Dec 1863–Fugitive Slave Law Schizophrenia in the North, King Cotton Implodes in the South and the Civil War is not Over

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

The oblig­a­tion of states to return run­away slaves was writ­ten into the Con­sti­tu­tion; how­ev­er, the issue became a bar­gain­ing chip in the great Com­pro­mise of 1850 and con­tin­ued to be a light­ning rod between North and South in the run up to the war. Once the war did begin, the Con­fed­er­ate gov­ern­ment in the South devel­oped the strat­e­gy of King Cot­ton diplo­ma­cy to lever­age their might and get their way with Great Britain. The deci­sion in 1861 would prove to be dis­as­trous. Although the war offi­cial­ly end­ed four years lat­er with Lee’s sur­ren­der of Grant at Appo­mat­tox, for some today–it still isn’t over!

Decem­ber 5, 1863 Danville North Star

The fugi­tive slave law is now and then enforced in Wash­ing­ton. A case occurred on Sat­ur­day in which a negro boy was claimed by a cit­i­zen of Mary­land. The own­er on tak­ing the oath of loy­al­ty and prov­ing own­er­ship had his slave returned to him.

***

The Fugi­tive Slave Act of 1850 that was on the books at the time had its roots in a clause writ­ten by our found­ing fathers into the Con­sti­tu­tion: “No Per­son held to Ser­vice or Labour in one State, under the Laws there­of, escap­ing into anoth­er, shall, in Con­se­quence of any Law or Reg­u­la­tion there­in, be dis­charged from such Ser­vice or Labour, but shall be deliv­ered up on Claim of the Par­ty to whom such Ser­vice or Labour may be due.” The pro­vi­sion was also more right­eous­ly called the “Fugi­tives from Labor Clause.”

In essence, the law required com­plic­i­ty and assis­tance of North­ern states in enforc­ing slave labor laws in the South. How­ev­er, by 1850 the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape had changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Over time many North­ern states enact­ed legal means to sub­vert the Con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion and the law that sup­port­ed it. “Per­son­al lib­er­ty laws” in North­ern states made jury tri­als a pre­req­ui­site to the return of any slave and for­bade local or state offi­cials from effec­tive­ly imple­ment­ing the Fugi­tive Slave law.

The influ­ence of the stri­dent abo­li­tion­ist move­ment, which hat­ed both the sin of slav­ery and the slave­hold­er alike, drove much of the resis­tance. South­ern elites coun­tered with their own the­o­log­i­cal con­struct; by mak­ing the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist argu­ment that slav­ery was “divine­ly inspired” and cit­ing the fact that there are numer­ous bib­li­cal ref­er­ences to slav­ery, they argued the prac­tice is not explic­it­ly cit­ed as a sin.

But the heat upon the South con­tin­ued to increase with some reli­gious groups, such as the Quak­ers, work­ing to help slaves escape from the South through the Under­ground Rail­road which spir­it­ed blacks north and on to as far as Cana­da. The con­flict between the two regions had esca­lat­ed beyond the reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal to the eco­nom­ic with pas­sions ris­ing accordingly.

Racist sen­ti­ment in the North remained strong with many peo­ple who did not want blacks in their midst. Despite these feel­ings among many whites, there were pock­ets in the North where run­away slaves and their fam­i­lies could live, farm and pros­per. One such place was Cass Coun­ty in Michi­gan. This cap­tured the atten­tion of slave hold­ers in Ken­tucky, who in 1847 and 1849 con­duct­ed raids upon the coun­ty to take back their property.

By 1850, the coun­try was com­ing apart, and South­ern states threat­ened to secede. How­ev­er, a Civ­il War was avert­ed for 11 years because Sen­a­tors Hen­ry Clay of Ken­tucky and Stephen Dou­glas of Illi­nois bro­kered a deal. One of the most con­tentious issues was whether new states would come into the Union slave or free. So as part of the great com­pro­mise of 1850, US ter­ri­to­ries were split in half by a nego­ti­at­ed line that pro­vid­ed the geog­ra­phy above it would come in as free states, and all new states below as slave. The new states of Maine and Mis­souri, the for­mer free and the lat­ter slave, were admit­ted to the Union as part of the deal that main­tained the Con­gres­sion­al bal­ance of pow­er between slave inter­ests and those who opposed it.

In addi­tion, the South demand­ed in the 1850 Com­pro­mise a new and more robust Fugi­tive Slaves Act. The law effec­tive­ly imposed a $28,000 (in today’s pur­chas­ing pow­er) fine on any US mar­shal or any oth­er law-enforce­ment offi­cial who did not arrest a run­away slave. His own­er mere­ly had to present a sworn tes­ti­mo­ny of own­er­ship. Those who aid­ed and abet­ted those slaves were sub­ject to the same fine and impris­on­ment for six months.

