S2 E3: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War

32. Season II, Episode III: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War

Release Date: October 21, 2021

Guests: Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, Wellesley College

Interviewers: Dr. Jeffrey A. Engel, Dr. Lindsay Chervinksy, Dr. Monica Kristin Blair

Citation: 

Bleeding Kansas and the Burning of Washington, 32. Center for Presidential History, Southern Methodist University, The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, 21 October 2021, accessed at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1304182/9404140-season-ii-episode-iii-bleeding-kansas-and-the-utah-war.mp3?download=true

Transcript:

Jeffrey Engel: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Past, the Promise, the Presidency, a podcast production of Southern Methodist University's Center for Presidential history. I'm Jeffrey Engel. And along with my colleague, Lindsay Chervinsky, we are your historian hosts for this season two, "Presidential Crises."

Episode three, 1850s. So far this season, we've seen the nation solidify under George Washington's leadership and then seen the city named for our first Presidentnearly burned to the ground by British forces, little more than a generation later. 

Now, the United States survived each of these crises, but now we turn to the time in American history where it most nearly didn't. The Civil War of the 1860s rent the nation in two, of course, dividing states and families, turning long friends into deadly [00:01:00] enemies. Any quick look at the nation's political map today-- go ahead. We'll wait while you find one. Okay. Got it? Good-- any quick look at the nation's political map today, say to the electoral college map of 2020, reveals a stark line of distinction, even now, more than 150 years later between states of the rebellious Confederacy and those who remain faithful to the union.

It's not a precise match, but it's pretty darn close. And perhaps we should not be surprised that lingering wounds still remain today from a conflict that so nearly brought the American experiment to an end, ended the moral stain of chattel slavery in a cascade of blood, and ultimately cost the lives of a full 800,000 Americans.

Actually, uh, historians keep raising that number as new historical methodologies keep revealing more and more-- that voices present in 1860 were long gone by the next national census. To put this in contemporary terms, if the United States were to lose today in 2021 a commensurate percentage of its population in [00:02:00] a new Civil War, we'd see nearly 7 million deaths. That's about 2,500 times the number of people who perished on 9/11, and sadly, 10 times the number whom to date have died in the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Such numbers are just simply hard to fathom, though it's no surprise that we consider the Civil War a crisis. Yes. A presidential crisis of epic proportions. But today we're not going to discuss the crisis of the war that I want to give you that broad context. But instead the crises just before-- two, from the 1850s: the struggle between pro and anti-slavery factions over the political fortunes of future states, known as "Bleeding Kansas," and the less well-known fight between federal authorities, PresidentJames Buchanan in particular, and Mormon leaders out of Utah over whose law should reign supreme in that new territory as it too marched toward statehood: to the church's law or the states. They called it the Mormon War, though we're also going to learn today why some historians still refers to [00:03:00] the conflict as "Buchanan's Blunder."

 To better understand these intertwined crises of federal expansion of the 1850s, we spoke with professor Sarah Barringer-Gordon the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the nation's experts on questions of constitutional religious freedoms. We then turned to professor Kellie Carter Jackson, who teaches in the department of Africana studies at Wellesley college. Her work focuses on the violence deployed all too frequently in the ongoing battle for slavery's abolition. 

Joining us in this conversation is Dr. Monica Blair. One of our post-doctoral fellows here at the CPH, and in fact, the executive producer of this show. 

Let's jump into it. The long struggle known as Bleeding, Kansas.

 going to give you the hard question we always ask first. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and telling us what you work on.[00:04:00] 

Sally Gordon: Yes, my name, is Sarah Behringer Gordon. I am a legal historian of religion in the United States. I have studied westward migration, different religious groups and, the Civil War and reconstruction. So my, my focus mainly is on the 19th century. 

Jeffrey Engel: Well, we've asked you here today to talk about the Utah War and uh, American crisis with the presidents and the Mormon movement out west. Could you fill our listeners in on we're talking about? 

Sally Gordon: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, the first President and prophet of the church, and a group of his followers. They also publish the Book of Mormon in 1830. And really from its first days, the church was controversial in part [00:05:00] because they had a brand new scripture and claim to be the only true Christians, saying that no one had followed the Bible for more than 1500 years and they were going to clean up Christians' acts.

Q: Why were Mormons so threatening?

Jeffrey Engel: Could you explain a little bit more why they appeared so threatening specifically to, to state authorities. Is it just that they were so close and almost appeared to be siblings that had gone the wrong way? Or are they actively promoting loyalties and activities that are unpopular?

