Page 2
University Daily Kansan Friday. March 26, 1954
1854-Year of Greatness, Omens
By TOM STEWART
The United States was on its boisterous way to becoming a world power in 1854, but even as it was impressing the world with its aggressiveness, it was showing signs of trouble at home—signs that were to erupt a decade later in the Civil War.
In October, the three U. S. ministers to Spain, England, and France met in Ostend, Belgium. They sent a note to the American secretary of state stating that the island of Cuba should be bought, if Spain wished to sell, or taken by force if Spain was stubborn.
The big step taken by the U.S. on the international front was the opening of trade doors with Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry and a small fleet. This achievement was applauded by almost everyone in this country, but another event in our dealings with foreign countries was poorly received. This was the Ostend Manifesto.
The interpretation of the note endorsed by Northern interests was that the three ministers, all proslavery Democrats, were interested only in getting possession of Cuba before it became another "Black Republic" like Haiti. The note was denounced by the administration. James Buchan, minister to France.
seems to be the only one who profiled: his part in the matter pleased Southerners, and he was later elected to the Presidency.
sas until 1857. The activities of Mr. Thayer's group caused secret societies to form in Missouri devoted to acting the free-state immigration.
While many of the nation's leaders were speaking of a powerful new America with a prominent part in the world scheme, many others looked with less confidence at the other side of the coin—the America that was seething with factionalism.
The slavery issue was in the news all through the year. On May 30, 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska act marked a compromise between the forces for and against the extension of slavery. In the month before, the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid society was formed by Elj Thayer with the purpose of populating Kansas with tree-state partisans.
About 2000 settlers came to Kansas under the society's auspices. It was reincorporated as a city in 1867, and the company about a year later, and was active in Kan-
In July, the Republican party formed around groups in many antislave states. One point seems to have been the basis for the birth of the party: dissatisfaction with the Kansas-Nebraska act. In the Northwest, "anti-Nebraska" men of all parties united on the common platform of opposing extension of slavery into free territories.
In Illinois, one more voice was raised against the Kansas-Nebraska act. Abraham Lincoln, later the 16th president, spoke in Peoria in October. It was his first public denunciation of slavery. Mr. Lincoln was at that time known only in his area.
Similar meetings took place throughout the country, Whigs, Free-Soilers, anti-slave Democrats, and others met to join forces at Ripon, Wis., in February. State meetings in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Vermont adopted a platform, with planks asking for repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska act and the Fugitive Slave law. By the end of the year, Republicans had taken hold throughout the North.
Another source of controversy in 1854, as in many other years, was the constantly increasing tide of immigrants coming into the country. The Know-Nothing party, officially known as the American party, built itself into a political party on the basis of one common interest of its members; their prejudice and alarm toward the Catholics and other immigrants who had started to arrive in such numbers the decade before.
Many businessmen were angered by the use of Chinese immigrant contract labor, particularly on the railroads. In 1854 this practice was just beginning. In exchange for a maximum of 12 months of labor, Chinese workers would be given passage to this country. The anger aroused by this practice was shown later by the passage of the strict immigration laws forbidding immigration from Asian countries.
Businessmen, incidentally, we ere doing well. The year 1854 showed expansion of business, partly because of the inflow of foreign capital (mostly British), and partly because of the gold strikes in California. There was a slight reversal in the fall, when there was a brief panic in the New York Stock Exchange,
but this was only temporary. A more serious run occurred in 1857- 58.
As the businessmen prospered, their employees sought their share of the profits. National labor unions began to appear all through the 1850's. In that decade, organization was accomplished among typographical workers, stone cutters, hat finishers, cigar makers, iron molders, machinists, blacksmiths, and others.
The farmers, too, were becoming more successful. This was largely due to the growing acceptance of the methods of scientific agriculture. In 1839, the Patent office had been granted only $1,000 for work with agricultural statistics, but in 1854 an appropriation of $3,500 was made.
The temper of the times was evident from the literature. Most popular were the "reform" novels. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe angered the South and appealed to anti-slave elements in the mid-19th century with books like *Predamnicum* ("Uncle Tom's Cabin"), the most popular book published in 1854 was Timothy Shay Arthur's "Ten Nights in a Bar Room and What I Saw There." Both books were later made into plays which became hits of their time.
