3 Constitutional Whig, August 29 (p. 51); Richmond Compiler, August 27 (p. 47); Richmond Compiler, August 24 (p. 37); Edenton Gazette, August 31 (p. 56); Richmond Enquirer, August 30 (p. 45); American Beacon, August 29 (p. 49).
4 Constitutional Whig, September 26 (p. 91); Petersburg Intelligencer, August 26 (pp. 38-39); Constitutional Whig, August 29 (pp. 50-52).
5 Constitutional Whig, September 3 (pp. 66–72); Constitutional Whig, August 29 (pp. 50-52); Lynchburg Virginian, September 8 (pp. 73–75).
6 Richmond Enquirer, August 30 (p. 45); Constitutional Whig, September 3 (p. 68); Constitutional Whig, September 26 (p. 95).
7 William Parker to Governor John Floyd, September 14, in Tragle, Southampton Slave Revolt, pp. 420-21; Richmond Compiler, August 27 (p. 49); Richmond Compiler, September 3 (p. 60); Lynchburg Virginian, September 15 (p. 80); Richmond Enquirer, August 30 (p. 44); Constitutional Whig, September 3 (p. 70).
8 Warner, Authentic Narrative, p. 34; American Beacon, September 9 (p. 75); Richmond Enquirer, October 4 (p. 117); Niles’ Weekly Register, October 29 (p. 131).
9 American Beacon, November 8 (pp. 1320–33); Norfolk Herald, November 4 (pp. 134–35); Petersburg Intelligencer, November 4 (pp. 135-36).
10 Richmond Enquirer, November 8 (pp. 136-37). For a full discussion of Gray, see Daniel S. Fabricant, “Thomas R. Gray and William Styron: Finally, a Critical Look at the 1831 Confessions of Nat Turner,” American Journal of Legal History 37 (July 1993): 332-61. See also Kenneth Greenberg, ed., The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents (Boston, 1996), pp. 1–35.
11 Confessions of Nat Turner, pp. 20, 3-5, 8–11, 18–19.
12 Richmond Enquirer, November 25 (p. 143).
13 Niles’ Weekly Register, September 10 (p. 77); Alexandria Gazette, September 1831 (p. 88).
14 Constitutional Whig, September 26 (p. 92); Richmond Enquirer, September 27 (p. 102).
15 On Garrison, see John L. Thomas, The Liberator (Boston, 1963); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998). Quotations are from Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1852), pp. 44–61.
16 Wendell Phillips Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (Boston, 1885).
17 Walter M. Merrill, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), Vol. I, pp. 94, 97–103, 105.
18 Ibid., pp. 102, 106.
19 William Lloyd Garrison, An Address Delivered Before the Free People of Color in Philadelphia, New York, and Other Cities (Philadelphia, 1831), pp. 3, 8, 10-13, 140–15; W. P. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, vol. I, p. 260; New York Evangelist, September 20, 1831.
20 New-Haven Register, n.d., as cited in College for Colored Youth: An Account of the New-Haven City Meeting and Resolutions (New York, 1831), pp. 22–23.
21 Samuel J. May, Discourse on Slavery in the United States Delivered in Brooklyn, Connecticut, July 3, 1831 (Boston, 1832), pp. 4–5.
22 Liberator, January 29, 1831; January 22, 1831.
23 Ibid., January 8, 1831; May 14, 1831; May 28, 1831.
24 Merrill, ed., Garrison Letters, vol. I, p. 129; Liberator, September 3, 1831.
25 Richmond Enquirer, September 27 (p. 101); Merrill, ed., Garrison Letters, vol. I, p. 139; Liberator, September 10, 1831.
26 Liberator, October 8, 1831.
27 Merrill, ed., Garrison Letters, vol. I, p. 113; Liberator, December 17, 1831; October 1, 1831.
28 Liberator, September 10, 1831; October 1, 1831.
29 Free Enquirer, September 17, 1831, p. 380
30 [Thomas R. Dew,] “Abolition of Negro Slavery,” American Quarterly Review 12 (September 1832): 245.
31 John Floyd, diary entry for September 27, 1831, reprinted in Tragle, Southampton Slave Revolt, pp. 255-56.
32 [James Boardman,] America, and the Americans (London, 1833), p. 7; Godfrey T. Vigne, Six Months in America (London, 1832), vol. II, pp. 32–41.
33 Henry Tudor, Narrative of a Tour in North America (London, 1834), vol. II, pp. 68–78.
34 [Thomas Hamilton,] Men and Manners in America (Philadelphia, 1833), pp. 279–80; 57–58, 317–22.
