THE AMERICAN NATION A HISTORY
FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES BY ASSOCIATED SCHOLARS EDITED BY
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ADVISED BY VARIOUS HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
IN 27 VOLUMES VOL. 18
THE AMERICAN NATION
A HISTORY
LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
Group I.
Foundations of the Nation
Vol.i European Background of American History, by Edward Potts Chey- ney, A.M., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Pa.
" 2 Basis of American History, by Livingston Farrand, M.D., Prof. Anthropology Columbia Univ.
" 3 Spain in Ameri ca, by Edward Gay- lord Bourne, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Yale Univ.
" 4 England in America, by Lyon Gar- diner Tyler, LL.D., President William and Mary College.
M 5 Colonial Self - Government, by Charles McLean Andrews, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Johns Hopkins Univ.
Group II.
Transformation into a Nation
Vol. 6 Provincial America, by Evarts Boutell Greene, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Dean of College, Univ. of 111. " 7 France in America, by Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., Sec. Wis- consin State Hist. Soc.
Vol. 8 Preliminaries of the Revolution, by George Elliott Howard, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Nebraska.
" 9 The American Revolution, by Claude Halstead VanTyne,Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Michigan.
" 10 The Confederation and the Consti- tution, by Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin, A.M., Head Prof. Hist. Univ. of Chicago.
Group III.
Development of the Nation
Vol. ii The Federalist System, by John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Smith College.
4< 12 The Jeffersonian System, by Ed- ward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
4' 13 Rise of American Nationality, by Kendric Charles Babcock, Ph.D., Pres. Univ. of Arizona.
" 14 Rise of the New West, by Freder- ick Jackson Turner, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Univ. of Wisconsin.
" 15 Jacksonian Democracy, by Will- iam MacDonald, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Brown Univ.
Group IV.
Trial of Nationality
Vol. 16 Slavery and Abolition, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Hist, Harvard Univ.
Vol. 17 Westward Extension, by George Pierce Garrison, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Texas.
" 18 Parties and Slavery, by Theodore Clarke Smith, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Williams College.
" 19 Causes of the Civil War ,by Admiral French Ensor Chadwick, U.S.N. , recent Pres. of Naval War Col.
" 20 The Appeal to Arms, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., recent Librarian Minneapolis Pub. Lib.
" 21 Outcome of the Civil War, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., re- cent Lib. Minneapolis Pub. Lib.
Group V. National Expansion Vol. 22 Reconstruction, Political and Eco- nomic, by William Archibald Dun- ning, Ph.D. , Prof. Hist, and Politi- cal Philosophy Columbia Univ. " 23 National Development, by Edwin Erie Sparks, Ph.D., Prof. Ameri- can Hist. Univ. of Chicago. " 24 National Problems, by Davis R. Dewey, Ph.D., Professor of Eco- nomics, Mass. Institute of Tech- nology.
" 25 America as a World Power, by John H. Latane, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Washington and Lee Univ.
" 26 National Ideals Historically Traced, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
" 27 Index to the Series, by David Maydole Matteson, A.M.
r
COMMITTEES APPOINTED TO ADVISE AND CONSULT WITH THE EDITOR
The Massachusetts Historical Society
Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., President Samuel A. Green, M.D., Vice-President James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., 2d Vice-President Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. History Harvard Univ.
Worthington C. Ford, Chief of Division of MSS. Library of Congress
The Wisconsin Historical Society
Reuben G. Thwaites, LL.D., Secretary and Super- intendent
Frederick J. Turner, Ph.D., Prof, of American His- tory Wisconsin University- James D. Butler, LL.D., formerly Prof. Wisconsin
University William W. Wight, President Henry E. Legler, Curator
The Virginia Historical Society
William Gordon McCabe, Litt.D., President
Lyon G. Tyler, LL.D., Pres. of William and Mary
College Judge David C. Richardson J. A. C. Chandler, Professor Richmond College Edward Wilson James
The Texas Historical Society
Judge John Henninger Reagan, President George P. Garrison, Ph.D., Prof, of History Uni- versity of Texas Judge C. W. Raines Judge Zachary T. Fullmore
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
From a Contemporary Photograph
THE AMERICAN NATION : A HISTORY
VOLUME 18
PARTIES AND SLAVERY
1850-1859
BY
THEODORE CLARKE SMITH, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN WILLIAMS COLLEGE
WITH MAPS
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.
e-p
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Editor's Introduction xi
Author's Preface xv
i. The Situation and the Problem (1850-1860) 3
11. The Compromise a Finality (1850-1851) . . 14
in. Politics without an Issue (1851-1853) . . 28
iv. The Old Leaders and the New (1850-1860) 40
v. The Era of Railroad Building (1850-1857) 59
vi. Diplomacy and Tropical Expansion (1850-
1855) 75
vii. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1853-1854) . . 94
viii. Party Chaos in the North (1854) .... 109
ix. Popular Sovereignty in Kansas (1854-1856) 121
x. The Failure of the Know-Nothing Party
(1854-1856) 136
xi. The Kansas Question before Congress
(1856) 149
xii. The Presidential Election (1856) .... 161
xiii. The Panic of 1857 (1856-1858) 174
xiv. The Supreme Court and the Slavery Ques-
tion (1850-1860) 190
xv. The Final Stage of the Kansas Struggle
(1857-1858) 209
xvi. The Triumph of Douglas (1858) .... 223
x CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
xvii. The Irrepressible Conflict (1858-1859) . 236
xviii. Foreign Affairs During the Kansas Con-
test (1855-1860) 249
xix. Social Ferment in the North (1850-1860) 263
xx. Sectionalism in the South (1850-1860) . . 286
xxi. Critical Essay on Authorities 305
Index 325
MAPS
The United States (September, 1850) (in
colors) facing 6
Railroad Lines in Actual Operation October, i860 (Based on Time-tables), (in colors) " 62
Test Vote on Kansas-Nebraska Bill in
the House of Representatives (1854) " 106
Civil War in Kansas (1854-1856) .... " 126
Party Situations Shown by Elections of
1855 " 132
Presidential Election of 1856 (in colors) " 158
Central America and Isthmian Routes
(1846-1860) " 246
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
lHE period from 1851 to 1859 is one of transi-
1 tion, in which the political organizations which had been dominant during the previous thirty years were broken up, and gave place to new crystalliza- tions of voters ; and in which also the former political ideas and issues were absorbed in the paramount rivalry of slavery and anti-slavery. To bring out the contrast between the old parties and their aims and the new and imperious issues is the object of Professor Smith's volume.
It was a period of remarkable characters as well as of stirring events; Clay and Webster are just descending on the horizon ; Seward, Chase, Douglas, Jefferson Davis, Sumner, Wade, come to the front as the protagonists in Congress and outside. The abolition movement, described in Slavery and Aboli- tion (vol. XVI. of the series), gives place to a broader and ever-widening anti-slavery movement, stirred by the fugitive - slave cases and by Uncle Tom's Cabin, but kept persistent by the attempts at the extension of slavery into the territories. The south- ern attitude towards slavery changes from the defen- sive to the aggressive assertion that slavery was
xii
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
meritorious. The conditions described by Garrison in Westward Extension (vol. XVII. of this series), are also changed : the annexation of Texas and fut- ure of New Mexico are no longer disputed ; and the controversy shifts to Kansas, and thus involves the long-standing Compromise of 1820.
The book begins after the passage of the Com- promise of 1850, which is described in the previous volume, and chapters i. to iii. are given to the finality period and to the attempt to keep slavery out of politics. In chapter iv., Professor Smith traces the appearance of the new generation of public men, who are to remain in power until after the Civil War. Then come two chapters, v. and vi., the first on the internal development of the country by railroad building, the other on the renewed at- tempts at external expansion by the annexation of Cuba. Chapters vii. to xii. describe the Kansas- Nebraska episode, its effect in breaking up the old parties, the attempt to make a new issue through the Native American movement, and the final re- suit in establishing a national anti-slavery party, which comes near electing its candidate in 1856. Chapter xiii. is on the panic of 1857 and its economic results. Then follows, in chapters xiv. and xv., an account of the Dred Scott decision and of the re- newal of the Kansas struggle in the debate over the Lecompton bill, the two chapters illustrating the last attempts to adjust the slavery controversy by the federal judiciary or Congress Chapters xvi.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
and xvii. describe the breach between the northern and southern democrats. Then, after one chapter (xviii.) on Buchanan's diplomacy, including schemes of annexation of future slave-holding territory, the text closes with two chapters on the state of mind in the north and in the south, especially with refer- ence to the Union.
The special importance of the volume in the American Nation series is that it shows the efforts to prevent the crisis which finally resulted in Civil War, by coming to an understanding as to the future of slavery; and that it reveals the impossi- bility of reconciling the rival habits of thought on that dividing question.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
IN the present volume I have endeavored to show how, in the years between 1850 and i860, the sectional divergence between free and slave states came to permeate law and politics, literature and social intercourse. This result was brought about in spite of the reluctance of the majority of the northern and southern people to admit any such antagonism, and over the persistent opposition of public leaders who exhausted every device to keep political feeling amicable and unsectional. If I have emphasized any one feature it is the course of party development, for it was in the field of party man- agement and in party struggles that the battles of sectionalism were fought at this time, largely deter- mining the course of executive action and of legisla- tion. The final party catastrophe which was the immediate cause of secession is left for a later volume in this series, but the year with which this volume closes, 1859, marks the virtual break-down of the effort at non-sectional politics. In the prep- aration of this work I have based my conclusion upon independent study of the documentary sources and other contemporary material, but in special
xvi
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
fields I have not hesitated to rely upon the labors of other investigators, and throughout I have con- sulted the larger historical works which cover this period. I wish to record my special indebtedness to the History of the United States by James Ford Rhodes, upon whose scholarly thoroughness I have continually relied for assistance and guidance.
