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  The slave owners and planters also felt that economic sense was on their side in the defence against reform. The abolitionist attack on slavery that blossomed in the fertile soil of North American faith could offer little by way of an economic critique of slavery. How could it? How could abolitionists point to the astonishing economic success that was cotton and argue that slavery had had its day, and ought to make way for free labour? Those most closely involved with slavery saw no economic reason to seek an alternative to slave labour, and although southern slave owners found themselves under increased attack after 1830, it was not because slavery was uneconomic.

  But the abolitionists had other weapons at their disposal. Now that slavery had been elevated from being a secular and constitutional issue and thrust securely into the heart of American faith, the anti-slavery argument was strengthened and given a new political edge through the personal testimony that emerged in the writings of black abolitionists.[22]

  Forty years earlier, British abolition had been greatly enhanced by the voice and writings of a small band of Africans offering personal testimony about slavery. American abolition, on the other hand, had a much more extensive list of former slaves to call on. There were plenty of African-Americans whose experience of slavery added a searing personal quality to abolition gatherings and writings. Frederick Douglass became perhaps the most charismatic presence following his escape from slavery in 1838. An orator of formidable power and presence, Douglass attracted huge crowds, on both sides of the Atlantic, and his restless energy drove forward the slaves’ cause throughout the USA (and Britain). Others added their own experiences to the mix: William Wells Brown, Ellen Craft, Henry Bibb, Harriet A. Jacobs, Sojourner Truth and Solomon Northrup. They are only the best-known of a host of black abolitionists. Their writing, speeches and activities formed a rebuke and refutation of many old myths and prejudices about black life. These black voices overturned the slave owners’ hackneyed arguments about attainment and achievement, and – just as important – they destroyed the much-advertised ideal of the contented slave. The chorus of black abolition formed a denunciation of everything the slave South represented; a refutation of the very culture of the South itself.

  In alliance with the tireless energy of black workers in the Underground Railroad, the irrepressible urge of the slaves to flee served to undermine and contradict old shibboleths of the slave South. Black abolitionists offered a blunt denial of widespread racism throughout the USA. By 1840 US abolition had grown by leaps and bounds, at least in the North, with the formation of hundreds of abolition societies and millions of pieces of abolitionist literature spilling from US presses. Yet this abolitionist clamour seemed to be getting nowhere. Despite numerous crowded abolitionist meetings, the tons of print, the packed abolitionist lectures and the wider public outcry against slavery, and despite the continuing flight of refugee slaves, there was little sign, by the 1840s, that slavery had been weakened or was ready to capitulate.

  The slave economy remained strong, the South continued to hold great political sway, and throughout the 1830s and 1840s abolition (despite its northern strength) remained a weak political force in the South. For all its religious strength, it faced opposition in the North, too. There was widespread racism among whites, who were fearful of the economic threat posed by free black workers migrating north; northern mobs regularly threatened abolitionist meetings.[23] There was, moreover, an unwritten agreement among political parties ‘that all discussion of slavery must be repressed’. The South embargoed abolitionist literature (as did the Post Office) and for a while Congress refused to accept abolitionist petitions. But one basic question remains puzzling. Why, asks David Brion Davis, was the South so obviously frightened of abolition?

  Antagonism between North and South was worsened as the US expanded westward in the 1850s, raising the prospect of slavery seeping into new territories. There was rising tension, too, about the threat posed by the fugitive laws to free blacks in the North. And there was periodic outrage at the violent and costly (but entirely legal) dragooning of fugitives from northern states back to slavery in the South, despite the efforts of aggressive crowds trying to prevent it.[24]

  In the midst of this mounting social and political turmoil, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. It was a book that had a seismic impact on opinion in both North America and Britain in adding to the religious crusade and in rallying support for black freedom. Within a year, it had sold 300,000 copies in the USA, almost one million in Britain. By 1860 it had sold four million copies, and Stowe had become ‘the most famous writer in the world’. The book was, in effect, a sermon against slavery (the author came from an evangelical family) and was sprinkled with biblical references. It proved enormously influential in persuading readers that slavery was sinful and should be abolished. But it was hated and reviled in the South.[25] Slave owners continued to be defiant, and it seemed that nothing short of force could spring the locks that bound the slaves to the land and to their owners.

  Many American politicians recognised the need to compromise on the politics of slavery, and accepted that slavery and its political contradictions remained at the heart of American life. Slavery was a political minefield, and politicians trod carefully for fear of triggering an explosion. This stand-off between the two sides was interrupted by periodic clashes in Congress, with points of friction, disputes, threats of secession and even of war from southern politicians aggrieved by what they deemed to be threats to the slave system.

