Thundering Secession from the Pulpit

Posted on December 2, 2012 by “Caius”

Why religion played a role in threats to secede.
New England differed from the rest of the country when it came to religion. The Congregationalist Church was the state-sanctioned church of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Church and state were not separate. Would you expect anything else from an area colonized by Puritans?
The clergy preached politics from the pulpit. They linked God’s will with the Federalist view. Jefferson was anathema to New England’s clergy. New England’s clergy were anathema to Jefferson.
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“[New England] will be the last to come over, on account of the dominion of the clergy, who had got a smell of the union between Church and State, and began to indulge in reveries which can never be realized in the present state of science.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1801 [1]
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Carey was born and spent his early years in Ireland where the Irish Anglican church was the state religion. Both Roman Catholics and Presbyterians were subject to politically and economically punitive laws. In Ireland, Carey was exposed to the Enlightenment ideal of separation of church and state. When New England’s clergy thundered secession from their pulpits, Carey was deeply offended.
“To Rev Dr Osgood, Rev Dr Gardiner, Rev Dr Parrish and the Rev Dr Morse.
 With a degree of horror and indignation commensurate with the atrocity of your crimes, has the public seen you for years prostituting the pulpit for the vilest and basest purposes…you denounce damnation upon all who dare dissent from your opinions. While you are dishonouring and disgracing your Sacred functions by preaching rebellion and civil war, you denounce as worthy of “hell-fire” those rulers who are legally chosen to govern us…Open your Bible. There learn your civil duty…”
Mathew Carey [2]
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What is your understanding of the separation of church and state?
Mathew Carey disseminated public documents in the Olive Branch. Public documents are available today over the Internet, but who reads them?
There are two ways of making sure information is available but not read. The first is to write a document that resembles a plate full of spaghetti, with long clauses entangling thoughts in a heap of confusion that requires a fork, a knife, a lawyer, or a reporter to sort things out. The second is to write so much that no one has time to read it. “Spare time” is history. Who has it? Combine complex sentences with numerous pages and you have a document that says something that really says nothing. A lot can be hidden in plain sight. We depend on those who report the news to summarize public issues and documents for us.
Modern news often blends fact with opinion. The same was true in the Early Republic. Jefferson and Madison founded a party that opposed the Federalists by starting a newspaper.

Next: How Newspaper Politics Fueled New England’s Discontent
Look for it Monday, December 10.

[1]  Thomas Jefferson to Moses Robinson, March 23, 1801; quoted in Henry Adams, History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson, (New York:  Literary Classics of the United States, 1986) 213.

[2] Mathew Carey, Miscellanies II, ms. (c. 1834), 221-5.

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Why the Louisiana Purchase Angered New Englanders

Posted on November 26, 2012 by “Caius”

Jefferson’s acquisition of the Louisiana territory disrupted the balance of power between New England and the South. The Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson’s economically crippling embargo, and his religious views caused rumblings of discontent in New England.
New England was the bastion of the Federalist Party. Most Federalists were merchants, ship owners, Congregationalist clergy, judges, and lawyers. Wealthy and powerful, New England’s merchants and ship owners had taken the risks and reaped the rewards of maritime trade in the Caribbean and Europe.
Following the French Revolution, Britain declared war on France. America, caught in the middle, struggled to uphold neutrality. Britain and France waged economic warfare with trade restrictions. Britannia ruled the waves, preying on the French merchant marine. French privateers fought back, plundering British merchant ships. Insurers were reluctant to write policies on British vessels. New England’s merchant marine became the carrier of choice for trans-Atlantic and Caribbean shipping. It was perilous but profitable. The rewards far outweighed the risks.
American ships and sailors were in constant jeopardy. The British Navy’s demand for sailors was double the supply of available Englishmen. American merchants also needed an increasing number of sailors to man their ships. Unlike the British Navy, they paid handsome wages and offered better working conditions. Sailors aboard an American merchant ship received fifteen to eighteen dollars a month compared with the seven dollars a month allotted to a British naval sailor. That created a powerful incentive for British sailors to desert.[1]
Desperate but dominant, the British Navy brazenly ignored the rights of men on land and at sea. British naval thugs called “press gangs” boarded ships and hunted down victims on the streets, wharves, and taverns of seaports. Armed with clubs, and ready to use their fists, they impressed men against their will to serve in the British Navy.
The last Federalist president had been Adams, a Massachusetts man. Virginia’s Democratic-Republicans, Jefferson and Madison, devised the Embargo of 1807. It devastated New England’s lucrative trade at sea. In 1808, the merchant marine in Massachusetts lost fifteen million dollars in revenue, an amount equivalent to the Federal government’s income in 1806.[2]

[1]  Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812:  American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies, (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) 103-4.