Theodore Clarke Smith.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY
PARTIES AND SLAVERY
CHAPTER I
THE SITUATION AND THE PROBLEM (1850-1860)
THE year 1850 marks the end of the first stage of the slavery controversy in the United States. In 1843 a movement began for expansion towards the southwest which brought about the annexation of- Texas in 1845, the war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848, and the purchase of the great domain of New Mexico and California. In the course of these events it was discovered that the majority of the people in the states where slavery did not exist were unwilling to see it introduced into any of the newly acquired territory. They demanded, ac- cordingly, from Congress, the passage of laws ex- pressly prohibiting involuntary servitude in the new lands, asserting this to be the traditional policy of the country, as illustrated in the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise. This sentiment of the free states regarding slavery was
4
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1789
to a large degree the result of an agitation for its abolition which had been active for a score of years without any positive results, until the north- ern feeling against slavery extension revealed that numbers of people who strongly disavowed any sympathy with abolitionists, properly so - called, had, nevertheless, been brought to dislike slavery as an indirect consequence of the abolitionists' in- cessant denunciation of the institution.1
On the other hand, it became evident that the people of the southern states regarded the existence of slavery in the new territories as vital to their interests. They maintained that, from the start, it had been the policy of the country to leave south- ern territory open to slavery, the proof being the absence of any restrictions upon the territories south of the Ohio at the time of the Northwest Ordinance, upon Florida or upon the Louisiana cession south of the Missouri Compromise line. In opposition to the proposal to exclude slavery from all the new regions, they demanded either the admission of slaves everywhere, or at least the division of New Mexico and California by a continuation of the Missouri Compromise line, prohibiting slavery to the north of it (as in the Louisiana territory) but per- mitting it to the southward.2 They considered the
1 Cf . Garrison, Westward Extension (Am. Nation, XVII.), chap, xviii.
2 Cf . Turner, New West, chap. x. ; Hart, Slavery and Abolition, chap. xxi. (Am. Nation, XIV., XVI.)
i85o] SITUATION AND PROBLEM
5
northern attitude an outgrowth of ignorance, big- otry, and unfairness, due to the abolitionist propa- ganda, and, regarding themselves as the aggrieved party — since the expansion movement was from the start a southern one — freely threatened to dissolve the Union in case their equality in the territories was not conceded.
As soon as the consideration of territorial organ- ization began in Congress, it was found that the House, in which the superiority of the north in population gave an antislavery majority, was bal- anced by the Senate, in which the number of mem- bers from free and slave states was equal. The "Wilmot Proviso," as the clause excluding slavery from the territories was called from its original mover, repeatedly passed the House, from 1846 to 1849, only to fail in the Senate; on the other hand, the extension of the Missouri Compromise line, which the Senate stood ready to adopt, was never favored by the House. Congress could not agree upon any form of organization for the territories, owing to this sectional issue, and popular excite- ment increased in intensity as year after year elapsed and no decision was reached.1
During this controversy, however, there existed a powerful influence which prevented the sectional antagonism from showing itself in undisguised form. Two political parties, the Democratic and Whig, stood in the years from 1840 to 1850 as parts of the
1 Garrison, Westward Extension {Am. Nation, XVII.) , chap. xvi.
6
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1844
accepted institutions of the country, singularly deep- rooted, thoroughly organized in every part of the Union, and not dependent upon casual issues for their existence. Led by keen politicians, their chief function was to carry elections and fill offices. Around their nominations, platforms, and campaign methods there had grown up a body of tradition hardening into immovable custom; and the sense of party loyalty among the voters had developed into an unquestioning faith and acceptance of the duty of supporting the "regular ticket" and the "usages of the party."
Principles which were supposed to divide Demo- crat from Whig were not always easy to discover, since the real basis of the organizations was social and partisan and not related to legislation; but, in general, the Democratic party professed an adhe- rence to states' rights and a tendency to restrict the powers of the central government ; while the Whigs inherited to some degree the more liberal govern- mental views of the Federalists, whose semi-aristo- cratic attitude they also shared. On all issues of the day it was practicable and often necessary for the parties to avoid taking definite action, since it was seldom that their membership was sufficiently united upon any federal policy to make it safe to enforce party discipline in a merely legislative question. The main desideratum was always party unity in elections ; and while the widest divergence in voting in Congress was compatible with party
1850] SITUATION AND PROBLEM
7
membership, no deviation at election time was tolerated, except in rare cases.
Towards the new slavery issue, the attitude of the two parties was strictly limited by the opinions of the leaders as to how far it was safe for campaign purposes to take ground for or against any measure. In 1844 the Democratic party declared for the an- nexation of Texas, but the Whig platform carefully avoided the subject, for fear of cooling the zeal of proslavery southerners or of antislavery northern members. As soon as the sectional divergence be- came apparent in Congress, the local party organiza- tions fell in with the sentiment of their sections, demanding exclusion or admission of slavery as the case required; but this apparent sectional division disappeared in the presidential campaign of 1848, when each party, by the simple expedient of refus- ing to take any attitude whatever on the problem of slavery in the new territories, was able to face both ways and retain its constituency.1 Through- out the period, however, there was visible a tendency on the part of the party leaders, both in the federal executive and in Congress, to favor conciliating the south as far as was feasible without danger of alien- ating the north, since the possibility of southern disunion was always alarming. This attitude, and the absence of any definite party principles on the issue of the extension of slavery, led the more radical
1 Cf. Garrison, Westward Extension (Am. Nation, XVII.), chap. xvii.
VOL. XVIII — 2
8
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1845
antislavery politicians to attempt the formation of a new northern party at Buffalo, in 1848, but the Free Soil organization succeeded only in drawing enough votes in the state of New York from Cass, the Democratic candidate, to secure the election of his rival, General Taylor. The election decided nothing and the situation remained critical.
In the session of Congress beginning December, 1849, and lasting to October, 1850, the moderate leaders of both parties— Clay, Webster, Cass, Doug- las, and others — united to advocate, and, after a bit- ter struggle, to carry through, a series of acts intend- ed to establish a permanent adjustment between the sections. This arrangement included three minor propositions as make-weights: the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, to satisfy antislavery sentiment; a more stringent fugitive- slave law, to satisfy the demands of slave-owners; and the payment of a sum of ten millions in return for the relinquishment by Texas of territorial claims over part of New Mexico. The most important acts were three: one admitted California, where the dis- covery of gold had already drawn a considerable population, as a free state covering the entire Pacific coast - line between Oregon and Mexico ; the other two organized Utah and New Mexico as territories without prohibiting slavery, under the so-called "principle of Congressional non-interference." The final determination as to slavery was left to the inhabitants at the time when they should draught a
1850] SITUATION AND PROBLEM
9
constitution and apply for admission as a state. During the long congressional struggle over this compromise, the south resounded with threats of secession, and a convention of delegates of the slave states met at Nashville to take preliminary steps for uniting the section in case its rights were not recog- nized. The state of Texas threatened to assert its claims in the region of New Mexico by force, and President Taylor was preparing to maintain the au- thority of the United States, at the risk of civil war, when a sudden illness caused his death and the acces- sion of Fillmore, a less pugnacious man, to the presi- dency. All felt that the country had been saved from a dangerous crisis by the leadership of Clay and his colleagues.1
With the passage of these compromise laws, every part of the public territories of the United States received some sort of regulation as regarded slavery. Except the Indian reservation, all of the old Louis- iana purchase which still remained in the territorial state was closed to slavery by the Missouri Com- promise, which in 1845 had been extended also over a small part of Texas. The Oregon territory was closed by an organizing act of 1848. All that was left open to slave-holders was the large but arid domain of Utah and New Mexico, clearly unsuited to any industry hitherto carried on in the United States by slave labor. It seemed as though there was no further opportunity for sectional contro-
1 Garrison, Westward Extension (Am. Nation, XVII.) , chap. xix.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
versy over the slavery issue, provided that the exist- ing conditions remained unaltered.
From 1850 to i860 the problem for the political leaders of the United States was that of guiding public affairs in such a way that neither section of the country should again feel that its interests were endangered. It was obvious that the chief danger to this programme was to be feared from the southern extremists ; for, whatever might be the legal or po- litical rights of the south, the slave-holding com- munities, as Calhoun had been pointing out for a generation, were on the defensive and were in the minority. There was no northern institution which was really endangered by the south, no northern in- terest menaced by southern reprobation. Slavery, on the contrary, was the object of attack by north- ern public opinion ; and if the north should, as a unit, decide to exclude slavery from the federal domain or to use the powers of the federal government to discourage the institution, its superiority of num- bers would enable it to carry out the purpose. With this situation clearly before them, southern extre- mists formed a far larger proportion of the local pop- ulation than did abolitionists in the north, and were held in far higher respect at home and greater awe in the councils at Washington. They proclaimed a visible danger. Accordingly, all the conservative leaders of both sections regarded the south as the political element of the country to be placated, and exercised their influence in executive, legislative, and
i860] SITUATION AND PROBLEM
ii
judicial office upon that assumption. With the older generation, as sectional dangers thickened, this feeling grew to be the sole effective political aim, until the last years of such a man as Webster were devoted to the one object of inducing his section to cease criticising the south, for fear of endangering the safety of the federal Union ; and the entire energy of such a president as Pierce or Buchan- an was expended in trying to satisfy southern desires.
The powerful assistance of the existing parties in carrying out this plan was clearly recognized, and from 1850 to i860 the possibility of keeping the south contented was seen to rest largely upon the preservation of these organizations in their nation- al, non-sectional condition. So long as Whig and Democratic parties drew support from all parts of the country it was not possible for a sectional presi- dent or a sectional Congress to be elected. But it was seen that the free states, if a sectional northern party were formed, could through their superior population elect an antislavery president and Con- gress, a result which would inevitably precipitate disunion; so that the one great political danger dreaded by conservatives and by the older party leaders was the disturbance of the existing party loyalty and the rise of either a northern or a south- ern sectional party. The practical problem in 1850 was, then, to preserve the old Whig and Democratic traditions, and to resume, if possible, the compara-
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
tively innocuous party contests of the years before 1848.
The only source of possible friction lay in the chance that the southern people might again at- tempt tropical annexations, an event which, in 1850, seemed by no means unlikely. Should the acquisi- tion of Cuba, the goal of southern desires, be seri- ously sought, the question of the addition of slave territory would lift its head, and might again arouse the north to sectional action; hence any attempt on the part of the United States to enter this field must be made with caution. Other points where the federal government must continue to touch slavery might prove annoying, but could hardly be dangerous. The new fugitive-slave law involved no striking novelty, and the diplomacy of slavery, re- lating to the slave-trade and shipwrecked or mu- tinous negroes, was not sufficiently important to arouse sectional antagonism.
Now that the slavery question had received some sort of adjustment, it remained to be seen whether the country would acquiesce and let the old parties resume their customary electoral contests, and con- cern themselves with those problems of internal gov- ernment with which their earlier days had been taken up — such as the currency, the tariff, the pub- lic lands. The administration in power was that of Millard Fillmore, a conservative Whig, thoroughly committed to the compromise measures which, as president, he had signed. His cabinet, newly formed
1850] SITUATION AND PROBLEM
in the summer of 1850, was equally determined to adhere to sectional harmony, from Webster, the secretary of state, and Corwin, secretary of the treasury, to Crittenden, of Kentucky, the attorney- general. The era of compromise opened with its friends in power in all parts of the federal govern- ment.
