Shaping America Final Script

TITLE: Lesson 20: "Irrepressible Conflicts”

PREPARED FOR: Dallas TeleLearning

WRITER: Gretchen Dyer

PRODUCER: Julia Dyer

DRAFT: Final

DATE: 9 March, 2001

ES-20-3 ”Lesson 20: The Failure of Compromise” 02/05/01 · XXX

Visual Audio

FADE IN:

INTRODUCTION (1 min.) / Music up
  1. headline or obit from newspaper re death of Daniel Webster; public notice re Parker’s sermon or cover of published sermon (?); image of Theodore Parker and/or Daniel Webster
2.  ACTOR 20-1 Mathis Roll 6970 16:23:31 / ACTOR (Theodore Parker): “Did men honor Daniel Webster? So did I. I was helped to hate slavery by the lips of that great intellect; and now that he takes back his words, and comes himself to be slavery’s slave, I hate it tenfold harder, because it made a bondman out of that proud, powerful nature.”
  1. Images of Daniel Webster in Congress/Statue of Daniel Webster (6709)
  2. Poster advertising for fugitive slaves
/ NARRATOR: Daniel Webster was one of Massachusetts’ most revered politicians. His distinguished career in government spanned 40 years, and for most of that time he was an outspoken critic of slavery.
But when Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, Daniel Webster made his own compromise with slavery. In the interest of protecting the Union, he supported the Fugitive Slave Law.
  1. Webster
/ Dishonored in the eyes of abolitionists, Daniel Webster died in 1852. Like Henry Clay, he did not live to see the final unraveling of the Compromise of 1850. But it barely survived Webster himself.
Segment One
“A Higher Law”
/ music up
  1. Paul Finkelman on camera; Images of escaped fugitives and slave catchers; abolitionist literature and meeting notices
/ PAUL FINKELMAN (Roll 7044, 1:10) In 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850 the South gets a new fugitive slave law and among other things, it allows for the appointment of a federal commissioner in every county in the United States.
  1. Richard Blackett on camera
/ RICHARD BLACKETT (Roll 7126, 1:12:44) It created an entire mechanism for recapturing fugitive slaves. For instance, if you were a commissioner that granted a slaveholder the right to take his slave back to the South, you got more money than if you said “no”, you couldn’t take the peeson back.
  1. Paul Finkelman on camera/ intercut with advertisements in newspapers describing runaway slaves, advertising services of slave catchers, etc.
/ PAUL FINKELMAN (Roll 7044, 1:11:10) The law itself is very unfair. It does not give the alleged fugitive slave a right to testify in his own hearing, so that the fugitive, the alleged fugitive can’t say, “you’ve got the wrong person.”
  1. Richard Blackett on camera; intercut with images listed above or newspaper headlines re Fugitive Slave Law
/ RICHARD BLACKETT (Roll 7126, 01:11:12) It said to people in the North, whether they were pro-abolitionists or anti-abolitionists, that they had to now become in effect either directly slave catchers or supporters of people who wanted to catch fugitive slaves. This changes the entire political mix.
  1. Images of captured slaves, slave hunters
/ NARRATOR: Most Northerners had no firsthand experience of slavery. When slave catchers came to their towns and cities, many witnessed for the first time its injury and injustice.
  1. Paul Finkleman on camera
  2. B-roll of Beacon Hill neighborhood (6655/6656); or Harriet Tubman home (6809)
/ PAUL FINKELMAN (Roll 7044, 1:11) In many cases there are attempts to retrieve people who actually had run away from slavery but had been away from slavery a very long time—10, 15, 20 years. They now had families, they had perhaps owned property in the North. And it struck northerners as just outrageous that somebody could come along and grab one of their neighbors, the father of his freeborn children in Pennsylvania or Ohio, the husband of a freeborn black woman in one of those states, and simply snatch him and bring him back to slavery.
  1. Image of abolitionist rally in Boston
/ NARRATOR: The Fugitive Slave Law turned many citizens who were formerly indifferent to slavery into abolitionists.
  1. ACTOR 20-3 Taylor Roll 6968 14:09:45
/ ACTOR (Amos A. Lawrence) “We went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”
  1. anti-slavery literature, newspaper headlines
/ NARRATOR: The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society instructed that the law should be “denounced, resisted, disobeyed and its enforcement on Massachusetts soil rendered impossible.”
  1. Richard Blackett on camera; images of northern black communities
/ RICHARD BLACKETT (Roll 7126, 01:13) By and large there was open resistance, declared resistance of the law. And the communities organized to make sure that fugitives within their midst or fugitives who were passing through their community would not be taken.
  1. Images of local governments, notices of public meetings re Fugitive Slave Law
