Category Archives: Whig Party

09/18/12

The Mid-America Conference on History

     Tomorrow I will be heading over to Springfield to attend the Mid-America Conference on History hosted by Missouri State University. I will be presenting a paper on Thursday at the 3:15 session. I have presented papers to various groups and given interpretive talks for many years, but this will be my first academic conference. Dr. Worth Robert Miller is the conference coordinator this year. Dr. Miller was on my graduate committee  when I was working on my M.A. at Missouri State. It’s been more than four years since I saw him last, and it was a real honor to receive an email from him a few months ago asking if I had a paper I’d like to present this year.

     The paper I will be presenting discusses the personal politics and political party affiliations of Ulysses S. Grant in the years preceding the Civil War. Parts of the paper come from posts on this blog, but the paper represents the research and thought I’ve put into this subject for several years now; particularly the last four years since I’ve been at Ulysses S. Grant NHS. 

     We are all products of the times and the environments in which we are born, grow to maturity, live, and work. Ulysses Grant was no different. Grant biographers have relished the contrast between Grant’s upbringing in Ohio, including his father’s Whig Party and anti-slavery politics, and that of Grant’s years at White Haven, his Democrat, slaveholding, father-in-law’s Missouri plantation, where Grant lived and worked from 1854-1859. My paper explores those two seemingly contradictory influences on  Grant.

     I’m also looking forward to hearing several other presentations, including one by Joan Stack of the State Historical Society of Missouri titled, “The Hat, the Horse, and the Hero: The Impact of Newspaper Illustrations Representing the Civil War Battle of Wilson’s Creek on the Legacy of General Nathaniel Lyon.” Also, the featured speaker on Friday night is Dr. George Rable of the University of Alabama. His talk is titled, “God as General: Was There a Religious History of the American Civil War?” I listened to one of Dr. Rable’s lectures online not long ago in which he said there was an anti-party spirit at the outbreak of the Civil War; regular citizens believed partisan party politicians had brought on the crisis. I note in my paper that Grant displayed that anti-party inclination, despite his quick support of the new Lincoln Administration.

     If you will be attending, or if you are in the area this week, I hope to see you!

07/20/11

Was Grant a Democrat? (part two)

Notice the slogan on the banner, "The Union-It Must Be Preserved"

     The other day I spent some time at the Missouri Historical Society looking through their collection of the papers of Thomas Hart Benton where I found this campaign circular from the state election of 1856. This would be the last campaign of the man who had so much influence on Missouri’s early history, and on the nation at large. Benton, a slaveholder from Tennessee, had been an advocate of slavery in Missouri during the debates over the Missouri Compromise, and had become Missouri’s first U. S. Senator, serving nearly thirty years from 1821-1851. In 1852, he won a term in the House. These years of Benton power coincided with the years of Colonel Frederick Dent’s arrival in Missouri (1817), his financial success as a merchant in the fur trade in St. Louis, his purchase in 1820 of the White Haven farm, and the time when U. S. Grant courted and married Julia, Colonel Dent’s first born daughter.

     Benton, as I wrote in an earlier post, was a dedicated Democrat and supporter of Andrew Jackson. Benton was a leading champion of westward expansion and a dedicated Unionist. It was his strong belief in the United States as a nation that led him to oppose South Carolina’s Democrat Senator John Calhoun during the debates over the Wilmot Proviso. Benton, a slave-owner himself, had no sympathy for the abolitionist cause, but he was also afraid that Calhoun’s unceasing attempts to protect slave-holders’ rights by uniting the southern slave states against the free states of the north threatened the disunion of the states. His fear that the Union was threatened by extremists on both sides of the slavery issue led him to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new territories. Missouri’s other Senator, David Rice Atchison, was firmly pro-slavery and quite willing to cooperate with Calhoun. Benton’s opposition to Calhoun, Atchison, and the expansion of slavery caused a bitter divide in the Democratic Party in Missouri between Benton and anti-Benton factions. (This division of the party over slavery issues wasn’t just limited to Missouri. There was a time when some prominent Democrats believed their party would actually become the anti-slavery party; Salmon P. Chase, for example.)   

       By the time of the elections of 1856, Benton’s influence had waned in Missouri. Partly this was due simply to the fact that he had been around so long, but also he found himself caught between the strongly pro-slavery faction of the Democratic Party in Missouri, led by Atchison, Claiborne Fox Jackson, and others, and the increasingly strident anti-slavery faction. Benton’s chief political lieutenants, Frank Blair and B. Gratz Brown, with their St. Louis German constituency, were becoming more and more outspoken in their opposition to slavery. To an extent, Benton had been with them, which is why the pro-slavery faction hated him. Benton opposed the expansion of slavery into new states and territories, but as Brown and others began agitating for the abolition of slavery in Missouri as well, Benton felt betrayed. What Benton really wanted was to just have everyone shut up about the slavery issue so the country could get on with its business growth and westward expansion. 

     Benton did not win the Governor’s seat in 1856. On August 4th he garnered a majority of votes in the St. Louis area, but out-state Missouri was overwhelmingly in favor of the proslavery anti-Benton faction. He lost to the proslavery Trusten Polk. 1856, of course, was the same year that the Republican Party ran its first candidate for President, John C. Fremont, Benton’s own son-in-law. Yet despite the high hopes of Blair and Brown, Benton refused to endorse his son-in-law. On November 3, 1856, Benton addressed a crowd in St. Louis. As one of Benton’s biographers wrote, “Frank Blair had built a strong following for Fremont, and the city’s vote might change the fate of America. Thomas Hart Benton knew this and had come for a last persuasive effort.” He endorsed James Buchanan, saying that although he loved and had supported Fremont in his western explorations,

“…knowing from the first that Mr. Fremont was to be the candidate of a sectional party, I told him that it was impossible that I could support any such nomination. No matter what came, he must be national, he must have a vision that could look over the Union. He must not be a dividing line, he must be national, or I [sic] cannot only not endorse him but I must take ground against him.”

When Buchanan won, Benton’s daughter, Jesse was convinced it had been her father’s influence that had cost her husband the White House.

