By The Numbers – Civil War

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Continental Congress – July 4, 1776

Zachery Taylor – 2
Elected 1849 – 1850
We won’t pee on your statue during daylight hours.

Enslavia: “HE TOLD ME TO DO IT!! COME BACK HERE!! I GOT RIGHTS!!… Put me in heh for nothing… Hey brother…!! What are you in here for?”
Arthur: “I was writing about racism in the white house…”
Enslavia: “Really? How interesting…”
Arthur: “Well they didn’t share your enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, the Council Of Negro-Please took my books and held a book burning at the statue of their founder, Iza Whipit… in Whipit Park.”
Enslavia: “The CNP!! How terrible!!”
Arthur: “Yes… I was there… It’s one of the reasons they put me in jail…”
Enslavia: “I Know You Didn’t Try To Stop Those Fools!!”
Arthur: “No… I threw a handful of firecrackers on the fire and they thought somebody was shooting at them… a couple of folks had a heart attack and you could smell pee all the way up to MLK Ave. Once they found out… well let’s just say I was halfway up the tree when the police got there… Luckily the Sargent arrived and told them people to cut me down… he said the only reason I wasn’t swinging up there like I was in Duke Ellington’s Orchestra is that he wants to make an example of this type of behavior… he said this one is going to be “OFFICIAL!!”

In this segment of “By The Numbers – Civil War,” we will be starting in 1849 with the presidency of Zachary Taylor, who was the 12th man to hold office. As usual, we will be assigning the following numerical criteria in an effort to determine how well they live up to the creed that all men are created equal.
10 – You can sit next to the table and watch while we play a couple of hands of bid whisk.
9 – You are able to use the word “Bro” in front of us.”
8 – You can bring something to the barbecue and we’ll put it on the table with the other food.
7 – We will wave at you if we see you on the street.
6 – We won’t side-eye or sass if you bring a watermelon to our family dinner.
5 – You can leave with a little bit of your dignity after saying “My Nigga.”
4 – If we hear you calling for help, we will call the police after we have charged our phone.
3 – We will count to three before we let the dogs out if you come to our house.
2 – We won’t pee on your statue during daylight hours.
1 – Faque Off!!

Zachary Taylor like his predecessors was a slave owner. This is not surprising because, like most of his predecessors, he was born in “cotton picking” Virginia and owned several plantations. Taylor’s father was a colonel in the Continental Army and after the war, he moved his family to Kentucky where he purchased a plantation he named Springfield in 1800. By 1808 he had enslaved 26 people. It was also about this time Zachary left home to enslave his own nigras. Okay, he didn’t leave for that reason. It was because he joined the military. Two years after joining the military he married Margaret Mackall Smith, the daughter of a wealthy tobacco plantation owner from Calvert County, Maryland. Now being a slave in Calvert County, Maryland in the 1800s was the same as being a slave in Datsyoaz, Mississippi in the 1800s. Maryland relied exclusively on slave labor to plant and harvest their tobacco and growing tobacco was very labor intensive. In the early 1800s, Maryland’s population was just shy of 320,000. They had close to 105,000 slaves at that time! One out of every three people living in Maryland was a slave! So I brought this up because I was wondering how a hillbilly from Kentucky wound up in Calvert County, Maryland to marry a princess of a tobacco king. Well, it seems he didn’t. Margaret’s father died and she went to live with her sister in Kentucky and that’s how they met. After doing a sprint in the service Taylor purchased a plantation in Mississippi that he named Cyprus Grove. Taylor also had plantations elsewhere in Mississippi, as well as in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Anyway, he bought Cyprus Grove and enslaved 81 people there. Now this is the reason I assigned him a two instead of a one, he was considered an anti-slavery president by other politicians. He opposed the spread of slavery to new U.S. territories… Really? This president had more slaves than Marc Anthony and Cleopatra and he was opposed to spreading slavery to new territories? Ima tell you why I think he opposed it in one word… competition. Thats right… more slavery means more plantations and less money to go around. He had no qualms about defending against slavery’s expansion while owning hundreds of enslaved men, women, and children himself. Taylor only served as president for a little over a year before he died in office at the age of 65. After Taylor’s death, some historians and scholars speculated that he may have been poisoned by his political enemies, who opposed his efforts to admit California and New Mexico as free states, which would have upset the balance of power between free and slave states in the Union. Anywho, to remain transparent, there is no conclusive evidence that points to his political adversaries spiking his coffee with the nasty. In his will, approximately 131 enslaved men, women, and children, ranging in age from infants to the elderly, were left to Taylor’s wife Margaret, daughters Ann and Betty, and his son Richard. Finally, as the tensions between anti-slavery and pro-slavery proponents heated up, he is believed to be the last president who brought enslaved men and women to live and work at the White House.

