Fort Sumter – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Lewis Cass among most important yet least known 19th century politicians

A rare political campaign daguerreotype of Lewis Cass from 1848 sold for $17,925 at a February 2007 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

By 1848, slavery had inexorably become a national issue. Opinions were slowly but surely being formed, much as wet cement hardens while baking in the sun. Generally, most people agreed that slavery should be “hands off” and left alone in the 15 states where it already existed.

However, they disagreed violently over whether it should be permitted in new regions. Pro-slavers insisted it be allowed to follow the U.S. flag. But anti-slavery backers (primarily Northerners) strongly opposed expansion into federal territories. Their logic was impeccable. Strong containment policies would eventually lead to complete elimination everywhere. This was the same flawed thinking that the framers of the Constitution had tripped over when they permitted a 20-year phase-out period. Except the difference, of course, was that without this clause, there were not enough votes to ratify the Constitution. Deception? Probably, but there was an overarching priority in favor of ratification … kick it down the road … maybe it will just wither away.

Naturally, the political leaders of both the Whigs and Democrats were just as anxious to duck the issue entirely. Both parties relied on support from voters in every section of the country. However, the issue was now much too prominent and the slavery issue ended up playing a major role in the 1848 presidential election.

Meeting in Baltimore in May 1848, the Democrats were the first to select candidates. For president, they went for Michigan Senator Lewis Cass. He had been a territorial governor for years and would be the first Democratic candidate from the area known as the Northwest. Many years later (1861), as James Buchanan’s Secretary of State, he begged the president to send reinforcements to Fort Sumter to keep the South from raiding its guns and supplies. He resigned when Buchanan predictably refused; it was the only option the 79-year-old diplomat had to display his strong objections.

Cass was 6 years old when his mother held him up to the window of their home to watch the bonfires blazing in the streets of Exeter, when New Hampshire became the ninth and final state required to ratify the Constitution. When he resigned, he memorably said, “I saw the Constitution born, and I fear I may see it die.” The Constitution survived, but 620,000 Americans died in the war to preserve the Union.

Cass was solidly known as an advocate for “squatter sovereignty” – the right of settlers in federal territories to decide the slavery issue for themselves. At the Baltimore convention, the New York delegation quickly split over the selection of Cass for president, accompanied by a party platform that declined to take a firm stand on the extension of slavery. They simply walked out and, along with other anti-slavery people, organized the Free Soil Party, which was firmly dedicated to preventing slavery in all federal territories. They chose the hapless ex-President Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams (son of the sixth president) with an unequivocal slogan: “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men.”

With the Democrats now divided, the Whigs made their choice at a convention in June in Philadelphia. Sticking to a “War Hero General” formula that proved to be successful, they confidently chose General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, “Old Rough and Ready,” the hero of the recent war with Mexico. Many Whigs (including a young Abraham Lincoln) were appalled by the choice. Not only was he too old (64), but he had never been involved in politics! In fact, he had never even voted and admitted he knew little about national domestic issues.

Daniel Webster called him “an illiterate frontier colonel” and warned that many thousands of Whigs “will not vote for a candidate … simply because of a war record.”

Webster turned out to be terribly wrong and the party backed “Old Zach” just as they had selected “Old Tippecanoe” (William Henry Harrison) in 1840. Taylor easily beat Lewis Cass on Nov. 7, 1848 – the first presidential election that took place on the same day in every state and the first Election Day statutorily on a Tuesday.

Taylor died on July 9 two years later and was the last president elected who was not a Republican or a Democrat … a period of 198 years (yes, I know that Lincoln ran in 1864 for the Union Party after becoming the first Republican president in 1860). Third-party candidates do not do well … just ask Teddy Roosevelt.

Cass remains a good candidate for the most important yet least known of any politician in 19th century America.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Civil War question: What were these men thinking?

This albumen print of a Union encampment, most likely of the 110th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, sold for $2,868 at a November 2008 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The last truly great Civil War book I read was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005). The award-winning book focuses on the 1860 presidential election and how underdog Lincoln was able to secure the Republican nomination against three formidable opponents, and then win the presidency without a single Southern vote (he was not on any Southern ballot).