Sally Gordon: The answer is a bit of both. One thing is that the church grew quickly. Joseph Smith was incredibly charismatic and his ability to attract followers, and to keep them really testify to his spiritual virtuosity. The other is that they were very active missionaries. As they began to create their [00:06:00] own settlements, they became a political force and governments were stunned by the ways that the Latter-day Saints seemed to operate, in exactly the ways that their prophet told them to with no question. Of course, that's not true on the inside, but that's the way it looked from the outside: that they were a danger, that they were a strange new political group. And in many situations they were believed to be abolitionists, against slavery. So when there was a group that settled in Missouri, they were attacked by the governor because he associated them with anti-slavery.

Jeffrey Engel: was that an accurate assessment on the governor's part?

Sally Gordon: I think it's fair to say that Joseph Smith was not a great fan of slavery and there were even Free Blacks in Nauvoo in Illinois, where they settled in the [00:07:00] 1840s. But he also varied a bit. His successor, Brigham Young, supported slavery in ways that blended well with Latter-day Saint culture, and encouraged the recruitment of slave-holding Southern, uh, Latter-day Saints. I think it's fair to say that the very charismatic prophet, while he wasn't always completely an abolitionist, was no fan of slavery and less racist than the church became after his death, and especially after their exodus to Utah in the late 1840s

Q: How much was Brigham Young's pro-slavery stance his own ideological commitment vs. a calculated political move?

Jeffrey Engel: So how much of that is an active political strategy? How much did Brigham Young decide to be more accepting of slavery or slave holders as a simply a means to get by or to fit in. And how much was it ideological for him personally? 

Sally Gordon: I think Brigham Young, a very [00:08:00] powerful man, who is following in the steps of a charismatic leader, he was very much interested in solidifying the church Um, and early on, those were very, very hard days. after the death of Joseph Smith and eventually the selection of Brigham young, they left a whole group behind who refused to ally themselves with Young, including Joseph Smith's widow. 

So yes, Brigham Young was a pragmatic man. He was also though clearly comfortable with racial hierarchy. He gave almost hysterical sermons on miscegenation. He said many times that slavery was a divine institution. So I think it's fair to say that he was both dedicated to the survival of the faith, but also he himself had very clear ideas about race , [00:09:00] and about the place of Black people in a Latter-day Saint theology. He very strongly argued that slave families should not be broken up by sale. One of the things he said was the best thing that could happen to a Negro as he put it, um, would to be a, slave among Latter-day Saints. That was the best possible outcome.

Q: This seems to echo anti-Papism. What's happening with religious freedom at constitutional level?

Jeffrey Engel: Let me ask you just a broader question, because much of the criticism that you're describing towards the early Mormons echoes of course, criticism launched against Papists and against Catholics, you know, especially the idea of a dual loyalty or a non American loyalty. We're in a period, of course, at the latter end of of state religions. you help us understand the state of religious freedom at this time? What does the constitution allow?

Sally Gordon: That's one thing that Joseph Smith had very strong opinions on.[00:10:00] The Bill of Rights were added in 1791, saying that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there of, but that only applied to the federal government. 

And Different states had different levels of tolerance. But most of them were pretty tolerant. That's one reason that Mormons stand out so much because they excited so much hostility. Part of that is connected to how they recruited but another part of it is that they set themselves up as some kind of independent political existence. And that's one reason that the exodus west, starting in 1847, made such sense to Brigham Young because he wanted to have his own space to run a government. 

Jeffrey Engel: Well, and [00:11:00] speaking of land. Okay. So we've gotten them to Utah. Why do we have to add the second word of "war?" 

Sally Gordon: So in Utah, Brigham young and his advisers and everyday Latter-day saints built you want to say thriving in some ways, but it was really, really hard work. And there were often on the edge of starvation, uh, in those very early years, but they put together an early government, they called it the state of Deseret, and, applied for admission to the union. And Instead of being admitted to the union as a state, which would have extended all the way west to the Pacific. Congress dealt them a blow and they admitted Utah Territory, which is a jurisdiction governed by the national government. The federal government had the most complete power over territories, and that was deeply [00:12:00] resented, not just in Utah, but in every territory thought they got a terrible deal from the central government. Nobody liked to stay a territory. 

Brigham Young was appointed as governor in 1850. And the territorial legislature was overwhelmingly populated by faithful Latter-day Saints. I can't tell you how many times I looked for debates over laws, proposed by the governor and there were none, it just was passed. It was a pretty well oiled government, but it was deeply Mormon. 

