The unbearable man
Joshua Giddings infuriated Congress—and influenced Lincoln’s course against slavery.
One of Donald Trump’s trials is set for March 2024, the heart of presidential primary season, with another trial scheduled on top of it and a third set for May. This alone assures an election year like no other; and who knows what surprises the next few months may bring? The rest of us will need wisdom, patience and skill.
I’ve been seeking wisdom in the past, which is why I wrote Differ We Must. The biography tells Lincoln’s life story through his meetings with people who disagreed with him. It’s out October 3, and available for preorder. You may reach out to your local bookstore, or click this link to receive the hardcover, ebook, or audio book.
As publication approaches, I’m sharing backstories of the sixteen characters who differed with Lincoln, going beyond the material in the book.
One of the sixteen used to practice law in this simple wooden building, which I got to visit in 2020. It was the office of Joshua Giddings, a member of Congress representing Ashtabula County, Ohio, by the shores of Lake Erie.
The man on the steps is David Thomas, the Ashtabula County auditor, who showed me the historic building and took understandable pride in his political predecessor.
Giddings was an opponent of slavery, first elected to Congress in 1838. Many of his colleagues didn’t like him, and he didn’t like them. He despised Southern slaveowners—and also Northerners who passively accepted the institution. Many critics of slavery felt this acceptance was essential to keep the country together, because slavery had not been resolved at the country’s founding. A gag order in the House forbade lawmakers even to discuss antislavery petitions they received.
Giddings did not remain quiet in late 1841, when a slave ship called the Creole set off to transport its human cargo from Virginia to New Orleans. The captives revolted. They forced the crew to sail to the Bahamas, which made them free. The United Kingdom controlled the islands, and recently had banned slavery.
U.S. authorities tried to apply U.S. law. Secretary of State Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, though opposed to slavery himself, felt obliged to demand the return of “the recognized property of citizens of the United States.” British officials refused, adding to the fear of war with the United States’ former colonial power.
In early 1842 Giddings introduced a resolution in the House that took the side of the enslaved. He acknowledged that U.S. law allowed slavery in the states that practiced it, but said those state laws did not extend onto the high seas. The federal government had no right to support “the atrocious employment of importing slaves.” The United States should admit the captives were free and stop seeking their return.
This so infuriated some Southern lawmakers that friends had to physically drag them away from Giddings to prevent a fight on the House floor. The majority of the House then voted to censure the Ohioan for raising such a divisive subject and taking the side of a foreign power. “Certain topics, like certain places, are sacred,” one said, while another voiced “abhorrence” of the tactics of the “fire-brand from Ohio,” and a third said Giddings’ resolutions were “treasonable.”
Giddings resigned his seat. He returned home to Ashtabula County—and promptly won the special election to replace him. He returned to the House floor, where he said his critics could not be Christians if they “bartered their fellow man for gold.”
Transcripts of Congressional debates make it clear that his colleagues considered him a total asshole. Before long he even alienated members of his own Whig Party by supporting a third-party antislavery movement. He was ostracized.
His approach to slavery differed from that of Abraham Lincoln. The Illinois lawyer shared Giddings’ beliefs from the early days of his career (“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” he said; “I can not remember when I did not so think, and so feel”), but preferred to build coalitions with more conservative figures.
Then Lincoln was elected to Congress from Illinois—and these two very different men realized that they needed to begin plotting strategy together. That is where we pick up the story in Differ We Must.
Each man tried to get some use out of a person who differed with him, which makes it a story for our time. I hope you’ll preorder the book at this link, and that you’ll keep looking for more backstories here. Lincoln dealt with amazing characters, and their backstories should enrich the book when it arrives.
This is similar to what is happening in Tennessee where a representative is continuously being censored and silenced by a white House speaker merely because of the color of his skin, an extension of the uncomfortable truth about slavery.