     What is striking about this is how similar Benton’s views were to the explanation Ulysses S. Grant gave for voting for Buchanan. From his Memoirs:

     “It was evident to my mind that the election of a Republican President in 1856 meant the secession of all the Slave States, and rebellion. Under these circumstances I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years. I very much hoped that the passions of the people would subside in that time, and the catastrophe could be averted altogether; if it was not, I believed the country would be better prepared to receive the shock and to resist it. I therefore voted for James Buchanan.”

    Did the great Democrat Thomas Hart Benton have an influence on Ulysses Grant? Grant himself wrote that he “was a Whig by education and a great admirer of Henry Clay.” But, in Missouri, the Whig party had never commanded a very large following, and over the years had either sat out elections or sided with one faction or another of the Democrats. By the mid 1850’s when Grant came to farm White Haven the Whig Party was disintegrating. As Grant wrote, “the Whig Party had ceased to exist before I had the privilege of casting a ballot.” (Note also that B. Gratz Brown had come from a strong Whig family background in Kentucky and had become a Benton Democrat.)

     In examining Benton’s possible influence on Grant, it is also intriguing to consider the views of Colonel Dent, but this is a challenge because there appears to be only second hand accounts of Colonel Dent’s politics, and often these are post-war reminiscences. Without doubt, Colonel Dent considered himself a Democrat. It has been said that this is why Grant did not get the County Engineer position in 1859; because he had been residing at White Haven living and working with his slave-holding Democrat father-in-law. But which faction of the Democrats in Missouri did Colonel Dent actually identify with? There are some clues. For example, as early as February 5, 1846, Grant wrote a letter to Julia from Texas in which he asked her, “Has John [Julia’s older brother] made application for an appointment in one of the new Regiments that are to be raised I hope he has not let the opportunity slip. With Mr. Benton’s influence he could probably get a Captaincy.”  Years later in January of 1854, Grant wrote Julia from Ft. Humboldt, California: “Hunt is making application for promotion in a new Regiment, should be raised this Winter, and any assistance that could be given by your father, or brother Lewis, in the way of writing to Col. Benton he would gladly receive, and, appreciate.” Clearly, Grant believed that there was a relationship of some importance between Benton and the Dents from early on. Was Dent still listening to Benton as Benton began to argue against the expansion of slavery?

     Colonel Dent is often painted as a fire-eating secessionist in complete opposition to his son-in-law, but the true picture of Colonel Dent and his relationship with his son-in-law is more complicated. On May 10th, 1861, the very day of the Camp Jackson affair, Grant was at the White Haven farm and wrote to Julia back in Galena: “Your father says he is for the Union but is opposed to having an army to sustain it. He would have a secession force march where they please uninterrupted and is really what I would call a secessionist.” On May 15, Grant wrote Julia, “As I told you your father professes to be a Union man yet condemns every measure for the preservation of the Union.”  Obviously, Grant and his father-in-law were not on the same page in 1861, but it is interesting to note Dent’s insistence that he is for the Union. Benton had died in 1858, and many of his supporters, under the leadership of Blair and Brown, became Republicans. One of the more fascinating what-if questions in American history is how would Andrew Jackson have responded to the secession crisis in 1861? This is equally true of Thomas Hart Benton. Was Colonel Dent, by this time an aging patriarch with a declining fortune, left politically rudderless with the passing of Benton? In her Memoirs, Julia recalled the scenes of patriotism she witnessed in Galena, Illinois in the spring of 1861. She remembered a torchlight parade and thought of it as a serpent out to “crush in its folds the beloved party of my father, of Jefferson, of General Jackson, of Douglas, and of Thomas Benton.”  And as I noted in an earlier post, there is the passage where she quotes her father in the midst of the war saying: “Good Heavens! If Jackson had been in the White House, this never would have happened. He would have hanged a score or two of them and the country would have been at peace. I knew we would have trouble when I voted for a man north of Mason and Dixon’s line.”

     I am not aware of any extant direct correspondence between Benton and Colonel Dent. Perhaps someone who has done more research knows of more evidence of the relationship between the two, but I think in some cases the differences of opinion between Grant and Dent in the 1850s have been exaggerated and I would like to know more about all this. As slim as the evidence appears to be, I don’t think we can have an accurate picture of Grant without a study of antebellum Missouri politics. Yesterday I asked, was Grant a Democrat? I still think the answer is…not really. But if he was, what kind of a Democrat was he?

07/19/11

Was Ulysses Grant A Democrat?

 

From Joan Waugh's U.S. Grant; American Hero, American Myth

   A commenter over at Civil War Memory cited a quote that is often attributed to Ulysses Grant by those who claim the war was not about slavery:

   “I have no doubt in the world that the sole object is the restoration of the Union. I will say further, though, that I am a Democrat – every man in my regiment is a Democrat – and when-ever I shall be convinced that this war has for its object anything else than what I have mentioned, or that the Government designs to use its soldiers to execute the purposes of the Abolishionists, I pledge you my honor as a man and a soldier that I wilt not only resign my commission, but will carry my sword to the other side, and cast my lot with that people.”

    Andy Hall of Dead Confederates quickly pointed out that the quote cannot actually be attributed to Grant:

    “[The quote is] given as a years-old reminiscence by a third party and printed in The Democratic Speaker’s Hand-Book, subtitled “containing every thing necessary for the defense of the national democracy in the coming presidential campaign, and for the assault of the radical enemies of the country and its Constitution.” It is a compilation of anecdotes and quotations to be used as what we would now call talking points for Democratic campaigners to use at rallies and in editorials against Grant and other Republican candidates. Given its provenance, I don’t see how any serious person can attribute that as an actual quote, in good faith.”

     Andy, of course, is correct, but the fact that the quote cannot be directly attributed to Grant doesn’t necessarily mean Grant didn’t say it. When we consider what we know about Grant and what we know he actually did say however, is it at all likely that the quote is something Grant might have said?

