Liberty Before Union : Massachusetts and the Coming of the Civil War
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1975 Liberty before union : Massachusetts and the coming of the Civil War. Stuart John Davis University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Davis, Stuart John, "Liberty before union : Massachusetts and the coming of the Civil War." (1975). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1342. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1342 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LIBERTY BEFORE UNION: MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMING OF THE CIVIL WAR A Dissertation Presented By STUART JOHN DAVIS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY July 1975 Hi s tory (c) Stuart John Davis All Rights Reserved LIBERTY BEFORE UNION: MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMING OF THE CIVIL WAR A Dissertation Presented By STUART JOHN DAVIS Approved as to style and content by: Bruce Laurie, Member Sidney Kaplan, Member Gerald W. Mc Far land, Chairman Department of History July 1975 Liberty Before Union: Massachusetts and the Civil War (July 1975) Stuart John Davis, A.B., Brown University M.A., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Stephen B. Oates In the years before the Civil War, Massachusetts underwent a great social and economic transformation. Agriculture declined as a source of state income and rural areas lost population. Changes in the factory system lead to the creation of a large, permanent laboring force of Irish, dependent on daily wages for survival. The status of Massachusetts' artisans was imperiled by absentee ownership and new technology. Economic power gravitated to a small group of textile magnates who also gained influence over cultural, educational, and political institutions. The political history of the fifteen years before the Civil War is largely a contest between these Cotton Whigs and those who resented the changes in Massachusetts society. As long as the Cotton Whigs were able to clothe themselves in the mantle of social and moral conservatism they were able to dominate the politics of the state. But when the slavery issue made the Cotton Whigs appear to place their economic interests above their ethical sensibilities, their antagonists seized the opportunity to dis- place them. Republicans, who represented the middle-class voters of the small towns and the countryside, became Massachusetts' new dominant political force. Having consolidated their hold over Massachusetts by 1857, the Republi- cans turned their attention toward the presidential selection of 1860. Initially they feared that the Harpers Ferry raid would upset their carefully Republi- laid plans. But after success in the 1359 elections, Massachusetts incarnation cans began to look more favorably at John Brown, seeing in him the Republi- of their Puritan values. During the election of 1850, Massachusetts campaigned upon cans were careful to mute the divisions within their party and the moderate platform of anti-extensionism. Initially the Massachusetts Republicans refused to concede the significance of the secession movement. Their opponents attempted to use the political crisis to divide the Republi- can party. However, no serious economic panic occurred in Massachusetts and the state's Congressmen generally ignored conservative pressure to compromise. Conservative mobs silenced abolitionist meetings but their efforts merely helped the abolitionists achieve a new respectability. The Massachusetts Republican party came closest to dividing itself when Charles Francis Adams proposed the admission of New Mexico to statehood, a proposal denounced by the radicals. Massachusetts radical Republicans and abolitionists shared considerable common ground. The Garrisonians believed that the election of Lincoln was their victory as well. They welcomed the secession crisis and believed that they had been instrumental in weakening Massachusetts' devotion to the Union. Massachusetts blacks likewise welcomed the crisis as an opportunity to abolish slavery, but feared that compromisers might seek to limit their own rights, earned after decades of struggle. com- There was a close relationship between the social and economic position of Massachusetts' churches and their teachings on slavery and regard the politics. Conservative clergymen argued that Christians should threat to moral- Constitution as divinely inspired and viewed disunion as a reformist ministers ity, order, and even Protestantism itself. But many saw the crisis as wondered if the Union had outlived its usefulness and denominations, the most con- punishment for the nation's sins. Of all the Seeing a connection between servative on slavery was the Catholic Church. toward the Southern antislavery and nativism, Irish Catholics gravitated cause. They hoped to prove their loyalty to their adopted country by fidelity to the Union in a time of crisis. Massachusetts political conservatives defined their identity by refer- ence to the Union, but Republicans considered themselves as New Englanders first. Most Massachusetts Republicans did not believe the Union was worth sacrifice of party principles. Thus they fought modification of the state's Personal Liberty Laws, opposed the adoption of the Crittenden Compromise, and obstructed the Washington Peace Convention. Many were willing to allow the South to leave in peace as long as secession was accomplished through orderly and legal means. CONTENTS I. WORKING MEN AND MILLIONAIRES -| II. THE REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION 17 III. HARPERS FERRY AND BEACON HILL 37 IV. THE PURITAN WARRIOR 53 V. MASSACHUSETTS FIGHTS THE SENATE 72 VI. THE ELECTION OF 1860 , 92 VII. CONGRESS^ ADAMS AND GOVERNOR ANDREW 121 VIII. THE ABOLITIONISTS' VICTORY 150 IX. GOD AND MASSACHUSETTS 173 X. THE CONSERVATIVE OFFENSIVE 201 XI. THE MINUTEMEN OF 1861 222 NOTES 242 BIBLIOGRAPHY.... 280 CHAPTER I WORKING MEN AND MILLIONAIRES Massachusetts, on the eve of the Civil War, was a society in the throes of a great social and economic transformation. The Commonwealth was no longer the homogenous, agricultural society of her Puritan past. As the dams went up along the Connecticut and Merrimack rivers and hill town farmers and Irish peasants streamed into the cities, thoughtful • men in Massachusetts wondered if traditional New England values could survive. The rude Irishman with his authoritarian church, unclean .cities with their vices and temptations, the new breed of factory worker who depended on his boss for sustenance--al 1 seemed to threaten the temDerate self-reliance that was the hallmark of the Yankee way of life. No figure in Yankee folklore is more predominant than the sturdy independent farmer. He had wrested the Bay Colony from the wilderness. As minuteman, he drove out the British oppressor. He was responsible for his own destiny, free from servile relationships. But the ante- bellum years were not easy for the Massachusetts farmer. In the hill towns of Western Massachusetts the thin soil eroded; and the farmers followed the streams which had washed away their soil into the valleys. In the decade of the 1850's ninety-five towns in the Commonwealth lost population; some like Wendell and New Salem in Franklin County diminished by almost a quarter. Pel ham, despairing of its decline, voted to sur- render its charter of incorporation. These towns, avoided by the rail- roads, had become isolated backwaters. Many of their fields turned once again into woodlots, as the new agricultural machinery— so useful on the 2 broad level prairies of the West—was unsuited to the small, rocky 1 fields of the New England hills. The factories that began to open in the 1830 's brought with them some opportunities to the farmer. Once operating on essentially a subsistence basis, certain farmers could take advantage of new markets which the mill towns provided. In areas of the Connecticut Valley and in Worcester and Essex counties, farmers discovered that the rivers which provided relatively fertile soil also attracted consumers of agri- cultural products. As the mills grew so did market crops such as 2 cereals, pork, beef, and wool. But the economic expansion that created these new markets soon destroyed them. The building of the western railroads brought the New England farmer into competition with areas far more suited to the pro- duction of these staples than his own land. The Massachusetts sheep herd of 1850 was barely a third of its 1840 size. By the mid-1 850 's more than half the state's beef came from the VJest and its oroduction of pork and 3 cereals had becone a relatively minor industry. It would be a serious misstatement, however, to suggest that Mass- achusetts' agriculture was in a state of collapse. Some new products, such as apples, cranberries, and tobacco, helped take up the slack. In areas such as the Connecticut River Valley, whose rich soil was amenable to new techniques, the farmers prospered. From 1845 to 1855 the value of agricultural production in Massachusetts rose from $22,590,000 to $37,867,000. But these figures also tell a different story. In 1845, agriculture accounted for nineteen percent of Massachusetts' productive wealth;