Washington Peace Conference: A Last Ditch Chance To Prevent Civil War

 

Jefferson Davis and his wife

War was in the air.

Everyone sensed it was coming. Oh, yeah! It was coming just like a plague of locusts or grasshoppers eating their way across the prairies. It was inevitable, just as it was inevitable that some damn fool would propose a plan to prevent it.

Prominent politicians authored two of the schemes that circulated early in 1861. The first, the Crittenden Compromise, was the brainchild of Kentucky Congressman John T. Crittenden. Former President John Tyler promoted the second one, known today as the Washington Peace Conference.

The Crittenden Compromise was a little too much for most Northerners. It guaranteed the rights of the slave states to continue to own slaves in perpetuity, to extend slavery into the territories north of latitude 36° 30’, and it ensured the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Laws. If the states thwarted slave owners in restoring their property, the federal government could reimburse them. Union men could not stomach the Crittenden Compromise.

It contradicted the entire Chicago platform of the Republican Party. If adopted, it would reverse the election’s course and the people’s will. At least, that was the way Abraham Lincoln and his supporters viewed the Crittenden Compromise.

The House and Senate quickly rejected it.

An Original Account Of The Baltimore Plot

 

(This account of the Baltimore Plot was originally published in The Century Magazine in Dcember 1887 as part of an article by John Hay and John Nicolet, presidential secretaries to Abraham Lincoln.)

On the morning of February 23d the whole country was surprised at the telegraphic announcement, coupled with diverse and generally very foggy explanations, that the President-elect, after his long and almost triumphal journey in the utmost publicity and with well-nigh universal greetings of good-will, had suddenly abandoned his announced programme and made a quick and secret night journey through Baltimore to the Federal capital. Public opinion, and for years afterward, was puzzled by the event, and the utmost contrariety of comment, ranging from the highest praise to the severest detraction which caricature, ridicule, and denunciation could express, was long current. In the course of time, the narratives of the principal actors in the affair have been written down and published, and a sufficient statement of the facts and motives involved may at length be made. The newspapers stated (without any prompting or suggestion from Mr. Lincoln) that an extensive plot to assassinate him on his expected trip through Baltimore about midday of Saturday had been discovered, which plot the earlier and unknown passage on Friday night disconcerted and prevented. This theory has neither been proved nor disproved by the lapse of time; Mr. Lincoln did not entertain it in this form nor base his course upon it. But subsequent events did clearly demonstrate the possibility and probability of attempted personal violence from the fanatical impulse of individuals, or the sudden anger of a mob, and justified the propriety of his decision.

 

The threats of secession, revolution, plots to seize Washington, to burn the public buildings, to prevent the count of electoral votes and the inauguration of the new President, which had for six weeks filled the newspapers of the country, caused much uneasiness about the personal safety of Mr. Lincoln, particularly among the railroad officials over whose lines he was making his journey; and to no one of them so much as to Mr. S. M. Felton, the President of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railway, whose line formed the connecting link from the North to the South, from a free to a slave State, from the region of absolute loyalty to the territory of quasi-rebellion. Independently of politics, the city of Baltimore at that time bore a somewhat unenviable reputation as containing a dangerous and disorderly element; her “roughs” had a degree of newspaper notoriety by no means agreeable to quiet and non-combative strangers. 

Hans Schmidt: The Priest Who Cut His Girlfriend to Pieces

 

Hans Schmidt and Anna Aumuller

Hans Schmidt, 33, was an assistant priest at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in New York City. He was also a murderer, a counterfeiter, and possibly one of the strangest men ever to sit in the electric chair at Sing Sing.

His victim was Anna Aumuller, a 24-year-old German immigrant Schmidt claimed to love.

He killed her, cut her body into pieces, and dumped the remains in the North River. When detectives asked why he did it, Schmidt said, “I killed her because I loved her.”

That was one explanation.

His other story involved St. Elizabeth of Hungary, a blood sacrifice, and voices telling him to kill.

Things only got stranger from there.

On September 4, 1913, some children playing along the New Jersey shore of the Hudson River near Ninety-sixth Street found a pillowcase. Inside was the torso of a young woman.