     According to the story told in the Hand-Book, it was the summer of 1861 when Grant was asked, “What do you think was the real object of this war on the part of the Federal Government?” First, if the question was posed in the summer of 1861, wouldn’t the question have been, “What do you think is the real object of this war…” rather than “was”?

    Second, would Grant have answered this way in 1861? Let’s start with the first sentence: “I have no doubt in the world that the sole object is the restoration of the Union.” Might Grant have said this? Here is what he wrote to his father-in-law on April 19, 1861:

     “The times are indee[d] startling but now is the time, particularly in the border slave states for men to prove their love of country. I know it is hard for men to apparently work for the Republican party but now all party distinctions should be lost sight of  and evry true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the glorious old Stars & Stripes, the Constitution and the Union….No impartial man can conceal from himself the fact that in all these troubles the South have been the aggressors and the Administration has stood purely on the defensive, more on the defensive than she would dared to have done but for her consiousness of  strength and the certainty of right prevailing in the end. The news today is that Virginia has gone out of the Union. But for the influence she will have on the other border slave states this is not much to be regreted. Her position, or rather that of Eastern Virginia, has been more reprehensible from the begining than that of South Carolina. She shoul[d] be made to bear a heavy portion of the burthen of the War for her guilt. –In all this I can but see the doom of Slavery. The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution. But they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance, and then too this disturbance will give such an impetus to the production of their staple, cotton, in other parts of the world that they can never recover the controll of the market again for that comodity. This will reduce the value of negroes so much that they will never be worth fighting over again.”

     So, might Grant have said the “sole object [of the federal government] is the restoration of the Union”? Maybe, but this would hardly have been the extent of his answer. The above letter shows just how keenly Grant understood the issues at hand. The letter also sheds some light on the question of whether or not Grant would have said so unequivocally, “I am a Democrat.”  While Grant never claimed to be a Republican in the years before the war, pegging him as a dedicated Democrat would also be a mistake. On September 23, 1859, Grant wrote a letter to his own father in which he explained why he had not received an appointment as St. Louis County Engineer. He had given up on making a living as a farmer at White Haven and had applied for the position, which required an appointment by the board of County Commissioners.

 Dear Father,

    I have waited for some time to write you the result of the action of the County Commissioners upon the appointment of County Engineer. The question has at length been settled, and I am sorry to say, adversely to me. The two Democratic Commissioners voted for me and the freesoilers against me….

You may judge from the result of the action of the County Commissioners that I am strongly identified with the Democratic Party! Such is not the case. I never voted an out and out Democratic ticket in my life. I voted for Buch. for President to defeat Freemont but not because he was my first choice. In all other elections I have universally selected the candidates that in my estimation, were the best fitted for the different offices and it never happens that such men are all arrayed on one side. The strongest friend I had in the Board of Comrs. Is a F. S. but opposition between parties is so strong that he would not vote for any one, no matter how friendly, unless at least one of his own party would go with him. The F.S. party felt themselves bound to provide for one of their own party who was defeated for the office of County engineer; a Dutchman who came West as an Assistant Surveyor upon the publick lands and who has held an office ever since.”

     Grant’s views on the political parties of the antebellum years and his views on the two major parties of the post-war years changed during the war, just as many others changed political affiliations. This is understandable when one considers the complicated nature of political parties in the antebellum years, particularly in Missouri where Grant resided from 1854-1860. (Stay tuned for more on this.) For now it is interesting to note a conversation Grant had with John Russell Young during his post-presidential trip around the world:

     “There is nothing I have longed for so much as a period of repose in our politics, that would make it a matter of indifference to patriotic men which party is in power. I long for that. I am accused, I see, as having a special aversion to democracy. People used to remind me that I voted for Buchanan, and call me a renegade. The reason I voted for Buchanan was that I knew Fremont. That was the only vote I ever cast. If I had any political sympathies they would have been with the Whigs. I was raised in that school. I have no objection to the Democratic party as it existed before the war. I hope again to see the time when I will have no objection to it. Before the war, whether a man was Whig or Democrat, he was always for the country. Since the war, the Democratic party has always been against the country. That is the fatal defect in the Democratic organization, and why I would see with alarm its advent to power. There are men in that organization, men like Bayard, McClellan, Hancock, and others whom I know. They are as loyal and patriotic as any men. Bayard, for instance, would make a splendid President. I would not be afraid of the others in that office; but, behind the President thus elected, what would you have? The first element would be the solid South, a South only solid through the disfranchisement of the negroes. The second would be the foreign element in the North, an element which has not been long enough with us to acquire the education or experience necessary to true citizenship. Neither of these elements has any love for the Union. The first made war to destroy it, the second has not learned what the Union is. These elements constitute the Democratic party, and once they gain power I should be concerned for the welfare of the country. They would sway their President, no matter how able or patriotic. My fear of this result has always made me wish that some issue would arise at home that would divide parties upon some other question than the war. I hoped that would be one of the results of the Greenback agitation. The triumph of a Democratic party as it was before the war, of an opposition party to the Republicans as patriotic as the Democratic party before the war, would be a matter to be viewed with indifference so far as the country is concerned. The triumph of the Democratic party as now organized I would regard as a calamity. I wish it were otherwise. I hope every year to see it otherwise. But as yet I am disappointed. I am a Republican because I am an American, and because I believe the first duty of an American – the paramount duty – is to save the results of the war, and save our credit.”

  Finally, we have the assertion, “when-ever I shall be convinced that this war has for its object anything else than what I have mentioned, or that the Government designs to use its soldiers to execute the purposes of the Abolishionists, I pledge you my honor as a man and a soldier that I wilt not only resign my commission, but will carry my sword to the other side, and cast my lot with that people.” Obviously, when the war did shift from being strictly a war to preserve the Union to a war to preserve the Union and to abolish slavery, Grant did not resign his commission and go over to the other side. Therefore, he either had no “honor as a man and a soldier” or the quote is bogus. I think the quote is bogus.

