Jonathan Earle

Marcus Morton and the Dilemma of Jacksonian Antislavery in Massachusetts, 1817–1849

MASSACHUSETTS JUSTLY EARNED a reputation as the historical center of the movement to end slavery in the United States. Bay State abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, David Walker, and Theodore Parker demanded immediate emancipation of slaves and, oftentimes, equal rights for blacks. They kept the issue of slavery squarely before a skeptical American voting public in the decades before the Civil War and never wavered in their radical attack on the South's (and, it could be argued, the nation's) central institution. Nonetheless, at the movement's height abolitionists per se accounted for only the tiniest of minorities among voters, even among the middle-class evangelicals who provided the lion's share of their financial and numerical support. The overwhelming majority of antislavery partisans—those Americans who eventually stood up to slavery and its extension—never belonged to any antislavery organization.

Marcus Morton. Engraving from U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

It took far more than professed agitators to overthrow slavery in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Americans of many stripes—black and white, rich and poor, Whig and Democrat—came to oppose slavery and its expansion in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. They came to this position for a variety of reasons. This essay will focus on the career of one Massachusetts antislavery politician, the jurist and two-time Democratic governor Marcus Morton. The story of how Morton defended his antislavery position—as well as the often tortuous path he followed into the Free Soil and Republican Parties—encapsulates the social and political transformation of the North during the mid nineteenth century.

Antebellum Democrats and Free Soilers rarely appear at the center of accounts of the antislavery movement; indeed, in recent years historians have usually cast the Democratic Party as one of slaveholders and their Northern lackeys.¹ Former Jacksonians such as Morton, however, formed a crucial part of the antislavery coalition; they lent it mass political appeal by infusing it with new members and grounding it in Democratic notions of egalitarian democracy and producer's rights. Far removed from the righteous abolitionists of Cambridge's Brattle Street, Morton's career in rough-and-tumble Democratic politics brings to life a vital moment in antebellum U.S. history—a moment when layers of loyalties, patronage ties, and political coalitions dissolved in the face of slavery's continued expansion.

In a decades-long political career during which he occupied both federal and state offices, Morton navigated a rocky course among the demands of the national Democratic Party, his constituents in Massachusetts, and his own conscience. Each fall between 1828 and 1843, the longtime jurist moonlighted as the Jacksonian candidate for governor, making his yearly appearance on the ballot—and his frequent defeat at the polls—as predictable "as the fall of the sear and yellow leaf."² During these years, including the two that he held the governorship, Morton downplayed but did not deny his strong opposition to slavery in order to prioritize Democratic Party issues such as expanded suffrage and a secret ballot, relief for debtors, repeal of an unpopular temperance law, and an end to state credit to private corporations. Like most antebellum Democrats, he believed that organized abolitionism distracted public attention from more important problems facing the United States; in particular, he shared with other radical Jacksonians the conviction that the influence of a "monied Aristocracy" posed a far more serious threat to the republic.³

Nonetheless, Morton's aversion to slavery—a feeling common among New Englanders—underpinned his political career, functioning sometimes as a boon and surfacing at other times as a liability.⁴ Morton's political successes in Massachusetts depended to a significant degree on his antislavery reputation: he won the governorship twice in part by siphoning off the votes of antislavery Workingmen, Antimasons, Whigs, and even Liberty Party men in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1845, however, as Morton awaited confirmation in the U.S. Senate to the federally appointed post of collector of the Port of Boston, that reputation became an Achilles' heel. Southern members of his own party, determined to excise any hint of dissent on the topic of slavery, attempted to derail his political viability with public accusations.⁵ If Morton's enemies had charged him with corruption or theft, Morton could easily have proven his innocence. But the charge leveled against Morton was abolitionism. Morton responded by retreating from his outspoken criticisms of slavery and distancing himself from organized abolitionism, thus demonstrating how little room then existed in the Massachusetts (or, for that matter, the Northern) Democracy for an antislavery politician. This tortured self-defense, echoed by his supporters and numerous other Free Soil Democratics, provides an object lesson in the realities—as well as the dilemmas—of Jacksonian antislavery.⁶

Marcus Morton was born in Freetown in Bristol County in 1784. His mother, Mary Cary, descended from the pious early settlers of Bridgewater; his father's ancestors had arrived in Plymouth Colony in the 1620s. Morton's father, Nathaniel, a self-taught "farmer of narrow means," provided for his family with only economy and "unremitting toil."⁷ Like other yeomen in the Taunton River Valley, the Mortons watched their agricultural yields and socioeconomic status decline precipitously during the last years of the eighteenth century, in sharp contrast to the bustling markets and maritime might of Boston, Salem, and New Bedford. According to one historian of the area, poor soil quality and weak domestic and overseas markets made life difficult for farmers in Plymouth and Bristol Counties, where sentiment ran strongly towards Daniel Shays's rebels in the 1780s. The region's settlers mostly tilled the "thinly populated waste of pine forest and cedar swamp," raising timber, wool, and corn.⁸

Despite his homespun rural background, Nathaniel served in both the General Court and the Commonwealth's Executive Council, while Mary, who had a "good education for those days," was a mainstay at the town's Congregational church. Marcus, the couple's only son, recalled being reared in the "orthodox Congregational faith" and educated at the local common school; his sister became a missionary. When Marcus turned fourteen, his parents sent him to Rochester, New York, to split his time between the lesson room and farm of Reverend Calvin Chaddock. In 1801, with Chaddock's recommendation, Morton gained admission to Brown College.⁹

While at Brown, Morton became an ardent follower of Thomas Jefferson. Morton publicly displayed his Jeffersonian beliefs during a commencement oration in 1804, embarrassing his teachers and classmates by condemning their "collective extravagance" and arguing that such extravagance in expenditure of public moneys inevitably creates inequality among the people.¹⁰ Morton's decision to attend Brown was in itself a political act—Massachusetts students who passed over Harvard and its conservative Unitarianism for Brown's heterodoxy and tolerance tended later to become opponents of traditional Massachusetts Federalism, National Republicanism, and Whiggery.¹¹

After college, Morton attended Tapping Reeve's famous law school in Litchfield, Connecticut. There he became acquainted with the school's most outspoken student, John C. Calhoun. Morton was in awe of his Southern classmate's "brilliancy of intellect," and the two built a close personal and political friendship based on their shared antipathy to central authority. They corresponded regularly after law school, and the independent-minded South Carolinian served as a political mentor to Morton and many other Massachusetts Democrats.¹²

After graduation Morton returned to Taunton to practice law.¹³ Although the fourth-oldest settlement in Plymouth Colony, Taunton was far less affluent than its Bay State neighbors. In Taunton, Morton further honed his anti-establishment politics, especially in his frequent clashes with Bristol County's Federalist town fathers (he was an outspoken supporter of Jefferson's Embargo). Nonetheless, he maintained good relations with all of his peers. What one historian called his "fineness of temper" provoked good will even among his political opponents.