  1. images of New York police
/ NARRATOR: Wisconsin declared the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional. The Chicago City Council resolved not to cooperate with federal marshals in the enforcement of the law. And the mayor of New York City vowed that his officers would not assist in the capture and transport of fugitives.
  1. Paul Finkelman on camera
/ PAUL FINKELMAN (Roll 7044, 1:16:03) One of the ironies of this period is that the states’ righters here are the people who are in favor of racial equality. And the people who are opposed to states’ rights turn out to be the southerners. The states’ rights arguments throughout the 1850’s are made by abolitionists who want their state to be able to protect people in their jurisdictions from the oppression of the national government. What we forget, and this is again very hard I think for Americans to come to terms with, is the Constitution is a pro-slavery document.
  1. Illustrations of runaway slave being pursued by slavecatcher
  2. ACTOR 20-4 Cicero Roll 6960 06:21:45
  3. B-roll: Beacon Hill alleys and hiding places (6655/6656)
/ ACTOR/SINGER (fugitive song): The hounds are baying on my track / O Christians will you send me back?
  1. Images of Theodore Parker and Wm. Lloyd Garrison, covers of sermons or tracts re “higher law”; statue of Garrison (6656)
/ NARRATOR: For abolitionists such as Theodore Parker and William Lloyd Garrison, the “higher law” of God as revealed through one’s own conscience superseded the manmade laws that sustained slavery.
/ RICHARD BLACKETT (Roll 7126, 1:16:51)
Garrison’s position is that the constitution was a wonderful phrase, a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.
  1. Banner of The Independent
  2. ACTOR 2-5 Hess Roll 6963 09:18:18
/ ACTOR (Leonard Bacon, editor of The Independent): “There is a higher law and you know it. It is a rule for political action, and you must obey it.”
  1. Images of slaves captured by federal officers
/ NARRATOR: The non-compliance of anti-slavery agitators and higher-law proponents did not have a significant effect on the law’s execution. But it was widely publicized in both the North and the South.
  1. Images of Boston in 1850’s, footage of Beacon Hill area (6655/6656)
/ In Boston, where abolitionism was rampant, sympathizers gave refuge to escaped slaves, and on several occasions even snatched them back out of the hands of their captors.
  1. Image of Anthony Burns or public notice of his arrest
/ The arrest of Anthony Burns in Boston in 1854 brought the situation to a showdown.
  1. Images of Wendell Phillips, Anthony Burns
  2. ACTOR 20-6 Houston Roll 6956 02:09:42
/ ACTOR (Wendell Phillips, abolitionist): “I want that man set free in the streets of Boston. If that man leaves the city of Boston, Massachusetts is a conquered State.”
  1. Images of Boston abolitionist mob; state militias, Anthony Burns in chains, streets of Boston (6655/6656)
/ NARRATOR: When abolitionists attempted to rescue Burns by force the attempt failed, leaving one man dead. Their attempts to prevent his departure by legal means were no more successful. And when they tried to buy his freedom, his owner was willing but the court refused to allow it.
To prevent further attempts at rescue, the state assigned twenty-two companies of militia to guard the prisoner. And President Pierce-- determined to prove that the federal government would back up the Fugitive Slave Law with force, if necessary--ordered marines, cavalry and artillery to Boston.
When Burns was marched through the streets to a ship waiting in Boston Harbor, thousands of citizens lined the streets to protest his removal. Buildings were draped in black, and the American flag hung upside down.
  1. CU on image of Anthony Burns in his walk thru Boston
  2. ACTOR 20-7 Wood Roll 6964 10:07:55
/ ACTOR (from “The Rendition,” by John Greenleaf Whittier): “And as I thought of Liberty/Marched handcuffed down that sworded street/The solid earth beneath my feet/Reeled fluid as the sea.”
  1. Abolitionist gathering; Wm. Lloyd Garrison; statue of Garrison (6656)
/ NARRATOR: Several weeks later, at an abolitionist gathering on the 4th of July, William Lloyd Garrison publicly set fire to the Constitution.
  1. B-roll of Constitution (program 10) layered with flames
  2. ACTOR 20-8 Mathis Roll 6970 16:00:33
/ ACTOR (William Lloyd Garrison): “So perish all compromises with tyranny. And let all the people say, ‘Amen.’”
Short Take
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
/ music up
  1. Images of Harriet Beecher Stowe
/ NARRATOR: The Fugitive Slave Law inspired defiance and civil disobedience across the North.
It also inspired a woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe to write a book which would become an unexpected literary phenomenon.
  1. Cover of The National Era, various issues containing serialized chapters of UTC
  2. Could also use b-roll of slave quarters (6775, 6908)
