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 adcraft
Ro olice Driver’s Handbook
The P
Roadcraft
The Police Driver’s Handbook

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We’d like to know what you think about this new edition of Roadcraft.
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The Stationery Office

London
 Authors: Penny Mares, Philip Coyne, Barbara MacDonald.
Design: Adam Ray.
Illustration: Original illustrations created by Nick Moxsom.
Additional design by Adam Kimberley.
Front cover photography: Rob Brown.
Project Managers: Catherine Saunders, The Police Foundation and Daniel Whittle, TSO.

The Police Foundation would like to thank IAM RoadSmart (formerly the Institute of Advanced
Motorists) for providing a financial contribution towards the cost of producing this handbook.

The Police Foundation

The Police Foundation is an independent charity that researches, understands and works to
improve policing.

For further details of The Police Foundation’s work and other related Roadcraft
publications, contact:

Tel: 020 3195 3837

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.roadcraft.co.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_police_fdn (#Roadcraft #MCRoadcraft)

Charity Registration Number: 278257

© The Police Foundation 2020

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this
publication was correct at the time of press, neither the author and/or the publisher assume
and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss and/or damage caused by any errors
and/or omissions, whether such errors and/or omissions result from negligence, accident, and/
or any other cause. This publication is not intended to be a substitute for the advice of qualified
emergency services driving instructors. The reader should take independent advice relating to
his/her driving ability from persons with appropriate qualifications.

The publication may include hyperlinks to third-party content, advertising, or websites, provided
for the sake of convenience and interest.

The publishers do not endorse any advertising or products available from external sources that
are contained or referenced in this publication.

Other essential guides to safe driving and riding also published by The Stationery Office include:

Motorcycle Roadcraft – The Police Rider’s Handbook (2020)

ISBN 978 0 11 708379 0

Roadcraft e-learning platform

https://www.roadcraftonline.co.uk

To order or find out more about these or any other driving titles, please refer to the contact
details printed inside the back cover of this book.

Applications for reproduction should be made in writing to

The Stationery Office Limited, 18 Central Avenue, St Andrews Business Park, Norwich, NR7 0HR

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 Acknowledgements iii

Acknowledgements
This edition of Roadcraft has been approved by the National Police Chiefs’
Council (NPCC) and Police Scotland, which are satisfied that it reflects
current best practice in police driver instruction and takes into account the
relevant views of civilian experts.

The Police Foundation would like to thank the many individuals and
organisations who gave so freely of their time and expertise in the
preparation of this new edition of Roadcraft. Particular thanks go to
Dr Lisa Dorn, Associate Professor of Driver Behaviour and Director of
the Driving Research Group, Cranfield University; Dr Gemma Briggs,
Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Open University; Dr Julie Gandolfi,
Driving Research Ltd; and Craig Arnold, Forensic Collision Investigator,
Merseyside Police. Some sections of material in Chapters 1 and 3 are
adapted from Human Aspects of Police Driving by kind permission of
Dr Gordon Sharp and Police Scotland.

This new edition of Roadcraft was produced with the strategic oversight
of a Standing Advisory Board with representatives from major police and
civilian driving organisations, to whom we are most grateful.

Standing Advisory Board

Gary Baldwin, Regional Service Manager, Royal Society for the Prevention
of Accidents (RoSPA)
Michael Collins, Roads Policing Advisor, College of Policing
Helena Devlin, Inspector and Head of Driver Training, Metropolitan Police
Driver Training Academy
Richard Gladman, Head of Driving and Riding Standards, IAM RoadSmart
Rick Muir, Director, The Police Foundation (Chair)
Colin Reid, Head of Road Policing and Driver Training, Scottish Police
College, Police Scotland
John Sheridan, Assistant Chief Driving Examiner, Driving and Vehicle
Standards Agency (DVSA)
Robert Ward and Roger Gardner, Strategic Advisors to the National Police
Driver Training Lead, NPCC
iv Roadcraft – The Police Driver's Handbook

It was undertaken with the dedicated help of a Reflective Practitioners group

of senior police, fire, ambulance and civilian instructors, whose contribution
to the detailed editorial and updating process has been invaluable.

Reflective Practitioners
Byron Chandler, Driver Training Unit Supervisor, Gloucestershire
Constabulary
Iain Cook, Lead Motorcycle Trainer, Driver Training and Development,
West Yorkshire Police
Kevin Day, Driver Training Manager, West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service
Kevin Dell, Driving Centre Manager, Oxfordshire/Buckinghamshire Fire
Rescue Services
Robin Gwinnett, Training Manager, South Western Ambulance Service
NHS Foundation Trust and Chair, Driver Training Advisory Group
(NHS Ambulance)
Keith Harding, Driver Training, Dyfed Powys Police
Nick Lambert, Senior Education Manager – Driving, South Central
Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
Colin Reid, Head of Road Policing and Driver Training, Scottish Police
College, Police Scotland
Peter Rodger, former Inspector, Metropolitan Police Driving School and
former Chief Examiner, IAM RoadSmart

Editorial and Project Management Board

David Bryan, Senior Content and Product Development Manager, TSO
Lisa Daniels, Account Director, TSO
Barbara MacDonald, Editor
Catherine Saunders, Communications Officer, The Police Foundation
Daniel Whittle, Content Development Manager, TSO
 Foreword v

Foreword
Roadcraft is the official police driver’s handbook and is widely used by the
other emergency services. This new edition has been prepared through
careful consultation with senior police, other emergency services and
civilian driving instructors who are experienced in advanced driver training.
It incorporates the best and most reliable parts of previous editions with
the latest knowledge in this rapidly developing field. While designed to
complement driver training and practice, Roadcraft is a valuable learning aid
for anyone who wishes to raise their driving competence to a higher level.