The county's Democratic-Republicans nominated Morton for the U.S. Congress in 1814, but he lost this first bid for office—pro-war supporters of Pres. James Madison won few popularity contests (or elections) in Federalist New England. Two years later, however, he did win, surprising political experts who thought he could not carry a rural and longtime Federalist district. He arrived in Washington in 1817 to begin two terms in Congress, a time he later described to a friend as "the lamest part of my life." He offered his support to Andrew Jackson, then under attack for conduct during the Seminole War. In his first direct engagement with antislavery politics, he took an active role in opposition to the admission of Missouri as a slave state during the Missouri Crisis of 1819–1820. Morton voted to prohibit slavery outright in Missouri and then to free all slaves there at age twenty-five. He later voted to keep the 36°30' provision—the line north of which slavery was prohibited in the Compromise—in the measure after various Southerners had proposed to strike it. He maintained his position during the second session, voting against Missouri's admission with the 36°30' stipulation and slavery. Years later, Morton expressed regret that, due to the "extraordinary influence and extraordinary efforts" of Henry Clay, "who was supposed by some to have resorted to extraordinary means to accomplish his purpose," the antislavery side failed to prevail in the Missouri crisis.¹⁴

Morton also recalled another experience that at this time shaped his attitudes about slavery: he saw "two droves of human beings manacled and chained together, driven like cattle by a drover, under the walls of the capitol, in which were assembled the representatives of the people proud and boastful of their liberty." This spectacle, he later admitted, convinced him Congress had the right—even the obligation—to abolish slavery in the territories and the capital city: "I can entertain no doubt ... [t]hat the congress has the control of the whole subject within the District of Columbia."¹⁵ He saw a clear distinction, however, between Congress's jurisdiction over slavery in the District of Columbia and its lack of jurisdiction in Southern states. Despite his strong and public antislavery feeling, Morton insisted that only the slaveholders themselves could put an end to slavery. Although this ability to parse on so delicate an issue may strike modern readers as a contradiction, it was one maintained by scores of antebellum politicians. In 1822, after returning to his law practice in Taunton, Morton put his belief into action. When Massachusetts officials imprisoned a Virginia slave owner named Camillus Griffith on criminal charges for trying to reclaim a runaway slave, Morton successfully defended the planter in court. More than two decades later, as Morton attempted to deflect charges of abolitionism, he invoked the Griffith case: "When no member of the bar would appear for him, I came forward and, at the risk of reputation and business, bailed him out of jail, defended him before the court, and successfully vindicated the law against prejudice and violence."¹⁶

John C. Calhoun, Morton's friend and later political opponent. Engraving by W. W. Rice and John C. Buttre, 1849–1850. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Morton entered state politics in 1824, when he received the nomination for lieutenant governor under William Eustis, with whom he had served in Congress and who had been a member of Jefferson's cabinet. He became governor when Eustis died early the next year, but with the supposedly non-partisan National Republican Party drifting towards a political alliance with John Quincy Adams and other Old Federalists (men Morton called "aristocrats") Morton refused to stand again in 1825. His successor, Levi Lincoln, Jr.—the last governor able to unite Old Republicans and Old Federalists—appointed Morton to the state supreme court later that year. Although he was the lone Jeffersonian on the bench, Morton wrote the the opinions for several cases, including Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (in which the court invalidated the Charles River Bridge company's monopoly charter); a few involving disestablishment of the Congregational church; and Commonwealth v. Kneeland, a successful blasphemy suit. For the latter, Morton wrote a dissent that won praise in legal circles.¹⁷

Safely ensconced on the state bench, Morton turned his attention to forging a political coalition to oppose what he called the "Aristocratic Faction"—the powerful network of ex-Federalists, conservative National Republicans, financiers, and manufacturers that ran the state from Boston. The supremacy of this financial and political elite, which firmly controlled the state house, the bench, and, from 1825 to 1829, the White House, further radicalized the die-hard Jeffersonian. Morton subscribed wholeheartedly to what James L. Huston has termed the "political economy of aristocracy": the belief that inequalities of wealth resulted from exploitative "aristocrats" who used government to transfer the fruits of others' labor to themselves.¹⁸ Morton saw the Second Bank of the United States and the exclusive clique of interrelated Lees, Otises, Higginsons, Cabots, and Perkinses who controlled business and politics, especially in Boston, as the embodiment of this new aristocracy. "We always have had a powerful monied Aristocracy," Morton wrote to his friend John C. Calhoun,

which by the influence of wealth has attached to itself a great force of talents and no inconsiderable share of moral worth. Wealth is here more regarded and draws to its possessor more consideration and respect than in any other free Country. This is the weakness or fault of N[ew] England character.¹⁹

Like many other "hard money" Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats in the 1820s and 1830s, Morton viewed the growing "Money Power" as the most serious threat facing the republic, far more serious a threat than slavery or slaveholders.

Morton, perhaps naively, believed that enough votes and energy existed across Massachusetts to drive the National Republican (soon to be Whig) majority from power. He saw potential in the existing—though fragmented—opposition, which drew most of its support from populations that had long opposed Federalism. They included farmers from southern counties, such as Morton's Bristol and neighboring Plymouth, Barnstable, and Norfolk; fishermen from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod; descendents of the Shays rebels in the western parts of the state; and mechanics, ship caulkers, and day-laborers in the growing seaport cities. Other disgruntled Massachusetts men joined these groups, including the banker David Henshaw, who had started his career as a druggist and felt snubbed by Boston's elite of Unitarian financiers and manufacturers.²⁰ Morton applauded when Henshaw established the anti-Adams, anti-aristocratic newspaper Statesman in 1821 and quickly became the acknowledged leader of the state's nascent Democratic Party in southern and western Massachusetts. In 1827, both Henshaw and Morton sought an alliance with the managers of Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign against Adams.²¹ Immediately after a pro-Jackson rally on January 8, 1828, the leaders of the state's opposition movement initiated a gubernatorial campaign for Morton and published a list of "Republican Jackson" candidates for the state senate.²² Although Morton won majorities in only eighteen towns, mostly in the southern and western parts of the state, the Democratic Party in Massachusetts had finally begun to coalesce.²³

David Henshaw. Lithograph by Charles Fenderich, 1843. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The South Carolina slaveholder John C. Calhoun, seeking reelection as vice president in 1828, helped draw together the various opposition groups in Massachusetts. Morton, close with Calhoun since their days together at law school and secure in his position on the state bench, became his chief source for Bay State political information.²⁴ Between 1828 and 1831, he also lent his support to Calhoun's presidential ambitions. Morton believed that Calhoun, an outspoken champion of "Southern rights," had the best chance at uniting New England's rural Jeffersonians, urban artisans, anti-Adams commercial interests, and the handful of ex-Federalists who had supported Andrew Jackson in 1828. He also viewed the South Carolinian as a potentially moderating influence on the Tennessee parvenu occupying the White House, whom most New England Democrats found "rash and violent."²⁵

Morton was especially drawn to Calhoun's ideas about states' rights and the protection of minorities.²⁶ "My opinion is the danger most to be feared is encroachment by the powerful upon the weak, and by the rich upon the poor—and not the reverse," he wrote to Calhoun. "The greatest vigilance is needed to protect the common people of the community, the industrious, quiet, producing classes of Society against the overbearing influence of the rich and the powerful.... [A]s one means of accomplishing this object, care should also be taken to protect individual States from the combined power of the whole."²⁷ By the "industrious, quiet, producing classes," Morton meant the people who voted for him each year—the farmers, ship caulkers, and New Bedford factory workers—a group that did not include enslaved African Americans. In fact, before 1831 Morton dismissed Calhoun's well-known pro-slavery pronouncements as essentially inconsequential. For example, when he advised Calhoun that his views on slavery weakened his support in New England, Morton added that such opposition could be overcome. "There are two subjects permanent and unavoidable operating against you," Morton confided:

