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115-473: In the speech, Lincoln elaborated his views on slavery by affirming that he did not wish it to be expanded into the western territories and claiming that the Founding Fathers would agree with this position. The journalist Robert J. McNamara wrote, "Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was one of his longest, at more than 7,000 words. And it is not one of his speeches with passages that are often quoted. Yet, due to

230-511: A slave catcher during the war, and at its end he pressed the British to return the slaves to their masters. With the British certificates of freedom in their belongings, the black loyalists, including Washington's slave Harry, sailed with their white counterparts out of New York harbor to Nova Scotia . More than 3,000 were resettled in Nova Scotia, where they were eventually granted land and formed

345-544: A North American Balkans. Instead, Abraham Lincoln did triumph in New York. He delivered a learned, witty, and exquisitely reasoned address that electrified his elite audience and, more important, reverberated in newspapers and pamphlets alike until it reached tens of thousands of Republican voters across the North. He had arrived at Cooper Union a politician with more defeats than victories, but he departed politically reborn. [...] At

460-458: A Senate seat in the 1858 Illinois Senate elections , he now eyed the presidency. However, it was expected that "the office should seek the man", and Lincoln refrained from announcing his candidacy. In February 1860, he was invited to speak at Henry Ward Beecher's church in New York, which he very excitedly accepted. Having not spoken in the East before, Lincoln was eager to make a good impression. He had

575-653: A committee, of which he was chair, to investigate "the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race". Their report, first delivered to the Medical Association in an address, was published in their journal in 1851, and then reprinted in part in the widely circulated DeBow's Review . Whether slavery was to be limited to the Southern states that already had it, or whether it was to be permitted in new states made from

690-525: A famous speech in the Senate in 1837, declared that slavery was "instead of an evil, a good – a positive good". Calhoun supported his view with the following reasoning: in every civilized society one portion of the community must live on the labor of another; learning, science, and the arts are built upon leisure; the African slave, kindly treated by his master and mistress and looked after in his old age,

805-538: A future date, sometimes with an intermediary status of unpaid indentured servant. Abolition was in many cases a gradual process. Some slaveowners, primarily in the Upper South , freed their slaves, and charitable groups bought and freed others. The Atlantic slave trade was outlawed by individual states beginning during the American Revolution. The import trade was banned by Congress in 1808 , although smuggling

920-473: A handful, freed their slaves by personal decision, often providing for manumission in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court papers to free individuals. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves cited revolutionary ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a promised reward for service. From 1790 to 1810, the proportion of blacks free in the United States increased from 8 to 13.5 percent, and in

1035-567: A hundred thousand (nearly one in five black slaves) left their homes ... betting on British victory", but Cassandra Pybus states that between 20,000 and 30,000 is a more realistic number of slaves who defected to the British side during the war. Many slaves took advantage of the disruption of war to escape from their plantations to British lines or to fade into the general population. Upon their first sight of British vessels, thousands of slaves in Maryland and Virginia fled from their owners. Throughout

1150-479: A man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live". Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves and your charge of destructiveness against us, are based on

1265-577: A murderer!" The third section, addressed to fellow Republicans, encourages level-headed thinking and cool actions, doing "nothing through passion and ill temper": We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Lincoln states that

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1380-796: A murderer!" To be sure, what the robber demanded of me—my money—was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle. ... These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery

1495-404: A necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content. But you say you are conservative—eminently conservative—while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against

1610-536: A new oratorical style: informed by history, suffused with moral certainty, and marked by lawyerly precision." Holzer wrote about Lincoln's speech in New York City: Had Abraham Lincoln failed at his do-or-die debut in New York, he would never have won his party's presidential nomination three months later, not to mention election to the White House that November. Such was the impact of a triumph in

1725-511: A new suit fitted (at the cost of $ 100 (about $ 3,000 in current dollars)) and went to great pains to write a sophisticated and well-researched speech. His new suit was of little impact, as the suit still fit the massive and lanky Lincoln poorly. But his speech proved to be very well written. By the time Lincoln got to New York, he had learned that the speech would instead be sponsored by the Young Men's Central Republican Union and would now be given at