CHAPTER II
THE COMPROMISE A FINALITY (1850-1851)
lHE three years following the passage of Henry
1 Clay's compromise measures were marked by the apparent triumph, in public opinion and in fed- eral and state politics, of the belief that the slavery issue between north and south could be permanently set aside. This triumph was foreshadowed, during the spring and summer of 1850, by a rising demand for sectional peace, which aided Clay and his follow- ers to carry out their programme. By the time that Congress adjourned, in October, 1850, the victory seemed almost won. All that remained was to se- cure definite ratification by press, pulpit, party reso- lutions, and the election of " compromise' ' candi- dates. To secure this the antislavery sentiment of the north, embodied in the Free Soil movement, and the still more threatening secessionist agitation in the south, must be stamped out, and the old-time political system re-established.
In the northern states the problem of the defenders of the new compromise was to induce men of anti- slavery tendencies to forego all further agitation
1 8 so]
FINALITY
i5
concerning slavery, on the ground that the decision just reached was equitable; and that, unless the north accepted it as final, the southern states might be driven to secede. To prove that the failure to exclude slavery from Utah and New Mexico was unimportant was comparatively easy ; but to render the fugitive-slave law acceptable seemed at first a difficult task. For the speedy capture of fugitives special federal commissioners were provided, and the United States marshals and their deputies were enjoined to aid; the procedure was simply proving the identity of the asserted slave to the satisfaction of the commissioner by ex parte evidence, excluding any testimony of the negro whose freedom was at stake; the decision of the commissioner was final; and all good citizens were liable to be called upon to aid in enforcing the law under heavy penalties for refusal or for aiding the fugitive. The commis- sioner's fee was to be ten dollars when he returned a fugitive to slavery, five when he discharged him. No part of the law indicated any precautions against the enslavement of actually free negroes ; it assumed that members of that race were normally slaves and that their liberty was a concern of the laws of the slave states alone, subject only to the check of the commissioner *s judgment . 1
Upon this act was poured out the anger of all unreconciled antislavery people in the autumn of 1850. Public meetings by the hundred were held in
1 U. S. Statutes at Large, IX., 462.
i6
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
all parts of the free states to denounce it as uncon- stitutional, immoral, unchristian, and abhorrent to every instinct of justice and religion, and to demand its repeal. Many announced their purpose to dis- obey the act, often in exasperating language. " We hereby declare our purpose," said an Indiana meet- ing, "to make it powerless in the country by our absolute refusal to obey its inhuman and diabolical provisions." 1 "The enactment of it is utterly null and void," declared a Syracuse mass-meeting, "and should so ... be treated by the people." 2
Against this agitation such defenders of the com- promise as Cass, Dickinson, and Douglas, of the Dem- ocrats, and Choate and Webster among the Whigs, began a powerful counter-movement for peace and submission to law. On their side rallied respectable society, the clergy, business men, and all who were tired of wrangles ; and they all proclaimed earnestly and repeatedly that the time had come for an abso- lute cessation of antislavery controversy. "Union meetings " in New York, Boston, and other cities ap- proved the compromise measures and demanded the execution of the fugitive-slave law in order to save the country. The great meeting in New York on October 30 voted "the thanks of this communi- ty and of the whole nation ... to those eminent statesmen and patriots, Clay, Cass, Webster, Fill- more, Dickinson, Foote, Houston and others," re-
1 Indiana True Democrat, November 8, 1850.
3 National Anti-Slavery Standard, October 17, 1850.
i85o]
FINALITY
*7
solved to sustain the fugitive-slave act by all lawful means, declared all further slavery agitation to be dangerous to the Union, and pledged those present not to vote for any one who favored it.1
No one was more active nor more influential than Webster, who devoted all the powers of his eloquence in letters and speeches to reiterating the substance of his Seventh-of-March speech, denouncing the aboli- tionists, censuring all who did not admit the binding force of the fugitive-slave law, and declaring, again and again, " No man is at liberty to set up, or affect to set up his own conscience above the law." 2 In Chicago the city council, supported by popular opin- ion, passed a resolution requesting all citizens to abstain from executing the obnoxious act ; but Doug- las achieved the feat of bringing a hostile public meeting by sheer force of oratory to adopt resolu- tions for submission to the law.3
The effect of this general campaign for finality was shown in the elections of 1850 ; the crisis seemed over, and voters were returning to the party situation which existed before 1848. The Whig party, whose platforms were usually rather more antislavery than those of the Democrats, lost ground in congressional and state elections, the Barnburners of 1848 now re- turned to their old ranks, and the Free Soil party crumbled into insignificance. In two states, how-
1 N. Y. Tribune, October 31, 1850.
2 Webster, Works (ed. of 1851), 578.
3 Sheahan, Douglas, 159.
j
18 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
ever, the Free-Soilers were able to score one last triumph owing to the accident that their representa- tives in the legislatures held the balance between the two old parties and thus were able to dictate the election of antislavery senators. In Ohio they as- sisted in sending to the Senate Benjamin F. Wade, a Whig of strong antislavery principles and pugna- cious northern sectionalism. In Massachusetts, by a formal coalition, the two minority groups, Free- Soilers and Democrats, managed to control the legis- lature and share the offices by electing George S. Boutwell, a Democrat, as governor, and Charles Sumner, a Free-Soiler, as senator. This coalition, which was denounced by the dispossessed "Cotton Whigs " as utterly immoral and unprincipled, seemed by its success to obscure the real decline of anti- slavery feeling; but outside of Massachusetts the failure of the Free Soil party was manifest.1
Meanwhile a very different contest was going on at the south. There the problem for such leaders as Clay, Crittenden, Stephens, Cobb, and Foote, who accepted the compromise, was far more difficult than that of their northern colleagues. It was necessary to persuade the southern people that their section had not lost by the admission of California, and that the north was going to carry out the fugitive-slave law, so that no cause existed any longer for secession. In the northernmost slave states the influence of
1 Wilson, Slave Power, II., chap, xxvii. ; Pierce, Sumner, III., 221-244; Curtis, Curtis, I., 138-185.
FINALITY
19
Clay was strong, but in the " cotton states " an active minority of leaders repudiated the compromise and refused to acquiesce without an effort to bring about secession. The result was a campaign carried on with all the personal absorption, high feeling, and vigorous oratory which characterized the contests of southern leaders with one another. Among the secessionists Governor Quitman, of Mississippi, was prominent, urging that the time for action had come. " There is nothing," he said in his message to the legislature in November, "to encourage the hope that there will be any respite from aggression . N ever has hostility to slavery been more distinctly marked or more openly asserted. . . . The North has just triumphed in every claim she has asserted. I do not hesitate to express my decided opinion that the only effectual remedy to evils which must continue to grow from year to year is the prompt and peacea- ble secession of the aggrieved states."1 Governor Means, of South Carolina, and Governor Bell, of Tex- as, were equally ready to bring about a crisis over the Texas boundary question ; and all that held Means back from prompt action was his conviction that some other state than South Carolina ought to take the lead.2 In Alabama, William L. Yancey, the elo- quent and radical "fire-eater," organized Southern Rights associations whose purpose was frankly to
1 Claiborne, Quitman, II., 47, 50.
2 Means to Quitman, May 12, 1851, Claiborne. Quitman, II., 133.
20
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
agitate for disunion, and these were imitated in other states until a new secessionist organization had come into existence. The Alabama Southern Rights con- vention, on February 1, 1851, denounced a "tame submission to hostile and unconstitutional legisla- tion," resolved to form a new southern party, called for the election of delegates to a southern congress, and announced that, if any other state or states seceded, Alabama should follow.1
On the other side, however, stood the bulk of the conservative Whigs and Democrats; and, in addition, many leaders who had been aggressive for slavery extension during the struggle just ended, but were now willing to accept the compromise as a tempo- rary settlement. Such men as Foote, of Mississippi, Howell Cobb, Alexander Stephens, and the fiery Toombs, of Georgia, were no less champions of south- ern rights than Quitman and Yancey, and they now threw their personal weight into the scales against secession. The first victory of the southern Union- ists was won in the adjourned session of the Nash- ville Convention of June, 1850, which came together again in November, in spite of the fact that Judge Sharkey, the Unionist president, refused to issue the call. So reduced was the membership that the convention did not feel strong enough to do more than denounce the compromise measures, reassert the right of secession, and recommend the south to cut off commercial relations with the north until 1 Hodgson, Cradle of Confederacy, 290; Du Bose, Yancey, 252.
FINALITY
21
its rights were recognized.1 Then the governors of Arkansas, Virginia, Alabama, and Florida, while con- demning the compromise, admitted that there was no necessity for secession until some further action on the part of the north should aggravate the situation ; 2 and the Texas legislature, instead of insisting on its boundary claim, accepted the federal offer of ten millions as a money compensation, thus removing a possible source of conflict.
Finally came the election of a state convention in Georgia to decide the question of union or secession. The strong trio of Cobb, Stephens, and Toombs can- vassed the state, and after a campaign of considerable excitement the Unionists won a complete victory in November. When the convention met the next month, it drew up what became widely known as the "Georgia platform," embodying the ultimatum of the southern proslavery Unionists.3 It declared in substance that the state, while not entirely approv- ing of the compromise, would regard it as a perma- nent adjustment, but in future "would resist even to the disruption of the union' ' any act prohibiting slavery in the territories, or a refusal to admit a slave state, or any modification of the fugitive-slave law.4 By the opening of the year it looked as though
1 Hodgson, Cradle of Confederacy, 279; N. Y. Tribune, Novem- ber 27, 1850; Cluskey, Political Text Book, 597.
2 Harper's Magazine, January, 1851, p. 267.
3 Stovall, Toombs, S3.
4 Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, 165; Hodgson, Cradle of Confederacy, 279-314.
22
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
the advocates of peace and union were likely to win in their contest. The next twelve months were to settle the matter definitely.