These are the Slavery subject and the Tariff subject. Altho' the efforts [of] the Federalists have been untiring to excite a prejudice against Slave holders; yet that prejudice is principally confined to that party.... The spirit of democracy with the aid of party discipline and the patronage of the National Administration will ride over both of these.²⁸

Calhoun, of course, did not become the Democratic presidential candidate in 1832. Andrew Jackson ran for a second term and won in a landslide, while at the same time breaking once and for all with his mercurial vice president over Nullification and other issues.²⁹ The public break with Jackson marked the end of Calhoun's career in the executive branch.³⁰

Although Morton privately claimed he supported Calhoun in the dispute with President Jackson, in March 1831 he dramatically broke off political relations with him.³¹ What caused the rift? Surely a portion can be explained by political expedience on Morton's part: the Massachusetts Democracy depended more on federal patronage than on Calhoun's organizational skills. More importantly, to Morton, Calhoun's recent actions supporting the South Carolina Nullifiers and praising slavery revealed that he had "depart[ed] ... from original [Democratic] principles":

[T]he danger to be most feared and guarded against is encroachment by the powerful upon the weak, and by the rich upon the poor—and not the reverse.... If I am not always found on the side of the weak against the strong, whether in reference to Governments, corporations, or people, it will be cause I err in finding which side that is. I cannot but fear that you and I might differ in the application of the above principles more than the principles themselves.³²

On nearly every issue before the public, from internal improvements to banks to the need for constitutional protection for minorities "from the combined power of the whole," little disagreement existed between Morton and Calhoun. Morton had expressed support for Calhoun's opposition to high tariffs and even his devotion to South Carolina's economic interests; he also seconded Calhoun's views on states' rights and internal improvements.³³ He stood apart from Calhoun, however, on one vital, deal-breaking difference in "principle"—the tenet that a state, acting on its own, could declare null and void any federal law it found unconstitutional.³⁴ Morton concluded that the protection of slavery, not states' rights, lay at the heart of Calhoun's doctrines. He also determined that slavery supported a political and economic class that bore a more than striking resemblance to the "monied aristocracy" he battled in Boston.

As far back as 1828 Morton had chided Calhoun for an earlier dalliance with New England's "monied class"; by 1831 he saw Calhoun's political moves as nothing less than the justification of an aristocracy of slaveholders. He coolly predicted that either Calhoun or Clay would represent the "aristocratic" party in the next presidential election.³⁵ Morton's break with Calhoun split the Massachusetts Democratic Party. One faction, loyal to Henshaw, continued to support the South Carolinian; Morton's group backed Jackson's new lieutenant, Martin Van Buren.

By the mid 1830s the second party system had solidified in Massachusetts. Both Democrats and Whigs boasted complete rosters of professional politicians, party-line newspapers, and patronage pecking orders. Although they disagreed on many issues, they came together—squarely—on one: the debate over slavery should be kept outside of state and national politics. For large majorities in both parties, the issue sapped strength needed for other battles, such as the tariff question or abolition of imprisonment for debt.

The sliver of antislavery voting that existed in the parties gravitated towards Marcus Morton, whose position on the matter was strikingly different from those of his Whig opponents—especially Edward Everett. In March 1826, the former minister and Harvard professor had taken to the floor of Congress to defend the slave system. "Domestic slavery is not, in my judgment, to be set down as an immoral and irreligious institution," he told the House in his second speech as a U.S. Congressman:

I would cede the whole continent to any one who would take it—to England, to France, to Spain—I would see it sunk in the bottom of the ocean, before I would see any part of this fair America converted into a continental Hayti.³⁶

While the three-hour oration won the windy Everett friends among the state's conservative textile barons, many voters hostile to slavery supported Morton, despite the national Democratic Party's dismal record on slavery and race relations. Other parts of Everett's 1826 speech were soon forgotten, but this portion was cited well beyond the Whig orator's dying day. One Everett supporter correctly predicted that his position on slavery "will make him infinitely odious to many people who wished him well," while Ralph Waldo Emerson noted of his former idol that, "in case of a servile war, he would buckle on his knapsack to defend the planter."³⁷

Edward Everett. Engraving after a photograph, undated. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Moderate antislavery voters fortified Morton's slow-growing electoral coalition in the mid 1830s.³⁸ In 1835, for example, Morton answered a formal query from abolitionist minister Gardner G. Perry on the topic of slavery, a request that Everett refused. Although Morton's answers fell far short of the abolitionist position, his reply clearly demonstrated his opposition to the institution: "I have a deep and strong conviction of the unrighteousness of holding our fellow men in servitude, and of the magnitude of the curse of slavery to our country." Nonetheless, he feared that the question of how to rid the nation of slavery raised "appalling if not insurpassable difficulties":

Can we interfere with the conduct of the slave holder towards their slaves? The power of holding slaves is guaranteed to a portion of the union by the sacred instrument which we are all bound to support. And we have great reason to fear that any interference with what the slave holders deem to be there domestic rights and their legal property will in any degree, tend to ameliorate the condition of the slaves of to facilitate their eventual emancipation.

Morton also noted his concern that further agitation by abolitionists would excite slaveholders' prejudices and "retard the growth of, if not entirely extinguish," their "humane" principles.³⁹

Morton scripted his reply to Perry against the backdrop of slavery's explosion onto the Massachusetts political scene in the 1830s. First, abolitionists had flooded the mails and Congress with massive postal and petition campaigns. Closer to home, anti-abolitionist Bostonians filled Faneuil Hall to overflowing in August 1835 to convene a meeting called by both the Whig Atlas and the Jacksonian Morning Post. In the keynote address, the Whig Brahmin Harrison Gray Otis railed against abolitionists for forming a "dangerous association" that incited blacks to rebellion and women to "turn their sewing parties into abolition clubs." Worse still, according to Otis, this "revolutionary society" was becoming a "political association" that "interrogated" candidates (just as Reverend Perry had Morton) about slavery. Within weeks of Otis's speech and Morton's reply to Perry, the city's anti-abolition fervor climaxed when a mob dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the streets of Boston at the end of a rope.⁴⁰

Many, if not most, local abolitionists held the governing Whig Party responsible for the riots. "The mobs of 1834–5, and especially the great outbreak of October, 1835, when 5,000 'gentlemen of property and standing' broke up the female anti-slavery society prayer meeting, were Whig mobs," wrote Joshua Leavitt in The Emancipator:

The ferocious pro-slavery meeting in August of that year, in Faneuil Hall ... was got up, officered, and addressed by Whigs. In the following January, Gov. Everett, the Whig governor ... recommended that the abolitionists be indicted at common law.... During all these years of Whig proscription, the country Democratic press, and the Daily Advocate, of Boston ... took sides with the abolitionists and in favor of free speech.⁴¹

As the Whig Party made itself especially repugnant to antislavery Bay Staters, some turned to the Democrats, who afforded them some alliance with Morton's reputation. Morton increased his vote totals by 14 percent in the 1835 gubernatorial election, picking up several formerly Whig towns—his largest one-year increase in nine tries for the office. The next year, he added another 7 percent, bringing his total to a competitive 46 percent of those voting. Constant agitation by the state's abolitionists added to the Morton's totals by keeping the slavery issue before the public, even though most Garrisonians refused to vote. From 1830 to 1839, the year Morton won the governor's chair by a single vote, Morton's vote increased from an anemic 32 percent to 50 percent—many of those votes provided by nominal Whigs and Democrats angry about their parties' expediency in regard to slavery.