Then, it deftly explains how President Lincoln was able to recruit all three Republican opponents to serve as key members of his Cabinet: New York Senator William H. Seward (Secretary of State), Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase (Treasury Secretary), and Missouri’s favorite son Edward Bates (Attorney General). Next was the brilliant way he managed to leverage each man’s strength and weakness into a form of political-enemy synergy.

Steven Spielberg secured the film rights before the book was written and his 2012 movie Lincoln was highly acclaimed. Out of 14 Oscar nominations, Daniel-Day Lewis won for Best Actor. But the movie was really only about the last four months of Lincoln’s life when he maneuvered to get the 14th Amendment approved. Neither the book nor film spends much time on the Confederacy or the underlying circumstances that made the Civil War inevitable.

This is not unusual, since books about Lincoln, his Cabinet and the generals of the war pop up with regularity. Relatively little has been written about the Confederacy per se (i.e. the formal government of the South). The primary focus seems confined to biographies of Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson or the famous battles between the North and South (such as Gettysburg).

Sure, people might know that Jefferson Davis was president of the CSA or that Alexander H. Stephens was vice president. But these two men were in office the entire war, from April 1861 to May 1865. Perhaps interest in individuals is limited because, as some historians argue, the Confederate States of America represented an entire people’s effort to cling to their past. They feared after the 1860 election that Lincoln and the now-dominant Republicans would simply force them to abandon the practice of slavery. So they naively decided to secede from the Union and start their own country.

They started with seven secessionist slave-holding states and in February 1861 established a new Confederacy in Montgomery, Ala., before Lincoln even took office. After Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in April, four more states seceded and joined the Confederacy (now based in Richmond, Va.). Missouri and Kentucky were later accepted but did not secede. Two seats in the Confederate Congress were given to Southern California.

Organizationally, the Southern government was much like the North. They had a Constitution and a Cabinet with six departments that composed the executive branch. With few exceptions, they replicated their counterparts in the Union. A prominent exception: the Attorney General was elevated to Cabinet status. It grew in importance since the Confederacy had no Supreme Court; the Department of Justice arbitrated any legislation or constitutional disputes.

However, most departments discovered their limitations once the War started. The Navy began the war without a single major vessel and soon lost easy access to international sea-lanes from Southern ports. The Treasury and War departments did not have the resources of their Union counterparts, little things like enough money or an army and a non-industrial economy. Here, one must ask: Who were these men and what were they thinking?

Some deep thinkers sincerely believe it was an honest attempt to build a New South with 11 individual states forging a future based on prosperity from land and slaves. After all, only 4 percent to 5 percent had direct involvement with the institution of slavery. The majority considered their way of life inviolate enough to defend it by force of arms. However, despite obvious mismatches from virtually every aspect, that did not deter its political leaders. They assured the Southern people that courage and determination could substitute for limited resources, limited manpower and lack of foreign aid.

The South’s goal of independence was as absolute as the North’s determination to maintain the Union. Hence, the objectives of the opposing governments could be neither compromised nor harmonized. The Civil War would have to be a fight to the finish.

For four long years, against impossible odds, the South persevered and suffered. It accepted honorable defeat and then wrapped itself in nostalgia. The South’s postwar vision of “The Lost Cause” – fighting and surrendering with honor – became a soothing balm for the sores of war.

However, President Jefferson Davis would admit much later, “The simple fact was the people had gone to war without considering the cost.”

Case closed.

Confederacy Relied on Creative Ways to Finance its War

This 1861 Confederate States T1 $1000 Montgomery Issue note from the “Colonel” E.H.R Green and Eric P. Newman collections sold for $76,375 at an October 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Several readers have asked how the Civil War was waged for so long with both sides short of the resources needed to wage war. Here is a short example of how it was possible.