When Congress met in December, 1850, it was evident that a calm had come over that once turbu- lent and angry body. All the forces of compromise united to declare the finality of the slavery adjust- ment, Fillmore intimating in his annual message that he would use his veto to protect it, and Clay uniting with forty other members in a manifesto pledging themselves to support no man for office who was not opposed to all further agitation.1 At- tempts by Hale and Giddings, two inveterate anti- slavery champions, to revive discussion of slavery questions provoked no response ; and when southern leaders such as Mason, of Virginia, pointed to the agitation against the fugitive-slave law as a proof that the compromise was not working well, they were met by eager assertions on the part of Clay and others that agitation was dying out. " I believe the law will be executed," asserted Cass, "wherever the flag of the Union waves. ... A wonderful change in public sentiment has taken place. It is going on and will go onward until the great object is accom- plished. We see it at the North, we see it at the West, and all around us, and we cannot mistake it." 2
It was a source of grief to Clay and his sympa- thizers that a succession of annoying episodes proved
1 Cong. Globe, 31 Cong., 2 Sess., 304. 2 Ibid., 296.
FINALITY
23
that the fugitive law was bitterly unpopular at the north. Its passage, accompanied by rumors that the government intended to apply it vigorously, caused a panic among the colored population of northern cities. Fugitives who had been living in imagined security fled to Canada, and their course seemed justified by the first cases under the law, which appeared to show a greater anxiety to return alleged slaves than to secure certainty as to their identity.1 Finally, in February, 1851, a fugitive named Shadrach was violently rescued in Boston by a crowd of negroes after examination before a commissioner.2 This act, not significant in itself, distressed the advocates of sectional harmony as seeming to contradict their confident assertions of the purpose of the north to execute the act; and Fillmore at once issued a proclamation announcing his purpose to employ the whole force of the gov- ernment to support the law. In a special message he also asked Congress for additional powers,3 with the result of a lively controversy between extreme southerners who were anxious to prove the law a failure and conservatives like Clay, who insisted that the behavior of Massachusetts was exceptional ; but no action was taken, and the session ended without further sectional recrimination.
1 Wilson, Slave Power, II., chap. xxvi.
2 Garrison, Garrison, III., 325; Weiss, Parker, II., 103-106; Fro thin gham, Parker, 412.
3 Richardson, Messages and Papers, V., 101, 109.
.yoL. xviii. — 3
|; \
\
24
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1851
The campaign for finality was now fought to a suc- cessful conclusion. In the north, Webster and others continued with unabated activity preaching the sanc- tity of the Union, the finality of the compromise, the futility and folly of agitation, and the supremacy of the law.1 It was true that a number of other cases of forcible resistance to the fugitive-slave law occurred in 185 1, notably the rescue of " Jerry" in Syracuse by a crowd of abolitionists and others,3 and the killing of a master, Gorsuch, by a band of negroes, among whom was the fugitive whom he was attempting to recapture. In their anxiety to pun- ish this crime with adequate severity, the federal authorities made an effort to convict a Quaker, Castner Hanway, of treason, on the ground that, as a by-stander, he had refused to assist Gorsuch ; but this attempt to bring resistance to the fugitive-slave act under the head of " levying war against the United States " proved futile.3 As the year wore on, it became evident that the compromise had done its work.
In spite of the efforts of radicals, the excitement over the fugitive-slave act diminished, and the peo- ple of the free states settled down to an attitude of sincere but reluctant acquiescence. " It is a dis-
1 Curtis, Webster, II., 499-523; Webster, Works (ed. of 1851), VI., 582 et seq.
2 Frothingham, Smith, 117; May, Antislavery Conflict, 373.
3 Wilson, Slave Power, II., 328; Still, Underground Railroad, 349; History of Trial of Castner Hanway, 1852; McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, § 60.
FINALITY
25
graceful and dirty business," said the Ohio State Journal, "but it is sanctioned by the constitution," and "whatever things it pledges them [the northern people] to do, these things they intend to do, whether agreeable or disagreeable." 1 A sign of this acquies- cence was the successful return from Boston of a fugitive named Sims, in April, 1851, in spite of the opposition of sympathetic abolitionists.2
In the elections of 1851, both Whig and Demo- cratic platforms dropped the last shreds of anti- slavery language. The decline in the Whig vote continued, and the Free Soil party now numbered little more than the old Liberty party. So hopeless appeared its outlook that one of its leaders in the Senate, Chase, of Ohio, formally joined the Demo- crats in the state election.3 Another result of the compromise struggle was seen this year in Missouri. Senator Benton, having refused to obey proslavery instructions of the state legislature, and having voted for the admission of California, his defiant attitude led to a split in the Democratic party in the sena- torial election. Though Benton retained a majority of Democrats, his opponents joined the Whigs to elect H. S. Geyer, an adherent of the compromise. Benton refused to accept this defeat as final, and fought hard for six years, sitting for one term in the
[ 1 Ohio State Journal, April 21, 1851.
2 Adams, Dana, I., 185; Frothingham, Parker, 415; Details of the rescues of fugitives, in Hart, Am. Hist told by Contempo- raries, IV., §§ 29-33.
3 Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 239-241.
26
PARTIES AND SLAVERY
House of Representatives, and dividing his party in election after election, without success.1 After his death, in 1858, the Bentonian Democrats in many cases became Republicans.
The struggle between the Unionists and Secession- ists was now fought to a conclusion in the cotton states, where the efforts of the Southern Rights associations caused a temporary reconstruction of party lines. Most of the Whigs united with the con- servative Democrats in a Union party, while the Southern Rights party, comprising the rest of the Democrats, and led by the unreconciled Quitman and Yancey, took the field in a last effort at secession. The result was a sweeping and conclusive victory for the Unionists in every state where the issue was joined, a victory due in large part to the personal power of the Unionist leaders in a region where per- sonality counted much. In Georgia, Cobb, the Union candidate for governor, won easily over the State Rights nominee ; 2 in Alabama both candidates approved the compromise ; in Mississippi the Union- ists won a complete victory in the election of dele- gates for a state convention. This seemed such a personal condemnation that Quitman, the Southern Rights candidate for governor, withdrew and Jeffer- son Davis took his place, finishing out the campaign with vigor against Foote, who barely succeeded in
1 Meigs, Benton, 414; Durrie and Davis, Missouri, chap, xv.- xvii.; Switzler, in Barns, Missouri, chap, xxiii.
2 Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, 166.
FINALITY
27
defeating him.1 Finally, in South Carolina, where the issue was made between those demanding imme- diate secession and those advocating co-operation with other states, the co-operationists won by a good majority in October.2 By the autumn of 1851, ac- cordingly, the last elements of irreconcilable opposi- tion to the finality of the compromise were beaten down in north and south. The only relics of the ex- treme wings were a few Free Soil senators and repre- sentatives— Hale, Chase, Sumner, Giddings — and a few Southern Rights exponents. The people of the country clearly accepted the compromise as a set- tlement, for the time being at all events, and the sla- very question seemed laid to rest as a national issue.
The reasons for this state of rest are the same as those for the passage of the compromise: the mass of the northern people were not enough concerned about slavery to risk driving the south into dis- union, and were willing to endure even the fugi- tive-slave law for the sake of regaining political and commercial peace. The southern people, deeply as they felt the loss to their section of a share of Cali- fornia, and little as they trusted the good-will of the north, were willing to let matters rest, provided nothing further should arise to disturb the equilib- rium. So peace reigned once more at Washington, and among the states.
1 Davis, Confederate Government, I., 18-22; R. Davis, Recollec- tions, 315-323 ; Garner, in Miss. Hist. Soc, Publications, IV., 91.
2 Hodgson, Cradle of Confederacy, 285-299.
CHAPTER III
POLITICS WITHOUT AN ISSUE (1851-1853)
THE triumph of the compromise of 1850 as a final settlement once assured, the political life of the country, freed from the annoyance of wrangles over slavery, turned back into the old channels ; and the years immediately following 185 1 were a second "era of good feeling." People could now devote themselves to their own affairs, glad to be rid forever of the wearisome phrases " extension of slavery," " Wilmot proviso," " states rights" and " secession." It was perfectly true, as Free-Soilers at the north and " fire-eaters " at the south pointed out, that the dif- ferences between the free and slave states remained unaltered, and that there was no guarantee against interruption by the first question which might come up requiring federal action towards slavery. But such prophets of evil were unpopular and were re- garded as disturbers of a hard -won peace. The whole country, in short, tried by an effort of will to sink the sectional differences into oblivion.
The two great parties were again organized for contest just as before 1848, and called for public sup-
POLITICS
29
port; but it now appeared that, with the slavery question out of the way, there remained no other important national issue. The old questions of na- tional bank and tariff were obsolete, for a new indus- trial life had come into being and new problems were confronting capitalists and farmers. Hence local affairs absorbed the interest of voters and legislat- ures. State banking laws were forced through, vetoed, or submitted to popular referendum; rail- ways were aided or regulated; new public schools and universities were established ; and the newspa- pers, once filled with angry editorials and sectional arguments upon slavery, now gave space to the paving and lighting of streets, the delimitation of legislative districts, taxation for charitable institu- tions, and like homely issues. Only steadfast abo- litionist and intense proslavery papers continued to refer to the subject which the country was trying hard to ignore.
In default of a national issue, public interest turned to various reforming movements.1 The tem- perance agitation had been going on for twenty years, in the form of a moral and religious propa- ganda against drunkenness, headed by vehement orators, of whom the eloquent and emotional John B. Gough was the foremost example. By 1850 pub- lic sentiment against the liquor traffic had grown so strong that attempts were made to prohibit the sale
1 For earlier stages, see Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Na- tion, XVI.), chap. i.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1848
altogether. The state of Maine led the way in acts of 1846 and 1848, culminating in the drastic statute of 1 85 1, known henceforth as "the Maine law." It absolutely prohibited the manufacture or sale of alcoholic liquors except under state authorization for medicinal use, and backed up its mandates by fines, imprisonment, and powers of search. The agi- tation for the Maine law quickly spread to other states, and soon resulted in bitter political struggles in legislatures and elections. Governors were obliged to veto or sign bills, parties were called upon to recog- nize the issue in their platforms, until it seemed as though, in the absence of any other pressing question, the whole country was destined to be absorbed in the prohibition contest. In many states the Free Dem- ocratic party adopted this policy and made notable gains in its vote, and in others impatient temperance reformers began to set up independent candidates.1 Observers detected in this sudden fervor the .signs of a new excitability in American political life, which, deprived of its former food by the cessation of the slavery struggle, sought for some substitute. Such an outlet was furnished by the visit of Kossuth and other Hungarian refugees to the United States in 1852. The people of the country were keenly in- terested in the upheavals of 1848 in Europe, sym- pathized strongly with the revolutionists, and were especially stirred by the brave struggle of Hun-