Enslavia: You do know what “OFFICIAL” means don’t cha?
Arthur: Yeah, it means they gonna have a trial first and then hang me…
Enslavia: No… it means they gonna take you to the front of the building and then the Sargent is gonna say he left his keys and go back inside. When he comes back out you won’t be there… just some smoke in the distance coming from Whipit Park. Official means they arrested you… then you escaped. Happened to my Uncle Clemont when he first got here.
Arthur: I heard about that… Isn’t he the one that was caught with a Sears and Robuck catalog with white women’s pictures in it!!
Enslavia: Yep that’s him! He was a slave up in “New Yoke City…” The massa was hot!! He hit my Uncle in the head with his cane and said, “Boy Ima send yo azz so far down south, you gonna think you a polar bear!!” Then he and his boys put a tee shirt on him with a picture of a white woman in a bikini and put him on a boat headed down south to a place called “As Long As It Ain’t A White Women, Mississippi!!” Later on, I heard that the massa changed his mind, and didn’t send him down south. They decided they were going to make this “OFFICIAL.” When Mom and I went to Whipit Park, we saw a pile of burnt of Sears catalogs and a tee shirt with a picture of a white woman in a bikini…

Millard Fillmore – 9
Elected 1850 -1853
You are able to use the word “Bro” in front of us.

Fillmore was a one-term president. Actually, it wasn’t even one term, he took Zachary Taylor’s spot after he died in office. So when I was first researching Fillmore, I used Chatgpt and it told me Fillmore had at least one slave named Cornelius and that he was emancipated in 1855. Having only one slave is the same as being shot only one time… somebody gonna be hurt. So I went straightaway to ripping his heart out. Come to find out Chatgpt told me a bare-faced lie! Fillmore never had any slaves and was a die heart abolitionist! When I first started using Chatgpt, they said it was prone to “hallucinations.” I’m like okay, so sometimes it gets a few things wrong… It might say the Civil War started in 1860 instead of 1861… I can handle that… no big deal. But what if it said… “What Civil War?” America never fought a Civil War and all y’all are still slaves… now dust off my monitor N-word!! So beware when using this tool and check your facts. Anywho, Fillmore didn’t have any slaves, although he was exposed to slavery while living in Upstate New York. He worked for a law firm that represented slave owners but eventually distanced himself from the firm and became more vocal in his opposition to slavery. So I didn’t give him a one because he supported the Fugitive Slave Act. The Act was part of the more expansive Compromise of 1850. The Compromise of 1850 did five things. It admitted California as a free state, Utah and New Mexico could decide if they wanted slavery, it got rid of the slave trade in Washington DC, but not slavery… meaning they could no longer sell slaves right in front of the damn Whitehouse… it established the Fugitive Slave Act and it settled a dispute between Texas and New Mexico. It seems Texas said that part of New Mexico belong to them and New Mexico agreed to give them $10 mil to squash it. So under the Fugitive Slave Act, runaway slaves who were captured in the North could be returned to their owners in the South, even if they had escaped to states where slavery was illegal. The law required citizens to assist in the capture and return of fugitive slaves, and it imposed heavy fines and imprisonment for those who helped slaves escape or obstructed their capture. Seven years later in 1857 the landmark supreme court case of Dred Scot would come before the court. You can read more about it here. Basically, Scott sued in federal court for his family’s freedom based on the fact that they had resided in a free state for an extended period of time. Also, his daughter had been born in a territory where slavery was illegal, which under state and federal law meant she was free… unless you believe a principle known as “partus sequitur ventrem,” Latin for “that which is brought forth follows the womb.” Under this principle, a child’s status as free or enslaved was determined by the status of their mother. This meant that if a child was born to an enslaved mother, regardless of the father’s status, the child would be considered a slave. It was the law of the land until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865, which made slavery illegal. However, it was 1857 and Dred Scott lost the Supreme Court case and was returned to slavery along with his family. The decision also put all of the rest of us in a bind by ruling that black folks weren’t citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue for freedom in federal court… ensuring that there would always be slave states in the United States. Anywho, back to Fillmore. He signed the Compromise of 1850 and The Fugitive Slave Act because he believed if he did not the southern states would secede… which they eventually did anyway… igniting the Civil War.

