Two Days in Washington: August 1814

Perhaps you heard that there was a little break-in at the US Capitol Building (for the love, "capital" is the city, it's the "Capitol Building") this week that has caused a slight kerfuffle around the, well, the world. We're not talking about that today, because this web site tends not to deal with the current century. Today we're talking about the last time that such a direct assault on the seat of American government. 

Do not get me wrong: I know that the attacks on Oklahoma City, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11, among others were far more devastating than what happened on Wednesday at the Capitol, but those attacks were not directly on the buildings that house the American government (though it appears the White House was a possible target of Flight 93). However, let's talk about Washington in 1814. 

The War of 1812...it wasn't going so well for the Americans.

[As a quick aside, the purpose of this here blog is to do deep-dives on the rhyming couplets of history, but by no means a comprehensive re-telling. Ideally, something you read here catches your fancy and you go read further about it. I'm a history teacher. I get, like, eight hours of class time to teach World War II. But maybe you read something here that you want to go further into, and that's where you hit up your library or whichever way do some investigating on your own.]

Having been a country for about 30 years, the United States was ready for some respect, and they weren't really getting it from Great Britain. That's what's important (to me) to remember about the War of 1812: respect, and the United States feeling like they deserved it. How was the US being disrespected? 

Great Britain was trying to deal with Napoleon. They needed sailors. And so they "impressed them," and not in, like, an "Anyway, here's 'Wonderwall'" sense of impressing them. Impressment was a thing that Great Britain did between 1793 and 1812 in which the British Navy would board merchant vessels and essentially force/kidnap sailors to serve the Crown, mainly to beef up their efforts to defeat Napoleon. Lest we think the British improper for this practice, they did say that they could only kidnap a sailor for five years, and then they couldn't do it again. So there's that. The British impressed over 15,000 American sailors in the aforementioned timespan. 

The British were also violating maritime laws bargained by the Treaty of Paris (1783) and further clarified by Jay's Treaty (1794). They were also encouraging Native Americans to fight back against the United States (and one can easily see why the Native Americans would do so). All of these ingredients combined together were seen by some members of Congress as the equivalent of taking their own hands and slapping their own face with them and saying, "Stop hitting yourself, innit?"

Who were these Congressmen? They were known as the War Hawks, and this is where I feel as though we should instead look at the War of 1812 like a massive duel between the United States and Great Britain. The War Hawks were led by men like Kentucky's Henry Clay, South Carolina's John C. Calhoun, and Tennessee's Solomon Felix Grundy. Well, if you're a Southern/Western gentleman and feel as though you have been disrespected and/or your honor has been attacked, what do you do? You challenge them to a duel, a duel that the War Hawks referred to as the "second war for independence." It's worth mentioning that this was bitterly opposed by the Federalist set of Congress, who valued trade with Great Britain. It's interesting to me that while it was New England who advocated for the Revolution over the hems/haws of the Southern colonies, it was the Southerners (and now-Westerners) who were agitating for Round Two over the objections of New England. 

Anyhow, despite not having much in the way of a standing army (thanks to the Anti-Federalists, led by Thomas Jefferson, who saw a standing military as the greatest threat to a government) the Americans were feeling their oats and were all, "Yeah, let's go take Canada. How hard can THAT be? Look at it. It's so Canadian!"* The United States tried to invade Canada and it went...extremely poorly. Every single attempt was repelled. As it turned out, much to the surprise of the Americans, a lot of former colonists went to Canada to stay under British rule, and weren't terribly interested in being Americans.

*paraphrasing

Now we get to the point of the post. The British were able to turn their attention to the United States in 1814, once Napoleon abdicated the throne. It starts with the Chesapeake Campaign, which was a diversionary invasion to take American attention away from Canada. On August 19, 1814 the British landed on Maryland's Patuxent River and Secretary of War John Armstrong, who wasn't exactly the best at his job in this country's history, didn't think the British would attack Washington because it simply wasn't of all that much strategic, military, or economic importance, especially what with the much more "valuable" Baltimore just, I mean, *right there*. Still, military leadership thought Baltimore was the target. Armstrong:

They would not come with such a fleet without meaning to strike somewhere. But they certainly will not come [to Washington]! What the devil will they do here? No! No! Baltimore is the place, Sir. That is of so much more consequence.

