IV.

SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR

Bibliographies.

(1856-1865).

95. References.

Lalor's Cyclopædia (Johnston's articles on "Secession," "Dred Scott Case," "Rebellion," "Confederate States "); W. E. Foster's References to the History of Presidential Administrations, 40-49; C. K. Adams's Manual of Historical Literature, 566-581, 602 ff., 663-666; Bartlett's Literature of the Rebellion; T. O. Sumner, in Papers of American Historical Association, iv. 332345; A. B. Hart's Federal Government, § 40.

Historical Maps. - Nos. 3, 4, this volume (Epoch Maps, Nos. 12, 13); MacCoun's Historical Geography, series "National Growth," 1848-1853, 1853-1889; series "Development of the Commonwealth,” 1861, 1863; Labberton's Historical Atlas, pl. lxxi.; Scribner's Statistical Atlas, pl. 16; Comte de Paris's History of the Civil War in America, Atlas; Scudder's History of the United States, 375, 378, 386, 396, 401, 403, 411; Theodore A. Dodge's Bird's-Eye View of the Civil War, passim; Johnston's School History of the United States, 293.

General Accounts.-Johnston's American Politics, chaps. xix., xx.; Patton's Concise History of the United States, cnaps. lvii.-lxv. (to p. 963); Bryant and Gay's History of the United Sta.es, iv., chaps. xvi.-xxiii.; Ridpath's Popular History of the United States, chaps. Ix.-lxvi.; H. von Holst's Constitutional History of the United States, vi., vii. (to 1861); J. F. Rhodes's History of the United States, ii. (1854-1860); James Schouler's History of the United States, v. 370512 (to 1861); Jefferson Davis's Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. (parts i., iii.), vol. ii.; Henry Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, ii. (chaps. xxv.-lv.), iii. (chaps. i.-xxxi.) James G. Blaine's Twenty Years of Congress, i. (chaps. vii.-xxvi.) J. G. Nicolay and John Hay's Abraham Lincoln, a History, vols. ii.-x.

Special Histories. — Edward Stanwood's History of Presidential Elections, chaps. xx., xxi.; Horace Greeley's American Conflict, i. (chaps. xxi.-xxxviii.); E. A. Pollard's Lost Cause (chap. v. to end); Joseph Hodgson's Cradle of the Confederacy (chaps. xiv. et seq.); G. T.

Curtis's Buchanan, ii. 187-630; Henry J. Raymond's Life of Lincoln; F. W. Seward's Seward at Washington, i., xxxix.-lxvii., ii., i.-xl. ; L. G. Tyler's Lives of the Tylers; G. S. Merriam's Samuel Bowles, i. 179-419; P. Stovall's Toombs, 140-285; John W. Draper's Civil War, i., chap. xxvi. et seq., ii., iii.; Edward McPherson's Political History of the Rebellion; Comte de Paris's Military History of the Civil War; William H. Seward's Diplomatic History of the Civil War; F. W. Taussig's Tariff History of the United States, 155-170; J. J. Knox's United States Notes; A. S. Bolles's Financial History of the United States, ii., chaps. xv., iii. book i.; Theodore A. Dodge's Bird's-Eye View of the Civil War; John C. Ropes's History of the Civil War (in preparation); Leverett W. Spring's Kansas; N. S. Shaler's Kentucky; C. F. Adams, Jr.'s Charles Francis Adams (in preparation); John T. Morse, Jr.'s Abraham Lincoln (in preparation); J. K. Lothrop's William H. Seward (in preparation); F. L. Olmsted's Seaboard Slave States, Texas Journey, and Back Country (or Cotton Kingdom); Marion G. McDougall's Fugitive Slaves; Mary Tremain's Slavery in the District of Columbia.

Contemporary Accounts. - Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia for the several years (particularly under the titles "Congress of the United States," "Congress, Confederate," "Confederate States," "United States," "Army," "Navy"); Horace Greeley's American Conflict, ii., and History of the Great Rebellion; Herndon's Life of Lincoln (chaps. xii. et seq.) ; L. E. Chittenden's Recollections of President Lincoln and his Administration; O. A. Brownson's American Republic (chap. xii.); Alexander Stephens's War between the States, ii. 241-631, and appendices; George W. Julian's Reminiscences; George Cary Eggleston's A Rebel's Recollections; Jones's A Rebel War Clerk's Diary; J. H. Gilmer's Southern Politics; Thurlow Weed's Autobiography (chaps. Ixi.-lxv.); G. W. Curtis's Correspondence of J. L. Motley, i. (chaps. xiii.), ii. (chaps. i.-vi.); Hugh McCulloch's Men and Measures of Half a Century (chaps. xiv.-xviii., xxi., xxii.); U. S. Grant's Personal Memoirs; W. T. Sherman's Memoirs; S. S. Cox's Three Decades of Federal Legislation, 1855-1885 (chaps. i.-xvi.); Ben: Perley Poore's Perley's Reminiscences, ii. (chaps. i.-xvi.); Henry A. Wise's Seven Decades of the Union (chap. xiv.); James S. Pike's First Blows of the Civil War, 355–526 (to 1861); Alexander Johnston's Representative American Orations, iii. (parts v. vi.); William H. Seward's Autobiography.

