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a slight and remote one.”³³

      Still more ominously, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a gag rule in 1836 in response to a perceived deluge of antislavery petitions directed to Congress.³⁴ Legislators in the Senate similarly protested the increase in petitions received. “They do not come as heretofore, singly, and far apart: from the quiet routine of the Society of Friends, or the obscure vanity of some philanthropic club,” complained Senator William Preston of South Carolina, “but they are sent to us in vast numbers, from soured and agitated communities; poured in upon us from the overflowing of public sentiment, which, every where, in all western Europe and eastern America, has been lashed into excitement on this subject.” Preston advised the Senate to be mindful of the precedents of Jamaica and St. Domingo and to follow the example of the House.³⁵ Keeping silent seemed to be the key to the safety and prosperity of the nation. In 1840 Representative William Cost, dissatisfied by the fact that the 1836 House rule had to be renewed at each session of Congress, pushed for the permanent rejection of antislavery petitions.³⁶

      Eclipsed by economic anxiety and the splintering of the antislavery cause into various reform efforts, these hyperbolic apprehensions subsided somewhat in the early 1840s (although mobbing, destruction of property, and personal attacks certainly did not disappear entirely).³⁷ The Wilmot Proviso, the acquisition of Texas, and the U.S. War with Mexico generated extensive debate in Congress about slavery in the mid-1840s. Then a second spike in calls for silence on the subject of slavery occurred between 1856 and 1860. In an 1856 speech called “The Crime Against Kansas,” Massachusetts Senator Sumner likened South Carolina senator Andrew Butler to Don Quixote. Like that misguided would-be knight, Sumner said, Butler had dedicated his life to the honor of his mistress who, “though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight:—I mean the harlot Slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse with words.”³⁸ In retaliation, Butler’s nephew, Representative Preston Brooks, beat Sumner unconscious with his gold-handled cane. Abolitionists characterized the assault as the suppression of free speech. However “profuse with words” Butler was in defense of slavery, the South would tolerate no utterance in its condemnation. The Slave Power demanded the concession of silence. An article in The Independent with the sarcastic title “Silence Must Be Nationalized” began, “Liberty of speech in a despotic government means a liberty of the despot to say what he pleases, and a liberty of everybody else to hold their tongues. This is the idea in the South now.”³⁹

      John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 amplified the demand for silence. Proslavery members of the Thirty-Sixth Congress blamed Hinton Rowan Helper’s 1857 The Impending Crisis for inciting Brown’s activities and called for the book’s suppression.⁴⁰ Heated exchanges in Washington in late 1859 and early 1860 confirmed that there were definite limits to freedom of speech in the South. Representative Owen Lovejoy, Republican from Illinois and brother of antislavery martyr Elijah Lovejoy who had lost his life in a raid on his press during the eruption of violence of the 1830s, demanded, “Has not an American citizen a right to speak to an American citizen? I want the right of uttering what I say here in Richmond. I claim the right to say what I say here in Charleston.” Representative Elbert Martin of Virginia threatened that if Lovejoy made his remarks publicly in the South, “we would hang you higher than Haman.”⁴¹

      Attempts to regulate speech reached a climax in a resolution proposed by Stephen Douglas of Illinois in the Senate on January 16, 1860. Called “Invasion of States,” the resolution called for the Committee on the Judiciary to prepare a bill for the “suppression and punishment of conspiracies or combinations.”⁴² Douglas indicated that he considered as “conspirators” those from the North who sent “agents” to “seduce” slaves to flee to Canada via the Underground Railroad.⁴³ Because of its potential for outlawing speech judged to be seditious, one scholar has called this proposal the culmination of “the slave interest’s long battle to impose intellectual conformity on the Republic.”⁴⁴ Although Douglas’s resolution was tabled, it demonstrates both the way speech was regarded as an act of aggression and the hostility employed in quashing it.

      At these dramatic junctures in the mid-1830s and late 1850s, provocative words about slavery were, with some justification, considered a matter of life and death. But throughout the thirty-five years before the Civil War, many people thought consciously about how to give the least offense while discussing slavery, and often decided that the best tack was not saying anything at all. In a letter to his cousin, Northern-born Zelotus Holmes, who had moved to South Carolina to study for the ministry, allowed that firsthand observation of slavery had altered his views, which had once been “perhaps somewhat ultra … [but] No logic can plead with the power of ocular demonstration.” He admitted, “I have not written my northern friends freely upon this subject since in the South, knowing that no good could arise from it.”⁴⁵ Opinions about slavery divided families, and the outspoken discovered there was no going back. “Thou knowest what I have passed thro’ on the subject of slavery, thou knowest I am an exile from the home of my birth because of slavery,” wrote Charleston-born Angelina Grimké to her sister Sarah after her antislavery views became public.⁴⁶

      Just as it is important to notice the temporal context of discourse about slavery, it is necessary to pay attention to the place where remarks were made and the audiences attending them. The hazards of discussing slavery differed greatly in the North and the South, and within the regions there were different accents and inflections. Nineteenth-century Americans thought of themselves in a global context and looked to Latin America, among other places, to understand themselves. They did not live in an autarky, but in a global economy where they needed to be conscious of available resources, changing markets, and foreign tastes and attitudes.⁴⁷ In particular, white Southern elites considered themselves cosmopolitans who understood their political and economic goals in relation to their slaveholding brethren in the Caribbean and Brazil. Whatever their expressions of superiority, they were tied to Latin America by both business and blood.⁴⁸ But this commonality of economic interests did not preclude expressions of distaste about conditions south of the border and an insistence that the ways of the United States were superior.

      The Latin American context was invaluable for an American claiming to speak on behalf of the whole nation, particularly on a global stage before an international audience. In the 1850s, the South closed ranks around its defense of slavery, and white Southerners often presumed to represent the entire region. In such circumstances the temptation to disparage Latin America by highlighting the cruelty or lack of discipline in the slave systems of Cuba and Brazil proved almost irresistible.

      There were “many Souths” and “many Norths” as well.⁴⁹ Talking about slavery exposed these fault lines. Since it was far easier to speak openly before a local audience than a regional or national one, politicians—especially those in national office—had to be particularly careful of what they said. As long as they were confident that they expressed the beliefs of the majority of their constituents, they could be boldly outspoken. But if they presumed to speak for a whole region rather than a particular locality, or if they aspired to national office, they needed to exercise more caution. Similarly, local newspapers dared say what national journals and books did not. Authors hoping to sell their publications to a broad audience resorted to more obfuscation than those writing for local consumption. Writers, editors, and publishers surveying a nation with many irreconcilable opinions about slavery consciously sought to commodify an “average racism” that was inoffensive (at least to white readers)⁵⁰

      Even in a small community, one could not always tell where an American stood on the subject of slavery. Geography could not be depended upon to determine opinion. By no means was every Northerner an abolitionist, nor was every Southerner a defender of slavery (the slaves themselves hardly rose to its defense).⁵¹ Southerners doing business, making purchases, attending school, and escaping sultry summers thronged Northern cities and vacation spots.⁵² Northerners sought business opportunities in the South. Journalist Jane Cazneau confidently predicted that all would be won over to the benefits of slavery, because American consciences “like that peculiarly useful article of which we make shoes and life preservers … stretch indefinitely when they come among cotton fields, and melt altogether in the ardent

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