 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Community Matters, and part of community, is understanding where we came from. You can't understand the present, let alone the future, if you don't understand the past. Not to say that the past necessarily repeats itself in every detail, but it informs us. And that means you're going to talk to a history professor once in a while, John David Ann of HBU, he's a professor of history there, and he comes to talk to us about strains of human development in this country that affect our lives today. Welcome back to the show, John. Thanks, Jay. It's a pleasure to be here. Let's talk about the Civil War. Let's talk about the threads in American history going way back when that led to the confrontation in the Civil War. Right, so it's really interesting, but the Civil War and the aftermath of the Civil War and the causes of the Civil War are still with us today. You can do polling in the major pollsters. They do polling about this, and they get really strong responses, very kind of heartfelt, heated responses to questions about the causes of the Civil War and the impact of the Civil War, et cetera. So I became very interested in one of these polls, and this is really what's generating my interest in this show. It was a poll by the Pew Charitable Trust done in 2011, it was the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. And if we can bring it up, it's an important poll because it shows some numbers that have been very stubborn and kind of stuck. And so, yeah, so you can ignore three-quarters of it, just go down to the bottom of the poll. It says, your impression of the main cause of the Civil War, mainly about states' rights, 48%, mainly about slavery, it's 38%. That's what got me agitated into the show, because what it shows is that there's still a lot of American people who believe that states' rights was at the base of the causes of the Civil War. And it allows, in some ways, it allows us to get off the hook on the issue of slavery. Because when we look at the causes of the Civil War, slavery is front and center for the 15 years before the Civil War begins. It is the cause of the Civil War. And when states' rights is a part of discussions about secession and discussions about, you know, contemplating a break and maybe even a war, it's connected to the question of whether or not southern states have the right to determine whether or not they can keep slaves. So even states' rights is wrapped up with the slavery. Yeah, it's all about the right of the state to allow slavery. You know, I used to think, and I think maybe some of my thinking is derivative of our earlier discussions, is that it was an economic thing. I think I heard from you at the time the Civil War began, two-thirds of the millionaires in the country were from the south. Why? Because they had this incredible system where they would buy an asset, namely a slave, and then they would own not only that slave, but the progeny of that slave went on for generations. This was the best investment you could ever make, and they became wealthy. Yes, no, that's true. The six millionaires were from the south at the time the Civil War broke out. And so it was both, you know, the slaves were so efficient because they were property, but they were also labor, so capital and labor combined together. And so, yeah, I mean, the slave owners had a very strong economic incentive to fight whatever battle they needed to keep their slaves, because their slaves were making them wealthy. I think I've said this before, too, that slaves built America in its early stages because they were slaves, not just in the south, but in the north as well. And in the south, of course, they are the primary source of labor. Four million slaves by the time of the Civil War out of a population of about 12 million in the south. So they're terribly important to the destiny of the slaveholding state. But this goes back, you know, we speak with reverence about the Constitution. We speak with reverence about all men are created equal and was a declaration. And yet, if we go back there, we find, and I remember my own history courses at this point, you remind me, we go back there. We find that, yes, it's all very romantic, but it was flawed. On this point, it was flawed from the very outset. Yes, so there are a couple of places in the Constitution where slavery is referenced. So the three-fifths clause of the Constitution, which is how you count a population for deciding how many representatives you have in the Congress, the three-fifths clause allowed slaves in the south to be counted as three-fifths of a typical person, right, of a free white person. So that's in there. And there's also a fugitive slave law in the Constitution. And this was a law which would allow slave owners to go north and recapture their escaped slaves. It was a weak fugitive slave law, but nonetheless, it was there. It was in the thinking of the founders. The greatest founders, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, they're all slaveholders. They all own many slaves, hundreds of slaves. Hundreds of abolitionists at the time. Was this a negotiated result, these provisions that seemed to support slavery, or was it just, you know, unanimous? Yeah, it's a good question. There was actually. So the revolution itself and revolutionary ideas, ironically, written by a slaveholder in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson waxed and waned on slavery all the time. But so the Declaration of Independence and the drive to implement those principles