How Massachusetts Ended Slavery, Part Six

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

We left Massachusetts with the failure of the 1778 constitution, a victim more of indifference than contention over slavery. Yet whites still contended over slavery, to the point of rioting at the proposal to arm black men to fight the British. They seem to have contended rather less over the prospect of black men voting, though partisans did line up in favor of preserving the right for any wealthy enough to cast their ballot.

Nor did those who suffered under these injustices give up the fight. In early 1780, “several poor negroes and mulattoes” of Dartmouth petitioned with the claim that

we have been deprived of enjoying the profits of our labor or the advantage of inheriting estates from our parents, as our neighbors the white people do, having some of us not long enjoyed our own freedom; yet of late, contrary to the invariable custom and practice of the country, we have been, and now are, taxed both in our polls and that small pittance of estate which, though much hard labor and industry, we have got together to sustain ourselves and families withall.

This “hard usage” for people who had dearly won their freedom and maintained themselves with little, deserved protestation. The petitioners further added that keeping black Bay Staters in penury would soon “reduce us to a state of beggary” and “a burthen to others.” So the whites needed to get their house in order and do something, or they would be stuck with the problem anyway.

Your petitioners further show, that we apprehend ourselves to be aggrieved, in that, while we are not allowed the privilege of freemen of the State, having no vote or influence in the election of those that tax us, yet many of our color (as is well known) have cheerfully entered the field of battle in defence of the common cause, and that (as we conceive) against a similar exertion of power (in regard to taxation), too well known to need recital in this place.

Dear White Bay Staters, you tax your black neighbors without granting them a vote or any representation whatsoever. Does any of that sound familiar to you?

Though phrased as a humble request, complete with flattery of the white legislators’ “wisdom and power”, that language has an edge to it. Everyone reading the petition would know just how whites chose to redress their taxation without representation grievances. The petitioners don’t threaten, but referencing their own service in the war in such close proximity to the shared grievance didn’t happen by accident. They received no response.

Dartmouth’s black and multiracial residents did not take all this sitting down. They resisted the collection of taxes and wrote the selectmen in April of 1781 asking them

to put a stroke in their next warrant for calling a town-meeting, so that it may be legally laid before said town, by way of a vote, to know the mind of said town, whether all free negroes and mulattoes shall have the same privileges in this said town of Dartmouth as the white people have, respecting places of profit, choosing of officers, and they like

How Massachusetts Ended Slavery, Part Five

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4

 

The Massachusetts legislature wrote a new constitution for the state in 1778. Therein they removed the right to vote from any free black man who met the property qualifications that applied to white, and also kicked Indians and mixed-race people out of the voter lists. This prompted outrage from antislavery whites, who saw the whole business of slavery and disenfranchisement of men as hypocritical in light of the revolution that white Bay Staters embarked upon under the premise of universal rights. The legislature’s chaplain counted himself among the latter and opposed the constitution so heartily that they fired him for it.

While the legislature’s chaplain got in hot water with his employers, a Thomas Kench asked them to authorize recruiting black Americans for the military. Kench asked on the third of April, then wrote again on the second and shed some light on popular reception to the idea:

The letter I wrote before I heard of the disturbance with Col. Seares, Mr. Spear, and a number of other gentlemen, concerning the freedom of negroes, in Congress Street. It is a pity that riots should be committed on the occasion, as it is justifiable that negroes should have their freedom, and none amongst us be held as slaves, as freedom and liberty is the grand controversy that we are contending for; and I trust, under the smiles of Divine Providence we shall obtain it, if all our minds can but be united; and putting the negroes into service will prevent much uneasiness, and give more satisfaction to those that are offended at the thoughts of their servants being free.

In other words, Kench asked before he realized whites would riot over the question. The dissension among whites surprised and troubled him since he believed that unity would bring freedom for all. He went on to say that he would leave it there. He said his peace and understood that further discussion might “give offence.”