After settling in, in 1852, they began to really, build out in public life, the structures that Joseph Smith had put into place very late in his life. And One of the key. Elements was polygamy. That is the [00:13:00] marriage of a faithful Mormon man to more than one woman. That was publicly announced in 1852. The early Republican party, which was only formed in the mid 1850s, argued early and often to great effect that they wanted to prohibit the twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery in all us territories.

I mean, you talk about Bleeding, Kansas in 1854, especially right. The whole country is undergoing tidal waves of conflict and division. Latter-day Saints would say, "We have our own peculiar domestic institution!" and really tried to make allies in the south. They did achieve a bunch of successes because southerners viewed the prohibition of polygamy. If there was a national statute that prohibited polygamy in the territories, they were very worried that that would be the nose [00:14:00] under the tent. And the next thing would be slavery.

Q: Did Buchanan use Mormons to distract from slavery?

Jeffrey Engel: I mean, Given the pervasiveness of the slavery question in American politics at this time, do we find instances, have you found instances where a President, say Buchanan, perhaps try to elevate the anti-Mormon issue, elevate the polygamy issue as a way of unifying the rest of the country behind something? 

Sally Gordon: it's a great diversion, right? I mean, deflect the gaze onto Utah. Absolutely. So you're raising the question of Buchanan's decision to send what passed for an army out to Utah, in an effort to show that open defiance of the national government would produce a fatal response. It was designed both to divert from slavery, but also to convince, fire eaters that there would be a price. It wouldn't work. 

Monica Blair: Can you tell us a little bit more [00:15:00] about the reaction of Mormons in Utah? When these troops started arriving?

Sally Gordon: Yes, one of the things that, we have to remember is that Mormons had been slaugthered. They had been run out of every place they'd ever been. They'd been tarred and feathered. It was really a, desperately, isolating position that they were in and hearing that the army was on the way. Brigham Young, who had been talking like an independent President as though he had great power over an independent jurisdiction, told all the saints to prepare for war, to be ready to abandon Salt Lake, to recommit themselves to God; to place, all they had and, everything they had worked for, in the hands of the church. And, there really is a great outbreak of, religious fervor. Great panic, deep [00:16:00] fear of starvation, deep fear of violence. And the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 was the tension around the army being, outside Utah and maybe on their way in whipped up fervor to the boiling point.

Monica Blair: Could you tell us about how the massacre unfolded?

Sally Gordon: The Latter-day Saints had profited from migrants coming through Salt Lake or Southern Utah they were viewed as a relatively reliable source of foodstuffs. Many trains were crossing the Plains that year. In this atmosphere of just toxic hatred flowing back and forth. a group of militia leaders, met, and began to recruit Native Americans as well to help them discipline [00:17:00] the wagon train. And eventually they wrought siege to the train, and finally, promised to escort everyone away from the train safely, if they left everything behind and just walked out men in one line, women and children in another. And the desperate, train captains agreed to do that. 125 people were slaughtered that day. Some by being shot in the head, others by knives, the only people who were spared were 17 children under the age of eight. uh, The children were dispersed to various Mormon families and not brought back until more than a year later. You know, Mormon women appeared in dresses that had been worn by migrants, and John D. Lee. The leader of the massacre acquired the most [00:18:00] beautiful Black stallion ever brought west that belonged to that train leader. It was really a terrible, inexcusable situation. And I have to say that, Mormon scholars have in the last. 20 years done a great job of getting the story right, and bringing it out and acknowledging it. 

Monica Blair: Can you tell us a little bit more about what happens when federal troops actually get there when they arrive in Salt Lake? What does that look like on the ground?

Sally Gordon: So in the 1840s, Joseph Smith formed an army the Nauvoo Legion, he called it, of which he was the general. So there were active militias in Utah and various different branches. These are not people who are defenseless , and these are people who know where they live much better than the army does. And the army kind of set out at a bad moment. too late in the season, got caught. [00:19:00] Buchanan just couldn't seem to do things right.

 But with the army was a young man named Thomas Cain. Cain was actually a rich kid with a trust fund from Philadelphia, and he was an anti-slavery activist, who had used his father's summer house , as a station on the underground railroad and his own dad put him in jail. he was also a. Uh, slender and sickly guy, The Saints had nursed him back to health when they were in winter quarters in Iowa after they'd left Illinois, and Cain became over the next several decades the loyal friend of the Saints. 

