opportunity

in his inaugural address he says you know you guys are all hot under the collar about the slavery thing and by

the way I’m paraphrasing he says but no but don’t worry because you don’t have to worry because this whole issue right

now is sitting in front of the Supreme Court and they’re gonna fix it and I like all good Americans will defer

to what every day decide to do well within a week the Supreme Court hands down the

Dred Scott decision and the Dred Scott decision gives the southern large

planters everything they want it declares that the Missouri Compromise is

unconstitutional it declares that african-americans have no rights that a white man is bound to respect as Chief

Justice Roger tawny puts in his in his majority opinion everybody writes an

opinion by the way for this particular case and tawny who had until this week had a statue in

Baltimore which is where he’s from now won’t no longer a statue in Baltimore I went down this week Toni says this and

it also says something crucial it says that Congress cannot legislate in the

territories what this means of course is that Congress cannot do things like

prohibit slavery it has to leave territorial government up to the people who live there and as I said under that

protection of property what this means is that if in slavers bring their enslaved people into all this new

western territory not just the land that people are fighting about with the Missouri Compromise Act which only

covers I’m sorry with the kansas-nebraska Act which only covers the Louisiana Purchase but also everything else under that America has

taken under the Treaty of Guadalupe dalgo the whole rest of the southwest Congress can’t do anything there except

leave it up to popular sovereignty and as I said under popular sovereignty if even one person brings us enslaved

people into that land it’s going to have to be slaves to a slave state and that

of course is going to mean that the northern states are going to be overawed in the House of Representatives as well

as in the Senate and America is going to become an enslaved enslaving the nation

entirely not just in the south all right so what happens people go ballistic over the Dred Scott decision because it looks

like James Buchanan has been in on it and historians now know yes he was he pressured northern Democrats to go along

with this decision because he wanted it to look like it was not a sectional decision so going into this on

this is 57 and now in 58 we have another discussion in Congress about slavery and

this and what’s happening in Kansas and this comes from South Carolina senator named James Henry Hammond then you know

he appears a lot in my work because James Henry Hammond is kind of a poster child for how really awful the large

southern slavers are he is just a horrible man his diaries exist if you want to read them he is vile on about

his enslaved people who he treats appallingly and raping them and killing

them and assaulting them but he’s also vile about women he’s very clear that women aren’t either sexual playthings

for men or are there to bring in their their money it’s how he rises in the world is fine

marrying a rich woman whom he didn’t proceeds to abused um anyway he ends up being thrown out of Congress for a long

time because he raped his four nieces and was furious at them for ruining his political career but it didn’t road his

political career that much in that society because he gets put back into Congress in the late 1850s and when that

happens he gives his speech about what’s happening in Kansas and he says you know I’m not really paying that close attention what’s happening in Kansas

because I trust my friends to do the right things because you know we’re kind of the best people and we know how

things work but but while we’re talking about this let’s just let’s just talk

about how society should work because you northerners talk a lot about

equality and that’s just wrong I mean and James Henry had actually written a letter that we have sang you know

Jefferson Davis was completely wrong I’m sorry Thomas Jefferson was completely wrong there is no such thing as people

being equal but of course people aren’t equal people like James Henry Hammond are far better than the others and he

says you know really the way society works is it is you know most people are

dull they’re they’re not very smart they can’t plan for themselves they’re really kind of like you know the mud

sills of a building the the the beams that you hammer into the dirt in order

to support the greater stuff above them and by the way until fairly recently

in Illinois they still use the word saloons for for lower class white people

people who were driven into the mud siller’s she said they’re really the mud cell and every society has them and

they’re loyal and they’re hard-working and they got muscle but they’re you know basically just want to dance and and you

know eat and they’re not they’re not thinkers they’re gonna stay where they are there’s nothing you can do for them

but we above them we are the ones who move society forward so what you really need to do is get those people at the

bottom to produce a lot and then to take what they produce and to consolidate it

up with us because we’re the ones with the education and the connections and who know how to run things and you have

to give it you you have to give us the power and the control to do that because

if you actually give those people to bottom a voice they’re going to you know taking atom and what they’re producing

they’re gonna they’re gonna demand a redistribution of wealth and when that happens we’re not going to be able to

accumulate stuff and we’re not gonna be able to sit around and think great thoughts we’re gonna have to work and if we have to work we’re not going to be

able to to to move society forward so you need to preserve this new idea this

this idea of mud cellars and those of us on the top being able to move things forward because this is really the way

society moves best and I’m gonna look ahead a little bit here and tell you that is precisely what Andrew Stevens