1840-544: A proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed

1955-422: A public question from there forward". After the new country's independence was secure, slavery was a topic of contention at the 1787 Constitutional Convention . Many of Founding Fathers of the United States were plantation owners who owned large numbers of enslaved laborers; the original Constitution preserved their right to own slaves, and they further gained a political advantage in owning slaves. Although

2070-533: A punishment for crime is still legal in the United States. By the time of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. During and immediately following the Revolution, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. The role of slavery under

2185-477: A significantly higher number and proportion of enslaved people in the population overall, as its commodity crops were labor-intensive. Early on, enslaved people in the South worked primarily on farms and plantations growing indigo , rice and tobacco ( cotton did not become a major crop until after the 1790s). In 1720, about 65 percent of South Carolina's population was enslaved. Planters (defined by historians in

2300-405: A stronger. 4. The happiness of the governed is in no sense its object. 5. The temporal improvement or the eternal well-being of the governed is in no sense its object. The object of it has been distinctly stated in one sentence by Judge Ruffin ,— "The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety." Slavery, then, is absolute despotism, of the most unmitigated form. In

2415-481: A text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: "What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?" ... The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one—a clear majority of

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2530-450: Is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing

2645-431: Is addressed to Republicans. In the first section, in response to a statement by Illinois Democrat Stephen A. Douglas , Lincoln asks rhetorically, "What is the frame of government under which we live?" He answers that it "must be: 'The Constitution of the United States. ' " From there, he begins his reasoning on why the federal government can regulate slavery in the federal territories (but not states), especially resting on

2760-473: Is better off than the free laborers of Europe; and under the slave system conflicts between capital and labor are avoided. The advantages of slavery in this respect, he concluded, "will become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers". South Carolina army officer, planter , and railroad executive James Gadsden called slavery "a social blessing" and abolitionists "the greatest curse of

2875-543: Is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between

2990-455: Is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. However, as the abolitionist movement's agitation increased and the area developed for plantations expanded, apologies for slavery became more faint in the South. Leaders then described slavery as a beneficial scheme of labor management. John C. Calhoun , in

3105-473: Is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication. ... Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. ... An inspection of

3220-450: Is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. ... Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much

3335-752: The Confederacy . Shortly afterward, the Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked the U.S. Army's Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. During the war some jurisdictions abolished slavery and, due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts and the Emancipation Proclamation , the war effectively ended slavery in most places. After the Union victory, the Thirteenth Amendment to

3450-594: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 gave effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause. Salmon P. Chase considered the Fugitive Slave Acts unconstitutional because "The Fugitive Slave Clause was a compact among the states, not a grant of power to the federal government". In a section negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, Section   2 of Article   I designated "other persons" (slaves) to be added to

3565-537: The Greek words prósopon ( transl.  face, person ) and poiéin ( transl.  to make, to do ). Prosopopoeiae are used mostly to give another perspective on the action being described. For example, in Cicero's Pro Caelio , Cicero speaks as Appius Claudius Caecus, a stern old man. This serves to give the "ancient" perspective on the actions of the plaintiff. Prosopopoeiae can also be used to take some of

Cooper Union speech - Misplaced Pages Continue

3680-600: The United States Congress acted on President Thomas Jefferson 's advice and, without controversy, made importing slaves from abroad a federal crime, effective the first day that the United States Constitution permitted this prohibition: January 1, 1808. During the Revolution and in the following years, all states north of Maryland ( the Mason–Dixon line ) took steps towards abolishing slavery. In 1777,

3795-510: The United States Constitution (1789) was the most contentious issue during its drafting. The Three-Fifths Clause of the Constitution gave slave states disproportionate political power, while the Fugitive Slave Clause ( Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 ) provided that, if a slave escaped to another state, the other state could not prevent the return of the slave to the person claiming to be his or her owner. All Northern states had abolished slavery to some degree by 1805, sometimes with completion at