Roadcraft is endorsed by the following organisations:

vi Roadcraft – The Police Driver's Handbook

Contents
Acknowledgements iii
Foreword v
Preface to the new edition xviii
About Roadcraft xx

Chapter 1 Becoming a better driver 1

Becoming a better driver 2
What makes a good driver? 3
Competences for police drivers 4
Your vulnerability as a driver 6
What are the commonest causes of collisions? 6
Who is most likely to be involved in a collision? 7
Critical learning from experience 8
Develop awareness of your personal vulnerability 10
Human factor risks for emergency services drivers 13
Distraction due to multi-tasking 13
Driving stress 13
Operational stressors 14
Time pressure and the purpose of your journey 16
‘Noble cause’ risk-taking 16
‘Red mist’ 16
How you learn 17
Training, practice and feedback 17
Overconfidence after training 18
Self-assessment will help you continually improve 19
Be honest 20
 Contents vii

Check your understanding 22

Chapter 2 The system of car control 23

The need for a system of car control 24
Integrating a range of competences 24
What is the system of car control? 25
How the system works 26
The importance of information 27
Mirrors and signals 27
The system of car control 28
Information 28
Position 29
Speed 29
Gear 29
Acceleration 29
Use the system flexibly 30
Applying the system to a left-hand turn 32
Applying the system to a right-hand turn 33
Applying the system to a roundabout 34
Re-applying the system to leave the roundabout 35
Applying the system to a potential hazard 36
Overlapping braking and gear changing 37
Brake/gear overlap – an example 38
Incorrect use of brake/gear overlap 39
Check your understanding 40
viii Roadcraft – The Police Driver's Handbook

Chapter 3 Information, observation

and anticipation 41
Processing complex information 42
Improving your information processing 43
Tips to improve information processing 46
Why observation and anticipation are essential for better
driving 46
What is a hazard? 47
Planning 48
Anticipate hazards 50
Prioritise hazards 51
Decide what to do 52
Forward planning beyond the next hazard 52
Improving your observation 53
Scanning the environment 53
Looking but not seeing 54
Peripheral vision 56
Zones of visibility 57
Your choice of speed 59
Keep your distance 62
Human factors that affect observation and anticipation 64
Alertness 64
Tiredness 64
Other physiological factors 66
Check your understanding 68
 Contents ix

Chapter 4 Anticipating hazards in the

driving environment 69
Night driving 70
You 70
Your vehicle 70
Your lights 70
Following other vehicles at night 71
Information from other vehicles’ lights 72
Dazzle 72
Reflective studs and markings 73
Other ways to improve observation at night 73
Weather conditions 74
Using lights in bad weather 75
Using auxiliary controls and instruments in bad weather 75
Observing when visibility is low 76
Micro climates 76
Road surface 77
Road surface irregularities 78
The road surface in winter 80
Driving through water 80
Road signs and markings 81
Local road knowledge 85
Making observation links 85
Check your understanding 88
x Roadcraft – The Police Driver's Handbook

Chapter 5 Acceleration, using gears, braking

and steering 89
Developing competence at controlling your vehicle 90
The tyre grip trade-off 91
Vehicle balance and tyre grip 92
Technology to help keep control of the vehicle 93
Using the accelerator 93
Retarders 94
Regenerative braking 94
Acceleration and vehicle balance 95
Acceleration and balance on different types of vehicle 95
Developing your competence at using the accelerator 96
Acceleration sense 97
Using the accelerator on bends 98
Key points 101
Fuel/power source affects acceleration and engine braking 101
Using the gears 101
Moving off from stationary 102
Accurate use of the gears 102
Key points 104
Automatic transmission 105
Automatic transmission modes 106
Using the features of automatic systems 107
Developing your competence at using automatic systems 108
Road conditions 108
Slowing down and stopping 109
Releasing the accelerator – engine braking 109
 Contents xi

Using the brakes 110

Normal braking (tapered braking) 110
Braking, tyre grip and balance 111
The safe stopping distance rule 112
Overall safe stopping distance 113
The two-second rule 114
Braking for corners and bends 115
Braking as you approach a hazard 116
Emergency braking 117
Using the parking brake 118
Steering 118
Steering technique 119
Seat position 119
How to hold the steering wheel 120
Pull–push 120
Rotational steering 122
Key points 123
Check your understanding 124

Chapter 6 Manoeuvring at low speeds 125

Developing your competence at low-speed manoeuvring 126
Using the system 126
Observation 127
Planning 128
Steering 129
Reversing in a confined space 130
Manoeuvring with a guide 132
xii Roadcraft – The Police Driver's Handbook

Parking 132
Check your understanding 134

Chapter 7 Maintaining vehicle stability 135

Controlling your vehicle’s stability 136
Attitudes to vehicle safety technology 137
How active safety systems work 137
Anti-lock braking systems 138
Traction control systems 139
Electronic stability programmes 140
Key points 141
Avoiding skidding 141
How does a skid happen? 142
How to minimise the risk of skidding 143
Recognising the cause of a skid 144
Cause: driving too fast for the circumstances 145
Cause: harsh acceleration 145
Cause: excessive or sudden braking 145
Cause: coarse steering 146
Understeer and oversteer 146
Aquaplaning 148
Check your understanding 149

Chapter 8 Driver’s signals 151

Developing your competence at using signals 152
The purpose of signals 152
Key points 153
 Contents xiii