Um, And he's the one who really brokered a peace, eventually, but there were deaths associated with it. There were even some murders of people who tried to leave Utah, Brigham Young [00:20:00] referred to it as going to California, meaning you were kind of gone.

Monica Blair: Did PresidentBuchanan respond in any way to the massacre or the federal government at large?

Sally Gordon: I think of it more in Congress than the president. It's possible That, Buchanan view the Utah War as one of his successes. And the massacre really is part of the Utah War and is an extraordinary example of fratricide. I believe that slavery was a deeper and more important division , for most of the country than fights over Utah or polygamy ever could be. 

Interview 2_Kelly Carter Jackson

Jeffrey Engel: Would you mind introducing yourself and [00:21:00] telling everybody what you work on?

Kelly Jackson: My name is Dr. Kelly Carter Jackson. I am an associate professor in the department of Africana studies at Wellesley College, and I wrote a book called "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence." And I really look at the intersections of political violence and Black leadership and the idea that because slavery was created by violence and sustained by violence, it made some sense to Black leaders that it would only be overthrown by violence.

Jeffrey Engel: So what we'd like to talk about today is one of the major crises of the 1850s. It's one of the crises, to know on the road to the Civil War, what we often call Bleeding Kansas. I'd love you to give us some background on that for our listeners who may not be so familiar and actually to answer one particular question: is "Bleeding Kansas" the right term?

Kelly Jackson: So the 1850s is probably one of the most violent decades in the antebellum period. The 1830s are pretty violent too, but the 1850s get really violent, politically speaking. And that's [00:22:00] because a lot of things are shifting.

So when you get this Kansas-Nebraska Act it makes null and void the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise basically said, "Hey, we're going to have this deal where basically slavery stays in the south and, free labor is in the north and everything below the Mason Dixon line, is how we're going to preserve this peace between the north and the south, politically speaking. So we don't have to worry about new territories that come in, because if they're above or below the line, that will determine their sort of slave status." But basically the Kansas- Nebraska Act says whoever is the dominant group within this territory will decide if this becomes slave territory or free territory.

And it sparks off a lot of violence. And so in some ways I do think that Bleeding Kansas is appropriate because people are being killed over this political contestation. 

Jeffrey Engel: How has the President engaging this crisis-- and/or is he? 

Kelly Jackson: [00:23:00] This is what is so problematic about the entire antebellum period is because all of the presidents are using the issue of slavery, like a hot potato, And it really becomes this issue that people. Are struggling, not just the President, but the all elected officials are struggling with how to maintain. control over the institution of slavery and its growth. But also the abolitionists are becoming much more, not just radical, but political. So you have people like Charles Sumner, you have people like Thaddeus Stevens. You have these white, radical abolitionist politicians that are holding the government's feet to the fire. Charles Sumner, I think, you know, is so prominent because when we think of this moment and we think of, you know, the caning. That happens in 1854. I think politically it is so representative of this contentious battle because he gives this fiery speech. [00:24:00] And then, for his words-- which are essentially fighting words--he gets caned within an inch of his life in the Senate chamber.

And so the President has to figure out, how we are going to deal with all this? And I think in a lot of ways, he was behind the ball. So, it's complicated, but I also think that it's probably one of the most contentious periods in American history. When I saw January 6th and like the storming of the Capitol it's so reminded me of everything that has taken place during the 1850s, especially during this, moment in which you have congressmen, elected officials that are getting beaten, and violently harmed. 

Jeffrey Engel: I have to say, I was hearkening back as you were talking, to myself, of January 6th as well, just for the complexity of how partisan politics and single issue politics, can really override sanity, but also more importantly override any influence that the President had over Congress. 

Kelly Jackson: Lincoln's not President then, [00:25:00] but in 1855, he says "the spirit that has desired, the peaceful extinction of slavery has itself become extinct." And he's basically saying there is not going to be a peaceful demise of slavery in our future. This is really at that moment, 1855.

Jeffrey Engel: We tell ourselves, or we tell our students anyway, that there is a road to the war that makes the war feel inevitable in some ways. And you just mentioned that Lincoln, in 1855, is saying, this is going to end poorly, or at least violently, And I think the presidents of that era get remarkably low marks because they didn't do much to stop it.