Whatever popular outcry existed against slavery, both Whig and Democratic leaders ignored it. Like most Democrats, Morton believed no action could be taken against slavery where it already existed except by slaveholders themselves. He repeatedly stated he would take no active part in agitating against it. Unlike his fellow party leaders in Massachusetts, however, Morton publicly and repeatedly attacked slaveholding and argued that Congress had the right to abolish the institution in the District of Columbia and in the territories.⁴² "To say that I am utterly opposed to slavery in every form, civil, political, or domestic, is saying very little," Morton wrote.

I deem slavery to be the greatest curse and the most portentous evil which a righteous God ever inflicted upon a nation; and that every effort consistent with a moral duty and the constitution ... ought to be made to mitigate, and, if possible, to extirpate it from the land.⁴³

During the eight days before the 1837 gubernatorial election, Morton received requests from several abolitionists—including the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, Daniel Henshaw, and "the colored citizens of New Bedford"—to state his opinion on issues connected with slavery. The queries reflected a more concentrated strategy by politically minded abolitionists to poll issue-evading candidates for their positions in regard to slavery. Morton declined to answer the various inquiries, fearing "it would do myself and the democratic cause more injury than benefit."⁴⁴ Despite this reticence, his attitudes about slavery reached a public forum on November 8, 1837, when the Boston Advocate printed a personal letter he had written to Morton Eddy on September 28. Although the letter accurately represented his views, Morton would live to regret it.

TABLE 1: MASSACHUSETTS GUBERNATORIAL RETURNS, 1828–1843

	Democratic	National	Antimasonic	Workingmen's	Liberty	Scattered	Morton's
	(Morton)	Rep./Whig		Party	Party		Change

1828	12.89%	81.53%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	5.58%	-
1829	19.50%	71.63%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	8.87%	6.61%
1830	30.61%	65.52%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	3.87%	11.11%
1831	25.96%	65.19%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	8.85%	-4.65%
1831	20.55%	53.92%	25.01%	0.00%	0.00%	0.52%	-5.42%
1832	23.66%	52.85%	22.97%	0.00%	0.00%	0.51%	3.12%
1833	24.84%	40.32%	29.30%	5.55%	0.00%	0.00%	1.18%
1834	24.81%	57.72%	13.91%	3.35%	0.00%	0.22%	-0.03%
1835	38.87%	57.86%	2.93%	0.00%	0.00%	0.34%	14.06%
1836	45.91%	53.78%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.30%	7.05%
1837	39.38%	60.28%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.34%	-6.54%
1838	44.49%	54.97%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.54%	5.11%
1839	50.00%	49.70%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.30%	5.51%
1840	43.33%	55.68%	0.00%	0.00%	0.85%	0.14%	-6.67%
1841	46.25%	50.40%	0.00%	0.00%	3.14%	0.21%	2.92%
1842	47.88%	46.56%	0.00%	0.00%	5.41%	0.15%	1.63%
1843	44.72%	47.74%	0.00%	0.00%	7.34%	0.20%	-3.16%

Source: Official Returns, Massachusetts State Archives. See also Earle, Undaunted Democracy: Jacksonian Antislavery and Free Soil (forthcoming), 248.

In the letter, which Morton later described as a "very hasty and rather slovenly reply ... designed expressly for private use," the jurist reiterated his previously published advocacy for the freedom of petition and speech and his opposition to slavery in the District of Columbia and its extension into new territory. The letter also provides something different: a clear glimpse into Morton's hard-to-discern personal views on the topics of slavery, race, and religion. "For one human being to hold others, whom the Almighty has created his fellows, in bondage, is entirely repugnant to that principle of equality which is founded in religion as well as in natural right," he wrote. "That principle of equality knows no distinction of race or condition, includes in its benevolent embrace the whole human family."⁴⁵ Unlike most other Democratic opponents to slavery, who consistently emphasized the institution's deleterious effect on white people, Morton suggested his opposition was based on a "principle of equality" he saw as guaranteed by both natural rights doctrine and Christianity.⁴⁶ This, of course, does not mean Morton thought of African Americans as white peoples' social equals; there is no evidence that he did, and if indeed he believed in absolute racial equality, it would have been unusual even among abolitionists. Still, Morton obviously held this "principle of equality" as the centerpiece of both his religious and political traditions, and he saw it threatened by aristocratic combinations in the North and the South.

Two years after this incident, Marcus Morton won his first race for governor, defeating the incumbent Everett by a single vote.⁴⁷ To Morton's slowly growing coalition were added those Bay Staters (including many new immigrants) incensed by an ill-conceived Whig law to limit the sale of liquor to quantities of fifteen gallons or more, effectively outlawing the sale of alcohol over bars in saloons. In his inaugural address, Morton avoided all mention of slavery, instead focusing on tried-and-true Jacksonian themes: economic retrenchment, an end to the practice of lending state credit to private corporations, suffrage extension and the introduction of a secret ballot, the abolition of capitol punishment except in cases of murder, and relief for insolvent debtors. Ever the politician, Morton also called for a swift repeal of the "fifteen gallon law."⁴⁸ Although "joyfully received as text books of the Democracy in all [Massachusetts'] sister states," Morton's program had little chance of passage with both houses of the legislature under firm Whig control.⁴⁹ He did, however, win the admiration of many peers and constituents. The historian (and fellow Bay State Democrat) George Bancroft glowingly recommended Morton for national office, writing that "he has gained in the hearts of his political friends so strong a hold, that they will remain restless till justice shall be done to his genius, his consistency, his patriotism, and his virtues."⁵⁰

During the next gubernatorial campaign, Morton found himself battling for reelection on the opposite front: a new political party devoted to slavery's demise made its debut Massachusetts—the Liberty Party. Consequently, Bay State antislavery voters had candidates of their own—candidates who were far less evasive than Morton on abolitionists' questions regarding slavery. The Liberty Party polled enough votes in the 1842 governor's race (6,382) to throw the election into the legislature.⁵¹ Normally, the House of Representatives would pick two candidates for the upper house to vote on for governor, but Liberty candidates had scored well enough to leave sixteen of the forty senate seats unfilled. Thus, the job of filling the empty seats fell to a combination of the legislators who had won clear majorities—and the six new Liberty representatives suddenly controlled the balance of power. "They [Whigs and Democrats] must look for the young giant hereafter," the Liberty editor Elizur Wright wrote to the New York abolitionist Gerrit Smith.⁵²

Liberty men knew that if they managed to keep Whigs and Democrats evenly divided, they had a realistic chance of elevating their own candidate—Samual Sewell—to the governorship and choosing one of their own as speaker of the house, but the plan fell one vote short of success. A solitary Whig member crossed party lines and voted with the Democrats, filling all the senate vacancies with Jacksonians.⁵³ The Whig Daily Advertiser editorialized that Whig members preferred another year with Morton as governor to an abolitionist candidate who won barely 7 percent of the vote; perhaps this was the motivation for the lone Whig turncoat.⁵⁴

