Virginia Politicians Rally in 1861 versus 2010 Hazy Memory

Photograph of R.M.T. Hunter taken by Matthew R. Brady from the Daguerreotype Collection of the Library of Congress, call number DAG no. 114.

In light of the political and media spectacle surrounding Virginia's Governor Bob McDonnell's declaration of Virginia as Confederate History Month (April 2010) and Mississippi's Governor Haley Barbour's comment that the dispute "doesn't amount to diddly" and this on-going conversation from some that slavery had no major role in the Civil War, I thought I would contribute to our political blog here by focusing on some of Virginia's political leaders on the eve of the Civil War. What were they saying about the approaching conflict and the election of 1860? The Republican Party?

In this post (a few more to be forthcoming), I will focus on Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter.

Hunter was born April 21, 1809 and died July 18, 1887. His early political career and indeed the terms of his service can be found here. But that only gives us terms in office, not what he was thinking and on which issues he acted upon. I think it is critical however to understand Hunter's lifestyle in Essex County, Virginia.

In 1840, while Hunter served as the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, he had 87 enslaved men, women, and children on his Fonthill estate in Essex County. The next decade, he had more than 100. By 1860, he had 116. The 1860 census illustrates that this slaveholding allowed him economic power as he had real estate valued at $80,890 and personal estate (which included all those people) at $92,800. Making him one of the wealthiest people in the county and certainly the one with the most political power. By 1860, Robert Hunter was a U.S. Senator in the important Finance Committee.

Hunter's letters illustrate that the fully intended for the South to continue to perpetuate slavery and as his home state was had the largest number of enslaved people living within its boundaries he saw its necessity to slaveholders and non-slaveholders alike.

On the subject of territorial expansion, Senator Hunter wrote to Shelton F. Leake about 1857 that the Federal Government could not privilege one group of citizens over another as the Supreme Court had ruled that the territories were also a part of the United States. He explained further, the government "cannot say that the free states may settle and colonize vacant territory the common property of all whilst the slave holding states are to be debarred from the same privilege." The thought that white slaveholding citizens could move to free territory, he found to be a foolish thought "because it involves the breaking of what, in some sense, may be called family ties." In an authoritative tone he wrote "To deny to the slave-holding States equal rights in these respects is to disturb the equality of the States in a most vital point." (Charles Henry Ambler, ed., Annual Report to the American Historical Association for the Year 1916 in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M.T. Hunter, 1826-1876, 1916, 256-261. Note: All further Hunter correspondence comes from this book and pagination will be noted only.)

Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, Hunter wrote a long, articulate (even though morally repulsive) treatise as to why secession is legal and why he was angered by the forthcoming 16th President. He wrote that:

"For the first time since the Union was formed we have seen a President of the United States nominated and elected, so far as the popular voice is concerned, by a sectional party, a party founded in hostility to the institution of African slavery, which exists in nearly half the States in the Union, and composed of members, all of whom believe it to be their duty to war upon the institution whenever a legal opportunity is afforded them; the difference being that some of them profess a respect for the restraints of the Constitution, as they construe it, whilst others openly avow a contempt for all such restraints in regard to the subject of slavery(R.M.T. Hunter to James R. Micotj, Thomas Croxton, and Others, December 10, 1860, 338)."

Hunter explained that Northern states had nullified the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and recently hardened in 1850 and therefore ignored the U.S. Constitution which bound people to return property (for which human beings were classified). Senator Hunter was outraged that following John Brown's 1859 raid the Northern states failed to enact laws to prevent such an event from happening again. Furthermore he was angered by the election of Massachusetts governor, John Albion Andrew (338).

Andrew who was a member of the Whig Party, then Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery (and the above letter to Leake illustrates Hunter saw it legally acceptable for slavery to move into the territories), and with the breaking apart of the Free Soilers in the early 1850s, Andrew became a Republican. In fact, Andrew even organized funding for John Brown's legal defense (and during the forthcoming war, helped to jump start the organization of armed black men into military regiments).

Slaveholders typically saw the irony of defending slavery in a region where most people indeed were non-slaveholders (a tactic used in the 21st century to maintain that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War). Senator Hunter however found reasons why non-slaveholders needed to be concerned about the (Southern perceived) Republican party's intentions to weaken white supremacy. He said that:

"...the slave population operates as a safety-valve to protect the white laborer against an unreasonable or ruinous decline in the rate of wages. The law of profit moves him to a theater where he will earn more for his master, and yet more for himself, whilst the labor market which he leaves is thus gradually relieved from the pressure, and the white man remains in the land of his birth, to enjoy the profits of remunerating operations. As a proof of the truth of this view, I ask if the average rate of wages of the white laborer of the South is not higher than in any other settled portion of the globe (346-347)?"

Senator Hunter saw Virginia's economic picture as rising with the rapid growth of railroads over the last two decades but especially in the 1850s. He therefore thought the Northerners were "mad" as they engaged "in their insane war upon slavery." Hunter saw Virginia's economic prosperity not with the North but with the South and growing Southwest (347).

What I see is that it is needless to say that on March 28, 1861, Hunter left the United States Senate after a long career which stretched almost 15 years in the Senate and almost 25 years in the Federal legislature (combining his years are a Representative and as a Senator). It comes as no surprise that Hunter served as the Confederate Secretary of State from July 25, 1861 to February 22, 1862. He spent the remainder of the war as the leading Confederate Senator for the Commonwealth of Virginia.