The Republican Party held its second national convention beginning at noon on May 16, 1860 in Chicago.  The presidential nominees included the veteran statesmen Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, Simon Cameron, and William H. Seward, as well as a new senator from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.  Although Seward was the favorite going into the convention and led the nominees on the first two ballots, Lincoln won the Republican presidential candidacy. Republican delegates had looked to back the candidate they felt could generate the most electoral support.  Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, had the ears of 48 delegates.  Greeley’s battle cry was “anyone but Seward!” and initially gave his support to Bates.  According to Greeley’s recent biographer Robert Chadwell Williams, as Lincoln began closing in on Seward in the third ballot, Greeley shifted his 48 votes over to Lincoln, giving him the candidacy.

This Currier & Ives political cartoon shows Seward drowning of the pier after being pushed in by Greeley (the figure in the top hat). Drawn by Louis Maurer and published in 1860, “Impending Crisis” satirizes the influential role of newspapermen in Civil War-era politics.  Henry J. Raymond (in the police uniform), founder of the New York Times, also helped write the charter of the Republican Party in 1856 and later was a New York Representative.  James Watson Webb (on the left dressed as a newspaper boy), editor of Courier & Esquirer, recently threw his support behind the Republican Party.  The title of the cartoon refers the book written by Hinton Rowan Helper in 1857, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, which denounced slavery from an economic viewpoint—slavery prevented a diverse economy, disadvantaging poor Southerners. Although Seward is undergoing the crisis of losing the Republican presidential candidacy in this cartoon, he would become Lincoln’s Secretary of State, a member of a cabinet filled with Lincoln’s previous political rivals.

The Election of 1860 mirrored the divided nature of the United States both in the presidential candidates and the voting results.  The four major candidates represented three parties, a result of sectional discord: Stephen Douglas (northern Democratic party), John Breckinridge (southern Democratic party), Abraham Lincoln (Republican party), and John Bell (Constitutional Union party).  This pro-Breckinridge political cartoon shows Douglas (on the left) and Lincoln (on the right) duking in out in a boxing ring, while Breckinridge points towards the White House with one hand and thumbs his nose (a sign of disrespect) at the boxers with the other.  The boxers’ coaches reflect the stereotypical perception of their constituency: an Irishman backs Douglas, reflecting the northern Democrats, while a black man coaches Lincoln, the antislavery-Republican candidate.  According to the artist, who may have published this cartoon in Cincinnati, Breckinridge could slip into the White House while Douglas and Lincoln were preoccupied with their “political prize fight.” Although the cheering line of gentlemen on the path to the White House would reflect the lower-Southern states’ unanimous support of Breckinridge, the split nature of the Democratic party helped enable Lincoln’s electoral victory.

American Political Prints, 1766-1876 (1991) catalogues Library of Congress’s collections, giving a brief contextual summary as well as the date and place of publication for their political images.  The book’s introduction briefly explains the history of American printmaking and also includes a selected bibliography for further research.

Dickinson College‘s 1860 commencement exercises occurred on Saturday evening, July 7, 1860.  Two local papers’ contrasting reports on the evening demonstrate the partisan nature of nineteenth century newspapers.  The Carlisle paper, The Herald, founded by Ekuries Beatty in 1799 originally supported the Whig party, but by 1860 printed articles with a strong Republican bias. In contrast the American Volunteer (another Carlisle paper) founded by William B. and James Underwood in 1814, reported the Democrat Party’s view of the news.  The Volunteer charged Dickinson’s commencement speakers with attacking the “vulnerable” democratic president James Buchanan, himself a Dickinson alum from “when the institution was worthy of the name of a college.” According to the Volunteer many of the commencement speeches were full of dangerous “Abolitionist preaching” which must “be stopped.” Mr. George A. Coffey, of Philadelphia, spoke at an alumni gathering on the Wednesday before commencement and particularly offended the writers of the Volunteer who labeled his speech as “fierce and outrageous.”  While the Herald admitted that Mr. Coffey introduced “topics which were offensive to many in the audience,” the paper concluded “it was a masterly speech.” Overall, the Herald presented a very different picture of the commencement exercises, carefully listing the names of the student speakers followed by a brief, usually complimentary, analysis of their speeches.  The two Carlisle papers’ distinctly partisan accounts of Dickinson’s 1860 commencement reflect the political spin of the press throughout the Civil War era.

