boston in the civil war hub of the second revolution many of us can recall the connection between boston and the first revolution in the seventeenth seventies but are we as cognizant of the events in boston in the eight hundred fifty s and hundred sixty s she's also the author of walking tulip tours of civil war boston and coeditor with the honorable marco botsford and the honorable patti sorry this of breaking barriers the unfinished story of women lawyers and judges in massachusetts her next book will focus on the women's suffrage movement in massachusetts barbara earned her undergraduate degree from harvard college and her law degree from harvard law school she works as a senior attorney at the massachusetts supreme to judicial court and i'd also like to add that barbara's books are for sale in the back of the room and of course she's here and will sign of for you if you would like and so for now please help me give a warm reception to our thank you all it's lovely to be here today and thank you for coming and i have a lot of images that i'm going to be using so if anybody's view was blocked at all by me or the podium you may just want to move where you can really see the pictures because the pictures i have a i have about fifty of them so i'm just going to start by explaining because i'm always asked this and i know we have plenty of time which is great why i got involved or how i got involved in this particular project and actually begin with my writing the walking towards a civil war boston which is now actually that second edition and what happened was i just love history in general american history in particular lived in boston for many i grew up in boston lost it again and as you heard went to school here and as the civil war one hundred fiftieth anniversary was coming i was very aware of the many important to storable events that had taken place in massachusetts and very important sites and statues commemorating certain people and events and i kept wondering why hasn't somebody written a book of walking tours of civil war boston of course we have the freedom trail and there are various other walking tours and i decided when i realized nobody had done of that that was something that i would enjoy doing so i started off by writing the book of walking tours of civil war boston and then i expanded it into this book about boston in the civil war as was mentioned in the introduction the subtitle hub of the second revolution was of course chosen carefully and the reason i chose it is because the thesis of the book besides describing what was going on in boston in the years leading up to and during the civil war is that boston was once again at the forefront of this nation's history in galvanizing the nation toward a second american revolution the first one of course gained us independence from great britain and the second one gained us the abolition of slavery in the country one hundred fiftieth anniversary commemoration period is drawing to a close at this point in time and actually as you may know next month december two thousand and fifteen marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary since the ratification of the thirteenth amendment that ended slavery the book really has two parts to it  for those of you who have looked at it the first really focuses on how boston's abolitionists and obviously i do touch on the national story as well as the local story essentially led to events that precipitated the civil war in the second part of the book i look at how boston itself was changed by the war and i particularly focus on the experience of certain communities including the black community in boston the irish community woman and a number of soldiers who fought in the war i'm for purposes of this talk i'm really going to focus on the first part of the book which is the boston abolitionist story but during the question and answer session i really encourage you to ask questions about anything else that i cover that you may be interested in so you do not at all need to confine yourself to the topic of abolitionism and before i start the last thing i'll just say is what is abolitionism i assume you're all familiar with the word but that of course was the movement to eradicate this nation of slavery and  purposes of this talk i'm generally going to be using the terms anti slavery and abolitionism as synonyms there is a slight difference that historians use which if somebody asks me about later on i'm happy to explain for our purposes i'm going to use them as s and i want to start here with this picture does anybody recognize a i mean some of you probably do you know where it is faneuil hall exactly i mean usually people recognize it but of course in f haul it's almost as large as this back wall maybe not quite but it's taller this is the enormous painting that hangs behind the stage hall and downtown boston and the reason why i want to start with it is because it commemorates a really important event in eight hundred thirty and the years that i'm really going to talk about in this talk are basically eight hundred thirty to the start of the war in eight hundred sixty one and obviously i'm going to go fairly quickly to thirty years response to a senator from south carolina the particular topic of the speech was about tariffs which we're not really going to go into the reason why i love it so much as i love what daniel webster says at the end of the speech and these very famous words actually run along the frame at the bottom of the picture and he says liberty in union one an inseparable now and forever and i think that really summarizes how bostonian svelt about them and their nation in the year eight hundred thirty at that point in time boston was primarily white and protestant there were only a very small number of irish immigrants at that point in boston and many of those were actually protestant there was a small black community or free blacks in boston but it was only about two thousand people and massachusetts had of course ended slavery soon after the american revolution in seven hundred eighty three and we were the first of the thirty eight original states to end slavery  economy was thriving was because of our close connection to the south and in particular to slave grown cotton m two levels our whole successful industrial revolution was based on turning slave grown cotton into cloth and our bankers and finance or is in large part made a significant amount of their money lending money to planters for the growing season and then of course they'd be paid back with interest and they were just very very close economic ties between the north and the south  yet as daniel webster says liberty in union because we didn't have slavery here we were free from great britain and people in boston were really in massachusetts when i say boston i'm talking generally about the state and certainly about the greater  boston area we're feeling really really good about themselves we took great credit and pride in our role in the american revolution that's basically worth things were in a quick summary in eight hundred thirty and just as daniel webster was giving this really feel good speech in the united states congress two people burst on the scene who are going to totally transform how bostonians came to think of their city and their state because of the role that the north played in southern slavery both in terms of benefiting from it but also simply in terms of being part of a country