/ Uncle Tom’s Cabin began as a series of sketches published in an abolitionist journal. When the sketches grew into a novel, printing presses could not keep up with the demand.
  1. Richard Blackett on camera
/ RICHARD BLACKETT (Roll 7126, 1:18) It’s one of those books that just reaches and affects people in ways that nobody could ever anticipated. I suppose outside of the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, no book had ever been read and had such an impact as Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
  1. British, French, German editions of UTC , etc.
/ NARRATOR: Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 10,000 copies in the first week. It was translated into dozens of languages, and became a bestseller in Europe, selling more than a million copies in the British Empire alone.
  1. Richard Blackett on camera; UTC playbills and illustrations
/ RICHARD BLACKETT (Roll 7126, 01:19) It was in the days when there was no copyright. Literally hundreds of thousands of copies here and in London appeared on the street, and so that it’s not only serialized but it’s also produced in cheap copies. Plays are produced based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And some of the figures and the characters become well-recognized figures that appeal to the sentiments of people who are concerned about the evils of slavery. So in that sense, it reaches the public in ways that Douglass couldn’t or Garrison couldn’t or none of the other abolitionists could.
SEGMENT TWO
“Bleeding Kansas”
/ music up
  1. Images of the west circa 1850’s
  2. B-roll of Cumberland Gap (6998) and Kansas (6999)
/ NARRATOR: The Compromise of 1850 had put off the question of slavery in the territories for a few years. But the lure of the west was irresistible.
By 1854, Americans were clamoring for new lands to be opened for settlement, and Kansas and Nebraska were first in line.
  1. image of Stephen Douglas
  2. Historic map of Kansas (UTA)
/ With his Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen Douglas, who would ultimately engineer the passage of the Compromise of 1850, became the unwitting engineer of its collapse.
  1. Images of Douglas/intercut with newspaper headlines re Texas annexation, Oregon emigration, Nebraska Territory
/ NARRATOR: Douglas was a tireless advocate of Western expansion.
As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, he was eager to organize the Nebraska Territory so that it could be opened for settlement.
  1. Political cartoon of Douglas as “The Little Giant”; Statue of Douglas (6633)
/ A man of small stature and enormous ambition, Douglas was nicknamed “The Little Giant.”
  1. Image of Thomas Hart Benton/intercut with image of Douglas; historic map of U.S. (UTA-34/Roll 7149)
  2. ACTOR 20-10 Thompson Roll 6958 04:16:50
/ ACTOR (VO) – Thomas Hart Benton
“He thinks he can bestride this continent with one foot on the shore of the Atlantic, the other on the Pacific. But he can’t do it—he can’t do it. His legs are too short.”
  1. Images of covered wagon trains
/ NARRATOR: In the 1850’s, westward expansion was a dream shared by many Americans.
  1. Images of western farms, settlements; b-roll of pioneer village (6874/75/76)
/ Northerners of the free soil, free labor persuasion wanted western lands opened to homesteaders.
  1. Images of southern plantations
/ Southerners were looking for opportunities to expand the dominion of slavery in the western territories.
  1. Images of western Indians
/ Neither North nor South was concerned about the Indian lands that lay in their path.
  1. Robert Johannsen on camera/ intercut with images of Plains and Western Indians
  2. Western landscapes (6874/6877)
/ ROBERT JOHANNSEN (Roll 6869, 5:06) The Kansas-Nebraska Act in effect opened up this plains area to settlement by farmers and whoever. Which meant they were encroaching on Indian lands. So what had to be done with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a renegotiation of all of the treaties, which was done in the latter 1850’s, pushing the Indians and the reservations north to what are now the Dakotas and south into what is now Oklahoma.
  1. Political cartoons, newspaper editorials, etc. re Douglas and “popular sovereignty”
/ NARRATOR: Douglas was not concerned with the sovereignty of the Indian nations, and regarded them as little more than an obstacle to progress.
But he believed in the popular sovereignty of white settlers.
  1. Image of the handwritten bill (?)
/ To this end, he drafted a bill which would organize two territories-- Kansas and Nebraska-- and allow the question of slavery in each territory to be decided by its inhabitants.
  1. Robert Johanssen on camera/ intercut with cartoons, newspaper headlines, etc.
/ ROBERT JOHANSSEN (Roll 6869, 5:01:10) He was dedicated or committed to this notion of popular sovereignty. He felt that was the only way to treat the slavery issue.