Interpreting signals given by others 153

The range of signals 154
Using the indicators 154
Using hazard warning lights 155
Brake lights 156
Using the horn 156
Flashing your headlights 157
Arm signals 158
Using courtesy signals 158
Responding to other people’s signals 159
Check your understanding 160

Chapter 9 Positioning 161

Developing competence at positioning your vehicle 162
Positioning for advantage 163
Safety position on the approach to hazards 164
Roadside hazards 164
Improving the view into nearside road junctions 166
Following position 167
Position on bends 168
Position for turning 168
Position at crossroads 170
Position for stopping behind other vehicles 171
Position for approaching the brow of a hill 172
Position at pedestrian crossings and traffic lights 172
Check your understanding 173
xiv Roadcraft – The Police Driver's Handbook

Chapter 10 Cornering 175

Developing your competence at cornering 176
Using the system to corner safely 176
Key principles for safe cornering 176
Cornering forces 177
Vehicle characteristics 179
Roadworthiness 179
Vehicle specification 179
Understeer and oversteer 179
Camber and superelevation 180
Summary of factors affecting cornering 181
Assessing the sharpness of a bend 182
The limit point 182
The double-apex bend 190
How to use the system for cornering 192
Information 192
Position 192
Speed 194
Gear 195
Acceleration 195
Check your understanding 197

