Joshua Glover and Sherman Booth
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Joshua Glover and Sherman Booth Breaking the Barriers of Slavery with State’s Rights William McDowell Junior Division Historical Paper 2,464 words 1 When Joshua Glover escaped slavery from the south in 1854, the underground railroad led him to Racine, Wisconsin 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 United States. 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 2 Slaves became essential to building wealth in the southern states 3 and eventually, slaves became the backbone of the south’s economy. Influential groups dubbed as “Slave Power” 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 3 [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.” 4 Joshua Glover was a slave who was forced to work in a cotton field in the slave state of Missouri. 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 slave catcher hired by Joshua's slave master kidnapped him, and had him arrested. He was quickly moved from Racine to a better reinforced Milwaukee 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 Racine 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 5 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 6 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 incident 9 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 7 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.'' 14 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 8 Attorney Byron Paine 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.” 15 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.