that had southern slavery and these two people the first two or really david walker a black man and william lloyd garrison a white man i suspect that everybody who's here has heard of william lloyd garrison very few of you probably have heard of david walker david walker was a black man originally from the south he was a free black man moved to boston and eight hundred twenty nine was moved to write a book called or really a pamphlet called an appeal to colored citizens of the world and in it he criticized tremendously the system of race based slavery  and he also criticized racism in the north which he claimed was a direct consequence of race based slavery in the south and to spam flip was immediately banned by southern slaveholders and southern governments the south was always very quick to be aware of anything that could lead to discontent among slaves and the possibility of a slave rebellion but nonetheless his pamphlet went through several printings very very quickly as people read it and david walker undoubtedly would have been us starting in eighteen twenty nine all the way through the civil war and beyond william lloyd garrison some of you may know was born in newburyport massachusetts he was born to a very poor family his father disappeared soon after and when he was a young child he lived with his siblings and his mother as i said very poor and when he was still a boy he was apprenticed to a newspaper publisher in newb port and there he learned journalism and typeface and all the different tools of journalism as a young man and people ask why was garrison how did he become a leading abolitionist why was he such a radical and the answer i think is twofold one he was simply born that way i mean there are people who simply their destiny at some level is to transform the world but also this was a period known as the great awakening when there had been this revival of protestantism and some protestantism and there was a big emphasis and ministers were preaching human being's ability to improve the world to perfect the world and garrison was a very religious man and garrison took it upon himself to devote himself to working against slavery and he first did that by leaving boston leaving newburyport and going to the quaker community in baltimore even in an era when there really was no organized anti slavery community in this country quakers were always opposed to slavery they viewed it as against their religion to own another person so garrison got involved in connected with the quaker community there  and he began to work on a quaker newspaper that was devoted among other things to moral opposition to slavery garrison was then invited and returned to boston in eight hundred twenty nine to give a speech at the park street church and in his speech he criticized the existence of southern slavery in very dramatic way that really no bus tony and her virtually no bus tony and had ever heard before and he talked about it as being an immoral awful system that the north was complicit in it and that everybody had to do everything they could to free this nation of this terrible evil two years later garrison returned permanently to boston to establish a newspaper called the liberator which many of you have heard of which he published every single solitary week from january eighteenth thirty one until december one thousand nine hundred sixty five when the thirteenth amendment ending slavery was ratified every single week you can see some issues of it online if you're interested i know sorry our history buffs in the boston public library and their rare book rare book room has available every single issue of it and it was no accident that garrison returned to boston to establish this newspaper i mean he could have done it in baltimore he could have gone to philadelphia where there was a quaker community he could have done it in new york which was such an important city of course washington d c the nation's capital back home to newburyport but he came to boston and he said to explain why he came to boston to set up this newspaper that he was determined to lift up the standard of emancipation within sight of bunker hill and the birthplace of liberty in other words garrison could think of no place more appropriate to fight the nation's next battle for liberty than in boston which had been such a leader in our initial fight for liberty the war of independence the american revolution garrison was not only really a brilliant speaker and journalist he was also a brilliant organizer in a way that really is very familiar to us of the twenty first century but was really quite astounding and astonishing really for his time period because garrison understood that the way to begin a movement is to go and be a community organizer and he went and he had a group of at the beginning just a handful of people who were drawn to the anti slavery cause with him and they would go out and speak to green men and woman separately or together in little cities and towns and churches and homes and halls initially throughout massachusetts and then they expanded trying to persuade anybody they could to convert to the anti slavery cause and garrison began  organizing what he called the new england anti slavery society which held its first meeting at the african meeting house on boston's beacon hill some of you may have been there it's a historic building on beacon hill and that in itself was significant because in an error of widespread racism garrison was it wasn't just that he was opposed to slavery he really was a true egalitarian and he welcomed blacks and whites and men and women to work together on the anti slavery movement and it was very  fitting and really appropriate that he held the first meeting of the new england anti slavery society at the african meeting house and garrison and his followers as i said they went out little by little trying to persuade people to create small anti slavery societies and over the next ten years the decade of the eight hundred thirty s little anti slavery societies began to dought massachusetts as well as other communities  can't obviously talk about all the different people who joined with garrison early on although there all really fascinating but i just want to mention a few to give you a sense of the diversity of some of these people so i'll just mention to start with william cooper nell who is a member of boston's freeplay community he was a very young man really a teenager when garrison established the new england anti slavery society and the liberator newspaper and he immediately began to work with garrison on the newspaper and mel would emerge over the next decades as one of the critical leaders of boston's very active although as i said very small black community lydia mariah child was one of my favorites she joined immediately with garrison as i said garrison welcomed woman to work with him and in eight hundred thirty three she published the first book length writing against slavery in the country so eight hundred thirty three it's perfect to mention her today around thanksgiving because lydia mariah a child besides writing about slavery was also a author of children's stories and poems and one of her most fit what became one of her most famous poems is over the river and through the woods to grandfather's house we go which of course later on was set to music and i always find that ever since i learned this some years ago just so fascinating because lydia mariah a child like