Stephen Douglas, the Little Giant

Image appears in Lincoln/Net, courtesy of the Chicago History Museum

This cartoon, dating from the late 1850s or 1860, depicts Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, popularly known as the Little Giant, as a Roman gladiator armed with his doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. In Douglas’ usage, Popular Sovereignty suggested that citizens of territories seeking to become states should determine for themselves if slavery would be permitted there. This proved very controversial in the northern states because the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had forbidden slavery in territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase located north of the 36 30′ (with the exception of Missouri). Douglas’ proposal potentially threw the entire West open for slavery, and served to intensify the sectional crisis that led to the Civil War.

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The Haymarket Riot

 

The above image is a contemporary artist’s imagining of the moment of the bomb’s explosion, found in Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror in America and Europe by Michael Schaack (Chicago: F.J. Schulte and Co., 1889). It appears in Illinois During the Gilded Age.

On the evening of May 4, 1886, an unknown individual lobbed a dynamite bomb into a formation of Chicago police officers sent to disperse an anarchist meeting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The panicked police responded with a hail of gunfire directed into the crowd attending the meeting. When order once again prevailed, seven police officers and at least that many private citizens lay dead, with many more wounded. These events touched off a wave of civic upheaval as Americans discussed the Haymarket bomb in light of the period’s rapidly changing economic and social conditions. It also led to a celebrated trial of eight avowed anarchists, the execution or death in prison of five of them, and Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld’s bold pardon of the remaining three.

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Owen Lovejoy

Image: Northern Illinois University Libraries

Owen Lovejoy (January 6, 1811 – March 25, 1864) was a Congregationalist minister and abolitionist who won election to the United States Congress in 1856. In an 1859 speech to the House of Representatives, he declared his opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law that required all Americans to assist in the capture of escaped bondsmen, in the following terms:
“Proclaim it upon the house-tops! Write it upon every leaf that trembles in the forest! Make it blaze from the sun at high noon and shine forth in the radiance of every star that bedecks the firmament of God. Let it echo through all the arches of heaven, and reverberate and bellow through all the deep gorges of hell, where slave catchers will be very likely to hear it. Owen Lovejoy lives at Princeton, Illinois, three-quarters of a mile east of the village, and he aids every fugitive that comes to his door and asks it. Thou invisible demon of slavery! Dost thou think to cross my humble threshold, and forbid me to give bread to the hungry and shelter to the houseless? I bid you defiance in the name of my God.”

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"The Last Refuge" by Thomas Cole

Image from Lincoln/Net, courtesy of Newberry Library

This 1855 engraving of Thomas Cole’s “The Last Refuge” depicts a Native American man pursued to the top of single pillar of rock in the wilderness, his “last refuge” from the encroachment of American settlement. Although all American citizens contributed to this dynamic to some degree, a significant number, especially Whigs in the urban North, regretted its impact on Native Americans. Hoping that their country would devote its energies to the more intensive development of territory east of the Mississippi River, or even east of the Appalachian Mountains, they associated rapid western settlement with the spread of cotton agriculture, slavery, and an American future as an agricultural nation dependent upon industrial Britain to buy its raw materials. They also feared it would undermine Christianity’s influence on Americans’ lives, especially those living on the frontier. 


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US Gunboat Cairo

 



Image appears in NIU's Mark Twain's Mississippi Project, courtesy of Tulane University Libraries' Robert M. Jones Steamboat Collection


 “Cairo, an ironclad river gunboat, was built in 1861 by James Eads and Co., Mound City, Ill., under an Army contract; and commissioned as an Army ship 25 January 1862, naval Lieutenant James M. Prichett in command.”
“Cairo served with the Army’s Western Gunboat Fleet, commanded by Flag Officer A. H. Foote, on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and their tributaries until transferred to the Navy 1 October 1862 with the other river gunboats. Active in the occupation of Clarksville, Tenn., 17 February 1862, and of Nashville, Tenn., 25 February, Cairo stood down the river 12 April escorting mortar boats to begin the lengthy operations against Fort Pillow, Tenn. An engagement with Confederate gunboats at Plum Point Bend on 11 May marked a series of blockading and bombardment activities which culminated in the abandonment of the Fort by its defenders on 4 June.”
“Two days later, 6 June 1862, Cairo joined in the triumph of seven Union ships and a tug over eight Confederate gunboats off Memphis, Tenn., an action in which five of the opposing gunboats were sunk or run ashore, two seriously damaged, and only one managed to escape. That night Union forces occupied the city. Cairo returned to patrol on the Mississippi until 21 November when she joined the Yazoo Expedition. On 12 December 1862, while clearing mines from the river preparatory to the attack on Haines Bluff, Miss., Cairo struck a torpedo and sank.” – Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.



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A New Type of Post

This spring I have begun posting individual images from Northern Illinois University Libraries' Digital Library, principally from digital projects exploring American history and culture that I have developed, to the Digital Library's TUMBLR account. I typically offer a few words of explanation or analysis to accompany the image.

I post materials for one week out of every month, every day of that week. My colleagues and I have agreed to re-post materials via our own blogs, so here goes...