Talk:Joshua Reed Giddings

no mention of famous Essays
Why is there no mention of his famous essays, especially "The Exiles of Florida", 1858 ??? I think it is important and a good source for the history of slavery, the history of maroons in Florida, of the Seminole Wars and a good exemple for a political essay by a great lawyer. --13Peewit (talk) 19:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry, mistake, they are mentioned at the end of the article. --13Peewit (talk) 21:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Select Committee on Slavery
John Q. Adams, Joshua R. Giddings, and a few other members of the House of Representatives constituted themselves the Select Committee on Slavery, resolved to use every means to destroy that institution. The defenders of the union knew that there was no use in attempting to discipline Mr. Adams, who served simply at his constituents' request, but decided to attack the second most prominent member, Mr. Giddings, hoping to scare all the rest of the members away and destroy the committee. It was for this reason that the House censured Mr. Giddings, and the two parties then nominated a fusion candidate against him. When his constituents returned him to office with 95% of their votes, it was clear that he, too, was immune to punishment, and the other members found that they, too, were not attacked. I will put this into the article when I have located my source (probably not too long). J S Ayer (talk) 23:55, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Does that include a quote? If so, where from?  In any case, under the constitution as it existed before 1865, the House of Representatives could do nothing to "destroy slavery" within the slave states -- even if there was an anti-slavery majority in the House, something which didn't remotely begin to happen until at least 1855... AnonMoos (talk) 14:22, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

I cannot find the college textbook I had in mind, title (short form) The Anti-Slavery Impulse. You are quite right, but please note the words "every means". They intended to mobilize public opinion against slavery until it was irresistible. They certainly whipped up public opinion, though others outside Congress shared in the endeavor, like Theodore Weld and Henry Ward Beecher. Results included brushfire war in Kansas, the caning of Senator Sumner, after which the assailant and his second resigned their seats and were re-elected by their constituents, and Senator Sumner, still an invalid, was re-elected by Massachusetts, then John Brown's attempted insurrection at Harper's Ferry, then full-scale war and generations of after-effects. I hope to find another source. J S Ayer (talk) 22:58, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

I finally found it. Unfortunately it does not say what I think is the fact, that in the special election after Giddings was censured and resigned in protest, the Whigs and Democrats put up a fusion candidate against him. J S Ayer (talk) 19:51, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Why do the photographs look so different?
Both of these photographs look 1860s to me, so how is it that Giddings aged so much within the span of a few years? Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 01:17, 27 December 2022 (UTC)