The Civil War in the Southwest

English Slavery, Napoleon Bonaparte, & Jeffersonian Democrats

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The title of this series, The Civil War in the Southwest, it sounds like I am going to be going deep into the history of the battles that occurred in New Mexico and Arizona. That makes sense, of course, and I will, but in reality, the lead up to the civil war and the decision to invade these territories by a Rebel Government, a Government that needed all available men to defend the home front, yet still sent men west, talking about the Civil War in the Southwest requires a global historical perspective. The United States Civil War did not occur in a bubble and worldwide events pushed each side into making their decisions. In order to enjoy the context of such battles as Glorietta Pass or Valverde or the last lance charge in north America or the pack mule IEDs, one needs to understand why those soldiers were killing one another in such a quote unquote desolate land in the first place. So, not only will I be talking a lot about New Mexico, but I will also mention Texas, Utah, California, Oregon, Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, Russia, Prussia, France, and England. And other locations still. I had no idea how international the conflict was, despite my lifelong fascination with the civil war, until I began reading for this series. And boy did I read. A lot. And now I’m going to share what I learned with y’all.

This won’t be your typical textbook version of Civil War History about slavery and state’s rights. Although those play an enormous role. In this series, especially the first few episodes, I will put the United States Civil War into an international context that most listeners have probably never heard or thought about. So get your boots on, grab your blue or grey overcoat, ready your rifle, and let’s march into the history of the civil war in the American southwest.

The first thing I am going to say, as a sort of disclaimer, just so that my listeners and those that stumble upon this corner of history know, so no one is confused, I believe that slavery is evil. And I am proud of our nation for abolishing it.

The Civil War of the United States of America, in hindsight, appears to have been inevitable. Of course, that is not how history works and there were many times that the catastrophe could have been avoided, but even from the start of the Revolutionary War, the country was divided between two factions: Loyalists and Patriots. Loyalists wanted to stay with England and after the war they would fatefully head to Canada. The Patriots, wanted freedom from Britain and to create a new nation under God. But even among the Patriots, those that wanted to avail themselves of what they saw as a tyrannical crown, even among the patriots, the warring nation was split between northerners and southerners. The southerners were dominated by that original English Colony, Virginia while the north was centered in New England in cities like Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Adams led the northerners while the Virginians were led by Washington and Jefferson and both men owned slaves but both men knew that slavery must one day end in the United States. The question to them, especially Jefferson, was how. And when.

While Washington would be the first Commander in Chief, Jefferson was not far behind him. In the end, Jefferson’s beliefs and policies would lead to a further division among the Patriots, now Americans, more so than Washington’s brief but effective term as President would. But in reality, the president after Washington, the New Englander, Adams, he would also greatly divide the nation with his Federalist agenda.

Jefferson’s own views about the new Republic and slavery are pretty fascinating and I truly believe we would be a much different nation if we had abided by his policies and hopes for the future. I’m not sure if that future would have been better or… the same as now, well, it wouldn’t have been the same as now, but Jefferson’s ideas wanted to take the nation on a course similar to that of the Roman Republic.

Jefferson saw the nation as a Republic where all citizens were equal. Key word being citizens, because not everyone living in America would have been a citizen. He, and many other founding fathers, believed that all citizens would be noble farmers who would and must, EARN their citizenship. They accomplished this mostly through owning land. A nation like Rhodesia is the closest modern example that I can think of that fits the plan Jefferson had for America. You must own a certain amount of land to be a citizen and to participate in the politics of the nation. If you did not own land, this was true in Rhodesia, but not in the US, if you did NOT own land but you wanted to be a citizen, then you could prove you were worthy of such citizenship by making enough money for the nation’s economy or by passing certain aptitude or maybe what we would call today, IQ tests. Passing these tests would have then given you the ability to make decisions for the future of the nation. Jefferson never entertained the idea of this test, mostly because such things weren’t really around then, but in his view, only land owners could vote. If you own land, if you own some of the soil, if you have roots, as Jefferson’s thinking went, then you have skin in the game. Your goals would be the preservation of not only your land but your country’s land as well. Because your country protected you. Hence why they named the president the commander in chief and why he was in charge of the military. He was the head of the armed forces. The commander in chief’s ultimate goal was to protect the nation against enemies, both foreign, and domestic. An important phrase… foreign and domestic… without and within. Really, the phrase should have been reversed. But by becoming a citizen and holding land that you would pass down to your progeny, the founding fathers were essentially taking the idea of a monarchy and spreading it around to the citizens. A monarch wants to protect his kingdom because he wants his kingdom to succeed and grow and prosper. So a monarch will do whatever is in his power, if he’s a good and worthy monarch, he’s going to do whatever he could to preserve his kingdom or, as we call it today, nation, against destruction. Jefferson and the founding fathers took that notion and abolished, what they saw as the tyrannical monarchy and aristocracy and they spread that responsibility and patriarchal leadership amongst the citizens. If you were a landed citizen, like the ancien regime kings, then you would desire the greatest outcome for your kingdom and your children and your children’s children and so on. Universal suffrage would have been abhorrent and unthinkable to most of the founding fathers. Especially those from Virginia. Like Jefferson.

