Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) grew up as a slave on a plantation in Maryland; he was the son of a white man. After 20 years of living in the horrible, violent conditions of the institution of slavery, Douglass escaped to the North. He became educated and one of the most prominent and outspoken abolitionists. This book is a narration of his life, with a preface written by another strong abolitionist,...
In September of 1856, during the race for the presidency, James Buchanan addressed the Senate on the subject of slavery. The issue of slavery was central to the Presidential Election of 1856. Buchanan, reticent of the fact that he needed to find middle ground on the topic in order to appeal to both pro-slavery southerners and abolitionist northerners, crafted his statements on slavery so as not to...
In late December of 1827, Sally Champs Carter, living in Richmond at the time, wrote home to her mother who was living in Albemarle County (approximately sixty miles west of Richmond). Sally described her living situation in the city, telling her mother that she participated in the gaieties of the city, however more moderately and prudently than she had in her first year residing there, as some of...
On August 14th, 1856 a man was arrested on the charges of disseminating incendiary material. The man, John Duberry, was caught distributing the speeches of Senators Sumner and Seward amongst slaves in Columbus, Mississippi. For committing a “crime' such as this, Duberry could have received a sentence of ten years in jail. Unfortunately though, the newspaper did not print a follow up to this...
In an article written on August 19, 1856, The Daily Dispatch commented on the growing sectionalism between the North and the South in the United States. In a then recent speech by a Missouri Senator it was stated that “there existed more comity between any two foreign nations now on the face of the earth than there exists on the part of the Northern States towards the South (The Daily Dispatch,...
Harriet Beecher Stowe just published Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1856. In the book, Stowe posits that slavery caused the corrosion of society. Dred is the second book by Stowe that centered on the topic of slavery. Stowe's first work, Uncle Tom's Cabin which was published in 1853, also addressed the issue of slavery and highlighted the institutions' inadequacies. Raised in Connecticut,...
The phrase manifest destiny originated in 1844 with a journalist in New York named John O'Sullivan in his magazine called the Democratic Review, in reference to the annexation of Texas. Manifest destiny is the idea that it was God's will that the United States expand throughout the whole of the continent (though not by force) to spread liberty and democracy. O'Sullivan's second use of the term, in...
In June of 1856, the Pro Slavery Party of the Kansas Territory elected the city of New Orleans to manage the affairs of the party. This entailed disbursing funds to aid the cause and keeping their foreign friends abreast of current situations in the territory. The slavery advocates in Kansas were presumably too wrapped up in fighting abolitionists and Free Soilers to concern themselves with running...
In June of 1845, the True American abolitionist newspaper was founded. Its editor, Cassius Marcellus Clay, was an outspoken abolitionist from the South (a Whig from Kentucky). His arguments against slavery usually were primarily economic in nature, thus appealing to the self-interests of farmers and small slaveholders that, at the time, were feeling the effects of severe economic depression in the...
In late May, 1949 the Virginia legislature reconvened, though their work and discussion was often interrupted by the fears regarding the Cholera outbreak affecting the region, especially Richmond where the legislature met.After much discussion and debate on whether it was necessary to leave, the legislature decided to move to the Fauquier Springs Hotel (though more like a country club) near Warrenton...