3910-466: The Upper South from less than one to nearly ten percent as a result of these actions. Starting in 1777, the rebels outlawed the importation of slaves state by state. They all acted to end the international trade, but, after the war, it was reopened in North Carolina (opened until 1794) and Georgia (opened until 1798) and South Carolina (opened until 1787, and then reopened again in 1803.) In 1807,

4025-631: The Vermont Republic , which was still unrecognized by the United States, passed a state constitution prohibiting slavery . The Pennsylvania Abolition Society , led in part by Benjamin Franklin , was founded in 1775, and Pennsylvania began gradual abolition in 1780. In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in Commonwealth v. Jennison that slavery was unconstitutional under

4140-629: The cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. The U.S., divided into slave and free states , became ever more polarized over the issue of slavery. Driven by labor demands from new cotton plantations in the Deep South , the Upper South sold more than a million slaves who were taken to

4255-402: The 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". At that time, it was feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. On April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson , one of the Founding Fathers of the United States , wrote in a letter to John Holmes , that with slavery, We have

4370-802: The American Continental Army . Rhode Island started enlisting slaves in 1778, and promised compensation to owners whose slaves enlisted and survived to gain freedom. During the course of the war, about one-fifth of the Northern army was black. In 1781, Baron Closen, a German officer in the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment at the Battle of Yorktown , estimated the American army to be about one-quarter black. These men included both former slaves and free-born blacks. Thousands of free blacks in

4485-851: The British forces. Historians agree that the proclamation was chiefly designed for practical rather than moral reasons, and slaves owned by American Loyalists were unaffected by the proclamation. About 1,500 slaves owned by patriots escaped and joined Dunmore's forces. A total of 18 slaves fled George Washington 's plantation, one of whom, Harry, served in Dunmore's all-black loyalist regiment called "the Black Pioneers". Escapees who joined Dunmore had "Liberty to Slaves" stitched on to their jackets. Most died of disease before they could do any fighting, but three hundred of these freed slaves made it to freedom in Britain. Historian Jill Lepore writes that "between eighty and

4600-434: The British war effort. Such proclamations were repeatedly issued over the course of the conflict, which resulted in up to 100,000 American slaves fleeing to British lines. Self-emancipated slaves who reached British lines were organized into a variety of military units, which served in all theaters of the war. Formerly enslaved women and children, in lieu of military service, worked instead as laborers and domestic servants. At

4715-465: The Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it. ... But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be

Cooper Union speech - Misplaced Pages Continue

4830-434: The Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century, (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century,) declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of

4945-517: The Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare, I give, not only "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live", but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them. ... I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all

5060-498: The Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they "understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now." But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed

5175-528: The Cooper Union, Lincoln became more than a regional curiosity. He became a national leader. Writing about his visit to Lincoln's speech place at Cooper Union and the meaning of this place for Lincoln's career and legacy, Holzer states that "only at the Great Hall of Cooper Union can audiences so easily inhale Lincoln's presence too—there to imagine not the dying but the living man, not the bearded icon of myth but

5290-577: The Deep South. The total slave population in the South eventually reached four million. As the U.S. expanded, the Southern states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to allow proslavery forces to maintain power in Congress. The new territories acquired by the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession were the subject of major political crises and compromises. Slavery

5405-511: The Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in The New York Times , Senator Douglas said: "Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better than we do now." I fully endorse this, and I adopt it as

5520-413: The Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer called the Cooper Union address "Lincoln's watershed, the event that transformed him from a regional leader into a national phenomenon. Here the politician known as frontier debater and chronic jokester introduced

5635-405: The Government under which we live" were of the same opinion—thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live", used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local from federal authority or some part of

5750-451: The Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now", speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask—all Republicans desire—in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection

5865-454: The North had to search for employment. George Fitzhugh used assumptions about white superiority to justify slavery, writing that, "the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child." In The Universal Law of Slavery , Fitzhugh argues that slavery provides everything necessary for life and that the slave is unable to survive in a free world because he is lazy, and cannot compete with