Kelly Jackson: I think about President Fillmore, because this is during, 1854. is Anthony Burns he, he's a freedom seeker that leaves Virginia and comes to Boston and gets arrested because of the fugitive slave law. And, being held in a prison prepared to be shipped back to the south. And President Fillmore basically says we're [00:26:00] going to take this show of force, this strong stance. And he sends over 2000 federal troops to secure Anthony Burns. Excessive for one person. It cost the federal government about $40,000 to do all of this, to bring soldiers to secure Anthony Burns, to send him back to Virginia. President Fillmore completely misses the mark on like how committed Boston was to the abolitionist cause, but also how that show of force pushed people to abolitionist ideals. Well, When this happens, people who had sort of been on the fence are now much more radicalized about the evils of the institution of slavery and the idea that it should be abolished and abolished immediately. When Lincoln comes into power the south basically takes a stance. Like You're either for us or against us. that's how polarized people were. They didn't believe that there was [00:27:00] any middle ground. And to some extent, you know, I would agree cause. You really can't have a middle ground with slavery. , it's either, you're either promoting it or you're demolishing it, I don't think you can live in a world in which it exists and say, we're going to make it so that it's fair. There is no such thing as like fair slavery or good slavery.

Jeffrey Engel: Where did the presidents stand on those issues or are they offering plans? Are they commenting on plans or are they simply riding the wind?

Kelly Jackson: From like George Washington, all the way to Abraham Lincoln, I would say that our presidents have not taken the appropriate measures to dissolve the institution of slavery as they should have. And even the ones that knew that it was wrong. Thomas Jefferson who writes about it concedes that it's so profitable. He can't really relinquish it. I think that , our leadership made a commitment to uphold the institution of slavery because of its profitability. The amount of wealth and profit that come from the [00:28:00] institution of slavery make it so that even the highest officials can't really dismantle it because they benefit from it. , and the country benefits from it financially speaking. We have a long chain of leadership that has refused to not just dissolve the institution, but even to dissolve white supremacy? It was almost impossible to think about America without slaves. It's impossible to think about America without Black exploitation. And think about Black humanity, equal full humanity. 

Jeffrey Engel: You're emphasizing the economic side, and the fact that this was too profitable to give up. I have been struck by how powerful, the notion of way of life. Is, opposition to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and sixties, the only justification that people can come on both at this point is that this is how we like the world . Help me understand how I should be thinking about this period.

Kelly Jackson: No, that's such a good point because I [00:29:00] think it's all of the above. It's all of the above in the sense that, is it profitable? Yes. Even Jim Crow segregation is profitable. Red lining is profitable to white homeowners. Segregation is profitable for white schools that are getting an excessive amount of funding that should have gone to Black schools.

There are all of these ideas politically, economically, socially, even morally, if you will, they're all connected because they all support. white supremacist ideology or white supremacist agenda. So You can't just have the economics alone. You can't just have the politics alone, the politics reinforce or protect the economics, but then the social benefit of. Both the psychological boost that comes from thinking of whiteness as supreme and the social boost that comes from white supremacy, they all, , are intertwined. You can't really pull on one string [00:30:00] without pulling on another, that's why I think it's important that we have not just economic historians or political historians and social and cultural historians and feminist historians. You just can't come at a one prong approach. You can't just say we'll change the. And then you'll change the system because it's more than the law, you know,, or we'll change people's hearts. And then, you know, you'll change. You'll change the culture. It's more than that too.

Jeffrey Engel: So many of the places where this is an ongoing problem, happened to coincide dramatically with a map of slavery and institutional racism. So when we think about the Bleeding Kansas incident, is it fair to imagine it simply that both sides are pouring their advocates and pouring, trying to pour votes into the region?

Kelly Jackson: Oh, absolutely. There's so much voter fraud There were 2,900 eligible voters, but 5,000 votes cast. I mean, That shows you that like, you know, the system is completely broken, but everyone [00:31:00] was so intensely invested in whether or not. Kansas becomes a free state or a slave state because of not just the economic implications, but the political implication. If you can bring your slaves to the state and have representation based on the three-fifths clause, you can have more representation advocating for you within Congress, within the house of representatives.

So this is also about political power as well. The investment to whiteness and white supremacy is so strong that even someone who was white and did not own slaves, could vote against their own interest because of how white supremacy worked for them.

And I think you still see that to this day. There are people who. Vote against their interests all the time, economically speaking, even politically speaking, but that's because in their minds they're not voting against themselves. They're voting for themselves because they're voting for white supremacy.

Jeffrey Engel: I'm amazed when I think back on the history of this, at the very least we have to acknowledge that the [00:32:00] anti-slavery electorate also voted to be white only..