kara said it was a real radical and when she died decades later it was said of her that she would die for a principle and star for an idea and i'm sure that she probably dashed off over the river and through the woods one day at a few minutes thinking that this was sort of you know want t piece of nothing and of course that here we are one hundred eighty years later and that's really what she is most well known for nowadays wendell phillips was a very a perch point addition to the anti slavery movement because wendell phillips was a boston brahmin his father was a marriage boston john phillips and wendell phillips had been educated at harvard college at harvard law school now the boston brahman community was shocked and really horrified when wendell phillips joined the abolitionist cause but he helped garrison and the others develop inroads into boston's wealthy brahman community wendell phillips was also an extraordinary a gifted speaker who was nicknamed the golden trumpet of the abolitionist movement and he was responsible for helping to persuade many to join the small movement now so at this point i'm going to sort of say we're basically up to eight hundred forty is and or close to and what you have is a small but growing abolitionist movement obviously we don't have polls saying how many people were part of it in massachusetts at that point in time but it was very very small i mean a percentage point a couple percentage points but it was bigger a lot bigger than it had been when garrison began of course and every year it was growing although slowly one thing that's missing though from what i described so far more any people in the movement you could talk directly and personally about slavery and of course that was really critical because southern slave owners and the southern governments were very aware of course of the liberated newspaper and in fact they had asked the mayor of boston to ban it  the mayor of boston explained that there is this thing called free speech and we in the north honor it but in any event they claimed that garrison and his followers didn't know what they what they were talking about that slavery was a benign institution it was kind that slaves didn't have the intellect ability to handle their freedom if they were given it and that slavery really was a very proper and benign and kind system of governance so it's very important read just a couple of years ago the invention of wings ice which which is a historical fiction book that's a lot of fiction and if there's also a lot of history that is based on the grimm sisters it's an excellent book in any event were the daughters of a very large white southern plantation owner they grew up in charleston south carolina and they witnessed slavery growing up all parts of it and sarah the older sister had accompanied her father to philadelphia in the early one nine hundred thirty s when he went to seek medical treatment and have a consultation with a quaker physician and while they were there which was for quite an extended period of time sarah converted to quakerism later she influenced her younger sister angela lena who also did the same and they moved to philadelphia and they angelino who was the more outgoing of the two sisters contacted garrison in the mid eighty's thirty's and basically offered her help to the anti slavery movement and garrison invited them to come to massachusetts where they immediately became very active spokes persons in the  and they could talk very concretely about their observations of slavery about the sexual abuse suffered by woman and girls in the slave population about the separation of parents and children  common law because they were not legal marriage slaves marriages husbands and wives the brutal beatings and other horrific punishments the people being worked to death and so forth and so that captured the sentiments of audiences in a way that others had not been able to since they really were talking about their own experiences their own observations and then even more significantly by the middle eight hundred forty s frederick douglass who became of course the most famous emancipated slave or self emancipated slave in american  history arrived on the scene he was a slave born a slave in maryland and managed to escape from slavery to new bedford massachusetts which had a very active free black community and while he was a slave in maryland he had been working he had learned skills as a ship's caulker he was near a port and he had been able to escape by boat with the help of a free black seaman so he went to new bedford and in new bedford he went and attended an anti slavery meeting and after listening for awhile he was moved to tell his own story and people there were really struck by his eloquence as well as of course the horrors that he described growing up the slave how he had been treated how as a young strong teenager he had been sent to a slave breaker whose purpose was to essentially beat him into it to breaking his soul and spirit and talked about it and he became next to garrison himself the most effective slavery speaker so any question i know we're going to have questions at the end but i know i'm covering a lot and it's small groups are there any questions right now yes that's what was the purpose of this group but what was what would be trying to just raise awareness or maybe they have a certain goal well they were trying to raise awareness in the hopes that the north would decide that it could not live in a nation with slavery and what the end result would be at this point in time  this is what we're really going to start talking about in a moment is whether it would be a political movement or even a separation during these years particularly the eight hundred forty s there were some including garrison and wendell phillips who raised the possibility of  union and that the only way that the north really could over that the north could not remain linked to the south they believed also some of them some of them were really quite pacifist what forms an actual movement with a clear goal actually is an outgrowth of what happens at the eight hundred fifty s you have really in the eight hundred forty s is a lot of awareness and more and more people being drawn to the anti slavery cause but it only really becomes a significant movement in the eight hundred fifty s and that's the critical decade of course because by november eighteenth sixty this nation is electing abraham lincoln the south begins to secede and then you have war coming very soon thereafter so the eight hundred fifty s is where i really want to spend the most time and things begin to change in the eight hundred fifty s for a variety of reasons it all begins really with the compromise of eight hundred fifty which some of you may remember those of you who have children or grandchildren take in u s history if you ever looked over their shoulder you've seen a big section of the textbook called the compromise of eight hundred fifty but i just want to back up for a moment and say i know you all know this you're very well informed group that from the beginning of this nation's history many people were aware that the gap between what became a free north as slavery was gradually ended in the northern states and a southern economy that became even more dependent on slavery as the cotton gin was invented and cotton became such an outstandingly successful cash crop many people understood that the acquitted any point to be