35 J. M. Peck, Guide for Emigrants (Boston, 1831), pp. 75-76.
36 Philadelphia Gazette, September 21, 1831; New York Evening Post, December 26, 1831; James Alexander, Transatlantic Sketches (Philadelphia, 1833), p. 227.
37 Johann August Roebling, Diary of My Journey (Trenton, 1931), pp. 117-18.
38 George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York, 1938; reprinted Baltimore, 1996), pp. 43-44.
39 J. P. Mayer, ed., Alexis de Tocqueville: Journey to America (New Haven, 1962), pp. 50, 225, 116, 61, 70.
40 Mayer, ed., Journey, pp. 224-25; Gustave de Beaumont, Marie, or Slavery in the United States (Stanford, Calif., 1958), p. 4; Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont, p. 515; Mayer, ed., Journey, pp. 157-59.
41 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Phillips Bradley (New York, 1945), vol. I, pp. 370-97.
42 Mayer, ed., Journey, p. 264. A comparison of Tocqueville’s diaries and letters from his journey with the chapter on race in Democracy shows how closely the former informed the latter.
43 Mayer, ed., Journey, p. 100; Alexis de Tocqueville to Louis de Kergoly, June 29, 1831, in Roger Boesche, ed., Alexis de Tocqueville: Selected Letters on Politics and Society (Berkeley, Calif., 1985), p. 46; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. I, pp. 370-88.
44 Mayer, ed., Journey, p. 242.
45 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. I, pp. 388–97.
46 Beaumont, Marie, pp. 36, 55, 74, 214–16.
47 Niles’ Weekly Register, September 24 (p. 89); African Repository 6 (February 1831): 362.
48 Merrill, ed., Garrison Letters, vol. I, p. 124; William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization (Boston, 1832), part II, p. 31.
49 Liberator, April 23, 1831; “After Nat Turner: A Letter from the North,” Journal of Negro History 55 (April 1970): 147; Alison Goodyear Freehling, Drift Toward Dissolution: The Virginia Slavery Debate of 1831–32 (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), pp. 170-71.
50 [Boardman,] America, and the Americans, p. 249.
51 Jane Randolph quoted in Freehling, Drift Toward Dissolution, p. 6; Floyd to James Hamilton, November 19, 1831, in Tragle, Southampton Slave Revolt, pp. 275-76; Floyd diary in Tragle, Southampton Slave Revolt, pp. 261-62.
52 Richmond Enquirer, December 17, 1831.
53 Ibid., January 19, 1832.
54 Ibid., January 21, 1832; January 24, 1832.
55 Speech of John Thompson Brown (Richmond, 1832), pp. 5, 15, 18, 21.
56 Richmond Enquirer, January 24, 1832; January 28, 1832.
57 “The Kentucky Resolutions,” in Merrill Peterson, ed., The Portable Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1975), p. 281; Notes on the State of Virginia, ibid., p. 186.
58 Edward Coles to Thomas Jefferson, July 31, 1814, September 26, 1814, in William and Mary Quarterly, 2nd ser., 7 (1927): 97–100; Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, August 25, 1814, in Peterson, Portable Thomas Jefferson, pp. 544-47.
59 Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, in Peterson, Portable Thomas Jefferson, p. 567.
60 Edward Coles to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, December 29, 1831, in William and Mary Quarterly, 2nd ser., 7 (1927): 105–7.
61 The Speech of Thomas J. Randolph, in the House of Delegates of Virginia on the Abolition of Slavery (Richmond, 1832); Richmond Enquirer, January 28, 1832. On September 2, 1829, Garrison proclaimed in the Genius of Universal Emancipation: “The question of expediency has nothing to do with that of right and it is not for those who tyrannize to say when they may safely break the chains of their subjects.”
62 Speech of Thomas J. Randolph, pp. 8–9.
RELIGION AND POLITICS
1 The Niagara Falls parable was first recorded by Asa Rand, “Depravity and Regeneration,” Volunteer 1 (December 1831): 138–39. The sermon in which it appeared, “Sinners Bo
und to Change Their Own Hearts,” was published in Finney’s Sermons on Various Subjects (New York, 1836), pp. 14–15; [Lyman Beecher,] “The Necessity of Revivals of Religion to the Perpetuity of our Civil and Religious Institutions,” Spirit of the Pilgrims 4 (September 1831): 478.