Jefferson’s views on slavery were obviously… conflicting. The estimable Darryl Cooper of Martyrmade is currently doing a series for his substack subscribers that goes into the history of slavery with regards to the lead up to the Civil War. In typical DC fashion, he begins his lengthy series at the beginning. Quite literally before recorded history. For y’all, I am just going to start with Thomas Jefferson. In part 14 of his series he finally brings up the founding fathers and especially Thomas Jefferson and he taught me some good history which I will quote from. We all know that Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but few know that he had some rough first drafts and much of what he wrote in those drafts was cut out by the Continental Congress. One such passage that he wrote that got trimmed was a diatribe against the king and the African slavery that Jefferson felt the King and England forced upon the United States. That’s how he saw it. He wrote in that first draft, quote:

(The king) has waged war against human nature itself, violating the most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain, determined to keep open the market where MEN could be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us and to purchase that liberty of which he has denied, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. End quote.

So in this rant towards the king, he is blaming he and England for capturing and buying blacks from Africa and dangerously… lethally transporting them to America to work in the fields of England’s colonies. Jefferson personally blames the king of England for bringing slavery to the US. He then says, rightfully so, that after forcing this slavery upon us, Americans, he says that after forcing slavery upon America with your soldiers and ships and commerce, now that we are fighting against you, you are exciting the slaves to open rebellion which could very well lead to the slaughter of us white Patriots. I will go into this more shortly because what he’s saying is true and factual. England, in her war against the Patriots, was inciting violence among the slaves in the south, and the north, but mostly in the south. The king was advocating for free and bonded slaves to take up arms against the colonists. And England will continue this possibly violent propaganda right up until the Civil War. They will also advocate this abolitionism on the Island of San Domingue or what we call today, Haiti.

Jefferson though, while clearly writing with hatred about the institution of slavery, while writing this, he owned slaves! He had them in his home. Outside his home. He had them working the fields and cleaning his plantation.

When he was 21 years old, Jefferson inherited 5,000 acres and 52 slaves. He would never free these slaves, mind you, but it is clear from his writings and his attitudes, from a young age, that he detested slavery. And he wasn’t the only founding father who did.

Here’s Darryl Cooper summing up the moral quandary of a people demanding freedom from tyranny while commanding tyranny themselves.

Quote: The moral problem of a people fighting for their liberty while holding half a million slaves in subjugation was becoming an unavoidable contradiction. The problem was not confined to salons in the Northern cities, either. Revulsion for slavery was felt even in the South, and even among many slaveholders themselves. It is easy to dismiss them as mere hypocrites, but these men had to deal with practical problems flowing from what, to us, with benefit of hindsight and far from the consequences of any decision, are uncompromising moral declarations. These were not men who could easily violate their principles without suffering the full psychological consequences, and they genuinely struggled when their principles seemed to contradict each other. End quote.

For this series I read an incredibly interesting book by a Canadian historian and author named Jeffrey Zvengrowski who wrote Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology from 1815 to 1870. He too started his book at the revolution and with Thomas Jefferson. I read his book lightning fast despite it being incredibly dense with quotes, personages, politics, speeches, laws, declarations, and so forth. It was one heck of a book and I will be quoting from it heavily, mostly in these first few episodes but also along the way. One quote about Thomas Jefferson that speaks to his view on emancipation by Zvengrowski is this, quote, Jefferson wanted black slaves to be gradually emancipated, but he did not desire to extend free blacks equality or fraternity within the Union. End quote. This, by the way, will be the view of future CSA, or Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis. But more on him in the next episode.