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5980-488: The North might well have lost. Slavery was a contentious issue in the writing and approval of the Constitution of the United States . The words "slave" and "slavery" did not appear in the Constitution as originally adopted, although several provisions clearly referred to slaves and slavery. Until the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865, the Constitution did not prohibit slavery. Section 9 of Article I forbade

6095-543: The Northern states fought in the state militias and Continental Army. In the South, both sides offered freedom to slaves who would perform military service. Roughly 20,000 slaves fought in the American Revolution. After the Revolutionary War broke out, the British realized they lacked the manpower necessary to prosecute the war. In response, British commanders began issuing proclamations to Patriot-owned slaves, offering freedom if they fled to British lines and assisted

6210-577: The Northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or over time. In New York, the last slaves were freed in 1827 (celebrated with a big July   5 parade). Indentured servitude , which had been widespread in the colonies (half the population of Philadelphia had once been indentured servants ), dropped dramatically, and disappeared by 1800. However, there were still forcibly indentured servants in New Jersey in 1860. No Southern state abolished slavery, but some individual owners, more than

6325-523: The Republicans' position on slavery is in fact the "conservative" policy, as Lincoln claims it coincides with the views of the American founding fathers, who he said opposed slavery. By supporting slavery, Lincoln claims that the Democrats are in opposition to the teachings of the founding fathers and "reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new." The final section

6440-488: The South, losses of slaves were high, with many due to escapes. Slaves also escaped throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic, with many joining the British who had occupied New York. In the closing months of the war, the British evacuated freedmen and also removed slaves owned by loyalists. Around 15,000 black loyalists left with the British, most of them ending up as free people in England or its colonies. Washington hired

6555-570: The Union address), went into effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date on which the importation of slaves could be prohibited under the Constitution. The delegates approved the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution ( Article IV, section 2, clause 3 ), which prohibited states from freeing those "held to Service or Labour" (meaning slaves, indentures, and apprentices) who fled to them from another state and required that they be returned to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and

6670-576: The United States Constitution was ratified on December 6, 1865, prohibiting "slavery [and] involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime." During most of the British colonial period, slavery existed in all the colonies. People enslaved in the North typically worked as house servants, artisans, laborers and craftsmen, with the greater number in cities. Many men worked on the docks and in shipping. In 1703, more than 42 percent of New York City households held enslaved people in bondage,

6785-483: The United States was a variable thing, in "constant flux, driven by the violent pursuit of ever-larger profits." According to demographic calculations by J. David Hacker of the University of Minnesota, approximately four out of five of all of the slaves who ever lived in the United States or the territory that became the United States (beginning in 1619 and including all colonies that were eventually acquired or conquered by

6900-532: The United States) were born in or imported to the United States in the 19th century. Slaves were the labor force of the South, but slave ownership was also the foundation upon which American white supremacy was constructed. Historian Walter Johnson argues that "one of the many miraculous things a slave could do was make a household white...", meaning that the value of whiteness in America was in some ways measured by

7015-509: The United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation , sharecropping , and convict leasing . Involuntary servitude as

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7130-465: The Upper South as those who held 20 or more slaves) used enslaved workers to cultivate commodity crops. They also worked in the artisanal trades on large plantations and in many Southern port cities. The later wave of settlers in the 18th century who settled along the Appalachian Mountains and backcountry were backwoods subsistence farmers , and they seldom held enslaved people. Beginning in

7245-399: The ability to purchase and maintain black slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe described slavery in the United States in 1853: What, then, is American slavery, as we have seen it exhibited by law, and by the decision of Courts? Let us begin by stating what it is not: 1. It is not apprenticeship. 2. It is not guardianship. 3. It is in no sense a system for the education of a weaker race by

7360-453: The air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill." Hammond believed that in every class one group must accomplish all the menial duties, because without them the leaders in society could not progress. He argued that the hired laborers of the North were slaves too: "The difference   ... is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment," while those in

7475-424: The assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it – when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell". Our new [Confederate] Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to

7590-607: The attitudes of white Southerners, and the concentration of the black population in the South, were bringing the white and black populations to a state of equilibrium, and were a danger to both races. Because of the racial differences between master and slave, he believed that the latter could not be emancipated. In a letter to his wife dated December 27, 1856, in reaction to a message from President Franklin Pierce , Robert E. Lee wrote, There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution

7705-437: The audience had. Lincoln's speech has three major parts, each building towards his conclusion. The first part concerns the founders and the legal positions they supported on the question of slavery in the territories. The second part is addressed to the voters of the Southern states by clarifying the issues between Republicans and Democrats. He rebukes claims made by the Democrats that they are "conservative", arguing instead that

7820-402: The careful research and Lincoln's forceful argument, it was stunningly effective." Horace Greeley 's New York Tribune hailed it as "one of the most happiest and most convincing political arguments ever made in this City. ... No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience." As 1860 dawned, Lincoln's political tides were turning. Although he had lost a chance at

7935-402: The character of the founders, and how they thought of slavery: The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one – a clear majority of the whole – certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories ... In

8050-425: The clean-shaven, fresh-voiced political original who conquered all New York here on the way to the White House and immortality." David Herbert Donald considers the speech to be a masterful political move. Delivered in the home state of William H. Seward , who was the favored candidate for the 1860 election, and attended by Greeley, now an enemy of Seward, the speech put Lincoln in the ideal position to challenge for

8165-451: The clearest and stable foundations. ... Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There are judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling—that sentiment—by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in

8280-470: The colonial era were unevenly distributed: 14,867 lived in New England , where they were three percent of the population; 34,679 lived in the mid-Atlantic colonies , where they were six percent of the population; and 347,378 in the five Southern Colonies , where they were 31 percent of the population. The South developed an agricultural economy dependent on commodity crops . Its planters rapidly acquired

8395-455: The community of the black Nova Scotians . In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves. Northern states passed new constitutions that contained language about equal rights or specifically abolished slavery; some states, such as New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more widespread, passed laws by the end of the 18th century to abolish slavery incrementally. By 1804, all

8510-532: The differences between the Constitution of the Confederate States and the United States Constitution , laid out the cause for the American Civil War, as he saw it, and defended slavery: The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions – African slavery as it exists among us – the proper status of

8625-592: The end of the war, freed slaves in British lines either evacuated to other British colonies or to Britain itself, were re-enslaved by the victorious Americans, or fled into the countryside. In early 1775, the royal governor of Virginia , Lord Dunmore , wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth of his intention to free slaves owned by American Patriots in case they staged a rebellion. On November 7, 1775, Dunmore issued Dunmore's Proclamation , which promised freedom to any slaves of American patriots who would leave their masters and join

8740-457: The enslaved of the early Republic were considered sentient property, were not permitted to vote, and had no rights to speak of, they were to be enumerated in population censuses and counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of representation in the national legislature, the U.S. Congress . The rebels began to offer freedom as an incentive to motivate slaves to fight on their side. Washington authorized slaves to be freed who fought with

8855-615: The enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans , was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South . Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas . From 1526, during the early colonial period , it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies , including the Thirteen Colonies that formed

8970-402: The eponymous Cooper Union . Lincoln hurriedly re-wrote his speech for a less religious audience. The night before the speech, he painstakingly "review[ed] and typesett[ed]" it with the aid of journalist acquaintances. The new audience proved to be very useful for Lincoln, as it now included Horace Greeley , who had the power to act as a presidential king-maker and was on a campaign to prevent

9085-420: The face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? ... When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right

9200-465: The federal government from prohibiting the importation of slaves, described as "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit", for twenty years after the Constitution's ratification (until January 1, 1808). The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 , passed by Congress and signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson (who had called for its enactment in his 1806 State of

9315-400: The historian James Oliver Horton noted, prominent slaveholder politicians and the commodity crops of the South had a strong influence on United States politics and economy. Horton said, in the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years [had] a slaveholder as president of the United States , and, for that whole period of time, there

9430-517: The intelligent European white race. He states that "The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world." Without the South, "He (slave) would become an insufferable burden to society" and "Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery." On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens , Vice President of the Confederacy, delivered his Cornerstone Speech . He explained

9545-529: The lands of the Louisiana Purchase and Mexican Cession , was a major issue in the 1840s and 1850s. It was addressed by the Compromise of 1850 and during the Bleeding Kansas period. Prosopopoeia A prosopopoeia ( Ancient Greek : προσωποποιία , / p r ɒ s oʊ p oʊ ˈ p iː ə / ) is a rhetorical device in which a non-human element speaks or is spoken to as a human. The term derives from

9660-505: The leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away   ... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon

9775-472: The lights of current experience—to reject all progress—all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we. ... If any man at this day sincerely believes that

9890-408: The load off the communicator by placing an unfavorable point of view on the shoulders of an imaginary stereotype. The audience's reactions are predisposed to go towards this figment rather than the communicator himself. This term also refers to a figure of speech in which an animal or inanimate object is ascribed human characteristics or is spoken of in anthropomorphic language. Quintilian writes of

10005-421: The nation". Gadsden was in favor of South Carolina's secession in 1850, and was a leader in efforts to split California into two states, one slave and one free . Other Southern writers who also began to portray slavery as a positive good were James Henry Hammond and George Fitzhugh . They presented several arguments to defend the practice of slavery in the South. Hammond, like Calhoun, believed that slavery

10120-420: The nation's media capital. Had he stumbled, none of the challenges that roiled his presidency would ever have tested his iron will. […] Moreover, had Lincoln failed in New York, few might recognize today the nation he went on to defend and rededicate. It can be argued that without Cooper Union, hence without Lincoln at the helm, the United States might be remembered today as a failed experiment that fractured into

10235-438: The negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of

10350-473: The new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live"; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided into new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing

10465-560: The nomination. Lincoln used the speech to show that the Republican party was a party of moderates, not crazed fanatics as the South and Democrats claimed. Afterwards, Lincoln was in much demand for speaking engagements. He travelled on a tour of New Hampshire , Connecticut and Rhode Island , repeating his arguments of the speech. The speech may have been a critical factor in ensuring his election. American slavery The legal institution of human chattel slavery , comprising

10580-512: The old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object", fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty"; but never

10695-540: The only thing that will convince the Southerners is to "cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right", supporting all their runaway slave laws and the expansion of slavery. He ends by saying that Republicans, if they cannot end slavery where it exists, must fight through their votes to prevent its expansion. He ends with a call to duty: Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to

10810-427: The original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live". And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of

10925-466: The political power of Southern states, as three-fifths of the (non-voting) slave population was counted for congressional apportionment and in the Electoral College , although it did not strengthen Southern states as much as it would have had the Constitution provided for counting all persons, whether slave or free, equally. In addition, many parts of the country were tied to the Southern economy. As

11040-565: The presidential nomination of his longtime friend, and now sworn rival, William H. Seward . Lincoln was the third speaker in a series, going after Frank Blair (who would later serve as an advisor to Lincoln) and abolitionist Cassius M. Clay . New York Evening Post editor William Cullen Bryant provided a warm introduction. Lincoln's ungainly appearance, ill-fitting suit, and shrill voice gave an initially poor impression to listeners, but he soon warmed up, and his oratory improved. The clarity and logic of his speech quickly wiped away any doubts

11155-598: The right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man — such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care — such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance — such as invocations to Washington , imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did. ... Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to

11270-489: The second half of the 18th century, a debate emerged over the continued importation of African slaves to the American colonies. Many in the colonies, including the Southern slavocracy , opposed further importation of slaves due to fears that it would destabilize colonies and lead to further slave rebellions . In 1772, prominent Virginians submitted a petition to the Crown , requesting that the slave trade to Virginia be abolished; it

11385-516: The second part, in which he uses the prosopopoeia of a mock debate between Republicans and the South, Lincoln denies that Republicans are a "sectional" party, representing only the North and helping to incite slave rebellions. He rebukes the Southern Democrats' accusation that Republicans helped John Brown by saying, "John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise." He addressed

11500-422: The second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, behind only Charleston, South Carolina . Enslaved people were also used as agricultural workers in farm communities, especially in the South , but also in upstate New York and Long Island , Connecticut , and New Jersey . By 1770, there were 397,924 blacks out of a population of 2.17 million in what would soon become the United States. The slaves of

11615-484: The single-mindedness of the Southern Democrats: Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. He also tried to show that the Southern Democrats' demand to secede from the Union if a Republican were to be elected president

11730-401: The size of the United States, and it was established at the insistence of Cutler and Putnam as "free soil" – no slavery. This was to prove crucial a few decades later. Had those states been slave states, and their electoral votes gone to Abraham Lincoln's main opponent, Lincoln would not have become president. The Civil War would not have been fought. Even if it eventually had been,

11845-478: The state's new 1780 constitution . New Hampshire began gradual emancipation in 1783, while Connecticut and Rhode Island followed suit in 1784. The New York Manumission Society , which was led by John Jay , Alexander Hamilton , and Aaron Burr , was founded in 1785. New York state began gradual emancipation in 1799, and New Jersey did the same in 1804. Shortly after the Revolution, the Northwest Territory

11960-413: The superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This view of the "Negro race" was backed by pseudoscience . The leading researcher was Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright , a Southerner and the inventor of the mental illnesses of drapetomania (the desire of a slave to run away) and dysaesthesia aethiopica ("rascality"), both cured, according to him, by whipping. The Medical Association of Louisiana set up

12075-547: The total of the state's free population, at the rate of three-fifths of their total number, to establish the state's official population for the purposes of apportionment of congressional representation and federal taxation. The "Three-Fifths Compromise" was reached after a debate in which delegates from Southern (slaveholding) states argued that slaves should be counted in the census just as all other persons were while delegates from Northern (free) states countered that slaves should not be counted at all. The compromise strengthened

12190-417: The whole—certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution ... It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of

12305-530: The wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville , in his influential Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against blacks increased as they were granted more rights (for example, in Northern states). He believed that

12420-531: Was a legal practise and had become entrenched socially and economically in many societies. The ideals and principles promoted in the Enlightenment and the American Revolution helped to put slavery and the desire for its abolition on the political agenda. As historian Christopher L. Brown put it, slavery "had never been on the agenda in a serious way before", but the American Revolution "forced it to be

12535-408: Was common thereafter, at which point the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (Coast Guard) began enforcing the law on the high seas. It has been estimated that before 1820 a majority of serving congressmen owned slaves, and that about 30 percent of congressmen who were born before 1840 (some of whom served into the 20th century) at some time in their lives, were owners of slaves. The rapid expansion of

12650-556: Was defended in the South as a "positive good" , and the largest religious denominations split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South. By 1850, the newly rich, cotton-growing South threatened to secede from the Union . Bloody fighting broke out over slavery in the Kansas Territory . When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, slave states seceded to form

12765-470: Was established, by Manasseh Cutler and Rufus Putnam (who had been George Washington's chief engineer). Both Cutler and Putnam came from Puritan New England. The Puritans strongly believed that slavery was morally wrong. Their influence on the issue of slavery was long-lasting, and this was provided significantly greater impetus by the Revolution. The Northwest Territory (which became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota) doubled

12880-496: Was like armed robbery: "the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle" from that of a robber. But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, You say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be

12995-458: Was needed to build the rest of society. In a speech to the Senate on March 4, 1858, Hammond developed his "Mudsill Theory", defending his view on slavery by stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in

13110-490: Was never a person elected to a second term who was not a slaveholder. The power of Southern states in Congress lasted until the Civil War , affecting national policies, legislation, and appointments. One result was that most of the justices appointed to the Supreme Court were slave owners. The planter elite dominated the Southern congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly fifty years. Slavery in

13225-399: Was rejected. Rhode Island forbade the importation of slaves in 1774. The influential revolutionary Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade. All of the colonies banned slave importations during the Revolutionary War. Slavery had existed for thousands of years, all around the world. In the United States and many parts of the world it

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