Chapter 11 Overtaking 199

Developing your competence at overtaking safely 200
Passing a stationary vehicle 201
Overtaking moving vehicles 204
The vehicle in front 205
Other documents randomly have
different content
 “The cities all of them are becoming daily more and more unsound,
and all for the same reason. The infusion of Northerners and
foreigners amongst them. And their interest is being felt in the interior.
The draymen and laborers of New Orleans are all white and
foreigners, and they will not let a Negro drive a dray. He would be
mobbed or killed. The steamboats all employ white servants, and their
captains are mostly Northerners, and the issue of Free Labor against
Slave Labor will soon be made at the South. Our own people many of
them are desponding. They begin to think that the institution of
Slavery is doomed.”[128]
In the light of this letter in 1849, we may well ponder what might
not have been accomplished for peace had not what might have
become a great artery of trade between Cincinnati and Charleston
been so recklessly cut in 1840. It is hardly possible to doubt, that in
the cutting, commercial conditions were made absolutely subservient
to political in the cultivated growth concerning the Institution in which
the disciples were continually forging ahead of the masters and
teachers.
In 1846 Calhoun had suggested, to J. H. Hammond, the propriety
of eulogizing Rev. Henry Bascomb for his vindication of the South on
the occasion of the division of the Methodists, and Hammond had
replied at some length with a declination. Calhoun’s rejoinder is of
some interest:
“I concur in the opinion that we ought to take the highest ground on
the subject of African Slavery, as it exists among us, and have from
the first acted accordingly; but we must not break with or throw off
those who are not prepared to come up to our standard, especially on
the exterior limits of the slave holding States. I look back with pleasure
to the progress which sound principles have made within the past ten
years in respect to the relations between the two races. All, with a
very few exceptions, defended it a short time since on the ground of a
necessary evil to be got rid of as soon as possible. South Carolina
was not much sounder 20 years ago than Kentucky now is and I
cannot but think the course the Western Baptist and Methodists took
in reference to the division of their churches has done much to expel
C. Clay and correct public opinion in that quarter.”[129]
Now if we go back twenty years from this expression of Calhoun’s,
we will be within one year of the date of Hayne’s great speech in the
United States Senate of 1827. In the twenty years, as well as can be
arrived at, the whites had increased to the extent of about fifty per
cent, the Negroes to the extent of about sixty per cent. Apparently he
had expected too much. The increase rate of the whites had not
been as great as that of the Negroes, no matter what were the
causes, and with the increase, the estimate of the Institution
increased. In the light of these facts it is scarcely surprising that in
1848, although railroads from Columbia to two points on the North
Carolina line, were again under way, and an application for a charter
for a third, along Hayne’s route to Spartanburg, pending, the City of
Charleston was induced to give $500,000 to complete the railroad
from Nashville to Chattanooga, in spite of the protest[130] of some of
the citizens of Charleston, that it was not right to use corporate funds
for work outside of the State, and even if it was, it was not expedient
to do so, as long as Augusta refused, as she was then refusing, to
permit a bridge to be built across the Savannah River at the terminus
of the Hamburg road, by which alone the South Carolina Railroad
could connect with the Georgia system.
Upon Calhoun’s return from the trip to the West which had been
urged upon him by the president of the South Carolina Railroad,
Gadsden, he expressed himself to his son-in-law, Clemson, as
satisfied with his reception in Memphis and elsewhere; but he could
hardly have been pleased at the tone taken by Gadsden very shortly
after with regard to the tariff.
Mention has previously been made with regard to what is herein
considered Calhoun’s failure in 1833 to cope successfully with Clay;
but the very slight gains then secured were wiped out in a new tariff
in 1842. In 1846, being free from the terrific responsibilities and
overshadowing dangers of Nullification, Calhoun secured legislation,
which seems in its workings to have balanced very satisfactorily the
imports and exports of the country, being apparently passed upon
the sound principles of Lowndes’s legislation. But the effort drew
from Gadsden’s swollen greatness, this insolent characterization of
the main creator of it:
“The passage of the tariff has pleased, but not satisfied us. Perhaps
it was the best terms which at this crisis could be got, and doing away
 with the minimums and the ad valorem duty is a point gained. The
valuation is ambiguous. Whether on the foreign or the home we
cannot understand. The bill may be construed either way. The
Pennsylvanians really seem to control you.”[131]
The conclusion must have been galling, and it was followed in
1847 with another letter in which, with professions of devotion, it was
intimated that General Taylor’s candidacy for the Presidency would
be a serious impediment to the only kind of candidacy Calhoun could
undertake. Whether Mr. Gadsden received the early answer he
requested on the ground “that the concert of action may be certain to
secure the triumph of one, who will not court our influence to
deceive,”[132] does not appear; but the next year there was a strong
movement, led by George A. Trenholm of Charleston, to oust
Gadsden from the presidency of the railroad, and in the last two
years of his life, Calhoun’s intimacy with Gadsden is not evidenced
by any correspondence. Rather it was upon Hammond that he leant
more and more and it was to him that he addressed the last letter
written to any one beyond the immediate circle of his own
hearthstone.
To Hammond the dying statesman turned with a confidence
calculated to inspire the latter’s belief in himself:
“Without flattery I know of no one better informed than you are on
the subject that now agitates the country, or more capable of deciding
what should be done, with the knowledge you would acquire of the
state of things here or of preparing whatever papers the Convention
may think proper to put out.... Never before has the South been
placed in so trying a situation, nor can it ever be placed in one more
so. Her all is at stake.”[133]
The convention was the Nashville Convention of 1850, which met
a few months after Calhoun’s death. Hammond and many others
hoped to have had Calhoun’s advice at it, and possibly the
suggestion for a new Constitution framed by Calhoun. They believed
emancipation was impending, and that with it the South would be
reduced to the condition of Hayti. Hammond had declared to
Calhoun:
 “We must act now and decisively.... If we do not act now, we
deliberately consign, not our posterity, but our children to the flames.
What a holocaust for us to place upon the alter of that union for which
the South and West have had such a bigoted and superstitious
veneration.”[134]
The brilliant follower had passed quite beyond his leader. The
orator who eight years later defiantly declared in the United States
Senate, “Cotton is King,” tersely states in this letter his political
creed, viz., that:
“The fundamental object of government is to secure the fruits of
labor and skill—that is to say property, and that its forms must be
moulded upon the social organizations. Life and liberty will then be
secured, for these are naturally under the guardianship of society and
that civilization which is the fruit of its progress. ‘Free government’ and
all that sort of thing has been, I think, a fatal delusion and humbug
from the time of Moses. Freedom does not spring from government,
but from the same soil which produces government itself, and all that
we want from that is a guarantee for property fairly acquired.”[135]
His conclusion was: “If leaders will only lead, neither they nor we
have anything to fear.”
Property is said to be proverbially timid, and the powers of finance
to dread war and its confusion; but Hammond’s conclusion was
identical with that if the greatest banker of Charleston, of that day,
who in the previous year had informed Calhoun after an extended
journey, that the South was “ready to act.”[136]
With Calhoun’s death, however, the party of action was without
any recognized head. There was no South Carolinian, who could in
1850 take his place without question, and accordingly by 1852, the
leadership of the South passed to Georgia from South Carolina, and
to some extent it did so pass from and through the blind efforts of the
Titan of South Carolina to mould all things to his will; for it was
through Calhoun to a considerable extent, that Georgia had secured
and waxed fat upon the great railroad up into Tennessee and to the
West. As soon as the Western and Atlantic, from Atlanta, reached
Chattanooga, meeting there in 1851, the road from Nashville, which
ran some 35 miles from Chattanooga towards the West, another
subscription was secured from Charleston,[137] for a road thence to
that point on the Mississippi river opposite Arkansas, although, in this
instance, with some glimmer of sense, it was conditioned upon the
removal of the obstruction caused by the city of Augusta’s refusal to
permit a bridge from the South Carolina shore across the Savannah
river, by which alone connection with the railroad beyond could be
made from South Carolina. But it was only, when, in despair of
accomplishing this bridging of the Savannah river in 1852,[138]
$500,000 was given to aid in pushing the South Carolina road on
from Anderson, S. C., to Knoxville, Tennessee, that then, by
purchase from Augusta, the right to bridge the Savannah river and
connect with the Georgia Railroad was obtained; so that, in the end,
some hundred or more miles of railroad had to be built beyond
Columbia in South Carolina, merely to secure the connection with
the Georgia road in 1853, for which Hayne’s great road had been
stopped at Columbia in 1840. But by 1853, the futility of any hope of
great benefit to South Carolina trade from the Georgia connection
having possessed the minds of those directing affairs in South
Carolina, $500,000 from Charleston and $1,000,000[139] from the
State was granted to promote the second of the two routes with
which Calhoun had obstructed the French Broad Railway from its
inception. For five years, with repeated disasters, the construction of
this second string to the bow of Calhoun, was energetically pushed,
with the vain hope of securing for South Carolina, at that late day,
what had been thrown away eighteen years earlier in blind
obedience to a great man’s imperious dictation. And it was in asking
for an additional $1,000,000 from the State and resisting the
arguments concerning the resurrection of the French Broad route
that Mr. Memminger, later Secretary of the Treasury of Confederate
States, declared of Hayne’s railroad:
“Although that great work was abandoned from causes beyond our
control, yet it has been the mother of all our interior railroads and has
not cost the State a single dollar of her money.”[140]
If there was anything which could have been said to have further
accentuated the fatal folly of the abandonment of this great
enterprise in favor of the attempted junction with the Georgia roads
in 1840 and a route to Arkansas instead of Ohio, it was epitomized
unconsciously by the same speaker, Mr. Memminger, at the same
time in 1858, in the same speech, from which the above extract was
taken:
“The two roads to the West, which have been assisted by
Charleston are the Memphis and the Nashville Railroads.... We hoped
that they would bring trade to the city, but it finds a cheaper outlet by
the Mississippi river.”[141]
One word more with regard to the cost of this road, which if it had
not been stopped at Columbia, might possibly have prevented the
war between the States. In the three years from 1836 to 1839 the old
Hamburg Railroad, run down and out of condition, had been
purchased and put into such order as to raise the receipts from it fifty
per cent, by 1839. Seventeen miles had been built on the fork to
Columbia from Branchville, with preparations so well forward that to
the $1,858,772 spent on the 153 miles, $584,304 additional, it was
estimated, would enable the remaining 48 to be completed in a year
to Columbia, with about $1,300,000 additional to be spent to reach
the North Carolina line by 1846, when the total expenditure of the
road from Charleston to Augusta and from Branchville through
Columbia to the North Carolina line via Spartanburg, would have
reached $3,743,076. At that point $1,102,600 pledged by North
Carolina and Tennessee would have been obtained, which with the
work done and prepared for was all lost by the stoppage at
Columbia. Yet nine years after Hayne’s death, 1848, the report of the
president of the South Carolina Railroad, James Gadsden, shows
$5,546,735.48[142] spent in securing only an additional 51 miles of
roadway.