Thomas Jefferson did see that freeing the slaves was inevitable… but he had reservations on how it should be carried out. He simply could not fathom a nation such as the one he had helped to create, he could not see the United States as being anything other than a white, agrarian, and egalitarian nation built on Christian beliefs. He believed the US would not survive if it let in a flood of people who did not share the Anglo Christian values that the founding fathers had. Only problem for Jefferson was… that there was already a flood of non-Anglo non-Christian people that had been violently forced to relocate to these hallowed shores.

Here’s Darryl Cooper on Jefferson again, quote: Blacks, he believed, Thomas Jefferson, Blacks, he believed, would prove unequal to the demands of liberty, and whites, even if they overcame their initial prejudice would resent having to carry them: He’s now quoting Thomas Jefferson himself:

Quote, I advance it as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both mind and body… This unfortunate difference in color and perhaps in faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people… Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, will divide us into parties and produce convulsions, and probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race. End all quotes.

Jefferson did not believe that Blacks were capable of enjoying the free society the founding fathers were building. Jefferson also believed that eventually, violence would erupt between the two distinct peoples. The blacks and the whites. The masters and the slaves. It was a fear that all slave holders had and a fear that slave holders have had since the beginning of slavery. Spartacus in Rome comes to mind. What did the Roman Republic do to the slaves who participated in the slave uprising in 71 BC? Well, Spartacus was killed… and then, his six thousand followers, were crucified alive, all of them, and they were crucified evenly along the 100 mile road from Capua to Rome. As a warning to all future slaves. Revolt equals death. And just to be clear, that’s one hanging and rotting crucified body every 88 feet… for one hundred miles.

Jefferson would not only be alive but he would also President and commander in chief of the US when this very horrific slave rebellion played out again but in the opposite direction in what is probably the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world. The slave revolt on san Domingue.

Washington, however, he saw the end of his slaves as important enough to demand such an action in his will. This is what he wrote six months before his death, quote:

Upon the death of my wife, it is my will & desire that all the Slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom…. I do hereby expressly forbid the sale… of any slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. End quote. He also wrote that, quote, this clause respecting slaves and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled without evasion, neglect, or delay. End quote.

Clearly, the founding fathers had a complicated and tortured relationship to slavery before and after they helped their nation gain independence from England. But how much independence did the United States really gain after the revolution? This is important. Because when Jefferson Davis espouses the necessity of cessation in 1861, he called it the second Revolutionary War against the Yankees. He wasn’t only talking about cessation from the north.

From the very beginning of the United States of America, Britain never ceased to harass the new quote unquote independent nation. Even after the smoke cleared from the battlefields and the treaty was signed, England never quit, and may have actually increased her practice of consistently abducting American Naval Vessels and the men aboard them for her own use. England had been practicing this forced impressment of sailors, whom they had captured, since the Anglo-Saxon era of that island. It did not cease just because one of her colonies became uppity and split. And again, it seemingly increased after the declaration of independence.

Now, this is… mostly because of one particular Emperor of the French, a certain Napoleon Bonaparte. England’s war against the Emperor of France forced England to use the United States of America as, essentially, a pawn. In this introduction to the Civil War in the Southwest, I will be talking a lot about Napoleon the first and eventually Napoleon the third. They both play a key role in the making of the Confederate States of America and her decisions before and during the civil war.

So from the beginning of the Union’s independence, England was theoretically enslaving men whom she found on the high seas and forcing them to be in the Royal Navy, regardless of their country of origin. During the Napoleonic wars from 1793 to 1812, England would increase her navy from 135 to 584 ships. And those ships weren’t manned by drones. They were heavily manned by human men. England, during that same period, also increased her personnel from 36,000 to 114,000 seamen. Of course, many of them were captured in England when they woke up from a drunken stupor aboard a ship, but many others had been pressed at sea when their vessels were overtaken by the royal navy. And many of those men who were overtaken at sea were Americans. Obviously, The united states didn’t care for this illegal seizure of men and equipment but also, this will directly lead to the outbreak of the War of 1812. But this forced impressment isn’t the only factor that led to that war.

Both before and after the American Revolution, England was also arming and supplying the New America’s greatest threat: The Indians. This was mostly done from her forts and ports in Canada around the great lakes, but the Crown’s reach was immense. In 1803 with the stroke of a pen, Thomas Jefferson, a future admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte, but in 1803 Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana from the Emperor Napoleon which gave the US 828,000 additional square miles.

