The Middle Period, 1817-1858 — Background and Themes

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Authors: Burgess, John William, 1844-1931 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2011 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861; United States -- History -- 1815-1861 Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 169,115

Reading time 736 min

Text sections 66

The Middle Period, 1817-1858 — Background and Themes can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 169,115 words, 12 hr 16 min estimated reading time, and 66 detected text sections.

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #35558

Burgess's preface reveals his aim to rewrite U.S. history from 1817-1858 impartially, despite his own Unionist biases. The excerpts show a focus on territorial expansion, slavery, and sectional conflict, with detailed accounts of the Seminole War, Texas annexation, and the Missouri Compromise.

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CHAPTER I. THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE OLD REPUBLICAN PARTY, . . . . . . . 1

CHAPTER II. THE ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

CHAPTER III. SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1820, . . . . . . . . . . 39

CHAPTER IV. THE CREATION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MISSOURI, . . . . . . . . 61

CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNING OF THE PARTICULARISTIC REACTION, . . . . . . . . 108

CHAPTER VI. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1824, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

CHAPTER VII. THE DIVISION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

CHAPTER VIII. DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION TO INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND PROTECTION, 166

CHAPTER IX. THE UNITED STATES BANK AND THE PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST OF 1832, . 190

CHAPTER X. NULLIFICATION, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

CHAPTER XI. ABOLITION, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

CHAPTER XII. THE BANK, THE SUB-TREASURY, AND PARTY DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN 1832 AND 1842, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

CHAPTER XIII. TEXAS, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

CHAPTER XIV. OREGON, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

CHAPTER XV. THE "RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS AND THE RE-OCCUPATION OF OREGON," 318

CHAPTER XVI. THE WAR WITH MEXICO, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

CHAPTER XVII. THE ORGANIZATION OF OREGON TERRITORY AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

CHAPTER XVIII. THE EXECUTION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND THE ELECTION OF 1852, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

CHAPTER XIX. THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE, . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

CHAPTER XX. THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

CHAPTER XXI. THE DRED SCOTT CASE, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

CHAPTER XXII. THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS CONCLUDED, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

APPENDIX I. THE ELECTORAL VOTE IN DETAIL, 1820-1856, . . . . . . . . . . . 475

APPENDIX II. THE CABINETS OF MONROE, ADAMS, JACKSON, VAN BUREN, HARRISON, TYLER, POLK, TAYLOR, FILLMORE, PIERCE, AND BUCHANAN--1816-1858, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

CHRONOLOGY, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

BIBLIOGRAPHY, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497

INDEX, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503

LIST OF MAPS. FACING PAGE FLORIDA AT THE TIME OF ACQUISITION, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

TEXAS AT THE TIME OF ANNEXATION, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

OREGON AS DETERMINED BY THE TREATY OF 1846, . . . . . . . . . . 312

CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO IN 1850, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS, 1854-1861, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468

THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE OLD REPUBLICAN PARTY

General Character of the Acts of the Fourteenth Congress--Madison's Message of December 5th, 1815--Change in the Principles of the Republican Party--The United States Bank Act of 1816--Report of the Bank Bill by Mr. Calhoun--Mr. Calhoun's Argument in Favor of the Bill--Webster's Objections to the Bank Bill--Mr. Clay's Support of the Bank Bill--Passage of the Bank Bill by the House of Representatives--The Passage of the Bank Bill by the Senate--The United States Bank of 1816 a Southern Measure--The Tariff Bill Framed by the Committee on Ways and Means--The Tariff Bill Reported--The Character of the Tariff Bill--Mr. Calhoun's Speech upon the Tariff Bill--The Passage of the Tariff Bill--The Army and Navy Bills--The Bill for National Improvements--Mr. Calhoun's Advocacy of this Bill--The Opposition to the Internal Improvements Bill--Passage of the Bill by Congress--Veto of the Bill by the President--The Failure of Congress to Override the Veto.

It is no part of my task to relate the events of the War of 1812-15. That has already been sufficiently done in the preceding volume of this series. I take up the threads of the narrative at the beginning of the year 1816, and my problem in this chapter will be to expound the acts and policies of the Fourteenth Congress in the light of the experiences of that War.

{2} [Sidenote: General character of the acts of the Fourteenth Congress.]

Those acts and policies were shaped and adopted under the influence of those experiences, and this influence was so predominant, at the moment, in the minds of the leading men in the Government and throughout the country as to exclude, or at least to overbalance, all other influences. This is especially manifest in the attitude of the statesmen of the slave-holding Commonwealths, and most especially in the attitude of their great leader, Mr. Calhoun, who was the chief champion of some of the most national measures voted by that Congress. A clear appreciation of his views and his acts at that period of his career will enable us far better than anything else to understand the terrible seriousness of the slavery question, which subsequently drove him into lines of thought and action so widely divergent from those upon which he set out in early life.

[Sidenote: Madison's message of December 5th, 1815.]

It was the President himself, however, one of the chief founders of the "States' rights" party, Mr. Madison, who set the direction toward centralization in the Congressional legislation of 1815-17. In his annual message of December 5th, 1815, he recommended the increase and better organization of the army and the navy, the enlargement of the existing Military Academy and the founding of such academies in the different sections of the country, the creation of a national currency, the protection of manufactures, the construction of roads and canals, and the establishment of a national university.

This is a very different political creed from that promulgated by President Jefferson when the Republican party first gained possession of the Government at Washington. Then, decrease in all the elements of power in the hands of the central Government, and careful maintenance of all the rights and powers of the {3} "States," were recommended and urged upon the attention of the national lawgivers.

[Sidenote: Change in the principles of the Republican party.]

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John W. Burgess opens his preface with a frank admission: writing the history of the United States from 1816 to 1860 is a 'serious and delicate task' because it touches on passions still alive in his own day. He acknowledges his own prejudice against secession and slavery, yet strives to imagine the perspective of those who held opposite views. This self-awareness sets the tone for a work that aims at impartiality while remaining rooted in the author's Unionist convictions.

The excerpts reveal a narrative driven by territorial acquisition and the slavery question. Burgess details the Seminole removal, the Texas colonization by Moses Austin, and the diplomatic maneuvers to purchase Texas. His prose is legalistic and precise, reflecting his background in political science and constitutional law.

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.