[2]  Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty:  A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2009) 655.
What do you think? Are anyone’s economic interests being ignored today? Is there a disruption in the balance of power?
Next: Why religion played a role in threats to secede.
Look for it Monday, December 3

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The French Connection

Posted on November 20, 2012 by “Caius”

Why did New England want to secede from the Union during the War of 1812?
Perhaps the best place to begin is with Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1800, Napoleon secretly took possession of the Spanish colony of Louisiana. Using Saint-Domingue as a base, he planned to send French forces to occupy New Orleans and Louisiana. There was one problem. In 1791, Toussaint L’Ouverture staged a slave rebellion gaining control of the French colony. Napoleon sent troops to the island to re-take it.
New Orleans was important to Americans. President Thomas Jefferson needed to protect the interests of settlers from Ohio and western territories. They shipped their agricultural products down the Mississippi to New Orleans. In 1795, Pinckney’s Treaty allowed merchants to store goods for export there. Americans gained the right to ship their goods on the Mississippi. As western settlements grew, the port of New Orleans became increasingly important.
If Napoleon’s forces landed in New Orleans intending to occupy it, Jefferson decided he needed to ally with Britain. Jefferson sent Robert Livingston to France hoping to secure New Orleans through negotiations. If Livingston failed, Jefferson instructed James Monroe to make an alliance with Great Britain.
Napoleon’s forces failed to gain control of Saint-Domingue. Without it, Napoleon had no base of operations in the Caribbean. He lost interest in conquering anything on the American continent.
On April 11, 1803, Talleyrand surprised Livingston by offering to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States. Despite concerns the purchase was unconstitutional, Livingston and Jefferson accepted the offer.
What do you think? What would we think of Jefferson today if he purchased Louisiana, even if there were concerns it was not constitutional?

Next: Why the Louisiana Purchase angered New Englanders.
Look for it Monday, November 26

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Secession?

Posted on November 16, 2012 by “Caius”

What is all this talk about secession?  Is it for real or can we write it off as post-election bitterness?  Even those of us who yawned through history in high school remember South Carolina seceding from the Union.  It may come as a surprise, but the South was not the first section of the country to come up with the idea.  During the War of 1812, wealthy New Englanders threatened to secede from the United States.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”           

                                                                 Santayana

If you, as an informed citizen, want to know more about secession, our political parties and the foundations of our economy, you are invited to meet figures who did not make it into your high school history textbook.  They played important roles forming our political parties, yet they have been relegated to obscurity.  You will not find their portraits on our currency, yet they shaped America’s economic policies.

One of them wrote a book, if not the book, about secession and national unity.  His name was Mathew Carey, and he lived in Philadelphia.  He was a printer, publisher, bookseller, and political economist.

During the War of 1812, Carey observed economic distress in New England with intense concern.  He feared those states would secede from the Union, and the nation would erupt in a civil war.  He wrote the Olive Branch to preserve the Union.

During the Nullification Crisis, Carey once again foresaw dissolution of the Union, and spent his retirement campaigning in vain for policies he believed would preserve it.  Southerners, opposed to the protective tariffs he advocated, burned him in effigy in Columbia, South Carolina.[1]

What do you think?  Does an informed citizen need to know about the history of our country?  Does that knowledge improve political discussions?

Coming up Tuesday, November 20:

  Why did New England want to secede from the Union during the War of 1812?  


[1] Mathew Carey, “The Crisis,” (Philadelphia:  Printed by William F. Geddes for Mathew Carey, July 26, 1832) 19.

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Welcome to the Secession And Mathew Carey Blog

Posted on November 16, 2012 by “Caius”

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