For modern scholarship on the subject of partisanship and the press see David T. Z. Minchin’s Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (1998). The Library of Congress also provides an online newspaper directory to find more information on newspapers from across the country.

Albert Hazlett was among several of John Brown’s raiders who were not with their leader on the morning of October 18, 1859 when US Marines attacked the engine house at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Instead, Hazlett and Osborne Anderson watched the short battle from afar. The two men had left Harpers Ferry undetected late on October 17. After they could not find the five raiders who also escaped, they decided to head north – which eventually brought them into southern Pennsylvania. While Anderson lived to publish a book in 1861 about his experience, Hazlett was arrested in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on October 22, 1859. Local authorities, however, at first thought that they had in custody “a man supposed to be Capt. Cook.” (John E. Cook was arrested three days later outside of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania). The initial confusion offered an opportunity for Hazlett, who claimed that he was actually William Harrison and had nothing to do with Brown’s raid. On October 29 Hazlett appeared before a judge in Carlisle on a writ of habeas corpus, but Hazlett’s claim that he was the wrong person failed to convince the judge. While “there is no evidence that we have any man in our custody named Albert Hazlett,” the court ruled that “we are satisfied that a monstrous crime has been committed [and] that the prisoner…participated in it.” Hazlett was sent back to Charlestown, Virginia on November 5 for a trial and was executed on March 16, 1860. Historian David Reynolds, who wrote John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, notes that the judge sent Hazlett back to Virginia “even though the evidence linking him to Harpers Ferry was circumstantial.”

Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania embraced the transportation and protection of fugitive slaves moving northward across the Mason-Dixon Line. Daniel Kaufman (alternately spelled Kauffman), born in Cumberland County in 1818, laid out designs for the town and helped make his presence known. His support for the Underground Railroad strengthened in Boiling Springs, as indicated by the events of October 24, 1847.

As shown by evidence later presented in court, thirteen slaves belonging to the Oliver family escaped in Maryland, crossed the border into Pennsylvania, and eventually found themselves in Kaufman’s barn in Boiling Springs. Kaufman consented to provide them with shelter and food, and within the next day he offered up his wagon to transport the slaves across the Susquehanna River. News of the fugitive slaves spread, and within a few short months the slave owner’s family filed a lawsuit against Kaufman.

The Court of Common Pleas of Cumberland County opened the case Oliver et al. v. Kaufman against Kaufman and two other known associates, Stephen Weakley and Philip Breckbill. The defendants argued that the suit could not be tried in state court as the issue pertained to federal law. Nevertheless, the jury delivered a verdict in favor of the plaintiff; Kaufman had to pay $2000 in damages. When a panel of judges of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court oversaw the case, their “majority opinion” notably argued “that Congress possesses the exclusive right to legislate on the subject [of fugitive slaves] and that State Legislatures have no right whatever” and could therefore not recover any damages. The Cumberland County Court’s ruling was reversed. The case continued in 1852, this time in a federal court, only to conclude in favor of the plaintiff and with Kaufman liable to approximately $4000 in damages and fines.

Kaufman’s case occurred during a period of heavy debate in Pennsylvania regarding state sovereignty and the adherence to federal mandates including the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850. Prior to the case seen in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania judges gave credence to the state’s “common law” and “clear right to declare that a slave brought within her territory becomes ipso facto a freeman,” as quoted by a law journal in Paul Finkleman’s An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity. traced the evolution of state sovereignty in Pennsylvania.

