Institution

An established custom. The word was much used during the long controversy about slavery, which was called the “peculiar institution” of the South. And it is frequently used jocosely: see 1854, 1867.

1788.  Preaching is a good institution; and, like every thing else that requires the aid of time and experience to bring it to maturity, is advancing rapidly towards perfection.—American Museum, iii. 171/1 (March).

1836.  This question of domestic slavery is the weak point in our institutions.—Mr. James Buchanan in the U.S. Senate, March 10: Cong. Globe, p. 222.

1837.  Mr. Pickens meant only to say that the tendency of the institutions at the north was to organize capital, and to make labor tributary to it.—House of Repr., Oct. 11: id., p. 217, App.

1838.  Those who advocate the surpassing excellence of the slave institutions of the south have taken a more daring stand…. It is the glory of our Northern institutions that they give to every man, poor and rich, high and low, the same fair play.—Mr. Naylor in Congress: The Jeffersonian, Albany, June 2, p. 125.

[1838.  Lynch law, Bowie knives, and gouging, are taking root among us as established institutes of society.—Id., Sept. 1, p. 223.]

1839.  Murder [in Ireland] has become an institution.—The Times, Feb. 18. (N.E.D.)

1841.  I was not aware, Mr. Speaker, that our rules protected from discussion any institution whatever.—Mr. Giddings of Ohio, House of Repr., Feb. 9: Cong. Globe, p. 348, App.

1842.  I have deplored these things, because I thought their tendency was to disparage the House, as an institution, in the estimation and judgment of the country.—Mr. Allen of Ohio in the Senate, June 10: id., p. 610.

1842.  I have heard more about disunion, and the downfall of our institutions, since I have been on this floor, than during the whole of my life before.—Mr. Mason of Maryland, House of Repr., July 7: id., p. 563, Appendix.

1844.  The States on the Mississippi were connected with, and rested on, a naval power; the Southern States on their institutions,—institutions which he hoped no fanatical spirit would ever have power to disturb,—and the Eastern States on their commerce.—Mr. James Buchanan in the Senate, March 12: id., p. 372.

1845.  The institution of slavery is secured to certain sections of the confederacy by the federal constitution.—Mr. Weller of Ohio, House of R., Jan. 9: id., p. 83, App.

1848.  My position is this: that slavery is an institution which depends solely upon the municipal law of the place where it exists.—Mr. Alex. H. Stephens of Georgia, House of R., Aug. 7: id., p. 1106, App.

1848.  

1849.  There is a domestic institution in the South, which in some sort insulates us from all mankind. The civilized world is against us. I know it; I comprehend it; I feel it.—Mr. Hilliard of Alabama, House of R., Feb. 10: Cong. Globe, p. 105, App.

1854.  Show us a lady’s bonnet, and we’ll tell you what sort of an institution she is.—Olympia (W.T.) Pioneer, April 29.

1854.  Among all our American institutions, there is none better befitting a great and growing republic than The Strawberry.—Knick. Mag., xliv. 105 (July).

1854.  When Miss Ketura escapes you “on the wing,” she won’t make you a useful institution, no way you can fix it.—Oregon Weekly Times, Dec. 2.

1854.  I last night visited my girl. We had not been long seated alone, when she sighed out, “Mr. Spriggs, don’t you think marriage is an institution?” “It is a great institution indeed,” said I.—Id., Dec. 9.

1854.  The old Sea Captain insisted on Bolus’s setting his negroes free, and taking five thousand dollars apiece for the loss. Bolus’s love for the “peculiar institution” wouldn’t stand it.—J. G. Baldwin, ‘Flush Times,’ p. 10.

1854.  The bar of every country is, in some sort, a representation of the character of the people of which it is so important an “institution.”—Id., p. 241.

1855.  Yankees do have a weakness for patent medicine. It is one of their peculiar institutions. They take pride in it, one and all, from the urchin who gulps down his first pill, to the octogenarian, who takes his final pull at the bottle, and tumbles into his grave.—Yale Lit. Mag., xx. 278 (June).

1857.  Chain-Gang. There was an addition of two made to this useful “institution” yesterday.—San Francisco Call, Jan. 27.

1857.  The Bible is an excellent institution.—Oregon Weekly Times, Nov. 7.

1857.  I never see an old man, seated in his great arm chair, with his grandchildren playing around him, smoking his pipe and enjoying its, to him, pleasant perfume, its soothing influences, without regarding that same pipe as an institution which I would hardly be willing to banish entirely from the world.—S. H. Hammond, ‘Wild Northern Scenes,’ p. 67.

1858.  Certain steamboat lines and other institutions.—Olympia Pioneer, July 23.

1860.  He had for the last few years used a boy and dog as fencing material; he found it ‘a good institution;’ less laborious and less expensive than rails.—Knick. Mag., lv. 415 (April).

1860.  (Dec.) The Slave States desire “to be let alone, and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way.”—President Buchanan’s message.

1860.  (Dec.) The Republican party holds the same opinion, as far as I know, with regard to your ‘peculiar institution’ that is held by every civilized nation on the globe.—Senator Wade’s speech: O. J. Victor, ‘The History … of the Southern Rebellion,’ i. 88.

1860.  (Dec.) Our platform repudiates the idea that we have any right, or harbor any ultimate intention, to invade, or interfere with, your institution, in your own States.—The same: id., i. 88–9.

1860.  (Dec.) The idea … that the institution of African slavery would be made the grand basis of a sectional organization of the North to rule the South, never crossed the imaginations [of the founders of the Union].—South Carolina’s Address to the Slaveholding States. Id., i. 110.

1860.  (Dec.) When it is said that the institution [of Slavery] exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.—Mr. Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill.—Id.,, i. 142.

1861.  (Jan.) The Republican party holds that African Slavery is a local institution, depending upon local statute laws—that it cannot exist beyond the limit of the State by virtue of whose laws it is established. The Democratic party holds that African Slavery is a National institution, existing everywhere where it is not prohibited by statute local law.—Mr. Stanton’s reply to Mr. Reagan: id., i. 230.

1861.  

1863.  Those wee little “affidavits,” alias gipsey hats, now so much in vogue, are quite a peculiar and saucy-looking institution, on both those whom they become and those whom they disfigure.—Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Feb. 12.

1866.  They [the New England people] built a fence around the institution [slavery] as high as Haman’s gallows, and hemmed it in, and laid siege to it jest like an army would besege a city to starve out the inhabitants.—C. H. Smith, ‘Bill Arp,’ p. 161.

1867.  Mr. Lincoln caught sight of some axes hanging up outside of the cabin. Leaving the group, he quietly went forward, and taking one down, returned with it, and said: “Gentlemen, you may talk about your ‘Raphael repeaters’ and ‘eleven-inch Dahlgrens;’ but here is an institution which I guess I understand better than either of you.”—F. B. Carpenter, ‘Six Months at the White House,’ p. 113. (Italics in the original.)

1908.  See HETCHEL.