1858 (58 page)

While Lincoln led the United States from the White House in Washington, DC, Jefferson Davis led the Confederate States of America from the Southern White House in Richmond, Virginia. Davis, who survived a near fatal herpes/neuralgia attack in the spring of 1858 and later that year solidified his position as the leading secessionist in the country, was selected as the president of the Confederacy at a special convention in Alabama in February 1861. He was seen by Southerners as a military hero who could lead the South to victory in a Civil War, if one came, and as a national executive respected throughout the North, as evidenced by the warm reception accorded him on his trip to New England in the summer of 1858. His difficulty in working with anyone and short temper was not seen as a drawback—then.

None of the lives of the men involved in this book were affected more by events that transpired in 1858 than abolitionist John Brown. The radical antislavery leader, his flowing white beard now familiar throughout the North and South, became convinced during his Missouri raid that the federal government would not or could not stop him and that, eventually, thousands of like-minded abolitionists would join him in successive raids into the South to free slaves. That confidence led him and a band of twenty-two men—seventeen whites and five blacks, including two of the Oberlin Rescuers—to attack and seize Harper’s Ferry in October of 1859, killing four townspeople in the process.

He expected thousands of abolitionists to join him at Harper’s Ferry, but none did. A military detachment led by Colonel Robert E. Lee captured Brown in a shoot-out on October 18 in which one marine and seven raiders, including two of Brown’s sons, were killed. Brown was tried, convicted, and hanged on December 2, 1859. Despite criticism of Brown and his Harper’s Ferry raid by every leading federal official and many Republican leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, the abolitionist immediately became the martyred hero of the antislavery movement and numerous songs were written about him, including the fabled “John Brown’s Body.” Brown’s raid gained him national acclaim, galvanized opposition to slavery in the North, and dramatically increased the Southern belief that the U.S. government would somehow eliminate slavery.

And so, when Confederate guns opened up on Fort Sumter in Charleston’s harbor at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United States, William Seward was U.S. secretary of state, and Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy. Robert E. Lee would shortly assume command of the Army of Northern Virginia and William Tecumseh Sherman would become one of the Union’s most successful generals. By the time Southerners commenced their thirty-three hour bombardment of Fort Sumter just before dawn that morning, the antislavery movement in the United States had reached epic proportions, thanks to the Oberlin rescue and John Brown’s 1858 Christmas raid into Missouri, just as fierce defense of slavery, and hatred of Northerners, had reached similarly titanic proportions in the South.

All of these people were in place because of events that occurred three years earlier, in 1858, a year when slavery became the overriding issue in the United States, and a year in which the president, James Buchanan, ignored it so he could spend time feuding with Stephen Douglas, threaten a war with Paraguay, try to annex Cuba, and open his niece’s mail.

Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Papers of Francis Hosford, Oberlin College

Papers of Howell Cobb, University of Georgia

Papers of James Buchanan, Dickinson College

Papers of James Monroe, Oberlin College

Papers of John Brown, Kansas State Historical Society

Papers of Robert E. Lee (Diary), Arlington House

Papers of Robert Rhett, South Carolina Historical Society

Papers of Stephen Douglas, University of Chicago

Papers of William Porcher Miles, University of North Carolina

Papers of William Sherman, Rutgers University

Andrew, J. Cutler. “The Confederate Press and Public Morale.”
Journal of Southern History
(November 1966).

Barnard, Steiner. “The South Atlantic States in 1833, as Seen by a New Englander.”
Maryland Historical Society Magazine
XIII (1918).

Brown, Salmon. “My Father, John Brown.”
Outlook
(January 1913).

Burroughs, William. “Oberlin’s Part in the Slavery Conflict.”
Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications
, Cleveland, Ohio (1911).

Cole, Arthur C. “Lincoln’s Election an Immediate Menace to Slavery in the States?”
American Historical Review
(July 1931).

Ellis, Richard, and Aaron Wildavsky. “A Cultural Analysis of the Role of Abolitionists in the Coming Civil War.”
Comparative Issues in Society and History
(January 1990).

Harrington, Frederick. “The First Northern Victory.”
The Journal of Southern History
(May 1939).

Herndon, William. “Analysis of the Character of Abraham Lincoln.”
Abraham Lincoln Quarterly
(December 1941).

Phillips, William. “Three Interviews with John Brown.”
Atlantic Monthly
, Volume 28, 1879.

Smalley, E. V. “General Sherman.”
Century Magazine
5 (January 1884).

Steckel, Richard. “Migration in Political Conflicts: Precincts in the Midwest on the Eve of the Civil War.”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
(Spring 1998).