a conflict between north and south over the issue of slavery and many people were determined to try to at least postpone that through a series of compromises and the first one was in eighteen twenty actually when the territory of missouri petition to enter the union as a slave state and if missouri had been allowed to do so that would have upset this very careful balance in the congress between the number of slave the number of free states it so happened that at that exact same time and i'm sure you're probably all agree with me that they used very poor judgment the people of maine wanted to separate from massachusetts and they wanted to establish their own independent state of maine and that happened in nine hundred twenty and of course maine entered as a free state and so that continued the balance when you get to eight hundred fifty there's a need to again work things out so the compromise of eight hundred twenty or the missouri compromise it also established by the way an informal horizontal line across the country above which it was going to be free and below which there was the possibility of slavery but in one thousand nine hundred fifty a new compromise was needed because facts on the ground had really changed in recent years most importantly the mexican american war had just been fought in the late eight hundred forty s and we of course acquired a lot of new territory at the end of that war all of which or virtually all of which was below that imaginary horizontal line so it raised the possibility that more live would come into this country that people might want to expand slavery into and i just want to add that there were quite a number of northerners we'll talk more about them in a moment who are fine with slavery being where it had always been but who did not want to to expand it wasn't that they were so protective of slaves or black people it was that they had a different vision for the future of the country and their vision was based on free enterprise free labor industrialization and they saw th economy as something old fashioned and backwards and they did not want to expand beyond where it was so they were a day the stage was set for a dispute over the future of that land also at the same time california due to the gold rush even though it was way far against the pacific ocean was ready to enter the union as a state and was going to enter a wanted to enter as a free state and there weren't slaves out there all these prospectors and others who supported them were the ones who had gone to the far west and the third thing that was happening was that even though the absolute numbers were small there was an increase in the number of runaway yourself emancipated slaves and that's because more slaves were aware not the ones who were on plantations who had no access to any information but all the ones who traveled with their masters or worked in cities or worked on ports had heard about william lloyd garrison had heard about the anti slavery movement and there was an increase in the number of sleeves trying to run away to freedom and from the very beginning this country it had a fugitive slave law on its books that required slaves to be returned to the south but it had stopped being enforced by the northern states in other words of slave like frederick douglass or any other mancipation slave mated to the north they were generally protected by allies within the anti slavery community w black or white and of course this informal connection of alliances is known as the underground railroad as i said even though the numbers were small the south was very very angry about our protecting these runaway slaves and refusing to return them so the stage was set as a result of these various factors for a new compromise and daniel webster was one of the key people in working out what became known as the compromise of eight hundred fifty and it had a number of but the three most important parts all related to these three issues that i was talking about the first is that california did enter the union as a free state the second is is that that new linda choir from mexico it was decided that a new doctrine called sovereignty would decide its future meaning that whoever settled it would ultimately be able to vote whether to have it be slave or free so the possibility for the expansion of slavery was set and the third thing was a harsh new fugitive slave act was passed that was pushed by the south and this new fugitive slave act required it took away the authority to decide whether or not to return an alleged fugitive slave from state court judges and state courts juries and put i n the hands of these specially appointed federal commissioners the whole system was totally biased against the runaway slave they weren't allowed to testify the commissioner was paid double if somebody accused of being a slave was returned to the south so ten dollars if the person was declared to be a fugitive slave returned to the south but only five dollars of the commissioner found that in fact this person had always been a free man  ordinary people like all of us were required to help under this new fugitive slave act so that if any member of law enforcement called out to you on the street you know after a hand that man a runaway slave and you didn't do so you were subject to imprisonment and a fine now of course i mean you all know very well the story of the system of unintended consequences in politics in american life including in contemporary life and this is another example the south was sure that this harsh new fugitive slave act would stop slaves from being able to run away have them returned and make people unwilling to help the opposite happened it made the north dig in its heels as more and more ordinary people who hadn't before been terribly politically involved or upset about the prospect of a human being being sent back to slavery from they are state and that's what happened in the eight hundred fifty s it began  and of course this happened in other states as well i mean there are a fugitive slave cases across the north but it so happens that nowhere the state had them with the extreme national importance of massachusetts for reasons that w surprise you the south immediately wanted to target boston the home of the liberator the home of william lloyd garrison as a place to prove the long reach of the fugitive slave act and the very first people they targeted was a couple known as elegant william craft to if you know the story about them they're really fascinating and it's a great story that i wish everybody knew but in any event elena william craft were slaves from georgia they had a common law marriage so obviously not a legally recognized marriage but they were husband and wife william was a slave who worked as a carpenter in a cabinet maker and he was what was called a lead out slave which meant that he was completely own but he essentially ran his own business but he was required to turn over the money that he made to his master and he was property he could be beaten he could be sold and so forth but he functioned as a cabinet maker and he was allowed to keep enough money from what he earned to support himself not very well but to support himself so he had the ability to save money which is why that's important ellen craft could pass for white she was very very fair skinned and she was the product of presumably a whole multigenerational series of rapes by a white master or the white masters relatives