Arthur: OMG!! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!!?? IT WAS COLD YESTERDAY AND I THOUGHT HE WAS BEING NICE WHEN HE LIT THAT FIRE OUTSIDE MY CELL WINDOW AND STARTED DANCING AND TELLING ME IT’S GONNA GET WARMER REAL SOON!!
Enslavia: If I were you I’d drink more water… maybe the sweat will put out the fire…
Arthur: OH YOU GOT JOKES!! THEY GONNA HANG ME AND LIGHT MY AZZ UP LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE IN TIMES SQUARE AND ALL YOU CAN SAY IS DRINK MORE WATER!!
Enslavia: Calm down… Calm down… I got a plan… ( Enslavia starts whispering in his ear…)

Franklin Pierce – 3
Elected 1853 – 1857
We will count to three before we let the dogs out if you come to our house.

Franklin Pierce was from New Hampshire. He came from what we would call now a middle-class family. Now during Franklin’s administration, there was slavery in New Hampshire. It didn’t end there until 1857. Franklin nor his parents owned any slaves and to tell you the truth there were probably as many slaves in New Hampshire at that time as there are black folks in my state of West Virginia right now. Yep, that’s right folks, West Virginia is the whitest state in the union as of 2023. Ninety-seven percent of the folks here are white, and no… I ain’t got no jokes cause I ain’t even know that. There are probably places in West Virginia where the only black person they ever saw was on a box of pancake mix… damn… Anywho, Pierce was a Democrat and the Democrats were by and large for slavery. Pierce backed the Compromise of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Act and he trashed the Missouri Compromise in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. So the Missouri Compromise maintained the balance of power between free and slave states. Back then in 1820, there were only 22 states, 11 slave and 11 free states. Missouri wanted to come in as a slave state because they had more black folks there than at a Popeyes on Mother’s Day. They didn’t want to let just Missouri in because it would give the slave states a majority in Congress, so they asked Maine to come on down. Now quiet as it is kept, they had slavery in Maine as early as 1650… not a lot of them, but some. Even today Maine is ninety-two percent white. They see an occasional negro on TV, but that’s about it… Anywho the balance of power was preserved when Maine was admitted to the Union. The Missouri Compromise also established a slave boundary at the 36°30′ north latitude, with slavery being permitted in all territories south of that line and prohibited in all territories north of it. So to visualize the boundary, just cut a straight line that runs north to south at the westernmost part of Missouri, then a line east to west along the southernmost part of Missouri. The bottom of the line will cross Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Everything west of Missouri at that time was still a “territory”… They conveniently leave the word “Indian” off in the history books because they hadn’t taken it from the Native Americans yet… but hold my beer. By Andrew Jackson’s administration in 1827 they had replaced the word “Indian” Territory, with locations like the “Northwest” Territory, and the “Southwest” Territory. Once they removed the Native American population, and they were carving it up into states, they changed the names to things like the “Oklahoma” Territory, the “Kansas” Territory, and the “Missouri” Territory. It took a lot of time though because the Native Americans had their 40s too. Anywho, so yeah, Pierce ditched the Missouri Compromise for the Kansas-Nebraska Act (KNA). By ditching the 36°30′ slavery boundary, the new law allowed slavery to expand into territories that were previously free. So this happened in 1854, just six years from the start of the Civil War. The KNA was also responsible for three major events in American history. The first one was the catalyst for an event called “Bleeding Kansas”. Kansas was coming in as a free state and the racist didn’t like it. They sent pro-slavery folks from Missouri to vote in Kansas to keep it from becoming a free state. Kansas wasn’t having it and a mini-civil war broke out between the two. Scores were killed in the skirmishes. Second, this is when John Brown came on the scene. John Brown was an uncompromising abolitionist with one of the longest, sharpest, pointiest swords you ever saw… and he was cutting off people’s heads with it! John Brown’s involvement in the Kansas-Nebraska conflict culminated in what is known as the “Pottawatomie massacre.” In May 1856, he and a group of his followers attacked a pro-slavery settlement near Pottawatomie Creek in southeastern Kansas, killing five pro-slavery settlers with “broadswords” in what Brown later described as a “judgment of God.” Ima tell you right now.. when you take out yo broadsword, you ain’t stabbing nuttin… you getting ready to relieve folks of their dome… that’s what it is for. Racists were like… OMG!! Anywho, Pierce had to send in the US Army to calm that shat down. Things were getting out of hand! Brown was branded a criminal and left Kansas. Of course, later he was hanged in Charles Town, WV, after an unsuccessful attempt to commandeer the armory at Harpers Ferry to arm black slaves in an insurrection against the United States. Most historians believe his death cemented the United States on a path to civil war. The third thing the KNA did was change our country forever or at least up until now… into the two-party political system we have today. Back then, it was the Whigs and the Democrats. The Whigs were at that time falling on either side of the slavery debate. To combat slavery exclusively a new party was formed… the Republican Party. In 1860, the first Republican president would come to office… Abraham Lincoln. So with Pierce’s support of the Kansas-Missouri Act, he laid down one of the stepping stones to the deadliest war in American history.