Kelly Jackson: Douglas has this great quote where he says, to be a white supremacist is the Republican way, There's a difference between being anti-slavery and being an abolitionist and there were a lot of white northerners, most white northerners were antislavery. But being an abolitionist was something different. It meant that you wanted to abolish this system. But even the abolitionists from our contemporary lens were also racist. I mean, They might've believed that slavery was wrong, but did they believe in Black equality?

Not necessarily. I think you had a few radical white abolitionists that did, but the prevailing belief of the day was that Black people were not people. that's how a lot of people approached Black humanity was that it's wrong to be violent, but you still shouldn't have rights.

Jeffrey Engel: I think our listeners are probably familiar with the story of John Brown, and his role here. Though feel [00:33:00] free to tell us about that. But, from your research, who are the names that we should know that haven't made it quite into the cannon of our education?

Kelly Jackson: This is how I was introduced to John Brown. I was a student at Howard university and a graduate student was teaching at the time and he said, I want to tell you about the coolest white man that ever lived. And I was like, ooh, tell me more. That was how I got introduced to John Brown. And then I wound up writing like a senior thesis about him and essentially saying that like John Brown is, not a leader, he's actually a follower. He is a huge fan of Black abolitionists of Haiti of Toussaint Louverture. And he's actually taking the things that Black people are promoting.

So what I love about John Brown is that I think he. Such a person ahead of his time. He's one of the few white people that really was like, slavery's not the problem. Whiteness, that's the problem. You think you're better than everyone. We're all God's children. And he was emphatic about. [00:34:00] Demolishing the institution of slavery, but also promoting Black equality. I think oftentimes when we tell the story of John Brown, we put him so much at the forefront and we forget that really is trying to fulfill the same ideas that Black leadership had been promoting the entire abolitionist era.

Also, I think that we forget people like Mary Ellen pleasant, I spend a lot of time talking about her in my book. she is a Black woman. Who was an entrepreneur who was incredibly wealthy, who donates $30,000 of her own hard earned money to help support John Brown. She's one of the largest finance years of John Brown.

I think it's really important to know that Black women were so supportive of him. Harriet Tubman was so supportive of John Brown. They had a great relationship. I'll be, it's sort of a short lived one.

He goes to Bleeding, Kansas, He brings his sons and his friends and says we are committed to stopping the institution of slavery by any [00:35:00] means necessary. He earns the nickname Osawatomie Brown for, committing really gruesome acts of violence, like hacking slaveholders to death. And then he goes all across the country fundraising, essentially saying, I'm going to start this rebellion. Like he was telling everybody about what he was going to do at Harper's Ferry it's amazing to me that he got so much support and that Harper's Ferry even takes place 

Jeffrey Engel: So is it the violence that he is willing to perpetuate that. Makes him credible to African-American leaders?

Kelly Jackson: Yeah. think it's important to sort of distinguish the kind of violence that John Brown is using. While slave holders and the institution of slavery is. Incredibly violent, John Brown is using violence to arrest that violence to stop that violence. So It's not as though he's engaging in violence as a way of life. He's using violence to stop the institution of [00:36:00] slavery. I think you could easily look at these actions and say, oh, well, you know, two rights don't make a wrong, I see this as protective violence, that protective violence is a way of using force and sometimes deadly force to protect one's humanity, to protect the community, to protect people who are most marginalized. And it's not meant to be perpetuated into perpetuity. It's meant to stop institutions from continuing violence. .

Jeffrey Engel: Is it fair to say that. Those who he was perpetuating the violence against and other violent abolitionists, white and Black, were perceived as not defending something, but rather just attacking whiteness

Kelly Jackson: Oh, absolutely. , the hypocrisy is like knows no bounds, but the idea that Black leaders and John Brown were killing slaveholders were so egregious. Especially to the institution of white supremacy that people [00:37:00] couldn't really discuss what they were actually fighting for. No one was willing to see the institution of slavery as a problem. They thought that slavery civilized, the Black people, that it was a good thing for them. They were bringing Black people to Jesus and doing them a favor. So they really saw this violence as heinous because they could not concede that slavery was a problem. 

Jeffrey Engel: So we're a podcast looking at presidential crises and oftentimes our analysis leads us to the conclusion that the President Didn't do enough or sometimes the President wasn't the right person to be looking at. Is this a story that we should be considering a presidential crisis? Or should we consider it a crisis? Which the President abdicated his responsibilities.