CHAPTER VIII.

SECESSION (1856-1861).

96. Financial Stringency (1857).

A WIDESPREAD financial stringency distressed the country during the first year of Mr. Buchanan's administration. Commercial Ever since 1846 there had been very great development. prosperity in almost all branches of trade and manufacture. Great advances had been made in the mechanic arts, and easy channels both of domestic and of international trade had been multiplied in every direction by the rapid extension of railways and of steam navigation; so that the stimulus of enterprise, along with the quickening influences of the great gold_discoveries, had been transmitted in all directions. But this period of prosperity and expansion, like all others of its kind, brought its own risks and penalties. Sound business methods presently gave way to reckless speculation. There was an excessive expansion of business; many enterprises were started which did not fulfil their first promise; there were heavy losses as well as great gains; and at last there came uneasiness, the contraction of loans, failures, and panic.

The revenue laws, it was thought, contributed to increase the difficulties of the business situation, by drawing the circulating medium of the country into the Treasury, chiefly through the tariff duties, and keeping it there in the shape of an augmenting surplus. With a view, therefore, to relieving the stringency of the money market, Congress undertook a revision of the tariff. The

1857.]

Financial Stringency.

197

other, more critical, questions of the day seem to have absorbed partisan purpose, and this revision differed Tariff from previous tariff legislation in the temperof 1857. ateness of view and equity of purpose with which it was executed. In the short session of the thirty-fourth Congress (1856-1857) all parties united in reducing the duties on the protected articles of the existing tariff to twenty-four per cent, and in putting on the free list many of the raw materials of manufacture. It was hoped thus to get money out of the Treasury and into trade again. Financial crisis, however, was not prevented, but disturbed the whole of the year 1857.

The facts.

97. The Dred Scott Decision (1857).

A brief struggle brought the business of the country out of its difficulties; but the strain of politics was not so soon removed, and a decision of the Supreme Court now hurried the country forward towards the infinitely greater crisis of civil war. Dred Scott was the negro slave of an army surgeon. His master had taken him, in the regular course of military service, from Missouri, his home, first into the State of Illinois, and then, in May, 1836, to Fort Snelling, on the west side of the Mississippi, in what is now Minnesota; after which, in 1838, he had returned with him to Missouri. Slavery was prohibited by state law in Illinois, and by the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820 in the territory west of the Mississippi; and after returning to Missouri the negro endeavored to obtain his liberty by an appeal to the courts, on the ground that his residence in a free State had operated to destroy his master's rights over him. In course of appeal the case reached the Supreme Court of the United States. The chief, if not the only, question at issue was a question of jurisdiction. Was Dred Scott a citizen

within the meaning of the Constitution; had he had any rightful standing in the lower courts? To this question the court returned a decided negative. The Jurisdiction. temporary residence of the negro's master in Illinois and Minnesota, in the course of his official duty and without any intention to change his domicile, could not affect the status of the slave, at any rate after his return to Missouri. He was not a citizen of Missouri in the constitutional sense, and could have therefore no standing in the federal courts. But, this question decided, the majority of the judges did not think it obiter dicens to go further, and argue to the merits of the case regarding the status of slaves and the authority of Congress over slavery in the Territories. They were of the opinion that, notwithstanding the fact that the Constitution spoke of slaves as "persons held to service and labor," men of the African race, in view of the fact of their bondage from the first in this country, were not regarded as persons, but only as property, by the Constitution of the United States; that, as property, they were protected from hostile legislation on the part of Congress by the express guarantees of the Constitution itself; and that Congress could no more legislate this form of property out of the Territories than it could exclude property of any other kind, but must guarantee to every citizen the right to carry this, as he might carry all other forms of property, where he would, within the territory subject to Congress. The legislation, therefore, known as the Missouri compromise was, in their judgment, unconstitutional and void.

Status of the negro.

The opinion of the court sustained the whole southern claim. Not even the exercise of squatter sovereignty Scope of the could have the countenance of law; Congress decision. must protect every citizen of the country in carrying with him into the Territories property of what