frees up a lot of people, including Southerners, but really in the north, this really takes hold where the Northern colonies act very quickly once the American Revolution begins to free their slaves. By the end, by the time the Constitution is approved in 1791, and we've got a new nation with a more sophisticated Constitution, then almost all of the Northern states have released their slaves. Delaware, if you call that a Northern state, they still have slavery. This was before 1800. Correct. And what they do is they have gradual emancipation. So they don't actually just let them all go, but so that it doesn't hurt the economy. Yeah, sure. They just gradually emancipate slaves as they come to a certain age. And by 1827, I think, a sojourner truth, the famous abolitionist, the African-American female abolitionist, she is actually freed from slavery in 1827. So it comes quite slowly, but nonetheless, the revolutionary ideas are there, and they're pushing people to think about abolishing slavery. Big question. So if everyone had slaves going into the New Republic, why just the north abolishes slavery? Gradually, however, but what was present in the north? Yeah, so it makes me smile because there is an idealism among not just Northerners, but also Southerners that comes into the revolutionary era. And even into 1800, Thomas Jefferson believed that eventually slavery would be abolished. Jefferson saw it as a necessary evil. And George Washington manumitted his slaves when he died. In his will, he freed his slaves. So Southerners also got this idealism of the founding of the country. But something happens, and it happens fairly early in the 1800s. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson makes a deal with France to buy the Louisiana Purchase. And if we can put up the Missouri Compromise, we'll get to the Missouri Compromise in a minute, but it's a good... So you see that unorganized territory down through Arkansas and Louisiana, that's the Louisiana Purchase. Now, the Louisiana Purchase was mostly unorganized, but in the southern part, Jefferson was absolutely delighted to allow his fellow slaveholders to move into this new territory, which happened to be very rich in its soil, and it was easy to grow cotton because cotton plantation in the eastern part of the country was wearing the soil out. So now they could expand into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and even into eastern Texas and Arkansas. So two things come out of that for me. Number one is that if you have large tracts of land, you have, for the time, big agriculture instead of small, diversified agriculture that you would find in New England, in the rocky terrain of New England, in small farms, you need staffing, you need labor to build big agriculture. It's just like in Hawaii. The people who are in those plantations were not too far off from slaves, really. And so I suppose that as a practical economic matter, you had to find cheap labor, this was cheap labor. So the other thing that happens is the cotton gin is invented in 1793, and this really changes up cotton plantation. It allows planters to plant much bigger fields of cotton, many more anchors of cotton because they can process the cotton very quickly with the cotton gin. Cotton gin pushes the seeds out of the cotton, makes it ready for production into cloth. So the cotton gin and the Louisiana Purchase allow, they really revive the institution of slavery in the South. Interesting. Technology. Yeah, and push it forward. So if you combine that, and then what happens is, of course, southern plantation owners, they buy land in the deep South, they move their slaves into the deep South. So the people who would have slaves are moving toward the territories that allow slavery. Absolutely. The capital was flowing to big agriculture. Absolutely, yes, yes, yes, right, that's right. The slave trade in Washington, D.C., most of those slaves that were sold were sold what we called down the river to the deep South, because that's where the labor need was. And the division was starting. The division that ultimately led to the war was starting geographically. It's a reconformation of this institution which is controversial, right, the institution of slavery which is controversial. And so you have that development taking place. And so the other thing, so that's the slave side, if we can move to the state's right side for just a minute. One of the things that happens is the United States doesn't get directly involved in the French Revolution, but it gets sort of involved in the French Revolution with the French wanting the United States to go on the side of the French. There are the British wanting us to go on the side of the British. The British are stopping our merchant ships and taking our sailors and the French begin to do some of the same. And it's a real crisis for this young republic. And it puts a lot of pressure on the government. And in 1798, the Adams administration, John Adams is now the president, Washington has retired. So there's a lot of attacks on Adams. Adams becomes pro-British, Jefferson pro-French. There's this tremendous factionalism that's going on in the American government and it's really hostile. I mean Adams and Jefferson, they don't talk to each other in this time period. They're sworn enemies. Adams decides, you know what, I'm done putting up with all this carping and criticism, so the national government passes a law called the Alien and Sedition Act in 1798. This is a law that basically says, if you criticize the national government, we can throw