02/2/11

Border State Politician (Part 4)

     When last we left Gratz Brown, he had moved to Missouri to work in his cousins’ law firm and had become a supporter of Jacksonian Democrat and long time Missouri Senator, Thomas Hart Benton. In the summer of 1852, Frank Blair, Gratz Brown, and others gathered enough funds to purchase a St. Louis newspaper to promote their political views. They changed the name of their new sheet to Missouri Democrat and Brown soon became a principal contributor to the editorial page. It is said that Brown’s “editorials, forceful, brilliant, witty, and often bitingly sarcastic, were ‘cursed by proslavery men, commended by free-soilers, and read by all.’” In addition, that summer Brown ran for political office for the first time. Strongly supported by the anti-slavery Germans in St. Louis, Brown and his cousin Frank Blair both won seats in the Missouri state legislature.[1]

    Despite being one of the youngest members of the legislature at 26 years of age, Brown quickly let it be known that his youth would not deter him from being heard. Issues involving public lands and railroads intermingled with fights over the Jackson Resolutions and the spread of slavery. Thomas Hart Benton, having lost his Senate seat, also ran for and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1852. Benton’s opponent, Lewis Bogy, maliciously denounced Benton as a Free-Soiler and an abolitionist. Benton declared that his enemies did not belong in the Democratic Party and should form a “grand sewer…to carry off all the filth from the democratic camp!” Though solidly aligned with Benton and Blair, in legislative sessions Gratz Brown cautioned against hurried action and injudicious legislation when it came to railroad bills. Brown was particularly concerned that railroad companies should not be the only beneficiaries of public lands. He offered his own railroad bill, and the final bills eventually included some of his ideas.[2]

     Throughout the years 1852-1854, Brown and Blair in Missouri, and Benton in Washington, fought the forces of slavery extension represented by David Rice Atchison, Claiborne Fox Jackson, and others. It should be noted that Brown, Blair, and Benton fought slavery’s extension, not on the basis of the abolitionist humanitarian concern for those in the crushing clutches of slavery, but rather on the more prevalent free-soil concern for the elevation of white labor. Frank Blair, in a February 1, 1853 speech, called for the repeal of the Jackson Resolutions because they “represented a plot by nullifiers who sought to destroy the Union by undoing the work of Congress as exemplified by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820.”  Editorials in the Missouri Democrat attacked the “Slave Power,” comparing it to the European aristocracy, and charging that it sought to make paupers of working class whites. This rhetoric appealed to the increasing numbers of Irish and German immigrants in St. Louis. It also appealed to the many New England businessmen arriving in the 1850s who wanted to attract eastern capital. In spite of efforts to court moderate Whigs however, Blair’s efforts to repeal the Jackson Resolutions came to naught when on February 14 the issue was tabled in the House. Gratz Brown then headed a committee that “called on all true Democrats to work for the election of a pro-Benton majority to the next legislature.”[3]

     In the spring of 1854, Gratz Brown became chief editor of the Missouri Democrat. Frank Blair wrote to his father that Gratz “had the advantage of being better known throughout the state because of his legislative experience and his having no ‘Barnburner antecedents.’ He also ‘is a better writer & thinker and has more energy & industry.’” [4]

     All the agitation for a railroad to the Pacific coast led to a fight over what to do about slavery in the Kansas Territory and the introduction of the concept of “popular sovereignty.” The result of this was exactly what Benton had always feared, increasing polarization and sectionalism of the country and an increasing threat to the stability of the Union. Benton Democrats, including Brown and Blair, were vehemently opposed to a bill introduced in Congress by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas in January 1854 that abrogated the Missouri Compromise, split the Kansas Territory in two, Kansas and Nebraska, and instituted popular sovereignty. Brown argued that if Kansas were free, “it would be settled much more rapidly by an energetic population; railroads would be built, commerce would flow between Missouri and Kansas.” At the same time however, Brown strenuously denied any charge that he was an abolitionist, avowing his belief in the inferiority of blacks and that restrictions on slavery benefitted whites.[5]

      Also in 1854, Benton, Brown, and Blair all faced re-election. Benton hoped to return to the Senate by unseating David Rice Atchison, a principal instigator of the Nebraska Bill. President Franklin Pierce also backed the Nebraska Bill and demanded that its support be a test of loyalty for all Democrats. He gave the power of patronage in Missouri to Atchison, making the campaign exceedingly difficult for the Bentonites. The split in the Democratic Party in Missouri between the anti-Benton pro-slavery wing and the anti-slavery Benton-Blair-Brown wing caused both to again court members of the minority Whig Party. Brown and Blair sought cooperation with prominent Whigs such as James Rollins, James O. Broadhead, and Edward Bates. Brown also kept up an effort to undermine the effects of the new Know-Nothing Party by identifying it with extremists. Editorials in the Democrat accused Know-Nothings of being abolitionists on the one hand, and, to maintain the support of German and New England business elements, Brown accused the Know-Nothings of being anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Yankee on the other.

     Blair and Brown managed to secure re-election, but when the legislature met in December of 1854, it could not decide on who Missouri’s Senator should be. Ballot after ballot was returned deadlocked, and eventually the legislators gave up. When Atchison’s term expired in March 1855, his seat was left vacant until 1857. For Frank Blair and Gratz Brown, however, these efforts at creating an alliance with Whigs to fight the spread of slavery were the foundations of the soon to be born Republican Party in Missouri.[6]

     [1] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 17-18. Parrish, Frank Blair, 45-49; Lucy Lucile Tasher. “The Missouri Democrat and the Civil War” in Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 31, No. 4 (July 1937), 402.

     [2] Ibid, 20-23; Smith, Magnificent Missourian, 288-290.

     [3] Parrish, Frank Blair, 50-57; Louis Gertais. Civil War St. Louis, (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 58-59.

     [4] Ibid, 54.  

     [5] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 28-29.

     [6] Gertais, Civil War St. Louis, 58-59; Parrish, Frank Blair, 55-58; Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 28-29; William E. Parrish. “David Rice Atchison: Faithful Champion of the South” in Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (January 1957), 113-125.

