Congressional power struggles
The first half of the nineteenth century brought the debate over the legality and morality of the institution of slavery to a dramatic climax. As agreed during the Constitutional Convention, in 1808 Congress outlawed the importation of slaves via the Atlantic Slave trade. While this stopped the preponderance of slave ships arriving from Africa, it did not affect plantation slavery, where masters relied on enslaved Black women to replenish their labor source. Nor did the legal change alter the racial hierarchy that whites believed was “God-ordained” and by which they had structured their political, legal, and social dynamics across the states.
Ever conscious of maintaining this hierarchy, Maryland’s state Constitution was amended to restrict voting to white men in 1810. The statute noted, “That every free white male citizen of this state … and no other … shall have the right of suffrage” (Miller, 2015, p. 267). This ensured that any free Black or enslaved persons who had bought their freedom remained disconnected from one of the most basic means of influencing the legal and political decisions made in the state: voting.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in Congress debated the morality of the institution. Southern states felt threatened by abolitionist activities fostered in the North. As populations in the West grew and more territories petitioned to be recognized as states, these debates increased. The southern states feared that if states entered as non-slave that this imbalance would put the pro-slavery elements of the government in the minority. Northern states, increasingly convinced of the immorality of slavery, argued vehemently against its continuation. Aside from the racial ideologies that sustained slavery, the South’s entire economy was dependent upon the institution. The confrontation, in many ways, pitted morality against economics. As historian Andrew Shankman (Mason and Hammond, 2011) noted, “throughout the long 1820s those conceiving the American System were thoroughly pre-occupied with slavery” (p. 248).
Abolitionism
“In reference to the question of Slavery, it may be reasonably supposed, that the Lord of light and life will not for ever slumber, he will not for ever see his children trodden down under the iron hoof of Southern despotism” (Smallwood, 1851, p. iii).
So begins the autobiography of Thomas Smallwood, an enslaved Black man born in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in 1801. Freed at age 30, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he became part of an active community of free and enslaved Black churchgoers at Ebenezer Methodist Church (Ferré-Rode, 2013). Smallwood had heard of and sought out the fiery abolitionist Charles Torrey who had been jailed in Annapolis for infiltrating a legislative meeting of Maryland slaveholders (Harrod, 2000, p. 282). Together, Smallwood and Torrey created the first Underground Railroad line from Washington, D.C. through Baltimore to Toronto, Canada. While Torrey was eventually caught and hung for his abolitionist efforts, Smallwood and his family escaped to Toronto where they joined a thriving free Black community (Ferré-Rode, 2013).
Smallwood and Torrey represented the growing urgency that caused many people to more actively combat slavery. Slave rebellions, fugitive slaves, and political and religious movements rose to confront and resist the institution. Historian Manisha Sinha (2017) wrote, “The connection between slave resistance and abolition in the United States was proximate and continuous. Prominent slave revolts marked the turn toward immediate abolition. Fugitive slaves united all factions of the movement and led abolitionists to justify revolutionary resistance to slavery” (p. 2). Smallwood represents the influence that free Black people, fugitive enslaved persons, and Black church members had in mobilizing white and Black groups to criticize slavery and actively resist it.
The abolition of slavery challenged the economic model upon which the South derived its wealth and stability. It threatened the legal, cultural, and political status quo of the North and South (Jeffrey, 2008, p. 1). And in many ways it challenged the notion of a racial hierarchy in the United States. Historian Tunde Adeleke (1998) noted,
Pro-slavery advocates and racial conservatives justified discriminatory politics on alleged deficiencies inherent in the character and conditions of blacks. Blacks, according to popular reasoning, were disadvantaged and degraded in consequence of behavioral and situational imperfections—that they were lazy, ignorant, backward and morally decadent…. [R]acial conservatives described these traits as inherent, perhaps even divinely conditioned, and, therefore, permanent. (p. 128)
South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun, accepting this view of the inherent inferiority of Black people, argued that slavery was a “positive good” (Kendi, 2017) – benefiting the country and the black population.
Abolitionists tapped into a long history of subtle and overt resistance by African Americans. While denigrated, abused, and enslaved, Black people found ways to celebrate their culture, stay connected to their families and friends, and whenever possible, defy their slave owners and seek their freedom (Franklin and Schweninger, 2000, p. 18-19; Kendi, 2017).
The Caning of Charles Sumner
The conflict over slavery reached its zenith during a Senate debate on the floor of the Senate in May 1856. “[A] noise-some, squat, and nameless animal [is]. . . not a proper model for an American senator” pronounced Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts and a staunch anti-slavery advocate (Senate.gov). Sumner was responding to the most recent controversy over whether Kansas should be allowed into the Union as a free or slave state. He called out two of his fellow senators – in less than flattering prose – for their unacceptable support for slavery. Three days later, a representative related to one of the senators Sumner had verbally attacked came into the Senate chamber and beat him ruthlessly. What has become known as the “Caning of Charles Sumner” vividly demonstrates the dramatic crises the country faced over slavery’s role in the American system (Senate.gov).
As the public debate over free versus slave states continued, an African American slave named Dred Scott pushed the conversation further. He sued for his and his family’s freedom arguing that they had been enslaved in a free state and therefore should be released as free. In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney led the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Scott’s argument. The Court asserted that “negroes, whether slave or free, were not citizens of the United States” (Bogan, 1990, p. 381) and therefore ineligible to make this appeal for freedom in front of the Court. Not surprisingly, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney had been born in Smith County, Maryland, to a tobacco farming family who owned slaves (Bogen, 1990, pp. 381-382). This decision, in line with the 1790 Naturalization Act, continued to define Black persons as inferior and not eligible for citizenship in the United States.