Violence in Abolitionist America: and the “Compliment Sandwich”
Sardis Birchard, the uncle and father figure of Rutherford B. Hayes, confessed, “I do despise an abolitionist.” When he penned this phrase, I think he had not considered the volatility with which it could be taken. Viewpoints like this might have done little more than generate tacit agreement with his buddies in Northwest Ohio in the 1830s. But, in this instance, he was writing to his brother Austin Birchard, who lived in Vermont and identified as an abolitionist. Austin could not let it go by. He penned a response to Sardis on June 3, 1838. In this post, we look at one section of this letter and discuss the topic of “mob violence” within this abolitionist movement. Image: Austin and Sardis Birchard. Austin is on the left. Sardis is on the right, wearing glasses and holding the cane.
Before I post these entries, I send them to one of my colleagues who gives great feedback on their readability. She always employs the “compliment sandwich,” a tactic designed to spare my feelings by placing compliments on the front and back end of what she really wants to discuss: her critiques. While I see through her plan—quite clearly—it does provide a pleasant since of collegiality in the process. Almost 200 years ago, Austin does something similar. He starts his letter by discussing young Rutherford’s future plans and ends it with a discussion on money. What he really wants to talk about is abolition, and this lengthy middle section is what I’m interested in as well.
Austin makes his point known that he disagrees with Sardis’s dislike of abolitionists, and points out Sardis has it wrong about who was at fault for the violence emanating from this activism. Austin felt the mobs were made of those who would like to disrupt “freedom of speech & the press,” presumably in opposition to Sardis’s view that the fault lied with abolitionists. Austin asked Sardis to expand his understanding beyond how “Southern slave holding or northern mobs” depicted abolitionism. To make his point, Austin introduced the tragic story of Elijah P. Lovejoy, the Presbyterian minister who was killed defending his press just a few months earlier.
Lovejoy opened a press and printed an abolitionist publication called the Observer in Missouri in 1827. He refused to stop publication, even after receiving requests to moderate his views. After a free black riverboat worker, Francis McIntosh, killed a constable, a number of St. Louis citizens lynched him. They then turned their attention toward Lovejoy, whom they blamed for McIntosh’s actions. Lovejoy subsequently moved his operations across the river to Alton, Illinois.
Despite now being in a free state, Lovejoy still aroused anger. He called for a meeting in October 1837 to organize an Anti-Slavery Society and the state attorney general packed the meeting with individuals who undermined the gathering’s purpose. Lovejoy’s opponents routinely destroyed his press. Tired of the destruction, Lovejoy made the fateful decision, on November 7, to defend his operation. He was killed by the mob.
Lovejoy’s death illustrates larger topics that were occurring in the United States during the 1830s. The mail service provided for quick and cheap dissemination of tracts and pamphlets, creating a communications revolution. President Andrew Jackson attempted to stop abolitionist material to the South, arguing it would incite slave insurrections. Former President John Tyler found this quick dissemination of information so odious that he spoke at length about how these tracts preyed on the “youthful imagination.” Regardless of how effective these pamphlets might have been in sparking the imagination and causing violence, they were effective at generating a response from individuals who hoped to disrupt their distribution. The distaste for these tracts resulted in multiple riots, over 100 in the 1830s. In our current moment of endless news cycles and partisan news talk shows, we might find some commonalities with those in the 1830s who felt that more information did not always bring positive results.
In this midst of this larger episode in American history, the correspondence between these two brothers highlights the volatile pressure points. It also highlights the multiple viewpoints that influenced Rutherford B. Hayes. As we chart these influences on Hayes (in future posts), we can see how elements of each of his uncles’ arguments were internalized by the eventual 19th president. Perhaps, more readily important, it gives us an example of civil discourse when our social media feeds are something else. Perhaps we could enjoy our different opinions if we interacted with this level of cordiality as Austin (and my colleague), when he employed his version of the tasteful “compliment sandwich.”