He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America, and reported the following:
From page 99:Visit Scott Gac's website.In October, one month after Millard Fillmore signed the new law [the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850], William P. Newman, a Baptist clergyman, fugitive slave, and now advocate of violent, Black resistance to federal authority, wrote to Frederick Douglass, “It may be properly asked, would not the Devil do well to rent out hell and move to the United States, and rival, if possible, President Fillmore.”While Born in Blood covers more than one hundred years of United States history from 1750 to 1900, page 99 nonetheless provides an excellent window into the book. It showcases insights about democracy and violence in the first half of the nineteenth century. By the time of the Compromise of 1850 (which included a new Fugitive Slave Act), the White male electorate in America had expanded to include nearly all White men. At the same time, however, White political leaders had removed the right to vote for Black men, who had had such a right in northern states such as Connecticut and New York. In and around election days, the newly enlarged and Whitened American electorate engaged in relentless revelry, fanatical partisanship, and physical intimidation to menace political opponents. Indeed, the 1850 United States was one of the largest slave societies in human history and its violent, White democracy was the cornerstone of the nation’s political practice. Ultimately, I believe that to fully grasp violence in America, one must consider how Whiteness—or White superiority—has influenced violent acts committed by individuals and the national state. This is a central tenet that brings together the three major parts of the book and on page 99 it is clearly on display.
The Compromise [of 1850] placed the fate of enslaved Black individuals and the political processes to manage the legality of slavery safely in White hands. The new Fugitive Slave Law undeniably involved the federal government as a guarantor of the cruelties and Black dispossession required to maintain the slave system; popular sovereignty undeniably empowered White male voters in the territories to make decisions that would affect Black individuals and families. From this viewpoint, the Compromise of 1850 is among the most blatant acts in support of hostile racial difference in United States history.
Among the most vocal supporters of White superiority in Congress, Senator Dodge could not imagine that the growing regional dispute over human enslavement would “embroil the States in a war in which American blood is shed by American hands.” (Notably, Dodge used the term “American’ to signal ‘White.’) But in December 1853, he helped to create exactly such a scenario. Dodge introduced a bill “to organize the territory of Nebraska; which was read the first and second times, by unanimous consent, and referred to the Committee on Territories.’ By January 1854, the bill further asserted that both the 1793 and 1850 fugitive slave laws would be “in full force within the limits of said Territory” and made clear other expectations. “In order to avoid misconstruction,” it read, “the true intent and meaning of this act, so far as the question of slavery is concerned,” is that “the people residing” in any states created from the territory will make decisions regarding slavery. In its final wording, this clause upheld the premise of “non-intervention by Congress with slavery” and declared “the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions”—the southern euphemism for slavery—“in their own way.”
The recent Fugitive Slave Law had increased federal force in support of human enslavement. This bill sought the near opposite. It favored individuals and locales over the authority of the United States. In short, political supporters of slavery secured the violence of the United States and the violence of individuals to protect and expand human bondage in the nation.
--Marshal Zeringue
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