Loose Party Times: The Political Crisis of the 1850s in Westchester County, New York

On November 7, 1848 William H. Robertson rose early and rushed to the post office in Bedford, a town in Westchester County, New York. The young lawyer was brimming with excitement because two weeks earlier, the Whigs in the county?s northern section had nominated him as their candidate for the New York State Assembly. Only twenty-four years old and a rising legal star, Robertson hoped that holding political office would launch his nascent career. After casting his ballot at the Bedford Post Office, Robertson paid a visit to Sheriff James M. Bates, his political manager, to await the election results. Robertson?s intelligence, collected a week before Election Day, that “news from every part of the district is favorable,” proved accurate. The Whig attorney heard later that evening that he had defeated his Democratic opponent, with 57% of the vote. To celebrate, Robertson and Bates feasted on “chickens, turkeys, oysters, and Champaign” before retiring around midnight at Philer Betts? Hotel. The following afternoon, they boarded the 3:00 PM train from Bedford to the county seat of White Plains, seventeen miles south. There, the two triumphant Whigs gossiped and caught up with their counterparts from Westchester?s usually Democratic southern section. Hearing of their friends? overwhelming victories surprised Robertson, leading him to exclaim, “The Whigs have carried almost everything!” Indeed, the Whigs had swept every elective office in Westchester County. [excerpt

States’ Rights, Southern Hypocrisy, and the Crisis of the Union

This article explores the arguments used by southern secessionists to explain why they left the Union. The article demonstrates that support for states\u27 rights was not the main reason for secession, and that on the contrary, most of the slave states left the Union because the free states were exercising their states\u27 rights in opposing slavery. The main reason for secession, as this essay shows, was the desire to protect slavery and to create a new nation, self-consciously based on slavery and white supremacy. This article began as part of an AALS legal history section program in 2010 and is part of a symposium based on the papers given at that session

Master of Arts

thesisIn September of 1851, four federal officials left Utah Territory after serving less than four months. Chief Justice Lemuel G. Brandebury, Associate Justice Perry E. Brocchus, Territorial Secretary Broughton D. Harris, and Indian Subagent Henry R. Day created a furor in Congress with their reports of Brigham Young‘s rebellion against federal authority. This came as a great surprise in Washington since over the previous five years, Mormon agents had created an image of the Latter-day Saints as mainstream Americans who were loyal to the United States and had a conventional form of republican government. Unfortunately, the Compromise of 1850 resulted in Congress imposing an unwanted territorial government on the Mormons. When nonresident officials arrived in 1851, the Latter-day Saints reacted with defiance and antagonism. As the situation worsened, these officers feared for their safety and left the territory. Members of Congress responded to their reports of a Mormon rebellion by threatening to send federal troops to Utah in 1852. Latter-day Saint agents in Washington realized this would almost certainly result in the kind of violence that led to the collapse of four previous Mormon settlements. Even though the report of the returning officials accurately described the words and actions of the Church leadership, Latter-day Saint agents in Washington discredited their charges by creating an image of them as -runaway officials‖ whose word could not be trusted. Unfortunately, the victory over the officials did not end the conflict with Washington. Brigham Young‘s insistence that the Mormons and not the federal government ruled Utah Territory put the Latter-day Saints on a collision course with Washington and became the first step on the road to the Utah War

Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850

The crisis facing the United States in 1850 was a dramatic prologue to the conflict that came a decade later. The rapid opening of western lands demanded the speedy establishment of local civil administration for these vast regions. Outraged partisans, however, cried of coercion: Southerners saw a threat to the precarious sectional balance, and Northerners feared an extension of slavery. In this definitive study, Holman Hamilton analyzes the complex events of the anxious months from December, 1849, when the Senate debates began, until September, 1850, when Congress passed the measures. Holman Hamilton is the author of a two-volume work about Zachary Taylor. A former Guggenheim fellow, he also wrote The Three Kentucky Presidents. A comprehensive analysis that more nearly defines the complex limits of the problem of this intricate legislative episode. —American Historical Review A succinct, useful book dealing with the Compromise of 1850 and the larger issues which led to the Civil War. —Howard R. Lamar, Yale University Bravo to the University Press of Kentucky for making Holman Hamilton\u27s landmark Prologue to Conflict available once more for student readers. Hamilton\u27s revisionist work credited Stephen A. Douglas with hammering out the crucial compromise that averted civil war for a decade. Hamilton sifted through the maze of rhetoric and uncovered the role of the Texas bondholder lobby in lubricating the machinery of political change. And Hamilton\u27s analysis of the crucial House and Senate roll-call votes was in its day a methodological breakthrough. All in all, Prologue to Conflict remains a historiographical classic, a timeless book essential to understanding the Middle Period of American History. —John David Smith, Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History, Hamilton has found drama and excitement. His presentation has all the suspense of a novel, even though the informed reader knows the plot at the start. Moreover, his analyses are incisive and provocative. —Journal of American History A great stride toward an understanding of a period and a \u27crisis\u27 that have been all too lightly regarded in the past. —Journal of Southern Historyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/1114/thumbnail.jp

