Disunion Feed

"The continued aggressions of the Federal Government in behalf of Negro Slavery must be met by the States in which the principles of Liberty yet survive. Ohio took the lead in 1855 in opposition to the Kansas Nebraska act, and it is very proper that she should again lead the column of Freedom in opposition to the doctrines recently promulgated by a Federal Slaveholding Court."

Four weeks after the ruling, the response stops being editorial and becomes legislative: an Ohio committee reports resolutions against the decision. Northern states answering a federal ruling with state resistance is the shape of the next four years — and the exact argument the South had been making since 1832.

Read it in the original — Ohio State Journal, Apr 3, 1857 ↗

"The fact is, the more the question has been settled, the more it has needed settling. The space between the different settlements has been strikingly on the decrease. [...] The first stood fifteen years — the second, ten years- — the third, five years — the fourth stood four years — and the fifth has stood the brief space of two years. [...] This last settlement must be called the Taney settlement."

From the pamphlet Douglass printed at his own press in Rochester later that year. He is counting the compromises — 1820, 1833, 1845, 1850, 1854, and now 1857 — and pointing out that each one holds for less time than the last. The stray hyphen after "ten years" is in the pamphlet's own printing.

Read it in the original — Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass (Rochester, 1857) ↗