01/19/11

Border State Politician (part 3)

"Old Bullion" Thomas Hart Benton

     Despite Missouri’s admittance to the Union as a slave state, there had always been an anti-slavery element in Missouri. Since its inception in 1821, economic growth fueled by fertile river bottom land, river trade, furs, lead mining, and new railroads brought increasing numbers of new residents. Many of these were immigrants, primarily Germans and Irish, who crowded into the growing city of St. Louis. These immigrants brought with them their own customs and beliefs. The Germans were adamantly anti-slavery and committed to the United States that had given them sanctuary. The German anti-slavery sentiment, the increasing national focus on slavery, and the fear of slaves running away to the free states that bordered Missouri, caused pro-slavery Missourians to pass stringent laws governing both free and enslaved backs and mulattoes living in the state in the 1840’s. The advocates of slavery extension, however, had a stern opponent in the state’s long-time and popular Senator, Thomas Hart Benton.[1]

     Elected in 1821 and serving nearly thirty years, Democrat Thomas Hart Benton was one of Missouri’s first U.S. Senators and a close ally of Andrew Jackson, despite having fought a gun battle with Jackson in 1813 in Tennessee in which Jackson was almost killed by Jesse Benton, Thomas’s brother. Benton was a leading champion of westward expansion and a dedicated Unionist. During the debates over the Wilmot Proviso, Benton had stringently opposed South Carolina’s Democrat Senator John Calhoun. Benton, a slave-owner himself, had no sympathy for the abolitionist cause, but he was also afraid that Calhoun’s unceasing attempts to protect slave-holders’ rights by uniting the southern slave states against the free states of the north threatened the disunion of the states. His fear that the Union was threatened by extremists on both sides of the slavery issue led him to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new territories. Missouri’s other Senator, David Rice Atchison, was firmly pro-slavery and quite willing to cooperate with Calhoun. Benton’s opposition to Calhoun, Atchison, and the expansion of slavery caused a bitter divide in the Democratic Party in Missouri between Benton and anti-Benton factions. It was into this divide that Gratz Brown stepped, when in late 1849 he decided to follow his Blair cousins and seek a future in Missouri.[2]

     The Blair brothers, particularly Frank, were by the time Gratz Brown arrived, already enmeshed in Missouri politics. In the late 1840’s and into the 1850’s, the Blairs, as noted, were ardent supporters of Benton, and Jacksonian Democracy. But they were also strongly drawn to the anti-slavery free soil movement. In fact, Frank Blair in 1848 attended the Free Soil party’s national convention in Buffalo, where former Democrat and President, Martin Van Buren, was nominated to run for the Presidency once again, this time as a free-soiler. Frank returned to St. Louis where he started a short-lived newspaper to promote Van Buren’s candidacy and Free Soil principles. Benton, though sympathetic to free soil principles himself, would not abandon his Democratic Party roots; he and the Blair brothers found themselves briefly at odds. Nevertheless, after the election the Blairs continued to be Benton advocates. Despite the growing numbers of German immigrants in Missouri, free soilism did not attract enough support in 1848, and only a few thousand votes were cast for Van Buren. Nationally, the Free Soil Party siphoned off just enough votes from the Democrats to throw the election to the Whig Party candidate, Zachary Taylor.[3]

     On January 15, 1849, Claiborne Fox Jackson, a plantation slave-owner and anti-Benton Democrat who would later be elected governor, introduced radically pro-slavery resolutions in the Missouri state legislature. Written by Judge William B. Napton of the Missouri Supreme Court, and reflective of similar resolutions introduced in the U.S. Congress by John Calhoun, the “Jackson Resolutions” declared that Congress had no Constitutional right to legislate against slavery in the territories, that all citizens had the right to take their slave property with them when emigrating to the territories, and that Missouri’s senators and congressmen were “instructed” to act in accordance with these principles. In addition, the resolutions promised Missouri’s “hearty cooperation with the slave-holding states, in such measures as may be deemed necessary for our mutual protection against the encroachments of Northern fanaticism.” The Jackson Resolutions were passed by large majorities in both the Missouri House and Senate, and were a direct challenge to Benton and the Blairs who supported him. Benton and the Blairs wasted no time in responding. Frank and Montgomery, along with thirty-six other Benton supporters, published an “address to the Democracy” denying the assertions of the Jackson Resolutions. Senator Benton, having been gone from Missouri for two years, returned from Washington, issued his own denunciation of the Jackson Resolutions, and proceeded to stump the state. Large and generally sympathetic crowds listened as Benton accused Calhoun of being the instigator of a slavery conspiracy, Jackson and Atchison of being Calhoun’s disciples, and proclaimed that their schemes threatened the Union.[4]

   In 1850 fifty-five Benton Democrats, thirty-eight anti-Benton Democrats, and sixty-four Whigs were elected to the Missouri state legislature. This badly divided body would decide whether or not Thomas Hart Benton would retain his U.S. Senate seat in 1851. Needing seventy-eight votes to secure Benton’s re-election, Frank Blair traveled to Jefferson City to convince Whig legislators to vote with the Benton faction, but to no avail. The Whigs sided with the anti-Benton Democrats to elect Henry S. Geyer, a pro-slavery Whig. This re-alignment, however, spelled the beginning of the end for the Whig Party in Missouri. 

   Gratz Brown spent his first year in Missouri working in his cousins’ law firm, and meeting prominent St. Louisans, many of whom were Whigs that his Uncle Orlando had recommended he contact. Nevertheless, at some unknown point, despite his earlier declaration to the contrary, he shifted his political alliance with the Whig Party and sided with the Blairs and Benton. There were likely several reasons for this change, including the Blair influence, the disintegration of the Whig Party in Missouri and the fact that his upbringing would have made any sentiment of disunion distasteful. In addition, Gratz Brown, like Frank Blair, was drawn to the free-soil movement.[5]

   [1] Benjamin Merkel. “The Anti-Slavery Movement in Missouri, 1819-1865.” Doctoral dissertation, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo, 1939, passim.

   [2] Elbert B. Smith. Magnificent Missourian: The Life of Thomas Hart Benton (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1958), 43-48. Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 10-11; William E. Parrish. Frank Blair: Lincoln’s Conservative (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 39; Slap, Doom of Reconstruction, 26-27.