Little did he know that the British were all, "Why not both!?" It was pretty clear when five days later, on August 24, the British arrived at Bladensburg, Maryland, about seven miles northeast of the White House. The British wanted to take out the symbolic importance of Washington, D.C. As the British crossed the Anacostia River, the militia quickly set up three lines of defense. Madison borrowed some pistols and rode out to watch the battle, but not before almost riding directly into the hands of the British. While the Americans outnumbered the British, the British were superior in tactics and, you know, general military expertise. "Commanded" by Brigadier General William H. Winder, the first line of defense quickly retreated into the second, gumming up the strategic works and causing confusion within the American ranks. Winder would actually be court-martialed for his "leadership" at Bladensburg and, though he was acquitted, Winder was demoted. 

The third line of defense was led by Commodore Joshua Barney. Barney looked at the War of 1812 like it was a reputation rehabilitation mission. He joined the cause for American independence at the age of 16. In 1794 the United States revived its military to deal with threats from Great Britain, France, and [squints] Algeria and appointed six new commanders for the new frigates commissioned by the government. Barney placed fourth out of six, appealed to be third, was denied, and then turned down the commission and went and fought for France. This would prove to be disastrous to Barney when the United States and France kinda-sorta got into a war in the late 1790s and the press started to refer to Barney in the same breath as Benedict Arnold, which is decidedly what one is not looking for. When the War of 1812 broke out, Barney quickly saw it as his opportunity to save his reputation.

Barney's third line held up more admirably than Winder's first two, delaying the British long enough to allow President James Madison to tell First Lady Dolley Madison to save as many possessions as she could before fleeing. Barney got shot in the thigh and was captured by the British, who released him on the spot in honor of his bravery. British Rear Admiral George Cockburn said of Barney and his men, "They have given us the only fighting we have had." With Barney wounded, the British broke through towards Washington. Madison was unimpressed by his fleeing defense, reportedly saying, "I could never have believed that so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, if I had not witnessed the scenes of this day."

With no defenses available, the Commandant of the Washington Navy Yard Thomas Tingey, set fire to the Navy Yard's vessels and supplies rather than let them fall into British hands. Senior administration officials fled into the countryside. James Madison and his Secretary of State James Monroe were nearly captured, and spent the night of August 26 at the home of Caleb and Henrietta Bentley in Brookeville, Maryland, giving Brookeville the eternal nickname of "U.S. Capital For A Day."

Meanwhile, the British had free rein in the nation's capital which...wasn't that impressive of a city. Washington hadn't even been the capital of the United States for 25 years at this point. A British soldier wrote of the city:

It possesses no leading features, by catching which I might hope to convey to a person who has not seen it, something like an accurate notion of the whole. It...is, I believe, still in its infancy, few of the streets being finished, and many containing not more than three or four houses, at wide intervals from each other...Like other infant towns, Washington is but little ornamented with fine buildings; except the Senate-house, I really know of none worthy to be noticed.

Sending a message to the apparently-one nice building in the city was appropriate to the British, who set fire to everything they could. While the Capitol dome hadn't yet been built, the original chamber of the House of Representatives was thought to be "the most beautiful room in America," according to the historian emeritus for the Architect of the Capitol. It was fireproof, except - and this is a pretty massive "except" - the ceiling, which was wooden. Catch the roof - with 100 skylights - on fire, and it'll collapse and destroy everything, which is, of course, what happened. William Allen:

The heat was intense. The glass in the skylights melted, became molten, and fell down in large chunks.

A 24-year old Senate clerk named Lewis Machen, assisted by Tobias Simpson, a Black messenger, commandeered a wagon and began loading Senate records onto the wagon as the fire raged in the Capitol building. Machen and Simpson didn't save all of the records, but they did save a large number of important ones. Unfortunately for the Capitol Building, the wooden floors and the remaining records and books served simply as kindling, especially the Senate side of the building. Machen and Simpson, after a hilariously arduous journey that included a wagon wheel flying off and the wagon itself just turning over resulting in hours of gathering the spewed papers, delivered the papers they were able to save to Madison at Brookeville.

He wasn't the only one thinking of preserving the past in the face of an uncertain future: Senior State Department clerk Stephen Pleasonton put the original Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution, and George Washington's correspondence in some linen bags and personally escorted them 35 miles to the northwest, to Leesburg, Virginia.

