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The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States

by Leon Whipple (more about this book and author)

Chapter 2: The Rights of the People (1830-1860)
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Subsection Links:

BY 1830 the first interpretations of civil liberty had been made. These involved: (1) the rejection of the English traditions and laws found unsuitable to the new form of government or the spirit of the people; (2) the definition of the powers of the United States respecting the liberties of the citizens of the separate states; (3) and the new ideas consequent upon the transfer of sovereign power from a hereditary monarch to the people acting through a majority. For the first, the divorce from England had been declared final. For the second, the principle was laid down that the central government had nothing to do with protecting the liberties of the citizens of states. The third—the new ideas of democratic control—now engages us.

For forty years the “Founding Fathers” had guided the nation. They had formed a sort of aristocratic succession to bridge the gap between monarchy and democracy. Now they were gone. The people were left alone with their government. The power had descended upon them, and through their new self-created leaders, Andrew Jackson first, they heard proclaimed the divine right of the people. They were easily flattered into a conviction of their wisdom, their power, and their final right to settle with the minority. Civil liberty became a question of resisting this new power, expressed either by law or by mobs.

The people had won important enlargements of political and economic rights: a greatly extended suffrage, generally without property or religious tests; equality of representation;
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freedom for the bond-servant, redemptioner, and apprentice. The workers (among whom we find always least liberty) were securing some of the essential social liberties through their greater political power. Imprisonment for debt was slowly abolished; and such imprisonment had doubtless been a useful device for easily disposing of stray agitators against economic evils. Labor had made a gesture at political action and was winning a qualified right to organize simple unions. Systems of popular education were being demanded, and sometimes established. Yet the lack of any demand by the workers for civil liberty was not because the mechanic had any freedom, but because they had so little of it they did not recognize its violation just as they say, in the Far North, there is not sunshine enough to make an icicle.

One section of the workers had no civil nor any other liberty. The Negro through this period can be dismissed thus: “In the eyes of the law a chattel … not a civil right of any kind was his.”1 The importation of slaves had ended according to Constitutional provision after 1808. But even in the “free States” the freedom granted Negroes was so restricted as to be beneath being called civil liberty.

But on the whole the people were not so concerned with civil liberty as the Revolutionary generation had been. For the canonization of the populace brought the “popular mob.” The people were the government (everybody told them so)—why worry about constitutional guarantees? The constitutions were theirs, too. If democracy means the rule of the majority, well, here is a majority now. Why wait for the tardy approval of the law? And so they rushed off to enforce by violence their economic necessities or instinctive prejudices. The dangers to civil liberty now were not from the dead hand of English kings, but from the living hands of the mob. The sophistry of the Federalists, that the Constitution needed no Bill of Rights to protect the people from themselves, was immediately disproved. The minority now needed that Bill more than anybody ever had needed it.
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From 1828 to 1855, and especially from 1833 to 1843, came a veritable mob era. The masses, charmed by this idea of the rule of the people, were convinced that it made small difference whether you downed the minority by ballots or by brick-bats, which they understood better. This form of tyranny by majority had not been anticipated by the statesmen who expected the colder process of voting down the minority to prevail over the warmer sport of killing them.

Social conditions helped establish these notions. Urban centralization had begun. Immigration, encouraged to bring in cheap labor, first the Irish and later the Chinese, aroused economic, racial and religious prejudices. There was an ardent “nativism,” by citizens who had themselves but yesterday come from foreign shores. There was an almost inexplicable dread of secret politcal or religious organizations, expressed in crusades against the Masons, Catholics, and Mormons. Beneath all, the growing machine industry was producing a proletariat. Wage-labor was slowly reaching economic self-consciousness, later to align itself against the wageless institution of Negro slavery. In a few places, direct action by the people approximated a rough sort of government, as in the Vigilantes and other extemporized “law and order” bodies of the frontier. They did some necessary natural policing before courts or State arrived. The question of whether “liberty” exists under such conditions, is so academic that it is not entered upon, and all cases in this category have been omitted.2

The early governing autocrats had tried to limit liberty by stifling interpretations of the Constitutions or by appeals to English precedents. The people simply appealed to force, to the interpretation by popular prejudice. The cases arise usually from a denial of rights to an individual or minority by another part of the community which claims to represent the will of the people,—the majority. As concerns the formal claims of civil liberty, they show how the State, organized ostensibly for law and order, failed to afford any real protection to unpopular groups.
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THE MOB ERA

The mob seems to have come on the American scene late. In the Colonies there were a few race riots,—against Negroes in New York City early in the eighteenth century, against Indians in New Hampshire in 1753 because they had stolen two Negroes (an odd complication), and the celebrated “Paxtang riot” in Pennsylvania in 1763.

Some Scotch-Irish in frontier settlements exterminated twenty Indians, the entire remnants of a vanishing tribe. The settlers were actuated partly by religious motives, quoting the command of the Israelites to destroy utterly the heathen of Palestine. The Province, mostly Friends, was thoroughly aroused, for a lynching was a new thing in Pennsylvania, and excited more indignation than it would now.3

The Revolutionary mobs were manifestations of the war spirit and even so were surprisingly humane and orderly. From then on the American people showed little inclination to mob violence until about 1830. Possibly the instinct which makes for it found outlets in duelling, frontier violence, rabid politics and a madly vituperative press. Some force restrained the people from mob excesses, possibly reverence for the new political order or the general loose organization of a life chiefly rural or a lack of the need of this form of control. One terrible popular outbreak, in barbarity like the excesses of the French Revolution or our modern “lynching bee” did take place in Baltimore after the opening of the War of 1812. It was a flagrant case of political intrigue employing the popular passions to violate constitutional liberty.

“THE BALTIMORE RIOTS”

The editors of the Baltimore Federal Republican attacked the war and the President, and in an editorial on June 20, 1812, declared that his motives bore “marks of undisguised foreign influence” and that they meant to use “every constitutional

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argument and legal means to render odious the contrivers of this highly impolitic war.” The following Monday the printing-office of the Federalists was pulled down and the presses destroyed; and the next night the mob searched another dwelling, dismantled several vessels lawfully bound for sea, and burnt down the house of a free colored man who was charged with having spoken in friendly terms of the British. They were setting fire to an African church when dispersed.

These events were under legal investigation by the criminal court until July 26 when one of the editors, Alexander Hanson, and some friends fortified the house of his partner, and next day printed and circulated an issue of his paper containing severe reflections on the mayor, the police, and the people of Baltimore. During the day a mob attempted to force the doors of the printing shop, and several were wounded by gunfire from the defenders. One of the wounded later died. The militia was sent for, and soon appeared, opening negotiations with the defenders who finally surrendered and were taken to jail on the assurance that the mayor and military commander would protect them from violence. Meanwhile a Dr. Gale had been killed by the Federalists.

The next day, about dark, the mob attacked the jail, overpowered the mayor, and forced a turn-key to let them into the prisoner's room.4 What followed is thus described by Richard Hildreth in his History of the United States:

Of those who fell into the hands of the mob, the fate was wretched indeed. Struck down by a butcher who had obtained access to the jail during the day, they were beaten in the most horrible manner, after which to the number of nine, they were tossed down the stone steps where they lay in a heap for three hours or more, the mob amusing themselves by beating their senseless bodies, sticking pen-knives into their cheeks, and dropping hot candle-grease into their eyes to ascertain if they were really dead. General Lingan expired amid these tortures, vainly reminding the infuriated wretches of his Revolutionary services…. General Lee barely escaped the same fate,

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being made a cripple for life…. The jail physician who tickled the fancy of the mob by suggesting that these dead bodies, as they seemed to be, would make excellent Tory skeletons suceeded in obtaining permission to remove them to the jail.5

The rioters next went and demanded the copies of The Federal Republican deposited in the post office. The Democratic magistrates now ordered out a military force which charged the mob and protected the postmaster who refused to give up the newspapers.

