We continue our look at Jacksonian Antebellum Virginia by looking at the “Yankeefication” of Virginia with “Rise of the Whigs” and “Migrants Against Slavery”. The classic “Road from Monticello” investigates the Slavery Debate of 1831-32, as does the “Drift Towards Dissolution” referring to the Virginia’s east-west sectional division.
“Road to Disunion” examines the political currents in the nation and Virginia from the Revolution to 1856 emphasizing the growing sectionalism, “Union at Risk” explores the distinctions found in the South and Virginia among nationalists, Jacksonians and Calhounites, and “Gospel of Disunion” develops the relationships between the denominational schisms north and south, and the subsequent political divisions.
See also, Jacksonian Antebellum Virginia part one.
These books are all used in bibliographies found in peer-reviewed surveys of Virginia history of scholarly merit. Insights are used from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
For book reviews of this historical period in other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction. General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Rise of the Whigs
The Rise of the Whigs in Virginia, 1824-1840 was written by Henry H. Simms in 1929 and reprinted in 2012. It looks at the county results in presidential elections following the end of the presidential Virginia Dynasty. The Whig Party found adherents among commercial interests of the state as well as propertied men of industry and slaveholding. The state divisions were not so much east-west or slave-free labor, but those who had a felt need for commercial, banking and transportation development, and those whose existing conditions sufficed for their empowerment. Whigs generally were anti-slavery, promoting colonization of free blacks they considered surplus population in a white man’s republic.
While Whigs grew to a competitive party after 1832 they did not carry the state in presidential elections of 1836 and 1840. Instead, they captured the General Assembly in 1834 and 1838-1840, and Virginia Governors in 1834, 1836, 1840, 1841 and 1842. The Democrats retained uninterrupted control, causing a deadlock for U.S. Senator, leaving only one representing Virginia 1839-41.
Though the Richmond Enquirer dominated the press and was countered by the Richmond Whig, other important papers are sourced from Lynchburg, Charlottesville and Winchester. Important leaders include Rives, Leigh, Tazewell, Tyler and Upshur. Learn more to buy “Rise of the Whigs” here for your bookshelf.
Migrants Against Slavery
Migrants Against Slavery: Virginians and the Nation was written by Philip J. Schwarz in 2001. It shows that unlike other southeastern states following the Revolutionary era, Virginians in the early 1800s migrated to free and slave territory in approximately equal numbers. The emigration of free and slave Virginians impacted the national debate over slavery, from Edward Coles freeing his slaves, migrating to Illinois and becoming an anti-slavery Governor there, to Henry “Box” Brown and Shadrach Minkins who escaped and publicized their rejection of enslavement.
Schwarz concludes with biographies of the Gilliam family, the Newby family, the Gist freed slave families, and abolitionist George Boxley in their resettlement north. Learn more to buy “Migrants Against Slavery” here for your bookshelf.
Road from Monticello
The Road from Monticello: A Study of the Virginia Slavery Debate of 1832 was written by Joseph C. Robert in 1941 and reprinted in 2010. Following Nat Turner’s insurrection and murder of 60 whites, Virginia’s House of Delegates took up a debate to abolish slavery. William O. Goode had proposed that no measure to abolish slavery be taken up in committee, and Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, proposed emancipation at birth for succeeding generations. Conservatives and slaveholders generally opposed abolition, an equal number of liberals and western Virginians generally favored it, and the balance of power was held by twelve who sought gradual emancipation after recover from the current economic downturn when it could be financed.
An account of the pro-slavery arguments stressing slavery as a positive good was written by Thomas Roderick Dew of William and Mary, “Review of the Debate”. It became a handbook for slavery advocates throughout the South. Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College wrote the anti-slavery “Address to the People of West Virginia”, which was taken up by the Abolitionists. Virginians retreated from calls for abolition due to fear of dividing the state, the growing influence of the nullifiers, resistance to Abolitionists, and the exportation of half a million slave population to the booming cotton states. Learn more to buy “Road from Monticello” here for your bookshelf.
Drift Toward Dissolution
Drift Toward Dissolution: The Virginia Slavery Debate of 1831-1832 was written by Alison Goodyear Freehling in 1982. Here Freehling sees no retreat from Jeffersonian liberalism, although the terms of the debate shift from natural rights to economic concerns related to slave freedman removal. The consensus was that slavery was a property right but a political evil that either posed a physical threat in slave majority counties, or served as an economic drag on the state’s economy.
Antislavery forces gained a kind of victory with the preamble to a resolution looking forward to a future free soil Virginia, only without blacks. The emancipation movement depended on the success of colonization efforts of free blacks, but African-American Virginians were reluctant to migrate. Antislavery momentum declined with the forced removal of slaves into cotton Gulf states, but the east-west sectional divisions in Virginia led to the creation of West Virginia. Learn more to buy “Drift Toward Dissolution” here for your bookshelf.
Road to Disunion
The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 was written by William W. Freehling in 1990. In this first of two volumes, Freehling seeks to explain the disunion of the nation by investigating the many Souths found in the United States from the Revolution to the mid-1850s. The South is divided upper versus lower, extremist pro-slavery and states’ rights versus moderates, white egalitarians versus elitists over blacks and poor whites, those for perpetuating slavery versus conditional terminators.
While “Social Control in a Despot’s Democracy” explores social structure and societal relations, most of the volume is dedicated towards political developments related to slavery and sectionalism. While Whigs could carry the South by choosing the more southerly candidate in the case of William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, Northern Democrats caved to Deep South demands under the post 1844 two-thirds rule for nominating presidential candidates.
White southerners were too American to fully accept the elitist, undemocratic ideology required to defend slavery as a positive good, but too southern racially and economically to accept emancipation. The horns of dilemma was exemplified by Virginians such as Jefferson, Henry A. Wise and Abel Parker Upshur. Virginia’s constitutional conventions of 1829-30 and 1850-51 are examined along with the Assembly slavery debate of 1831-32. Learn more to buy “Road to Disunion” here for your bookshelf.
Union at Risk
The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis was written by Richard E. Ellis in 1987. It illuminates three nation factions in contention during the nullification crisis. There were the nationalists of the north and two sorts of states’ righters: Andrew Jackson’s supported decentralized government and perpetual Union, and John C. Calhoun’s who upheld the rights of a national minority and the right to peaceable secession.
While Jackson feared nullification would bring civil war, the Force Bill allowed Calhoun to shift the debate to the question of tariff reform and a coerced Union. Jackson was weakened in his Bank War and had to agree to Henry Clay’s compromise to reduce the tariff. The Democrats gained the explicit merging of states’ rights thinking and proslavery advocacy, and secessionist thinking was strengthened throughout the South. Learn more to buy “Union at Risk” here for your bookshelf.
Gospel of Disunion
Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separation in the Antebellum South was written by Mitchell Snay in 1993. This intellectual history investigates the relationship between religious ideology and separatist movements and southern nationalism. After 1830, northern critics began to argue that slavery was immoral and southern society was evil in principle. The “abolitionist crisis of 1835” led white clerical leaders to first defend human bondage as Biblical, then sanctifying it as the Christianizing agent for Africans. Divisions arose among Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists, leading to sectional schisms among the latter three.
Ecclesiastical divisions provided a model for political disunion. For the Presbyterians, it was the southern churches could maintain their purity by separating from moral impurity. For the Methodists and Baptists, it was that schism was justified because the denominational majorities did not uphold constitutional guarantees upholding southern rights. Learn more to buy “Gospel of Disunion” here for your bookshelf.
For book reviews of this historical period in other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction. General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.