Henry Stuart Foote Quotes


Let him [Hale] visit the good state of Mississippi ... I invite him there, and will tell him beforehand ... that he could not go ten miles into the interior, before he would grace one of the tallest trees in the forest with a rope around his neck, with the approbation of every virtuous and patriotic citizen; and that, if necessary, I should myself assist in the operation.


Context

In 1848 a pro-slavery mob in Washington DC Gamaliel Bailey's anti-slavery publication, The National Era, which soon thereafter was the publisher of the serialized Uncle Tom's Cabin. Senator John P. Hale introduced a bill in the Senate outlawing rioting in the District of Columbia. The Southern Senators objected violently and this served as a catalyst for one the for the most extensive and bitter public debate that had ever been held on the slavery issue.


Citations

Henry Stuart Foote, 1804-1880, U. S. Senator (Democrat, MS), Governor of Mississippi, Senate Debate, April 20, 1848

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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Henry Stuart Foote
Henry Stuart Foote
  • Born: February 28, 1804
  • Died: May 19, 1880
  • Nationality:
  • Profession:

Henry Stuart Foote was a United States Senator from Mississippi and the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1847 to 1852. He was a Unionist Governor of Mississippi from 1852 to 1854, and an American Party supporter in California. During the American Civil War, he served in the First and Second Confederate Congresses. A practicing attorney, he published two memoirs related to the Civil War years, as well as a book on Texas prior to its annexation, and a postwar book on the legal profession and courts in the South.