Authors: Steve Sheinkin

Two Miserable Presidents (3 page)

BOOK: Two Miserable Presidents

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S
upporters and opponents of slavery set off on a race to Kansas. New England abolitionist groups sent money and guns to anti-slavery settlers. But the pro-slavery side had an advantage: the slave state of Missouri was right next to Kansas. The Missouri senator David Atchison took a vacation from Congress to personally lead Missouri men into Kansas. “There are eleven hundred men coming over from Platte County [Missouri] to vote,” he said, “and if that ain't enough we can send five thousandâenough to kill every *#$%! abolitionist in the Territory.”

And sure enough, just as Kansas was about to elect its first government, five thousand Missouri men rode in and votedâillegally, since only real residents of Kansas were supposed to vote. The new legislature quickly legalized slavery in Kansas.

Calling this government “the bogus legislature,” anti-slavery settlers held their own election. The anti-slavery settlers, also known as “Free-Soilers,” chose their own government, and, of course, banned slavery. So by the beginning of 1856, Kansas had two different governments meeting in two different cities. Both sides were storing up weapons and organizing armies.

Luckily, that winter was bitterly cold, with temperatures dropping to twenty-nine degrees below zero. Most people stayed inside.

But by May it was warm enough to fight. An eight-hundred-man pro-slavery army marched to Lawrence, home of the Free-Soilers' government. The invading army chased out the Free-Soil leaders, dumped two newspaper printing presses into the Kansas River, and fired a cannon at the Free State Hotel.

The hands of Northern readers shook with fury as they read the next day's newspapers. “STARTLING NEWS FROM KANSASâTHE WAR ACTUALLY BEGUNâLAWRENCE IN RUINSâSEVERAL PERSONS SLAUGHTERED,” shouted the headlines of the
New York Tribune
. (Actually, no one was slaughtered, though one pro-slavery man died when a chunk of the Free State Hotel fell on his head.)

Step 12: Insult Senators

N
o one was angrier about events in Kansas than Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. In a speech he called “The Crime Against Kansas,” Sumner called the pro-slavery army “murderous robbers from Missouri â¦ picked from the drunken spew and vomit.” He also slammed senators who supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act, saving his most personal attack for Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Sumner charged Butler with loving slaveryâand also hinted that Butler stammered and spat when he talked. This was a low blow, since Butler had difficulty speaking due to a stroke that had left him partially paralyzed. Even Sumner's friends were a bit offended. And Butler's friends were exploding with rage.

That brings us all the way back to the point where we began: with the caneswinging Congressman Preston Brooks.

Step 13: Hit Him Again!

P
reston Brooks was Senator Butler's cousin. Two days after Sumner's speech, Brooks walked into the Senate chamber looking for revenge. He strode up to Sumner's desk and declared: “I have read your speech twice over, carefully. It is libel [a false and harmful statement] on both South Carolina and on Senator Butler, who is a relative of mine.”

Then Brooks began beating Sumner on the head with his metal-tipped cane. Blood flowed down Sumner's face as he tried to wriggle his long legs out from under his desk, which was screwed into the floor. Sumner finally ripped up the desk, along with some of the floor, then stumbled to the ground. Brooks continued smacking Sumner until his cane snapped and he was yanked away by other members of Congress.

Brooks was thrilled to find that his attack on Sumner made him a hero in the South. “Every Southern man is delighted,” he boasted. One Virginia newspaper commented: “The only regret we feel is that Mr. Brooks did not employ a horsewhip â¦ instead of a cane.” Dozens of Southerners sent him new canes, some with cute sayings on them such as “Hit Him Again!”

Northerners were stunned by this reaction. One member of Congress had beaten another nearly to death and was considered a hero!

Now you know why Brooks attacked Sumnerâand you can see that the events leading to this attack were splitting the country apart. The conflict between the North and South was bitter, personal, and a little bit bloody.

It was about to turn seriously violent.

John Brown Lights the Fuse

John Brown was in Kansas to fight slavery. When this emotional abolitionist heard about the attack on Lawrence, he “became considerably excited,” witnesses said. And when he learned of the beating of Senator Sumner, he “went crazyâcrazy.” Brown told his small band of supporters to sharpen their swords and grab revolvers and rifles. They set out after dark, as Brown put it, to “strike terror in the hearts of the pro-slavery people.”