  Through all this, the British remained an issue in the dispute about slavery. Ever since 1776 there had been a residual hostility to Britain. In their turn, British visitors and writers made no bones about their contempt for America’s inconsistency about slavery: proclaiming the high principles of 1787, yet enjoying the fruits of a slave economy. Americans felt insulted by British disdain, and their dislike was compounded by massive immigration of Irish people into the USA, carrying with them their own hostility towards the British. It was hardly surprising, then, when the British preached to Americans about abolition, that many Americans tended to see it simply as a disguise for British self-interest. It was just the latest version of British humbug masquerading as high principle. The Americans had other reasons to dislike the British, who refused to pay compensation for fugitive slaves who managed to reach Canada. They also freed slaves who landed on British islands from American ships in distress. When southerners looked at the mounting crises of the sugar industry and the diminishing prosperity of the British Caribbean, they felt justified in their belief that if you tamper with slavery, economic and social gloom will follow. As if to compound southern antipathy, there was mounting evidence that British statesmen were actively promoting an end to slavery the world over. The old deep-seated anti-British feeling in North America was thus revitalised. Perfidious Albion was up to her old tricks and southerners had no trouble denouncing American abolitionists (on their successful visits to Britain) as treasonable agents of the British. For years, it proved difficult for American abolitionism to shake off the accusation that it was a stooge for Britain’s devious interests.

  The South exercised great influence in Washington, and its power in the Senate would be strengthened if new states were allowed to be slave states. Thus the issue of western expansion became central both to slavery itself and to political power in Washington. Furthermore, the rising population of slaves in border states, notably in Virginia, prompted the encouragement of western migration of slavery – if only to prevent slaves outnumbering whites in older states. Such was the basis of the ‘Missouri crisis’ of 1820–1: should settlement west of the Mississippi be free or slave? The outcome was notable for hardening divisions between the slave South and the free North. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed for one new slave state (Missouri) and one new free state (Maine), came at a time of feverish reaction to Denmark Vesey’s slave revolt in Charleston and helped to convince the South that slave unrest (supported by free blacks
in Washington and elsewhere) was being played upon by northern politicians. Whatever their political differences, southerners had shuffled themselves into a ragged unity against the North, and against any public debate about slavery. Once again, they had reacted much like their contemporaries in the British Caribbean: slave owners of diverse views and standing found unity in stark opposition to abolitionist opponents and to any discussion about slavery and freedom.

  Debates in Washington were increasingly bitter and divisive. But it was the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court in 1857 that thrust slavery centre-stage of American politics. Dred Scott and his wife Harriet were slaves from Missouri, but living in Illinois; they sued for their freedom in a complex case that reached back to the 1840s. The Supreme Court ruled, by seven to two, that slaves were property, not citizens, and had no right to sue for freedom in a court of law. In the words of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, slaves had ‘no rights a white man need respect’. The judgment also confirmed that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from new territories. In effect, the court ruled the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional.

  The Dred Scott decision was that people of African descent were ‘regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race’. It was a legal judgment of the deepest racist hue and it electrified abolitionists and slaves alike. In the words on one abolitionist, the decision was ‘the moral assassination of a race’. Slave holders were now free to take their slaves anywhere in the USA and settle.

  Abraham Lincoln was only one of many who denounced the decision: ‘All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him [the slave]. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the Theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in the prison house.’ It was around these issues that Lincoln began to stake out a national political career in the 1850s, placing the question of slavery at the heart of his public politics. When he stood for election, as a Republican Senator for Illinois in 1850, he stressed the centrality of slavery. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.’[26]

  This was the great turning point in American history. Lincoln’s electoral battle to the Senate faced fierce opposition from an opponent who used the race card mercilessly against him, tapping into popular racism to ridicule Lincoln’s views on slavery. In fact, Lincoln was not an abolitionist at this point, and he did not believe in black equality. But he did believe that blacks should have equal access to the rights offered by the Declaration of Independence. Although Lincoln was not elected to the Senate, he had become a national figure.

  By 1859, North and South were locked in fierce opposition to each other: the South, disturbed by the shadow of slave emancipation elsewhere, the North committed to helping fugitive slaves, and refusing to countenance the consequences of Dred Scott in allowing the expansion of slavery westwards as the US grew. In this increasingly febrile atmosphere, in October of that year John Brown (a volatile abolitionist who had come to regard insurgency as the only way of ending slavery) launched his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He hoped his attack would ignite a slave revolt. It failed, and Brown was hanged – but he went to the gallows proclaiming biblical justification for his actions. Southerners were deeply shocked when they learned of the widespread northern sympathy and support for Brown. In the subsequent political disputes about slavery, the Democratic Party split, and Lincoln secured the presidential nomination for the Republicans. The presidential election of 1860 was rowdy and divisive, and the result was a nightmare for the South. Newly elected President Lincoln and his party were committed to the principle that slavery was a moral outrage, but now they had the power of federal authority to confront the slave-owning South.

  South Carolina was the first state to take the step that many southerners had been threatening for years: they withdrew from the Union. Six others followed to form the Confederate States of America. On 12 April 1861, when forces fired on Fort Sumter, a Union position controlling Charleston harbour, the Civil War had started.

