Border Wars by Stanley Harold REVIEW
Let me just say that before reading Border Wars, I
did not know just how pervasive and unrelenting the violence between North and
South was before the Civil War. The power of the book’s argument is to be found
in the density of the evidentiary over-supply. Saying that John Brown invaded
the South is like saying that Babe Ruth hit home runs. It is not an incorrect
statement but it leaves out many other batters and many other hits. If I were
to try and convey the density of the material, I would have to recreate the
book itself because it supplies a torrent of anecdotal material. One might
argue that though there were more battles after the Civil War started, there
was more fighting before it started. I wonder if my drawing together a
fictitious composite of the kinds of violence would suffice to give an accurate
picture.
Imagine for a moment that there is a slave owner in Kentucky or Maryland or Virginia who, wishing to counter the abolitionist impulses of nearby Ohio, comes down violently on any insolence in his slaves. Fearing that they might read abolitionist literature, he denies them any opportunity to read and overtly supports the mobbing of abolitionists and the violent removal of any abolitionist presses or distribution of abolitionist literature. His repression inspires a slave to escape with the help of a Northern abolitionist from Ohio. Knowing that success will breed emulation, the owner hires a bounty hunter to cross the Ohio River to get his slave back. The attempt involves a forced entry into a white man’s home and a forcible abduction of the fugitive. It may even lead to a gunfight in which several people are wounded. Safely back in Kentucky however, the slave awaits a counterstrike on the part of some of the abolitionist friends of the original “slave –stealer.” They enter Kentucky and break said slave out of jail, making their way back to Ohio with a posse in hot pursuit. Within a few days, the Kentucky owner has filed for extradition and a Ohio sheriff makes arrests of both slave and accomplices. He is threatened by a mob that takes exception to his working for “the other side.” He fears for his life.
The trial is set for a certain day and a sympathetic judge drops the charges against the white abolitionist. The Kentucky “gang” vows to get their own revenge. The judge does however award the slave to the owner but as soon as the verdict is heard, a crowd of white and black abolitionists surrounds the “victim” and mobs the claimants. They return to Kentucky licking their wounds but vowing revenge. A warrant is issued in Kentucky for violation of Kentucky laws about slave stealing and a larger posse heads out to show the Ohio scoundrels a little Kentucky justice. This of course, involves bullets, shot guns, dirks, and pistols. Reports in rabid news outlets on both sides portray the other side as scum; Their own side as patriotic. Both sides vow death before dishonor.
Once in Ohio, they now have to worry about permanent slave catchers who have been hired. They also must contend with the new Fugitive Slave Act which makes it a crime for anyone in Ohio to help them. Free blacks on the Ohio side form a Committee of Vigilance to protect themselves and their families from abduction. They are sworn to use violence to so protect themselves if they must. Many opt to head North to Canada, leaving the torn relationships behind. Some of them decide that they must head back into slave country to rescue family or friends before they it is too late. Larger and more dangerous incursions are planned that will lead to greater chance for escalating violence. Kentucky begins to feel its sovereignty invaded and its laws disregarded. They begin to draft and raise border guards, equipping them for tighter security; A move Ohio abolitionists counter with greater support. Ohioans, formerly neutral, begin to despise Southerners coming over the border and taking justice into their own hands. They resent slave catchers using their courts to violate their morals.
Back in Kentucky, things on the plantation are getting more and more and more tense. The master, understanding that his valuable slave property is now more likely to get up and walk away, determines to sell a few of his slaves to a dealer who will bring them south where the prices are higher, the need greater, and the risk of slave escape less. Formerly sedate slaves become restless and even dangerous as they contemplate the fact that they may likely be separated from their families and removed from the hope of escape forever. They begin to plot for a more general escape, stealing (or making) weapons that they can use when the time comes to strike. One slave, unwilling to wait, strikes out on his own and steals his wife and child from a nearby plantation, absconding with some money and a horse as well. Soon after his disappearance, the larger group absconds, meeting a patrol out looking for the first runaway. A gun fight ensues and several white slave catchers are wounded or killed as are several slaves. A few escape to the other side and are pursued. The slave is wanted for stealing a horse as well as himself. Ohioans are inclined to think that he is owed the horse but many Ohioans begin to fear an excess amount of free blacks in their community taking their jobs. They get up a “gang” to counter the one that always seems to show up at the court-house to deny their Kentucky relatives justice. They tire of watching Federal law flouted in the North just as Northerners tire of seeing State law flouted in the North. A Southerner states “I am open for hostility.” A Northern town raises money for ammunition and better weaponry. An Ohio abolitionist fortifies his house. A Kentucky abolitionist buys a cannon to protect his house.
