Posted on 11/21/2015 11:35:55 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Before when free-soil men invoked the right of revolution in defense of their political rights, proslavery men condemned them for defying the legitimate government. But proslavery men feared the loss of their right to own slaves as much as free soilers feared the loss of the right to exclude slavery.
At Hickory Point, [Kansas] a squabble over land claims ignited these political quarrels. A settler named Franklin M. Coleman had been squatting on land abandoned by some Hoosiers, who subsequently sold the claim to Jacob Branson, another Hoosier. In late 1854, when Branson informed Coleman of his legal claim and attempted to move into Coleman’s house, Coleman held him off with a gun. A group of arbitrators later awarded part of the claim to Branson, but the boundaries between his land and Coleman’s were not determined. Branson invited in other men, including a young Ohioan named Charles W. Dow. Branson belonged to the free-state militia, a connection he used to intimidate Coleman, although Branson later testified that there had been no problems between Dow and Coleman – until the day of Dow’s murder.
On the morning of November 21, 1855, Dow went to the blacksmith shop at Hickory Point to have a wagon skein and lynchpin mended. While there he argued with one of Coleman’s friends, but left unharmed. As he walked away, he passed Coleman on the road. Coleman snapped a cap at him. When Dow turned around, he received a charge of buckshot in the chest and died immediately. His body lay in the road until Branson recovered it four hours later. Coleman claimed that Dow had threateningly raised the wagon skein (a two-foot piece of iron) as they argued over their claim dispute, forcing him to act in self-defense. Fearing that he could not get fair treatment at the free-state settlement of Hickory Point, Coleman and his family fled to Missouri.
Nicole Etcheson, “Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Eraâ€
Logged aboard as of yesterday.
bkmk
Please opt me in, Homer. Thank you.
You are so opted.
That’s a Carly Simon song about Warren Beatty, right?
Please add me to your class Homer. I look forward to it.
You are added. Welcome aboard.
Please include me and thanks!
Done and you are welcome.
1855 - Isaac Singer patents sewing machine motor
The sewing machine profits equipped an infantry regiment for the Union.
http://inventors.about.com/od/sstartinventors/a/sewing_machine.htm
However, Isaac Singer’s machine used the same lockstitch that Howe had patented. Elias Howe sued Isaac Singer for patent infringement and won in 1854. Walter Hunt’s sewing machine also used a lockstitch with two spools of thread and an eye-pointed needle; however, the courts upheld Howe’s patent since Hunt had abandoned his patent.
If Hunt had patented his invention, Elias Howe would have lost his case and Isaac Singer would have won. Since he lost, Isaac Singer had to pay Elias Howe patent royalties. As a side note: In 1844, Englishmen John Fisher received a patent for a lace making machine that was identical enough to the machines made by Howe and Singer that if Fisher’s patent had not been lost in the patent office, John Fisher would also have been part of the patent battle.
After successfully defending his right to a share in the profits of his invention, Elias Howe saw his annual income jump from three hundred to more than two hundred thousand dollars a year. Between 1854 and 1867, Howe earned close to two million dollars from his invention. During the Civil War, he donated a portion of his wealth to equip an infantry regiment for the Union Army and served in the regiment as a private.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Howe
Howe contributed much of the money he earned to providing equipment for the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry of the Union Army during the Civil War, in which Howe served as a Private in Company D. Due to his faltering health he performed light duty, often seen walking with the aid of his Shillelagh, and took on the position of Regimental Postmaster, serving out his time riding to and from Baltimore with war news. He’d enlisted August 14, 1862, and then mustered out July 19, 1865.[6][7]
1855 - US Congress approves $30,000 to test camels for military use
I think most of us have heard the camel story but there is an interesting twist regarding the civil war. It would appear that Jefferson Davis was a proponent but once he left for another job, the idea began to decline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Camel_Corps
Among the reasons the camel experiment failed was that it was supported by Jefferson Davis, who left the United States to become a rebel and President of the Confederate States of America that the U.S. Army was a horse and mule organization whose soldiers did not have the skills to control a foreign asset.[4]
http://www.transchool.lee.army.mil/museum/transportation%20museum/camel.htm
1954 is an interesting year also:
http://www.brainyhistory.com/years/1854.html
two black colleges started.
republican party started.
Admiral Perry opens Japan for trade.
first Lincoln speech?
several boat wrecks
History of the Transcontinental Railroad
The Railroad has a very interesting part in the Civil War.
http://www.bushong.net/dawn/about/college/ids100/history.shtml
The Route
None of the bills passed, because a route could not be decided on. Congress was split along geographical lines; northerners wanted a northern route and southerners wanted a southern route. This was because of the issue of slavery in the “New West” [Howard 57]. Since the “New West” really was new, there really wasn’t any slavery there yet. Congress was split over whether slavery should be permitted at all in these new states.
The railroad surveying teams finished in autumn of 1854. The results of their research was reviewed by the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. He concluded that the southern route, running through the newly purchased Gadsden lands, would be the most cost-effective [Howard 84]. Jefferson Davis, of course, who went on to become the president of the Confederate States of America after the secession, had vested Southern interests.
