ECW Podcast: Remembering John Adams (with Marianne Holdzkom)
The Emerging Civil War Podcast is hosted by Chris Mackowski (a John Adams fanboy–ergo this week’s tangent!). This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Civil War Trails, the world’s largest open-air museum, offering more than 1,500 sites across six states. Request a brochure at civilwartrails.org to start planning your trip today.
Hosted by Chris Mackowski, The Emerging Civil War Podcast taps into ECW’s award-winning line-up of historians and great special guests—all of whom come from a wide variety of backgrounds with a wide variety of interests on a wide variety of topics.
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Let’s not forget Abigail, who on the day the Constitution was ratified, predicted that, as wonderful a document as it was, it would also lead to civil war due to what would arise: an attempt to gather all power in the as-yet-to-be-named DC Swamp and destroy Federalism – that being what the Constitution was all about – with slavery having nothing to do with the conflict. Savvy lady.
But it was the balance of power as determined by the 3/5 compromise that cause Southerners to have disproportionate power in the first place, and as soon as it looked like they would lose that upper hand, they began talking about such nonsense as nullification. Lincoln publicly said that he opposed the expansion of slavery–which meant no new slaves states would come into the Union and, thus, permanently diminish the political power of slave-holding states–and so his election triggered secession. It was CLEARLY over slavery, and not just because of the issue of political power but because of the social order (as Jefferson Davis himself said when he left the U.S. Senate: “[Mississippi] has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.”). My thanks to my friend Eric Jacobson for that reference.