A few days later, more body parts washed ashore near Weehawken. Then, on September 10, still more pieces turned up at Keansburg, New Jersey.

Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, John Breckenridge And The Election Of 1860

 

Abraham Lincoln

The election of 1860 is like no other in the history of the American Republic. There is talk of civil war if Lincoln’s Black Republicans take the election. Many newspapers predict an “irresistible conflict.” One that will determine once and for all if the country is to be “free labor” or “slave labor.”

For a while, the South strutted after the Supreme Court decision handed down with Dred Scott. The court ruled that slaves were property. “Protected by all the Constitutional guarantees of property and went where the Constitution went; neither a territorial legislature nor Congress could exclude slavery from a territory because they could not exclude the Constitution therefrom.”

To many Southerners and President Buchanan, it seemed as if the case was closed. Slavery was the law of the land. Nothing could stop it.

Not so for Abraham Lincoln.

During the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, Abraham Lincoln goaded Stephen Douglas until he took the bait and acknowledged the decision meant nothing more than that black people, not being citizens, could not sue in court. Nowhere in the case did it mention the territories. So, the decision did not impact slavery in the territories.

“No matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question,” Douglas told the crowd. “Still, the right of the people to make a slave territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill.” And then, as if to make his point, Douglas added, “I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point.”

Douglas’s decision that day became known as the Freeport Doctrine (named after the Illinois town that hosted the debate). It helped Douglas win the Senatorial election. But it created a rift in the Democratic Party that lost him the 1860 Presidential election. 

Broaching the subject was a significant risk for Lincoln, but paid big dividends. John Nicolay and John Hay later said Lincoln told them, “If Douglas answers, he can never be President.”

Countdown to 250 - July 4

 

Celebrating America's 250th Anniversary with five days of banners depicting our country's birth and heritage. This one covers the landing at Jamestown, the Trans-Continental Railroad, the Wright Brothers, Woman's Suffrage, World War II, Martin Luther King, and the celebration of America 250.

Happy 250th Birthday America!

If There's An Apple Tree In Your Backyard, You Can Thank Johhy Appleseed

 

Johnny Appleseed wandered the country, barefooted with a tin can for a hat

Like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and other frontier legends, Johnny Appleseed is one of those mythical characters every schoolchild learns about. But unfortunately, his story has become so entwined in the folklore surrounding him that it’s hard to unravel truth from fiction.

He was born John Chapman in Leonidas, Massachusetts, on September 26, 1774. His father served as a Minuteman in the Revolutionary War. He fought at Bunker Hill and served with Washington’s troops in New York. Johnny’s mother died in 1776, most likely from tuberculosis.

In 1797 or 1798, Johnny made his way to western Pennsylvania, where he planted his first orchard on Brokenstraw Creek. A few years later, he lived near French Creek planting orchards.

Johnny was a shrewd businessman. He seeded orchards several steps in advance of settlers moving into new territories, so he could have young apple trees ready for the immigrants when they arrived.

An article published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine said: “Johnny would shoulder his bag of apple seeds, and with bare feet penetrate to some remote spot that combined the picturesque and fertility of [the] soil, and there he would plant his seeds, place a slight inclosure around the place, and leave them to grow until the trees were large enough to be transplanted by the settlers.”

Did Betsy Ross Really Make the First American Flag?

Flag Committee visiting Betsy Ross

Elizabeth Ross was an obscure Philadelphia upholsterer and occasional flag maker until 1870, when her grandson, William Canby, presented a paper before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

 

The nation’s centennial celebration was approaching, and Canby’s story arrived at just the right time.

 

America had a new hero. Her name was Betsy Ross.

 

As the story goes, Betsy wasn’t just a flag maker. She was quite a storyteller, too, and the tale she passed down to her children and grandchildren was a whopper—whether or not it was true.

 

Here’s the story as Canby told it.

 

Sometime between May 23 and June 7, 1777, George Washington, Robert Morris, and Colonel George Ross walked into Betsy Ross’s upholstery shop on Arch Street in Philadelphia.

 

Washington showed Betsy a rough design for a new flag and asked if she could make it. She said she could try, but the design needed work. One problem was the stars. The original sketch called for six-pointed stars. Betsy suggested using five points instead.