For a more detailed summary of the cases, the House Divided record of the case provides access to several primary documents, including newspaper articles and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the ruling of the case. Finkleman’s book puts Kaufman’s trial into context, but his summary of the case will help those even vaguely familiar with its nuances. LexisNexis, though requiring a subscription, grants access not only to the court documents, but to modern scholarship on the case’s wider importance in the debate on Federalism and state’s rights. In Robert Kaczorowski’s article “Federalism in the 21ST Century,” the Fugitive Slave Laws emerge as the focal point for a much wider debate on the intent of the Founding Fathers with regard to state rights and federal mandates.

The Christiana Riot took place on September 11, 1851 when Maryland slaveowner Edward Gorsuch and several of his relatives attempted to capture fugitive slaves at William Parker’s house in Christiana, Pennsylvania. Gorsuch was killed and several members of his party were wounded in the fight, but Parker and the fugitive slaves escaped to Canada. House Divided has several newspaper articles and a diary entry related to this event, including an editorial from Frederick Douglass’ Paper. The African Americans who participated in the riot “are to be tried…for high treason,” which Douglass characterized as “the climax of American absurdity.” Editors of the Memphis (TN) Appeal, however, had a different perspective on what they called a “great judicial farce.” Instead of facing “charges of which they might by convicted,” the Appeal criticized prosecutors for their decision “to rest [the case] solely on the law of treason.” “The State authorities fail[ed] in their duty and pass[ed] over the real crimes [of] riot and murder,” as the Appeal observed. Teachers may also want to check out the resources available from “Slavery & Abolition in the US: Select Publications of the 1800s,” which is a digital collection of books and pamphlets produced by Dickinson College and Millersville University. The site has a number of great sources, including: A True Story of the Christiana Riot (1898), which is a recollection by David Forbes, and The Christiana Riot and the Treason Trials of 1851: An Historical Sketch (1911),  written by William Hensel to commemorate the 60th anniversary. Two of the best secondary sources on this event are Jonathan Katz, Resistance at Christiana: The Fugitive Slave Rebellion, Christiana, Pennsylvania, September 11, 1851 (1974) and Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (1991). While William Parker’s house no longer exists, a historical model of the building is available on House Divided’s Virtual Field Trips page.  (See this page for help in using these files).

Thaddeus Stevens, one of the most powerful and controversial congressmen of the nineteenth century is the central figure of a large restoration project conducted by the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Stevens was an adamant opponent of slavery and helped runaway slaves escape, even going so far as to employ spies to watch for slave-catchers.  He was also a leading attorney in several fugitive slave cases, most notably the Christiana Treason Trial (1851). Stevens also shared his home with Lydia Hamilton Smith, a mixed race woman who managed his household affairs and also proved to be an enormously successful businesswoman herself.

The Stevens & Smith Historic site is a $20 million educational and interpretive complex, integrating the restored 19^th century properties of Stevens and Smith located in historic downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania featuring an original cistern discovered in 2003 believed by historians and archeologists to have been used by Stevens and Smith as a hiding place for escaping slaves along the Underground Railroad. A cistern is an underground storage tank used for holding water.

The planning for the Stevens & Smith Historic site overcame several obstacles before its approval, specifically the original plans for a new downtown convention center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania calling for the demolition of the historic sites previously owned and managed by Stevens and Smith. The Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County possessed protective easements on the properties and were successful in developing a strategy for the preservation of Stevens’ Lancaster city law office and residence from the antebellum period within the new Lancaster County Convention Center.