FOOTNOTES:
[109] Trotter, Finances of the North American States p. 163.
[110] Hadley, Railroad Transportation, p. 33, et seq.
[111] Trotter, Finances North American States, p. 165.
[112] Hadley, Railroad Transportation, p. 33, et seq.
[113] Trotter, Finances North American States, p. 165.
[114] Ibid. p. 211.
[115] Ibid. p. 212.
[116] Ibid.
[117] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 388.
[118] Ibid. p. 459.
[119] Courier, March 13th, 1838.
[120] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 477.
[121] Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 464.
[122] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 470.
[123] Phillips, Transportation in Eastern Cotton Belt, p. 316.
[124] Ibid. p. 242.
[125] Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 1062.
[126] Courier, Dec. 18th, 1839.
[127] Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 1060.
[128] Ibid. p. 1188.
[129] Ibid. p. 672.
[130] Pamphlet, C. L. S. Vol. VIII. Art. 7, p. 6.
[131] Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 1085.
[132] Ibid. p. 1148.
[133] Ibid. p. 782.
[134] Ibid. p. 1210.
[135] Ibid. p. 1210.
[136] Ibid. p. 1188.
[137] Pamphlet, C. L. S. Vol. VII. Art. 7. p. 16.
[138] Ibid. p. 19.
[139] Pamphlet, Vol. II, C. L. S. Miller, p. 6.
[140] Pamphlet, Vol. XXI. Memminger, C. L. S. p. 9.
[141] Ibid. p. 23.
[142] Pamphlet, Vol. V. C. L. S. Art. 18, p. 18.
 CHAPTER VII

The school of Georgia politicians in 1852 did not favor Secession.

Their objection to it was that it would so reduce the value of slaves
as to force the owners to emancipate them themselves; while, with
the preservation of the Union, they believed they could force slavery
to the Pacific.
Certainly Georgia was in many respects amply fitted to lead. By
the census of 1850 it was disclosed that in the value of her personal
property, returned for taxation, she led the Union with $213,499,486.
Twelve million more than the old and wealthy State of
Massachusetts, which returned $201,976,892. South Carolina came
third with $178,130,217. Alabama fourth with $162,463,700. New
York fifth with $150,719,379.[143]
In the value of their real estate, which could not be as well
concealed as their personal property, the Northern States stood out
richer, so that in her revenue, Georgia stood not higher than seventh,
among the States of the Union; but, when revenue, expenditure and
debt were considered together, no State in the Union was apparently
in such an eminently sound and healthy condition; for, with her
surplus, she could have extinguished her debt in five years.
Of course that which made the personal property returned for
taxation by the residents of the Southern States, stand out so greatly
in excess of that of the richer States of the North was the fact that
the bulk of it was in slaves. But that fact reveals why the institution of
slavery had such a hold upon the South, when not more than ten per
cent of its inhabitants were slave holders. If the statesmen and
politicians who supported and defended it demanded “a guarantee
for property fairly acquired,” that property bore the bulk of the tax.
That was not the condition of the North, and the vice of the more
advanced civilization of that section was that, by every device which
could be conceived, more and more the burden of taxation was
thrown upon the poor.[144]
 While not to the swollen condition that is apparent today, the North
was, for thirty years and more prior to the War between the States,
the land of the capitalist, the abode of American capital.
How far the determination of Northern capital to keep the South
financially tributary to it was responsible for the rapid railroad
development of the North and West, it will require much investigation
to disclose. Whether, with a higher and nobler personnel among its
leaders and greater regard for the toiling masses of its white
population, it could have prepared the way so thoroughly for the
conquest of the South is doubtful; but having been stricken a blow,
even if a weak one, by the tariff of 1833, with a home valuation it had
parried the blow and sustained itself on the increased import trade
until it could enact the tariff of 1842; and when that was replaced by
Calhoun’s tariff of 1846, marshalling its industrial dependents, it
reached out with splendid energy, with one hand grasping the South
and the other the West and bound them both to its girdle with bands
of steel.
We have seen what was attempted in the South in the political
commercial effort to stretch from the Atlantic to Arkansas, after the
abandonment of the movement to Cincinnati in 1840. Now reverting
to the West, we find that in Ohio, part of the Cincinnati, Sandusky
and Cleveland Railroad was built in 1837; but it was not until 1848
that it was completed.[145]
In Kentucky, of the 97 miles projected, by 1839, there were in
operation from Lexington to Frankfort, on one end, 28 miles; from
Louisville to Portland on the other end, 3 miles.[146] But within nine
years from the time at which the Louisville, Cincinnati and
Charleston Railroad was stopped at Columbia, a railroad extended
from Detroit across lower Michigan, and by 1851, Cleveland and
Pittsburgh were connected by rail; while a second line from Toledo
below Detroit, paralleled the road from Detroit to the lower end of
Lake Michigan. By 1853, down from Lake Michigan to the junction of
the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, a line continued these two from
Toledo and Detroit; while from Cleveland a network of roads reached
Indianapolis, sending out from that city a line West to Terre Haute
and one North to Lake Michigan. By 1857 this had become a perfect
mesh of railroads, crossing and recrossing Ohio, Indiana and Illinois
and reaching up into Wisconsin, while three constituent roads
stretched across from the North Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi
River opposite Missouri.
The situation with regard to population was about as follows at this
period: The three States mentioned above contained about
4,500,000 white inhabitants, which the population of Michigan,
Wisconsin and Iowa raised to about 6,000,000. Behind them were
banked some 11,000,000 whites in New York, Pennsylvania and
New England.
Meanwhile, to the Nashville Convention of 1850, South Carolina
had sent a representative, who might have been considered a leaf
from her great past, Langdon Cheves and against the independent
secession of South Carolina, he strove successfully.
Mr. G. M. Pinckney, the most sympathetic of all Calhoun’s
biographers, thus sums up the situation in 1850:
“If Mr. Calhoun had lived a little longer, it seems highly probable that
history would have been different. He certainly would have forced
matters to head at this session, and at this time, had the South taken
definite action it seems probable that there was left genuine love
enough for the Union on all sides to save it. To delay ten years was
necessarily fatal. Every moment lost but added fuel to the kindling
flame of sectional hatred. Mr. Calhoun’s death was a stunning blow.
The South fell into confusion. Delay resulted and natural causes
taking their course produced natural results.”[147]