says Alexander Stevens says in his cornerstone speech about the foundation of the Confederacy he doesn’t say we’re

going back to an old world he says we’re mounting a new world that’s gonna take over the entire globe we’re gonna be the

center of this new slave based society well this is 1858 Abraham Lincoln is

listening to all of us and he’s gotten involved in politics by 1856 and he’s listening to this and he’s saying wait a

minute you James Henry Hammond who’s famous for raping your nieces and who’s

never done a lick of work in your life and this is where you are because you you married into it you’re better than

me who’s and and he doesn’t say this I’m putting words in his mouth who’s

obviously brilliant who has worked my way from nothing and who is now you know

this this famous in an increasingly famous railroad lawyer and speaker and you

would have me have stayed in my father’s fields chopping wood my whole life and

just using my muscles which by the way as soon as he made to went into politics is a log splitter but the minute he

didn’t have to swing an axe any longer he didn’t do um you wouldn’t you think that I should be at the bottom and you

should be on top not happening and he gives this really important speech in 1859 and in this 1859 speech at the

Milwaukee Agricultural Fair he says no no there are people who think that society works best when all the money

sits at the top and they’re the ones who can move society forward but those of us

who believe in free labor believe something different we believe that society works best when government

doesn’t work for the very wealthy moving money upwards but rather works to preserve equality of opportunity because

if you preserve equality of opportunity for people at the bottom if you make sure they have access to resources and

access to education they are the innovators in the world and if you remember Abraham Lincoln is our only

president who holds a patent on something he was an innovator I’m an inventor I’m they’re the ones are gonna

innovate they’re the ones who are gonna use their ideas best they’re the ones who are gonna work hard they’re the ones who are going to come up with new ideas

and use their money and really exciting ways and they’re gonna produce more than they can consume and they are in turn

going to support a level of people above them who are going to be merchants and are going to come up with new ideas in

terms of factories and they’re kind of going to to to invent new things and

they in turn might support a few financiers but they’re going to hire beginners just

starting out and what this is going to do is it’s going to create not this world that the Southern Democrats are

holding on to where a few people have everything and everybody else has nothing this binary world of haves and

have-nots what we see is a world where if the government puts its weight into the

people at the bottom they’re going to create an updraft of prosperity that is

going to create prosperity across the country for everybody a sort of circle

if you will a web of interaction that is to lift all boats although he doesn’t

say that but it’s an interesting thing because as I mentioned before the reason his early store fails is because the

river sells him and none of the people in the town really can do enough to dig that river out and he realizes early on

if only the government had come and dug out the river which they could not do his early town would have survived

he believes governments should be helping people like him by doing things that they can’t do like dredging rivers

and building roads and putting their energies into education and helping people at the bottom so they in turn can

produce enough to move things upward through society this is the principle on

which the Republican Party goes in front of the country in 1860 and they say if

you turn the government over to us we are no longer going to use it to consolidate wealth among a few very

wealthy people who are enslaving other human beings we will use it to help people at the bottom regular Americans

who are trying to have equality of opportunity my point I want to make here as I talk about this is that the early

Republican Party is not out there talking about freeing the enslaved people they believe that enslavement

should be left in the south where it’s protected by the Constitution but they don’t talk about ending it that’s going

to come during the war what they’re talking about in 1860 is a new kind of government that helps people at the

bottom rather than helping people at the very top and in the election of 1860 the

Democratic Party splits dramatically between the people who believe in concentrating wealth at the top and a

number of northern Democrats who rally behind Stephen Douglas the same one who started this whole problem in 1854

behind Stephen Douglas who and who say you know we don’t really like the idea of concentrating wealth we would like to

move away from the slave power the Democratic Party actually splits in two and when that happens there’s also

another party that rises I want to tell you about when that happens the extreme southern Democrats organizing the deep

south most of the rest of the Democrats organized in the north of the middle of the country and they split their vote

and Abraham Lincoln wins the election 86 1860 by a plurality of the vote

slightly less than 40% of the American vote and therefore takes this concept of

free labor the idea that this new Republican party needs to protect equality of opportunity into the White

House with that so much material and so

many more great stories I could tell you I’ve hit an hour and I’m gonna leave that here now and next week pick up and

I’m gonna do this to begin the stuff I really like which is the Civil War and

and possibly its aftermath thank you very much I hope this was useful if it

was I’ll see you next Thursday to continue with the history of the Republican Party and as always I will do

the Tuesday 4:00 o’clock sessions on the relationship between history and modern

politics and who knows what next week’s gonna bring thanks a lot for being here

I’ll see you next week

openpolitics.com

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