1 Whig Almanac and Tribune Almanac, 1 851-18 56; Cyclop, of Temperance and Prohibition, 275-360.
POLITICS
3i
gary against Austria and Russia. When Hungary was crushed in 1849 and Kossuth took refuge in Turkey, an agitation began which finally led Con- gress to offer an asylum to the exiles. Accordingly, in December, Kossuth arrived at New York as a national guest and began a tour of the country in search of pecuniary and other aid. Under any cir- cumstances the tragic fate of Hungary and the at- tractive personality and wonderful eloquence of Kos- suth would have commanded interest; but coming at this time of absolute political calm, his visit produced a volcanic eruption of excitement which equalled the earlier crazes over " Citizen Genet " and Lafayette. He was met at New York by roaring crowds, salutes of cannon, banquets, and welcoming deputations from every conceivable body of men from Socialists to Presbyterian ministers. At Phila- delphia, Baltimore, and other cities the same excite- ment was manifested. Local politicians, conscious of the pressing necessity of keeping with the popular current, made speeches of unmeasured eulogy and sympathy.1 Had the language of many fervent con- gressmen been taken literally, Kossuth would have been justified in expecting the United States to enter upon a course of active intervention in behalf of Hungary and other oppressed nations of Europe.2
1 Von Hoist, United States, IV., 64-96; Rhodes, United States, I., 231-243.
2 Cong. Globe, 32 Cong., 1 Sess., December 1, 8-12, 16, 27, January 2, 5, 8, 20 et seq.
32
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1851
Webster, however, as secretary of state, carefully refrained from committing the United States to any formal action,1 and although there was a public re- ception to the Hungarian patriot by each House of Congress, Kossuth, whose head was not turned by his situation, saw clearly that he could hope for noth- ing more than sympathy. Some of the more conser- vative members of Congress, alarmed by the inflam- matory eloquence of such men as Cass, Foote, Doug- las, and Walker, of Wisconsin, took occasion to preach restraint and caution, but it was really not necessary. The whole affair was only saved from being a farce by the vein of genuine republicanism and defiance of Europe which underlay all the extravagances of enthusiasm and applause. When Kossuth left the country, in the summer of 1852, the excitement was over ; and all the eloquent exile had to show for his visit was a small amount of money. The episode was at an end.
Meantime, national politics sank into a vacuity which reflected the prosperity of the times. The Congress of 1851-1852 sat for nine months, but ac- complished little beyond granting public lands and passing a river ancWiarbor bill. The large Demo- cratic majority ineach house found no party measure to consider, and the time of the members was devoted for weeks together to political manoeuvring with re- gard to the presidential election of 1852. The party situation was peculiar, for with no definite issue in
1 Curtis, Webster, II., 571.
POLITICS
33
existence success seemed to depend upon the strength of party loyalty, the choice of a popular candidate, •and the careful avoidance of any position which might seem to endanger the quiet between the sec- tions. From Free-Soilers and secessionists there was nothing to fear, and the prime necessity in the eyes of leaders was to establish their devotion and that of their respective parties to the compromise. Much time ' was devoted in party caucuses and in each House to the consideration of resolutions affirming " finality,' ' but beyond the passage of such a resolu- tion on April 5, by the House of Representatives, no definite results were attained, nor could either side claim any advantage over the other.1
Still, by the spring of 1852, it became clear that of the two parties the Democratic was in far better shape. Its discipline was restored with the return of the Barnburners, its northern and southern lead- ers were in accord, and its recent successes in con- gressional and state elections gave it courage. For the Whigs, on the other hand, the situation looked ominous. They had lost steadily for two years in congressional and state elections; the respectable Fillmore administration did nothing to win prestige ; and the chasm between southern and northern Whigs, however carefully ignored by the leaders, must be revealed the moment the question of a presidential candidate or platform was raised. Upon
1 Cong. Globe, 32 Cong., 1 Sess., 6-9; Von Hoist, United States, IV., 105-117, 976-983.
VOL. XVIII.— 3
34
PARTIES AND SLAVERY
what common ground could men like Toombs and Seward meet? Would the southern wing be satis- fied with anything short of an explicit adoption by the party of the southern position as laid down in the " Georgia Platform," and the nomination of a man thoroughly committed to the execution of the fugitive - slave law? Could the Seward Whigs ac- cept such a programme, or hold their constituents if they did so?
The party nominations and platforms in 1852 were of a purely partisan and wholly uninteresting char- acter. The Democratic convention, held June 1, at Baltimore, added to its earlier platforms a new resolution pledging the party to a faithful execution of the compromise measures, " the act for reclaiming fugitive slaves included," and promising to resist all attempts at renewing the agitation of the slavery question.1 Then for three days it struggled over the problem of a candidate, unable to secure a majority vote for Cass, Marcy, Buchanan, or Douglas, until on the forty-ninth ballot the convention suddenly found a solution of the difficulty in a carefully prepared ' 1 stampede" towards Franklin Pierce, of New Hamp- shire. Pierce was not a man of national prominence, but he had held a respectable place in public life, was personally attractive, kindly in manner and feelings, with no record to attack and no enemies to fear.2 Immeasurably inferior to either of the four men he
1 Stanwood, Hist, of the Presidency, 249.
2 Hawthorne, Pierce, 109 et seq.
POLITICS
35
supplanted, he was a safe selection under the exist- ing conditions. The candidate for vice-president was William R. King, senator from Alabama.
Two weeks later the Whig convention met at the same place and hastily adopted, without debate and over loud protests from many northern members, a platform which had been framed by the Georgia Whigs and was intended to satisfy all elements. The first two resolutions committed the party to the doctrine of states rights, and the eighth resolution declared the compromise acts, "the Fugitive Slave Law included,' ' to be a settlement of the slavery ques- tion, and pledged the party to maintain them until time should demonstrate the necessity of further legislation, and to discountenance all efforts to renew the slavery agitation.1 The concession to the north- ern Whigs lay in the careful avoidance of the term "final." In selecting a candidate the convention found its members divided between three aspirants, each with a devoted band of followers. General Winfield Scott was supported by northern Whigs, who hoped to repeat the success of Taylor in 1848, while on the other side the compromising or " final- ity" vote was divided between Webster, with the New England contingent behind him, and Fillmore, who received southern votes. The stubbornness of the followers of the last two candidates made them unable to combine against Scott,2 and protracted the
1 Stanwood, Hist, of the Presidency, 251.
2 Curtis, Webster, II. » 620-627.
36
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1852
contest for fifty -three ballots, but the gradual change of a few delegates finally gave Scott a majority.
The immediate impression of these nominations upon the country was significant. Pierce received hearty support from all elements of the Democratic party, southern as well as northern, Unionist as well as secessionist, "Barnburner" as well as "Hunker," while Scott repelled the southern Whigs. The south- ern Union party of 1851 was now entirely broken up, its Democratic contingent supporting Pierce; while its Whigs either yielded a reluctant support to Scott or openly bolted. July 3 a number of leading southern Whigs, headed by Stephens and Toombs, published a manifesto announcing their purpose to oppose Scott as not sufficiently in favor of the com- promises.1 Others in Georgia formed a Webster elec- toral ticket. In short, the campaign had hardly opened when it was seen that the Whig party, in spite of the adoption of a compromise platform, had driven away by its nomination those elements which had given it victory in 1848. 2 Hoping to revive their party, the Free-Soilers rallied in August at Pittsburg and nominated John P. Hale for president on a plat- form which reiterated the protest of 1848 against the existence of slavery in the territories, denied the finality of the compromise, denounced the fugitive- slave law as repugnant to the Constitution, to Chris-
1 Cluskey, Political Text Book, 682.
8 Hodgson, Cradle of Confederacy, 323-330.
POLITICS
37
tianity, and the sentiments of the civilized world, and demanded its repeal.1
Since there was no real issue except the personality of the candidates, the campaign of 1852 was trivial and unenthusiastic . Scott 's attempts to win over the German and Irish vote, during a thinly disguised stumping tour in the west, provoked ridicule, and the contest soon degenerated into petty abuse and personalities. Pierce was painted as a coward in the Mexican War and a drunkard in private life, and Scott was held up as a miracle of vanity and inepti- tude.2 The most vigorous efforts of the Whigs to stir up enthusiasm for "the hero of Lundy's Lane, Contreras and Churubusco" fell flat, and the result of the election was foreseen weeks before the vote took place. Pierce's victory was overwhelming. He carried every state except Massachusetts, Ver- mont, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and received 254 electoral votes to Scott's 42. In the south, the Whig vote shrank to small figures. In the north, the Free Democratic party, as the revived Free Soil organiza- tion now styled itself, polled only 155,825 votes, and had no direct influence upon the result.
The Whig leaders and newspapers seemed stupe- fied by the completeness of their defeat. It was true that the election decided nothing more than a change of office-holders: no new policy was presaged; no alteration of sectional balance was indicated; but
1 Stanwood, Hist, of the Presidency, 253.
2 Rhodes. United States, I., 269-277.
38
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1852
the failure of the party to retain its southern support was ominous, and, in spite of the large popular vote drawn by Scott in the north, the future seemed dark. For over a year all energy departed from Whig party activity, and in 1853 it suffered renewed severe de- feats in state elections.
Fillmore's last months in office went by in peace, the short session of Congress (185 2-1 853) contributing nothing of importance to public interest other than sundry debates upon foreign affairs, the only quarter where any new developments were looked upon as likely to occur. Pierce was inaugurated March 4, 1853, in the full sunshine of popularity, and delivered an optimistic address to the greatest concourse ever assembled in Washington on such an occasion. All elements, Whig as well as Democratic, were disposed to look favorably upon the handsome, affable presi- dent whose aims seemed so high and whose prospects appeared so secure. His cabinet was conciliatory in its make-up. Marcy, the secretary of state, had been a leader of the New York " Hunkers," but Mc- Clelland, of Michigan, had been an antislavery man; Guthrie, secretary of the treasury, and Dobbin, of the navy department, were conservative southern Democrats, but Davis, of Mississippi, the secretary of war, had been a Southern Rights leader in 1851; Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, the attorney-gen- eral, able, shrewd, and considered shifty, had only recently come out of the Whig party. All elements were represented.
POLITICS
39
So ended a period of political stagnation, interest- ing only as showing how the American public, by sheer effort of will, could force itself into old lines of political habit and ignore a vital question. The success of the effort in arresting sectional contro- versy was undeniable, but, as far as the Whigs were concerned, the refusal of the southern members to support the party nominee in 1852 showed that not even the utmost efforts of compromising and Union- saving leaders could efface sectional distrust. The appearance of any new issue might instantly destroy the artificial calm.