The British moved on to the Presidential Mansion (it wasn't known as the White House until 1901) and set fire to it, but not before eating the dinner that had been prepared for Madison and 40 other people - which is just massively disrespectful. The British burned the Library of Congress and pretty much every government building they could find, including the State Department, Treasury Department, and War Department. You could see the glow of the fire from Baltimore, 40-ish miles away.

The British mostly left the few private residences in the city alone. While the British had a (mostly) no-looting policy, one British soldier took Madison's traveling medicine chest. This chest passed to a British soldier, which descended through his family until it was returned to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939.

The following morning, with the fires still burning in Washington, the British searched the city for other stuff to burn. They found an ammunition store but, after a little accident with some gunpowder barrels that resulted in the death of 30 British soldiers, decided to bounce, fires still raging behind them. And then? A miracle. A massive thunderstorm complete with a tornado hit Washington in early afternoon of August 25. The National Weather Service said that the strong tornado struck northwest Washington and downtown and did "major structural damage to the residential section of the city," noting that more British soldiers were killed by flying debris than by American guns. The aforementioned British soldier, Robert Glieg, wrote:

Of the prodigious force of the wind it is impossible for you to form any conception. Roofs of houses were torn off by it, and whisked into the air like sheets of paper, while the rain which accompanied it resembled the rushing of a mighty cataract rather than the dropping of a shower...[it was] the most appalling effect I had ever, or probably shall ever witness.

Two British cannons were picked up and spun around in the most intense part of the afternoon. The roof of the General Post Office was ripped off. Houses were wrenched off of their foundations, and trees were uprooted all of the city. Thirty Americans were killed in the storm, which lasted for over two hours, dropping such an immense amount of rain that it put the fires out. However, it also created enough confusion to allow the British to slink off towards Baltimore. 

When Washingtonians woke up the next morning they found the city smoldering, houses destroyed by the storm, the army was nowhere to be found, no one knew where President Madison or his cabinet was, and the Union Jack flew over the capital. That's a rough day.

Madison wrote on September 1, 1814 complaining that the British operations in Washington were Extremely Bullcrap, given that peace talks had already been offered by the British when they sacked Washington:

Whereas, these proceedings and declared purposes, which exhibit a deliberate disregard of the principles of humanity, and the rules of civilized warfare, and which must give to the existing war a character of extended devastation and barbarism, at the very moment of negociacions [sic] for peace, invited by the enemy himself, leave no prospect of safety to any thing within the reach of his predatory and incendiary operations, but in a manly and universal determination to chastise and expel the invader.

It took three years to rebuild the Presidential Mansion, an undertaking led by the Irish-American James Hoban. We don't know all that much about Hoban's life as his papers were destroyed, ironically, in a fire in the 1880s. James Monroe was able to live there beginning in 1817. Thomas Jefferson sold his  book collection to the government to restock the Library of Congress.

James Madison's Congress met on September 19, 1814 at Blodgett's Hotel, at Eighth Street and E Street NW, which also housed the Patent Office. An impressively-quick-thinking superintendent said the building contained patent models from inventors, which qualified the building as private property. This was good enough for the British, who left the building alone. Congress would meet there until they adjourned in March 1815 and approved Madison borrowing money to rebuild the damaged buildings on their existing sites. 

There was only one (non-storm) casualty of the British assault on Washington: John Lewis, George Washington's grand-nephew. Lewis and his brother had been impressed into the service of the Royal Navy and had only just been released, so he was ready to kick some heads. Lewis saw a group of British soldiers, hopped on his horse with his sword drawn and, after shouting "a volley of epithets" at the British began to attempt to remove some British heads from their respective bodies when he was shot and killed. 

So, yeah. This week in American history was pretty wild. 

The Little Cannon Accident on The Princeton

The 10th President, John Tyler, had only achieved the highest office in the land thanks to the stubbornness of William Henry Harrison. Harrison has the notoriety of the shortest tenure as president, 31 days, as Harrison - a War of 1812 veteran who campaigned on a rough-and-tumble "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" platform and refused to wear a coat or a hat (gotta keep that rough-and-tumble energy up) at his inauguration despite the cold and the rain of March in Washington still delivered the longest inaugural address in the country's history (almost 8,500 words long). While many historians don't believe Harrison died a month later because he couldn't remember motherly advice to put on a coat and a hat, 100% of historians do agree that William Henry Harrison, did, in fact, die.