Aurthur: Uh huh… uh huh… uh huh.. okay… you knock me out… I escape when they put me in the morgue… okay right…
Enslavia: Just leave it to me…
Sargeant: (Sargeant comes to the cell…) WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT MAN? WHY ISN’T HE MOVING?
Enslavia: Well Suh… he told me that you had tried to warm us up wid yo fire outside the cell window.. and he just couldn’t take the kindness… He looked at me wid tears in his eyes and said ‘Enslavia no white man has ever been that kind to me..’ Next thing I know… he grabbed his chest and fell to the floor…
Sargeant: They don’t make em like that anymore… The last time I saw one like that was when my PaPa was beating Bo and sprang his wrist… Bo grabbed that whip outta PaPa’s hands and started beating himself… PaPa was so overwhelmed.. he told Bo he could stop at 49 instead of the usual 50. Corporal.. come in heh and take this nigra to Black Joe’s Undertakers… Help me put him in this bag… let’s get him a real heathen burial… tell him to throw in some real chicken feet and heads… it’s on me…
Corporal: Right away Sarg… do you want some fire spitting too…
Sargeant: Let’s not get uppity now!! Tell him he can show a couple of snakes though…
Corporal: Hey Black Nigra or whateva… Sarg says to give this here boy a first class nigra burial… he says it’s on him…
Black Joe: Sure thing Boss.. take care of it right away!!
Helper: Joe he didn’t pay for the last one he sent heh… we even painted that last one’s toes! You gonna bury him wid the high hat nigras that has the grass on theirs?!
Black Joe: Naw we ain’t… throw that bag in the incinerator… send Boss a picture of these chicken legs and a coffin…

James Buchannon – 1
Elected 1857-1861
Faque Off!!