With all that in mind, one might expect the constitution to sail through ratification. Certainly non-whites had their white champions in Massachusetts, but enough Bay Staters went all-in for white supremacy to cause riots and make opponents drop the subject. Instead, the constitution failed. It appears to have faced general indifference rather than strong opposition, with many towns returning no votes at all. Boston and Cambridge came out unanimously against it. Dartmouth took pains to stress that while they disagreed with the the provisions excluding non-white men from the vote, they had no such voters among them. While the constitution failed, it doesn’t seem to have failed because of its white supremacy.

How Massachusetts Ended Slavery, Part Four

Parts 1, 2, 3

We left Massachusetts with the constitution of 1778. After some debate, the legislature chose to restrict the vote to free white men and take no action against slavery in the Bay State. In other words, they proposed greater restrictions upon free black Americans than then existed and enough of the convention felt slavery should continue to overwhelm those who thought it ought to end. This prompted attacks upon the constitution by antislavery whites, with our old friend Dr. Gordon speaking up once more:

The complexion of the 5th Article [which restricted the franchise] is blacker than that of any African; and if not altered, will be an everlasting reproach upon the present inhabitants, and evidence to the world, that they mean their own rights only, and not those of mankind, in their cry for liberty.

A cynic or proslavery person could argue that Gordon grasped the point exactly. Neither, he castigated the legislature for its unprecedented innovation: No other colony denied a free man who could meet property qualifications the vote. White men then faced the same qualifications, so while white supremacy and slavery ensured that a far smaller portion of the black population could meet the bar, those lucky few could cast their vote in all thirteen colonies at the time of Gordon’s writing. He called the move to the contrary a “public scandal.”

Gordon then raised the example of Jamaica’s maroon society, composed of enslaved people who freed themselves by force and managed to maintain their freedom long enough that King George II sent men to negotiate a peace with them which granted them that freedom. For people rebelliong against what they deemed British tyranny, that had to rankle.

Furthermore

The exception of Indians is still more odious, their ancestors having been formerly proprietors of the country.

Nineteenth century antislavery men rarely had that particular scruple.

Al that said, Gordon moved on to the prohibition on bi-and mult-racial men voting. Just how did the convention intend to make that work? Did the children of those people inherit the disability, so long as they had a single drop of the suspect blood in their veins, down “to the hundredth generation”?

Gordon wrote all of this in public, in the newspapers, while serving as chaplain of the legislature. He had been present for at least some of the debates. He opened sessions with prayers. He knew the principals, at least professionally. If he would write this for public consumption, one can only imagine how forthright he got in person. They had enough and fired him, effective April 4th or 6th, 1778. Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts gives both dates. As Gordon served as chaplain to both houses, presumably they fired him on different dates.

How Massachusetts Ended Slavery, Part Three

By the summer of 1777, Massachusetts had considered bills to end slavery and opted out. Many white Bay Staters did have increasingly serious objections to slavery, understanding it as in fundamental contradiction with their revolutionary project, but that only went so far. Understanding they had a potentially explosive issue on their hands, the Massachusetts House passed the buck to the Continental Congress by asking for advice. Congress gave none and it all died there. Meanwhile, Massachusetts whites continued human trafficking in the same papers that printed antislavery letters.

Shortly after that, the legislature got to work on a new constitution. Since that constitution would necessarily touch on fundamental rights, and antislavery whites hadn’t given up the cause. Nor had their enemies. This naturally resulted in a battle in the papers. William Gordon argued:

Would it not be ridiculous, inconsistent, and unjust, to exclude freemen from voting for representatives and senators, though otherwise qualified, because their skins are black, tawny, or reddish? Why not disqualified for being long-nosed, short-faced, or higher or lower than five feet nine? Are black, tawny or reddish skin is not so unfavorable an hue to the genuine son of liberty, as a tory complection?

In other words, why exclude patriotic non-whites from the polls when loyalist whites would clearly be allowed to vote? Surely the latter had far less fitness for the ballot in Revolutionary Massachusetts.

The records of the 1777-8 constitutional convention don’t seem to have survived in full, but what does shows that they debated citizenship for those people who lacked their discerning taste when they chose their skin color. A lengthy speech from the convention arguing for equality and for reconsideration of a vote to exclude non-whites from voting appeared in the September 23, 1779 Independent Chronicle.