But the Com­pro­mise would prove to be a band-aid; it was a cat­a­lyst for even more North­ern resis­tance against slav­ery and led to the proxy war in Kansas between Free-Soil­ers and slave inter­ests. Kansas would see its own guer­ril­la war orga­nized and fund­ed by com­pet­ing inter­ests in the North and the South. Two sep­a­rate governments–one free, one slave—were in con­test for pow­er with­in its bor­ders. And the his­toric 1858 debate between two Illi­nois can­di­dates for the Sen­ate, Lin­coln and Dou­glas, occurred. Lin­coln argued that Kansas be admit­ted to the Union as a free state, because slav­ery was immoral; Stephen Dou­glas thought that “pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty” should be main­tained and that the peo­ple of the state should decide the slave ques­tion for them­selves. This ques­tion would be one of the issues that caused the coun­try to come apart at the seams three years later.

The expe­ri­ence of that black boy in the nation’s cap­i­tal on a Sat­ur­day after­noon in Decem­ber of 1863, in the midst of a civ­il war, was reflec­tive of our country’s tor­tured his­to­ry. By virtue of the great Com­pro­mise of 1850, slave trade had been banned in Wash­ing­ton DC ‚and yet the young man, who escaped the Union state of Mary­land, where slav­ery was a Con­sti­tu­tion­al right and pro­tect­ed by the fugi­tive slave pro­vi­sion of an eleven-year-old law, was giv­en back to his own­er and sent back into human bondage.

War and General New Items

It is said that the cot­ton which will be thrown into the mar­ket by our occu­pa­tion of Texas will amount to 250,000 bales.

***

At the end of his life, US Grant wrote in his mem­oirs that the Civ­il War would not have hap­pened with­out the cot­ton gin. Eli Whitney’s inven­tion of this machine, back in 1794, enabled the cul­ti­va­tion of cot­ton in many areas of the coun­try, includ­ing the Deep South. The gin breathed new life into the prac­tice of slav­ery by mak­ing cot­ton farm­ing more pro­duc­tive and eco­nom­i­cal­ly sustainable.

By 1861 cot­ton had become as impor­tant to the glob­al econ­o­my as oil is today. The entire South was depen­dent on this cash crop that was America’s num­ber one export. For the Con­fed­er­a­cy, cot­ton was the rev­enue spig­ot to fund the gov­ern­ment and buy arms. It also pro­vid­ed the South con­sid­er­able lever­age in nego­ti­a­tions with pow­er­ful coun­tries in Europe, espe­cial­ly Britain.

In fact, the rebel gov­ern­ment craft­ed much of its diplo­mat­ic strat­e­gy on a crop that could become fod­der for the boll wee­vil. The locust did not come to pass; how­ev­er, the South did much to shoot itself in the foot. The weapon that was the tool of this self-inflict­ed strat­e­gy was called King Cot­ton diplo­ma­cy. The goal was to force Britain to for­mal­ly rec­og­nize the Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca as an inde­pen­dent nation, sup­ply arma­ments for the war and per­haps enter the con­flict on the South’s behalf. In a move that in hind­sight seems to be a case of “cut­ting your nose off to spite your face,” the Con­fed­er­a­cy decid­ed to cut off cot­ton sup­plies to Eng­land, its biggest trad­ing part­ner and a dom­i­nant play­er in the glob­al tex­tile industry.

Before the Civ­il War, the South was send­ing about 678 mil­lion bales of cot­ton to Great Britain, rep­re­sent­ing about three-quar­ters of the island’s man­u­fac­tur­ing con­sump­tion. In order to kick-off the King Cot­ton pro­gram, the South set 2.5 mil­lion bales afire to cre­ate a cot­ton short­age. The Con­fed­er­a­cy could then export less than half of the commodity’s orig­i­nal amount. To make mat­ters worse, Jef­fer­son Davis for­got to take into account that the bumper crops through­out the 1850’s had been shipped to Britain. Over the three or four years lead­ing up to the Civ­il War, its trad­ing part­ner had built up a stock­pile of one-mil­lion bales before the war began.

Britain was able to wait out the “cot­ton famine” well into 1862. When cot­ton drought did come, the price per bale shot through the roof, going from ten-cents a pound in 1860 to $1.89 a pound in ’63 –’64. But nar­cis­sism had caused the South to unknow­ing­ly give up their place in the catbird’s seat. After the Con­fed­er­a­cy had lit the match in ‘61 to mil­lions of bales in the name of King Cot­ton, Great Britain had turned to oth­er export­ing nations like Egypt, Brazil and India.

From ’63 on, the South was able to use cot­ton to barter with British man­u­fac­tur­ers to sup­ply them with weapon­ry, ammu­ni­tion, and ships. The Union block­ade of South­ern coast­lines also depressed the avail­abil­i­ty of cot­ton and helped cre­ate a black mar­ket for the crop, allow­ing block­ade run­ners to real­ize prof­its of 300 to 500 per­cent and chalk the loss of some ships to Union cap­ture as a mere busi­ness expense. This black mar­ket also pre­sent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for graft and cor­rup­tion in the Union Army. Mil­i­tary offi­cers con­spired with “oper­a­tors” in the North who would then “move prod­uct” to near­by tex­tile man­u­fac­tur­ers. So where did the 250,000 bales of Texas cot­ton go? What mon­ey end­ed up in whose pock­et is anybody’s guess.

Mean­while, the Union was still dither­ing in the East­ern The­atre, but US Grant would soon take over.

Decem­ber 12, 1863 Danville North Star

Late Rich­mond (Va.) Papers give mea­ger accounts of the recent oper­a­tions in Ten­nessee and Geor­gia, but what a “ter­ri­ble dis­as­ter” is frankly admit­ted … there is a strong tone of gloom, dis­ap­point­ment and depres­sion per­vad­ing the South­ern com­mu­ni­ty in con­se­quence of this rebel defeat. Bragg is denounced in unspar­ing lan­guage and his removal is demand­ed with­out delay. Longstreet’s posi­tion in East Ten­nessee, after many pos­i­tive asser­tions of great suc­cess, is final­ly admit­ted to be pre­car­i­ous, and there is hard­ly a gleam of hope or con­fi­dence to be extract­ed from any point of the rebel mil­i­tary sit­u­a­tion by even the hope­ful and defi­ant rebel jour­nals themselves.

Washington News

Wash­ing­ton, Dec 4 – The Star, under the head of “The Army of the Potomac and Its Hes­i­tat­ing Gen­er­als,” says: -

“So long as our army in this quar­ter con­tin­ues to be guid­ed by its present coun­cils in the field, it is now clear that it will fail to com­mand pub­lic confidence…So if Lee, rely­ing upon a con­tin­u­ance of the chron­ic hes­i­tan­cy that has afflict­ed the coun­cils of Gen Meade, ven­tures to rein­force Longstreet con­sid­er­ably from his own army, which he has yet time at least to attempt, the Gov­ern­ment will prompt­ly seek to make him pay dear for his temer­i­ty, as our, Army of Potomac is ready at this moment to move again as it was when under­tak­ing to do so in a few days since.”

Decem­ber 26, 1863 Danville North Star

War and General New Items

John Mor­gan, the escaped gueril­la chief, has reached Rich­mond and Davis has giv­en him the com­mand in the Army of Georgia.

***

John Hunt Mor­gan was a Con­fed­er­ate cav­al­ry com­man­der. His cav­al­ry trav­elled light and lived off the land. He made raids into the North, includ­ing one where he ram­paged and raised hav­oc in Indi­ana and Ohio for two-and-a-half weeks, over­run­ning local mili­tias. How­ev­er, the Union cav­al­ry inter­vened and chased him all the way into Penn­syl­va­nia. Mor­gan and his offi­cers were thrown into the Ohio State Pen­i­ten­tiary, but he tun­neled out the facil­i­ty and found his way back to Geor­gia to fight again. A year lat­er he man­aged to get him­self killed, which no doubt helped him earn a spot in the pan­theon of “Lost Cause” mythology.

The South’s post-war revi­sion­ism, called “The Lost Cause,” is still going strong today. Among oth­er things, Lost Causers believe that seces­sion was legal, slav­ery is not a moral abom­i­na­tion, and the North start­ed the Civ­il War because they opposed the spread of slav­ery into new US territory.

They ral­ly around the Con­fed­er­ate flag and peti­tion local gov­ern­ments to name schools and town squares after peo­ple like Gen­er­al Nathan Bed­ford For­rest. For­rest was a slave-trad­er extra­or­di­naire. He orches­trat­ed the mas­sacre of USCT (US Col­ored Troops) after their sur­ren­der at Fort Pil­low and was the orig­i­na­tor and first Grand Wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan, a para­mil­i­tary group that ter­ror­ized and killed blacks and those sym­pa­thet­ic to their cause after the Civ­il War and well into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. There is a KKK group in exis­tence today whose require­ments are that you be white, Chris­t­ian and not have been con­vict­ed of being a pedophile. All oth­er white Chris­t­ian crim­i­nals are eli­gi­ble for membership.