“Northern Aggression?” Further History of the Phrase

       This is a second part of a series on “Northern aggression.” You can read the first part here. These first two parts deal with the term itself. The third part, at some point in the future, will look at some of the ways Southerners perceived aggression on the part by the North prior to the war.

   Some people (many people?) see the term “Northern aggression” and think it is tied to just the actions by the Lincoln administration in early 1861. Most notably, they refer to the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, after Secretary of State William H. Seward had promised Southerners that there were no plans to resupply or reinforce that garrison. In actuality, the term “Northern aggression” was being used by Southerners at least three decades prior to the events in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as the sending of troops across the Potomac River to capture Alexandria, Virginia, on May 24, 1861.  

   There may be other examples in written correspondence, in the journals from various state legislators, or the U.S. Congress, that use the term, but the phrase “Northern aggression” dates back at least three decades in contemporary newspapers.

      In July 1830, a Philadelphia newspaper reprinted part of an article from Milledgeville, Georgia. The Georgia newspaper editor wrote that “We confess that our language, respecting the conduct of our Northern Brethren towards the South, and the notice we take of their abuse, scurrility & denunciations, would be, under any other circumstances, unbecoming, inasmuch as it should be no plea, because an adversary departs from the deportment of a gentlemen, that you should imitate him. The only apology we can offer, is that our blood boils in our veins when we come across the slanderous and scurrilous remarks of northern writers, upon the south and southerners. We cannot keep our-temper-we do not posses the patience of a Job. We cannot take upon ourselves to give our enemy the left cheek, after he has smitten us on the right one. We are more apt to return the blow with liberality. As long as we can hold a pen, and have a press at our command, Georgia shall be defended from northern aggression, and her citizens vindicated from the foul aspersions of northern fanatics and ultras.”[1]

   This of course comes in the wake of the Nullification crisis and January 1830 debate between Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts regarding the question of states’ rights versus Federal authority.  The term appears again in July 1831, in a toast given at Barnwell Court House, offered by D. Thorton: “The Militia of South Carolina-If ever called upon to defend the State from Northern aggression-may their lamps be trimmed and burning.”[2]

Henry Clay before the U. S. Senate 

   The saying “Northern aggression” begins to appear with some regularity in the 1840s, particularly 1847. James Polk was president, and the United States was wrapped up in the Mexican-American War. There was much discussion regarding the Wilmont Proviso. A Mississippi newspaper came out in praise of Henry Clay and the Missouri Compromise of 1820, saying that it was Clay who “more than a quarter century ago, erected that impenetrable shield between the rights of the South and Northern aggression…”[3] An Alabama newspaper editor asked the next year, that if the Wilmont Proviso was passed, would “the progress of northern aggression and demand stop at this point, if conceded”?[4] There were many other occasions when the terms were used in the years around the Mexican-American War in newspapers from Richmond, Charleston, Washington, D.C., Huntsville, and Vicksburg.

   By using one of the popular newspaper databases, a search using the term “Northern aggression” between the years 1850 and 1859 produced 1,954 hits. Granted, some of these articles, in the time-honored tradition of “sharing” between newspapers, are copies. Regardless, the idea that the Northern states were the aggressors flowed freely from the pens of editors. “Those who have hitherto put their trust in the Southern President as their forlorn hope against Northern aggression must now confess that they have leant on a broken reed,” wrote one Louisiana editor.[5] A newspaper in Natchez called for meeting of friends “who are opposed to Northern aggression, or Southern submission to the unconstitutional acts of Congress” in 1851.[6] The phrase was even used at times in jest. In January 1852 a Richmond editor complained of “Northern Encroachment… Whatever difference of opinion may have been heretofore existed among some of our citizens as to the fact of Northern aggression on the South, the question was set at rest beyond cavil or dispute, on Tuesday last. On the morning of that day, at early dawn, we were invaded by a Northern snow storm…”[7]

   Once again, this post is not a discourse on how the South perceived the North as being aggressors when it came to trampling on Constitutional rights. This is simply an examination on the use of the term “Northern aggression” from nineteenth-century primary sources. The idea that the North was the aggressor was not a new idea in the 1860s. The term had been used for decades prior to the 1860s.  

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[1] The United States Gazette, July 30, 1830.

[2] The Charleston Mercury, July 8, 1831.

[3] Natchez Daily Courier, September 14, 1847.

[4] The Independent Monitor, September 28, 1848.

[5] The New Orleans Crescent, January 8, 1850.

[6] Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, January 11, 1851.

[7] Richmond Dispatch, January 26, 1852.