The argument for white supremacy consisted in part of casting them as foreign, which the speaker would have none of:

What, unless it be their color, constitutes them foreigners? are they not Americans? Were they not (most of them at least) born in this country? Is it not a fact, that those who are not natives of America, were forced here by us, contrary, not only to their own wills, but to every principle of justice and humanity?

But he knew the actual lay of the land well enough:

there is one argument more which has been urged by gentlemen of the opposing side, as being of great weight and importance, which is this, “That by erasing this clause of the constitution, we shall greatly offend and alarm the Southern States. ” Should this be the case, Sir, it would be surprising indeed! But can it be supposed, Mr. President, that any of the sister States will be offended with us, because we don’t see fit to do that which they themselves have not done?

At the time, free black Americans who could meed property and wealthy qualifications could and did vote. Removing the franchise from them went hand in hand with extending it to poorer whites over the course of the nineteenth century.

Facts counted for little, though. The advance of white freedom demanded the sacrifice of non-white rights, as usual. The constitution of 1778 provided:

Every male inhabitant of any town in this State, being  free, and twenty-one years of age, excepting Negroes, Indians, and molattoes, shall be intitled to vote for a Representative or Representatives, as the case may be

How Massachusetts Ended Slavery, Part Two

We left Massachusetts in 1777, with white Bay Staters increasingly of the sentiment that they ought to do something to get rid of slavery. Among the writers pressing for some form of abolition, the contradiction between fighting for freedom and practicing slavery had become increasingly difficult to ignore. William Gordon expressed it well in an open letter of September 21, 1776:

The Virginians begin their Declaration of Rights with saying, ‘that all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive themselves or their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty.’ The congress declare that they’hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.’ The Continent has rang with affirmations of the like import. If these, Gentlemen, are our genuine sentiments, and we are not provoking the Deity, by acting hypocritically to serve a turn, let us apply earnestly and heartily to the extirpation of slavery from among ourselves. Let the State allow nothing beyond servitude for a stipulated number of years, and that only for seven or eight, when persons are of age, or till they are of age: and let the descendants of the Africans born among us, be viewed as free-born; and be wholly at their own disposal when one-and-twenty, the latter part of which age will compensate for the expense of infancy, education, and so on.

Gordon’s sentiment rings true. His letter came as part of the contagion of liberty sweeping the colonies. I have it in a copy of George Moore’s Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts, a middle nineteenth century work still much-beloved of the eighteenth century’s long-s. I’ve taken the liberty of fixing that for your convenience and I do proof any quotes I type out, but if I miss one and you end up reading about “flavery” and “fervitude”, please accept my apologies.

Besides the long-s, Notes includes reference to other letters on similar lines. Then, conscious even in 1866 that one might imagine Massachusetts as eternally antislavery, Moore devotes an entire page to contemporaneous ads selling and seeking slaves:

TO SELL-A Hearty likely NEGRO WENCH about 12 or 13 Years of Age, has had the Small Pox, can wash, iron, card, and spin, etc., for no other Fault but for want of Employ.

WANTED a NEGRO GIRL between 12 and 20 Years of Age, for which a good Price will be given, if she can be recommended.

To be SOLD, a large, commodious Dwelling House, Barn, and Outhouses, with any quantity of land from 1 to 50 acres, as the Purchaser shall choose within 5 miles of Boston. Also a smart well-tempered NEGRO BOY of 14 years old, not to go out of this State and sold for 15 years only, if he continues to behave well.

Obviously, some Bay Staters had good inoculations against the contagion of liberty. The House’s proposal for gradual emancipation, deferred pending the advice of Congress which never came and so buried it, speaks to a growing sentiment in agreement with Gordon’s. These ads speak to the opposite. The bill never came to a vote so we can’t say for sure if it would have passed, but given the natural inclination of enslavers to care far more about maintaining their human property than others did for stripping them of it we must harbor some doubt about abolition’s prospects. Further developments will add still more.

How Massachusetts Ended Slavery, Part One

I’m sorry for the lack of posts, Gentle Readers. I felt a bit ill over the weekend and then my mother had cataract surgery on Monday. That’s put me behind on several things but has given me occasion to revisit something I meant to do more of and fell away from. Welcome back to Deep Dives, where we go back in time far past the usual late Antebellum to look at the history of American slavery.