A lot of this became known as the Northwest Territory which included Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and some of Minnesota. Immediately, Americans flocked to the region they were already kinda exploring and branching out into. England, still having possession of Canada, was fearful of American expansionism so they regularly armed and trained bands and tribes of Indians to repel, kill, and massacre American frontiersman and their settlements. In reality, England has a long history, which they passed to us in the middle of the 20th century, of arming various worldwide rebels and rebellions to accomplish their own aims. I know I just kinda brushed over this but I can’t spend too much time on Tecumseh and the war of 1812 and America’s aims of procuring a lot of Canada. Well, actually, I will go into that later when the 19th century progresses under the influence of the then Democrat Warhawk secretary of war Jefferson Davis.

But before and after the revolution, England was impressing America’s sailors, England was arming the Indians and causing havoc on the frontier, and England was attempting to restrict the new nation’s trade with America’s oldest ally: France.

So, back to the Revolutionary War.

If you’ll recall from your various history books and history podcasts, the nearly bankrupt Kingdom of France, which had been around for almost a thousand years, France, under the newly crowned Louis the 16th, he fatefully backed the Revolutionary patriots in America during her war against England. England and France have a long history of animosity which had recently flared up again in what Americans call the French and Indian war. Which itself was an extension of the seven years war which itself was a global conflict that saw an immense amount of death which is why the founding fathers told us future Americans NOT to entangle ourselves in European conflicts… Well, during the French and Indian War, future patriots and their fathers fought AGAINST the French and her Indian allies. But by the time the Revolution rolled around, Francophiles like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson gained the support of France in the way of 63 warships, 22,000 sailors, and 12,000 soldiers, all of them French. We would not have gained our independence without France’s help. Simple as that. This help though, would come at a high price for France of oh… the French Revolution. And, I don’t think the French Revolution would have happened if France had not directly involved herself in the American Revolution. For a history on the French Revolution, listen to Mike Duncan. But I’m still going to talk a lot about it because it would have immense consequences for two nations important to this story. Those two nations being the US, obviously, and San Domingue or, Haiti.

Because of the French Revolution and its abject horror that was the red terror, Napoleon Bonaparte famously, quote, found the crown of France in the gutter. I picked it up with the tip of my sword and cleaned it, and placed it atop my own head. End quote. I think that’s a great quote.

I have mixed feelings on Napoleon… I have the famous portrait of him atop the horse crossing the Alps hanging in my office. I also have far too many books about him including a large leather bound tome I found being given away for free in a box on the sidewalks of Menton, France. This beautifully illustrated and thick book is all in French so I can only open it and look at the pretty pictures but, Napoleon is a great man of history. Wether you ascribe to that theory or not, it is undeniable that Napoleon, like Washington, and a few others in recent memory, it is undeniable that great men are able to move the chess pieces of the world with considerable ease and bravado. Napoleon, like Caesar, is a man that modern men can learn from. Even better themselves by studying them. But Napoleon is not without his faults. And that is, in my opinion, also true of American men like Thomas Jefferson. 

At first, Thomas Jefferson despised Napoleon’s despotic tendencies. You have to understand, Patriots like Jefferson wanted an egalitarian society where all free white men were equal. This is actually a very important view of Jefferson’s that would be passed down to future Democrats like someone I will talk about soon named Calhoun. But also to the man who was named after Thomas Jefferson and the man who would become President of the CSA, Jefferson Davis. At first, Thomas Jefferson saw Napoleon as another King George. A tyrant. But eventually, Jefferson, and other southern Democrats would grow to greatly admire Bonaparte. But at first, Jefferson called him a scoundrel and a betrayer of the French Revolution. Which, yes, Napoleon did betray the French Revolution but, have you read about what the Montagnards, the Jacobins, and the crazy reds were doing?! Despite his initial feelings, Jefferson much preferred alliance with the French than with the English.

In 1807 Jefferson wrote to a fellow Democrat and said, quote, I never expected to be under the necessity of wishing success to Bonaparte, but the English being equally tyrannical at sea as he is on land, & that tyranny bearing on us in every point of either honor or interest, I say, 'down with England, and as for what Buonaparte is then to do to us, let us trust to the chapter of accidents. I cannot, with the [Federalist] Anglomen, prefer a certain present evil to a future hypothetical one. End quote. This very exact same sentiment, especially the let the French do to us what they want as long as England isn’t doing it, sentiment, it has a long lasting impact on future democrats. Especially Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and by extension, the confederate states of America.