Still desperate for money, Confederate States Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger proved to be creative. After Fort Sumter, he proposed a series of 12.5 percent duties on coal, lumber, cheese, paper and even iron – despite the military need for wood and iron for railroads. He came up $25 million short because of the blockade, especially in New Orleans. But after the surprise Confederate victory at Bull Run, he went back to the Confederate States Congress and asked them to impose taxes on real estate, slaves and any other personal property, since these assets were valued at almost $6 billion. Farmers effectively killed this effort since it hit them disproportionately. The Treasury then resorted to a “war tax,” but it was a real dud.

So, the only way out was to turn to the old tactic of printing money … short-term notes, longer-term bonds. The notes were, in reality, simply “script” forced on soldiers, retailers, suppliers and anyone else the Confederate government owed. Predictably, Confederate currency was issued in bigger and bigger amounts and redemption dates deferred longer into the future. By the end of 1861, the total had grown from $1 million to $30 million, to $450 million in 1862, and doubling into billion territory in 1863. Gold and silver were really the only currencies of value and they were being hoarded as their value continued to grow. In a mark of futility, merchants, railroads and other businesses started issuing their own paper currency, commonly called “shinplasters” since there were basically worthless. An editor in Mississippi wrote, “Great God, what a people. 250 different sorts of shinplasters and not one dime in silver to be seen.”

As the money devalued, a “greenback” was worth four Confederate dollars, a gold dollar went from three to 20, and in the final years, the exchange rate was 1,000 to one … if it was available. For consumers, inflation meant ruinous prices … coffee four times in 1861, 25 times higher a year later, then 80 times higher in 1863, and by the end of 1864, 125 times more expensive. The Daily Telegraph in Macon, Ga., said: “An oak leaf will be worth just as much as the promise of the Confederate Treasury to pay one dollar.”

By the end of the war, the South was a land of blackened cities, destroyed factories, destitute families and rotting wharves. Twenty-five percent of military-age men were dead, 40 percent of livestock and thousands of miles of railroads ruined, and its system of slave labor, the foundation of its economy, was gone. Sixty-five percent of the South’s wealth simply vanished. The South became a place of death, destruction, debt, ruin and humiliation. Recovery would take 100 years.

A good analogy was Germany in the 1920s when they tried to print money until a loaf of bread cost a wheelbarrow of money. It continued to escalate until the paper was worth more than the finished printed money.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Clear Objectives, an Overwhelming Force, Exit Strategy Crucial to Any War

Korean War stories were popular in comic books published in the early 1950s, like this *Two-Fisted Tales* from EC Comics.

By Jim O’Neal

When I started studying the history of war in early 1962, I was surprised that so many wise military men all warned about the danger of a land war in Asia. Words like “bogged down,” “embroiled” and “mired” were liberally sprinkled around in the hope of shaping foreign policy. I knew President Eisenhower had quickly ended the “police action” in Korea that President Truman had left unfinished. As an experienced military strategist, Eisenhower knew that fighting on the Korean Peninsula could easily expand into a direct confrontation with China. He had been determined to avoid restarting the global conflict he had helped end.

The 1950s were a good time for America as we helped rebuild the world.

Then the seeds of war in Vietnam started slowly showing up on the evening news. The implications were blurred by events in San Francisco. Hippies, flower children, sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll were far more entertaining. President Johnson started complaining about “JFK’s war” while he and Secretary of Defense Bob McNamara were quietly acceding to military requests for more troops and guns.

Eventually, draft protests grew more violent, followed by riots in major cities and MLK and Bobby Kennedy being assassinated. By 1968, the United States had 550,000 troops in Vietnam, having steadily grown from a few hundred “military advisers.” It would take another seven years and a different president to extricate the nation from an incremental war that had caused such domestic turmoil. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists 58,318 names (including eight women) as of May 2017 who were “declared dead.”

The wise military officers had been right.

One hundred years earlier, a similar series of events had culminated in a civil war. In the three months following President Lincoln’s election, seven states seceded from the Union. The new president was paranoid that the Confederates would attack Washington after they forced the garrison at Fort Sumter to surrender. He urged his military advisers to preemptively attack rebel forces in Virginia, but the Union army lacked training and was too slow.