In those later decades, we think of Massachusetts as resolutely antislavery. The state practiced slavery at one point and conservative elements within it always remained inclined to make excuses, but we can reasonably call it a state that aligns firmly on the antislavery left. How it got from a state which enslaved people to one that did not receives little scholarly attention, even though we believe that it did so with an instantaneous, uncompensated abolition much like enacted in 1865. Some of that comes down to slavery lasting longer in the American South and the vastly larger scale of the institution there. We should also probably grant that the Revolution draws a tremendous amount of scholarly attention away from anything near to it. But that still leaves us with a remarkable story.

John Adams

In 1780, Massachusetts wrote a new constitution which included a bill of rights written by John Adams. His draft received some style tweaks by a committee and the convention accepted it. Article I reads:

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

An enslaved man named Quock Walker sued for his freedom under that provision in 1783. The Massachusetts courts agreed with him. The 1790 census shows no slaves in Massachusetts. Therefore Walker killed slavery in the Bay State and, retroactively, it was abolished with the adoption of the new constitution in 1780. Thereafter, Massachusetts assumed its place as the leading bastion of freedom. The records indicate a more complicated story and ambiguous story, as usual.

As soon as revolutionary rhetoric with its talk of natural rights began to circulate, black Americans insisted it ought to apply to them as well. White antislavery men agreed, but the flurry of speeches and petitions generated only limited action. The state House formed a committee to look into the conditions facing black Bay Staters in the fall of 1776. Spring brought about a few bills for abolition, with a gradual emancipation proposal gaining some steam. We don’t know how it would have gone down because the House drew up short of a final vote, instead asking Congress for an opinion:

from an apprehension that our brethren in the Other Colonies should conceive there was an impropriety in our determining on a question which may … be of extensive influence, without previously consulting your Honors

Congress, which had a war to run and absolutely no inclination to touch such an explosive issue if it meant to keep the South fighting the British, refused to answer. With no approval forthcoming, the Massachusetts House approved a petition asking for abolition and went no farther.

“Fear & excitement”

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

John Stringfellow’s Squatter Sovereign advised that good proslavery men must somehow silence their antislavery counterparts. John Brown’s murders proved the point and he did not shy from connecting them to anyone who gave them aid and shelter, however uninvolved in the killing itself. That didn’t mean they should go out of their way to murder people in the dark of night, but then the proslavery party had the territorial government on its side. They didn’t need to skulk about quite so much as Brown and company.

They didn’t need Stringfellow’s advice or permission to get going either. A resident of Osawatomie wrote his Cousin Sidney on Wednesday, May 28,

Osawatomie is in much fear & excitement. News came tonight that a co. of Georgians and Alibamians were coming to make this their headquarters. All work is nearly suspended, the women are in constant fear.

Jefferson Burford’s Georgians and Alabamans already camped nearby. It wouldn’t take much to move them in and they had come all this way to murder abolitionists. Seeing what could come their way, the residents of Osawatomie and the vicinity got together in a public meeting which published conciliatory resolutions. (I haven’t been able to find a copy, Gentle Readers.)

Those resolutions received the unanimous acclaim of the meeting, but in person the members differed on whether Brown and his men had committed a grave offense or acted in some kind of tragic self-defense. Certainly the local proslavery men had not made for the best of neighbors, but efforts to show that Brown knew of the Shermans’ threats against Squire Morse and others have yielded no clear evidence that he did. If he had those incidents specifically in mind, he wouldn’t have hesitated to bring them up. Rather he seems to have acted from a general conviction that the free state party needed to avenge itself and terrorize their enemies. His heroic act of murder would do that open the floodgates of antislavery anger.

Charles Lawrence Robinson

Brown may well have gotten the latter, though it’s hard to separate the impact of his killings from the sack of Lawrence. Later on, free state leaders like Charles Robinson said that they always had a considered position in favor of armed nonviolence. The events of the Wakarusa War and the sack of Lawrence demonstrated that not everyone agreed with that. Robinson often struggled to contain the more militant antislavery Kansans, who counted more than just Brown and his intimates among their number. They never liked all this backing down and talking things out. The fall of Lawrence and Robinson’s arrest removed the leading voice for a more diplomatic solution from the board, at least for a time.

