Was it about Slavery?

Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog has featured a fascinating ongoing examination of the Civil War and slavery. One of his most interesting tasks has been his thorough debunking of the idea that, for the South, 'it wasn't about slavery.'

Which, of course, raises the question: how much was slavery an issue for the North? Is it plausible that -- as some scholars have argued -- the North was fighting for "Union," with the issue of slavery a tactical afterthought.

That latter question is probably more complex -- not least because Lincoln's Republican electorate (not to mention the Northern Democrats) was an uneasy coalition between Free Soilers and Abolitionists.

But, as such, it was interesting to read snippets from Hiland Hall's inaugural address as he took the governorship of Vermont in 1858. (From Tyler Resch's biography of Hiland Hall )

(what follows are nested quotes; first Tyler Resch's commentary, then verbatim quotations from H.Hall's speech -- I'll try to get back to this post to reformat the quotes).

The rest of his address was given over to a passionate dissertation on
slavery, though he began gently:

The marked general feature of the national government
for several years past, has been its entire disregard and abandonment
of some of the most important principles, which were considered as
political axioms by the framers of the constitution, and acted upon as
such in the earlier and purer days of the government, and indeed down
to a very recent period. This has been more particularly manifested in
reference to the subject of slavery.

He picked up steam by lamenting that:

judges, of distinguished legal attainments, have often been . . .
found giving countenance to oppression and wrong by ingenious and
fanciful constructions, and that English liberty has been fixed upon its 44
present firm foundations, not by the aid of judicial efforts, but by
overcoming them.

More forcefully, he continued:

There is reason to hope that the extra-judicial opinions of
the majority of the judges in the Dred Scott case, contrary as they are
to the plain language of the constitution, to the facts of history, and to
the dictates of common humanity, will meet the fate which has
attended those of the judges in the parent country, and that liberty will
be eventually established in spite of them.

The extraordinary persevering exertions which, during
the past year, have been made by the chief magistrate of the nation to
prevent the people of Kansas from excluding slavery from their soil,
by imposing upon them a constitution which he well knew they
loathed and abhorred, furnishes new and alarming evidence of the
aggressive character of the slave power which controlled him, and
shows that the principles of justice and of popular sovereignty stand
no more in the way of its demands for political domination than do
those of the constitution. The near approach to success, by
congressional legislation, of this attempt to stifle the will of the great
majority of the people of Kansas, is calculated to excite strong distrust
in the continued success of our republican institutions; for if the
principle of right and justice, by the influence of government
patronage and party discipline, can be thus outraged and overcome,
our boasted democracy will be but another name for despotism.
It is, however, matter of just pride and congratulation,
that these efforts to impose a slave constitution on an unwilling
people, have as yet proved unsuccessful, and that the people of that
rich and growing territory, boldly defying the threats of executive
power and nobly spurning the offered bribes of government patronage
and lands, have, by an overwhelming majority, declared their love of
freedom and their abhorrence of slavery

The people of Vermont, mindful of the history of its early
settlers in their struggle against injustice and oppression from without,
have deeply sympathised in the extraordinary and protracted
sufferings of the people of Kansas in the cause of liberty and right,
and now greet them on the favorable prospect of a happy and
successful termination of their patriotic labors.

There was ample precedent for Hall's abolitionist message. The previous
governor, Ryland Fletcher of Proctorsville, had protested the evils of slavery
during his inaugural messages in 1856 and 1857, as had Governor Slade in 1845
and 1846. Governor Fletcher in two addresses compared the hardships suffered by
the Free State settlers in Kansas with those of the Vermont pioneers. Fletcher
expressed fear that the Dred Scott decision of March 6, 1857 left little hope that
"the spread of slavery will ever be stopped under our present form of government."

Later, Rodney V. Marsh, a State Representative from Brandon, Vt. would pass a bill authorizing the formation of a Committee to discuss Dredd Scott and the issue of slavery:

"

Marsh's Select Committee soon issued a report declaring that citizens of
Vermont and of the free states could be reduced to slavery with impunity and their
property could be destroyed without remedy, and that the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850 was unconstitutional. In late November the legislature adopted resolutions
presented by Marsh's committee guaranteeing the freedom of all persons in
Vermont and resolving that the Dred Scott decision had no warrant in the
Constitution or in the legislative or judicial history of the nation, and furthermore
that "these extra-judicial opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States are a
dangerous usurpation of power and have no binding authority upon Vermont or the
people of the United States."

An ironic precursor to modern right wing fulminations about 'activist judges.'

As an interesting footnote, Hiland Hall would spend many of his later years as a historian of the state of Vermont. In that role he was a fervent retrospective advocate of secession -- Vermont's secession from New York and New Hampshire, that is.