This brings us to his Vice President, John Tyler. No president had ever died in office before Harrison's one-month reign. While people had likely thought about a line of succession, it wasn't until after John F. Kennedy was assassinated that the 25th Amendment was ratified, officially promoting the Vice President to President in the event that the President is unable to perform their duties, and that is all we will say about that at present. Even Harrison's cabinet members called him "acting president." Opponents called Tyler "His Accidency," which, even by today's standards, is just a devastating burn. Henry Clay, leader of the Whigs, kicked Tyler out of the party. A whole bunch of Harrison's cabinet members resigned whenever Tyler tried to assert his authority as a president by vetoing bills. Congress opposed Tyler when he tried to nominate people to his own cabinet. This is, of course, insane. The Whigs tried to impeach him three times in his less-than-four-year-long presidency. Mid-19th century American politics were crazy because they were literally just making it up as they went along. Anyhow, Tyler consolidated his power and set out to fashion his own presidency that he never could have imagined a month earlier. 

On September 5, 1843 the Princeton was launched for the first time, a technological achievement in ship-building. The Princeton was known as a "corvette," the smallest class of warship, designed by Swedish inventor John Ericsson who would later go on to design and build the USS Monitor, the first steam-powered iron-hulled ship commissioned by the US Navy that would end up trading cannonballs off the CSS Merrimac at the Battle of Hampton Roads in the Civil War. 

Ericsson was a genius. Over his lifetime, not only did he design a working iron-hulled ship that changed the US Navy forever, but he invented an iron steamboat, a hot air engine, a solar engine, and a new kind of torpedo boat, among other things. He had designed a new ship that used twin screw-propellers that moved in opposite directions but the British Admiralty didn't like it. However, Ericsson's design had caught the eye of someone who could help his design see the light of day.

The Princeton was named so because it was the hometown of the Stockton family, a member of which was Captain Robert Field Stockton, the son of U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative Richard Stockton, the grandson of New Jersey Attorney General and signer of the Declaration of Independence (and not all confusingly-similarly-named) Richard Stockton. Captain Stockton spent his military career in the Navy, fighting in the War of 1812 at 17 years old. Stockton was an, ahem, skilled politician. He consecutively supported John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson - about as far apart on the political spectrum as you can possibly get. President Tyler asked him to be the Secretary of the Navy after the previous one resigned. He declined, but said he would help out. This gave him political influence. 

Using that influence, Robert Stockton invited Ericsson to come to the United States, and oversaw construction of the Princeton. The ship was commissioned on September 9, 1843 with Captain Stockton taking the helm. The Princeton was notable because it was the first American ship to employ screw propellers, powered by an engine below deck to protect it from gunfire. 

Over the next few months, the Princeton raced - and easily beat - the SS Great Western, then the fastest steam ship in the world, until everyone involved was satisfied that the ship was ready to go. In early 1844, the Princeton sailed for Hogg & Delamater's in New York to get two big guns (wrought-iron 225-pounders) in addition to the twelve 42-pound cannonades already installed: Peacemaker (which Stockton helped design) which weighed 27,000 pounds and was built in England, and the Ericsson-designed Oregon. Oregon was tested over 150 times. Stockton was the one who designed Peacemaker based on Ericsson's design, but didn't fully understand Ericsson's blueprints, unfortunately skipping some details that Ericsson had placed to stabilize and reinforce the massive cannon, and Stockton added another almost 13,000 pounds of weight to the gun. Stockton and Ericsson argued about the guns. Stockton was ready to take them out for a spin, Ericsson said Peacemaker hadn't undergone enough testing yet. 

Once the guns were fitted, the Princeton made its way to Washington, D.C., where she gained the interest of the town as well as government officials. By this time Stockton was actively seeking credit for the ship's design and increased tensions between him and Ericsson were putting an end to their partnership.

The Princeton arrived in Washington on February 13 and proceeded to make passenger runs down the Potomac River, just to show off, over the next week. Congress adjourned on February 20 so that congressmen could take a tour of the ship. 

On February 27 - Stockton fired Peacemaker (the big boy cannon that he had designed) and it had overheated. More vigorous testing of the gun should have taken place, apparently it had only been fired five times before receiving its official go-ahead. But the next day was a big day for Captain Stockton and the Princeton. That night Stockton wrote to his wife:

"Tomorrow - Tomorrow - Oh that tomorrow were past and I could say All is well."