That Federalist Anglomen Thomas Jefferson refers to are American men in the north, like Adams, that will eventually become known as… Republicans. But that’s a few decades away. So, initially, Jefferson and other Democrats, especially southern Democrats, they were initially leery of Napoleon’s success, but they were frustrated by England’s blockade against France that stopped them from being able to do business with and to trade with that country. The south especially wanted to keep their cotton trade alive. You know, that industry that relied almost entirely on slave labor…

The Southern Democrats, like Jefferson, also began to see the picture that Napoleon was painting in his militaristic domination of Europe. The Democrats would come to see during Napoleon’s overtaking and overthrowing of monarchy after monarchy in his crusade to create a United States of Europe that Napoleon may not be the tyrant the Democrats first thought he was. Sure, Napoleon would place his own family and friends as the new monarchs in those nations he just conquered, but at least everywhere he went, he created new constitutions, he created parliaments, he abolished the aristocracy and their titles while also spreading suffrage to, and here’s the key, WHITE, europeans. Jefferson and especially his southern Democrat friends, and a few in the north, but the Democrats soon began to worship Napoleon.

It should be said, Napoleon absolutely believed in the supremacy of the White Europeans. And that was a view that Jefferson and his Democrats also held. And Napoleon would eventually extend HIS white supremacist view to France’s most productive colony in the world… San Domingue.

For a history on the Haitian Revolution I again point you towards Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast. But essentially, after the American Revolution spread to France, it jumped the pond again and landed in the Caribbean. San Domingue is one half of the island of Hispañola. The other half is the Dominican Republic. San Dominue though, was France’s most profitable colony on account of its sugar cane. Sugar cane is notoriously difficult and unpleasant to harvest and manufacture for use in the production of sugar. Many accounts of slavery on the island points to a very bleak situation. Dan Carlin also covered Haiti’s rebellion in one of his episodes but unfortunately some of the sources he used were inaccurate. Still, it was awful to be a slave in San Domingue. It’s awful to be a slave anywhere, but in San Domingue it was particularly bad.

San Domingue was also notorious because of its demographics. The island was made up of 500,000 slaves, along with 28,000 freed blacks, and only 32,000 whites. There were over 16 blacks, half of them from Africa, to every one Frenchman. Eventually, buoyed by the French Revolution’s promises of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, in 1793 the abolitionist Sonthonax and the Jacobins freed the blacks. These blacks, after a decade of debacle and battle, would eventually kill every single White French man, woman, and child that did not escape to The united states or back to France. Some 25,000 French whites would ultimately be killed. And on top of that, 75,000 French troops. Now, on the flip side, around 200,000 blacks would be killed. The whole affair was a horrendous, sad, and bloody saga.

This, this atrocious act of history, it was the southern slaveholder’s greatest fear. An actual successful slave rebellion that would see the white’s massacred. And many blacks as well. This was Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare as I quoted him saying earlier. Now there are a ton of reasons this massacre happened and those reasons are for someone else to dive into. But because of this whole revolutionary thing, Napoleon would send 31,000 troops to reestablish French rule in 1803 but of those, only 7 or 8 thousand would end up fighting since the rest would die of disease. This resistance to diseases was one of the main driving forces of African slavery in the first place. The Africans could survive in conditions where whites could not. But in response to Napoleon’s invasion, England mustered the largest force she had yet in her history mustered and England sent this force out to conquer the Caribbean and destroy quote, the power of France in these pestilent islands. End quote. The entire time during this long slave rebellion on future Haiti, England had been, you guessed it, supplying the slaves and rebels with weapons. Just like they’d been doing in North America with the Indians against the Americans. And just like they would do in Mexico with the Juaristas which I will talk about later. And just like they did during the American Revolution with the slaves England herself brought to America.

The US was viewing all of this business in Haiti with suspicion and abject fear. Many Americans saw Napoleon at first as a threat because some assumed that he would reconquer Louisiana. But that threat disappeared with the disastrous Haiti campaign. Other Americans, especially in the south, saw England’s meddling and rapidly growing abolitionist views as a much more severe threat to the republic than France trying to reclaim her colony.

Americans like John Adams. He was preceded by George Washington, making him the second president of the US and he served as President from 1797 to 1801. Adams was a Federalist who preferred banks over farming, preferred a strong federal government over strong states governments, and he preferred England over France. And during the Haitian revolution, Adams, along with the British, assisted the slaves on the island, horrifying Democrats like Jefferson who would become president after Adams. Jefferson would immediately cease assisting the ex-slaves. He couldn’t fathom the same thing happening in the United States that had happened to the whites in Haiti. Which is what England was pushing for.

