Disunion
One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.
The essays that I've read so far have been really interesting, both in their analysis/commentary and in the source material they draw upon. I think a lot of people will find this interesting, even if you're not a history buff, per se. Reading it, I'm struck by how much of the discord in our current politics looks a lot like it did in 1860, even if the specifics have changed. I found the
State's Rights entry particularly engaging. In it there is this synopsis of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
The law allowed for the appointment of a federal commissioner in every county of the nation, with the power to hear fugitive slave cases and order the return of an alleged fugitive. It was the country’s first federal law enforcement bureaucracy and the first instance of a federal law enforcement presence at the local level.
The law was dramatically unfair: it denied alleged fugitives a jury trial, access to the writ of habeas corpus and, most astoundingly of all, the right to testify at the hearing. Anyone interfering in the return of a fugitive slave could face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, an enormous sum in the 1850s.
The worst part of the law was the procedure for paying commissioners. They received $5 if they determined that the alleged slave was in fact a free person, but they got $10 if they decided the person was a slave. Congress had reasoned that if a commissioner found for the slaveowner he would have to fill out a great deal of paperwork, and thus need greater compensation. But for the vast majority of Northerners, this seemed like a crude attempt to buy justice.
What do you even say about that? It's astonishingly immoral, and was a national act of Congress. We're all lucky to be living in an era where the great debate is over whether or not the state should provide health care, and not whether or not it must enforce property rights to human beings.