It wouldn't be. 

On February 28, President John Tyler boarded the Princeton at Alexandria, Virginia, with a number of prominent politicians. Among them were former first lady Dolley Madison, Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, Captain Beverly Kennon - Chief of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repairs -  Representatives Virgil Maxey of Maryland and David Gardiner of New York, as well as Armistead, one of President Tyler's slaves.

One dignitary who declined an invitation to view the Princeton was former president and current Representative John Quincy Adams. He wasn't a fan of Tyler's expansionism and wrote derisively of the Princeton tour that the whole endeavor's purpose before Congress was "to fire their souls with patriotic ardor for a naval war."

As the Princeton sailed down the Potomac River, her cannons - 42 pounders - fired 26 times, one for each state in the Union at that point. When she passed Mount Vernon, the band played "Hail to the Chief." Upon the return to Washington, the various and assorted dignitaries were in the dining area giving toasts when Captain Stockton was informed that Peacemaker and Oregon were ready for a third firing demonstration. Initially he declined the request, but acquiesced in the presence of so much political power. Secretary of the Navy Gilmer was asked to make a toast before heading to the deck, which he pronounced "Fair trade and sailor's rights" to thunderous applause. It didn't take much, I guess. 

Everyone went to the deck of the Princeton, except for President Tyler, who stayed below to talk to somebody. He was halfway up the stairs to the deck, and there were about 100 people on the deck to view the firing of the guns when Stockton fired Peacemaker. Ericsson's warnings about Peacemaker, unfortunately, proved correct. The left side of the gun failed, shooting blazing hot metal across the deck and into the crowd of dignitaries. 

Congressman George Sykes, who was on the ship, wrote:

Upon turning my eyes towards [the gun] I was astonished to find that every man between me and the gun was lying prostrate on the deck - and about 30 or 40 men lying in heaps indiscriminately and promiscuously round the gun either killed, wounded, or knocked down and stunned by the concussion as the smoke gradually cleared away...

Secretary of the Navy Gilmer, Secretary of State Upshur, Captain Kennon, Rep. Maxey, Rep. Gardiner, and Tyler's slave Armistead were instantly killed. Captain Stockton, who had his leg resting on "Peacemaker" when it exploded, had his beard and hair burned off, and was in the hospital for weeks. 

The next day, President Tyler (uninjured as he had remained below deck for a few extremely fortunate minutes) wrote a letter to Congress absolving Stockton, or anyone, of blame, saying that the explosion "must be set down as one of the casualties which, to a greater or lesser degree, attend upon every service, and which are invariably incident to the temporal affairs of mankind."

Now Tyler had the unenviable task of replacing two cabinet members: Secretary of State Upshur, and Secretary of the Navy Gilmer - who had only been confirmed by the Senate two weeks earlier. Stockton was cleared by a court of inquiry, and Tyler sent him on board the Princeton to Galveston to deliver an offer to annex Texas. By this point Stockton was known as being somewhat rash, so Tyler had to tell him to calm down. While in Galveston, Stockton became aware of a growing desire in Texas to go to war against Mexico, and reported the news to President Tyler. Stockton was promoted to the rank of Commodore and was dispatched aboard the Princeton to California, where he eventually commanded the Pacific Fleet, and marched on Los Angeles. Mexican General Jose Antonio Castro abandoned all his artillery. Stockton sent a courier, a Christopher Houston (Kit) Carson, to inform Washington of his conquest of California.

Stockton resigned from the Navy in 1850 and ran for the Senate as a Democrat from New Jersey. It wasn't until 1913 that the 17th Amendment allowed for citizens to directly elect their senators, and so the elections fell to the State Legislatures, of whom New Jersey's State Legislature elected Stockton over the Whig incumbent William Dayton. Stockton resigned in 1853 to become president of the Delaware and Raritan Canal Company. He passed away in Princeton, New Jersey in 1866.

Rep. Gardiner's daughter, 24-year old Julia (to whom Tyler had already proposed, been declined, proposed again and was awaiting a formal response), was on board The Princeton and fainted when she learned of her father's death. President Tyler carried her off the ship back to Washington, and she went on to marry President Tyler in four months later, citing Tyler's actions on that day as the cement of her love for him. 