you in jail. It's a very punitive law, which is, you know, it's unconstitutional. It sounds like, yeah, unconstitutional. This was a bad break only a few years after the Constitution was adopted. That's right. But the Adams administration approves that Jefferson and his allies are outraged. They believe it contravenes the Constitution of free speech. It's just very bad for the republic. So Jefferson and Madison decide to speak out against this and their way of doing this is to write resolutions that are proposed before state legislature. So Jefferson writes a resolution that's proposed before the Kentucky legislature. It's called the Kentucky Resolutions. And one of the Kentucky resolutions proposes that if things go far enough that the states should consider seceding from the union, Jefferson described in this... Go far enough where? Well, tension between the Adams administration and his opponents. If it goes far enough, secession is an option because Jefferson describes in that resolution. He describes the United States as a free and voluntary compact of states. That's where the compact... Confederation. Yeah, compact theory of government comes into being with the Kentucky resolutions. James Madison writes resolutions for Virginia. And James Madison's resolutions are more moderate. Madison says, you know, we should stop short of secession. We can protest against the national government. We can organize protests. We should petition the national government to change this law. So it's a much more moderate approach, really in line with what we think of as the kind of protests we can do today. But these are profound disagreements, profound legal controversies at a time when the republic was very young. Exactly. And Jefferson, the innovator, seems to always be innovating. The compact theory of government is picked up. It's picked up. And after he's gone, then John C. Calhoun is really the one who picks up this theory of government. It's contravened completely by other legal scholars and by other presidents. Lincoln rejects the compact theory of government. He believes that what happens when the country is founded and the Constitution is written is that the American people, as a people, form a union. And that union, because it's formed not by particular states, but by the people of the whole United States, that it is inviolable. So big difference. There's a huge difference. But they were rethinking the whole thing, right? This conversation, or argument as the case may be, is getting right under the basic tenets of the Constitution. That's right. So Jefferson and others of his ilk are making this kind of argument. And what happens is the state's rights argument gets coupled to the slavery issue. So what happens then, as the country expands, as the territory from the Louisiana Purchase becomes populated and then proposed to allow those territories to become states of the union, then you have this question, should they come in as free or slave? What a perfect time for us to take a break. Because this is really an important thing. And we take one break, come back, and we'll inquire into the implications of that new system about allowing new states. We'll be right back with John David Ann about the Civil War and the things that led up to the Civil War right after this break. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We're hiding the host of Voice of the Veteran, seen here live every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. As a fellow veteran and veterans advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans, active duty, and family members, I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1 p.m. for the Voice of the Veteran, alone. All right, we're back. We're live with John David Ann. It was kind of a cliffhanger before we left. And we're talking about all these new states coming in in the period between what, 1820? Yeah, 1819 is the first batch. And the first state in of this group is Missouri. And the people of Missouri have proposed to come in. And if we bring that slide up, the people of Missouri propose to come in as a slave state. And, of course, southern slaveholders in the Congress are delighted. And it needs to be shrunk down. This is quite different from the picture we saw earlier. Yeah, and that's actually a different one. But that's the compromise of 1850. If we can bring up there, there's the Missouri compromise. Right, so what happens is in the Congress, all of a sudden there's a crisis. Why? Because before Missouri, there are 11 free and 11 slave states. This is very important for congressional representation and number of senators. So that means that there was this notion about if we have a majority of slave states versus non-slave states, then that's tilting in that direction. We can do whatever we want or we can expand slavery. I mean, there's all kinds of potentialities there. So there's a crisis. And Thomas Jefferson describes this as a fire bell tolling in the night. He sees this as a crisis of the Union. He understands it that way. He was right. He's Christian. Yes, he's absolutely right. And understanding the implications are huge for the country. So there's this debate in the Congress. And there are a few who say, hey, Kentucky resolutions, we could secede. There are not many who even go there with that debate. It's very frightening, I think, for the national government. But it's in the conversation. Well, it's just barely in the conversation in 1819. But so there is this crisis. And there are senators who work and congressmen who work to resolve it. And