After the election of 1842 but before the legislature's vote to return him to the governor's chair, Morton sought the political advice of a famous abolitionist. "[I have] long wished to confer with some candid, intelligent Abolitionist, on the best mode of ameliorating the condition of the slaves, and of eventually accomplishing emancipation," he wrote to the poet John G. Whittier. Morton declared that he was "no political abolitionist," accusing abolitionist leaders of "selfish and sinister designs"—but, he said, he was "as ready to take any measures which are right in themselves, and give any rational promise of relief to the slaves, as the highest toned Abolitionist in the country." Whittier's reply is lost, but Morton's statement survives as testimony of his intention to pursue a more deliberate and active antislavery course.⁵⁵

This is not surprising: Morton and other state-wide candidates undoubtedly viewed the Liberty Party as a serious rival for votes after the 1842 election. Morton must have known that he had more to lose than his Whig opponents, having long been the beneficiary of antislavery voters. The growth of the Liberty Party's support in the 1840s suggests that more and more of its votes came from disgruntled Democrats who, presumably, had previously supported Morton.⁵⁶

Morton's loss in the 1843 campaign was to his last. Within a few years, the demands of national politics and the struggle for control of the Democratic Party would pull him away from state elections. Henshaw's faction of the state party, now firmly allied with President John Tyler and John C. Calhoun, continued to wrestle with the Morton-George Bancroft faction. The contest became more heated after the new Polk administration favored the Morton-Bancroft group with patronage appointments in early 1845. Polk made Bancroft secretary of the navy and appointed Morton, for his sixteen years as a candidate, collector of the Port of Boston.

Recognizing the shift in the balance of power, Henshaw's followers went on the offensive. Their strategy precipitated the crucial political battle of Morton's career. Using the Statesman and the Post as their amplifiers, Morton's enemies charged that he was anti-Catholic, that he had removed people arbitrarily from positions at the Custom House, and that he was an abolitionist. In the political climate of 1845, with Southern Democrats increasingly defensive about slavery and strengthening their hold on federal power, the charge of abolitionism had the potential to wreck a political career, even one as distinguished as Morton's.

Morton refuted the first two charges with ease. He wrote to New Hampshire senator C. G. Atherton that "from the days of the [1798] Alien law, when I was a school boy, I have advocated the principle of the naturalization laws, and the rights of the naturalized citizens and especially Catholics."⁵⁷ Morton had routinely captured large majorities of the Irish vote in Massachusetts, and he was popular among Catholics. The charge did not stick. His accusers had a similarly difficult task proving that Morton had been arbitrary in his removals at the Custom House while collector. Morton argued that he had looked to the entire Democratic Party when dispensing patronage: "in my nominations were included Van Buren men, Calhoun men.... Now, I believe, there are more than twice as many Calhoun and Tyler men than Van Buren men."⁵⁸ Very few people believed Morton had behaved improperly as collector.

The charge of abolitionism proved much more dangerous. The attack forced Morton to defend his record in public or risk going down to defeat in his Senate confirmation vote and losing the position of collector. So Morton took up a campaign of his own to demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was no abolitionist. Although Morton had never been a member of the Liberty Party or any abolitionist society, he was known to be hostile to slavery and, increasingly, to the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. In January 1845, when he first heard of the accusation, Morton was not surprised: "It is not very strange that Southern men should think the language of [the letter to Morton Eddy published in 1837] somewhat inflammatory. As it was printed, it certainly appears pretty sharp." But, Morton insisted, it "clearly showed no connection with the abolition movement."⁵⁹ He added that he regretted the haste with which he had written the letter and the lack of "cautious" language.

In the opening salvo of this battle, Morton's opponents charged him with secretly favoring abolitionists in his appointments as a quid pro quo for Liberty Party support during the deadlocked election of 1842. In his defense, Morton appealed to various high-ranking Democrats, promising them that "[n]ot a single abolitionist, in an form directly or indirectly, cast a vote in my favor [in the legislature]"; he asked them to "[b]e assured, that though I am strongly opposed to slavery on principle, no one here has ... been more cautious not to recommend abolitionists for office."⁶⁰ Morton received several queries from Washington and Boston about the antislavery views held by some of his appointees, and to each he responded in a similar manner. "I have made inquiries into the moral character of Mr. Worth, the candidate for postmaster of Nantucket," he wrote in one letter, "and I am informed, by men of great respect and worth, that there is not the slightest foundation for the [abolitionist] charges made against him."⁶¹ Morton's earlier correspondence confirms that he had carried out inquiries into the views of his appointees, but not that he favored or passed over supposed abolitionists. In the case of Mr. Worth, the Nantucket postmaster, Morton seems to have been aware that he was one of seven members of the "abolitionist faction" on the county Democratic committee. In a letter that seems to presage the McCarthyism of the 1950s, one angry Nantucketer fingered Worth as an influential abolitionist, writing Morton that "none were more active [than Worth] in attracting votes for the amalgamation or negro ticket" and that Worth had received his office only because local Democrats were "not aware of the new character which he had in the meanwhile adopted." Nonetheless, Mr. Worth retained his postmastership, at the recommendation of Marcus Morton.⁶²

By the end of 1845, Henshaw and his ally B. F. Hallett ratcheted up their charges against Morton, hoping to poison his position with Southern senators. In December, they outstripped the argument that he had favored abolitionists for office and accepted their votes, instead accusing him of out-and-out abolitionism. In a remarkable issue of the Boston Post, Democrats leveled salvo after salvo at one of their own for, as governor, refusing to surrender a Virginia fugitive, acquiescing in antislavery and anti-Texas resolves passed by the state legislature, and approving an act to repeal the state's law prohibiting marriages between blacks and whites and another to punish any state official who aided in apprehending a slave. "Standing in relation of secret cooperation with prominent Abolitionists," the Post piece concluded, "Mr. Morton has often obtained a larger vote than the strength of the Democratic Party proper"—a statement that must be among the first complaints by a party organ that its own candidate attracted too many votes.⁶³

Morton could hardly deny the specifics of Henshaw and Hallett's charges, since he did accomplish each of these measures while in the governor's chair. Instead, he recycled the once-effective strategy of stressing his dual oppostion to both abolition and slavery:

Any charge of Abolition against me, is entirely without foundation; and I have no fear that abstract opinion against slavery is any objection to a northern man. If a non-slaveholder is to be opposed for an opinion against slavery, a slaveholder may just as reasonably be opposed for his opinion in favor of slavery.⁶⁴

During the 1830s, this defense probably would have sufficed to save Morton's appointment. Yet by 1845, too much had changed in Massachusetts and the nation. Texas had won admission to the Union as a slave state. The rift between Northern and Southern Democrats had widened when Northern Democrats watched their Southern brethren spurn Martin Van Buren at the 1844 Baltimore convention. More to the point, abolitionists had gained significant force in Northern (and national) politics, and Southerners had become increasingly insistent that the federal government use its power to silence them, to extend slavery into new territory, and to return fugitives to slavery. In response, a growing number of Northerners believed that these actions represented the machinations of a conspiratorial "Slave Power" intent on dominating every corner of American political life.⁶⁵ Because the concerns of Southerners still increasingly steered the party at large, Morton had to defend his views and actions in public and demonstrate his hostility to organized abolitionism in any form, or he had no future in the Democratic Party.