Julia Gardiner Tyler was the youngest First Lady in American history until 1886. Grover Cleveland, a long-time bachelor, invited the widow of his former law partner Oscar Folsom to the White House. Rumors flew that he was going to propose to the widow, he instead proposed to her 21-year old daughter, who accepted. Frances Folsom married 49-year old Grover Cleveland in the Blue Room of the White House in the only wedding to take place within the White House. 

UPDATE: One thing that I was remiss to...miss was the fact that John Tyler - who passed away in 1862 - has two still-living grandchildren (as of August 30, 2020). John and Julia's 4th child was Lyon Gardiner Tyler in 1853. Lyon G. Tyler was the president of the College of William and Mary from 1888 until 1919. After his first wife passed away in 1921, Tyler (67 years old) married Sue Ruffin (32 years old). They had three children together: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr. was born in 1924, Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928, and a third child died in infancy. Lyon, Jr. and Harrison are still alive - the grandsons of the 10th President of the United States, who has been dead for 148 years. 

Bleeding Kansas

In the wake of two separate mass shootings within 12-15 hours in the United States, both seemingly racially-charged (to put it as mildly as humanly possible), the History Nerd in me had been thinking about Bleeding Kansas. 


1850s America was rough, man. Congress for, oh, about 80 years had refused to do anything definitive on the issue of slavery, preferring instead to kick the can down the road hoping for a solution from...literally anywhere/anyone else. Congress just couldn't afford to run the risk of taking a stand that would alienate a group of rich Southern land- and slave-owners. The Union had to preserved, I suppose.

In 1850 Henry Clay introduced legislation that would end up as five separate bills known as the Compromise of 1850. Another effort to thread the needle in keeping the pro- and anti-slavery crowds happy, it admitted California to the Union as a free state, but strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act. It organized the New Mexico and Utah territories, and allowed popular sovereignty to determine how each territory would address slavery, essentially leaving it up to the residents of the territory to vote on whether or not they would allow slavery.

The Compromise of 1850 also banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. There were enough concessions to each group that a coalition of Whigs and Democrats gave the bills enough votes to pass. While Henry Clay introduced it, it was Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) who pushed it through Congress. And since California's admittance to the Union officially gave free states a majority, California agreed to send one anti-slavery senator (John C. Fremont) and one pro-slavery senator (William Gwin) to Congress to keep the balance.

The territory west of Missouri, which was admitted to the Union as a slave state as part of Henry Clay's Missouri Compromise in exchange for Maine's admittance to the Union as a free state and prohibited slavery north of 36° 30', was essential to Douglas' desire for a transcontinental railroad (which would obviously help the people of Douglas' Illinois). Ah! But this territory was north of 36°  30', and the Missouri Compromise dictated that those would have to be free states. Southern Congressmen just couldn't abide by that, as it would upset the precarious balance between free states and slave states they had worked so hard to maintain.

Enter the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, introduced by Douglas. Here's the gist of it:

-Organize the territory west of Missouri into two territories (Kansas, and Nebraska).
-Allow popular sovereignty to determine slavery's future in each territory, in which it was pretty much assumed that the Nebraska would oppose slavery, and Kansas would approve it, given its next-door status to Missouri.

But it wasn't enough for southern congressional leaders, particularly David Rice Atchison, a slave-owning lawyer/senator from Missouri who lived near the Missouri-Kansas border (Atchison's highest-profile client was Mormon founder Joseph Smith). Atchison led the charge for this compromise to repeal the Missouri Compromise and would go on to write "The Voice of Kansas, Let the South Respond," which urged Southerners to move to Kansas in order to pack the popular sovereignty vote in favor of slavery.

Because Douglas viewed the railroad as "the onward march of civilization," the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was ultimately included in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Thank God someone thought of the railroads.

Douglas received some push-back. In "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" (January 1854), a coalition of congressmen - among them Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner - wrote:
At the present session a new Nebraska bill has been reported by the Senate Committee on Territories, which, should it unhappily receive the sanction of Congress, will open all the unorganized Territories of the Union to the ingress of slavery...

...We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge, as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.

Douglas made an impassioned speech in favor of...railroads:
You must provide for continuous lines of settlement from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Ocean...[do not] fetter the limbs of this young giant.

Charles Sumner, one of the authors of the Appeal of the Independent Democrats, said of Douglas:
Alas! too often those principles which give consistency, individuality, and form to the Northern character, which render it staunch, strong, and seaworthy, which bind it together as with iron, are drawn out, one by one, like the bolts of the ill-fitted vessel, and from the miserable, loosened fragments is formed that human anomaly - a Northern man with Southern principles (emphasis his). Sir, no such man can speak for the North. (Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852-1857.)