on slave woman so ellen craft could pass for white and ellen and william were given a cup they were very highly regarded slaves by their owners and they were given a couple of days off at christmas time in the late eighteenth forties and they had planned this very daring escape whereby ellen would disguise herself as a well the white planter son traveling with her but with her slave ellen couldn't go as a woman because it would have been unheard of for a white woman to travel with a male slave so ellen had to describe herself as of male and that image you see on the screen with them is owned by the massachusetts historical society shows ellen in the clothing that she wore her arm is in a sling visual c and the reason for that is they plan to travel openly and that would require them to purchase train and ferry tech it's and typically a somebody might be asked to sign for those tickets and ellen was illiterate so her arm was in a sling so that she wouldn't have to sign and they travel together too and they made it to philadelphia they wrote a book about it later on and it was a harrowing escape i mean they almost didn't make it on several occasions because ellen didn't have the papers that were often required to prove that in fact william was her slave but through accidental fortuitous circumstances that happened a couple of times they managed to make it once they got to pennsylvania members of the anti slavery community there sent them up to boston because it was father away from the south and they became great spokespersons for the anti slavery cause on many levels i mean first of all they had obviously a fascinating story to tell but it also really made more people stop and ponder the implications of slavery because ellen essentially looked white so here too in a society that had a lot of racism minute here was a person who essentially looked white who had been enslaved in addition to the extent that the south had been successful in trying to convince northerners that slaves lacked the mental ingenuity the skills the intelligence the so forth to live free here with these people who had constructed this really astonishing plan and carry it out successfully so when the fugitive slave act was passed it really was no surprise that the very first people targeted were ellen and william craft and several slave catchers were sent to the city of boston to apprehend them well the anti slavery members of boston's community both black and white so harassed and harangued and followed around these slave catchers that they ended up leaving empty handed after a couple of weeks that made the south very unhappy and they were determined once again to target a fugitive slave in boston and the next person captured was a runaway slave named shad recommend ons and he was brought to the courthouse on court street in boston and before anything could happen before any proceedings under the fugitive slave act a mob of mostly black people led by louis hayden who himself was a self into the harbor in seven hundred seventy three parker was actually the grandson of captain john parker who led the lexington militia in april seven hundred seventy five and i just point that out because once again i mean these people were so aware of boston's  legacy of liberty i mean they were simply determined to extend what had begun at the revolution into the future then there was a third fugitive slave captured in boston the south was not giving up on boston a man named thomas sim and he was brought to the court house that you can see pictured there that stood on court street it's actually where the boston school committee building now stands and the building is different it is not that building but if you know it you know that there's a lot of physical similarities and actually the columns a sort in front of the court house actually are on the second floor of the newer structure which is also granite so thomas sims was brought to the court house chains were put around the court house and you you're supposed to be  temple of justice as they referred to the courthouse but thomas simms could not be rescued a commissioner heard his choice and he was ordered back to slavery and he was late at night in the dark brought from the courthouse to boston harbor where he was sent back to georgia where he had been from and that brought more people around to the anti slavery cause still a minority then a couple of things happened in the next couple of years which really made boston go from the minority of people caring about and worrying about the anti slavery movement to a majority and those things are first and foremost harriet beecher stowe as book on tom's cabin i don't know how many of you have read it but i'm sure every one of us heard of it she wrote it in eight hundred fifty two i'm harry peter stowe was a northerner and she wrote a fictionalized account of the lives of some slaves a heroic man named uncle tom who ultimately is beaten to death by this evil awful overseer simon legree and a slave mother alive and you may remember his dramatic images of a slave mother holding her baby crossing a sea ohio river to escape to pennsylvania when she learns that are b b is going to be sold away from her and harriet beecher stowe is book other than the bible became the runaway best seller of american history and everybody read it in the north and that converted a lot more people to the anti slavery cause people began to think of them as human beings with story as with families that they cared so much about the slave parents uncle tom and so forth at just about the same time solomon northrup wrote his remarkable memoir twelve years a slave which is kind of dropped off the radar of most people but of course i'm sure many of you know of the movie that came out just a few years ago about his experiences as a free block who had been captured and slaves in the south for a dozen years until amazingly enough he was able to be freed and so again that was another depiction of the horrors of slavery in the south in addition to those two books if those weren't enough a new piece of legislation was act was passed the kansas nebraska act and kansas and nebraska were territories that were now being organized and getting ready for statehood they weren't quite ready to be states but they would be in the too distant future and the question was what would happen to kansas and nebraska in terms of slave or free and of course if you know your american geography you know that your breast is pretty far north and kansas even isn't very far south and yet the south was determined that kansas and nebraska would be open to the possibility of slavery this doctrine of popular sovereignty in other words that the settlers would decide whether they would be free or slave and that just emphasized yet again what had begun to be emphasized in the compromise of eight hundred fifty but even more starkly given how far north these regions were that the south was simply not going to be satisfied with slavery where it had always existed  north carolina and south carolina and virginia and so forth and that they were absolutely committed to its expansion across this country that they were just as committed to slavery is expansion as northerners most of them were committed to limiting it to where it was and so more and more northerners began to realize that it was essentially a fantasy to believe that the south would simply just be satisfied with what they had in the past and that led