  Within a single lifetime, this astonishing country had emerged from a loose collection of colonies into a thriving nation, with an expansive economy and a booming population. As it looked westward to the boundless land of the frontier, the future of the USA seemed bountiful beyond imagination. Yet here it was, at war with itself. North and South viewed each other with deep distaste: each thought the other to be the denial of all they admired and held dear. And each was preparing to fight a war, at the heart of which lay the question of slavery. Lincoln’s fervent hope was to hold the Union together, but the war that followed tore it apart.

  Recent scholars have taken to writing of the Civil War as an ‘abolition war’. Yet on the eve of the war, in 1860, US slavery was more valuable and important than ever, and not solely to the South. The slaves’ total value – calculated at $3.5 billion – made them forty-eight times more valuable than the entire spending of the federal government. Five years later, when they emerged from the Civil War as free people, they had lost their monetary value. US slave owners found their most prized possessions rendered worthless.

  The Civil War proved to be the first ‘total war’ in modern times, inflicting death and destruction on a catastrophic scale and affecting all corners of American life. The human cost was appalling. The Union army of 2.1 million suffered 360,000 deaths, the Confederate army 260,000. One-fifth of the 200,000 African-Americans in the Union forces died. On both sides, disease killed as many men as combat. The conflict was marked by a litany of acts of savagery on both sides, culminating (and decided by) the scorched-earth march from Atlanta to Savannah in 1864, led by the Union general William T. Sherman. Long after the war had ended, reminders of the war’s profound and long-lasting damage lived on in the huge armies of wounded and disabled survivors.

  Americans who had, before 1860, inveighed against slavery as a national sin, viewed the wartime sufferings as the Lord’s way of cleansing a sinful nation. Even Lincoln hinted as much: ‘Surely he intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion.’[27] The most striking impact of the Civil War was its enormous destructiveness – and the most important destruction of all was the ending of slavery. It dawned on many in the North that emancipation must become a key war aim for the Union: only freedom could undermine the South’s wellbeing based on slavery.

  In his public life in the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln had recognised slavery as a great injustice, but he had not supported emancipation. Struggling to keep the Union together during the war – he hesitated (he even considered colonisation a solution). Yet on 1 January 1863, while the war had still two years left to run, this same man issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He had finally accepted that black freedom was vital to the cause, and more than three million people were freed, at least on paper, by the proclamation. It became clear, however, that only military victory could secure both the survival of the Union – and the freedom of those slaves.

  There can be no doubt about the slaves’ attitude towards the war. They voted with their feet, leaving the plantations in droves while the war continued. They travelled in families and in groups; they took to boats to carry them to northern ports; others loaded their meagre possessions onto carts and wagons and headed for freedom. The streams of fugitive slaves continued to pass through border towns on their way north. The old Underground Railroad was effectively bypassed and rendered superfluous by the wave of assistance that carried along refugee slaves, leaving slavery behind them. Slaves no longer had to worry about the dangers of flight – they travelled in the open, during daylight hours. Anyone trying to apprehend a fugitive ‘would be a fool’. Where possible, the slaves crossed to the Union lines. (More slaves fled across than had escaped in the previous thirty years.) Most were simply seeking freedom and refuge beyond the conflict. The slaves’ flight was deeply distrusted by the Confederacy because the fugitives often took with them invaluable
logistical and military information, which they passed on to the Union army. In places, the arrival of Union troops gave slaves the opportunity to wreak vengeance on their owners’ property.

  At first the Union army found the refugee slaves a problem; black volunteers were not allowed to join their ranks and some were even returned to the owners, but, soon, the fugitives became military ‘contraband’. Eventually, with Lincoln’s encouragement, black volunteers were accepted as auxiliary workers (cooks and the like) before being allowed to enrol as soldiers. Fifteen black soldiers and eight black sailors won the highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and black regiments secured lasting fame for their exceptional gallantry. One-half of the black 54th Massachusetts Regiment died in the attack on Fort Wagner in 1863. Black military valour and assistance clearly helped to undermine slavery itself, as 150,000 joined the Union army as willing combatants, and 70,000 died in warfare and from disease. The Confederacy, by contrast, put slaves to work as labourers – but more and more of them simply melted away, intent on ending their own bondage. The Confederate army only agreed to accept black troops in 1865 – far too late to affect the outcome of the war. Slavery simply crumbled in the course of the conflict.

  Yet the military outcome remained uncertain until Sherman’s breakthrough in November to December 1864. Even then, Congress continued to struggle with the question of slavery before finally passing the Thirteenth Amendment on 31 January 1865. On 14 April, in his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln was unsparing about the role of slavery in the country’s history – and in the unfolding of the Civil War. It was a remarkable acknowledgement of the debt owed by the USA to its enslaved people, referring to ‘all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil’.[28] These words proved to be Lincoln’s own memorial. He was assassinated three weeks later. Lincoln’s address was as perceptive and poignant an account as any by subsequent historians of the centrality of slavery in the making of the USA.