{"id":3848,"date":"2011-05-02T08:51:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T13:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=3848"},"modified":"2024-01-31T10:13:04","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T15:13:04","slug":"good-bye-john-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2011\/05\/02\/good-bye-john-bell\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago (IL) Tribune<\/em> – \u201cGood Bye, John Bell\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> One hundred fifty years ago today<\/a> the Chicago (IL) Tribune<\/em> published excerpts<\/a> from two Kentucky newspapers that condemned former US Senator John Bell<\/a> for announcing his support for the Confederacy.\u00a0Bell was the Constitutional Union Party’s candidate for President in 1860<\/a> and he had opposed secession\u00a0 after Abraham Lincoln’s<\/a> victory. Yet in April 1861\u00a0after the attack on\u00a0Fort Sumter<\/a> and\u00a0President Lincoln’s call<\/a> for 75,000 troops \u00a0Bell changed his mind. In a speech in Nashville<\/a> Bell had been “clear and loud to every Tennessean \u2013 to arms! to arms!\u201d Not only did the speech prove that Bell was “a rank secessionist, but a traitor and a coward” as the Tribune<\/em> explained. In addition, the Tribune<\/em> included excerpts of two editorials from papers based in Lexington<\/a>, Kentucky. The Journal <\/em>had\u00a0supported Bell in the 1860 election and now noted that “we cannot but recall the striking advice given by some prudent sage \u2013 ‘Never praise a man till he is dead.’\u201d The Democrat<\/em>, which argued that Bell \u201cnever had brains enough to stand up in a storm,\u201d also condemned Bell and concluded that:<\/p>\n

“And thus John Bell has sunk without a ripple to mark the place where he went down. \u2013 As the Judge always says when he sentences a murderer, \u201cMay the Almighty have mercy on your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read more about Bell and the secession crisis in the Upper South in Daniel W. Crofts’ Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis<\/a><\/em> (1989). You can listen to this article by clicking on the play button below:<\/p>\n

Listen to the Chicago (IL) Tribune<\/em> article:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nhttp:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2011\/05\/1861_05_02_ChicagoTribune.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One hundred fifty years ago today the Chicago (IL) Tribune published excerpts from two Kentucky newspapers that condemned former US Senator John Bell for announcing his support for the Confederacy.\u00a0Bell was the Constitutional Union Party’s candidate for President in 1860 and he had opposed secession\u00a0 after Abraham Lincoln’s victory. Yet in April 1861\u00a0after the attack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,171],"tags":[4756],"class_list":["post-3848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-historic-periodicals","tag-contests-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3848"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5628,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848\/revisions\/5628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}