VOL. XVIII. — 4
CHAPTER IV
THE OLD LEADERS AND THE NEW (1850-1860)
IN the contest of nationalism against sectionalism, which was seen to be inevitable after 1844, the triumph of the Unionists in 1850 and the years fol- lowing was due largely to the fact that the weight of leadership and party tradition was with the com- promisers. To keep the slavery question suppressed and to prevent the sections from again coming into conflict in Congress, the same strong leadership must continue; but unfortunately for the finality of the compromise, the leaders who had won that victory soon passed off the stage and left no successors of equal influence. The result was the ultimate vic- tory of sectionalism in north and south, and the coming to the front of those radically different ideals and political habits which guided north and south into and through the Civil War.
The distinguishing feature of the older group was the strong Unionism of its leaders, whether Whig or Democratic. The peace, perpetuity, and strength of the Union stood in their eyes above all other politi- cal ideals ; and when the slavery question arose and
LEADERS
4i
extremists in north and south insisted on forcing the sectional issue, they were alarmed and horrified. Their principles in politics were imbibed when most of them entered public life, in the nationalistic era of 181 o- 1830, 1 and they felt called on neither to approve nor to condemn slavery, nor, in fact, to concern themselves with it. In their eyes the moral earnestness of the abolitionist was as incomprehen- sible as the sincere sectionalism of the secessionist was abhorrent; and they were amazed and grieved by the fierce disapprobation of compromise by both kinds of extremists. Considering slavery outside the range of legitimate political discussion, they tried to exclude it first by their disapproval and then by compromise.
As long as such men as Clay and Webster led the forces of nationalism with all the power of their per- sonalities and the splendor of their eloquence, the spirit of Union triumphed ; but Clay's work was done when the compromise of 1850 was carried through; he took little part in events thereafter, beyond speaking in the Senate in behalf of "finality." His death, in June, 1852, was regarded as a national loss, and Whig and Democrat alike paid him glowing tributes and united in recognizing the passing of a great American leader whose sun had set in peaceful skies, for he had outlived personal ambition.
Not so with Webster : to the last he hoped for the Whig nomination for the presidency, and when Scott 1 Cf . Turner, New West {Am. Nation, XIV.) , chap, xviii.
42 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1848
was selected over him his bitterness and grief were intense. He even advised his intimate friends to vote for Pierce, and died in October, 1852, a sad- dened man. In New England his death was mourned as the loss of the foremost citizen, and even his bitter- est critics, the Free-Soilers, admitted his intellectual greatness ; but outside of his own constituency only the conservative Whigs felt his loss. Something in Webster's personality prevented him, in death as in life, from rivalling the popularity and national standing of his rival, Clay.
Most of the other strong Unionist leaders retired from political life about the same time. Among the northern Jacksonian Democrats, Van Buren made his last appearance in politics in 1848; in 185 1 Woodbury died, and Dickinson lost his seat in the Senate; and of the Webster Whigs, Winthrop, of Massachusetts, and Ewing, of Ohio, retired in 1851, and Corwin in 1853. At the south, Benton, the senatorial Hercules of the Jacksonian Unionists, lost his seat in 1851, and consumed his remaining days in a gallant but futile struggle to regain power in his state ; and Foote, who had led the Unionist forces in Mississippi, did not re-enter national politics af- ter 1 85 1. Among the southern Whigs, Berrien, of Georgia, retired from the Senate in 1851, and Man- gum, of North Carolina, in 1853. Most of these men were of the older school, except perhaps Foote, and their public conduct was guided by a tradition of formal statesmanship inherited from the first dec-
I852]
LEADERS
43
ades of the century. Their simultaneous departure from the field of national politics left the leadership of Union feeling to men who were at once less able to control sentiment and less skilful in congressional and executive direction.
The surviving Unionists, during the years 1853- 1860, were stronger in the Democratic party than in the Whig, especially since they counted among their number the one man who had the ability to succeed Clay as a congressional and popular orator. Stephen A. Douglas entered public life in the preceding dec- ade, and by experience in House and Senate had become, by 1850, the keenest parliamentarian of his party and the foremost man in the west. He was a strong defender of the compromises, totally indif- ferent to slavery as an institution, and devoted to Unionism in the same way that Webster and Clay had been. His ability as a public speaker, which gave him party leadership in the Senate, made him the idol of the Illinois Democrats and won him the admiration of his party in most states; while his force and energy so dominated his short frame that he was known as "the Little Giant." Douglas was better suited than any other man in the United States to maintain Unionism against antislavery sentiment in the north, but, unfortunately for his success, he was hampered by his very facility in debate and in party leadership, for he lacked caution and insight into the conditions of popular feeling. Unable to comprehend the force of moral indigna-
44
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tion against slavery, he was led through overcon- fidence in his own powers into grave mistakes of policy which eventually ruined his cause.1
Other Democratic Unionists were Cass, Buchanan, and Marcy, rivals with Douglas in the national con- vention of 1852. Of these Marcy was the strongest in character, an experienced Jacksonian politician of New York, a member of the "Albany Regency," and the originator of the famed phrase "to the vic- tors belong the spoils of the enemy." Marcy was, however, much more than a spoilsman: he was a hard-headed, aggressive Democratic partisan, with none of the popular power of his younger rival, Douglas, but with much more caution and political shrewdness. His later career as secretary of state under Pierce was his last appearance in politics, and his death in 1857 removed one of the steadying in- fluences in his party. Cass and Buchanan remained in public life to the end of the period, and, with Douglas, stood forward as representatives of the compromise Democracy. Of the two, Cass had the greater native ability, and from his long career in Michigan and his vigorous personality had a fairly strong hold over the party in the northwest. Like Douglas, he does not seem to have had any compre- hension of the depth of the moral opposition to slavery in the north, and his eagerness to settle sectional questions by compromise or by finding some way to appease southern threats won him, 1 See Brown, Douglas.
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among abolitionists and Free-Soilers, the name of " Arch-dough-face. " Buchanan, with less courage and personal strength than Marcy, held somewhat the same position in Pennsylvania, where his con- servative, steadily partisan record made him the special representative of the highly conservative Democratic party of that state. At no time in his career did a spark of originality disturb his utter- ances ; but he had a political shrewdness which stood him in good stead. These men, strongly intrenched in the party machinery of their section, were pre- pared to make an obstinate fight for the principles of Unionism through compromise.
Among the Whigs the Unionist leadership was far weaker/ Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, elo- quent, honorable, a lover of concord and harmony, was sent to the Senate to succeed Webster, but he lacked the fighting quality of men like Douglas, and could not retain leadership. Fillmore, after his re- tirement from the presidency, remained a figurehead for conservative Whigs, but he had no power over people; nor did Fish, the New York Whig senator who replaced Dickinson in 185 1, prove to be a strong leader ; while Choate, of Massachusetts, distinguished for eloquence and brilliancy, lacked the willingness to throw himself heart and soul into a contest for party supremacy. Nowhere among the Whigs did there appear a figure of national prominence able to carry on the work of Clay and Webster
At the south, the sincere Unionists were tempora-
46
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rily reinforced, in 1850, by a large number of Whigs and Democrats, who later showed that at heart they were more sectional than national. If these be left aside, the number of consistent Union leaders who remained in public life after the death or retirement of Clay, Benton, Berrien, and the rest, was compara- tively small. Houston, of Texas, an original Jack- sonian, was a picturesque figure in the Senate and a personality of influence in his own state, where to the end he upheld the cause of Unionism against secession. Bell, of Tennessee, a man without great gifts as either speaker or thinker, but popular in his own section and a leader of steady Unionism, was joined in the Senate by Crittenden, of Kentucky, a man of Clay's type with all of Clay's fervent Union- ism and much of Clay's personal hold over the peo- ple. Up to the verge of the Civil War these three men, with Clayton, of Delaware, a strenuous debater although a rather unsuccessful diplomat, struggled to maintain the traditions of Clay, carrying on a contest in their section parallel to that waged by the northern Unionists.
Now that the passions aroused by the civil conflict have retired into the past, it is possible to credit these Unionists, northern and southern, with more genuine honesty and patriotism than it was custom- ary to ascribe to them in earlier years. The northern Doughface, willing to make concessions to the south for the sake of peace, the southern Unionist, ready to forego an opportunity to advance the interests of
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slavery if by so doing he could preserve the Union, were not cowards nor traitors to their sections ; they were stimulated by an ideal no less than were their opponents ; and their failure discredits not so much their patriotism or moral earnestness as their powers to meet the difficult task imposed upon them. Cer- tainly a large majority of the American people looked to these men as true patriots, inspired by the senti- ments expressed in Longfellow's apostrophe to the Union in his ''Building of the Ship," published in 1850; and even as late as i860 a great majority of the wealthier classes at north and south still held to their point of view.
Opposed to these Unionists there stood in the north a growing number of antislavery political leaders who regarded politics from a wholly different point of view. In their eyes the controversy over slavery was not a distressing interruption to normal politics, but was an inevitable consequence of their highest convictions. The Union, they too professed to uphold, and they uniformly denounced secession, but they were ready to risk harmony and peace within the Union for the sake of righting what they considered a wrong. Admitting their impotence to interfere with slavery in the states, and for the most part disclaiming the desire to do so, they insist- ed that slavery must not be extended into additional territory, nor fostered by the federal government. Such Unionism was very different from that of Clay or Foote : it meant that a peculiar interest of one sec-
48 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1848
tion was not to receive national support or counte- nance ; and it did not prevent a feeling towards the south ranging from hostile criticism to savage dis- like.
The earliest representatives of this northern sec- tionalism had been John Quincy Adams and Joshua R. Giddings in the House,1 joined later by Hale, of New Hampshire, in the Senate. Adams died in 1848, but Giddings and Hale continued in Congress during most of this decade, where as open agitators they made incessant attacks on slavery. Of the two, Gid- dings was bitter and aggressive, Hale keen and humorous ; but each had an unerring scent for those interests of slavery which on their face did not refer to the "institution." The Free Soil agitation and the controversy over the compromise of 1850 brought into office a number of men who were destined to be the country's leaders in the period of civil war and reconstruction. Two of these were Free-Soilers — Chase, of Ohio, and Sumner, of Massachusetts — men who fought together the battle of antislavery, and, while very different in personal qualities, were united by a lasting friendship and confidence. Chase was in some respects the abler of the two, gifted with strong practical sense in legislative matters, good powers of debate, and some of the useful qualities of the managing politician. He was a large man in every way but one; he was deficient in a sense of party loyalty, and, by his willingness to advance his 1 Cf . Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.) , chap, xviii.