Kelly Jackson: Wow. Can it be both? I mean, I see it as a top down problem, and a bottom up problem. because It requires. All hands on deck to, to end an institution [00:38:00] like slavery. You needed the activists, the abolitionists, the people on the ground, calling it out. You needed people in the highest level, calling it out as well. and not just saying, this is a problem, but creating. Solutions and legislation and a path to emancipation that let people know, Hey, there is a end date on how we see the institution of slavery. I don't think that we had that leadership even Lincoln does not like slavery, but he's ambivalent about what to do with Black freedom.

Jeffrey Engel: It's astounding. Um, I guess sometimes as historians, I think we look at these situations and say, we've done this before. We know how this experiment should work. Why is it not?

Kelly Jackson: I think we continue to underestimate. White people's allegiance to white supremacy, how difficult it is to sever those [00:39:00] ties because it shapes everything around them. And it is really difficult to think about what a world looks like when it's not there. And so I think. When we look at January 6th, that's a perfect example of how people are willing to put their bodies on the line to promote white supremacy. And when I say white supremacy, I mean whiteness as supreme, I don't think we realize how. Tethered to that. The American psyche is the American economy, the American political structure.

Laws that are in Texas and that are in Georgia, to me are really saddening because almost 200 years after the end of slavery, we still can't relinquish. Power. We still can't relinquish. The belief that. Black people are human beings and citizens and deserving of the vote and equal protection and home ownership and a proper [00:40:00] education and healthcare. Or we think that if we grant those things that somehow it undermines white freedom, white identity, white home ownership, there can't be both we can't both own houses. We can't both vote. it's a real problem. 

Jeffrey Engel: Monica, you got any thoughts you wanna throw in?

Monica Blair: I know that your work also talks about how Black abolitionists thought about the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution. 

So could you talk a little bit about, how people in your book are thinking about the memory and legacy of those revolutions.

Kelly Jackson: Oh man. Yeah. I, I think of William Nell Cooper, who is a Black abolitionist and historian, and really does the work of talking about , Black people that fought in the American Revolution and getting us to think about history from a global perspective. And so he talks about Haiti. A lot of Black abolitionists are saying, when we look at revolution, we should really look to Haiti as. Only revolution that abolishes the institution of slavery that grants,[00:41:00] emancipation and citizenship to its people. The only real revolution that like effectively changes life in a transformative way for the entire populace. 

But If you look at the American Revolution, Black abolitionists are quick to, call it the hypocrisy to say, well, we are, we're this new independent country, but how are things better for the enslaved? How are things better for women? How are things better for native Americans? How are things better for poor white farmers? There's a lot of things that haven't been addressed in this so-called revolution. So what I love about the Black abolitionists and Black leadership so much is that they're not like take down America, burn it all down. They're like, no, be what you say you are. For everyone live out. These principles apply these principles to everyone. What you have is like a great theory, but put it into practice. A beautiful theory, a powerful theory. I believe in all of the things that are in the constitution and the declaration of independence. These are great ideas of enlightenment in this [00:42:00] moment, but putting that into practice and having it apply. to the most marginalized is what should make America an exceptional place. But because we live in this duality and this hypocrisy and because these ideals have not been fully fulfilled, that is the tension. And so these leaders are looking at this in the 1830s, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and saying, Hey, America, wake up America.

monica--she-her-_1_09-13-2021_110543: Absolutely. It reminds me of that. Langston Hughes poem, "Let America be American Again". That's the same kind of idea , we want them to actually live up to those principles that are in that founding. We talked some about Black abolitionists, having a good relationship with someone like John Brown, but how were Black abolitionist trying to speak with work with, or push back on some of these white abolitionists who were not anti-racist, who weren't living their values, but could maybe be an ally in undoing institution of slavery.

Kelly Jackson: When I look at a lot of Black abolitionists, I think they're responsible for not just [00:43:00] recruiting more Black people or more white people into the movement, but getting them to change their ideas about what could be possible and what should be possible. When I think about Frederick Douglas and how he starts his own newspaper,. Essentially Douglas is saying , if you believe in my equality, show me. Don't just try to abolish the institution of slavery, but prove it politically prove it socially, legally, all of these things, don't just make us secretaries in your organizations or poster children for the movement. But allow us to lead and allow us to show you what we want for ourselves. And a lot of people like Henry Highland Garnet, Jermain Loguen uh, Lewis Hayden, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner truth. I think that you do have some powerful relationships between white and Black abolitionists. And I think they are excellent examples not just how to be an ally, but how to be a comrade, how to be in the [00:44:00] fight together. And, John Brown is just one of them, but I also think of people like, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens. These were the white people that were working as politicians, as elected officials to push reconstruction. But it takes a lot to create systemic change. 