   [3] Parrish, Frank Blair, 35-38.

   [4] Walter B. Stevens. Centennial History of Missouri (The Center State): One Hundred Years in the Union, 1820-1921, Vol II (St. Louis, MO, Chicago, IL: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1921), 832-833; Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 11-12; Parrish, Frank Blair, 41-42.

   [5] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 16.

01/14/11

Will We Ever Learn?

     As part of my research into the life of B. Gratz Brown, I decided I needed to know more about Thomas Hart Benton. As I said in an earlier post, there is probably no politician who looms larger than Benton in antebellum Missouri. So, I went searching for a biography. Aside from Benton’s own 30 Years View: A History of the Working of the American Government 1820-1850, originally published in 1856, I was surprised to find only three biographies: The Life of Thomas Hart Benton, written by Theodore Roosevelt, published in 1886; Old Bullion Benton: Senator from the New West by William Nisbet Chambers, published in 1956; Magnificent Missourian: The Life of Thomas Hart Benton by Elbert B. Smith, published in 1958. No biographies newer than 1958 of a man who was a giant in his day, not only in Missouri, but nationally as well. Benton served as one of Missouri’s U. S. Senators for almost 30 years. If you want to understand the causes of the Civil War, Benton cannot be avoided. 

     I am now about halfway through Smith’s Magnificent Missourian and I wanted to share a passage. In 1834, Henry Clay and John Calhoun were bitter enemies of President Andrew Jackson. Clay had introduced a set of resolutions censuring the President for actions he had taken in regards to the National Bank. Benton was a fierce supporter of Jackson. From Magnificent Missourian:

     “In the short but savage session of 1835, Benton renewed his demand for expunging the censure of Jackson in a mighty speech which added the bank’s provable sins of the ‘panic’ session to his usual indictment. The Senate was unimpressed, but Benton was speaking primarily to the general public in preparation for the coming election. State legislatures were beginning to bombard their Senators on the expunging issue, and the Whigs were in a raw mood. Their counter-attacks against Jackson were so violent that when a slightly deranged young man tried to assassinate the President, the Globe charged them with the basic responsibility for inspiring the foul deed.”      

     Oh my, sound familiar?

01/5/11

My Own Whig Ancestor

     While I am on the subject of the Whig Party, I thought this might be a good time to include a post on my 3xgreat-grandfather, Cyrus Gray Luce. I briefly mentioned Cyrus’s father, Walter Luce, in an earlier post. The first Luce’s arrived in Martha’s Vineyard in the 1600s. About 1720 Walter’s father moved to Tolland, Connecticut. After serving in the War of 1812, Walter, in 1815, settled on the Western Reserve in Ohio, where Cyrus was born on July 2, 1824. Cyrus’s mother, Mary, was born in Virginia. Mary’s father was “tinctured with abolitionism” and moved out of Virginia to Ohio to get away from slavery.

     Cyrus was raised on the family farm until, when Cyrus was 12 years of age, Walter and Mary moved again, this time to Steuben County, Indiana. Cyrus “attended one of the pioneer country schools and supplemented his early education by a course in an Academy located at Ontario, Lagrange, Indiana, where he resided for three years.”  When Cyrus was 17, his father started a cloth-dressing and wool-carding establishment. Cyrus went to work there and eventually was in charge of the factory for seven years.

     “In early life Mr. Luce was a warm admirer of Henry Clay and he cast his first Presidential ballot for Zachary Taylor in 1848.” That same year, Cyrus ran for State Representative on the Whig ticket. The district was comprised of the counties of DeKalb and Steuben. It was apparently a strong Democratic district, and despite a vigorous canvass on his part, Cyrus lost by eleven votes.

     Perhaps stung by this defeat, Cyrus soon moved north to Branch County, Michigan. In August, 1849, he married Julia A. Dickinson, the daughter of “well-to-do and highly respected residents of Gilead.” In 1852, he tried his luck at politics again, this time winning a seat  on the County Board of Supervisors. Cyrus was one of the organizers of the Republican Party in Branch County, Michigan, and in 1854 he was elected to the Michigan legislature on the Republican ticket. In 1858, and again in 1860, he was elected county treasurer; in 1864, and again in 1866, he was elected State Senator. In 1867 he was a member of the constitutional convention that drafted a new state constitution for Michigan. In 1879 he was appointed State Oil Inspector. In 1886 he was elected  Governor of Michigan on the Republican ticket, and was re-elected in 1888.  

     The above information comes from brief early 2oth century biographies of Cyrus G. Luce which can be found online. There is no booklength biography that I know of. I have found scattered references to Governor Luce and have found speeches given by him online. I wish I had the time and money to go to Michigan, do the research, and write a biography myself. Maybe someday. In the meantime, I will write more on him in future posts here.

01/4/11

Is the Modern Whig Party Upholding Its 19th Century Principles?

  

   In my last post I wrote briefly about the Whig Party in antebellum Missouri. Nationally, the Whig Party began as a coalition of various political elements drawn together by their common opposition to Andrew Jackson. In his 1967 study The Whig Party in Missouri, John V. Mering stated that there were four “constituent members of the original Whig coalition. These were 1) champions of the American System who, under the National Republican label had supported John Quincy Adams for the Presidency in 1828 and Henry Clay in 1832; 2) defenders of state rights who parted company with Andrew Jackson as a result of his response to South Carolina’s Nullification Proclamation; 3) Democrats who opposed Jackson’s policy toward the United States Bank, and (4) member of the Anti-Mason party. In states where the Whig party emerged earlier than Missouri there was a fusion of two or more of them.” In Missouri, however, Mering states that there was no coalition; the Whigs of Missouri were Adams-Clay men who supported Clay’s “American System,” i.e. protective tariffs, internal improvements, national bank.