Blood Flows in Kansas

J
ohn Brown was fifty-six years old, the father of twenty children. He had spent much of his adult life helping slaves to escapeâand starting businesses that failed (he was sued twenty-one times, usually for not paying his debts). Now he and his sons were in Kansas, determined to win this land for the cause of freedom.

After the attacks on the town of Lawrence and the head of Sumner, John Brown decided it was up to him to get revenge on pro-slavery forces in Kansas. “Something must be done to show these barbarians that we too have rights,” he said.

“I hope you will act with caution,” said a Free-Soil man.

“Caution, caution, sir. I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice.”

John Brown

On May 24, 1856, just before midnight, John Brown knocked on the door of the cabin of a pro-slavery settler named James Doyle. Behind Brown stood four of his sons and three other men, all with guns and swords.

“What is it?” asked James Doyle from inside the cabin.

Brown said he needed directions to a neighbor's house. But when Doyle opened the door, Brown charged inside, announcing himself as “the Northern Army” and demanding the surrender of Doyle and his family. Doyle's wife, daughter, and three sons jumped out of bed to see what was going on. Brown ordered Doyle and his two older sons, ages twenty and twenty-two, to step outside. He left the rest of the family inside.

Brown's men marched Doyle and his two sons about a hundred yards down the dark road, threw them to the ground, and cut open their heads with swords. Brown and his crew visited other cabins that night, killing two more pro-slavery men and leaving their sliced-up bodies in the dirt.

When the bodies were found the next morning, it was the South's turn to be furious. “WAR! WAR!” declared a Missouri newspaper. A pro-slavery paper in Kansas called the killings an “abolitionist outrage” and demanded immediate revenge.

Pro-slavery forces went on the attack, burning Free-Soilers' cabins, stealing their horses, and searching for John Brown. Free-Soil armies struck back, and all-out war erupted in Kansasâor as newspapers now called it, “Bleeding Kansas.”

More than two hundred men were killed in Kansas in 1856. And the issue of slavery was still far from settled.

Dred Scott Denied

M
eanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court was about to give the North and South something else to fight about.

Here are the facts of the case: A black man named Dred Scott was enslaved, owned by a white army surgeon from Missouri, Dr. John Emerson. In the 1830s Emerson had taken Scott with him to a few army bases in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territoryâareas where slavery was illegal. In 1846 Scott had sued for his freedom from John Emerson's wife, Irene (John had recently died). Scott told the judge that he had lived for years in a free state and free territory, and therefore he should be free:

“Believing that under this state of fact, that he is entitled to his freedom, he prays your honor to allow him to sue said Irene Emerson in said Court, in order to establish his right to freedom.”

After more than ten years in court, Scott's case reached the United States Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland was a proud defender of the South and saw this as his big chance to strike a blow for Southern rights. (Maybe his last chance: he was eighty.)

Dred Scott

In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott was still a slave. Why? Because blacks were not citizens of the United States, wrote Chief Justice Taney, and they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” In other words, Scott had no right to bring his case to court in the first place.

But since he had, Taney went on to rule that there should be no free territory, because Congress has no right to ban slavery in territories. Slaves are property, Taney said, and the government cannot tell citizens where they can and cannot take their property.

Southern slave owners cheered that their rights had finally been protected. But opponents of slavery were shockedâand scared too. What next? Would the Supreme Court rule that slavery was legal everywhere in the United States?

Senator Lincoln?

A
braham Lincoln was one of many Northerners upset by the Dred Scott decision. To Lincoln, the Court's decision demonstrated that supporters of slavery had too much power in the national government. He planned to help change that. “I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator,” he told friends.

His wife, Mary, agreed that Abe could be a senatorâshe only wished he would act like one. Lincoln had the embarrassing habit of answering their front door in his slippers. And he wore baggy, sloppy clothes, and a tall black hat in which he kept notes and letters. One day some kids knocked off Lincoln's hat and his important papers fell out and scattered all over the sidewalk. As Lincoln calmly bent down to gather the papers, the laughing kids jumped onto his back.

That was Lincolnâhe just wasn't a fancy guy. Born in a tiny log cabin in Kentucky in 1809, Lincoln had spent only about a year in
school. He made up for this by reading every book he could get his hands on. He even stuck books in his pockets before going out to the field to plow. As twelve-year-old Abe explained: “The things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who'll git me a book I ain't read.”