In this fresh bout, Morton began by marshaling his forces. When the Suffolk County Committee, a Henshaw pet, submitted a petition to the U.S. Senate declaring Morton "unacceptable" to the Democrats of Massachusetts, Morton solicited aid from Northern Democratic senators Benjamin Tappan of Ohio, John M. Niles of Connecticut, and John Fairfield of Maine, each of whom had his own misgivings about the "Slave Power." Morton also requested support from proslavery Northern Democratic stalwarts C. G. Atherton and Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire.⁶⁶

At the same time, Morton allowed his defenders to publish a thirty-two-page pamphlet entitled A Refutation of the Charge of Abolitionism ... Against the Hon. Marcus Morton in an attempt to salvage his appointment and political career. A "defense pamphlet" straight out of the honor culture of a waning era, the document addresses, line by line, the various charges made against Morton.⁶⁷ "Against no man in the Commonwealth, can the charge of Abolitionism be made with less truth, than against Marcus Morton," stated the author. "Governor Morton has always expressed the greatest alarm at the rash thoughtless course pursued by this band of modern fanatics."⁶⁸ The Marcus Morton portrayed in the pamphlet resembles a conservative Northern doughface such as Franklin Pierce or James Buchanan more than the principled governor-jurist of the 1830s.

Occasionally, the pamphlet overstates Morton's distance from abolitionist positions and willfully misreads their presses in an attempt to shield him from association. "The Abolition party in this state, knowing [Morton's] opinions hostile to their views, have ever opposed him in their prints, and by their votes," the pamphleteer stated. Quite to the contrary, Joshua Leavitt had come to Morton's defense in The Emancipator in 1845, using the imbroglio as a challenge to antislavery Democrats to disavow "the pro-slaveryism of [Henshaw and Hallett's] Boston clique ... the unscrupulous vassals of the overseers":

[W]hat shall we say of the masses—the men who are Democrats because they are men, and not because they expect preferment and office? ... Can you, as honest men, any longer submit to the lead of men who openly avow such a policy as this—a policy which virtually excludes from the party a majority of the party itself?

Even if The Emancipator exaggerated the percentage of men with "abolitionist tendencies" in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, it made a spirited defense of that "old and faithful servant, Ex-Governor Morton."⁶⁹

In the areas of miscegenation and fugitive slaves, the pamphlet addresses the issues head on—but not so as to imply solidarity with organized abolitionism. Regarding the charge that Morton "approved an act authorizing marriages between negroes and whites," the pamphlet's author asked, "what has this to do with abolitionism?"

Mr. Henshaw seems to forget that he lives under a Republican Government where nature alone authorizes marriages, leaving matters of color entirely to the taste of the parties concerned.... There was in our statute books an old law, interfering with this law of nature, [which] was repealed with the approval of Governor Morton.⁷⁰

On the issue of prohibiting the use of state jails for the imprisonment of fugitive slaves, the writer suggests that "the existing laws of our State point to the acts which encloses a citizen within the walls of our prisons;—and the constitution declares, that being a slave is not one of them." Thus, the extremely volatile issue of fugitive slaves appears in the guise of civil liberties alone.⁷¹ All told, Morton's views on questions central to the slavery debate become neatly severed from that debate and especially from abolitionism. His campaign to save his commission and clear his name is notable for its energy, its effectiveness, and its extreme backpedaling on the greatest issue of the day.

Bancroft informed Morton that he had been confirmed by the Senate, despite the furious campaign against him, in May 1846, after Bancroft "[made] representation" of much of Morton's "inflammatory" antislavery rhetoric as "untrue."⁷² Morton's defense had succeeded. The timing, however, proved ironic: the Mexican War and David Wilmot's famous Proviso just three months later—planned and introduced by antislavery Northern Democrats in the U.S. Congress—placed the issue of slavery and its extension in the center of American politics for the next fifteen years. The old strategy of relegating slavery to the political sidelines was no longer effective or even possible. Morton, clearly uncomfortable with the centrality of the slavery issue, feared for the future of the Democracy: "[t]he dreadful question about Slavery appears to have assumed a worse aspect than on any former occasion," he wrote to Bancroft. "We should all do well to have our robes folded for a graceful fall."⁷³

A divided state Democratic Party met in Worcester to pick candidates in the spring of 1847, and an attempt by Morton's ally Amasa Walker to place the convention behind the Wilmot Proviso never made it off the table. "As a matter of preservation," Walker said over the shouts of his opponents, "the Democracy cannot thrive in the Bay State if it must be forever bound to the shameless, undemocratic institution of chattel slavery." Despite having "more than four fifths of the Democracy" behind the resolution, it was tabled by the Henshaw men who controlled the party's machinery.⁷⁴

After the convention, Morton turned his back on state politics and began a rich correspondence with Martin Van Buren's New York Barnburner faction. This group, Morton concluded, had the best chance to overpower the Southern wing of the party and set the Democracy on what he deemed to be the "correct" path. "The Northern Democrats have conceded and submitted till they have lost the respect of their Southern brethren," Morton wrote to Van Buren lieutenant John Dix. "It is quite time they asserted their rights and let the South know that a man who disapproves of slavery is to stand on equality with a man who approves of it."⁷⁵

In 1848, when the Free Soil schism splintered the Democratic Party in New York, Morton pledged his support to Van Buren and the Barnburners. He was even asked to join Van Buren as the vice presidential candidate on a new ticket based "on the free territory principle." Morton demurred, suggesting that a candidate from the South or West would balance the new party. "I would certainly make any personal sacrifice which might be deemed useful in the establishment of the great principle of freedom," Morton wrote, "but my connection with the government presents an obstacle which I know not how to surmount."⁷⁶

Although he remained at his post as collector, Morton campaigned openly for the Utica ticket of Van Buren and Henry Dodge of Wisconsin. "I must go for free territory and Van Buren, be the consequences what they may," he wrote to B. F. Butler. To Seth Whitmash, another old Antimason who had joined the ranks of the Democratic Party, Morton delivered the hard sell. "An honest and true Democrat could take but one side of the question—that Democracy and slavery were antipodes.... [J]udge my surprise and grief when I learned from you that you intended to support the extension of slavery into free territory!"⁷⁷ Although disappointed with the Free Soil Party convention's choice of the Whig Charles Francis Adams as vice presidential candidate (Morton called Adams "the greatest Iceberg in the Northern hemisphere"), Morton worked tirelessly, if quietly, for Van Buren's election.⁷⁸

Van Buren, of course, lost the 1848 presidential election, both nationally and in Massachusetts.⁷⁹ But he did outpoll Democratic candidate Lewis Cass—at least 45 percent of the Free Soil vote came from former Democrats.⁸⁰ For the first time, the Whig Party became a minority party in Massachusetts. This truth was not lost on the engineers of the Free Soil-Democratic alliance that took control of Bay State politics in 1849, led by ex-Democrats, such as Amasa Walker, and ex-Whigs, such as Charles Sumner (who had long preferred Jacksonian economic policies). Although Morton was enough of an old Jacksonian to oppose Sumner's Free Soil U.S. Senate bid on grounds that, except on the slavery issue, he was an "ultra" and "impracicable," he had left the Democratic Party behind.⁸¹ It seemed obvious to him, and other antislavery (though not abolitionist) ex-Democrats, that the Slave Power had reached all the way to Massachusetts. They could only hope to stop it—and to prioritize once again the old Democratic issues such as the secret ballot, regulation of banks and corporations, and cheap postage—with the help of other antislavery partisans, even their former opponents, including Charles Sumner.

