Hey RB, I thought about this thread while listening to the news this morning. They were talking about quick moving fires burning down homes in Texas and Oklahoma. It was a bit suprising since its winter time and the weather is cooler, but apparently the wind is a factor as well.
I'm pretty sure we can rule out abolitionists though...:^)
I've been paying close attention to those fires. We have a lot out in the cedar covered hill country of Central Texas. We hope to build on it, so the fires are a concern to us.
When I was growing up in a little Texas town, our neighborhood got together for fireworks on the 4th. The fireworks set the grass on fire a couple of times (sparks from rockets that landed in the grass). The volunteer fire department put them out.
The 1860 fires weren't grass fires as far as I know. They started in towns and houses. The Unionists (Sam Houston and Union supporting papers I think) claimed that blaming the abolitionists for the fires was a political ploy by the opposition. Maybe, maybe not. I wonder how the history of our times would read if only the New York Times were used for documentation.
See the Great Hanging at Gainesville from the Handbook of Texas Online
There were no "rash of fires". There were no "slave uprisings" and there was no Unionist Conspiracy. What there was were mobs of Secessionists who violated more civil liberties and constitutional protections in one small Texas town than happened in all of the Union under Lincoln. Dozens of innocent people were hanged and shot by the noble slaveocracy and their willing thugs (and future members of the KKK.) Similar events took place across the South where any real or imagined opposition was ruthlessly crushed without benefit of due process.
The Lost Cause brigade hates the have the word "Gainesville" mentioned because it shoots the legs right out from under their "Lincoln the Tyrant" mythology.
War time, in any nation, can be dangerous for dissenters. But during the American Civil War, being a Copperhead in the North was infinitely safer than being a Unionist behind Confederate lines. A Copperhead took the chance of prison only if his rhetoric reached the point of open sedition. A Unionist in the South faced near absolute certainty of either a rope or a bullet if he were discovered.
I received a book for Christmas called Lincoln's Wrath by Manber and Dahlstrom. The book concerns the shutting down of opposition press by pro-Union mobs and government mail restrictions and arrests of editors. The book focuses mainly on the shutting down of the Jeffersonian of West Chester, Pennsylvania.
I've not gotten very far into the book but did discover that Lincoln secretly financed an Illinois newspaper back in 1858 and hired the publisher. Ethics of the time perhaps.
Another interesting tidbit in the book was a political dirty trick by Ward Hill Lamon, he of the arrest warrant for Chief Justice Taney fame. Lamon and another guy had a large number of fake admission tickets printed for the 1860 Republican Convention. The tickets were given to Lincoln supporters who got to the hall early. When Seward's supporters arrived with legitimate tickets, they were turned away since the hall was already filled.
Here is a quote from the Introduction of the book:
Interestingly, after all these years [they researched for the book for 10 years], we as authors disagree as to whether the draconian actions of Lincoln and his administration in muzzling dissenting voices were justified. Perhaps it is right that two historians cannot agree, for the role of the Constitution in a crisis is a basic American dilemma. Is the Constitution only to be obeyed during times of national peace? Hodgson [editor of the Jeffersonian] thought not, and perhaps we are a stronger nation today because of the personal courage of these Civil War-era editors.
I did get the book Yankee Leviathan recommended by LS. I see on page 144 it notes that in contrast to newspaper suppression in the North during the war, "only one paper (in Knoxville, Tennessee) seems to have been closed by national authorities [Confederate]; only one other (in Raleigh, North Carolina) was destroyed by mob action." The Tennessee paper was Parson Brownlow's. However, some claim Brownlow's paper was shut down by state authorities, not national authorities (see Link).
Perhaps some Southern papers were closed by local or state authorities (as opposed to national), but I've just not run across that in the old newspapers.
Suspected sources of fire were: fireworks, welding, burning trash in barrels, cigarettes thrown from cars, and sparks from catalytic converters. I would be interested in knowing if drought conditions in 1860 had also touched off prairie fires, but haven't been able to find reports. In any case, I don't think one can draw an airtight distinction between prairie fires as acts of nature and city fires caused by humans.
Trying to come up with more information on the Internet, I found lots of cases of fires started at sawmills in 19th Century Texas. One family even lost their mill four times on the post-Civil War frontier. It must have something to do with sawdust and shavings as tinder and kindling, the friction of the saws providing sparks, and whatever source of energy was used to heat or light or power the mill.
Blacksmith shops and livery stables may have been other likely flashpoints. We've seen how the dangers of early phosphorous matches made safety matches necessary starting at about this time. Candles, oil, and kerosene may also have been factors.
We forget how different things were between then and now. I came across a report of two men in Coryell County, Texas being lynched for voting for Lincoln. I haven't had time to verify but it does indicate just how unlike the present-day, the America of 1860 was.