     Today there is a new Whig Party in Missouri which claims the original Whig party as its antecedent.  Their website says they are a “moderate political party.” As I read through their website I thought, “This is pretty interesting.” Then I came to the last principle:

 “Reserved Powers – The United States is uniquely design by sovereign states which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between the national and state governing authorities. Behind the theory of the Constitution, each State, unique in its citizens, environment, history, economy, and geography, is the essential element of the general government and it can generally determine its course of action based on local values and unique needs. To this end, putting the well being and needs of the state first while keeping a good relationship with the sister states and the national governing authority which is constitutionally portrayed and preserved in the tenth Amendment.”

 I’m not sure what this means when it comes down to policy. To me, this sounds too much like the nullifiers and the states’ rights credo. While there were factions of the antebellum Whig Party that would have applauded this principle, not all would have. In fact, it was disagreements over Congress’ right to legislate on slavery in the territories that split the party. I suppose part of the problem with the principle stated here is how to define “sovereign.” That might have to be a topic for another post.

01/3/11

The Missouri Maze

     Any study of 19th century political parties is challenging to say the least. Trying to make your way through the byzantine world of 19th century Missouri politics can be downright daunting. In my research on B. Gratz Brown, I have been trying to sort through the various parties, factions, issues, and personalities that inhabit the years between Missouri’s birth as a state and the beginning of the Civil War. The political scene in Missouri and throughout the country was chaotic and in constant flux in the decades preceding the Civil War. Political parties were born and disappeared. Voters and politicians often deserted their party in favor of new alignments, or found themselves without a party. Some believed parties were created solely for the purpose of reform, and when that reform was achieved the party served no further purpose. This idea would also find expression after the war, and have a major impact on Gratz Brown’s career. It seems clear that the majority of Missourians considered themselves to be Democrats. However, they were frequently divided into factions over numerous issues. There was a Whig Party beginning in the 1840s and into the 1850s, but it never commanded a majority of the electorate and would often either sit out elections or align itself with one faction or another of the Democrats. Politicians wrestled with questions of immigration, currency, tariffs, territorial expansion, internal improvements, civil service reform, foreign policy and a host of other issues, but slavery increasingly overshadowed these other issues, and impacted how all other issues were approached. Missouri’s geographic position as a border state between North and South, and the gateway to the West, also impacted the political atmosphere in the state.[1]

    Missouri’s early ties had been primarily with the South. Many Missourians had come from southern slaveholding states, bringing their slave property with them and establishing trade ties with the cotton plantations of the Deep South by selling horses, mules, hemp, and excess slaves. Rivers were the highways of the early nineteenth century, and the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers encouraged trade with the South and through the southern port city of New Orleans. It would be easy to assign secessionist impulses to these Missourians, but that would be a mistake. To be sure, many would become pro-secession, but others would remain Unconditional Unionists. There was, for example the prominent Whig, Abiel Leonard, who one historian described as “a symbol of this group. Slaveholder and farmer, his mules and horses went to the South in droves; his hogs, barrelled or otherwise, found their way to the same market.” Leonard himself said that the Missouri River “carried upon its bosom the great commerce of the west.” Nevertheless, Leonard remained a staunch Unionist until his death in 1863.[2]

     With the advent of railroads however, many Missouri businessmen increasingly favored economic ties with the North, East, and West. Although construction of the first railroad in Missouri was not begun until 1850, a railroad convention had been held in St. Louis as early as 1835. These businessmen wanted to develop the state’s mineral resources and other industry. A look at the delegates to the railroad convention in 1835 shows that many who wanted to develop these East-West commercial ties were Whig slaveholders, such as Henry S. Geyer and Hamilton Gamble, who would become provisional governor during the war. But, Missouri Democrats also were interested in railroads. In 1849 Thomas Hart Benton, always with an eye to westward expansion, proposed in the Senate that a railroad be built all the way to the west coast. Despite his ardent commitment to Jacksonian Democracy, Benton’s bill suggested that the federal government should finance the construction of the railroad and own it.[3]

       These shifting, competing and conflicting views of Missouri’s social and economic future complicated the politics of slavery in the antebellum years. Many Missouri slaveholders, like Gamble and Leonard, would remain staunch Unionists yet still resist emancipation. As Senator, Geyer would vote for passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Leonard argued:  “The question is not what will be the future of the country when it shall be settled and a state government established, but what is its present condition now while it is still an unsettled waste? It is an insult to the slaveholder to exclude him from the country until it is settled and then tell him that the question is left to be decided by the inhabitants.” Of course, the opposite was also true; once slaveholders and their enslaved were settled, how difficult would it be to make the new territories free?[4]

     No politician looms over antebellum Missouri politics as does Thomas Hart Benton, and his positions first on currency, and then on slavery extension were major factors in dividing the Democratic Party in Missouri. I’ll be posting more about Benton.

   [1] William E. Parrish, Frank Blair: Lincoln’s Conservative,  (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 33-44; Slap, Doom of Reconstruction, 25; Wm. Rufus Jackson. Missouri Democracy: A History of the Party and its Representative Members-Past and Present, Vol I (Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., Inc., 1935), 170; John Vollmer Mering. The Whig Party in Missouri (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1967).

   [2] Frederic A. Culmer. “Abiel Leonard, Part III” in Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 27, No. 4, (July,1933), 325.

   [3] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 12-13; Howard L. Conrad, ed. Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri (New York, Louisville, St. Louis: Southern History Company, 1901), (accessed online December, 16, 2010). http://tacnet.missouri.org/history/encycmo/railroads.html ; James Neal Primm. Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri (St. Louis: Pruett Publishing Company, Second Edition, 1989), 210-220; Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, Gary R. Kremer, Kenneth H. Winn, editors. Dictionary of Missouri Biography (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 336-337.

   [4] Frederic A. Culmer. “Abiel Leonard, Part V” Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, (January, 1934), 105.