For decades after the Revolutionary War, English abolitionists would publish and disseminate abolition literature in the north with the hopes that it would find its way to the south. They’d advocated for a slave rebellion during the revolution remember, well they didn’t stop afterwards. Even after seeing what it did on the island of Hispañola.

While the French Revolution did ultimately end slavery in the French Napoleonic Empire, and Napoleon himself would spread abolition wherever he went, he wasn’t an egalitarian when it came to the races. After Haiti Napoleon sent the French Army to Algeria, Vietnam, Senegal, and a slew of other colonies in Africa and Asia to restore white French rule. Bonapartists detested slavery in every way but they were also white supremacists. Much like Thomas Jefferson. And as I mentioned earlier, Jefferson would eventually come to admire Napoleon.

Because of the Napoleonic Wars and because of the aforementioned English meddling in the US, the war of 1812 happened which saw England reasserting its dominance over the United States. Sure, the US repelled the English, especially at the very French city of New Orleans under Andrew Jackson, but the English still burned the White House and much of DC. America invaded Canada but was repelled by the Indians, the American Loyalists who had fled there decades before, and on account of the English. And very consequentially for our story, politics in the US became even more divided after the war. Northern Federalists and Democrat Republicans, which will be the future republican party, they wanted an alliance with England, while the southern Jeffersonian Democrats wanted to strengthen ties with Napoleonic France.

After the Napoleonic Wars which saw Napoleon deposed and England re-Monarching the continent, many French veterans, generals, and leaders headed to The United States where they would influence the young nation’s institutions. Many generals wound up in cities like Savannah, Charleston, Mobile, and obviously New Orleans and many of these men would influence the politics of the upper-class Southerners. But not all of them headed to the south.

It would be, in my opinion, impossible to argue that Napoleon was not a military genius. Napoleon revolutionized conventional warfare. His ability and skill to win through outmaneuvering which would cause the enemy to surrender was unparalleled at this time. This outmaneuvering would cause not just surrender but defeat which then saw Napoleon’s armies sweeping through the opposing nations and kingdoms. This genius rubbed off on many of his subordinates and many of them would find themselves in America at prestigious places like West Point. Once there, many of them at the request of American politicians, they would attempt to remake the US Army into a Napoleonic one. One Bonaparte aid de camp who became an American citizen, Simon Bernard, he would end up influencing the then Secretary of war, John C Calhoun. A man who wanted to conquer all of North America for The United States. Especially British North America.

John C Calhoun plays an enormous role in this lead up to the Civil War. Calhoun was born in South Carolina in 1782. He got a good education, went to Yale, and eventually became a Congressmen. Once in Washington, Calhoun became one of the leaders of the Jeffersonian Democratic Warhawk, and he was a huge pusher for declaring war on England in 1812. He would end up drafting a Declaration of War in which he accused England at various times in the document of having, quote, lust for power, unbounded tyranny, and mad ambition. End quote.

After the war, Calhoun was deeply unimpressed with the performance and mismanagement of the US Army. He had, after all, wanted to conquer both British North America and British Caribbean. So, he sought to remedy its faults. That’s when Simon Bernard enters the story and influences Calhoun. Bernard suggested that the US should build forts on the coast from Louisiana to Maine, just in case the English invaded again. Other ex-Bonapartists had Calhoun’s ear as well. And they told him that the US should build more roads and canals in the interior, as well as a good system of communication. Although the period after the War of 1812 is sometimes referred to as the Era of Good Feelings, there were many Americans and politicians, especially in the south, that felt like another war very well could be imminent. The war had been somewhat of an embarrassment for the US and a lot of that was because as soon as Napoleon abdicated the throne, England sent a bunch of hardened veterans of that conflict to the US. England also sent hundreds of men from the Caribbean and India to fight US Soldiers. And once on shore, England burned DC and freed 3,000 black slaves in the south before sending them to resettle in the British Caribbean. The south would not forget this. And again, immediately after the war of 1812, England began flooding New England with abolitionist literature and ideas. Especially at Calhoun’s alma mater, Yale.