The City Council laid the blame upon Hanson and his associates for having persisted in the publication of their newspaper in the time of war. The ring-leaders of the mob escaped punishment, because the Democratic attorney-general refused to exercise his right of changing the venue, and a Baltimore jury acquitted the prisoners without hesitation. Hanson and others were also acquitted after a trial for manslaughter at Annapolis. But the political effect was defeat for the mob and what it stood for.

The political aspect of the State of Maryland has been completely changed by the election. The House of Delegates now consists of 54 Federalists, and 26 Democrats. The Maryland representation in the 13th Congress will include Alexander C. Hanson in place of Mr. Key.6

The Baltimore event was imitated by mobs of military volunteers at Buffalo and Norfolk. The rarity of the event as well as its tragic enormity gave it such melodramatic prestige that it became famous as “Baltimore Club Law,” was rebuked by papers such as The Salem Gazette, and was mentioned by DeTocqueville in his Democracy in America over a decade later, helping doubtless to form the European tradition of American violence. The whole transaction exemplifies the ferocity of war psychology, and the frequently amazing incapacity or deliberate negligence of local authorities in the face of popular passion.7
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THE ANTI-MASONIC EXCITEMENT

Between 1826 and 1829, the Masons suffered the violation of their liberties by legal and political methods, by mob violence, and by social pressure, in northern New York, in Pennsylvania, and other scattered spots. This is a fine example of the abiding fear in the American people of secret political societies, first expressed in the dread of the establishment of a monarchy by Washington and his officers through the Order of the Cincinnati. The excitement began in the alleged abduction and murder of one William Morgan of Canandaigua County, New York, by Masons, because he was about to print a so-called revelation of their secrets, having himself been a member of the fraternity. Attempts were made to burn the printing-shop and manuscript (showing the Masons' own respect for a free press), and then Morgan was seized as he left a courtroom, placed in a carriage, and disappeared forever. What became of him was never learned, nor were his kidnappers discovered. But public clamor brought punishment on the Masons, and even became the basis for an anti-Masonic political party which exerted a limited influence for a short time.8

Some of the incidents of this agitation follow. The town clerk of Bethany, New York, disqualified a number of Masons as jurors although previous to 1827 they had been returned as able and sufficient jurymen, free-holders, men of understanding and integrity, some of them church-members, and one a representative of Seneca County in the Assembly for three years. The thing was so raw that the clerk was aftterwards indicted by the unanimous vote of even an anti-Masonic grand jury, but acquitted. An attempt was made to break up a celebration of Masons at Batavia. In 1829, a county convention appointed a committee to investigate the affiliations of a land company so as to proscribe the Masons. A Colonel King was pursued by sheriffs all the way to Arkansas for suspected complicity in the Morgan kidnapping. He returned of his own will, but was never arrested. An instance of social pressure is shown by the fact that over one hundred meetings adopted

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resolutions that they would not support any person for office, or any minister who was a Mason. Batavia Church dismissed one of its deacons, and its pastor had to resign.

More significant of how the people were centering power in themselves as against minorities were the efforts in New York and Pennsylvania to abolish extra-judicial oaths, in order to outlaw the pledges of secret societies. In 1828 a select committee of the New York Assembly reported a bill, but it was never moved in either house. A memorial to Congress, May 12, 1828, was not received but was referred to President Adams, and never heard of again. A whimsical event was the removal of a Masonic sheriff, Eli Bruce of Niagara County, from office by Governor De Witt Clinton, himself the Grand High Priest of the General Chapter of the Masonic Order. Bruce had refused to testify at a trial of persons charged with the Morgan abduction on the ground of self-incrimination. Perhaps the old Governor was white-washing himself.9

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND THE PEOPLE

Constitutional religious liberty was not yet fully attained. Church and states were not quite divorced. Religious qualifications for the governorship persisted into the nineteenth century in New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Vermont. In Maryland, no Jew could serve on a jury, sit as judge or magistrate, practice law or be a member of the Assembly until the passage of the “Jew Bills” in 1828; and it was only in 1851 that a special clause of a new Maryland constitution forbade all such discriminations.10 There was not so much intolerance toward new creeds as we might expect, even though they preached new ideas of sex and property. These creeds had much freedom within their own groups, but a too vigorous evangelism among outsiders, especially when complicated by bad morals, resulted in rough discipline. As most of these sects were rural, their remoteness and the lack of communication made at least for the tolerance of ignorance.11 They probably suffered both from social obloquy and

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various petty persecutions which small communities visit upon non-conformists. But it was only when economic competition aligned the Irish-Catholic against the native mechanic, or the Mormons against the land and slave-owning oligarchy that active suppressive measures were used.

THE “NATIVE AMERICAN” PERSECUTIONS

Let us take up the Catholic cases first. The “Native American” agitation with its political by-product, the Know-Nothing Party, was directed chiefly against the Irish-Catholics from 1835 to 1855. To the hatred of cheap Irish immigrant labor was added race prejudice and religious bigotry, making an appealing combination for persecution. Political partisanship augmented the trouble. The Know-Nothings, paradoxically also semi-secret, answering “I know nothing” when asked about their organization, depended upon this appeal to patriotic nativism. They gained control of a few states, and reached national proportions in the early fifties, only to be submerged in the strife over slavery. This movement is significant in the history of civil liberty because it shows the slow solidifying of the majority as a tyrannical force. The country belonged to the American mob. Foreigners would not be granted freedom to introduce competitive ideas. Things were already being standardized. This picture of a horde of hungry Irishmen rushing in to seize the very government of the people (and also their jobs) aroused such a gust of passion that politicians easily turned the resulting mob spirit to their own ends. As a result, the rise and fall of Know-Nothingism produced more violence than any other political movement in our history, and involved a large diagonal slice of territory between the Catholic centers, Boston and New Orleans, extending politically into Virginia and the Ohio Valley.

The liberty lost was that of the body and possessions, which is always sacrificed to mob violence. The violence included orgainzed attacks on religious institutions or personages, miscellaneous fights, and terrorizing elections by rival political gangs. The free-for-all fights were perhaps generally enjoyed,

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and the election riots were a rude contest between the “outs” and “ins,”—with small choice for virtue between them. So the chief interest for us is in the cases of attacks on religious institutions.

 

THE BURNING OF THE URSULINE CONVENT

Convents were the objects of bitter anti-Catholic propaganda so that the sudden and secret flight of one Rebecca Reed in 1833 from the Convent of the Ursulines at Charlestown, near Boston, aroused great popular excitement. This was increased by her book Six Months in a Convent, a purported revelation of convent iniquities that rivalled in sensational success the later Uncle Tom's Cabin. In July, 1834, Sister Mary John got hysteria, secretly fled, but returned with her brother. From this the press spread the rumor that she was detained against her will and there was a demonstration by some of the ignorant and prejudiced. This led to an official visit by the selectmen of Boston who examined the Convent from cellar to garret and conversed with Sister Mary John, declaring that they would announce their satisfaction with conditions in the next day's papers.