Strikingly, the new political coalition that in the 1850s stood up to the Slave Power included Morton's entire constituency from the 1830s and 1840s. Marcus Morton and his unusual coterie of supporters—few of them abolitionists—were central to the new antislavery politics of the 1850s. These, along with the Garrisons, Walkers, and Parkers, helped bring on the Civil War and the end of slavery in North America.

JONATHAN EARLE is assistant professor of history at the University of Kansas. He is the author of The Undaunted Democracy: Jacksonian Antislavery and Free Soil (forthcoming, University of North Carolina Press) and the Routledge Atlas of African American History (2000).

NOTES

The author wishes to thank the Massachusetts Historical Society for its generous financial support, and Conrad E. Wright and Donald Yacovone specifically for their advice, help, and conversation.

^1. On Democratic racism and proslavery, see David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991); and Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (London, 1990), 127–165. On Free Soil racism, see Eric Foner, "Racial Attitudes of the New York Free Soilers," New York History 46 (1965): 311–329.

^2. Boston Atlas, Oct. 24, 1838. On the dominance of the conservative National Republican and Whig Parties in state politics see Harlow W. Sheidley, Sectional Nationalism: Massachusetts Conservative Leaders and the Transformation of America, 1815–1836 (Boston, 1998). The best overview of antebellum state politics in Massachusetts remains Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s (New York, 1983).

^3. An interlocking set of monied individuals and institutions personified by the Second Bank of the United States, the "monied Aristocracy" (later the "Money Power") supposedly exploited the nation's farmers and workingmen: "[T]his aristocracy, ever changing its numbers but steady in its purpose, has the much greater proportion of our political existence controuled the government of the states," Morton wrote in 1828. Morton to John C. Calhoun, Dec. 8, 1828, Marcus Morton Letterbooks, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter, MML).

^4. For example, in numerous private and public letters, Morton had termed slavery a "sin," a "curse," and "the most portentous evil which a righteous God ever inflicted upon a nation." He also voted against extending slavery while in the U.S. Congress and opposed the admission of Texas into the Union as a slave state. Morton to Morton Eddy, [n.d.], in Niles' Weekly Register 55 (1837): 222 (hereafter, NWR); Morton to Gardner B. Perry, Sept. 23, 1835, MML.

^5. See the Boston Post, Dec. 17, 1845.

^6. Some useful resources on the topic include Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford, 2000), passim; Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Politics in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill, 1969), 44–49; and Arthur B. Darling, Political Changes in Massachusetts, 1824–1848 (New Haven, 1925), 124–126.

^7. George Bancroft, "Political Portraits with Pen and Pencil, No. XXVII: Marcus Morton of Massachusetts," United States Magazine and Democratic Review 9 (Oct. 1841): 383–395; Nathan W. Littlefield, "Governor Marcus Morton: An Address Delivered Jan. 13, 1905," Collections of the Old Colony Historical Society 7 (1909): 75–92; Morton to Bancroft, Sept. 1, 1841, George Bancroft Papers, MHS.

^8. Henry F. Howe, Salt Rivers of the Massachusetts Shore (New York, 1951), 270–271.

^9. Bancroft, "Marcus Morton." See also Littlefield, "Governor Marcus Morton," 78, 81; Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1934), 13:259.

^10. Bancroft, "Marcus Morton," 385; Littlefield, "Governor Marcus Morton," 80. Morton later traced his belief in a direct link between equality of citizenship and economy in public affairs to his days as a collegiate Jeffersonian.

^11. Darling, Political Changes, 28. In addition to Morton, Massachusetts political figures such as John Bolles, B. F. Hallett, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Horace Mann also graduated from Brown.

^12. Bancroft, "Marcus Morton," 385; Morton to Calhoun, Feb. 19, 1843, MML.

^13. Morton quickly built a "large and lucrative practice" in Bristol County by, as one contemporary recalled, "appear[ing] in every case which was tried." Littlefield, "Governor Marcus Morton," 82.

^14. Morton to Eddy, in NWR, 55:222. For Morton's opposition to the admission of Missouri as a slave state, see Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2d sess., 1214–1215 and appendix, 1274; 16th Cong., 1st sess., 1572, 1587; 16th Cong., 2d sess., 944, 1116, 1146, 1209.

^15. Morton to Eddy, in NWR, 55:222.

^16. Morton to George Bancroft, Dec. 26, 1845, Bancroft Papers, MHS.

^17. Bancroft, "Marcus Morton," 387.

^18. James L. Huston, Securing the Fruits of Labor: The American Concept of Wealth Distribution, 1765–1900 (Baton Rouge, 1998), 6–11.

^19. Morton to Calhoun, Dec. 8, 1828, MML.

^20. Arthur Darling's Political Changes in Massachusetts is still the most thorough source for the history of the antebellum Democratic Party in Massachusetts. See pp. 40–84 for the formation of the Jacksonian coalition in the state.

^21. Darling, Political Changes, 53–55.

^22.Statesman, Apr. 4, 1828.

^23. Darling, Political Changes, 58.

^24. Morton to Calhoun, Jan. 6, 1829, MML.

^25. Morton to Calhoun, Jan. 6, 1829, MML. Two years later Morton confessed that "the President himself, always was personally unpopular, in this State. There are some points in his character which our people do not and never will like." Morton to Calhoun, Mar. 10, 1831, MML.

^26. Of course, Calhoun was not concerned about racial minorities but about minority groups (such as slaveholders) and views (that slavery was a positive good).

^27. Morton to Calhoun, Feb. 13, 1834, MML.

^28. Morton to Calhoun, Mar. 7, 1829, MML. Calhoun, of course, was well known for his vehement opposition to protective tariffs that, he believed, damaged Southern planters.

^29. Jackson's public break with Calhoun was precipitated by the Nullification controversy (Calhoun had joined with South Carolinians wishing to "nullify" a federal tariff), the Eaton affair (in which Calhoun's wife, Floride, publicly snubbed Peggy Eaton, the wife of Secretary of War John H. Eaton), and Jackson's censure for actions in Florida in 1818 (it was disclosed that Calhoun had secretly denounced Jackson's actions there). See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945), 54–56.

^30. The correspondence between Calhoun and Jackson relating to Calhoun's responsibility for the Monroe administration's censure in 1818 was published in the Boston Statesman and numerous other papers on Feb. 26, 1831. On the Eaton affair, see John F. Marszalek, The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson's White House (Baton Rouge, 1998). On Nullification, see William Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (Oxford, 1992). See also Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, 54–56; and John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (Baton Rouge, 1988), 175.

^31. Instead of writing Calhoun an average of six letters a year, as he had from 1829 to 1831, there is a three-year gap between Mar. 10, 1831, and Feb. 13, 1834. After this date, Morton's next (and last) letter to Calhoun is dated Feb. 20, 1843. MML.

^32. Morton to Calhoun, Feb. 13, 1834, MML.

^33. Morton to Calhoun, Mar. 7, Apr. 18, 1830; Darling, Political Changes, 44, 81.

^34. See Calhoun's Exposition and Protest, in Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, ed. Ross M. Lence (New York, 1992).

^35. Morton to George Bancroft, Dec. 18, 1834, MML; Morton to G. B. Perry, Sept. 23, 1835, MML. See also Darling, Political Changes, 81–83.

^36.Register of Debates in Congress, vol. 2, pt. 1, 1579–1580.