Simon Bernard held Calhoun in respect and Calhoun held Napoleon in respect. Later in life Calhoun would say of Napoleon, quote, The overthrow of Bonaparte was followed throughout Europe by a powerful reaction against the popular principles on which our government rests, and to which, through the influence of our example, the French Revolution was traced. End quote. Calhoun was disgusted by the British undoing of what Napoleon had done in Europe. Many in the south had seen Napoleon’s actions and interpreted them as creating a United States of Europe, which were based on the United States of America. Calhoun feared that England, like they had done in Europe, wanted to undo the US Revolution. Something they had tried to do twice already.

So Calhoun listened to the ex-Bonapartists and he agreed. The interior should be strengthened. The Army should be overhauled. The Federal Government needed to have a stronger presence when it came to protection and the military BUT not a stronger presence in the lives of Americans. Another key push the ex-Bonapartists insisted was that the US should accomplish full Industrialization. This though, clashed with Calhoun’s Jeffersonian Democratic beliefs. Like Jefferson, and like future CSA President Jefferson Davis who was very influenced by Calhoun, John C Calhoun feared and fought against an English style inequality among whites in the US. He, like Jefferson, wanted a nation of equal Whites with no hierarchy among them. Like Jefferson, and many other southerners, Calhoun very much sought an egalitarian equality for American citizens. White American citizens. These southerners truly believed, that if white Americans stayed equal, that they would surpass England. Calhoun also believed, once America surpassed the fortunes of England, that a future war with her would be inevitable. Hence his Warhawk status and why he wanted to strengthen the US military. These calls for forts and roads and canals would either be ignored or met with hostility in Washington. Mostly because they wanted closer ties to their twice enemy.

After Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, Calhoun became an ardent supporter of the General and future president. During Jackson’s presidency, Calhoun was his vice president. Actually, Calhoun had also been vice president for the administration before with John Quincy Adams. So he was Vice President for two different presidents. And he’s the only one so far.

In 1824 John Quincy Adams would be elected president and he would immediately seek to be closer to England. He also began to strengthen the northwest interior as opposed to the entire interior including the south, much to his vice president Calhoun’s dismay. Adams would also encourage immense growth and industrialization in the north AT the expense of the south. But Adams biggest affront to his Vice President and the other southern Jeffersonian Democrats was his promotion of racial equality while at the same time promoting inequality among whites.

After Adams, the war hero of New Orleans, General Andrew Jackson was elected and Calhoun was again Vice President and while Vice President, Calhoun pushed Jackson to remove what he saw as the traitorous Indians from the South. He did this mostly because he and other Southerners believed that the Indians were receiving British aid and weapons.

This was certainly true in the north at this time. Indians in Michigan, backed by the English in Canada, had just recently attacked a fort and then scalped the men in charge before mutilating their bodies. This was happening at the same time that Federalists in the north, like John Quincy Adams, were advocating for and romanticizing the Indians as a peaceful people who were unjustly conquered. I am reminded of the Pueblo Mystique. And how early Indian Agents to the Apache felt. It’s a theme I recently learned, is still taught in public schools to this day. The Pueblo mystique is apparently not only reserved for the Puebloans of the Southwest. Calhoun, Jackson, and other Southern Democrats saw this sympathetic view towards the Indians as traitorous and they blamed… the English.

So, it’s clear that from the very beginning of the nation, but especially after the war of 1812, the north and the south were at odds. The northern federalists preferred an alliance with England after the war of 1812 while some southerners, the ones more in danger from the Caribbean and their west, wanted fortifications and a strong army. The Southerners also wanted a more egalitarian white society. To further advocate for this, Jackson and Calhoun won the quote unquote bank war in which they stopped a national bank from forming. They believed that this bank would mostly only benefit northern elites and ultimately create a nation even further divided into classes.

Eventually, shortly after the war of 1812, federalism would be destroyed but the sentiments remained, especially in New England. Although, there would be some holdouts in the south. Especially my home state of Georgia. And those sentiments included a desire to be closer to England. Jeffery Zvengrowski mentions a group of influential New England Federalists which were at that time given the name Essex Junto, because they were mostly from Essex County Massachusetts, but Zvengrowski sums up how the south saw these New Englanders who were led by a radical New England secessionist named Timothy Pickering, but he sums up how the south saw these radicals in a long but great quote:

Essex Junto new England federalists like Timothy pickering, after all, supposedly sought to institute British-style class, ethnic, and religious hierarchies among whites, embracing British abolitionism at the same time by enfranchising blacks to diminish the political power and social status of lower-class whites. Rejecting Jeffersonian Democratic plans to gradually eliminate slavery without challenging white rule so that blacks could be removed from the United States in the end, they had also ostensibly worked to turn the Union or at least a seceded New England into a submissive British ally against Bonapartist France. And many New England Federalists did look to the British for protection from Napoleon I, whom they loathed for espousing égalité, fraternité, and, to a lesser extent, liberté among whites even as Calhoun-type Jeffersonian Democrats hailed him for championing what they took to be the basic democratic principles of the American and French Revolutions. End quote.