About eight o'clock that night, August 11, 1834, a mob began to assemble, but no great alarm was felt as the city authorities were warned and presumably could keep the peace and protect property. But—

About ten that night about five or six hundred ruffians made a furious assault on the Convent … broke in the windows, battered down the doors, and ransacked and pillaged the building, and having broken and thrown out of doors such furniture as they could not carry away, finally burned it to the ground. No effectual efforts were made to extinguish the flames, the firemen probably being over-awed by the mob. The pupils, about fifty-five, all young ladies, were hastily dressed, and hurried out of the building, followed by the nuns, and found refuge in a neighboring farm-house.12
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The next day in Faneuil Hall, a meeting led by Harrison Gray Otis passed resolutions of condemnation in the strongest terms. The Catholic Bishop, Fenwick, restrained his followers from acts of retaliation, and the excitement subsided. Of thirteen rioters tried, only one was convicted and he probably the least guilty. He was soon pardoned on petition from Bishop Fenwick as suffering unjustly for others. The Ursulines were forced to leave the vicinity.13

THE MASSACHUSETTS SMELLING-COMMITTEE

The following gives a second case of propaganda against convents, fortunately not without its humorous features:

The famous “Know-Nothing Legislature” of Massachusetts convened the first week of 1855. The upper house was solidly Know-Nothing, the lower with the exception of three. One of the opposition papers suggested as a text for the customary election sermon before the Legislature: “For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing.” (Job I, 9.) There were about half as many farmers as in previous legislatures, but there were four times as many clergymen—twenty-four….

The most notable event was the appointment of a committee to inspect the nunneries, the so-called “smelling-committee,” which under the lead of one Hiss, a “Grand Worthy Instructor” of the Know-Nothing Council, became a junketing affair and carried along with it a number of invited guests. Its members lived at the best hotels and drank expensive wines at the cost of the State. The hotel expenses of a notorious woman were included among its many vouchers.

The gentlemen roamed over the whole Convent, not a part was spared. The ladies' dresses were tossed over in their wardrobes. The party invaded the chapel and showed their respect—as Protestants, we presume—for the One God whom all Christians worship, by talking loudly with their hats on; while the ladies shrank in terror at the desecration of a spot which they hallowed…. Under pressure of public clamor, the Legislature began to investigate
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its investigating committee. Hiss was finally expelled from the House. The only distinctive nativist measure passed was a proposed amendment to the Constitution restricting office-holding to native-born Americans, and requiring twenty-one years residence for naturalization.14

In 1853 at Cincinnati the militia had to disperse a mob of two thousand moving on the residence of Archbishop Bedini, papal nuncio to Brazil. In Baltimore he had to conceal his presence. The next year, the “Angel Gabriel”—an eccentric Scotch anti-Popery preacher—caused numerous out-breaks in New England. A Know-Nothing mob attacked the Irish quarter in Chelsea; the Catholic chapel at Coburg was burned; the Dorchester chapel blown up; at Manchester, N. H., the mob tore the American flag from the priest's house and wrecked the interior of the Catholic church; and at Ellsworth, Maine, Father Bapst was tarred and feathered. A mob led by a notorious criminal attacked the Convent of Mercy at Providence, but the damage was slight as the Catholics rallied to protect the institution. In August, St. Louis saw a riot which resulted in ten deaths. At Washington, a Know-Nothing mob captured a block of marble sent by the Pope as a tribute for the Washington Monument, and threw the papal gift in the Potomac.

Typical of the free-for-all-fight class, was the Broad Street riot in Boston, June 11, 1837. It had a comedy opening: an engine company returning from a fire came into collision with an Irish funeral procession, and soon 15,000 people were involved. The Irish were driven into their houses, and but for the appearance of the military, the Irish quarter would have been destroyed. No lives were lost. The City Council decided that the blame rested about equally upon the firemen and the Irish. Street fighting seems to have been a pleasant recreation in those days. In June, 1854, an anti-Catholic preacher was escorted through Brooklyn by a Know-Nothing mob of 5,000. They collided (favorite word) with an Irish mob, and a free fight ensued. The following Sunday it was
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renewed. That this was a sort of game for spirited youths is shown by the organization in New York City that same spring of a nativist society for younger men. They were sometimes called “Wide-Awakes” from their rallying cry. This organization attended to all street disturbances in behalf of their order. Their wide felt “wide-awake” hats were recognized as the insignia of their belligerency.15

The third class of cases concerns election riots. For example at Mobile, Alabama, during the life of the Know-Nothing party Catholic property near the city was burned.16 Kentucky witnessed a violent outbreak, the more singular because the State had hardly any foreign population, and the native Catholics were excellent and respected citizens. The election for Governor which the Know-Nothing candidate won by 4,400 majority led the roughs of the “native American party” to attack the Catholics, with the loss of twenty-two lives and a large amount of property.17 The devices against freedom of speech and assemblage are noted thus:

If a meeting was called to expose and denounce its schemes, it was completely drowned in the Know-Nothing flood which at the appointed time completely overwhelmed the helpless minority…. In my town thousands of men assembled as an organized mob to suppress the freedom of speech, and succeeded by brute force in taking possession of every building in which their opponents could meet, and in silencing them by savage yells.18

The reign of Know-Nothingism in Baltimore was a picturesque terrorism in which clubs called by such choice names as the Tigers, the Black Snakes, the Rip Raps, the Blood Tubs, and the Plug-Uglies roughed elections. In only one ward could the Irish vote in safety. In others only the citizen who gave the proper signal could get to the polls. A hovel custom was the use of coops to prevent voting. Many persons were captured by the workers of the party and confined in cellars and other convenient places so they could not vote. Often

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beaten and robbed, the poor victims were thrown into these filthy places where as many as a hundred and fifty men were sometimes confined for several days without even the decencies of civilized life.19 Pitched battles with artillery were fought:

Fighting and rioting occurred in various parts of Baltimore, but the most serious affair was around Belair Market. The fighting here began about three o'clock and continued desperately until dark. The Know-Nothings brought with them a small cannon mounted on wheels which was loaded with all kinds of missiles. The Democrats, however, overpowered them and got possession of the cannon, and the high constable and twenty policemen were not able to prevent the rioters from carrying it off…. We find a list of ten killed and over 250 wounded, making a total of fourteen killed in the two elections.20

The high constable seems to have been a sort of umpire in this pageant for which Baltimore seems to have an unequalled record. The city staged war riots in 1812, in 1860, and in 1917. In June, 1857, the Marines had to be gotten from the Washington navy yard to suppress a riot. Political manoeuvres paralleled the military. The Catholics fought for a division of the school fund. The Governor tried to make the Mayor protect the elections, but was himself forced to withdraw.21 When finally the Democrats came into control of the Legislature, they merely reversed the injustice, illustrating the old point that who has power has liberty. They passed a Police Bill to remedy the Baltimore situation which contained a clause that no Black Republican or endorser of the Helper book22 should be appointed to any office under the Board. Schmeckbier says:

This action shows that the Democrats were just as proscriptive as they charged the Know-Nothings with being, as it was [illegible] as much a part of the religion of the
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Abolitionists to oppose slavery as it was for the Catholics to believe in the Pope's supremacy.

The Democrats learned nothing from persecution, but immediately fell to persecuting somebody else for something they did not like. The cry of “native Americanism” was used to proscribe whatever foreigners the party in power found in its way. Note how the slavery faction absorbed the idea:

While in the North the crusade was carried on chiefly against the Irish, the South was chiefly concerned with insuring the harmlessness of the wicked Germans. Adams, of Mississippi, in assigning his reason for his Naturalization Bill, December, 1854, had laid special emphasis on the fact that the Germans had sent in so many petitions against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and had even burned Douglass in effigy.23

The final outburst of this brand of nativism came in Baltimore, as usual, when in April, 1861, the German Turner Hall was sacked by indignant Southern men because it was reported that a number of Germans had volunteered their services to the Government at Washington. The same night the office of the Wecker, a German paper, was attacked on account of the anti-slavery views expressed by that journal.24 Startling evidence of the seizure of any pretext by those in power to limit liberty is that while the Irishmen of the Atlantic Coast were being mobbed as invading foreigners, other Irishmen on the Pacific Coast had set up the cry of “native Americanism” to outlaw the “heathen Chinese”—who were stealing “their” jobs, and “their” country!

FREEDOM OF EDUCATION

The “Native American” movement was too loose and unsubstantial to write any proscriptive laws against religion on the statute-books. Or perhaps the Catholic Church was too powerful. The only serious attempt to abridge religious
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liberty by formal act was the effort to prevent Catholics from giving their children the kind of education they wanted.

In the North throughout these years Catholic children endured much petty persecution in the public schools. At Ellsworth, Maine, a Catholic child was given corporal punishment for declining to read the Protestant scriptures. The Supreme Court of the State denied the claims of the child's parents, but the decision was not later approved by any court of last resort.25 A hundred Catholic children were expelled from the Elliot school in Boston for refusing to participate in Protestant religious exercises. In the same city in 1858 a contest arose over discontinuing the reading of the Protestant Bible in the public schools, professedly non-sectarian and attended by many Catholics. One student was severely flogged for refusing to read the religious exercises, though he merely obeyed his parents' commands. An action for assault was brought against the teacher, but later dismissed. The Bishop advised the boys to submit, and took up the matter of changing the rule, but it was not adjusted until some years later. In Maryland a law for the control of persons in nunneries was proposed.26 In Philadelphia the great riots of 1844 grew out of a controversy over Bible reading.27

THE PERSECUTIONS OF THE MORMONS

The Mormons have suffered longer and more bitter persecution than any other sect in the United States. The events of an entire decade after 1833 are unheard of by most Americans, yet they rival in terror the pogroms against Jews in Europe, and the horrors suffered by the Chinese and Negroes in this country. The origin of the hatred against them during this period was economic, not moral. They announced their determination to secure by thrift and absorption (never by illegal means) the land on which to build the new Jerusalem foretold in their scriptures. God had ordained them to own this land in spite of all mundane opposition,—though in fact the ordained site had to be changed each time they were

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driven on. These people had a fanatic “will-to-land” which naturally threatened and terrified the communities in which they pitched their tents. In slave-owning Missouri the Mormons freed Negroes, and that fanned the flames. The conventional churches hated this usurping hierarchy with its picturesque appeals. There were many cases of personal immorality and peculation by leaders and members of the flock. Self-anointed religious leaders seem to fall into these sins.

But it must be held clearly in mind that the sufferings here recounted were not due to sexual immorality under the Church aegis. The doctrine of polygamy had not even been broached. It was not a tenet of their creed, nor was it even associated with the leaders until the very end of this period. The Mormons had broken no law to justify the treatment they received. They were just another alien and threatening power which the people with their new sense of solidarity dared not tolerate. They were a different sort of neighbor, and thrifty competitors. They seemed to hold out the threat of a secret society against the government. Later, of course, all other hatreds could be justified on the high moral ground of their sexual heterodoxy.

The Mormons had no political interests during their first period, which alone is covered here. They tried to run their communities under municipal ordinances secured by revelation, but they lived peaceably within the government, and rendered unto Caesar his due. Later when the democracy's demand for uniformity had driven them far west to found their own State—Deseret—they became a political power and a political issue. This new struggle, from the founding of the Utah regency to the abolition of polygamy by Congress, will be treated hereafter.28

THE TARRING OF A PROPHET

Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was a phenomenon,—an incarnation of pure will, the courage of endurance, duplicity in affairs, and that startling sexual vigor characteristic of early

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Americans. In the first days of his Church in the East, he suffered the following atrocity, consequent on the public exposure of his financial methods by two seceding elders and the rumors of immoral practices in the fold. He describes it himself thus:

My wife heard a gentle tapping on the windows. Soon after, the mob burst open the door and surrounded the bed, and the first I knew I was going through the door … They seized my throat and held on until I lost my breath. I saw Elder Rigdon stretched out on the ground whither they had dragged him by the heels. All my clothes were torn off me except my shirt collar; and one man then fell on me and scratched my body with his nails like a madcat…. I pulled the tar away from my face so I could breathe…. I was naked and when my wife saw me she thought I was mashed all to pieces, and fainted. With my flesh all scarified and defaced I preached to the congregation as usual. The next morning I went to see the Elder Rigdon and found him crazy, for they had dragged him by the heels so high from the earth he could not raise his head from the rough frozen surface which lacerated it exceedingly; and when he saw me, he called to his wife to bring him his razor…. He wanted to kill me. During the mob one of my twins received a severe cold and died. The mobbers were composed of various religious parties, but mostly of Campbellites, Methodists, and Baptists.2

This and other outrages were not, as the Mormons claimed, outrages on the liberty of opinion. In this case, papers revealing a plot to take their property away from them and put it in Smith's control fell into the hands of some of the converts who thereupon organized a company to punish Smith and Rigdon. Smith was also tried on the financial charge, and vindicated. One commentator says:

Mormon writers have dilated on these persecutions, but the outcome of the hearings indicated fair treatment of the accused by the arbiters of the law, and the indignation

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shown to him by his neighbors was not greater than the conduct of such men in assuming priestly dignity might evoke in any similar community.30

The fact remains that these men were mobbed; and the fact remains that whatever their short-comings, hundreds of sincere believers suffered solely on account of their faith.

THE DEPORTATIONS IN MISSOURI

By 1833, the Church, now in Missouri, was busy at the New Jerusalem. Their spread alarmed the slaveholders of Jackson County and the following remarkable proscription was passed at a formal mass-meeting.

We, believing that an important crisis is at hand as regards our civil society, in consequence of a pretended religious sect of people, styling themselves Mormons, and intending to rid our society of them “peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must,” and believing as we do that the arm of the civil law does not afford us a guarantee, or at least, a sufficient one against the evils which are now inflicted upon us,

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deem it expedient to form ourselves into a company for the easier accomplishment of our purpose … which is justified as well by the law of nature as by the law of self-preservation…. We believed them deluded fanatics or weak and designing knaves, and that they and their pretensions would soon pass away; but in this we were deceived…. More than a year since it was ascertained that they had been tampering with our slaves and attempting to sow dissensions and raise seditions among them…. In the “Star” published by leaders of their sect there is an article inviting free negroes and mulattoes to become Mormons and settle among us…. They declare openly that their God hath given them this county of land, and that sooner or later they must and will have the possession of our lands for an inheritance…. We therefore agree that if after a timely warning and receiving an adequate compensation for what little property they cannot take with them, they refuse to leave us in peace as they found us, we
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agree to use such means as may be sufficient to remove them.31

July 29, a meeting of 500 citizens demanded that no more Mormons come into the County, that those present pledge themselves to move, and that the editor of the Star discontinue his business. The latter refused and that same day the mob razed his printing-shop and home, and threw his wife and a sick infant out of the house. They also tarred Edward Partridge, bishop of the Church, in front of the Courthouse. The Mormons petitioned Governor Dunklin for troops to help regain their homes, assuring themselves that “no republican will suffer the liberty of the press and liberty of conscience to be silenced by a mob” and knowing “that every officer, civil and military, with a very few exceptions, has pledged his life and honor to force us from the country, dead or alive.”

Governor Dunklin, who throughout this controversy showed a keen sense of the Mormons' constitutional rights but did nothing to protect them, advised that they get the circuit judge to have the offenders apprehended and “bind them to the peace.” The futility of this advice was later proved, for Smith declares: “We made oath before Judge Ryland of the outrages committed upon us, but were refused a warrant; the Judge advising us to fight and kill the mob.”32

THE MISSOURI POGROM

Between October 31 and November 7, the Mormons on isolated farms and in small communities were subjected to a reign of terror. Houses were destroyed, men beaten, and a pitched battle between sixty citzens and thirty Mormons took place near Independence. Several were wounded and one died. The militia was called out and the Mormons decided to give up their arms and leave the county. Certain leaders were given up for trial for murder on account of the battle, but were dismissed in a few days. Then, says Joseph Smith,

“By November 7, there was an exodus of over 1200 people out of Jackson County across the Missouri…. The mob continued depredations and outrages upon us

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until November 13th … on which day they finished the work of driving every Mormon out of the country. Our crops became free booty to their horses, hogs, and cattle. They also burned about 203 houses. I was chased by about sixty of these ruffians five miles. I fled to the South and my wife was driven north to Clay County, and for three weeks I knew not whether my family was dead or alive…. At one time I was three days without food…. I found my family on the banks of the Missouri River under a rag carpet tent, short of food and raiment. In this deplorable situation, my wife bore me a son…. Even our lands in that county were robbed of their timber, and either occupied by our enemies for years or left desolate….”33

The legal consequences of these events are especially interesting. The Circuit Judge investigated “the outrageous acts of unparalleled violence,” and declared “disgrace will attach to our official character if we neglect to take proper means to insure the punishment due such offenders.” The Attorney-General wrote: “I am warranted in saying that if the Mormons desire to be replaced in their property an adequate force will be sent forthwith to effect that object. If the Mormons will organize themselves into regular companies, they will, I have no doubt, be supplied with public arms.” The Mormons refused this invitation to civil war, and again appealed to the Governor. He replied in part: “Your case is certainly a very emergent one…. For that which is the case of the Mormons to-day, may be that of the Catholics tomorrow and after them any other sect that may become obnoxious to the majority of the people of any section of the State.” And later he wrote: “I am fully persuaded that the eccentricity of the religious opinions and practices of the Mormons is at the bottom of the outrages committed against them…. They have the right constitutionally guaranteed to them, and it is indefeasible, to believe and worship Jo Smith as a man, an angel, or even as the only true and living God, and call their habitation Zion, or the Holy Land, or even heaven itself. Indeed, there is nothing

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so absurd or ridiculous that they have not a right to adopt as their religion, so that in its exercise they do not interfere with the rights of others.”

Despite this libertarian philosophy, when the Court convened, it was protected by only one company of militia, and the Attorney-General decided that the bold front of the mob, “bound even unto death, as I have heard,” was not to be penetrated by civil law or awed by executive interference. The Mormons next sent a petition of 114 names to President Jackson, April 10, 1834, pointing out that such illegal violence had not been inflicted upon any sect since the Declaration of Independence (which was true); that it was a religious persecution, for the county court records held no name of a Mormon crime; and praying most humbly “in behalf of our society which is so scattered and suffering … to be restored to our lands in Jackson County and protected in them by armed force, and as in duty bound will ever pray.” Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, made the usual reply,—that the laws of Missouri had been violated, not those of the United States, which could interfere only if the State applied for help on the ground that an insurrection existed. “But this state of things does not exist in Missouri, or if it does, the fact is not shown in the mode pointed out by law.” This should be compared with the opposite action of President Tyler in the Dorr War, treated later. A petition to Congress was answered by the Judiciary Committee in the same tenor,—the grievance was against Missouri. Here ended the lesson. The Mormons secured neither protection in their rights or redress for their physical suffering, mental anguish, or lost property. Their only official consolations were these touching words in Governor Dunklin's refusal to endorse their petition to the President:—

Permit me to suggest to you that as you now have greatly the advantage of your adversaries in public estimation, that there is a great propriety in maintaining that advantage which you can easily do by keeping your adversaries in the wrong. The laws, both civil and
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military, seem deficient in affording your society the proper protection; nevertheless, public sentiment is a powerful corrector of error, and you should make it your policy to continue to deserve it.

After this humorous epistle, rather more truthful than most official apologies, the Mormons had only one course. They withdrew, and set about converting Clay and Caldwell Counties into Mormon colonies. They lost their peaceful habits, went into politics, and organized their own militia. In 1838 the Jackson County troubles were repeated, ending with a near-battle between the State and the Mormon militia, the court martial and later the civil trial of their leaders, and the final exile to Illinois. Two incidents show the character of this religious civil war.34

GOVERNOR BOGGS'S ORDER OF EXTERMINATION

Headquarters of the Militia
City of Jefferson, Oct. 27, 1838

Gen. John B. Clark,

Sir: Since the order … directing you to cause four hundred mounted men to be raised within your Division, I have received information of the most appalling character … which places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws…. Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operations with all possible speed.

The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace….

I am, very respectfully, your ob't serv't,

L. W. Boggs, Commander-in-Chief.

THE HAUN'S MILL MASSACRE

In the afternoon of Tuesday, October 30, 1838, there Occurred in Caldwell County a dreadful incident. At Jacob Haun's mill, on Shoal Creek, had collected about twenty Mormon families…. Perhaps four families had come in on the evening before, from Ohio, and were

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occupying their emigrant wagons. Not one member of the little community had ever been in arms against the “Gentiles,” or taken any part whatever in the preceding disturbances…. Setting out from Woolsey's, Col. Jenning marched swiftly out of the timber towards the doomed hamlet….

Taken wholly by surprise, the Mormons were thrown into extreme confusion. Perhaps 20 men, Captain Evans among them, ran with their guns to the blacksmith shop and began to return the fire. It was wild and ineffective; that of the militia, accurate and deadly…. Many were shot down as they ran. Captain Evans gave orders to retreat, every man to take care of himself….

Coming upon the field after it had been abandoned, the Gentiles perpetrated some horrible deeds. At least three of the wounded were hacked to death with cornknives, or finished with a rifle bullet. William Reynolds found a little boy only ten years of age, named Sardius Smith, hiding under the bellows. Without even demanding his surrender, the cruel wretch drew up his rifle and shot the little fellow as he lay. Charley Merrick, only nine years old, ran out but received a load of buckshot…. He did not die, however, for nearly five weeks. Esquire Thomas McBride was 78 years old, and had been a soldier under Gates and Washington in the Revolution. He lay wounded and helpless but still alive. A Daviess County man demanded his gun. “Take it,” said McBride. Rogers picked it up and finding that it was loaded, deliberately discharged it into the veteran's breast. He then cut and hacked the body with his cornknife…. The militia had not lost a man killed and only three wounded. The Mormons killed and mortally wounded numbered seventeen. The severely wounded numbered eleven, one boy and one woman, a Miss Mary Stedwell, shot through the hand and arm as she was running to the woods.35

THE MORMONS DENY FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Driven from Missouri, the Mormons founded a new city, Nauvoo, Illinois, with their own municipal government, militia, and Church hierarchy. With the coming of power,

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their leaders became as intolerant as any of their persecutors. The practice of polygamy had been introduced, and a strong faction of the old Church tried to break it up by publicity, with this result:

The first, and indeed, the only, number of the “Expositor,” June 7, 1844, contained a scandalous attack upon the most respectable citizens of Nauvoo [e.g. revelations of immorality]…. The City Council immediately took into consideration what would be the best method of dealing with it, and resolved—

“That the printing-office from whence issues the ‘Nauvoo Expositor’ is a public nuisance … and the Mayor is instructed to cause the said printing establishment and papers to be removed without delay, in such manner as he may direct.”

The Mayor (Joseph Smith) issued orders to the city marshal to destroy the press, and to Jonathan Dunham, acting Major-General of the Nauvoo Legion to assist, if called upon. The marshal with a small force demanded entrance. This was denied, whereupon the marshal broke in the door, carried out the press, broke it in the street, pied the type, and burned all the papers found in the office, and then reported to the Mayor, who sent an account of these proceedings to the Governor of the State.36

From this incident arose a sequence of events that culminated in the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in the jail at Carthage by a mob, and then came the exodus to Utah. What they suffered here, they suffered for conscience sake, and at the hands of “the popular mob” made up of American citizens.

THE SOCIAL REFORMERS

About 1825 there first appeared in the United States what may be called “social reformers.” They had no predecessors, though Thomas Paine was in the direct line, and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson of kin. They were the forerunners of our later radicals and libertarians. The mark of all

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this group is the belief that society may self-consciously improve itself and direct its course, through research for facts, by propaganda and education, by legislation, and by changing public opinion. They rather definitely gave up the idea that salvation resides in religion alone, and they denied the millenial nature of the American democracy. They naturally came into conflict with both religion and government, for they disputed the old authoritarian, revelation-from-above idea in favor of a new experimental, revelation-from-below idea, with much studying of cases, statistics, and causes, and with the purpose of reconstructing the social system. Hence they were called “atheists” or “anarchists”—as indeed some of them were. Since they criticized the established order and advocated sharp changes, they were attacked and hampered and had early to take a real interest in civil liberty as a method of social progress.

 

THE ECONOMIC RADICALS

The economic radicals included the Utopian Socialists, certain religious communist bodies, a few mild anarchists, and the short-lived workingmen's parties in New York and Philadelphia, 1828–1830. These radicals suffered more from financial short-windedness than from persecution, though they did endure petty harassment by their neighborhoods. The moving spirits of the communist-labor groups were Robert Dale Owen, and Frances (Fanny) Wright, editors of the first radical organ, The Free Enquirer, an odd vehicle for philosophy, moral allegories, schemes for social salvation, and much excellent propaganda for education and labor reforms. The paper was abhorred as a thing tainted with immorality and atheism, and its editors suffered in modern fashion, thus:

Miss Wright, having been denied the use of the Walnut Street Theater to lecture in … made exertion through some of her friends to get Washington Hall; this was also refused, but finally Military Hall was secured. Miss Wright arrived, but was deterred, it is supposed, by the pressure of the crowd, from alighting. She addressed a

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few words to the crowd and drove away. Miss Wright wrote. “During the absence of Mr. Labbé, the proprietor, Washington Hall, was rented from his lady, the money paid, and receipt given…. During the course of the evening such active measures were taken to intimidate Mrs. Labbé, by threats of arrest, prophesies of riot and disturbance, and forewarnings of persecution and loss of patronage that the individuals who had rented the hall felt constrained in deference to her feelings to forego its occupany.37

Strike-breaking by the military arm was the most startling innovation in the field of labor. Although prosecutions for conspiracy were still invoked against labor unions, strikes and violence had increased. The military was first called out on strike duty, August 2, 1828.38 The next year troops were again used on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad; and in 1834 riots on this railroad became such a nuisance that citizens along its way printed a set of resolutions against the Irish who were held responsible.39 These troubles were chiefly casual fracases by immigrant laborers, mostly Irish, about the living conditions of their contract camps, the chief demand often being for more whiskey. But here we find the beginning of the long struggle by labor for liberty.40

FREEDOM FOR THE NEW SEX MORALS

The scrutiny of sex from an economic and semi-scientific rather than a religious view produced various doctrines and experiments, among both communal-religious and free-thinking groups, ranging from absolute chastity to community free-love. These experiments suffered less interference than might have been expected, perhaps less than they have suffered in later years. The economic and political implications of sex freedom were less realized by those in power then than afterwards. The societies practicing unusual sex relations suffered little persecution. Legal proceedings, of a kind not precisely within the field of civil liberty, were sometimes instituted. These concerned: (1) property rights and the rights of the

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children, (2) public morals, which might be injured by the reputed adultery, fornication and bigamy of some sects. But people and government seemed surprisingly indifferent until the later doctrines of the Mormons threatened the basic monogamous ideal of their society.

Even the doctrine of birth-control and the practice of contraception were somewhat widely preached in these years without much opposition. Charles Knowlton, M.D., a very respectable practitioner, who lived the end of his life in Ashfield, Massachusetts, was confined in East Cambridge jail, in 1833, and even set at hard labor. He was the author of the first treatise in the United States on these subjects, called The Fruits of Philosophy, An Essay on the Population Question. His seems to have been the single case of imprisonment. Robert Dale Owen's Moral Physiology ran into ten or more editions without interference. Alexander Noyes, a leader of socialist-communist thought suffered some unimportant prosecution for his tract, Male Continence, which attracted a good deal of attention.41

The study of prostitution and the social aspects of sex was rare, and met with reprobation when attempted, as in the case of a young minister, MacDowall, who felt called upon to go to New York, acquaint himself with the prostitute class, and publish their stories. His was a religious rather than a scientific effort, and he achieved little but a home for wayward girls, soon broken up by the pressure of public opinion and his own slackness in money matters.

He did, however, publish for a year or more a monthly, called MacDowall's Journal, which was attacked by the respectable newspapers, because it seemed to endanger both the reputation of the city, and the character of its leading citizens. “It is spoken of from Maine to Mississippi as a vile nuisance,” declared one six-penny sheet. Editorial nagging finally produced the following action:

The Grand Jury presented the “MacDowall's Journal” as a nuisance which calls loudly for the interference of

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the civil authorities. Under the pretext of cautioning the young of both sexes against the temptations of criminal intercourse, it presents such odious and revolting details as are offensive to taste, injurious to morals, and degrading to the character of our city. We believe the representations therein made of the extent to which prostitution prevails within our limits is grossly exaggerated….42

Nothing was done to MacDowall, and the “Journal” soon afterward failed. But the incident suggests the beginnings of “Comstockery,” the later efforts to bar from the mails vice reports by scientific bodies and the general idea of censorship.

Other groups of the social reformers were interested in a higher social status for certain sections of society by the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women; in free popular education with enlarged opportunities for the poorer classes, women, and Negroes; in temperance; and in freedom of thought, especially in the fields of religious criticism, scientific research, and experiments such as vivisection. The inter-relation of these groups, then as now, possibly because their adherents were so few in number, is shown in interlocking directorates and common memberships. The movement for equal suffrage was partly in order that the votes of women might kill the liquor traffic. Communists like Owen furthered the labor parties, free education, and birth control because they were all to alleviate poverty. These movements may all be called humanitarian, but they had two sections,—one wing emotional and melodramatic, and the other practical and scientific. Although these years saw only the beginnings of such labors, their interest in relation to civil liberty is real, both in themselves and their later difficulties.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS

In spite of the prison reforms of this period, forced by humanitarian and labor movements, legal punishments existed that might well have brought them within the constitutional prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments.” In 1879, in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, ten

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crimes were punishable by death. “In 1822, a felon was flogged on the campus of Yale College in the presence of the students…. So late as 1817, in Philadelphia, a sailor was bound to the iron rings outside the walls of the Walnut street prison and flogged…. In 1811, the Superior Court of Georgia, at Milledgeville, sentenced one Miss Palmer to be ducked in the Oconee.”

THE FIRST AMERICAN REVOLUTION

THE DORR WAR—1842

The Dorr War in Rhode Island was the first American Revolution. That of 1776 was begun by Englishmen. Its little-known history, and the invasions of liberty it caused, make it a necessary part of our study. In 1840, Rhode Island still lived under a Charter granted by Charles II in 1663 by which a Charter Assembly exercised uncontrolled power. Since 1666 suffrage had been limited to “freemen”—freeholders of certain property (at this time fixed at $134) and their eldest sons. Yet even such qualified persons had to be voted into suffrage by the other “freemen” of the town, and this they were not legally bound to do. Moreover no reapportionment of the representation of the towns had been made since the Colonial charter, and this had resulted in great inequalities, especially in the urban centers where modern industry had begun to concentrate great numbers of un-en-franchised working-men. Government was by a minority, a landed aristocracy, with the strange right of succession. The effect of this upon civil rights and civil liberty is thus indicated:

No person whatever, since the Revolution, had been permitted to bring suit in any court of law in the State, or have a writ out of the clerk's office unless he be a free-holder. The right of a trial by a jury of impartial peers is denied since none but freemen could sit on juries. Another law authorized the town council when any person whom “they shall determine to be an unsuitable person

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to become an inhabitant of the town, enters, to give notice to that person (he not being a free-holder) to depart out of the town within a certain period, on penalty … of being bound for one year into servitude to any citizen of the United States.”

Reverend William Fuller, a respectable minister, was preaching (about 1830) in a house erected by the contributions of Christians, many of whom were disfranchised…. But his faithful testimony against rum-selling made him obnoxious to a number of free-holders by whom he was formally notified that he should be banished from the town unless he altered his style of preaching. He pursued the even tenor of his way…. Either by order of the town authorities or else by vote of the freemen in open town meeting he was authoritatively ordered to leave town with which orders he peaceably complied, and left the State.

An attack on freedom of assemblage may be found in the resolution enforced at Providence … excluding all persons except themselves (the free-holders) from the Town House during the Town Meeting.43

Finally in 1841 as a result of two Constitutional Conventions,—one voted by the popular suffrage associations, and the other held by the alarmed Assembly itself,—Rhode Island supplied itself with two constitutions in place of none. What the actual preference of the people was is not clear, though it seems that the “people's Constitution” got a majority of the new-electorate of adult males, and even of the old Charter “freemen” electorate. At any event, on April 18, 1842, under the Peoples' Constitution, Thomas Wilson Dorr, an abolitionist, was elected Governor with 6,147 votes, and nearly a full House and Senate; while, next day, Governor King was re-elected by the Charter group. Rhode Island attained the distinction since attained only by Utah Territory of having two governments. Meanwhile the Charter Assembly had proscribed possibly 180 citizens of the State, many of them prominent, for participating in this “revolution” or “rebellion.” The method was by the famous “Algerine Laws,” so

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called from their severity, akin to the barbarity of the Algerine pirates.

THE ALGERINE LAWS

After a preamble, explaining that “in a free government the duties of the citizen to authority should be plainly defined, and that the good people of the state have been misled by certain artful persons into a plan for the subversion of the government,” it was enacted:—

Section 3. If any persons, except such as are duly elected thereto, according to the laws of this State, shall, under any pretended constitution of government … or otherwise, assume to exercise any of the Legislative, Executive, Judicial, etc. functions of the offices of Governor, Lieutenant-governor, Senators, etc. of this State … either separately or collectively, or shall assemble for the purpose of exercising any such functions … every such exercise or meeting … shall be deemed to be an usurpation of the sovereign power of this State, and is hereby declared to be treason against the State and shall be punished by imprisonment during life….

Section 4. All offences under this act shall be triable before the Supreme Judicial Court only…. All indictments … and also all indictments for treason against this State, may be preferred and found in any county of this State without regard to the county in which the offence was committed; and the supreme Judicial Court shall have full power for good cause … to remove for trial any indictment … to such county of the State as they shall deem best for the purpose of ensuring a fair trial of the same, and shall upon conviction of any such offender … have full power to order, and from time to time alter, the place of imprisonment of such offender to such county jail … any act, law, or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.44

In spite of this remarkable recognition of the Judicial Court as a kind of Star Chamber, the People's government was organized in an old foundry in Providence, May 3, and Dorr sent a dignified message to his new Assembly. The Algerine

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laws were repealed, and a few minor offices filled. Meanwhile the Charter government met at Newport and sent commissioners to Washington.45 Dorr's search for help from Tammany Hall in New York; the abortive attack on an Arsenal; and the subsequent dilatory and futile military operations of both governments are the records of a revolution so constitutional-minded on the people's part that they could not be persuaded to use force, and so uncertainly opposed by the entrenched power that they seemed to admit their arms would not be supported. The Charter Assembly finally declared martial law over the entire State from June 25 to August 8, when it was suspended by the Governor until September 1, and later suspended indefinitely. The alleged violations of civil liberty run into the hundreds, of which some specimens are here recorded:46

A Providence blacksmith was arrested … marched through the streets by a band of twelve men, nine of whom were negroes, and confined in the armory overnight. Sunday he was released by the colonel as no charges were made against him. A farm employee, of Warren, was arrested, kept in jail seven days, examined by one of the commissioners, and discharged three days later, there being no accusation against him unless it was that of being employed as a moderator of a people's town meeting. A minister was eating his dinner … when three soldiers burst into his room and searched the house; though they found no concealed weapons, they made the clergyman a prisoner and marched him to a tavern…. It causes no surprise to find that sixteen persons were confined for three days in one cell, twelve feet by nine. In another, seven by ten, fourteen men were confined.47

A brother of Colonel Cooley, who had come on from New York, but with no intention of taking any part in the matter, having been arrested and confined for a long time in the pestilent air of the prison, until he became insane, died suddenly during the trial of his brother for treason. August 11, after martial law had been suspended, Mr. Hoskins, a citizen of New Hampshire was

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arrested…. The Justice had begun to get the warrant ready, but fearing to be too late, despatched the Deputy Sheriff without one, and Mr. Hoskins was arrested, examined and committed before the warrant was made out against him. General Carpenter urged that he should be set at liberty. Mr. Hazard, the justice, replied very pettishly, “I don't care a damn for the letter of the law. It is time the law was resolved into its original elements.” They found nothing that could be construed as treason when Mr. Hoskins had been confined in prison for several days.48

“The Express,” the organ of the Constitutionalists, though its prevailing voice had been for peace, even to the last, was marked as one of the first victims of the aristocratic triumph…. There are two accounts…. One that armed men presented themselves at the printing-office, and demanded that the publication should cease, or they would throw the types into the street; another, is that the landholder, the Charterist who owned the building, preemptorily ordered the printing to cease, and with a similar threat. After the suppression of “The Express,” the “Republican Herald” began to publish some of the passing occurrences, but soon after announced that it had been taught that “the truth was not to be spoken at all times.” It declined to publish the particulars of outrages committed by the Charterists.49

PRESIDENT TYLER'S THREAT OF FEDERAL INTERFERENCE

Appeals were made by both sides for the United States to establish the new or protect the old government. The issue concerned national politics, since an Abolitionist government in Rhode Island would injure the slave-states, perhaps changing the alliance of two senators. President Tyler's promise of armed help to the Charterists was a principal cause of the early downfall of Dorr's party, for it alienated possible aid both within and without the State. Tyler stated his position thus:

They are questions of municipal regulation, the adjustment of which belongs exclusively to the people of

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Rhode Island … however, when an insurrection shall exist and a requisition shall be made, I shall not be found to shrink from the performance of a duty…. The Executive could not look into real or supposed defects of the existing government, in order to ascertain whether some other plan of government proposed for adoption was better suited to the wants and more in accord with the wishes of any portion of her citizens. To throw the Executive power of this Government into any such controversy … might lead to an usurped power, dangerous alike to the stability of the State governments and the liberties of the people. It will be my duty to respect the requisitions of that government which has been recognized as the existing government through all time past, until I shall be advised in regular manner that it has been … abolished and other substituted in its place, by legal and peaceable proceedings, adopted and pursued by the authorities and people of the State.50

The threat here given was made real on May 2, when the garrison of Fort Adams was raised from 10 officers and 109 men to 21 officers and 281 men. Later Major Payne was directed to obtain accurate information on the probability of conflict between the two parties. Tyler repeated his readiness “to succor the authorities of the State,” on May 7. Such eagerness to intervene is in complete contrast with the failure of the United States to interest itself in the Mormons in Missouri who needed succor much worse than Rhode Island. But power was with the Southern States, and the Charter government increased that power, while the Mormons were freeing slaves, and so the group with power decided who should enjoy liberty.

Threatened with Federal action, and disintegrating within, the Dorr government disappeared. Dorr left the State, but was later arrested and tried for treason.51 However, this only American revolution was, in fact, successful, for the Charter government held a new constitutional convention and proposed a more liberal constitution which was adopted November 23, 1843, by 7,032 votes to 59.
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NOTES

1 J. B. McMaster, The Acquisition of the Rights of Man in America, p. 32. This valuable effort to overthrow the popular fallacy that absolute equality existed in American States, immediately after July 4, 1776, has strangely been limited to five hundred privately printed copies. For the Personal Liberty Acts see A. B. Hart, History by Contemporaries, IV, 88, 89, 93; and J. C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage.

2 H. H. Bancroft, Popular Tribunals, Vols. XXXVII and XXXVIII, of his Works, and Cutler, Lynch Law, will give the student of extra-legal popular justice, the genesis, methods, and history of these movements.

3 Sharpless, History of Quakers in Pennsylvania, II, chap. iii. Cutler, Lynch Law, also records an attack on a small-pox hospital.

4 Niles' Weekly Register, II, 373, 405, “Report of the Committee of the Council and Ten Citizens.”

5 Hildreth, History of the United States, V, 327.

6 Niles' Weekly Register, III, 96, 112, 176.

7 For other details see The Aurora (Philadelphia), August 11, giving the testimony before the Mayor's committee; True American, August 18–19; Annals of Congress, Vol. Ill, Papers Relative to the Recent Riots at Baltimore; John T. Morse, Memoir of Henry Lee; J. B. McMaster, History of the United States, III, 548.

8 J. R. Crandall, The Morgan Episode; J. B. Hammond, History of Political Parties in New York, II, 237–239, and chap. xxxviii; Alfred Creigh, Masonry and Anti-Masonry in Pennsylvania since 1792; McMaster, History, V, 108–120; Alexander Johnston, “Anti-Masonry” in Lalor's Encyclopedia.

9 Henri Brown, Narrative of the Anti-Masonic Excitement, records most of the above incidents.

10 Stimson, Constitutions; and McMaster, Acquisition of Rights, pp. 86–87.

11 Two evangels of the Perfectionists were ridden on rails by the people of Colerain, Massachusetts, for liberties with their female disciples in 1835. See Niles' Weekly Register, December 5. Note also McMaster, Acquisition of Rights, pp. 90, 96.

12 Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, III, 521.

13 Public opinion finally forced the passage, March 16, 1839, by the Massachusetts legislature, of an act making the community responsible for damages suffered under such circumstances. Since the measure was not retroactive, the Ursulines got no damages. It may be noted that laws similar to the above now exist on other statute books, and some State Constitutions even provided for the responsibility of counties and sheriffs for lynchings. But such laws are apparently honored only in the breach, and it can be safely said that never at any time anywhere in the United States has there been a real effort to punish the perpetrators of such mob violence, or to provide damages to the victims for the arson and theft which go with violence. The popular mob has too much political power!

14 H. J. Desmond, The Know-Nothing Party, p. 130.

15 Such instinctive hooliganism is quite different from such an incident as the “Hannah Corcoran riot” in Boston in 1853, so-called from the conventional rumors that the girl had disappeared through Catholic machinations. The Reverend Thomas F. Caldicott, of the First Baptist Church, prayed and preached to arouse the feelings of his auditors. Finally hand-bills were distributed inviting the “Friends of Liberty” to assemble in front of the Catholic Church on Richmond street. But the Mayor got out the forces, read the riot act, and finally dispersed the mob. Here rowdyism is also better than the cold-blooded refusal to let a priest visit Catholic immigrants stricken with ship-fever, and detained on Deer Island and in the Poor House.

16 Dubose, Life of Yancey, p. 291.

17 N. S. Shaler, History of Kentucky, p. 219. Most of the above facts on these events were taken from that interesting book, The Know-Nothing Party, by Humphrey Joseph Desmond. The author's name suggests a reason for bias toward the Catholic Irish, but the facts seem honestly recorded.

18 George W. Julian, Political Recollections, p. 142.

19 L. F. Schmeckbier, History of the Know-Nothing Party in Maryland, p. 39.

20 Ibid., p. 102.

21 Ibid., pp. 74–87.

22 Hinton R. Helper's economic analysis of the effects of slavery on labor in the South, written by a Carolinian, was violently hated by the Democrats for its arguments in favor of abolition. See Schmeckbier, op. cit., p. 105.

23 Von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States, V, 188.

24 The Baltimore Sun, April 22, 1861, cited by Schmeckbier, p. 53.

25 Donahue v. Richards, 38 Maine Reports 376 (52 Am. State Reports 444).

26 Schmeckbier, op. cit.

27 Desmond, op. cit., pp. 39–40.

28 See infra, chapter VII.

29 Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, I, 242.

30 W. A. Linn, Story of the Mormons, p. 134.

31 Smith, History of the Church, I, 312.

32 Smith, op. cit., pp. 312, 327.

33 Smith, op. cit., I, 334.

34 Smith, History of Church, I, II, chaps. iii, xi, xii, xiv–xvi; Linn, Story of the Mormons, chaps. v, vi, vii, ix; J. P. Greene, Facts Relating to the Mormon Expulsion from Missouri, Cincinnati, 1839; Missouri General Assembly, Documents in Connection with the Mormon Disturbances; McMaster, History, VI, 249, 454–458.

35 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 6, 1887. See also Smith, History, II, chap. xiii. About forty Mormons were killed in the campaign, but only one citizen, with fifteen badly wounded. General Clark addressed the Mormons thus: “If I am called here again, you need not expect mercy, but extermination, for I am determined the Governor's order shall be executed…. And, O, if I could invoke the great spirit, the unknown God to deliver you from those fetters of fanaticism with which you are bound. I would advise you to scatter abroad, lest you excite the jealousies of the people, and subject yourselves to the same calamities.” The “jealousies of the people” is an accurate word for the cause.

36 Brigham Roberts, Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, p. 248.

37 The Philadelphia National Gazette, quoted in the Free Enquirer, September 23, 1829.

38 Mechanics Free Press (Philadelphia).

39 The Liberator (1834), p. 195. For violence in labor and political disputes see McMaster, History, VI, 86, 96, 224–7, 367, and Acquisition of Rights, pp. 54–60; Commons, History of Labor, I, 390, 415–418.

40 The luxuriant labor press—75 to 100 publications were started, including two dailies—seems to have suffered no interference, nor were the labor parties oppressed in any way. The Loco-foco riots in New York City (1835 and 1837) were just examples of the general inter-party courtesies which characterized the period.

41 It is interesting to note a similar freedom in England where Knowlton's book was reprinted, and for forty years ran through several editions. But in the seventies, there as here, a spirit of moral censorship arose. In 1876 Charles Watts had to plead guilty and withdraw the book; and when in 1877, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh republished the volume they suffered prosecution on moral grounds by the Crown.

42 New York Courier and Enquirer, March 15, 1834.

43 William Goodell, The Rights and Wrongs of Rhode Island, p. 13.

44 Section 1 of the law provided that those who served as moderators or clerks of illegal town meetings and elections should be fined a thousand dollars and imprisoned six months; Section 2, that any person signifying that he would accept any executive, legislative, judicial, or ministerial office through such pretended elections, or becoming a candidate therefore would be adjudged guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.

45 Goodell, op. cit., pp. 27, 38, et seq.

46 A. M. Mowry, The Dorr War, p. 227, says: “The Charter government is censurable, not only for the exceedingly large number of arrests, but for the indiscriminate character, the methods of making them, and the treatment of the prisoners.”

47 Mowry, op. cit., pp. 227, 229.

48 A Rhode Islander, Might and Right, pp. 305, 310.

49 Goodell, op. cit., pp. 76, 79.

50 Letter of April 11.

51 See 3 Howard's Reports.

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