^37. Horace Binney to [unknown], [n.d.], in Charles C. Binney, Life of Horace Binney (Philadelphia, 1903), 82; Ralph Waldo Emerson, July 30, 1835, in Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (Boston, 1909–1914), 3:517.

^38. More radical, "immediatist" abolilitionists eschewed suffrage. See Stewart, Holy Warriors, 35–50, 59–60.

^39. Morton to G. B. Perry, Sept. 23, 1835, MML.

^40. Boston Atlas, Aug. 25, 1835. On the Faneuil meeting and the Boston mob, see Leonard Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing (New York, 1970), 58–64.

^41. Joshua Leavitt, The Emancipator, Dec. 1, 1847. The Daily Advocate was edited by the newly minted Jacksonian (and former Antimason) B. F. Hallett, who for a brief time in the mid 1830s dabbled in antislavery politics.

^42. Morton to G. B. Perry, Sept. 23, 1835, MML. Morton had responded privately to abolitionist inquiries on his views regarding slavery several times, and one of his letters was printed by the Advocate and, later, by the national paper Niles' Weekly Register. See Morton to M. Eddy, Sept. 28, 1837, printed in Boston Advocate, Nov. 8, 1837, and NWR, 55:222.

^43. Morton to Eddy, in NWR, 55:222.

^44. Morton to Bancroft, Dec. 7, 1837, MML.

^45. Morton to Bancroft, Dec. 7, 1837, MML; Morton to Eddy, Sept. 28, 1837.

^46. David Wilmot, one of the better-known antislavery Democrat, always placed his opposition to slavery in racial terms, claiming he wished to "preserve for free white labor a fair country, a rich inheritance," in the West. See Wilmot's speech in The Herkimer Convention: The Voice of New York! (New York, 1847), 10.

^47. Darling, Political Changes, 241.

^48. Bancroft, "Marcus Morton," 392–393; Littlefield, "Governor Marcus Morton," 91; Darling, Political Changes, 215–220. Massachusetts law required the death penalty for murder, treason, rape, arson, burglary, and highway robbery.

^49. Quotation in A Refutation of the Charge of Abolitionism ... Against the Hon. Marcus Morton (Boston, 1845), 4; Darling, Political Changes, 251. Even Morton's lieutenant governor was a Whig, leaving him at the head of what Darling called "a hostile government."

^50. Bancroft, "Marcus Morton," 395.

^51. After losing to John Davis by margins of 15,700 and 4,600. See Darling, Political Changes, 273, 281.

^52. Quoted in Reinhard O. Johnson, "The Liberty Party in New England, 1840–1848: The Forgotten Abolitionists," Civil War History 28 (1982): 250.

^53. These peculiar "winner take all" election rules helped the National Republicans and Whigs hold on to the state legislature and senate from 1828 to 1843 in much stronger numbers than their votes reflected.

^54. Darling, Political Changes, 292; Johnson, "Liberty Party in New England," 251. The Liberator claimed that a few of the Liberty representatives ignored the plan and voted entirely for Democrats, but there is little evidence to support Garrison's claim. See Liberator, Mar. 17, 1843.

^55. Morton to John G. Whittier, Dec. 20, 1842, quoted in The Emancipator, Dec. 31, 1845.

^56. Arthur B. Darling concluded that in the 1842 election the Liberty Party drew votes primarily from ex-Whigs. See Darling, Political Changes, 290–292. But if analysis is spread over the 1840s, especially past 1844, when the Liberty Party rose to its period of greatest electoral strength in Massachusetts, then it becomes apparent that the lion's share came from disgruntled Democrats. See Johnson, "Liberty Party in New England," 127–169. Edward Magdol came to a similar conclusion for the Liberty Party as a whole in The Antislavery Rank and File: A Social Profile of the Abolitionists' Constituency (New York, 1986), 146–148.

^57. Morton to C. G. Atherton, Feb. 18, 1845, MML. Emphasis Morton's.

^58. Morton to Bancroft, July 3, 1845, MML.

^59. Morton to Bancroft, Jan. 13, 1845, MML.

^60. Morton to C. G. Atherton, Feb. 21, 1845, Feb. 18, 1846; Morton to Cave Johnson, June 23, 1845, MML. See also Morton to R. J. Walker, Morton to Bancroft, summer 1845, MML.

^61. Morton to Johnson, July 2, 1845, MML.

^62. "Extract," [unknown] to Morton, [1845], MML. While it is fairly certain that Worth was, in fact, an abolitionist, he remained a strong Democrat and Free Soil (Van Buren) supporter. See Morton to Benjamin Tappan, Apr. 21, 1846, MML.

^63. Boston Post, Dec. 17, 1845. In a letter to George Bancroft, B. F. Hallett asked "With his letters to Whittier and Eddy ... showing the closest communion with abolitionism, from '37 to '44, can the President send in his name to the Senate with consistancy?" Hallett to Bancroft, Sept. 23, 1845, Bancroft Papers. On the imbroglio, see also I. H. Wright to Bancroft, Mar. 21, 1845; and Chauncy Clarke to Bancroft, Mar. 25, 1845, Bancroft Papers.

^64. Morton to Bancroft, Dec. 26, 1845, MML. See also Morton to Eddy, Feb. 21, 1846.

^65. On the Slave Power conspiracy, see Leonard Richards's brilliant The Slave Power (Baton Rouge, 2000). On the origin of the term "Slave Power," see Earle, Undaunted Democracy, chapter 1.

^66. Morton to John Fairfield, Jan. 26, 1846; Morton to John M. Niles, Feb. 12, 1846; Morton to Atherton, Feb. 21, 1846; Morton to Tappan, Apr. 21, 1846, MML. On Benjamin Tappan's antislavery, see Daniel Feller, "A Brother in Arms," Journal of American History 88 (2001): 48–74. Tappan, Niles, and Fairfield all became Free Soilers.

^67. On defense pamphlets, see Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, 2001), 113, 116–121.

^68.A Refutation, 14.

^69. Joshua Leavitt, The Emancipator, Dec. 31, 1845.

^70.A Refutation, 20.

^71.A Refutation, 21.

^72. Bancroft to Morton, May 9, 1846, Bancroft Papers.

^73. Morton to Bancroft, Feb. 27, 1847, Bancroft Papers.

^74. "Remarks by Amasa Walker, Esq., in the late Democratic State Convention," n.d., scrapbook, Amasa Walker Papers, MHS.

^75. Morton to John Dix, Mar. 2, 1848, MML.

^76. Morton to A. C. Flagg, June 17, 1848, MML. In this letter, Morton referred to the letter from Oakley, which is now missing.

^77. Morton to Seth Whitmarsh, Aug. 9, 21, 1848, MML.

^78. Morton to John Van Buren, Oct. 4, 1848, MML. See also Morton to John Crittenden, Willis, Chapin, Tillinghast, and Mason, Aug. 24, 31, Sept. 19, 20, 1848, MML.

^79. 1848 State Presidential and Gubernatorial results, Massachusetts State Archives:

Lewis Cass / Caleb Cushing (Dem.) 35,281 / 25,323 (26% / 20%)

Zachary Taylor / George Briggs (Whig) 61,972 / 61,640 (46% / 50%)

Van Buren / Phillips (Free Soil) 38,307 / 36,011 (28% / 29%)

^80. Richard Sewell, Ballots for Freedom (New York, 1976), 219.

^81. Morton to Frederick Robinson, Nov. 22, 1850, MML.

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