to the grope growth excuse me of a new political party called the free soil party and the free soil party is just what its name says they were people who were determined not to allow the spread of slavery they were determined not to interfere with it we were it had always been but not to allow it because as i said they saw the future their vision of this country was free labor free enterprise free land growth and so forth and you all know how politics works and that people can compromise some of the time in politics and so it won't surprise you to hear that the free soil lawyers and those committed the abolitionists who wanted the total eradication of slavery has certain commonality and other words not letting slavery expand and it was what became an alliance of the abolitionists and the free soil movement that formed the new republican party in the mid eighty's forty's and this of course is the party that would elect abraham lincoln in eight hundred sixty and just to jump ahead if you're familiar with lincoln and you know the story his story and you know that when lincoln was elected president nine hundred sixty he was a free soil or that he had run for president on a platform that pledged to not allow slavery to expand but also pledge not hundred fifty two eight hundred fifty three and eight hundred fifty four as the passage of the kansas nebraska act the last fugitive slave to be seized in boston was captured his name was anthony burns this is a really famous case in virtually every s history textbook that i've taken a look at in recent years no matter who it's published by or what state it's used in even if there's a few paragraphs about the fugitive slave act of the compromise of eight hundred fifty the anthony burns case virtually always  anthony burns was a slave who had managed to escape from virginia was in boston his owner had learned that he was in boston because anthony burns was a little bit literate or somewhat literate and had written a letter back home to alert his family members that he was safe in boston slave catchers were sent to boston to apprehend anthony burns he was captured he was brought to that same court house whose picture you saw our a moment ago a nother one of these unfair proceedings was held before a federally appointed commissioner and the commissioner found that anthony burns was in fact a slave in order to return to slavery but this time unlike a couple of years ago when thomas simmons was returned the city of boston and surrounding areas went absolutely crazy thousands of people came out into the streets to protest his return to slavery people who had homes and businesses along court and states tree black banners some of them carried a coffin with the words liberty on it to symbolize the death of slavery there was so much concern on the part of the federal government that burns would be rescued by a mob as he was going to be watched back from the courthouse to boston harbor that a couple of hundred federal troops were sent from washington to boston to essentially create a phalanx around him as he was paraded through the streets of boston but nonetheless anthony burns was put on a ship and sent back to slavery in virginia and that really is the turning point in boston on the heels of of course the previous capture a fugitive slaves the publication of uncle tom's cabin this new kansas act the birth of the free soil party and two of my favorite quotes i will just read to you you can see them miri seaver who was the daughter of a mirror of boston her father was no longer in office and he was abroad and she wrote him a letter about the anthony burns case and she said almost all are unanimous and feelings of indignation mortification and humiliation and then my very famous one of all by amos lawrence and lawrence of course you'll recognize the name he was one of the heirs to the incredible textile fortune from the city of lawrence named after his family that was busy turning slave girl in cotton into cloth and and that amos lawrence wrote of the anthony burns case we went to bed one night old fashioned compromise union wigs and waked up stark mad abolitionists which pretty much says it all and i really wish that we had from early june eight hundred fifty four a public opinion poll of boston because from all sources the media letters what people said this really was the turning point in the the kansas nebraska act coupled with the anthony burns case and the passage of the kansas nebraska act and the anthony burns case took place within about a month of within a month i just want to mention i will hold this for questions the slightest just to remind me to tell you that of course this still were some people who did not showing the free soil or the anti slavery movement there were some so called cotton wigs who remained committed to life as it had always been and then we can talk about this later on if you'd like the vast majority of irish immigrants who have been coming to this country during the eight hundred forty s and eight hundred fifty service as a result of the  in ireland where for a variety of reasons not drawn to the anti slavery cause but sticking with the story leading up to the civil war at this point after eight hundred fifty four it's really a series of dominoes in terms of what happens i mean at this point war becomes essentially inevitable well maybe not inevitable but it is a series of actions that happen all of which of course involving boston that make a collision between north and south an evitable and what i'll do for a few minutes is just give you a little flavor of some of those now the first and i gather you heard steve julio speak about the caning of charles sumner c should all be those of you who are there should be very up on this episode congress in eight hundred fifty six about the kansas nebraska act about reeling against the possibility that slavery would spread and after that speech he was beaten nearly to death by a congressman from south carolina preston brooks and it's really a miracle that king didn't die i mean if he hadn't been this tall really strong person incredibly good physical shape he almost certainly would have died he was so badly injured that he couldn't take a seat in the senate for three years and he was very very badly hurt and his caning symbolize to the north really the barbarism of southern society in other words it wasn't only that they owned slaves which more and more people of course were now convinced was not a good thing but that what it created in the society people who thought not because they could go around beating their slaves a man who thought nothing of coming into the sacred place the senate where people were supposed to use reasoned discourse to discuss issues of the time and using a cane and beating a northern white man as if he were a slave so if you look at it as and if you read stephen pouliot as book he does this to some extent if you look at the press reactions to the way this episode was described in the north and the south in the south preston brooks was essentially a hero and in the north he was viewed as a barber a criminal barbaric criminal one year after the killing of charles sumner was the dred scott case and that was when the united states supreme court in a famous ruling held not only the congress lacks the authority to bar slavery from any land but that no black could be a citizen of this country even one who had been born free in the north and that of course led people