2 Garth M. Rosell and Richard A. G. Dupuis, eds., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1989), p. 325; “The Recent Revivals of Religion,” Spirit of the Pilgrims 4 (August 1831): 409; Rosell and Dupuis, eds., Memoirs of Finney, p. 307.
3 Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney (New York, 1876), p. 24. On Finney, see Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney: Revivalist and Reformer (Syracuse, New York, 1987); William McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New York, 1959).
4 James Boardman, America and the Americans (London, 1833), p. 131.
5 [Beecher,] “Necessity of Revivals,” p.467. On the Great Awakening in Rochester, see Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837 (New York, 1978).
6 Rosell and Dupuis, eds., Memoirs of Finney, pp. 299–302; account of Finney’s preaching quoted in Hardman, Finney, pp. 201, 207.
7 Rosell and Dupuis, eds., Memoirs of Finney, pp. 330, 343-45.
8 “Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts,” in Finney, Sermons on Various Subjects; William McLoughlin, ed., Lectures on Revivals of Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 209, 220.
9 Asa Rand, The New Divinity Tried (Boston, 1832). Benjamin Wisner responded to Rand’s attack in Review of “The New Divinity Tried” (Boston, 1832). Rand then issued A Vindication of “The New Divinity Tried” (Boston, 1832), to which Wisner responded with Reply to Rand’s “Vindication” (1832). See also Spirit of the Pilgrims 5 (March 1832): 161-69.
10 “Thoughts on Some of the Dangers of the Times,” Spirit of the Pilgrims 4 (November 1831): 574; William Sprague, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York, 1836), p. 37; Rand, New Divinity Tried, p. 14.
11 Walter Balfour, Tricks of Revivalists Exposed (Boston, 1831), p. 13.
12 Bernard Whitman, Letter to an Orthodox Minister (Boston, 1831), p. 51.
13 Ralph Waldo Emerson to Mary Moody Emerson, February 8, 1831, in The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph L. Rusk (1939), vol. I, p. 318; Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. William H. Gilman and Alfred R. Ferguson (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), vol. III, pp. 238, 246, 257, 259.
14 Gilman and Ferguson, eds., Emerson Journals, vol. III, p. 259; vol V, p. 477.
15 John Claiborne, Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman (New York, 1860), pp. 108–9.
16 Charles Hall to Absalom Peters, December 17, 1830, quoted in Whitney Cross, The Burned-Over District (New York, 1950), p. 177; Rosell and Dupuis, eds., Memoirs of Finney, pp. 305-6; McLoughlin, ed., Lectures on Revivals of Religion, p. 259; Rebeccah Lee, An Address Delivered in Marlbourough, Connecticut, September 7, 1831, quoted in Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood (New Haven, 1977), pp. 131-32.
17 Lydia Maria Child, The Mother’s Book, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1832); review of “The Mother’s Book,” American Monthly Magazine, 3 (July 1831): 238. For an exhaustive study of Child, see Carolyn L. Karcher, The First Woman in the Republic (Durham, N.C., 1994).
18 Henry Ware, Jr., On the Formation of Christian Character, in Henry Ware, Jr., Sermons (Boston, 1847), vol. II, pp. 287-391. See also William Sullivan, The Moral Class Book (Boston, 1831).
19 Spirit of the Pilgrims 5 (May 1832): 277–96; Edward Everett, “Advantage of Knowledge to Workingmen: An Address Delivered as the Introduction to the Franklin Lectures in Boston, November 14, 1831,” in Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions (Boston, 1865), vol. I, p. 327.
20 Working Man’s Advocate, November 5, 1831. On reactions to Mormons, see Working Man’s Advocate, May 28, 1831; New Jersey Mirror, August 26, 1831, September 11, 1831; Connecticut Mirror, April 16, 1831; Philadelphia Gazette, August 20, 1831.
21 First Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the New-York Magdalen Society (New York, 1831), pp. 5, 8, 9, 13; Connecticut Mirror, July 23, 1831; Orthodox Bubbles, or a Review of the First Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the New-York Magdalen Society (Boston, 1831), p. 11; Working Man’s Advocate, July 20, 1831; Confessions of a Magdalen (New York, 1831), p. 30.
22 Orthodox Bubbles, pp. 9–10; Confessions of a Magdalen, pp. 3, 29; First Annual Report, p. 11; Magdalen Facts (New York, 1831), p. 95.
23 Confessions of a Magdalen, p. 29; Orthodox Bubbles, p. 9; Working Man’s Advocate, July 25, 1831; Remarks on the Report of the New-York Magdalen Society (New York, 1831), p. 11.
