Alan J. Singer New York and Slavery, Time to Teach the Truth (2008)

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.275).As Van Buren became more prominent in the national Democratic Party,he tried to maintain a difficult balance on the slavery issue, just as many politi-cians today claim to personally oppose abortion while respecting a woman sfreedom of choice.Van Buren argued that while slavery was morally wrong, at-tacking the slave system violated the constitutional principle of states rights.As a candidate for President and in his inaugural address, Van Buren assuredslave owners that he and the entire Northern White population had no desireto intervene in their local affairs and were prohibited from doing so by the Con-stitution.He promised that as President, he would protect their property rightsas slave owners (Berlin & Harris, 2005, p.5; Van Buren, 1837).After his defeat for reelection in 1840 and an unsuccessful effort to securethe Democratic Party nomination in 1844, Van Buren blamed Southern in-trigue for his defeats and changed his position on slavery (Foner, 1970, p.151).He became a Free Soiler because he believed that free White labor couldnever compete economically with enslaved Africans, and he decided that Con-gress had the authority to prevent the extension of slavery into new territoriesand to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.Business connections inevitably led to political alliances between NewYork s merchants and Southern planters.During the summer of 1860, NewYork s leading merchants organized The Volunteer Democratic Associationof New York to save the federal Union from the calamities which would be-come inevitable consequences of the election of Lincoln and Hamlin (Foner,1941, p.172).Members of the group included William Astor, merchant andheir to a real estate fortune, Moses Taylor, whose banking operations wouldeventually evolve into Citibank, sugar baron William Havemeyer, ErastusDebate 81Corning, President of the New York Central Railroad, and August Belmont,the American agent for the Rothchilds.After the election, they organized aUnion Committee of Fifteen in an effort to ward off Southern secession.Ameeting on December 15, 1860, on Pine Street in the Wall Street area was at-tended by over 2,000 people, including A.T.Stewart, a cotton merchant andfounder of one of the country s first department stores, Abiel Low, whoseimport-export firm dominated the China trade, August Belmont, and MosesTaylor (Farrow et al, 2005, pp.10 11).It was followed by an editorial in theJournal of Commerce pledging to defend the Constitutional rights of the slave-holders and the fraternal relations established by it between you and us(Foner, 1941, p.228).Local merchants and politicians continued their effort toassuage the South and preserve slavery until the South finally fired on FortSumpter (Foner, 1941, p.267).The New York politician from this era most closely identified with sup-port for slavery and the South was Fernando Wood (Singer, 2005a, p.196;Mushkat, 1990), a wealthy merchant involved in the coastal trade with theSouth and a successful investor in local real estate, who served in Congress andas mayor of New York City.On January 8, 1861, the New York Times publishedthe transcript of Mayor Wood s annual report to the city s Common Council.In this message, Wood spoke about the city s options as the United States fed-eral union appeared to be dissolving and he called for the city to secede as well.Woods told the Common Council, It would seem that a dissolution ofthe Federal Union is inevitable. He reminded its members that with their ag-grieved brethren of the Slave States we have friendly relations and a commonsympathy because [w]e have not participated in the warfare upon their con-stitutional rights or their domestic institutions. He proposed that New Yorkshould endeavor to preserve a continuance of uninterrupted intercourse withevery section, and to do this it should secede from the Union itself and become a free City. He concluded, When disunion has become a fixed and certainfact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a corrupt andvenal master.New York, as a Free City, may shed the only light and hope for afuture reconstruction of our once blessed Confederacy (p.2).Wood s sentiments were supported by the New York Herald and the Jour-nal of Commerce.The Herald published a statement by department store mag-net Alexander Stewart charging that the refusal at Washington to concedecosts us millions daily. The Journal of Commerce warned President-elect Lin-coln that [t]here are a million and a half mouths to be fed daily in this city andits dependencies; and they will not consent to be starved by any man s policies(Ellis, 1966, p.291).While Wood backed away from this position once the actual fighting brokeout, in 1864 he represented the city in Congress where he opposed the ThirteenthAmendment to the Constitution.In congressional debate he argued that an end toslavery would make it impossible for southern planters to repay their debts to NewYork City merchants.Once again, economic gain trumped ethnical considerations.82 New York and SlaveryPolitics, especially pro-slavery politics, makes very strange bedfellows.From as early as the 1830s, New York had a strong nativist contingent, usuallyanti-Irish and identified with the city s Protestant social elite.Samuel F.B.Morse, the inventor, was their candidate for mayor in 1836 and 1841.Morsedisliked Roman Catholics, who he believed were part of a European conspiracyto destroy American liberty (Burrows & Wallace, 1999, p.545), and supportedthe enslavement of Africans, which he thought was divinely ordained (Morse,1863, p.10) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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