Kansas-Nebraska Act Step Toward Civil War
Bv KEN COY
In 1854 a black cloud hung threateningly over the North. The statesmen of the North had lost their fight, lost it by a humiliating margin.
feat in the halls of Congress before but had
They had known defeat in never lost the will to fight. Abolitionists and Northern statesmen was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill on May 30, 1854.
The Whig Party was dead, killed by the Know-Nothings as the Anti-Masons had killed the Anti-Jackson party in 1833-1835. There was, as yet, no Republican party.
The Democrats had carried the whole country in the recent election and their only great foes, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, were both dead. These two statesmen had the unfortunate position of being strong men in a weak party.
In the November election Winfield Scott, Whig candidate for President, got only 42 electoral votes of a possible 296.
Not until the election of 1856 was the picture to change. It was during this disillusioning era of one-party that Stephen A Douglas acted.
All of the West was strongly Democrat. All of New England, except Massachusetts and Vermont, and all of the middle states were added to their fold.
He pushed through Congress hi
controversial. Kansas-Nebraska bill
The bill revoked the measures adopted by the Missouri compromise. That measure had admitted Missouri as a slave state and stopped all slavery from all land north of 36 degrees 30 minutes. It was, in effect, a victory for slavery, but not nearly such a complete victory as was the Kansas-Nebraska bill.
The bill ignored the slavery limit line established in the compromise. It gave the Kansas territory the right of popular sovereignty.
It removed all congressional barriers to the spread of slavery, not only north of the line, but including the land northwest of the Ohio river, between the Atlantic and Pacific, and the lands from the Great Lakes down to the Gulf of Mexico.
It left every foot of land in the U.S. fair game for slavery interests.
All of this happened, despite the eloquent giants supporting the anti-slavery cause in Congress. These leaders were some of the Sackville Chase, Hale, Wilson, and Giddings.
Passage of the bill prompted Sen. B.F. Wade to say, "An empire is to be transformed from freedom to slavery, and the people must not be consulted on such a question, so big with zeal or woe to the millions who are to people these vast regions in all time to come."
In short, the North thought its
cause was lost. If its great speakers had failed to stem the tide of the rising southern power, what could the little people of the land do.
The situation was summed up by a headline in the NewYork Tribune May 24, 1954. The headline simply said, "Slavery Is King."
To understand how fully hopeless the cause seemed to the anti-slavery interests one need look only at the high officials of that administration.
Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederate states, was secretary war; the James Buechner was a slave man; the Supreme court was packed with pro-slavery people, as were both houses of Congress.
On the other hand, slavery interests had broad plans, almost fantastic plans in the light of later developments. They naturally expected to get both Kansas and Nebraska as slave states, five more slave states were to be carved from Texas and Cuba and the Central American countries also were to come in as slave states.
There was only one thing they didn't figure on, the tenacity of the little people who moved West and settled in the Kansas territory and other controversial territories.
They had forgotten the people, who were to believe so strongly they would send Beecher's Bibles-Sharp rifles-to Kansas to aid the fight.
They didn't realize that they had only moved the battle of slavery from the halls of Congress to the plains of Kansas.
Two towns were founded there in 1854 - Polesda and Canton. They were soon consolidated under the name of Boston. A party of colonists from Cincinnati, bringing a boatload of freight, including 10 portable houses, arrived in 1855 and concluded a deal whereby they were given half of the townsite. The deal provided for renaming the place Manhattan.
Manhattan Once 2 Towns
Lying in a hill-encircled natural limestone bowl west of the junction of the Big Blue and Kansas rivers is the college, farm, shipping, and trading town of Manhattan.
In 1859 Blumont college, forerunner of Kansas State college, opened its doors.
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
'Barleycorn' Villain of Ten Nights'
Bv MARY BESS STEPHENS
Time was, way back in 1854, when Timothy Shay Arthur's book with the interesting title was running "Uncle Tom's Cabin" a close race in popularity.
"Ten Nights in a Barroom" may be an interesting title, and must be, to have lived in the minds of so many so long. Yet this literary achievement of 1854, according to library requests, is rapidly losing its reader appeal.
The now stock characters of the soften father, a murderous villain, and the pitiful child moved around in the novel, all highly affected by corn whisky.