24 Samuel Whitcomb, Jr., An Address Before the Working-Men’s Society of Dedham (Dedham, Mass., 1831), pp. 18-20.
25 Stephen Simpson, The Working Man’s Manual (Philadelphia, 1831), p. 20.
26 “Imprisonment for Debt,” North American Review 31 (April 1831): 491, 502; Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society (Boston, 1831), p. 66; Simpson, Working Man’s Manual, pp. 189-90.
27 “Report of the Select Committee on So Much of the Governor’s Message As Relates to Imprisonment for Debt,” Assembly Doc. 190, New York Assembly Documents (Albany, 1831), pp. 1-32; An Act to Abolish Imprisonment for Debt and to Punish Fraudulent Debtors (New York, 1831); Laws of the State of New-York Passed at the Fifty-fourth Session of the Legislature (Albany, 1831), pp. 396–406.
28 Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851 (New York, 1927), vol. I, p. 35; Thomas Skidmore, The Rights of Man to Property (New York, 1829), quoted in Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic (New York, 1984), p. 185; Free Enquirer, December 24, 1831, p. 71.
29 Robert Dale Owen, Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question (New York, 1831), pp. 16, 42; Free Enquirer, March 26, 1831, p. 176.
30 Thomas Skidmore, Moral Physiology Exposed and Refuted (New York, 1831), pp. 71, 75, 37, 9.
31 Evans quoted in Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy (Stanford, Calif., 1960), p. 86; Free Enquirer, November 5, 1831, p. 16.
32 Free Enquirer, December 24, 1831, p. 69; Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America (Philadelphia, 1833), p. 156; J. P. Mayer, ed., Alexis de Tocqueville: Journey to America (New Haven, 1962), pp. 170-71.
33 Edward Giddins, An Account of the Savage Treatment of William Morgan in Fort Niagara (Boston, 1830); An Impartial Statement of the Facts in the Case of Rev. George Witherell (Boston, 1831); A Letter on Freemasonry by the Hon. Richard Rush (Boston, 1831).
34 Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Philadelphia, 1876), vol VIII, pp. 378, 368; John Q. Adams, Letters and Opinions of the Masonic Institution (Cincinnati, 1851), pp. 9–27.
35 Josiah Johnston to Henry Clay, September 26, 1831, in Robert Seager, ed., The Papers of Henry Clay (Lexington, Ky., 1984), vol. VIII, p. 406; New York Register and Antimasonic Review, January 1, 1831, p. 14; Proceedings of the Antimasonic State Convention of Massachusetts (Boston, 1831), p. 17.
36 William H. Seward, An Autobiography (New York, 1891), pp. 89–90, 208.
37 John P. Kennedy, Memoir of the Life of William Wirt (Philadelphia, 1851), vol. II, p. 298; The Proceedings of the Second United States Anti-Masonic Convention (Boston, 1832), pp. 63-67.
38 New York Evening Post, October 1, 1831; Niles’ Weekly Register, January 21, 1832; Henry Clay to James F. Conover, October 9, 1831, in Seager, ed., Clay Papers, vol. VIII, p. 417; New Jersey Journal of Commerce, quoted in Maine Working Men’s Advocate, October 20, 1831; Kennedy, Memoir of the Life of William Wirt, vol. II, p. 312.
39 Calvin Philleo, Light on Masonry and Anti-Masonry (Providence, 1831); James Thompson, An Address Delivered Before the Fraternity at Leicester, Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1831), p. 3; Free Enquirer, November 27, 1830, p. 39.
40 Seward, Autobiography, pp. 208-9.
41 Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (New York, 1838), vol. I, p. 173; Calvin Colton, ed., The Private Correspondence of He
nry Clay (Boston, 1856), pp. 304, 308–9; Journal of the National Republican Convention (Washington, 1831), pp. 20, 24, 25. On the history of the Whigs in America, see Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago, 1979); Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (New York, 1999). See also Harry Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York, 1990).
42 Clay wrote in August, “I fear the public mind is not yet ripe for gradual emancipation.” The month before, he sought to buy “three or four young negro men.” (Henry Clay to Thomas Speed, August 23, 1831, and Henry Clay to George Corbin Washington, July 24, 1831, in Seager, ed., Clay Papers, vol. VIII, pp. 390, 378. Quote in text is from Calvin Colton, ed., Works of Henry Clay (New York, 1897), vol. V, p. 439.
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