For more information check out the Stevens & Smith Historic Site online for a full overview and updates on the project. The site also features a video on the story of Stevens & Smith and images of the proposed historical site.  Fergus Bordewich’s article, “Thaddeus Stevens and James Buchanan – How Their Historic Rivalry Shaped America” is a great source for historical background on Stevens’ and Smith’s contributions and connections to the abolitionist movement in Lancaster.  Further information can be found on the Thaddeus Stevens Society website including an overview of the archeological dig of the cistern conducted outside Stevens’ residence and law office. The address for the site is located at 45-47 South Queen Street Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

When Dickinson College President Jesse Peck arrived in Staunton, Virginia, for a conference in the spring of 1849, local authorities detained him as a result of a prank by Dickinson students. As the Richmond (VA) Examiner reported:

“some reprobate student…wrote a letter to the Physician of the Hospital [in Staunton], giving him a description of some individual who had left Carlisle, the seat of Dickinson College, in a state of mental derangement; and stating, furthermore, that it was more than probable that the said individual had betaken himself to Staunton, inasmuch as it was a sort of monomania with him to regard himself as the President of [Dickinson College],…. It is needles to add, that the description of the insane person coincided precisely with the appearance of the Rev. Doctor himself – and that it required the reiterated identifications of the ministers of the Conference around, to save him from confinement!”

Moncure Conway (Dickinson College Class of 1849), who later became a southern abolitionist, admitted that he was one of the student leaders involved with the prank. You can read the full story here.

A new political movement born out of New York and Philadelphia spread across the country, emerging in Cumberland County in 1854, shaping its politics for more than two years. Spurred by anti-Catholic and anti-immigration sentiment, the Know Nothing party grew to significant prominence if only for a short period during the mid 1850s. Reverend Otis H. Tiffany was Dickinson College’s professor of mathematics and president of the Know Nothing State Council. Tiffany, a prominent leader and adamant speaker for the Know Nothing party, gave a public lecture at Carlisle Union Fire Hall on November 16, 1854 on the Protestant origins of American freedoms and on the dangers of the vast immigration and rapid naturalization of foreigners. Tiffany commented, “No foreigner is competent to discharge the duties of an American until he ceases to be identified with the land which gave him birth.”

Many of the sources on the Know Nothings in Cumberland County are derived from local newspapers such as the Carlisle American, Carlisle Herald, Shippensburg News and American Volunteer. During this time, Tiffany and several other professors at Dickinson College had been active in the Know-Nothing movement. While most of the papers were supportive, the American Volunteer was the most negative, commonly criticizing the party and the involvement of Tiffany and others from Dickinson College. On August 23, 1857 with the Know Nothing movement nearly dissolved, the Volunteer cited the negative effects brought on by the faculty “by their constant dabbling in politics…But we gained our point which was to drive them from their Know-Nothing lodges to their duties in the College.”

While unsuccessful in sustaining the Know Nothing movement in Cumberland County, Tiffany was and remained a respected leader throughout the community. In Alexander Kelly McClure‘s Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, he comments on the merits of Tiffany. McClure, a prominent Pennsylvania politician and journalist, regarded Tiffany as the ablest of all the Know-Nothing leaders.

“The one who stood out most conspicuous as an active politician and consistent Christian gentleman was Dr. Tiffany, who, as I have stated, accomplished the union of the opposition forces at the conference in 1855. He was not only a man of unusual eloquence, but a sagacious leader in Church and State, and always commanded the respect of all who came in contact with him, whether supporting or opposing him.”

The Library of Congress provides a wealth of resources for teachers to use in the classroom.  Most helpful are the themed Collection Connections, which seek to give historical context to the Library’s collections and assist teachers in using them in the classroom.  One of these Collection Connections is on the Abraham Lincoln papers.  In this section, documents by Abraham Lincoln have been selected for each of several categories.  These resources are invaluable for anyone studying the life and times of Abraham Lincoln.  One of the categories is Lincoln’s 1860 presidential campaign.  There are four key documents included to illustrate this period of Lincoln’s life, including speech notes, campaign posters, and a letter.  This selection of a few key documents serves to underscore the main themes and events of the campaign, and there are discussion questions included as well for teachers to use in the classroom.  The page presents the information in a clear way but requires a critical reading of the texts as well.  To help students further analyze the documents, there is a critical thinking page designed to give assistance with interpretation and analysis of events during Abraham Lincoln’s lifetime.