The Middle Period, 1817-1858 — Background and Themes

A Historian's Confession of Bias

In the preface, Burgess states that he learned 'before my majority to regard secession as an abomination, and its chief cause, slavery, as a great evil.' He does not claim to have shed these feelings, but instead has 'exerted my imagination to the utmost to create a picture in my own mind of the environment of those who held the opposite opinion.' This is a rare moment of methodological transparency for a late-nineteenth-century historian. Burgess does not pretend to be a neutral observer; he acknowledges that his early years were 'embittered by the political hatreds which then prevailed.' The reader is thus warned that the narrative, while striving for fairness, is filtered through a Unionist lens. This candor invites the reader to weigh Burgess's interpretations against the evidence he presents.

Territorial Expansion and the Slavery Question

The excerpts show Burgess treating territorial expansion as a central thread. He describes the Seminole War in Florida, noting that after expulsion, white inhabitants formed a constitution that 'legalized slavery' and demanded admission. Similarly, the Texas section traces the 'long dispute between Spain and France, and then after 1803, between Spain and the United States' over the Rio Grande boundary. Burgess highlights the role of individuals like Moses Austin, who 'represented himself as the leader of a company of Roman Catholics' to secure a land grant from Mexico. The narrative is dense with legal and diplomatic details, such as the 1827 and 1829 attempts by the U.S. to purchase Texas. Burgess's focus on these episodes underscores how slavery's expansion drove the political conflicts of the period.

The Mechanics of Sectional Conflict

Burgess's account of the Missouri Compromise and the Texas annexation reveals his interest in constitutional mechanisms. He notes that Florida was kept waiting for admission 'until Iowa was ready, and then admitted the two at the same time and by the same Act,' a clear example of the sectional balancing act. His language is often clinical: 'the rule of these officials was arbitrary and uncertain, and the race prejudice between Spaniard and Anglo-Saxon was immediately excited by it.' Burgess does not moralize heavily; instead, he presents the sequence of events—the Bustamente decree of 1830 prohibiting further immigration, the Texan colonists numbering 'some twenty thousand, mostly bold and hardy men'—and lets the logic of conflict unfold. The reader gains a sense of how small decisions and local grievances escalated into national crises.

Reading Burgess's Evidence

Because the excerpts are incomplete, the reader should note that Burgess's narrative is built on official documents, treaties, and legislative acts. He frequently cites dates and legal provisions, such as the 1819 treaty with Spain or the 1838 Florida constitution. The preface indicates that Burgess wrote with the benefit of hindsight, having lived through the Civil War. His interpretations may reflect late-nineteenth-century views on race and nationhood. For instance, his description of the Seminole conflict as a 'long and expensive war' that resulted in expulsion treats Native American removal as a matter-of-fact outcome. Readers should approach Burgess's claims with an awareness of his context and compare his account with modern scholarship on the period.

Burgess's Middle Period is best read as a primary source in the historiography of the Civil War era, not as a neutral chronicle. His preface offers a rare window into the challenges of writing history amid ongoing sectional tensions. The excerpts show a work that is meticulous in its legal and political details but colored by the author's Unionist convictions. For a first reading, pay attention to how Burgess frames each conflict—whether as a matter of constitutional principle, racial destiny, or inevitable expansion—and consider what evidence he emphasizes or omits.

Some afternoons, I think of Burgess wrestling with his Unionist heart, hoping to be fair to a divided country. There's a quieter struggle in The Proper Limits of the Government's Interference with the Affairs of the East-India Company Attempted to be Assigned with some few Reflections Extorted by, and on, the — A Reader’s Guide, a searching for just bounds. Both are patient inquiries into how power ought to behave.