The role of British North America in Anglo-American relations, 1848-1854

This study analyses the impact on mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-American relations of British North America. It argues that successive British governments worked to retain the strategically-important colonies, despite the often exaggerated influence of Little Englandism. It also stresses the overwhelming loyalty of the colonists, despite aberrations like Canada's 1849 Annexation Crisis. It points to two annexation crises - in 1848 and 1849. During the former, Anglo-American relations suffered as the colonists braced themselves for a popular American invasion. In the 1849 crisis, unknown to the British, the American government briefly considered annexing Canada. When this opportunity vanished, Washington willingly prolonged the crisis in order to weaken Britain during negotiations over Central America. The Fishery Dispute of 1852-1854 found Britain practising pressure politics. London used years of tension between American and colonial fishermen as a pretext for a show of naval strength off North America during negotiations with the United States over Cuba and Central America. The Fishery Dispute also succeeded in forcing the Americans to take Reciprocity seriously. This study rejects traditional interpretations which claim that Lord Elgin's success in 1854 stemmed from his own brilliance and his ability to tell America's feuding sections different stories about the likely effect of Reciprocity. Instead it argues that Elgin succeeded in 1854 because of the work over several years by other diplomats. He also succeeded in 1854 because of a mutual desire for transatlantic calm due to America s domestic problems and Britain's involvement in the Crimean War. Though Elgin's ability oiled the wheels of success, he was also fortunate to arrive just as the ruling party in Washington put down its guard and celebrated the Kansas-Nebraska Compromise. The ratification of Reciprocity in British North America confirms that, despite granting self-government to the three main colonies, Britain put wider imperial interests before purely colonial interests. The thesis concludes that British North America, though nominally powerless and dependent on Britain, had a significant role in Anglo-American relations. The colonies pressured London and Washington by various tactics, while Mother Country and territorially rapacious republic frequently used the colonies as a weapon in their dealings with each other. This produced a diplomatic North Atlantic Triangle with each polity cynically trying to use the other two for its own ends

Luther v. Borden: A Taney Court Mystery Solved

It has not been generally remarked that Chief Justice Taney wrote surprisingly few of the Taney Court’s major opinions—those cases that tend to be anthologized and remembered by generalists. Those major cases which Taney did write are consistently about slavery (or states’ rights or state powers, which in Taney’s mind may have amounted to the same thing). There is a notable exception: Luther v. Borden—a case about the Guarantee Clause. This raises a question. Setting aside his opinions on slavery or states’ rights, what could have moved the author of Dred Scott, by consensus the worst Supreme Court opinion in history, to choose Luther v. Borden as one of the few remembered major opinions he did write? To begin to unravel this little mystery of history, a glimpse into the character and judgment of Roger Brooke Taney is offered, with an amusing parallel drawn between the respective nominations to the Supreme Court of Taney and Robert Bork. Luther is reconsidered in light of the Transcripts of Record, and with an unembarrassed presentism rather than historicism. In view of Chief Justice Warren’s thinking in Powell v. McCormack, much of Chief Justice Taney’s reasoning in Luther is shown not only to be evasive, illogical and unconvincing, but also intellectually dishonest, if he is to be credited with the understandings of law and its processes reasonably attributable to a former Attorney General of the United States. Even more disturbingly, Luther v. Borden can plausibly be read as having a darker side than is conventionally understood, with an impact of surprising magnitude and hurtfulness, placing it well within the ambitions of the author of Dred Scott

The Papers of Henry Clay. Volume 10. Candidate, Compromiser, Elder Statesman. January 1, 1844-June 29, 1852

The culminating volume in The Papers of Henry Clay begins in 1844, the year when Clay came within a hair\u27s breadth of achieving his lifelong goal-the presidency of the United States. Volume 10 of Clay\u27s papers, then, more than any other, reveals the Great Compromiser as a major player on the national political stage. Here are both the peak of his career and the inevitable decline. On a tour through the southern states in the spring of 1844, Clay seemed certain of gaining the Whig nomination and the national election, until a series of highly publicized letters opposing the annexation of Texas cost him crucial support in both South and North. In addition to the Texas issue, the bitter election was marked by a revival of charges of a corrupt bargain, the rise of nativism, the influence of abolitionism, and voter fraud. Democrat James K. Polk defeated Clay by a mere 38,000 popular votes, partly because of illegal ballots cast in New York City. Speaking out against the Mexican War, in which his favorite son was a casualty, the Kentuckian announced his willingness to accept the 1848 Whig nomination. But some of his closest political friends, including many Kentucky Whig leaders, believed he was unelectable and successfully supported war hero Zachary Taylor. The disconsolate Clay felt his public career was finally finished. Yet when a crisis erupted over the extension of slavery into the territories acquired from Mexico, he answered the call and returned to the United States Senate. There he introduced a series of resolutions that ultimately passed as the Compromise of 1850, the most famous of his three compromises. Clay\u27s last years were troubled ones personally, yet he remained in the Senate until his death in 1852, continuing to warn against sectional extremism and to stress the importance of the Union-messages that went unheeded as the nation Clay had served so well moved inexorably toward separation and civil war. Publication of this book is being assisted by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Melba Porter Hay is a specialist in the history of Kentucky and was associate editor of volumes 8 and 9 of The Papers of Henry Clay.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_political_science_papers/1011/thumbnail.jp

Marking the coterminous boundary line between the United States and Mexico 1848-1856

The treaty history of United States expansion toward its contiguity is compacted between the years 1803 and 1953. During the period since that era, less significant boundary adjustments have been extended into current history. Within the scope of territorial expansion by treaty, this thesis is focused upon the marking of a common boundary line between the United States and the Republic of Mexico. This effort spanned an eight year period from 1848 to 1856