This was the atmosphere of the 1810s and 20s in the nation. New England preferred England and wanted to secede from the Union or abolish it altogether, while southerners preferred Napoleon’s France and wanted égalité, fraternité, and liberté among whites while slowly absolving themselves of black slaves.

Calhoun would eventually have a falling out with Jackson but Calhoun would stick around in politics nearly up until he died. During his time as a Senator and Secretary of State in the 1830s and 40s, Calhoun sought massive industrialization for the south IN UNISON with the north and he sought Federal oversight for this objective. He even wanted to use black slave labor under the control of the Federal Government… and watchful eye of a powerful militia. He wanted these black slaves to build infrastructure in the south like railroads and factories. Jeffery Zvengrowski wrote about how Calhoun saw the slaves. Quote, Blacks, after all, were not childlike charges in Calhoun's view but instead a brutishly hostile race to be controlled by "the stern and powerful will of the government" if the "feeble and flexible will of a master" would not suffice. End all quotes. So he had no problem in using black slaves to further the nation and he wanted the powerful federal government to oversee this growth in infrastructure in the south. A growth he hoped would rival the north until eventually overtaking it. And by extension, England.

The south actually did use black labor in coal, copper, and gold mines in places like Virginia and Georgia. Calhoun wanted to increase this use of the south’s slaves. Calhoun could not see the Nation, and especially the south, grow and compete with England if slavery were abolished. In 1838 he remarked that if slavery were abolished the abolitionists in the north would then work to lower the southern whites to a place below the blacks. It’s a sentiment that was proven correct during reconstruction. Something he would not live to see. 

I know this is a lot of political history and intrigue but… I’m not quite done yet. Because in 1838 something big went down in a place known as the Republic of Texas.

I will not be going into the history of the annexation of Texas but it was an important catalyst to the Civil War and actually, the Civil War almost started in Texas… as I will get to in a couple episodes.

Under Calhoun as secretary of war for President Tyler, the United States annexed Texas and made it a slave state. In a surprising bit of historical fact I did not know, actually this episode is filled with those, but Calhoun and other southern Democrats greatly feared at this time that the English were after Texas and that they were going to take quote exclusive control of the cotton trade end quote and that this was a grave threat to the quote very existence of the south. End quote. Those were Calhoun’s words. But Texas went to the United States.

In the next episode, I will introduce the most important southern man during the Civil War, future President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis. I will also talk about the Warhawks hope for an expanded America and Napoleon the Third’s rise to power.

Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest by Donald Frazier

Jefferson Davis, Napoleon France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology by Jeffrey Zvengrowski

Texan Santa Fe Expedition By H. Bailey Carroll

The Skirmish at Mesilla, Arizona and the West, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Winter, 1959), by Martin Hardwick Hall

The Three Cornered War by Megan Kate Nelson

The Civil War in New Mexico by Father Stanley

The First Filibusters, Americans in the Yucatan by Hans Von Stockhausen

The United States Army Camel Corps 1856-66 By John Shapard

The Apache Wars by Paul Andrew Hutton

Rebels on the Rio Grande, The Civil War Journal of AB Peticoles by Don E Alberts

Mangas Coloradas by Edwin R Sweeney

The Civil War in the Western Territories by Ray C Colton

The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis

The Battle of Glorieta Pass by Thomas S Edrington and John Taylor

The War of 1812: Stoking the Fires. Summer 2012, Vol. 44, No. 2 Impressment of Seaman Charles Davis by the U.S. Navy By John P. Deeben

Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition by George Wilkins Kendall

Building a State in Apache Land by Charles D. Poston

Mule Bombs at Valverde By Dr. Conrad Crane, U. S. Army Military History Institute, February 9, 2009

Darryl Cooper’s Martyrmade: The Peculiar Institution, Part 14

The Age of Jackson Podcast: 091 Jefferson Davis and the Pro-Bonaparte Democrats with Jeffrey Zvengrowski