the compromise is made. The compromise, and if we can bring that map back up, the compromise is that Missouri will come in as a free, pardon me, a slave state. Is this the one you want? Yeah, I think so, yeah. And then up there on the way right, Maine is admitted in 1820 as a free state. So 12 and 12, the balance is restored. And then you have a line that's drawn under Missouri. And this is a compromise by southern slaveholders. Under Missouri, you draw that to the end of the Louisiana Purchase and bingo, you've got a compromise that both sides can live with. That's not the Mason-Dixon line, is it? No, no, this is way before. That's correct. The Mason-Dixon line is up on the bottom of Pennsylvania. But this is called the Missouri Compromise Line. And it's, of course, before the United States is a continental power. It's the Spanish control, all kinds of territory that is part of the United States today. But as the United States grew, there were forces that wanted to have their theory, their theory of government imposed by achieving more slave states or more non-slave states. Right, so by 1820 then, slavery has become a going concern, and especially in the deep south and to the west. Those states are immensely profiting from slavery, so they're not likely to give up slavery or to even limit it in any way, except they were willing to draw a line there that limits it in the Louisiana Purchase territory. Let me add this, though, John, in Europe at the same time. My recollection is right around the same time slavery was being abolished. In Britain, for example, in the 1830s, right? Before this. Even before this. Yeah, in the late 18th century, yeah. Okay, so we were more and more standing alone. The British abolished it in the French soon after. Yes, yeah, yeah. We were standing alone with institutionalized slavery that was not only... Not completely alone, though. The America's slavery was commonplace in the Central and South America. And there was still great demand for slaves. The British had, by this time, stopped the... They had vowed to stop the slave trade. The United States government in 1808 agrees to stop the slave trade, because by this time they're doing slavery through reproduction, they don't really need the slave trade. Right. But something you said before, namely that at least some people knew that it was not sustainable, that ultimately slavery would have to go. Was this a view generally held in the South? Well, so, no, it was becoming so. It goes from Jefferson saying this is a necessary evil to others who are now profiting immensely from slavery, going, well, this is actually quite profitable. This is a positive good. It's positive for my bottom line. And the argument goes that it's positive for the slave, because we take care of the slave into old age. That's actually a fable that's not actually true. They weren't taking care of the slaves. They were refusing the slaves. What they did with slaves in old age is they would take them out to a cabin in the woods and starve them to death. So, yeah, but at any rate. So, yeah, the slaveholders had become more powerful in the national government, and they're more committed to their institution, because it's much more profitable. They were uprisings in that same period. The Nat Turner we talked about. That's right. And culturally, the South becomes kind of a place apart from the North, and slavery fits into the plantation system. And the culture of the South is looked at by many Northerners as this kind of disgusting, degrading culture of oppression and inequality. So, the tensions are not just economic, but they're also culture. But economics, of course, plays a very big role. And the line deepens. It deepens. It does deepen. So, one thing that abets the divide between the North and the South is the rise of a new abolitionism in the 1830s. Before the 1830s, abolitionism really consisted of elites arguing that maybe slavery should be abolished. Jefferson was actually a part of a group called the Colonization Organization. And Jefferson believed that, yes, maybe slavery should be abolished, but the slaves are freed, then they should be sent back to Africa. And this was kind of the premise of the Colonization Society. That wasn't the humanitarian thing. That was just to get rid of them. Honestly, Jefferson wrote about this. He thought a great deal about this. He believed that the African was incompatible with the life and the principles of a white American government. And he makes it very clear as to why he thinks this. They're incompatible and their intellect is inferior. Their apprehension, their attitude, their ability to kind of focus is inferior to whites. He makes this very clear. So, he's putting out there the fundamental inferiority of slaves while he's actually sleeping with a slave. So, anyway, Jefferson's a very complicated historical figure. And the engagement of the slaves and the owners, they took the slaves to bed with them. They had kids. There were all these haphazardly kids running around. In fact, in the movie Lincoln, Spielberg's movie, one of the chief legislators was actually married to a former slave. So, I mean, the engagement between the races was actually at some level increasing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it was a function of slavery in the South on the plantation. There was lots of interaction. But so, what happens in the 1830s is that abolitionism becomes linked to this very powerful evangelical movement. What's called the Second Great Awakening is happening. And these evangelicals decide that slavery is a sin. And they're growing in numbers dramatically. They come from the North. North and South. Evangelicalism just booms in this time period. 25% of the population converts to some form of evangelical Christianity between 1800 and 1840. So, it's this enormous wave of religious piety that comes in. This was a big issue for them. Yes, this becomes the crucial issue for many, not so much for Southerners, although there are Southern abolitionists. But especially Northern religious organizations take on slavery and they move very aggressively to build an abolitionist kind of wave. And that wave really frightens Southern slaveholders because they can see their way of life and their economy going away of slavery. Exactly. And that probably had a big effect because that reached a lot of people and suggested, yes, we can do an underground railway. Yeah. So Lincoln, after the book, is Uncle Tom's cabinet is published that Lincoln actually meets with Harriet Beecher's Stowe. This is during the Civil War. And Lincoln says, so you're the little lady who started the Civil War. The power of the press. So it's this enormous movement, and it really pushes Southerners into this very staunch defensive slavery. And it divides the country. Double down. Yes. Yes. The base. Exactly. No, they do. They double down. And so there's about 20 years of quiescence, shall we say, 25 years actually. But by the 1840s then the issue of slavery in the territories is just pressing down upon the government of the United States. The reason for this is the Mexican War. The United States fights the Mexican government in a war, a pretty short, very profitable war. That's exactly right. We gain California territory, New Mexico and Arizona territory, Utah. That whole area of the West, along with the session from the British of Washington and Oregon, becomes ours. Very profitable war. A very profitable war indeed. And so the question is, what of these new territories, slavery or not, slave or free? Big question. So this becomes the dominant debate in Washington in the late 1840s. And so what emerges is a political movement and a political party. It's called the Free Soil Party. And I have a poster here before we're done. It's a poster of Martin Van Buren. There he is. Van Buren and Charles F. Adams of the famous Adams family, John and his progeny. And Van Buren and Adams, they run on the Free Soil ticket in 1848. They formed this political party. And the Free Soil ideology or the commitment is to make the territories free of slaves, no slaves in the new territories. And this, of course, is an abomination to Southern slaveholders. And the Free Soilers, no, it's not that the Free Soilers are all enlightened abolitionists. Not true at all, actually. Many Free Soilers are rabid racists. They don't actually want Black labor competing with their own labor in these new territories. And there are many laws that are passed in the states that emerge from these new territories. Some of them, you can't actually go to these states if you're an African-American. So it's not, the abolitionism part of this goes into the Free Soil Party a bit. But there's also a lot of plain old racism and kind of this separation between whites. But it's really about the land of the West being made free, not degraded by slave labor and slave holders. And it's so Free Soil, Free Labor is the slogan of the Free Soil Party. Now they don't do very well in the election. What other parties were there at the time? Well, there's the Democratic Party, which is- We're seeking slavery. It has a very strong base in the South among slaveholders. It's both North and South, but it has a very strong base in the South. And then the Whig Party, which has also a very strong base in the South, we're still in a time period where political parties are national, they're not sectional yet. It's in the 1850s that political parties become sectional. So- And the Republican Party did not get established until what, Lincoln? That's really the first sectional party. The Republican Party becomes the party of the North, the party of preventing slavery from spreading. Many abolitionists go into the Republican Party and then the party of Lincoln, the party of freeing the slaves. Freeing the slave Republicans. Gee, how times have changed, eh? That's exactly right. It was a very proud party and a party with a great history, actually. But so the Free Soilers, they don't do very well in the election of 1848, but they're there. And for them, slavery in the territories is the only issue. And it brings it on the national agenda in a way that cannot be ignored. And so by 1850, if we have time, by 1850, then the national government is at loggerheads again over this issue, the same issue of the compromise. Coming to a head. The same issue. It would still be 11 years before the Civil War started. That's correct. If you were standing there now in 1850, you could see it coming to a nasty head. Because in the late 1840s, there's a relative balance of free and slave states. That's going to get pushed all out of whack with these new territories. That's correct. Sean, what a wonderful time, a wonderful moment to suspend our conversation. We'll come back to this. We'll come back to 1850. Talk about the compromise of 1850. Yeah. Okay. We'll be back. We're going to do more of this. And so you say, write on your notes. We stopped at the compromise just before the compromise of 1850. Think Tech, acting modern, talking about today, because all of this is relevant to today. That's correct. Great to talk to you. Good to be here.