Fettered Speech
The hosts discuss how the ‘gag rule’ actually spurred discussion of slavery in the North — and the harsh measures taken across the South to stop any discussion of abolition.
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BRIAN BALOGH: Ed, Peter, gag rule applied to the nation’s rhetorical body, known as windy and giving speeches forever?
PETER ONUF: Don’t we wish.
BRIAN BALOGH: I really don’t get that. And especially today, I think of Congress. We see them on C-SPAN. It’s broadcast nationally. How do they actually keep this stuff quiet back in the 19th century?
PETER ONUF: Well, Brian, the suppression of those petitions was no secret in the North, because there was full reporting on the gag rule itself all over the North through the Northern press. There was a lot of focus on that single medium, the newspaper. And through that medium, the Northern public, interested or not, was forced to take into consideration what was happening in Congress.
ED AYERS: And you know, Brian, what’s interesting is the way that the White South presented itself from letting that contagion spread within itself. In these very years that the Congress is wrestling with the gag rule, Virginia, the largest slave state, is debating whether they should begin the eventual emancipation of slavery.
Nat Turner’s Rebellion, a general decline in the economy of Virginia, the largest slave state, led many people to wonder is this really the future? And there’s a close vote. And then as soon as that vote’s over, people said, oh, my god, what were we doing? We’re saying all these things that are being published all over the state and all over the country. Some enslaved people could actually read this.
Never again will the future of slavery be publicly debated, discussed in the South. And that is the case.
So the remarkable thing to me is how for 30 years after this the white South manages to suppress within its own borders any discussion about any future of slavery other than its perpetuation. And that takes the form of everything from tarring and feathering, to actually shooting and killing people, to driving people out of the South.
And so the gag rule fails in Congress. But it certainly succeeds across the South as a whole.
PETER ONUF: That’s right, Ed. And I think it’s important to remember that Southerners in Congress were bullies for a reason. It’s not just that they were pathological personalities. They saw that their whole way of life was at risk. And that required both a strong defense against the outside and strong policing on the inside. And that’s a combination that ends up being fateful for the future of the Union.
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ED AYERS: Earlier we heard from Richard John, a historian at Columbia University and author of Spreading the News, the American Postal System from Franklin to Morse. A version of that story aired in our episode on the history of the post office.
BRIAN BALOGH: It’s time for a short break. But stay with us. When we get back, how calling the president a hoary headed incendiary landed one man in jail.