Professor Paxson’s view of the situation for the same time seems
somewhat in accord with the above:
“Had the secession movement of 1850 grown into war, none of
these factors (i. e. railroads) would have been effective, and success
for separation could hardly have been questioned. But in 1860
secession came too late. The Northwest was crossed and recrossed
by an intricate entanglement of tracks.”[148]
Such a coincidence of view in such widely separated quarters is
entitled to the highest respect; but it is not the view entertained by
the writer of this work, to whom 1850 seems to have been too late to
affect the situation favorably for secession, even if Calhoun had
survived; for, judged by his career, it is exceedingly doubtful if he
would have forced matters to a head. It would not have been in
accord with his past. He was a great parliamentarian and an even
greater debater; but all through his career his hand had been forced.
He was never quite ready for the situation as it developed. It may
have been greatly to his credit and consistent with his views; but he
always consulted and pondered. His political methods so disclose
him. McDuffie forced his hand with regard to Nullification. Clay
forced his hand with regard to the tariff of 1833. For Rhett’s
resolution of 1838, he was not ready, although that was the logical
time and the logical course.
Those who feel, that for this great Republic a world task was and
is reserved, may rejoice that no effort to secede was moved in 1838,
but that does not effect the question of its possible success had it
been attempted. Conditions in South Carolina were very much
confused by Calhoun’s death. To supply his place in the United
States Senate, Governor Seabrook first appointed F. H. Elmore and,
upon his death in a month or two, Robert W. Barnwell, but upon the
meeting of the General Assembly of South Carolina, six months
later, that body elected R. Barnwell Rhett, who, for about a year and
a quarter, strove for the accomplishment of the policy of secession
and failing, resigned and gave way to W. F. DeSaussure, apparently
in accord with the Georgia policy of pushing slavery to the Pacific,
within the Union, and in the wake of Georgia, South Carolina moved
until 1860, when her representatives again took the initiative with the
full approval of the leaders of the Empire State of the South.[149]
For the carrying into effect, in 1850, of the Georgia scheme of
pushing slavery to the Pacific there were in Missouri 592,004 whites,
in Arkansas 163,189, and in Kentucky and Tennessee 1,518,247, to
which the entire South remaining could add 3,422,923, and even if
Arkansas had doubled her white population since 1840, the 450,000
whites with which Ohio’s population had been increased in the same
time, put in that State one-tenth of the total white population of the
Union, which, with that with which Indiana and Illinois disposed of in
about the same space as Kentucky and Tennessee below, furnished
fully two and a half times as many to draw upon. It should have been
apparent, therefore, that it would take all that the South could do to
hold Missouri, much less invade the further Northwest, even if Iowa,
at that, time did not have very many more white inhabitants than
Arkansas. There was a chance to have affected Ohio in 1840; but by
1855 the movement from the East and the railroads had made it the
powerful advanced outpost of the Abolitionists. The ten years
between 1838 and 1848 practically determined the course of events,
making more and more for war between the slowly separating
sections, and for the steadily increasing black population of slaves in
the South.
If it is true that:
“Transportation, after all, has determined both the course and the
period of Western development.”[150]
—the colonizing stream with which the great and populous State of
Ohio, from 1840 fecundated the prairies of the West might have
poured to a considerable extent into the valleys of the Blue Ridge,
the Alleghany and the Cumberland mountains along the lines of the
Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad to meet and mingle
with the stream which had been moving westward from South
Carolina, since 1820.[151] In such a case the country might and in all
probability would have developed at a slower pace; but it would have
been as a more homogeneous people. It is idle to declare that there
was an irrepressible conflict. That has always been the claim of
those who are determined to precipitate such and are absolutely
dead to—
“the influence of a free, social and commercial intercourse, in
softening asperities, removing prejudices, extending knowledge and
promoting human happiness.”