Finally, on July 16, 1861, Union General Irvin McDowell led 33,000 slightly trained soldiers toward Manassas, Va. (later better known as Bull Run). Before they arrived, spies tipped off P.G.T. Beauregard, who quickly called for 10,000 reinforcements to bolster his 22,000 troops. Rumors of the pending battle spread quickly and there was a large contingent of politicians and civilians perched on a hillside with blankets and picnic baskets, eager to see a good fight. Among them was a young senator from Ohio, John Sherman, whose brother William Tecumseh would play a key role with General Ulysses S. Grant in ending the war.

However, 10 hours of combat on July 21, 1861, changed the way a nation viewed war. Both Federals and Confederates had come to these fields supremely confident of swift, relatively bloodless victories. Even Abraham Lincoln had attended church that day after being assured of an easy Union victory. Senator Sherman was one of the first to learn otherwise. “Our army is defeated and my brother is dead,” Secretary of War Simon Cameron informed him.

They left behind more than 800 dead and 2,700 wounded. They also left behind any illusions that the war would be won or lost on a single, lazy Sunday afternoon. Confederate officer Samuel Melton wrote, “I have no idea that they intend to give up the fight. On the contrary, five men will rise up where one has been killed, and in my opinion, the war will have to be continued to the bloody end.”

Another wise man who understood war.

Now flash forward to October 1998 when official U.S. foreign policy was changed by a benign-sounding Congressional action to remove the Iraqi government: the Iraq Liberation Act. Then, four years later in October 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the “Iraq Resolution,” which authorized the president to “use any means necessary” against Iraq. At 5:34 a.m. Baghdad time on March 20, 2003, the military invasion of Iraq began. Fifteen years later, we are still in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Niger. Some now call this the “long war” and there is no end in sight.

My friend Colin Powell says he did not invent the “Pottery Barn Rule” (if you break it, you own it). But he does believe that any war should have a clear objective, an overwhelming force to achieve it and a clear exit strategy.

He is a wise man.

Semmes One of Greatest Commerce-Raider Captains in Naval History

The oil on canvas *Sinking of the Alabama*, circa 1868, by American marine painter Xanthus Smith (1839-1929) sold for $38,837 at a June 2008 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, seven of the Southern slaveholding states had seceded from the Union before even hearings his inaugural address. In it, he declared, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

During the run-up to the 1860 election, Lincoln had chosen not to actively campaign and simply refused to comment on the issue of slavery. However, his Democratic opponent, Stephen A. Douglas (the “Little Giant”) campaigned across the country. In the South, he denounced threats of secession, but warned that Lincoln’s election would inevitably lead to that tragic end.

I have often wondered if the Civil War could have been averted if Lincoln had taken his inaugural speech to the South before the election or if a civil war was the only alternative to end slavery permanently. I suspect emotions were too high and that many actually hoped for a war, especially after all the heated rhetoric in places like South Carolina.

It became a moot point when barely a month later on April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on the Union garrison Fort Sumter and forced it to surrender. Now president, Lincoln announced that part of the United States was in a state of insurrection and issued a call for military volunteers. Four states – Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina – refused to provide troops and instead joined the Confederacy.

As positions hardened, Lincoln proclaimed a naval blockade against the seceded states, however, this was a futile effort since the Navy only had 42 ships to monitor 3,500 miles of Confederate coastline. They started chartering ships for blockade duty and soon there were 260 warships in service. Their task was made easier since the Confederate “Navy” consisted of 10 river craft armed with a total of 15 guns and not a single ship on the high seas.

Even the South’s military mobilization was devoted almost exclusively to ground forces since this was clearly the most urgent short-term priority.

However, one man was determined to change that. His name was Raphael Semmes (1809-1877) from Mobile, and following Alabama’s secession from the Union, Semmes was offered a Confederate naval appointment. He resigned from the U.S. Navy the next day, Feb. 15, 1861, and set off to the interim Confederate capital of Montgomery. There, he met with Jefferson Davis – the newly inaugurated president of the Confederate States of America – and Stephen R. Mallory, Secretary of the Navy. He outlined his plan to take the war to the enemy … not the federal Navy (that was too large to challenge), but to the U.S. merchant fleet.