The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed the Senate, 37-14. It passed in the House 113-100, with Southern Democrats voting in favor of it a 57-2 margin. President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May 30, 1854.

Then things got really wild.

Pro-slavery advocates and abolitionist activists rushed to Kansas. You really had three different political groups: Pro-Slavery, Free-Staters (or Free-Soilers), and Abolitionists. The Pierce Administration appointed the pro-slavery Andrew Horatio Reeder as the first territorial governor. There were rampant rumors of abolitionists and other Northeners flooding into Missouri, which led to Southern pro-slavery activists also moving to Kansas in an effort to sway the elections, scheduled for November 1854. It worked.

About five thousand "Border Ruffians" - led by ol' boy David Rice Atchison (a sitting Senator, may I remind you) who said "The prosperity or the ruin of the whole South depends on the Kansas struggle." - descended on Kansas to intimidate Free-Staters and abolitionists. In the November 1854 election, pro-slavery candidate John W. Whitfield won. But there was a slight issue: out of 2,833 votes cast, 1,729 were cast illegally. According to William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas (1883), there was one location in which only 20 of the 604 votes were actually cast by residents of Kansas. When the findings of the report into the Kansas elections were presented to President Pierce, he ignored them and ordered the results to stand, and then removed Governor Reeder from office.

On March 30, 1855 Kansas held the elections for its first territorial legislature. Again the Border Ruffians came (again led by Atchison). They seized at gunpoint the ballot boxes, and again cast thousands of fraudulent votes. In one case, Border Ruffians simply destroyed the ballot box at Bloomington. Territorial Governor Reeder voided the results in six of the districts that protested and ordered new elections in May. When the first Kansas legislature convened, the other representatives ousted the May winners in favor of the March winners, leading the whole group to be known as the Bogus Legislature. Tensions weren't exactly easing in Kansas.

Two old coots - pro-slavery Franklin Coleman and Free-Stater Charles Dow - had argued for years about a plot of land that both had claimed. On November 21, 1855 Coleman shot Dow nine times in the back. That it seemingly wasn't about slavery was irrelevant - shots had been fired. This is the unofficial beginning of the Wakarusa War, and Bleeding Kansas as a whole. Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones - himself a pro-slavery man and the leader of the group that destroyed the aforementioned ballot box, which earned his appointment as Sheriff - arrested a Free-Stater named Jacob Branson for "disturbing the peace." Free-Staters quickly got Branson released, but were so alarmed by law enforcement that they raised a militia to strengthen the town of Lawrence, which had become a Free-State stronghold. Jones responded by raising 1,500 of his own men, most of them from Missouri, to invade Lawrence and get rid of the Free-Staters. The town planned for a war, but the governor was able to make peace in December 1855.

Sheriff Jones returned in April 1856 to rid Lawrence of the Free-State movement and George W. Brown's Herald of Freedom, a leading Free-State newspaper. Jones' very presence riled up the people of Lawrence, who surrounded Jones where he got "grabbed by the collar" and "punched in the face." (Schultz, Duane (1997). Quantrill's War: The Life & Times Of William Clarke Quantrill, 1837–1865)

On May 19, 1956 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner began an epic two-day speech that became known as his "Crime Against Kansas" speech. He had been preparing for this speech for two months, and it showed. It was 112 pages long, he had memorized it, and no one was spared:

-Sumner exposed Atchison on the Senate floor for his role in the troubles in Kansas, comparing him to Roman emperor Catiline, who had betrayed his country to overthrow the existing order. Sumner had documentation from newspapers to back up his claims. (Despite Sumner's speech being published, Atchison had no idea he had been sonned. Two days later he gave his own speech to some men from Texas he had hired specifically to kill anti-slavery activists and loot Free-State towns. It wasn't a good look).

-The framer of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas was "a noise-some, squat, and nameless animal...not a proper model for an American senator."

-South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, he said "[Butler] has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery." Sumner would go on to mock the way Butler spoke, though Butler had recently suffered a stroke.