FOOTNOTES:
[143] U. S. Census, 1850 p. 190.
 [144] McMaster, The people of the United States, between
1854 and 1860, Vol. VIII. Hanleiter, Speech Robert Harper, 1858.
[145] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 255.
[146] Trotter, Finances of North American States, p. 244.
[147] Pinckney, Life of John C. Calhoun, p. 212.
[148] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 266.
[149] Stephens, History of the United States, p. 561.
[150] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 247.
[151] McCrady, History of S. C. Vol. I, p. 1.
 CHAPTER VIII

The presidential election of 1852, tended at first to allay

excitement. A New Englander, affiliating closely with Southern men,
Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, won the Democratic nomination
over competitors much more prominent. Of these competitors
Buchanan and Cass had long and intimately been connected with
the party leaders of their States in the time of Andrew Jackson;
trained in the old school of politics; drawing what strength they had
from faithful service. The third competitor, a comparatively new
leader in the West, forceful, aggressive and impatient of restraint,
Stephen A. Douglas, was of an entirely different type. Determined to
make a spoon or spoil a horn, he evolved the doctrine of squatter
sovereignty, and with it soon had the country in a turmoil.
The condition was strange. The Georgians had a policy and the
lead of a section, but no man among them possessed the qualities
essential for such a task, as their bold program of pushing slavery to
the Pacific within the Union, demanded. Howell Cobb approached
nearer the station of leader than any other man of his State; but he
scarcely measured up to what was required. Besides as great as
Georgia was among the Southern States, second only to Virginia, in
point of population, and quite beyond in wealth and resources,
among the States of the Union, in point of population, she barely
ranked tenth. From the continuous stream of white immigrants
pouring into Illinois that great State was, however, rapidly moving up
to the position of fourth in population, while in Stephen A. Douglas,
she possessed one of the most audacious and resourceful of
politicians who had ever moved in the affairs of the Union, to a great
height. Carrying at his heels some forty-two Northern votes in
Congress, he appeared to be just the man the Georgians needed,
and accordingly in the Congress which met in December, 1853, he
introduced his bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska,
framing the provisions thereof upon the precedents set in the
organization of the territories of Utah and New Mexico four years
before. Of this bill, a distinguished author, later president of the
United States, has said:
“No bolder or more extraordinary measure had ever been proposed
in Congress, and it came upon the country like a thief in the night,
without warning or expectation, when parties were trying to sleep off
the excitement of former debates about the extension of slavery.”[152]
Mr. Woodrow Wilson was of the opinion that Southern members
had never dreamed of demanding such a measure and that no one
but Douglas, would have dreamed of offering it to them; but yet he
says the President had been consulted and had given his approval
to it, upon the ground that “it was founded upon a sound principle
which the compromise of 1820 had infringed upon.”[153] And certain
it is that the President had consulted, concerning it, that Southerner
who was destined to occupy the most prominent position ever held
by a Southerner. Jefferson Davis knew of it.
Of the author of the bill, Robert Toombs declared some seven
years later, with his characteristic exaggeration, that the Apostle Paul
was about his only superior as a leader. While Alexander H.
Stephens, with absolute devotion, clung to him, until secession
swept them apart, Toombs was less faithful. Forty-four Northern
Democrats, and all but nine of the Southern members of the House
of Representatives, supported the bill, and in the popular branch of
Congress, it prevailed, by a majority of thirteen votes; in the Senate,
by a vote of nearly three to one.[154] But Mr. Wilson declares that the
Act contained a fatal ambiguity. When was squatter sovereignty to
give its decision on the question of slavery?
Here was where the break came, when the Act was being tried out
in practical operation.
The Southern members thought that Douglas represented their
view. Mr. Davis, Secretary of War at the time of its introduction,
distinctly declares, that, at Douglas’s request, he obtained the
interview between Douglas’s committee and the President on
Sunday, January 22, 1854, by which the President’s approval was
secured, and he avers, that from the terms of the bill and arguments
used in its support, he thought its purpose was to open the territory
“to the people of all the States with every species of property
recognized by any of them.”[155]
But Douglas was not simply leading the Southern minority. He was
endeavoring to formulate a policy by means of which he could yoke
both sections to his triumphal car, and he was just as ready to use
the Southerners, as they were to use him. When the Southerners
found out how he proposed to over-reach them, Alexander H.
Stephens still clung to him; but Toombs, less faithful, vociferated that
he “didn’t have a leg to stand upon.”
The truth was, compromise upon compromise had so involved the
question, that it was almost impossible to disentangle it without the
use of the sword.
In 1787 there had been a compromise, by which slavery and the
slave trade had been both recognized; and over the Missouri
question in 1820, the Southern States had had a perfect
constitutional right to dissolve the Union; but again compromise had
been accepted.
The admission of California and the law of 1850 was a distinct
breach of the second compromise and the right to secede was just
as clear, as it had been in 1820; but the expediency of such action
was nothing like as clear. There was no great and towering
personality around which men could gather. Rhett’s resolution in
Congress in 1838 was the logical result of Calhoun’s teaching since
1833; but Calhoun was not ready to act. If ever secession was a
practical policy it was in 1838 as presented by Rhett in Congress.
[156]