Jeff & Lindsay Wrap-Up

Jeffrey Engel: The 1850s were a problem for historians and for the people at the time. And I'm really glad that Lindsay is here to explain to me what we just learned. We're going to revise one of our tactics from last year, which was that, Lindsay and I both wrote down a few points that we wanted to make to each other, and that we found interesting from our interviews. Lindsay what do you got? 

Lindsay Chervinsky: The first thing that really stuck out to me is, you know, I was in school for roughly eleventy billionty years. And [00:45:00] yet I am not sure I ever learned about the massacre that Sally talked about. I don't think it was in my textbooks. I And if it was, I don't remember it. So that is shocking to me that there could be this horrible violent event and one that really had tremendous ramifications and one that is still continuing to be contested and discussed. And yet I don't think that I ever learned about it. 

Jeffrey Engel: I have to admit I was not familiar with the Mormon War. And I only learned about the massacre that you're referring to I think when I got here, probably the SMU as a tenured faculty member because there's a Southwest center and a lot of people around here at SMU study that part of the country. I think it really reinforces for me the the fact that all knowledge is new the first time you learn it, now we can draw a broader conclusion, I think, that what gets into the historical cannon is critical, the very least, I'm always amazed at how many people come up to us as historians [00:46:00] and tell us things that we didn't know,

Lindsay Chervinsky: And it's a good reminder for, someone like me and someone like us who have been in school for such a long time, that when we engage with audiences that don't know about something for example, The Tulsa Massacre or the Wilmington Riot.

These are stories that maybe we've learned about in our graduate studies, but not, everyone's going to know it's so important to encourage the spirit of learning and to the curiosity and the quest for new knowledge 

Jeffrey Engel: One of the points that Gordon made that I found very persuasive was that President Buchanan soon after taking office, basically takes up the political fight of what to do with the Mormons. Yes, he was getting pressure, but yes, he also thought that this is a good fight to have. Why?

Because, you know, we're ripping the country apart over slavery by the time he's President, but we can at least most of us agree polygamy is not the direction we want to go. So polygamy can unite the country, anti polygamy can unite [00:47:00] the country in that sense. And he takes on this mission.

I think thinking it was going to be much easier than it turned out to be of course of subduing group, of, we want to call them Americans at this time, do you want to call them former Americans, but certainly the point that she made that Buchanan actively engaged and in some way sought out that crisis is I think something to really keep in mind as we think about crises going forward.

Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah, it's amazing how often sometimes presidents will welcome crises as a way to distract from domestic or more local challenges that they don't have a solution to.

Jeffrey Engel: We all know, obviously Secretary of State Seward famously advised that to Lincoln in the first days of the Civil War, let's pick a fight with the British that will unify us. Lincoln I think was very prudent in suggesting that one enemy at a time is I think exactly what he wrote back.

Lindsay Chervinsky: All of these episodes continue to tie us into today because history never really dies, but it was one of the main concerns in our [00:48:00] recent transition period. Former President Trump was going to try and pick a fight with China, and China feared that he was going to pick a fight with them as a way to distract from the election or from the transition. I guess it's just another reminder that history is not even past. 

Jeffrey Engel: The Past, The Promise, and the Presidency is a production of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Our thanks to the Office of the Provost and the Dedman College of Arts and Sciences for their support and special. Thanks to Taylor Enslin, Brian Franklin and Monica Blair for producing this episode, whose original theme music was composed by Marshall Engel.

For show notes, more information on our expert guests, recommended readings, and really quite a lot more about Pierce, Buchanan, and the other presidents we're talking about this season visit pastpromisepresidency.com. I [00:49:00] mean, seriously, you got to check it out. There are articles, links to biographies, timelines, our CPH team, fellow, students, and interns.

Frankly, they work hard each week to make this podcast and everything that we do here at CPH, a model for understanding and debating the past, both on its own terms and for today. Now I couldn't be prouder of their work and the opportunity that it gives you, the listener, each week to shed just a little bit more light on our collective presidential past.

Tune in next week to learn about a crisis President Ulysses Grant faced in a tumultuous years after the Civil War and particular, how he handled the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871. Now that's a story from the past that still resonates today. Trust me, you won't want to miss it.