in the north to talk about the possibility that the southern slave owner could bring slaves with them to massachusetts i mean could bring the slaves anywhere in other words even if congress wanted to invalidate the kansas nebraska act the supreme court was saying congress would have no authority to do so there was a scathing descend to the dred scott case written not surprisingly by the supreme court justice from massachusetts benjamin robbins curtis in eight hundred fifty eight the atlantic monthly magazine was founded and this of course was the heir of some of the literary geniuses from massachusetts people like ralph waldo emerson henry webs of webs worth longfellow oliver wend sr and others and they the publication immediately again came out against slavery and again drew this distinction between the civilized intelligent industrious north and the ignorant illiterate barbaric backward south so again just again hammering in this notion of grave sectional differences between the north and the south the black community meanwhile had reacted to the dre scott case by demonstrating the important role that blacks had played in american history from the beginning and william cooper now the black man i his photo i showed early on who was a young man joined will william lloyd garrison eight thirty one actually became the nation's first published black historian and he wrote a book called colored patriots of the american revolution in which one of the things he did in that book was show the role that have been played by blacks both  throughout this nation's history then we get to harper's ferry raid eight hundred fifty nine and that's when a radical abolitionist named john brown who was determined to attack slavery not in the territories but actually in the heart of the south in virginia and he with a small band of black and white men went into what's now west virginia was that virginia and attacked or broke into a federal armory and their goal of course was to arm local slaves and foment slave uprising you probably know that that failed but nonetheless there was quite a lot of sympathy for john brown in the north and that made the south feel that the north couldn't be trusted that there just weren't people in the north who were willing to work with them any longer and then essentially set up the election of eight hundred sixty with the north and the south really on a collision course and up until this point i haven't talked about the presidents but all of the presidents during the hundred fifty s were either from the south or sympathetic to southern interests just like the united states supreme court was with the dred scott case but lincoln of course was a candidate of the new republican party the free soil party and lincoln was elected as you know it was a complicated election there were actually and the south was unwilling to let the presidency be turned over to somebody who was opposed to slavery in any fashion even of course a free soiler and no sooner was lincoln elected than the session movement began the full eleven states that form the confederacy didn't also cede until the war broke out in april but beginning right after his election even before the first of the year southern some of the southern states began to secede refusing to be part of a government with lincoln as president and you know that the war began in hundred sixty one with lincoln trying to provide provisions to fort sumter which was a federal fort off of the coast of charleston south carolina and south carolina has a seated they claimed that all federal property was now the property of the confederacy and so that included a property like the island the fort sumter was on and fort sumter itself and lincoln of course was not going to allow that to happen he had agreed not to send weapons to fort sumter but he was determined to send supplies of food because they were running low on provisions and when he attempted to do that the confederates opened fired as you all know in april eight hundred sixty one and that was the start of the war i'm going to end this little section as i think we have fifty five more minutes before questions but just talking about one more event involving boston at the very start of the war because it's really it was called even by the by contemporaries the lexington of eight hundred sixty one and i don't know if any of you know this but bus tony and her people from massachusetts were actually the first soldiers to for the union in battle at fort sumter one person died one member one union soldier but he died in an accident he didn't die from enemy fire so after fort sumter and all these southern states were critically in the union even though it was a slave state but was very unclear at the start of the war what was going to happen to maryland and whether it was to seed or not so lincoln called for troops to come to washington d c to help provide a militia for the state capital excuse me for the nation's capital there was no standing federal army at this point i mean they really had to rely on state militias and i should have mentioned back here the man on the left  andrew who was an abolitionist was elected governor of massachusetts in november eight hundred sixty one lincoln was elected and governor in june had immediately been preparing state militia for the possibility of war so when lincoln called for troops to come to washington c the very first state to respond was massachusetts and several groups of state militia were sent to washington d c including one group that was comprised of young men basically from essex county so a little bit lol but primarily peabody and salem and marblehead in and over in that area and they travel to washington d c and they traveled by trade and in that era to travel by train to washington d c you had to go to baltimore and change trains we sort of think northstowe should in north station and south station you would come in to one station then you would have to go across the city to the other station and the way you would get across the city was either by horse and wagon by horses pulling railroad cars they actually did that or by troops simply walking and that's what the troops set out to do as they were coming to respond to lincoln and when i talk about maryland as a border state sometimes people think that means that they were neutral was really the opposite and they had many people who were very committed to succeeding and joining the south and many people who are very committed to staying with the union and as these troops begin traveling from one station to the other a mob of confederate sympathizers began to attack them with bricks and ice and snowballs and so forth and eventually somebody fired and a melee broke out with shots being fired and by the time it finally ended twelve civilians were dead and also four soldiers and those are actually considered the first combat fatalities of the civil war and the lexington of eight hundred sixty one was referred to by politicians leaders throughout massachusetts who reminded the citizens of massachusetts that once again we had a major role to play in this country's destiny so again hearkening back to the american revolution and i will just end with one last comment and i love to open up for questions and that is as you've been listening all of you so politely you may be wondering what about the radical abolitionists what about the wendell phillips of william lloyd garrison when somebody like abraham lincoln was