Author Arthur had a theory concerning the labor problems of 1854. Arthur believed that bad labor relations were caused by the working man's admiration for King Alcohol
So Arthur, wanting to do his hit for the country, and being a strong temperance man, wrote "Ten Nights" of classic graphic example of the evils of drink.
Many youngsters learned how to enunciate a good sizzling "S" from hissing the villain on those lucky evenings when a stock company would bring the show to town.
The novel is a serious moral piece, but the theater spotted its potentialities, and in the late 1800's it opened on Broadway, becoming a theater classic of the period.
In fact, the novel did not do away with liquor by any means, but both are still a pervasive topic in thinking in the public, as well as lot of interesting table conversation.
In 1931 the play was revived on Broadway, in a dramatization by William Pratt.
Douglas' Ambition Led To Vivid Political Life
Bv ELIZABETH WOHLGEMUTH
It is said that when Stephen A. Douglas kissed his mother good... the homestead gate near Canandaigua, N.Y., her last inquiry as, "When shall you come home to visit us, my son?"
my way to Congress." he answe
On my way to Congress, the first visit home was made 10 years later as he was on his way to Congress where he was to propose a bill which was to vitally affect the territory of Kansas and the whole United States.
Douglas was chairman of the committee on territories and was the sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska act, which inaugurated the bloody border warfare in Kansas and the controversy which seven years later flared into Civil War.
He was primarily concerned in promoting the interests of the states. He championed the Nebraska bill, for he believed organized government would hasten settlement and speed acquisition of land grants for railroads.
The Kansas-Nebraska bill repealed the Missouri compromise and subtituted the principle of popular sovereignty. The legislature of the territory would make the regulations concerning slavery. When the territory applied for statehood the final choice of whether or not to have slavery was to be left to the people in the state. He contended this procedure was more democratic.
Douglas assumed that Kansas would automatically be slave and Nebraska free and did not anticipate the bloody war which resulted in Kansas as a result of the bill.
St.Mary's Had Large Mission
The largest of the Roman Catholic missions in Kansas was St Mary's, 51 miles from Fort Rilev.
It was under the direction of the Rt. Rev, J. B. Meige, D.D., bishop Apostolic Vicarate of the Indian territory. Each Sunday sermons were preached in Indian and English.
Girls had the majority in attendance usually, outranking the boys 67 to 52.
Popular with the Indians, the mission was said to resemble a town with its buildings, adjacent trading houses, groups of Indian improvements, and extensive cornfields. Some even favored St. Mary's as the capital of the territory.
A resident described the mission: "We have two tailors, a schoolmaster, carpenter, cook, gardener and a farmer. None of us are encumbered with a wife; we are all bachelors."
He had no moral concern over slavery and was not interested in whether or not slavery was expanded.
Before the bill was passed Doug-Lennard summed up famous debates over the potter
The bill was passed in 1854 and Kansas became a territory. Most people thought Kansas would be ideal for slaves. The South wanted Kansas to be slave because it saw the future of slavery at stake in the issue.
His mother moved to a small farm left her by her father and she resided with her brother who had an adjoining farm.
This man, who sponsored the bill that made Kansas a territory 100 years ago, was born in Brandon, Vt., April 23, 1813. His father was a physician. Douglas knew little about his father for he died when Douglas was two months old.
Douglas didn't like farm life or living with his uncle. At the age of 15 he went to Middlebury, learned the cabinet-making trade, and while there formed a taste for reading, particularly political works.
In 1829 he became ill and was forced to return home. He was told by his doctor that he was too feeble to work at the cabinet business.
Seeing he would have to select a new occupation, he attended academy in Brandon and when he met the teacher he attended the academy, there
In 1833, he entered the office of Walter and Levi Hubbell as a student of law. But later he learned he could get a license to practice law in a year if he went further West. So he went to Cleveland, where he became ill with a fever and was sick for four months.
From Cleveland he went to St. Louis and not finding suitable work there went to Illinois. There he taught school and practiced law in small communities to earn a living until he could.get his law license.
His political career began in Jacksonville, where he made a speech for the Democrats regarding the administration and its relation to the bank and currency question. Much of what he gave the speech in the opposition newspaper and he became quite well known in the county.
Later he was elected to the position of state attorney at the age of 24 and in 1836 he was elected to the state legislature.
He went on in his political career, becoming a senator to Congress from the state of Illinois and working himself into such a position as to propose the Kansas-Nebraska bill.