Southern Border States begin to wonder if the country splits apart if they should stick with the North to guarantee their slaves will be protected under the Fugitive slave law or if they should secede because they see it rarely enforced. Everyone is on pins and needles unsure of what will happen next. Abolitionists publish articles suggesting that a slave has every right to kill a master who pursues him. Anti-Abolitionists publish articles saying that abolitionists who come into Southern border-states can expect to be hung. More and more frequently, Northerners are given the opportunity to meet and work with formerly abused slaves. They begin to feel former slave-masters need a thrashing.
Meanwhile, out in Missouri, slave owners fear that if Kansas becomes a free state, they will be unable to maintain slavery in the state any more (having free States on three sides). They begin to assemble a possie to terrorize free-soilers and dissuade New Englanders from coming to Kansas. A few radical abolitionists return the terror in kind. “Disputes, violence, bloodshed and rescues” ensue. Militias are called up. Bayonets are drawn. Axes are used to break down doors. States send sheriffs into other states to kidnap kidnappers and the people who kidnap kidnappers. Both assert that the law is on their side and resort to lawlessness when the law does not comply. Even abolitionists in the South call abolitionists in the North “a horde of radical incendiaries.” Slavery and anti-slavery are described as “runaway prairie fires.” Blood is spilt. Bodies are found drowned in the rivers. “The horrors of servile war” loom over the border States. Post offices are mobbed in the South to keep abolitionist presses from supplying customers. Courthouses are mobbed in the North to deny pro-slavery claimants from winning their cases. Moralists are called “deluded criminals.” Quakers are reviled. A “horde of pirates invest both banks of the Ohio” hoping to help a slave escape or return the same for money. Sometimes both. Barns of slave-helpers are burned. Children are lured from the shore and resold into the Deep South by unscrupulous thugs. Whites suspected of giving abolitionist lectures can be tarred and feathered in some towns. Rocks and bricks fly. Laws get stricter. Penalties get harsher. Brutality becomes normalized.
“I am free to say that if there be a crime for which I would hang a citizen in our State, it is that of aiding a slaveholder,” says one Ohioan. “If you still thirst for bloodshed and violence, the same blade that repelled the assaults of assassin sons, once more in self-defense is ready to drink the blood of the hireling horde of psychophants and outlaws of the assassin sire of assassins,” says Cassius Clay in his newspaper, The True American. “The hemp is ready for your neck. Your life cannot be spared. Plenty thirst for your blood.”
God forbid that these people should have gotten their hands on Prohibition Era Tommy guns instead of their Bowie knives because the streets and rivers would have run red with the carnage. Harold tells us of carriages riddled with bullet holes. And all the while, John Brown simmers in a stew of righteous vengeance. Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God,” the masses chant. People begin to refuse to pay taxes. Slaves kill themselves, in one case, their own children, in order to avoid being recaptured.
A U.S. Senator is caned almost to death on the floor of the Senate. Slave owners feel gratified to see it happen. Guns are renamed “Beecher’s Bibles.” Tiny armies march in Kansas, guerillas plunder. Towns are sacked. Hostages are taken. Slave stealers are regarded as car thieves might today. Slave owners are regarded as pedophiles all. All the while, the feeling grows that the North needs to take the war to the citadel of Southern slave power. “Suppose there was an awful big snake down there on the floor,” says Harriet Tubman,
“He bites you. Folks all scared, because you may die. You send for doctor to cut the bite; but the snake rolled up there, and while doctor is doing it, he bites you again. The doctor cuts out that bite; but while he’s doing it, the snake springs up and bites you again, and so he keeps doing it, till you kill him. That’s what Master Lincoln ought to know.
All in all, it is an ugly, violent, messy, frightening place and time to live in American (or any) history.
Question for Comment: Have you ever felt on the verge of violence?
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