

I had an electronic interview via text message with Judge Richard S.

Brown on the topic of the “ writ of open sesame” which was a writ

I could not quite find the meaning of.

State Power against Slave Power: How Wisconsin warred on slavery, and Won

This resource is a paper on the topic of how Wisconsin fought against

slavery and won, it goes into great detail on how the abolitionists

in Wisconsin responded to the ever growing threat of slavery.

This paper is written by Ben Manski.

Henry Adams, John Randolph (1882) pp. 178–79

John Randolph is a book by Henry Adams. There was a useful quote on wikipedia.

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