This last one resulted in one of the most astounding acts in Congressional history: Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina and Butler's second cousin, had taken offense to Sumner's words. Had Brooks considered Sumner a gentleman, he would have challenged him to a duel. Instead, Brooks picked a cane that he would use to discipline a dog, and on May 22, 1856 proceeded to beat the ever-loving piss out of Sumner. For over a minute Brooks hit Sumner over the head with a cane. Sumner, who lost his sight with the first blow, had fallen between his seat and his desk and couldn't get up, was helpless as the rest of the Senate was too stunned to move. Brooks calmly walked out of the Senate. Brooks survived a censure resolution in the House and resigned. He was immediately re-elected in a special election and served in the House until he passed away at age 37 of croup. Both Brooks and Sumner were hailed as heroes by their respective stances on slavery and the deep divisions of the country were solidified as even Congress couldn't find civil ground.

The day before Sumner's beating, Sheriff Jones Jones returned to Lawrence with a small outfit of soldiers and a gun battle ensued, leaving Jones partially paralyzed, but not before he destroyed the printing press of the Herald of Freedom as well as the Kansas Free State, burned the Free State Hotel, burned the house of Charles Robinson - the Free-State militia leader, and looted the rest of the  town. This became known as the Sacking of Lawrence. Jones recovered and tried to win support from the governor to jail his adversaries but when it was clear that the governor was trying to win peace rather than further escalate tensions, Jones resigned and moved to New Mexico.

On the morning of May 26 an Ohio abolitionist named John Brown (who would father 20 children), four of his sons, and two additional men rode into Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas - a pro-slavery town. Brown and his posse forced five pro-slavery men out of their homes and proceeded to hack them to death with broadswords in front of their families.

Religious leaders started to get on board. Prominent clergyman Henry Ward Beecher started sending rifles to Kansas in crates labeled "Bibles" (the rifles became known as Beecher's Bibles, which is as solid a band name as you could ask for).

Nine years prior to the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre, John Brown met Frederick Douglass in Springfield, Massachusetts. Douglass said of Brown:
Though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery. 

At this 1847 meeting Brown outlined to Douglass his plan to lead a war to free the slaves.

On July 4, 1856 proclamations from President Pierce led 500 U.S. Army troops from Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley to descend on Topeka, where the large Free-State Legislature had set up their own government. They approved a constitution and everything (rejected by Congress). The troops brought cannons and with lit fuses pointed at Constitution Hall in Topeka ordered the dispersal of the Free-State Legislature. Colonel Edwin Vose "Bull Head" Sumner - cousin of the recently-beaten Charles Sumner - led the effort to disperse the Free-Staters (nicknamed "Bull Head" due to the legend that a musket ball bounced off his head, Sumner would later serve as the oldest commander in the Union Army).

In August 1856 between 250-400 Border Ruffians led by John W. Reid, a lawyer, had information that John Brown was in Osawatomie and moved his men towards the town, which was largely deserted out of a fear of what was exactly about to happen. Brown's son Frederick was leading an advance party towards the town when a pro-slavery Baptist preacher named Martin White was leading a group of Border Ruffians as a guide. White shot and killed Frederick Brown. When John Brown heard his son had died, he led an attack of 40 abolitionists against the Border Ruffians that only ended when they ran out of ammunition. Four Free-Staters had died, as well as two Border Ruffians. After the Battle of Osawatomie, Brown wrote:

God sees it. I have only a short time to live - only one death to die, and I will die fighting for His cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. I will give them something else to do than extend slave territory. I will carry this war into Africa.

Brown would spend the rest of the year in Kansas, and then move back East and begin plotting what would become the raid on Harpers Ferry, resulting in his execution and yet another turning point that set out the country's path towards war.

After the Battle of Osawatomie, Pierce named John W. Geary, who had been the first mayor of San Francisco (and would later be governor of Pennsylvania), as the third territorial governor of Kansas in September 1856. Geary didn't stop the violence in Kansas in his six months as governor, but he rejected the pro-slavery contingent in the territory and spent the next few years in Washington warning people of the danger in Kansas. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War and died of a heart attack shortly after his term as Pennsylvania governor ended.

With the elections of 1856 the old Whigs had disintegrated as a political party and gave rise to a new party: the Republican Party, which would become the party of abolitionism, or at least the party to stop the spread of slavery in the United States. Please keep in mind how the Republican Party and the Democratic Party essentially switched platforms over the 100 years from the 1850s to the 1950s. The election of Abraham Lincoln brought about the actual split between the states, but the roots had been there for years.