Because of the bad blood involved, no action was taken on his decision; votes taken went against funding the Southern route, because of the split in Congress between Northern and Southern interests. Then, in 1861, the Southern congressmen left Congress as a precursor to Southern secession, whereupon action and funding progressed immediately to begin work on the Northern route. The North’s final decision on a route, the central route through Nebraska, hinged greatly on analyses of how use of the Railroad would impact the impending Civil War, which had just broken out [Gordon 151].
From your source. Hadn’t realized there was a lot of action beyond just political. There were a lot of grass roots movement.
This article, published in De Bow’s Review in May of 1854 and written by the Lafayette Emigration Society, was a call to southerners to emigrate to the Kansas territory, particularly those who owned slaves or could vote. Just as northern groups, such as the New England Emigrant Aid Company, sought to send free-soil immigrants to the Kansas territory in order to establish numerical and moral superiority in the territories by importing, as it were, numerous people from Massachusetts and New England, their southern counterparts sought to bring in enough southerners, slaveholders, and slaves to firmly establish slavery in the territory.
De Bow’s Review was a periodical of “agricultural, commercial, and industrial progress and resources†established in New Orleans in 1846 by James D. B. De Bow (1820-1867). Its articles, largely written by De Bow himself, covered a range of topics including planting and agricultural reform, economics, and politics, all with a heavy emphasis on the South. From 1853 to 1857 he moved the headquarters of the periodical to Washington, D.C., where he was serving as superintendent of the U.S. Census. During this period, his sectionalist arguments in the Review became more fervent and frequent. By the outbreak of the Civil War, De Bow’s Review was the most widely circulated Southern periodical.
This particular article was published while the Kansas-Nebraska Act was still being debated in Congress, but was already anticipating the increasing tension that would result from the adoption of popular sovereignty. By bringing into Kansas as many southerners and slaveholders who could vote as possible, they hoped to have a solid southern population by the time of the fall elections.
Letter requesting ministers petition Congress against passing the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
Perception of separation of church and state was different before income tax was established.
TO THE CLERGY OF NEW ENGLAND.
Dear Brethren:
Upon another page you find a Protest which explains itself. It is sent simultaneously to every Clergyman of every name in New England. It is earnestly hoped that every one of you will append your name to it, and thus furnish to this nation and this age the sublime and influential spectacle of the great Christian body of the North united, as one man, in favor of freedom and of solemn plighted faith. It can hardly be doubted, that if this Protest can go immediately to Washington, carrying upon it the names of the entire Clergy of New England, it will exert there a moral influence of incalculable weight—possibly, in connection with other influences—sufficient in the good Providence of God, to avert the impending evil.
Permit us, then, to commend the following suggestions to your notice, and, so far as they agree with your own convictions, to your immediate action.
1. Please tear off, sign, fold, seal and return to us this annexed Protest BY THE NEXT MAIL to this city, directed to “Rev. John Jackson, Boston, Mass.†He will combine all the answers received into one great Protest, which will be immediately forwarded to Congress.
If you have already—either as a private citizen or as a clergyman—signed any other similar document, PLEASE SIGN THIS ALSO; as it is earnestly desired to embrace in this movement (as far as possible,) the unanimous clerical voice of New England.
2. If deemed judicious, please exert your influence to get up and send immediately on to your Representative in the House, a similar protest from your own neighborhood. It is believed that a great number of such protests—even if less than one hundred legal voters should sign each one—will be of great consequence in indicating the general arousal of the slumbering sentiment of the North, on this fearfully important subject.
3. It is respectfully submitted whether the present is not a crisis of sufficient magnitude and imminence of danger to the liberties and integrity of our nation, to warrant and even demand the services of the clergy of all denominations in arousing the masses of the people to its comprehension, through the Press and even the Pulpit.
4. It is affectionately urged that it find frequent remembrance in all Christian supplications to Him who holds the hearts of all rulers in his hand, and, as the rivers of water, can turn them whithersoever He will.
Affectionately yours,
CHARLES LOWELL, COMMITTEE OF
LYMAN BEECHER, CLERGYMEN
BARON STOW, OF
SEBASTIAN STREETER. BOSTON.
Boston, February 22, 1854.
Yes, for me.
I’m in.
You’re in.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.â€
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
I probably have too much time to think. The above deserves much reflection. The essence of his message was:
There is going to be a fight, there are going to be winners and losers, but after, we are going to be united again.
From a Biblical perspective, Jesus came to divide, separate his sheep. He foretold there world be division and he would be the center of the division, the cause and the issue that would divide people. Our tender ears don’t like to hear that. How can He speech of dividing and also peace?
Luk_12:51 Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!
As we approach the Christmas season, Many will quote the “peace on earth”. But all the other translation state it slightly differently which changes the meaning.
Luk 2:14 “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
So, what is the takeaway? would it be first you have division and then peace, or first peace and then division?
I think Lincoln was very well grounded in his faith (not perfect like us/s) He saw a truth here and didn’t back away from it or change it. He was Honest Abe, said what he meant and meant what he said (how rare today)
Maybe we should be saying the same today. When we encounter liberals, we might say there is going to be a fight this, a house divided cannot stand.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.