Friday, December 24, 2010

The South Bend Free Press

Saturday, December 9th, 1837.

The South Bend Free Press echoes the Cincinnati Journal:  “. . . North of the Ohio, that blessed statute of 1786 . . . has prevented slavery from imprinting its footsteps, and thus securing us against evils which, like an incubus, have pressed upon some of the fairest portions of our country. And though our sister, Kentucky, yet suffers her moral and physical energies to be pressed down, the spirit is now working which will, ere long cause her to . . . shake herself free from the chords that bind her to the principles of slavery. . . . How greatly slavery stands, and ever has stood, and while it exists, ever will stand in the way of its moral and intellectual advancement of the great body of the people. . . .”

Our Center for History, on Washington Street, has copies of the South Bend Free Press, starting in 1837. That paper opposed the election of Martin Van Buren, victor in the Presidential contest of 1836 to succeed two-term Andrew Jackson, also of the Democratic Party. The Panic of 1837 was in full spate, partially provoked by a decision of the Department of the Treasury to accept only gold or silver in payment for public lands. But there were other causes.

Speculators in land had made fortunes playing the real estate market when at least the professed motivation for loosening bank restrictions had been “the small family farm”; speculators in currency had their own little “money market,” trading in state treasury script and paper currency issued by banks to pass for money, often circulating at half face value, often on shaky foundation, or from a distance as to conceal its true value. Funny how some things don’t change.

I’ve been doing a history project, trying to understand the issues and political feelings in the South Bend area in the years before the Civil War. You see, there was a famous 1849 case where fugitive slaves, living right across the border in Michigan, were re-captured there by a party from Kentucky. On their way back, in South Bend, they were freed in a thrilling three-day showdown featuring posses of blacks and whites, courtroom shout-downs with guns and knives drawn—the whole “wild west” stew.

Now, slavery had been prohibited in the Indiana Territory since 1787, but the same Ordinance required fugitive slaves in so-called “free states” to be returned to their masters. This provision galled the free-soil sentiments of northern Indiana. At the same time, anti-black propaganda clouded Hoosiers minds and ultimately led to a constitutional provision barring black settlement in the state. Was anti-slavery or abolitionist sentiment strong in Michiana? That’s what I was trying to learn. Protestant groups and Quakers had anti-slavery sentiments. South Bend’s Free Press, was of strong Whig editorial position, and while it embraced the mammoth improvement schemes that made a few men so rich at the expense of the common people, it was also anti-slavery, and featured sympathetic editorials like the one I just read, and empathetic coverage of such incidents as the killing in Alton, Illinois, of the abolitionist Rev. Elijah Lovejoy and the destruction of his press, the Alton Observer.

So what happened on that fateful weekend in September 1849? So far I think courageous people of Michiana decided that it was wrong to enslave ones neighbors. Faced with a real live family in distress, whites and blacks conquered their prejudice and struck a small blow for emancipation. It wasn’t easy then, many paid heavily for their stand. It’s not any easier now. I pray we can summon that same moral courage for today’s discrimination issues.

Broadcast by David James on December 24, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
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