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own interests without concerning himself much about his political friends, had won a reputation for self- seeking which stood in his way in later life. In the Senate, however, his bearing was admirable.1 The northern compromisers and southern sectionalists had no more dangerous opponent. Sumner, his col- league, was a narrower man, less of a politician and less of a legislator, his main interests lying in the slavery contest. He brought with him to the Senate a florid eloquence, a biting tongue in debate, and an unflinching courage in enunciating the doctrines of the antislavery philosophy in the teeth of the south- erners, which was later to cost him dearly.2
Wholly different from these men were two anti- slavery Whigs who now came forward. Wade, of Ohio, was a fighting northern partisan, a rough, fearless, practical westerner, with none of Sumner's eastern scholarship and little of Chase's solid legal training and ability, but well suited to aid these men in undermining the hold of compromisers upon the north. Seward, of New York, elected in 1849, was still different, for he was as much politician as antislavery statesman. Trained under Thurlow WTeed, the master of the Whig machine in New York, he knew all the details of party management and was ever guided in his senatorial career by considerations of party and personal policy. He did not love a fight, as did Hale, Chase, and Sumner; and his
1 Hart, Chase, chaps, iv., v.
2 Pierce, Sumner , I., chaps, xxxv.-xlii.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1851
speeches in the Senate were rather party and personal manifestoes than a share in a give-and-take debate ; but his reputation as party leader often gave them an importance which the more strictly forensic efforts of the others failed to secure.1
At a later time these leaders were joined by a host of other antislavery representatives, in House and Senate, especially Trumbull, of Illinois, a hard-hit- ting debater, and Wilson, of Massachusetts, an anti- slavery politician with a power of party management equal to Seward's. No one of these men, however, was individually the equal of Douglas, and it was not until Abraham Lincoln issued from private life in 1858 that his hold upon the west was shaken.
Over against the northern radicals stood a group of southern proslavery statesmen, destined to lead their states into secession and civil war. These men, whether nominally Whigs or Democrats, differed from their great forerunner, Calhoun, in openly and frankly holding that the sectional interests of their states were superior to any incompatible claims of the Union, and in making that the main-spring of their action. They regarded the north with uncon- cealed suspicion and hostility, and were equally ready to secede or to stay, according to the benefits which their section derived from the situation. In- asmuch as their attitude was the most direct threat to the perpetuity of the Union, they were regarded by the northern Unionists as the chief power to be 1 Cf. Bancroft, Seward, I., chaps, xii.-xxi.
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conciliated, and thence came their strong influence over such Whigs as Webster, Everett, and Choate, and such Democrats as Cass and Buchanan. No group of men in the country was so powerful: they dictated platforms, inspired executive policy in do- mestic and foreign affairs, and exercised in Congress an almost unbroken parliamentary supremacy. Ut- terly fearless in debate, they assumed and main- tained a masterful control over less belligerent north- erners, overawing them by their greater fluency of speech, their readiness to resort to personalities, and their hot tempers, which the social influence of the slave-holding south had not taught them to bridle.1 Among the more significant of these leaders were several former Unionists. Senator Toombs, of Geor- gia, whose reputation in the north was that of one of the hottest of the "fire-eaters," was really less ex- treme than many other southerners. Elected as a Whig to succeed Berrien in the Senate in 185 1, he showed himself a man of great eloquence and strong personal assertiveness. In debate he held the fore- most place until Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, re- turned to his chair in 1857, when he became the southern spokesman. Davis was a more logical speaker than Toombs, less diffuse, and keener. When matched, as he was later, against the adroit and slippery Douglas, Davis, by his directness and singleness of aim, showed himself his equal. These two men, insisting on the rectitude of slavery and 1 Brown, Lower South, 61, 80.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [185 1
the rights of the states, proved too strong for the southern Unionists.
Yet neither Toombs nor Davis at that time was a secessionist; each avowed his preference for a con- tinuance of the Union, but each showed clearly that when the choice had to be made between secession and a Union in which slavery was restricted, they would prefer disunion. Some other southerners were ready for secession at any time, notably William L. Yancey, of Alabama, a man of great popular elo- quence, a born agitator and stump-speaker, whose desire for a separation from the north was so strong that he refused to serve in any federal office. Quit- man, of Mississippi, a strong advocate of Cuban an- nexation, was also ready for secession as soon as possible, and many South-Carolinians, notably Barn- well Rhett, who remained out of politics during most of this decade. Both Senate and House in these years contained a group of southerners of the Davis and Yancey type, all marked by the same readiness in debate, sensitiveness to the rights of their section, and self-confident spirit in all affairs. They had a dash, a vigor, a parliamentary "gallantry," to use the favorite southern adjective, entirely lacking among northern representatives. Such men as the fiery Stephens, of Georgia, Howell Cobb and Iver- son of the same state, Clement C. Clay, the leading Alabama "fire-eater," and A. G. Brown, of Missis- sippi, had an advantage in debate not disturbed, until just before the Civil War the break-down of
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Unionist sentiment at the north allowed a number of radical opponents of slavery to enter Congress and meet the fire-eaters with equal spirit, if not with equal eloquence.
The older generation of statesmen took with them into the grave or into retirement not merely their lively Unionist spirit, but also their old-fashioned opposition to a partisan civil service. As a rule, men like Clay, Webster, Adams, and, above all others, Calhoun, had no love for office-broking, and looked with contempt upon such political manipulation as was perfected by Van Buren, Weed, and other ma- chine managers. But the rising generation of party leaders in the north entertained no such feelings. Davis, Toombs, Seward, Chase, Lincoln, and Doug- las alike considered the filling of offices with personal and party friends as the natural course of events.1 The last relic of reluctance to avow the principles of rotation in office was exhibited when the Whigs, under Taylor and Fillmore, still affected to consider the turning out of Democrats to make place for office-seekers a " reform." The claim was de- nounced as hypocrisy by the defeated party. "Ap- pointments and removals," said Bright, of Indiana, in the Senate, "were made throughout the Union and in every state on the sole ground that the in- cumbent was a Democrat and the applicant a Whig. If the removals had been made on this ground I do
Salmon, Appointing Power, 76-85; Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 161-164.
54 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
not believe there is a decapitated officer . . . that would have uttered a voice of complaint. . . . But when . . . the monstrous defence is set up that our friends were dishonest, unfaithful and incompetent, a reply is demanded. . . . Recollect, Mr. President, I am not complaining of the removal of my political friends, when that removal is made under the regu- lar rules and articles of political warfare." 1
When Pierce came in, the pressure for office was overwhelming; and the kind-hearted president, be- wildered by the unbounded demands of office-seekers, and unable to say " no " to any one, was driven to distraction before the expiration of a year of his term. His fruitless efforts to please everybody succeeded merely in causing heart-burnings, and in leading to a complete rupture of the New York Democrats into two factions, the Hard-shells and the Soft-shells, who formed distinct organizations and remained bitterly at war for three years.2
Four years later, at the accession of Buchanan, the theory of rotation in office reached its full develop- ment, for although one Democratic president suc- ceeded another, the pressure for removals was nearly as strong as though there had been a party change. Accordingly, almost without arousing comment, Bu- chanan turned large numbers of Pierce's appointees out of office in order to make places for new Demo-
1 Cong. Globe, 31 Cong., 2 Sess., 155, 156.
2 Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 165; Rhodes, United States, I.i 38s-389. 399- 419-421.
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cratic incumbents.1 Marcy merely provoked a smile when he remarked, "They have it that I am the author of the doctrine that 'to the victors belong the spoils,' but I should never recommend the policy of pillaging my own camp." The last vestiges of opposition to the reign of spoils in federal offices seemed to have disappeared. At the south, how- ever, the system was less fully developed. The per- sonal and local character of politics prevented the rise of a class of office-seekers dependent upon pat- ronage for a livelihood, and kept the federal service in these states comparatively free from plunder.2
Another feature of the new politics of the decade was the appearance of corruption. The industrial development of the north at this time, the growth of large cities, and the influx of hundreds of thousands of ignorant foreigners, largely Irish and German, produced the first unmistakable signs of a new era in machine politics. For the first time one encoun- ters in the newspapers of these years rumors of the lavish use of money in elections and of bribery in legislatures. Actual corruption was proved in con- nection with land grants by a Wisconsin legislature in 1856, and with the tariff of 1857. " Bribery is com- paratively of recent introduction in our country,' ' wrote one observer. " Its effects are only very par-
1 Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 166; Salmon, Appoint- ing Power, 84; Taney to Pierce, August 29, 1857, in Am. Hist. Rev., X., 359.
2 Charleston Mercury, April 4, 1857; Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 157.
vol. xviii.— 5
56 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1849
tially developed, but the rapid progress it has made within a few years is a fact too prominent to be over- looked and a warning too serious and too significant to be disregarded. ... In some states wealthy and powerful corporations have usurped absolute power, controlling both the legislative and judicial action — its officers openly boasting that they carry the state in their pockets and that their corporation is rich enough to buy any legislation they want." 1 There is no reason to suppose that one party was materially better than the other : a Democratic legislature and Republican governor in Wisconsin took " gratuities" from a railway with equal facility,2 and though the municipal corruption of New York City occurred under Democratic rule, the largest defaulter in a state office at this time was a Republican treasurer of Ohio during Chase's governorship.
Two scandals connected with cabinet officers took place under Whig administrations: the Galphin claim, in which George W. Crawford, secretary of war under Taylor, secured one-half the payment of the arrears of interest on a Revolutionary claim, amounting to ninety-four thousand dollars ; and the Gardiner claim, where Corwin, as secretary of the treasury, received large sums from a claim later proved fraudulent.3 In Buchanan's term, also, the Covode investigation, of a bitterly partisan char-
1 Hazard, Economics and Politics, 118, 120.
1 Tuttle, Wisconsin, 346, 356.
3 Rhodes, United States, I., 203, 298.
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acter, found evidence of corruption in purchasing votes in Congress for an administration measure by contracts, offices, and money bribes. These charges Buchanan denied sweepingly but ineffectually.1 It was definitely proved at the outbreak of the Civil War that Floyd, Buchanan's secretary of war, was a defaulter under circumstances which showed a singularly dull sense of official propriety.
