![]() ![]() He also took over a Democratic paper, the Chicago Times, to promote conciliation in the secular sphere. Rice – to promote religious conciliation of the South. In the late 1850s, McCormick acquired a Presbyterian newspaper, the Expositor – edited by Rev. This South-soothing declaration saved the Old School from the fate of the Methodists and Baptists, who during the same period split into separate denominations over the slavery question. The Southerners and the moderates got their way in 1845, when the General Assembly (Old School governing body) deplored antislavery agitation and said it was no sin in itself to hold slaves. A middle group professed moderation, sometimes opposing slavery while in practice seeing “abolitionism” as the greater threat to ecclesiastical and national unity. A comparatively militant antislavery group – active in the Northwest – held slaveholding to be a sin (absent extenuating circumstances like an intention to educate them to freedom). Southerners like James Henley Thornwell and Benjamin M. The Democrats were divided on slavery, as were the Old Schoolers. ![]() To McCormick’s dismay, the seeds of discord were present in both of his favorite institutions. He resisted any attempts to weaken the hoops, and provoke a collapse of the Union “barrel,” through divisive antislavery agitation. McCormick believed that the Democrats and the Old School denomination held the Union together like two hoops holding up a barrel. The two institutions McCormick relied on to thus keep the Union together were the Democratic Party and the influential Old School Presbyterian Church – he was a fervent member of both institutions. To McCormick in the 1850s, preserving the Union was an urgent cause, to which quieting slavery agitation was essential. Īfter McCormick’s marriage, his wife encouraged him in the direction of philanthropy and politics, which he now worked on with the same energy and determination with which he continued to promote his reaper. After McCormick’s reaper became profitable, he moved to Chicago to better supervise his reaper business which was particularly popular among farmers in the modern Midwest, once then considered the Northwest. ECW welcomes back guest author Max Longley Cyrus McCormickĬyrus McCormick was famous as the inventor of a mechanical reaper which made grain-harvesting ten times more efficient. ![]()
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