A month after James Buchannon left office in March 1861, the Civil War started in April 1861. He was the only unmarried president elected to office. He remained a lifelong bachelor… and Ima tell you why in a little bit. Now another little historical fact that the southern leaning historians lead us to believe is that the Southern states seceded when Lincoln was elected to office. That’s a bare-faced lie. Several Southern states had already started to secede under Buchannon and South Carolina had already left the Union while he was in office… and Buchannon was pro-slavery! Buchannon was raised in Pennsylvania and the state had for all intents and purposes made slavery illegal. Well, Ima says not totally illegal.. they sorta kinda changed the name.. to indentured servitude. That sounds better than slave… Politically Correct Massa: “Servant… would you please go out there a pick my cotton right away so that no one has to resort to any displeasing remedies.. vs Southern Slave Massa: ” YOU MY SLAVE AND IF YOU DON’T GET OUT THERE AND PICK MY COTTON… YOU GONNA BE MY DEAD SLAVE!!” So yeah, Pennsylvania covered their slavery up in a law called the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780. Now to be fair, the act did eliminate chattel slavery. Chattel slavery is a form of slavery that was practiced here and in Europe. This type of slavery treats the enslaved as legal property. You and any children you had were the property of the owner to do with as he pleased. So some of the other types of slavery are bonded slavery, in which after you satisfy an agreed upon amount paid for by your labor, you would be set free… excuse me while I laugh… LOL!! LOL!!.. good luck with that… that was an early form of sharecropping… and forced labor. So the difference between chattel slavery and forced slavery is the fact that forced slavery wasn’t legal. People could be put in jail for forced slavery, which usually comes under the title of human trafficking. Anywho, I’m off the subject… so Pennsylvania slowly eliminated chattel slavery… over decades. Buchannon himself owned two indentured “servants.” An account of how it came to be that he came to be in possession of two young chickens, one 28 and the other 25 when he released them from their servitude was written by a biographer in 1962. So the story goes he was visiting his ill sister and found out that his brother-in-law had family in Shepherdstown WV, that owned two women slaves, Daphne Cook and her daughter Ann Cook. The future “unmarried” president let it be known that he wanted to purchase the Cooks. In March 1835, the deed of transfer was signed, and the Cooks came into Buchanan’s possession in Pennsylvania. According to the contract, Daphne, age twenty-two, would serve Buchanan for seven years while her daughter Ann Cook, age five, would serve for twenty-three years until she reached the age of twenty-eight. Yeah, we all are thinking the same thing… he wasn’t unmarried for nothing… that’s right I said it… Okay, now for the transparent stuff. Daphne’s daughter died about two weeks after the purchase… and Daphane ran away. History doesn’t say what happened to Daphne after she left or if Buchannon went looking for her… or under what circumstances how a healthy five year old child died in a rich man’s home, being taken care of by her young 22yr old mother. That’s some real Columbo shat right there. Anyway, when he purchased Daphne and her daughter he was a Senator and his dislike for abolitionists was well known. He believed that abolitionists delayed the emancipation of enslaved people, as slavery would eventually run its course. He opposed banning the slave trade in DC and opposed freeing them too. He Championed the Fugitive Slave Act and was sorry his home state of Pennsylvania opposed it. He even celebrated after the Compromise of 1850 was signed, saying, “The honor of the South has been saved.” It is at this minute that you realize you should have given this dude a one, “Faque Off!!” Now you may not see it… but right after I put the period at the end of this sentence I’m changing it to a 1. That’s better. So let’s see… Buchannon was also an advocate for territorial expansion, specifically Cuba. Now the only thing that slaveholders wanted more than more nigras, was the island of Cuba. He even wrote a Manifesto detailing why America needed to buy the island. Luckily Congress turned that shat down or we would have been fighting the Civil War over there too. Remember the Dred Scott case? Well at his presidential inaugural address, he said that he would “cheerfully” submit to whatever is decided. Come to find out this dude was behind the court pressuring them to vote for overturning the Missouri Compromise and to think about what it would mean if Dred Scott won. Remember the Compromise set a slavery boundary, one side free and the other slave, while if Scott won, the nigras who had lived on the free side of the boundary, sent there to work by their massa’s in the south, those nigras would be in court by the thousands eating chicken sandwiches and shat… Anywho we know that Dred lost and the Missouri Compromise was ruled unconstitutional setting the stage for war. On March 4, 1861, Buchannon would hand the reins of government over to a backwoods Kentucky farmer and the United States would change forever.

Sargent: Enslavia your court date is tomorrow… be ready to move early. Corporal, I need to talk to you … privately…
Enslavia: Did you take care of poor Arthur Mr. Sargent… You said you would take care of him…
Sargent: Nigress when I say Ima take care of something I do it!! I made sure that boy got everything that he deserved!
Corporal: Yes Sargent…?
Sargent: Did you take the nigra over to Black Joe and tell him what I said?
Corporal: I sure did Sarge… and he did exactly what you said he do… He told me.. “yes boss, Iza take care of it”… and then after he thought I left he threw the bag right in the incinerator… just like you said he would…

In our next installment of “By The Numbers – Lincoln,” we will focus on the Great Emancipator. Where on the scale should he be placed? Will he be invited to sit down, Faque Off, or will it be somewhere in between? Join us next week when we will explore more of “By The Numbers.”

Thanks for reading ©Hill1News.