Updike, John. “Such a Sucker as Me.”
New Yorker
(October 30, 1995).

Abels, Jules.
Man on Fire: John Brown and the Cause of Liberty
. New York: Macmillan Co., 1971.

Adams, Charles Francis, ed.
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams
. 12 vols. Philadelphia, 1876.

Angle, Paul.
Created Equal? The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial Cultural Landscape Report
, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 2000.

Auer, Jeffrey, ed.
Anti-Slavery and Disunion, 1858–1861: Studies in the Rhetoric of Compromise and Conflict
. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.

Avery, Myrta.
Dixie After the War
. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1906.

Baker, George, ed.
The Works of William Seward
. 5 vols. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1884.

Ballantine, W.G.
The Oberlin Jubilee: 1833–1883
. Oberlin, Ohio: E.J. Goodrich, 1883.

Bancroft, George
. The Life of William Henry Seward
. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900.

Barton, William.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln
. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1925.

Bashford, Herbert, and Harr Wagner.
A Man Unbound: The Story of John C. Fremont
. San Francisco: Harr Wagner Publishing, 1927.

Basler, Roy.
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
. 8 vols. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

Baumann, Roland.
The 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue: A Reappraisal
. Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College, 2003.

Beveridge, Albert.
Abraham Lincoln: 1809–1858
. 2 vols. New York: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1928.

Birkner, Michael.
James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s
. Selingsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1996.

Blodi, Frederick, ed.
Herpes Simplex Infections of the Eye
. New York: Churchill Livingstone Company, 1984.

Blue, Fred.
Salmon Chase: A Life in Politics
. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987.

Boller, Paul.
Presidential Anecdotes
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Bonham, Jeremiah.
Fifty Years Recollections
. Peoria, Ill.: Franks Co., 1883.

Boyer, Richard.
The Legacy of John Brown: A Biography and History
. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1973.

Brady, David.
Critical Elections and Congressional Policy Making
. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Brandt, Nat.
The Town That Started the Civil War
. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990.

Brigance, Henry, ed.
A History and Criticism of American Political Address
. New York: Russel and Russel Co., 1960.

Brinkerhoff, Roeliff.
Recollections of a Lifetime
. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke Company, 1900.

Brooks, William.
Lee of Virginia: A Biography
. Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Press, 1932.

Brown, Bishop Robert.
“And Once Was A Soldier”: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Robert E. Lee
. Shippensburg, Pa.: White Maine Books, 1998.

Brown, John.
Provisional Constitutional Ordinances for the People of the United States
. St. Catharine’s, Canada: William Day, printer, 1858.

Burnham, Dean.
Presidential Ballots: 1836–1892
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955.

Burton, Theodore.
John Sherman
. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1906.

Canfield, Cass.
The Iron Will of Jefferson Davis
. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978.

Carr, Clark.
Stephen Douglas
, Chicago: A.C. McClure and Co., 1909.

Chaney, William.
Duty Most Sublime: The Life of Robert E. Lee as Told Through the “Carter Letters.”
Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1996.

Channin, Steven.
Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.

Cochran, William.
The Western Reserve and the Fugitive Slave Law: A Prelude to the Civil War
. Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1920.

Commager, Henry Steele.
Theodore Parker
. Boston: Little Brown and Co. 1936.

Congressional Quarterly Guide to United States Elections, 1799–1997, Official Results
. Washington, DC:

Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1975.

Connelly, Thomas.
The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society
. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1977.

Conrad, Earl.
The Governor and His Lady: The Story of William Henry Seward and His Wife Frances
. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960.

Cooper, William, Jr.
Jefferson Davis: American
. New York: Alfred Knopf, Jr. 2002.

Coussons, John.
Thirty Years With Calhoun, Rhett, and the Charleston Mercury: A Chapter in South Carolina Politics
. Diss. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1971.

Cralle, Richard, ed.
John C. Calhoun, Works
. 6 vols. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1883.

Craven, Avery, ed
. “To Markie”: The Letters of Robert E. Lee to Martha Custis Lee
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933.

Crissey, Elwell.
Lincoln’s Lost Speech
. New York: Hawthorn, 1969.

Curtis, George Ticknor.
The Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States
. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969.

Davis, Burke.
Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War
. New York: Rhinehart Co., 1956.

———.
Sherman’s March
. New York: Random House, 1990.

Davis, Stanton.
Pennsylvania Politics, 1860–1863
. Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press, 1935.

Davis, Varina.
Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America: A Memoir
. 2 vols. New York: Belford Publishing, 1890.

Davis, William.
A Fire-Eater Remembers: The Confederate Memoir of Robert Barnwell Rhett
. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2000.