In South Carolina in 1850, Calhoun was dead, and there was the
view of Rhett and the view of Cheves. In Georgia there was the view
of Cobb and the view of Toombs, and the view of Hill and the view of
Stephens.
Of the man who did more than any other to arrest secession in
1850, we know least, and what we do know does not help us to any
great extent to understand him. What policy Howell Cobb
represented is not very clear. He was strong enough to be
denounced as a traitor by those who could not drive him from their
path, and somewhat in the same way that Hayne was taken out of
national politics, when State politics required a man of unusual force,
Cobb stepped down in 1852 from the high station of Speaker of the
House of Representatives, to become Governor of Georgia; while in
the last four years before secession, he was silenced by his position
in Buchanan’s Cabinet.
But apart from leaders the country had changed, and in spite of
the declarations to the contrary, in nowhere more than in the South.
The continual increase of the Negro population and the immense
sums invested in that species of property had worked a
disintegration of former views.
Nullification had accelerated the change, for the views of Hayne in
1827 and Calhoun in 1836, were certainly wide apart.
In 1845 Calhoun had congratulated Hammond on the progress of
opinion in the South to the high ground he had held in advance; but it
may well be doubted whether Calhoun, himself, would not have been
startled by the progress disclosed in 1855, as evinced by the
agitation for the re-opening of the slave trade.
In 1845 when Wise, then United States Minister to Brazil,
disclosed the manner of conducting the slave trade in that country, in
which both Englishmen and Americans were implicated, the
President, in whose cabinet Calhoun then was Secretary of State,
condemned it without stint, rejoicing that “our own coasts are free
from its pollution”; although he was forced to admit that there were
“many circumstances to warrant the belief that some of our citizens
are deeply involved in its guilt.”[157]
Calhoun’s criticism of Wise on this occasion was only that he
feared he was injudicious, and that his declarations might affect the
relations between Brazil and the United States.[158]
Certainly Calhoun was not the man to have favored what his chief
styled “pollution,” and to have remained in his cabinet.
 Again, there is no reason to believe that Calhoun sympathized at
all with the ambitious scheme of forcing slavery to the Pacific.
Whatever may have been the merits or demerits of his policies, they
were strictly defensive, and he clung almost religiously to the phrase,
“slavery as it exists in the South.”
What that was, to some extent was disclosed by the committee on
religious instruction of the Negroes, which, in 1845 received reports
from all quarters of the South.
Robert Barnwell Rhett, was at the head of one of the principal
committees and among its members were D. E. Huger, Basil
Gildersleeve, Robert W. Barnwell and many others prominent in
affairs of State and matters of culture and religion in the South.
The account from Alabama of “the servant Ellis” is most
interesting. His blood and color, it was claimed were unmixed, and
he gave much aid in the meetings among the Negroes, though “more
retiring and modest than most people of his condition, when they
have ability above their fellows.”[159]
It is said he could read both Greek and Latin and was anxious to
undertake Hebrew; and the synods of Alabama and Mississippi
proposed to purchase him, in order to send him to Africa as a
Missionary.
Conditions such as these reports revealed were absolutely ignored
by the fanatical Abolitionists of that day although they are but some
of the many indications how mild and humanizing slavery, as it then
existed in the South, was.
But the question was, could it so continue? And by 1855 there
were ominous signs of a change. Agitation began for the re-opening
of the slave trade.
What a frightful moral injury to the South this would have been, is
evidenced by the statement alone of those who advocated this
course, and at the same time had the courage to express their views
on the inadequacy of the laws then in existence for the proper
protection of those of the inferior race, who were then in the South,
improved as they had been by years of training.
 In 1856, Governor James H. Adams, of South Carolina, had thus
expressed himself:
“If we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then we must
expect to be supplied with a species of labor, we do not want, and
which from the very nature of things is antagonistic to our institutions.
It is much better that our drays should be driven by slaves—that our
factories should be worked by slaves—that our hotels should be
served by slaves—that our locomotives should be served by slaves,
than that we should be exposed to the introduction, from any quarter,
of a population alien to us by birth, training and education, and which,
in the process of time, must lead to that conflict between capital and
labor, which makes it so difficult to maintain free institutions in all
wealthy and highly cultivated nations, where such institutions as ours
do not exist.”
In all slave holding States true policy dictates, that the superior race
should direct, and the inferior perform all menial service. Competition
between the white and the black man for this service may not disturb
Northern sensibility, but it does not suit our latitude. Irrespective,
however, of interest, the Act of Congress declaring the slave trade
piracy, is a brand upon us, which I think it important to remove. If the
trade be piracy, the slave must be plunder; and no ingenuity can avoid
the logical necessity of such conclusion.
My hopes and fortunes are indissolubly associated with this form of
society. I feel that I should be wanting in duty, if I did not urge you to
withdraw your assent to an Act which is itself a direct condemnation of
your institutions.”[160]
That was the true, the honest, the intelligent and the reasonable
statement of the case; the hopes and fortunes of those in control
were indissolubly associated with the form of society which slavery
had erected in the South.
In the elaborate report of the committee of the General Assembly
of South Carolina, in reply to the message, in which the said Act was
recommended to be nullified; while the honesty and sincerity of the
members may not be questioned, their woeful unfitness for the
position of responsibility placed upon them, has, in the light of time,
been made almost ludicrously apparent. Their utter inability to
appreciate the terrific evils, to the civilization they thought they were
defending and strengthening by their advocacy of the re-opening of