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ThePioneer Greys T he enthusiastic speeches made at the Cedar Falls railroad celebration had emphasized the grains, wools, and other goods that would soon be carried out of the valley. Those who made the speeches could not know that the guns at faraway Fort Sumter had created a new demand. There would soon be another more immediate and more precious cargo shipped out on the rails-volunteer soldiers for the Union armies. The guns fired from Charleston were the first shots of a bloody, four-year tragedy in which the Southern states tried to tear themselves loose from the rest of the country. There were many reasons for the war, for the United States had never been a simple, homogeneous society. Each of its sections had its own origins, traditions, and values. The differences were most clearly exemplified by the Southern institution of race-slavery. Most Northern states, including Iowa, had harsh laws on their books that discriminated against black people and served to discourage any but whites from settling there. But while such laws represented racial bigotry, they also forbade the practice of enslavement. The ongoing conflict between slave and free states was brought to a head by the United States victory in the war with Mexico. Mexico's defeat in 1848 had cost it most of its land claims north of the Rio Grande. That area included California and most of the present-day southwestern states. The new lands belonged to the nation as a whole, and slaveholders took the position that they could take their slaves along when they settled there. Free-soil advocates disagreed and said that the national Congress had a responsibility to protect free labor by restricting the spread of slavery. Iowa had come into the Union as a free state, the first created from the Louisiana Purchase, as a result of congressional action. Statehood had come under the terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which forbade slavery north of Missouri's northern border. Iowans often agreed with their southern neighbor's racial views, but they drew the THEPIONEER GREYS line at slavery. The pioneer dream was of success achieved through one's own ambition and drive. John and Dempsey Overman had not needed slave labor to build the Cedar Falls millrace and grain mill: they had hired free labor. Their employeeswere men like Edwin Brown, people with their own dreams and ambitions beyond laboring for the Overmans. Most Cedar Falls people, like most Iowans, agreed that Congress should regulate the spread of slavery. As far as they were concerned , the Missouri Compromise line should be extended clear to the Pacific Ocean. Let the Southerners keep their slaves, but don't let the hated institution spread north. By 1859, only 1,069black people were living in Iowa. Most were in the east along the Mississippi, where they were often employed on the waterfronts or in the lead mines. The 1860 census showed only five blacks in Cedar Falls. Two-a man named Hilary W. Bauk and a woman, Minerva Dutton-resided with local families and were presumably employed by them. Another man, William Dutton, lived with his eight-year-old son and a four-year-old girl dependent. Dutton earned his living as a barber, and his business was as much in the spirit of pioneer free labor as was Boehmler's shoe shop or Mullarky's general store.' Political parties that might have served to unify the country tore themselves apart over the issue of slavery. The Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern wings. The old Whig Party fell apart, and numerous smaller parties, such as the Free Soil Party, emerged. Stephen Douglas, a Democratic senator from Illinois, tried to repair the split in his party by introducing what he called the principle of "popular sovereignty." In its simplest form, popular sovereignty held that when the territories were organized as states, it would be up to the people in those territories to vote whether or not to allow slavery. Douglas's position did not heal the split in his party, but it drove home the last few nails in the coffin of the Whig Party. It also shoved the Kansas Territory into its own civil war, as advocates of both slaveand free-state status fought for control. The bloodshed in Kansas and the threat of new slave states in the West gave life to a new party, the Republican Party. The central core of the new party was made up of...

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