elected who was pledged to allowing slavery to remain where it had always been and to preservation of the union and of course these men were pledged garrison etc to the end of every the total abolition of slavery and the answer was that the abolitionists believed that ultimately the nation could not survive part slave and part free lincoln of course came around and said that not too much later and that if the war lasted long enough which it did that lincoln would come around and as soon as the war begin they took on a new role that was essentially persuading lincoln and the members of his cabinet and members of congress that the only way the war could be  fashion that would allow the country to continue to survive was if ultimately there was an emancipation proclamation and slavery were abolished from the country so why don't i stop there and i would be happy to take any questions that people may have yes forth there were of course some people who were sympathetic to the north because once you get into the war you have certain very brave spies and things like that so clearly there were some people who were sympathetic to the north but few and far between and of course the south had done such an ex did such an excellent job of persuading poor white people even those who could not afford a slave and so forth that somehow it was about their way of life and their honor and so forth that as you know the south fought valiantly viciously for four long years and were very much supported even by those who did not own slaves and didn't profit from slavery which is really quite remarkable absolutely i'm really glad you asked that there was tremendous open abbott opposition to him people were very concerned about his upsetting the apple cart of peace and of economic prosperity and in fact in eight hundred thirty five at one point when garrison was addressing it anti slavery meeting a mar broke in and he hid and then ended up jumping out from one addict into a pile of something and he was captured by this mob who threatened to tar and feather him and the only reason his life was saved is because the mayor of boston did not want blood in his hands did not want bloodshed and garrison was actually held overnight at the city prison to keep him safe but there was true you know a number of that's probably the most dramatic one but there were a number of mob actions like that all the way through there were people very very angry about harrison was doing that less and of course tremendously once you get to eight hundred fifty four in the anthony  the free soil movement and so forth but even up until the very end there were conservatives in boston and when a number of conservatives in boston learned that jefferson davis who of course would become the president of the confederacy was up in i figured it was maine in new hampshire in the summer of eight hundred fifty eight or eight hundred fifty nine for health reasons his family had been advised to get some fresh mountain air and when they were going to sail back to the south they were invited to come to large majority of votes in massachusetts but there were still plenty who didn't vote for him i mean there was the so called constitutional unionist party those were the old with the cotton manufacturers who just wanted everything to remain as it had always been and as i said the irish immigrants were not even though they five very bravely in the war once war broke out they were in general not supportive of the anti slavery movement but that's a great question slaves allowed to be owned legally ended in the late eighteenth twenties in new york what happened was there was the north experience what was called gradual abolitionism massachusetts was the first and most dramatic because it centrally happened after court case in seven hundred eighty three but then the different northern states began to pass laws they were almost all legislative ending slavery usually done over a period of years so that slaves when they reach twenty one or twenty five or so forth were freed some of them were then converted to a system of indentured servitude so it wasn't exists they were all kind of you know given a good life after woods and of course there could have been some people held against their will but the censuses don't show that mean slavery really by the time william lloyd garrison begins his newspaper slavery had become a southern phenomenon and in places like massachusetts and it's really quite fascinating if you study how history is remembered i mean people wanted to forget very much the massachusetts had ever had slaves and we had never had that many slaves it wasn't big here because of the nature of our economy we weren't growing vice and tobacco and then of course  but massachusetts had slaves too but no sooner was slavery ended in seven hundred eighty three than it really was kind of erased in large part from the local memory as some of you may know it but a couple of recent books written about this which is really interesting so yes i'm actually on the board of the royal house and slave quarters a museum which is a fascinating place that if any of you ever been there ok oh it's so interesting now i mean i only joined the board actually after this book came out but it's a fascinating place because eyes are of royal jr and his father who died in seven hundred thirty nine they were the largest slave owners in massachusetts and own devout sixty people total have on their farm in medford which is preserved it exists as the royal as the real house and slave quarters it's also the only separate existing slave quarters surviving in the whole northern united states that historians are aware of because any other places where we know slaves were hosed were within the homes where they lived in an unfinished kitchen or garret addict or whatever but in medford is actually a separate building that was part of the slave quarters some judgment there that's   absolutely i'm a fan of you know the story if you notice in the newspaper but when so isaac royal ended up leaving the united states in seven hundred seventy five and went to canada and then to england people generally say he was a loyalist but some people simply say he was afraid or confused but in any event he left and then he died in seven hundred eighty one and he had been overseer of harvard i mean off the slave labor they lived the lives almost like flint taishan owners and  it as it saw fit to establish a professorship and he gave several different choices one of which was a professorship of law and for various reasons it took a number of years for that to happen so it wasn't until eight hundred fifty nine hundred sixty nine hundred seventeen that ultimately the first professor of law was established and much and that was called the royal chair and this still isn't isaac royal chair at harvard law school much later this isn't until now the early part of the twentieth century at some point harvard decided and some of you may know this to create shields for it's different schools like the famous i mean this is the very tasks but there's a shield for the medical school the law school the business school in all its different schools and the harvard law school this day and so yes periodically and this is going on again now the students complain that that's a really inappropriate way to inappropriate symbol for a school that is dedicated to law and justice and so forth so that's why you read about it recently in the newspaper