Furthermore, even though Robinson paints himself as the consistent man of peace and had a reputation to back it, his party consistently explained their preference for diplomacy as situational. They did not want to strike the first blow, nor strike United States troops. Keeping their noses clean helped politically, at least so long as political violence in Kansas remained intermittent and small-scale. If the fate of Lawrence hadn’t changed that permanently, then Brown’s murders may well have done the trick. As long as no one on your side goes hunting the enemy, refraining feels normal. Once someone has, the question must naturally arise for men reared in nineteenth century masculinity as to why they haven’t themselves gone in? Were they cowards? Boys playing soldier? Women? Even if they had a sincere objection to the use of force before, the proslavery reaction would make Brown’s claims of self-defense more plausible to others in retrospect. Now they really did have proslavery men coming for them, so they had best stand ready.

“There must be no night work”

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

The Squatter Sovereign advised its reader that in response to the Pottawatomie murders,

Every pro-slavery men in Atchison county ought immediately to call at Atchison, and learn the news and course determined.

They had abolitionists to hunt. It wouldn’t take a psychic to see the solution the paper had in mind, though coordinating our of Atchison made good logistical sense and would bring some paying customers by the newspaper office. However, John Stringfellow’s paper also intended to help its readers learn the news. Right after the call to arms came a report on John Brown’s massacre under the headline Civil War in Kansas:

Since the organization of the Territory the abolitionists have proposed various games by which they hoped tow in Kansas, at all of which, so far, they have been defeated. Failing to carry the elections by fraudulent voting-by packing upon us unscrupulous census takers, by which we were defrauded of our just representation-by placing abolition judges to preside over the elections-by an attempt to swindle us out of our representatives after they were elected-by attempting to defeat all our legislation after we had met in the Legislature-by attempting to defy the officers of the law in enforcing its requirements, they have commenced a new game-that of midnight murder.

Before we get into the murdering, remember all the other reasons the antislavery party deserves the hatred of all good proslavery men. They did the fraudulent voting. They tried to cheat honest Kansans out of fair representation. They packed the election staff with their partisans. Atchison, Kansas studiously observed Opposites Day. This level of perversity, while depressingly common, still deserves recognition. Stringfellow, like people of every era who know their own tactics can’t stand the light of day, outsourced them to the opposition.

That long sentence to outrage the reader primed them for the actually new news

armed bands of assassins are prowling about, murdering men at midnight for no offence except their political opinions.

Remember, Gentle Readers, Stringfellow’s brother Ben argued that one should murder abolitionists for abolitionism. John might say that the overt act of preaching antislavery justified the difference, but he would have undermined himself in the previous piece where he said that those who tried to sit out the slavery fight would get attacked from both sides.

The Sovereign went on to a bit of self-praising, reminding readers that the proslavery side treated the contest “in a bold, manly, open manner”. By that we should not think that they killed no one, only that they did most of their murders in broad daylight and with pride; proslavery men had standards. Stringfellow urged that their side should not sink to John Brown’s level:

There must be no night work, but in the face of day we must hunt these banded outlaws to death or out of the Territory.

The paper asked where this would end, if they let it go on? Brown’s victims, per the Sovereign’s lights, did nothing wrong. Some of them hadn’t even marched against Lawrence once. If the antislavery party would martyr such innocents, then the proslavery side must show them that they played “a losing game.” Only then would they stop. Thus:

Every man who is known to have taken any active part with these lawless traitors, should be silenced in some way.

Reckless murderers, assassins and thieves

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

 

Set on the notion that the proslavery party should obey the law, unless self-defense came into it, John Stringfellow’s Squatter Sovereign situated itself on well-trod ground. Most everyone in any era thinks that the law doesn’t bind them in a suicide pact. If you have to run a red light to get away from someone who stuck a gun in your face, no one is going to fault you for doing it. It’s not a safe choice, but neither is sticking around. Stringfellow, and his brother Benjamin, considered the mere presence of antislavery men a similar situation. John Brown proved them, at least this once, right by hauling men out of their homes at night to hack them to death with swords.