In 1861, the U.S. Merchant Marine was the largest in the world. No one surpassed the skill and ingenuity of Yankee shipwrights in the design and construction of wooden vessels. America’s carrying trade had steadily increased in the 1840s-50s, fueled by the discovery of gold in California, treaty ports in Japan and China, and the whaling fleet that operated from the North Atlantic to the Bering Straits.

Semmes theory was that if Confederate cruisers could disrupt the merchant marine, the powerful shipping interests in the North would force the Lincoln administration to reconcile with the South and end the war. After studying naval commander John Paul Jones, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, Semmes was convinced a weak naval power could neutralize the merchant marine of a more powerful adversary.

President Davis approved the concept and thus launched the career of Raphael Semmes as one of the greatest commerce-raider captains in naval history. Along the way, he traveled 75,000 nautical miles without ever touching a Confederate port and is credited with 64 of the 200-plus Northern merchantmen destroyed by Confederate raiders, many as the commander of the cruiser CSS Alabama. (The warship was eventually sunk in battle with the USS Kearsarge in 1864.)

Fittingly, he is a member of the Alabama Hall of Fame and a monument by sculptor Caspar Buberl (1834-1899) still stands proudly in Mobile … unless, of course, Monument Marauders figure out who he was.

Stephen Douglas Understood Rebels were Resolute

This Stephen A. Douglas campaign silk ribbon sold for $8,125 at a May 2014 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Stephen A. Douglas was known as “Little Giant” due to his diminutive stature and superb oratorical skills. During his successful campaign for reelection to the senate in 1858, he engaged in a series of historic debates with Abraham Lincoln.

The “Great Debates of 1858” were a series of seven debates where the main issue was slavery. Media coverage was intense and major newspapers in Chicago sent stenographers to create verbatim texts of each one.

At the time, state legislators elected U.S. senators. The efforts of both Douglas and Lincoln were designed to enhance the probability of their parties winning the Illinois legislature.

Douglas, as a Democrat, won the senatorial race, but the visibility of the debates significantly elevated Lincoln in national prominence. This led directly to Lincoln winning the 1860 presidential election … defeating Douglas, who ran a weak fourth in the electoral vote behind John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky and even John Bell of Tennessee.

Despite this loss, Douglas was an astute political strategist and quickly realized that supporting Lincoln (and the federal government) was critical to avoiding an all-out civil war. So he launched a grueling speaking tour on behalf of the Union, preaching the need for unity – an effort that was to no avail, as we know.

After Fort Sumter fell, Lincoln proclaimed a state of rebellion and called on Douglas for his advice regarding calling up 75,000 troops to quell it.

Douglas suggested one change: Increase troop size to 200,000, since “you do not know the purposes of these men as well as I do.”

He then died of typhoid fever on June 3, 1861, just weeks after the start of hostilities on April 12. The war would grind on for four years and result in 620,000 deaths.

Douglas was right. The purpose of those men was war.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

People of South Carolina were Eager, Even Jubilant, to Start an All-Out War

This Confederate albumen photograph of Fort Sumter, taken two days after Union Major Robert Anderson surrendered, sold for $1,875 at a June 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Fort Sumter, S.C. – site of the first battle of the Civil War – was located on an artificial island inside the entrance to Charleston Harbor. A pentagon with block walls 300 feet long, 40 feet high and up to 12 feet thick was still under construction in late 1860.

On Dec. 26, U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson moved his troops from Fort Moultrie, at the edge of the harbor entrance, to Fort Sumter to reduce their exposure to an attack. Just days earlier, South Carolina had declared their state an independent republic and they resented the “foreign” U.S. flag. They considered Anderson’s transfer of troops an act of aggression.

They considered it another hostile act when the lame-duck James Buchanan administration sent an unarmed merchant ship with reinforcements in January 1861. As the ship approached Charleston Harbor, shore batteries opened fire and forced it to turn back.