01/1/11

Border State Politician (part 2)

   Benjamin Gratz Brown sprang from an extraordinary American family of Scots-Irish descent. His grandfather, John Brown, was said to have been an aide-de camp to General Lafayette during America’s Revolutionary War. John Brown graduated from William and Mary College, and studied law with Thomas Jefferson before moving to Kentucky in 1783. He served in the Virginia State Senate and the United States House of Representatives, helped Kentucky attain statehood, and became Kentucky’s first U.S. Senator. Gratz Brown’s father, Mason Brown, became a respected judge, entertaining at his Kentucky home such guests as Lafayette, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Zachary Taylor. Gratz Brown’s mother, Judith Bledsoe, also had a Revolutionary War veteran in her pedigree and her father, Jesse Bledsoe, was a U.S. Senator before becoming a professor of law at Transylvania University. Unfortunately for Gratz Brown, his mother died when he was still in infancy.  Nevertheless, Gratz enjoyed a warm and loving childhood as his grandmother, Margaretta Mason Brown, filled the void left by his departed mother.[1]

   Margaretta Mason Brown had been born and raised in New York, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She was well educated and adhered to her Presbyterian faith throughout her life. Although she was outspoken in her opposition to slavery, she accepted the institution as part of life in Kentucky. Margaretta insisted that the Browns only kept enough slaves “as were necessary for our personal accommodation,” and that she had an “aversion to wealth purchased by the sufferings of their creatures.” She educated the enslaved children at her Kentucky home. No doubt, as a child Gratz Brown was instilled with his grandmother’s beliefs. Gratz Brown’s father and his uncle, Orlando Brown, both possessed fine libraries, which Gratz took advantage of, and he received a thorough classical education.  In 1841 he went to live with his great-uncle and namesake, Benjamin Gratz, in Lexington, and entered Transylvania University.[2]

   At the time, in addition to Benjamin Gratz’s five sons, Gratz Brown’s cousin, Frank Blair, also lived in the Gratz house and studied at Transylvania. In 1843 Benjamin Gratz’s stepson, Joseph O. Shelby came to live there as well, and although there was a four year difference in age between the two, Gratz Brown and Joseph became good friends. Politics were a frequent topic of debate, with divergent opinions held on the issues that would tragically divide the family and the nation. Shelby would later gain fame as a ruthless Confederate cavalry commander in Missouri. Benjamin Gratz and his wife were staunch advocates of Henry Clay, the Whigs, and Unionism; political philosophies that the young Gratz Brown claimed as well.[3]

     The visit in 1843 of Benjamin Gratz’s beautiful sister from Philadelphia, Rebecca Gratz, “Aunt Becky,” also caused excitement among the cousins. Gratz Brown impressed Rebecca, and he visited her often when, after graduating from Transylvania, he attended Yale from 1845-1847. (For an excellent blog dedicated to Rebecca Gratz see Rebecca Gratz & 19th Century America.) At Yale, Gratz Brown discussed and debated with his fellow students the issues of slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the preservation of the Union, which gripped the nation and led to war with Mexico in 1846. A young lieutenant from Ohio, also of Scots-Irish descent, Ulysses S. Grant, got his first taste of battle in the Mexican War and earned a brevet promotion to Captain. Grant had begun a life-long association with the state of Missouri when, upon graduation from West Point in 1843, he had been stationed at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. White Haven, the family home of a former West Point roommate, Frederick Dent, was nearby, and it was there that Grant met his future wife, Julia, Fred’s younger sister. Julia and Ulysses married in St. Louis in 1848. The paths of Grant and Brown would eventually cross, though not for several years, as Grant’s military career took him first to Michigan and New York, and then to the west coast.[4]

   During a break from studies in 1847, Gratz Brown visited Silver Springs, the home of another great-uncle, Francis Preston Blair, Sr., in Maryland. Blair held some political sway in the capitol city of Washington, and was joint publisher of the Congressional Globe. His sons, Frank and Montgomery, became attorneys and moved to Missouri where they practiced law and were ardent supporters of Thomas Hart Benton. At Silver Springs Gratz Brown was exposed to a good dose of Jacksonian Democracy, but in a letter to his Uncle Orlando he declared his continuing commitment to the Whig party. “I scarce think that General Jackson himself – if he were to rise bodily from the grave, could win me from the true cause. I am sure no lesser satellite could do so,” he boldly stated.[5]

   After completing his studies at Yale, Gratz Brown returned to Kentucky to study law under his father, and then entered Louisville Law School. The slavery issue continued to torment the country as Congress debated the Wilmot Proviso. David Wilmot, a congressman from Pennsylvania, wanted a ban on slavery in any territory acquired as a result of the war with Mexico. In the course of these debates, Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed merely extending the Missouri Compromise line of 36˚ 30˝ all the way to the west coast. All these attempts to restrict slavery’s growth were defeated. Ominously, the pro-slavery votes and anti-slavery votes split along sectional lines rather than party lines. In the aftermath of the debates, northern anti-slavery Democrats split from their party, joined anti-slavery Whigs and the Liberty Party, to form the Free Soil Party in New York. Gratz Brown followed these events with great interest. In Kentucky an emancipation convention was held in April 1849. Kentuckians had voted to hold a constitutional convention to draft a new state constitution and the emancipationists hoped to have an anti-slavery provision included. Though emancipation sentiment was relatively strong in Kentucky, even among slaveholders, no emancipationists were elected to the constitutional convention. Instead, a clause was included in the new constitution that said any newly freed slaves were required to leave the state or be jailed. Despite being slaveholders themselves, the Browns vehemently opposed this measure, and allowed several of their slaves to purchase their own freedom before the new law took effect.[6]

To be continued…..

   [1] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 1-3; Liberty Hall Historic Site website http://www.libertyhall.org/family.htm (accessed December 15, 2010).

   [2] Gratz Brown’s maternal grandmother, Sarah Howard Gist, had four younger sisters; one, Elizabeth Violet married Francis Preston Blair, Sr; another, Maria Cecil married Benjamin Gratz.  http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~raggmopp79/Gist.html; Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 4; Liberty Hall Historic Site website http://www.libertyhall.org/margarettabrown.htm (accessed December 15, 2010).

   [3] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 5; Daniel O’Flaherty. General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1954).

   [4] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 6; William E. Parrish. Frank Blair: Lincoln’s Conservative (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 1-2; Jean Edward Smith. Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 29-31, 73-77.

   [5] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 7.

   [6] Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 9-10.