Had Stringfellow’s paper confined itself to that point, it would hardly warrant our attention. Like his brother Ben, John Stringfellow would not so constrain himself. He argued that they would hold up their end of a civil war if the Free State party saw fit to throw one and furthermore cast his net far wider than Brown’s eight men:

Hundreds of the Free State men, who have committed no overt acts, but have only given countenance to those reckless murderers, assassins and thieves, will of necessity share the same fate of their brethren. If civil war is to be the result in such a conflict, there cannot be, and will not be, any neutrals recognized. “He that is not for us, is against us” will of necessity be the motto

Stringfellow sounds like his brother here, bent on wiping out the enemy and keenly attentive to the aid that non-militant collaborators give to the militants. People who looked the other way or shared their roof with John Brown and company did involve themselves in the fray, whether they bore arms or not. By aiding the enemy, they joined the ranks. This may sound extreme, but the logic holds. People who make it easier for a murderous enemy to carry on are helping that enemy murder you. The distinction between the gunman and the person who sold them the gun and wished them well doesn’t matter much from the victim’s perspective. John Brown knew the same thing and acted on it much as either Stringfellow might have expected themselves to act if it came to a shooting war.

A good politician doesn’t finish without suggesting a course of action in these things, so Stringfellow continued:

Every pro-slavery men in Atchison county ought immediately to call at Atchison, and learn the news and course determined.

In other words, the boys had best come on in. They had abolitionists to hunt. Maybe this time they would suffer no disappointments.

Midnight murders, assassinations, burglaries and arson

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

Wilson Shannon thought it best to use the military to suppress the free state movement in order to restore the proslavery order in Kansas. This, in turn, would prevent his territory sparking a general civil war. Armed bands of proslavery men might endanger that project, but nowhere near so much as the antislavery side would. Shannon believed that out of general conviction. John Brown’s murders made him, at least in the one narrow case, right. So the Governor called out the army and soldiers went about ordering anyone they found in a group under arms to go home.

Immediate reaction to the Pottawatomie killings outside government officials proved more mixed. Some proslavery individuals did leave the area after Brown did his bloody work, but the party didn’t give up. Actual Kansans might outnumber them, but they had plenty of men in Missouri, the Kansas militia, and territorial government to even the score. John Stringfellow’s Squatter Sovereign laid into the story with its June 10 issue, having missed the week before. A throat-clearing exercise under the headline Free State Party In Kansas got things going:

Midnight murders, assassinations, burglaries and arson seem now to be the watchwords of the so-called Free State party. While those rebellious subjects confined themselves to the resistance of the law, in their attempts to make arrests, and execute process in their hands, the pro-slavery party in the Territory was determined to stand by the law, and aid the officers in executing process, and the courts in administering justice.

Mind the past tense; Stringfellow did. “Every pro-slavery man” should stick to that, but times do change.

Self-protection -defense of one’s life, family, and property are rights guaranteed to all law abiding citizens; and the manner and mode of keeping off murderers, assassins, &c., are not confined to any very strict rules of law

Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow

Proslavery men could, would, and should keep themselves strictly within the law. But faced with an emergency, a direct threat to their lives and property, they might color outside its lines. No one could fault them for answering to self-preservation instead of the statute book. Stringfellow couches this as a response to an emergency, and did write to answer Brown’s murders, but he could have just as easily made the claim two years prior. His brother did:

Though we fully recognise the duty of all good citizens to obey the law, to rely upon the law, where there is no law, the right of self-defence requires that we should resort to the strong hand for self-protection. We have no law by which the expression of abolition sentiments is made a penal offence, and yet it is a crime of the highest grade. It is not within even the much abused liberty of speech; but in a slaveholding community, the expression, of such sentiments is a positive act, more criminal, more dangerous, than kindling the torch of the incendiary, mixing the poison of the assassin. The necessity for a law punishing such a crime, has not, until now, been felt in Missouri. Until such a law is enacted, self-protection demands that we should guard against such crimes.

Benjamin Stringfellow placed the emergency point at the mere presence of antislavery men. John Stringfellow, who voted for laws that did make expression of abolitionist sentiments a crime, now had a more immediate reason to make the same argument.