Apparently, few recognized how eager (perhaps more than just eager) the people of South Carolina were to start an all-out war against what they considered the oppression of the North. Some even prayed for it to start.

On Feb. 15, 1861, the Confederate Provisional Congress in Montgomery secretly resolved that “immediate steps should be taken to obtain possession of both Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens … either by negotiation or force.” Confederate President Jefferson Davis then dispatched three commissioners to Washington to try diplomatic negotiations. However, he also ordered P.G.T. Beauregard (full name Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard) to take command of the harbor and start formal preparations for the use of force.

General Beauregard (one of only eight full generals in the Confederacy … ever) proceeded to extend and enlarge the batteries, targeting the fort. His preparations nearly complete, he advised President Davis on March 27 that expulsion of the Union troops “ought now to be decided in a few days.” Davis replied that Anderson should not be allowed to buy provisions in Charleston.

Want to start a war? Surround a fort with canons … cut off any reinforcements … and restrict its provisions. Then get a match and prepare to light the fuse.

On April 10, Beauregard was ordered to demand an evacuation of Fort Sumter, and if refused, to “reduce it.”

On April 12, 1861, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds on an ill-equipped Fort Sumter. They surrendered after 34 hours. Two days later, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to quell the “insurrection.” The president was not willing to start a war over the slavery issue, but the taking of federal property was leading to disunion, something the president was not going to allow, even if it meant all-out war.

The U.S. flag would not be raised over Fort Sumter again until April 14, 1865, exactly four years after the surrender. Who would have guessed? Obviously, few if any of the people who were so jubilant when the war started and so utterly demoralized when it ended.

The 1850s Represented a Challenging Time for America

u-s-senator-jefferson-davis-gold-pocket-watch — U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis presented this gold pocket watch to Franklin Pierce the year Pierce was nominated for president. Pierce was Davis’ favored candidate since Pierce had not openly opposed slavery. This watch sold for $15,535 at a June 2007 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

jefferson-davis-and-franklin-pierce In 1819, the United States was a divided nation with 11 states that permitted slavery and an equal number that did not. When Missouri applied for admission to join the Union as a slave state, tensions escalated dramatically since this would upset the delicate balance. It would also set a precedent by establishing the principle that Congress could make laws regarding slavery, a right many believed was reserved for the states.

In an effort to preserve harmony, Congress passed a compromise that accepted Missouri as a slave state and Massachusetts would be divided (creating Maine) and admitted as a free state. The passage of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 earned U.S. Senator Henry Clay the nickname of the “Great Pacificator.”

It was the first real crisis over the slavery issue and kicked the can all the way to the 1850s, however, observers like Thomas Jefferson were profoundly upset. He said just the threat of disunion in 1820 caused him to be apprehensive about the future. He foresaw the potential for civil war, saying, “My God, this country is going to have a blow up. When it hits us, it’s going to be like a tornado.”

Those words would prove to be eerily prophetic.

By the 1850s, the disagreement had splintered into a five-way dispute. Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans arguing with the Southern Democrats. The Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas, versus the Southern Democrats through Jefferson Davis. There were heated arguments between Frederick Douglass (and the political abolitionists) and William Lloyd Garrison, who favored non-violent moral suasion, and both against the non-political-process abolition that led to John Brown’s violent actions.

The War with Mexico (1846-48) had fueled these contentious debates since there was no consensus on how to treat the vast new territories of California, Utah, New Mexico or even Texas. After years of wrangling, the Compromise of 1850 put a bandage on it and several other lingering issues (e.g., the Fugitive Slave Act, the banning of slave trade in Washington, D.C.). Neither side was satisfied, but the Union remained intact.

However, the tentative peace was fleeting. When the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, with cooperation between U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas and President Franklin Pierce, the inevitability of a civil war was finally a stark reality. The election of Lincoln in 1860 was the final straw and seven Southern states seceded, even before his inauguration, to form a new confederacy.

Formal hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired on the Federal seaport of Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., and would not end for four bloody years. Even Jefferson’s metaphor of a tornado never contemplated the death and destruction that took place.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell]