“Another Ray of Light,” Fayetteville (NC) Observer, November 7, 1859

Notes
Cropped, edited, and prepared for use here by Don Sailer, Dickinson College, November 6, 2009.
Image type
document
Use in Day View?
No
Courtesy of
19th Century U.S. Newspapers (Gale)
Permission to use?
Yes
Original caption
Another Ray of Light
Source citation
“Another Ray of Light,” Fayetteville (NC) Observer, November 7, 1859, p. 1: 2.
Source note
Original image has been adjusted here for presentation purposes.

An American History

Election of 1860 (Muzzey, 1920)
Type: Description
Citation:
David S. Muzzey, An American History, rev. ed. (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1920), 325.
Body Summary:
In the election on the sixth of November Lincoln carried all the Northern states except New Jersey, receiving 180 electoral votes. Douglas got only 12 electoral votes, from Missouri and New Jersey. Bell carried Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, with 39 votes. And Breckinridge got the 72 votes of the rest of the Southern states. But the electoral vote does not tell the story of the election. Douglas polled a very large popular vote in all the states of the North. He received 1,370,000 votes to Lincoln's 1,860,000 and would have easily won with the support of the united Democratic party. He was repudiated by the administration of Buchanan and by the radical slavery leaders of the South, yet he received nearly twice as many votes (1,370,000 to 850,000) as their candidate, Breckinridge. It was a wonderful testimony to his personal and political hold on his countrymen. Again, although Lincoln received 180 electoral votes to 123 for Douglas, Bell, and Breckinridge combined, his popular vote was only 1,860,000 as against 2,810,000 cast for his opponents. He was the choice of exactly 40 per cent of the voters of the country. Finally, the election showed that the South as a whole was not in favor of secession in 1860.
Harpers Ferry Raid (Muzzey, 1920)
Type: Description
Citation:
David S. Muzzey, An American History, rev. ed. (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1920), 321-22.
Body Summary:
[John Brown] felt that he was commissioned by God to free the slaves in the South. He conceived the wild plan of posting in the fastnesses of the Appalachian Mountains small bodies of armed men, who should make descents into the plains, seize negroes, and conduct them back to his ‘camps of freedom.’ He made a beginning at the little Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, where with only eighteen men he seized the United States arsenal and, raiding the houses of a few of the neighboring planters, forcibly freed about thirty of their slaves. They were huddled together with his men in the arsenal, rather bewildered, and more like captives than newly baptized freemen, when a detachment of United States marines (under the command of Robert E. Lee) arrived on the scene, battered down the doors of the arsenal, and easily made captives of Brown's band (October 18, 1859). Brown, severely wounded, was tried for treason by the laws of Virginia. He pleaded only his divine commission in his defense and was speedily condemned and hanged. When Brown was hailed as a martyr by many antislavery men in the North, who were jubilant to see a blow struck for freedom, even if it were a murderous blow, thousands in the South were persuaded that the "Black Republicans" were determined to let loose upon their wives and children the horrors of negro massacre.
Secession (Muzzey, 1920)
Type: Description
Citation:
David S. Muzzey, An American History, rev. ed. (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1920), 326-327.
Body Summary:
Within six weeks after the secession of South Carolina the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas had severed their connection with the Union. Delegates from six of these seven " sovereign states " met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, 1861, and organized a new Confederacy. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was chosen president, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia vice president. A constitution was drawn up and submitted to the several states of the Confederacy for ratification. This constitution was very similar to the Constitution of the United States, except that slavery was expressly sanctioned, Congress was forbidden to levy protective duties, the president was elected for a term of six years without eligibility for reelection, and the members of the cabinet were given the right to speak on the floor of Congress. A Confederate flag, the " stars and bars," was adopted. A tax of one eighth of a cent a pound on exported cotton was levied. President Davis was authorized to raise an army of 100,000 men and secure a loan of $15,000,000, and a committee of three, with the impetuous Yancey of Alabama as chairman, was sent abroad to secure the friendship and alliance of European courts. Both Davis and Stephens believed that the South would have the fight "a long and bloody war" to establish its independence.

A Student’s History of the United States

Election of 1860, Democrats (Channing, 1922)
Type: Description
Citation:
Edward Channing, A Student’s History of the United States, 4th ed. (New York: MacMillan Co., 1922), 435-436.
Body Summary:
Up to this time the Democratic Election of party had remained united — at least outwardly. Now, however, the demands put forth by the slave power were more than Northern Democrats could endure. The Democratic National Convention met at Charleston, South Carolina, in April, 1860. The Northern Democrats, with Douglas for their candidate, were willing to accept the Dred Scott opinion, and any decision which the Supreme Court might make as to slavery. The Southerners demanded that the convention should lay down as one of the principles of the Democratic party that Congress should assume the protection of slavery in the territories. They also declared that the Northerners must advocate slavery and acknowledge that slavery was morally right — nothing else would satisfy the South. The Northern delegates were in the majority; they adopted the Douglas platform and the Southern men withdrew. The convention then adjourned to Baltimore in the hope that time would bring about a reconciliation. In the end, the Northern Democrats nominated Douglas, and the Southern Democrats Breckinridge.
Election of 1860, Republicans (Channing, 1922)
Type: Description
Citation:
Edward Channing, A Student’s History of the United States, 4th ed. (New York: MacMillan Co., 1922), 437-438.
Body Summary:
The Republicans held their convention at Chicago in May, 1860, and adopted a studiously moderate platform. They denied any intention to interfere with slavery in the states, which in their opinion was a matter for the voters of each state to settle for themselves whenever and as often as they pleased. They demanded, however, that Congress should prohibit slavery in the territories—for them the Dred Scott decision had no validity. They also declared in favor of the protective system and internal improvements at the charge of the general government. The selection of a candidate for the presidency proved to of Lincoln, be difficult. Seward and Chase were the most prominent leaders in the party; but they had been "too conspicuous," and Seward was regarded as a visionary. Lincoln was comparatively unknown; he had few enemies, and was strong in the doubtful Western states which had been carried by the Democrats in 1856. His "availability," to use a modern political phrase, commended him to the delegates; but his nomination was hastened by the transfer to him of the votes of fifty delegates who were pledged to Cameron of Pennsylvania. This transfer was made in consequence of a promise given by Lincoln's friends that Cameron have a cabinet position; it should, however, be said that this was in opposition to Lincoln's express direction. His nomination was received with some indignation by the abolitionists.
Harpers Ferry Raid (Channing, 1922)
Type: Description
Citation:
Edward Channing, A Student’s History of the United States, 4th ed. (New York: MacMillan Co., 1922), 418-19.
Body Summary:
[John Brown] asserted that ‘twenty in the Alleghanies could break slavery in pieces in two years’ –  precisely how is not clear.  It is clear, however, that it was his intention to free the slaves, not to excite a slave insurrection – although it is difficult to understand how the former could be accomplished without bringing on the latter; it is also clear that his project met with strong disapproval many persons to whom he applied for money.  On the 16th of October, 1859, he suddenly appeared at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, with nineteen followers.  He seized the United States arsenal at that place, but allowed a train to pass on its way to Washington.  He was captured with all but two of his followers, indicted, tried, convicted, and executed on a charge of treason and conspiracy with slaves and others to rebel and murder.
Secession (Channing, 1922)
Type: Description
Citation:
Edward Channing, A Student’s History of the United States, 4th ed. (New York: MacMillan Co., 1922), 441-442.
Body Summary:
On the day Secession of (December 17, 1860) that Senator Crittenden brought forward this conciliatory proposition, the South Carolina convention met at Charleston. "Commissioners" and leading men from other Southern states were present to urge haste, but there was at least one memorial urging delay; it was suppressed. Three days later the convention adopted unanimously an "ordinance to dissolve the Union between the state of South Carolina and other states united with her under the compact entitled ' The Constitution of the United States of America.' It also adopted a “Declaration of the immediate causes which induce and justify the secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." Before March, 1861, six other states had joined her: Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10), Alabama (January 11), Georgia (January 19), Louisiana (January 26), and Texas (February 1).

Nothing shows more clearly the stagnation of Southern constitutional life than the action of these conventions. They proceeded precisely on the lines of the conventions of the Revolutionary epoch. The democratic spirit of the nineteenth century, which had so profoundly influenced political action in the North, had not produced the least effect in the South. Only one of these ordinances of secession was submitted to the people for ratification, and that one (Texas) only because the election of delegates to her state convention had been so irregular that it could not well be avoided.

History of the United States of America

Harpers Ferry Raid (Spencer, 1874)
Type: Description
Citation:
J. A. Spencer, History of the United States of America (3 vols., New York: Johnson, Wilson & Co., 1874), 3: 548-59.
Body Summary:
The bitterness and keenness of southern feeling on the subject of slavery and its issues, were greatly increased by a strange, wild attempt on the part of a man named John Brown, a native of New York, to produce a rising of the slaves in Virginia. Brown, it appears from his history, had become excited beyond all control on the slavery question, and having been a sharer in the difficulties and violent contentions in Kansas, he seemed to think himself called upon to devote his life and energies to the freeing of the slaves. Several of his sons and a small body of others (twenty-two in all, seventeen white, five black) joined him; arms and ammunition were collected; and on the night of October 16th, he made a descent upon Harper's Ferry, a town of about five thousand inhabitants, and containing the United States arsenal with 100,000 stand of arms. The buildings being unguarded, were seized upon; prominent citizens were arrested; and the workmen connected with the armory, on going to their business in the morning, were also captured. About thirty prisoners were thus made. The alarm spread rapidly, and the exaggerated reports were speedily circulated of the extent of the force, the objects had in view, the rising of the slaves, etc…. Brown and his party finally entrenched themselves in the engine house, where they struggled to the last; but late in the night a body of United States marines, under Colonel Lee, invested the engine house, and early on the 18th, succeeded in battering down the door and capturing the insurgents.

Haywood County, Tennessee, 1857

Scanned by
John Osborne
Scan date
Notes
Cropped, sized, and prepared for use by John Osborne, Dickinson College, November 6, 2009.
Image type
map
Use in Day View?
No
Permission to use?
Public
Original caption
A New Map of Tennessee with its roads and distances...
Source citation
Mitchell's New Universal Atlas.... (Philadelphia: Charles Desilver, 1857), 27.
Source note
Cropped from the larger original image of the state of Tennessee, available as a zoomable image here.

Hawkins County, Tennessee, 1857

Scanned by
John Osborne
Scan date
Notes
Cropped, sized, and prepared for use by John Osborne, Dickinson College, November 6, 2009.
Image type
map
Use in Day View?
No
Permission to use?
Public
Original caption
A New Map of Tennessee with its roads and distances...
Source citation
Mitchell's New Universal Atlas.... (Philadelphia: Charles Desilver, 1857), 27.
Source note
Cropped from the larger original image of the state of Tennessee, available as a zoomable image here.

Hardin County, Tennessee, 1857

Scanned by
John Osborne
Scan date
Notes
Cropped, sized, and prepared for use by John Osborne, Dickinson College, November 6, 2009.
Image type
map
Use in Day View?
No
Permission to use?
Public
Original caption
A New Map of Tennessee with its roads and distances...
Source citation
Mitchell's New Universal Atlas.... (Philadelphia: Charles Desilver, 1857), 27.
Source note
Cropped from the larger original image of the state of Tennessee, available as a zoomable image here.
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