The Lincoln family moved west to Indiana, and then on to Illinois. By the time Abe turned eighteen, he was six feet four inches tall, with long limbs rock hard from years of farmwork. “He can sink an axe deeper into wood than any man I ever saw,” a friend said. He was also unbeatable at wrestling. When he was twenty-three, Lincoln decided to run for the Illinois state legislature. He traveled around Sangamon County talking to voters (and wrestling many of them). On Election Day he came in eighth.

Lincoln ran again two years laterâand won. He was a natural politician, the kind of guy who could walk into a room full of strangers and have everyone cracking up in a few minutes. But he had another side, a quiet and gloomy side. He sometimes sat still for hours, staring silently into the air. “I never saw a more thoughtful face,” a friend said of Lincoln. “I never saw so sad a face.”

By the time he was fifty Lincoln had served in the state government and the United States House of Representatives, and had become a successful lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. But he had a bigger dream: to return to Washington, D.C., as a U.S. senator. And he got his chance in 1858 when the Republican Party announced: “Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate.”

Who were the Republicans? The answer requires â¦

A Brief Word About Political Parties

A
t this time there were two main political parties in the United States: Democrats and Republicans. Just like today, Democrats and Republicans fought over all kinds of issues. But it was the issue of slavery in the western territories that caused the bitterest debate.

The new Republican Party had been founded in 1854, and it opposed the expansion of slavery in the western territories. The Republicans got nearly all their support from the North. Members of the Democratic Party argued that slavery should be allowed in the territories if white settlers wanted it. The Democrats had some supporters in the North, but they got most of their support from the South.

Long Abe vs. the Little Giant

N
ow back to “Long Abe” Lincoln and his 1858 Senate dreams.

The man who had the job that Lincoln wanted was Senator Stephen “the Little Giant” Douglas. Douglas's nickname was based on two things: he was little (just over five feet), and he had the powers of a giant in Congress. Douglas, who was a Democrat, knew Lincoln would be a tough opponent. “You have nominated a very able and a very honest man,” he told a Republican friend. “I shall have my hands full.”

Lincoln opened the contest with an alarming predictionâthe North and South were speeding toward a dangerous showdown: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln said. “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolvedâI do not expect the house to fallâbut I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”

The only way to prevent Northern states from becoming slave states, Lincoln argued, was to stop the expansion of slavery right now.

Douglas thought this was ridiculous, and he said so over and over when the two candidates met in a series of famous debates all over Illinois. Lincoln and Douglas argued for three hours at a time before huge outdoor crowdsâcrowds that took part in the action by laughing, cheering, and, when they felt like it, yelling out insults and comments. When Lincoln took out a piece of paper to read something aloud, one person shouted, “Put on your specs!”

“Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so,” Lincoln said, putting on his glasses. “I am no longer a young man.”

This got a big laugh.

Newspaper writers followed the Lincoln-Douglas debates, printing the arguments for the entire country to read. Lincoln and Douglas, both great debaters, were battling over the very issues that were splitting the country apart.

Douglas attacked Lincoln's idea that the Union could not remain half slave and half free. Why couldn't it? Douglas demanded.

“Let each state mind its own business and let its neighbors alone! â¦ If we will stand by that principle, then Mr. Lincoln will find that this republic can exist forever divided into free and slave states.”

Stephen Douglas

The obvious solution, Douglas argued, was to let voters in the western territories decide for themselves whether or not they wanted slavery. And everyone else should just butt out.

This was exactly what Lincoln refused to do. Lincoln was not an abolitionist, but he was convinced slavery was evil. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” he said. And he was not willing to compromise on what he saw as a simple question of right and wrong.

“That is the real issue. That is the issue that will
continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principlesâright and wrong.”

By the day of the election both men were exhausted. Trying not to get his hopes up, Lincoln kept telling himself he would never win. But his wife disagreed. “Mary insists,” he told a friend, “that I am going to be Senator, and President of the United States, too.” Lincoln laughed at this idea. “Just think of such a sucker as me as president!”

Well, Abe was rightâthis time. Douglas won the election in a very close vote. Lincoln said he was too sad to laugh, too old to cry. “I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten.”

Abraham Lincoln