In New York City the employment of municipal offices to fill the pockets of party leaders was now in full operation. During years of turbulent poli- tics, in which the figure of Fernando Wood, the first successful city boss, occupied the central place, the voters struggled with dishonest primary inspectors, corrupt election judges, and self-seeking leaders whose desire for reform was wholly subordinate to their personal interests. In 1853 there came an exposure of corruption of the kind which on many later occa- sions has produced waves of " reform." Bribery in the awarding of street railway franchises, corrupt contracts, the sale of offices, and inefficiency on the part of the police were revealed ; but the strong con- trol maintained by Wood over the voters was suffi- cient to bring him into power after a brief interval of "reform" government by a coalition candidate.2
In the decade after 1850 the elements of later political life were plainly visible. The old methods of Jacksonian days were superseded by a more so-
1 House Exec. Docs., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 648.
2 Myers, Tammany Hall, 178-230.
58 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
phisticated machinery, in which the nominating con- vention, party committee, and newspaper organ were not merely means for carrying elections, but were the field of operations of a perfectly well-defined class of professional politicians. The industrial rev- olution taking place in American economic life was affecting politics and making of them a business in city and country. The advent of a new political generation in the north meant the control of political life by men who were at the same time more elevated than their predecessors in their conception of per- sonal liberty, and less elevated towards party or- ganization and corrupt politics.
CHAPTER V
THE ERA OF RAILROAD BUILDING (1850-1857)
ONE of the chief reasons for the hearty accept- ance of the compromise measures as a final settlement was the fact that they were adopted in the midst of an era of great economic prosperity and optimism. To the men of the decade before the Civil War, the real interests of the country were financial, commercial, and industrial, and in their eyes the slavery controversy was an annoying inter- ruption. Foremost among the causes for congratu- lation after the compromise was the opportunity for undivided attention to the absorbing expansion of the country's business.
The most striking economic fact of these years is the extension of the railway systems of the United States from the seaboard into the great plains, and the creation of a new economic balance. Under the influence of this new opportunity for exchange there came a great growth of American manufacturing, stimulated in addition by the sudden deluge of Cali- fornian gold and the temporary disorganization of European economic conditions through the Crimean
6o PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1849
War. All these agencies combined to bring an era of confidence, hope, and expansion in agriculture, in- dustry, and finance.
The construction of the first railways began slowly in the eastern states,1 and for many years was car- ried on as an adjunct to river, canal, or other water carriage. The total number of miles built from 1830 to 1848 was under 6000; but after that year rail- roads suddenly became a mania, and no less than 16,500 miles were laid down between 1849 and 1857, the larger part in the interior. The barrier of the Appalachian Mountain system was penetrated by seven trunk lines, and these by their connections in the central states were able to reach the Ohio River at eight places and the Mississippi at ten. The first railroad to make a through connection to the lakes was the New York Central system in 1850; next followed the Erie road, whose completion to Dun- kirk in 185 1 was celebrated by a journey of the Fill- more cabinet, including Webster, from one end to the other. Farther south the Pennsylvania road reached Pittsburg in 1852, and the Baltimore and Ohio road was completed to Wheeling in 1853, the same year in which the Grand Trunk line was opened between Portland and Montreal. In con- trast to these important connections between the northern seaboard and the interior, the southern communications lagged behind, none being com-
1 Cf . MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chap, vii.; Hart, Slavery and Abolition, chap. iii. (Am. Nation, XV., XVI.).
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pleted before 1857. In this period the northeastern states built nearly 4000 miles, the south Atlantic states only 2750; the northern central states con- structed no less than 7530 miles, the southern in- terior states only 2150.1 In the "Old Northwest" this expansion was fairly extravagant, railways radi- ating from city to city until the region speedily be- came a net-work. The road-beds, it is true, were often of such a character as to appall an English engineer, and the cars and engines appeared flimsy; but, such as they were, they represented a great sinking of capital in a still sparsely settled com- munity.
This extension of railways was not merely the venture of capitalists, but the absorbing interest of the people of the country. Where the laws permit- ted them, cities and counties subscribed liberally for the mortgage bonds which were the usual means of securing capital, and carried on fierce rivalries for the possession of railway communications. Indi- viduals contributed from motives of local patriotism as well as from a desire to speculate, and popular meetings to agitate for branch lines and short con- nections gave the movement a semi-political aspect. Intense indignation was stirred up in New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Cincinnati when the people of the town of Erie, in order to preserve business for their freight -handlers and hotels, forcibly prevented the alteration of the broad-gauge railroad tracks in
1 Eighth Census of the U. S., Miscellaneous Statistics, 323.
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its territory to conform to the width of connecting lines. The "Erie war" attracted general interest in the early part of 1854, and the railroads were for a time held at bay; but the contest ended in the defeat of the obstructionists. All felt that the only salvation of a community from economic death de- pended upon good steam communications with the eastern seaboard, or at least with the leading lake or river cities. In this way, in the years from 1850- 1857, the main lines of the present railway system of the United States east of Chicago were brought into being.1
Westerners rose to rhapsody in contemplating the situation. "The West is no longer the West, nor even the great West," said an enthusiastic Ohioan, "it is the great Centre. . . . The change is coming upon us so rapidly that only the young can fully appreciate it. Like a splendid dream will it appear to people of mature age. Before the census of i860, the whistle of the locomotive and the roar of the rolling train will be heard at nearly every house and hamlet of the wide central plain, and no one but a hermit will be willing to live beyond the cheering sounds. . . . The imagination can conceive nothing more imposing than this march of humanity west- ward, to enter into possession of 'Time's noblest Empire.'"2
The telegraph, also, first used extensively in this
1 Rhodes, United States, III., 21.
2 De Bow's Review, XV., 50 (July, 1853).
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decade, spread with the railways and branched into every important community. Mail routes took im- mediate advantage of the new lines, and Congress was led, in 1851, to pass a cheap-postage law. By 1855 the chief elements of the modern commercial world — namely, rapid transportation and prompt and easy communication by mail and telegraph — were established.
The general effect of this rush into railroad build- ing was to upset the previous economic balance of the country. Prior to 1850 the only routes of trans- portation from the interior, except the turnpike roads over the mountains, were the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal or the Mississippi outlet to the Gulf. The traffic of the country ran, as a rule, upon north and south lines, the northern seaboard states trading with the southern by water, and the northern interior states reaching the southern central states and the exterior world by the great river system of the Mis- sissippi and its branches. But after 1850 the open- ing of the trunk lines made it possible for the farmer of the west to ship his wool, cattle, and grain directly I to the east, and receive in exchange the products of I eastern mills and the wares of the importer. The whole current of trade in the free states swung in a new direction within a few years. Yet the inland" and sea -coast navigation of these years did not feel the competition of railways suffi- ciently to keep it from continuing with great vig- or, carried on by a host of light - draught, high-
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sided river - steamers and a growing fleet of sail and steam craft upon the ocean and the Great Lakes.
The rush into railway building was accompanied by a rising demand for government assistance from the promoters in the western states, backed in most cases by the state legislatures. The first grant of public lands, in response to such an appeal, was the donation, in 1850, of two and a half million acres in the states between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico to the state of Illinois, by which it was to be transferred to the Illinois Central Railroad. This precedent was eagerly pressed by other western and southern states, but of fifteen similar land-grant bills to pass the Senate in 185 1, only one passed the House. In 1853, however, Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas received coveted grants of land to be transferred to railways, and in 1856 no less than nineteen million acres were given for railroads in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Missis- sippi, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. The years following were busily occupied by the states mentioned in transmitting these gifts to rail- way corporations, though seldom with immediate satisfactory results.1
In addition to this federal munificence, several states, especially Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, en- tered into financial support of railways which proved
1 Sanborn, Cong. Grants of Land to Railways, chaps, ii.-iv., App. A; Hart, Practical Essays in Am. Govt., 257.
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at a later time a serious embarrassment . 1 The largest scheme was that of a railroad to the Pacific, to be built by the aid of federal land-grants of alternate sections along the line of the projected road. In spite of constant efforts by the California senators, no bill passed up to the Civil War, mainly because of the bitter quarrels over the eastern terminal ; just as rival towns struggled for railway connections, so the north and south pulled against each other in urging New Orleans, St. Louis, or Chicago.
During these years the long-standing pressure for government aid to internal and sea-coast navigation was not forgotten. President Pierce's Democratic scruples, based on traditions of Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, were put to the test which Polk and Tyler had been obliged to meet, and, like them, Pierce did not flinch. In 1854 his veto blocked an internal improvement bill, but in 1856, when he returned five bills for deepening the channels of interior and sea- coast rivers, a Democratic Senate joined an opposi- tion House in passing them over his veto.2
Side by side with these schemes for aiding rail- ways and steamers went demands upon Congress and the state legislatures to regulate them. There was crying need for protection against the accidents which, in the age of reckless construction and unskilled operation, happened with appalling fre-
1 Scott, Repudiation of State Debts, 51, 67, 98, 131; De Bow's Review, XX., 386 (March, 1856).
2 Mason, Veto Power, 101-103.
66 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
quency. The number of deaths from railway col- lisions and steamboat explosions and wrecks were such as in a time of less buoyant optimism would have filled the country with horror. In the first seven months of 1853 the New York Herald counted 65 railway accidents; the total for 1855 was 142. This was equalled by the list of steamboat acci- dents on the western rivers, which in 1853 amounted to 138.1 The states struggled, without great suc- cess, to render travel less murderous by placing pecuniary responsibility for losses upon the rail road companies. Congress, with more decisive re- sults, regulated steamboat traffic by an act passed in 1852 which provided for the inspection and licensing of steam vessels engaged in interstate commerce, with a view to enforce safety in construction and equipment.2
Such mighty changes had marked effects in trans- portation and upon the agricultural life of the coun- try. The grain of the interior found an increased market in the east and in Europe, its sale abroad being stimulated by the reduction of the English corn tariffs and the loss of the Russian grain supply during the Crimean War. The northwest, hitherto content to feed the south, now found itself called upon to send its surplus to Europe, and the grain crops of the land swelled correspondingly from one
1 De Bow's Review, XVII., 305 (September, 1854), XX., 393 (March, 1851).
2 Cong. Globe, 32 Cong., 1 Sess., 1667-1672, 1737-1742.
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hundred million bushels in 1850 to one hundred and seventy-one millions in i860, of which more than one-half was grown in the " Old Northwest." Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin replaced New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia as the leading grain states. In the same way the centre of the grazing industry passed in this decade from the northeast to the states north of the Ohio River and to Texas, which furnished the bulk of the wool grown in the United States.1
In the south the railways shared, although to a less degree, in causing the great prosperity of the cotton-growers, which in this decade of general ex- pansion seemed to surpass that of any other class in the Union. In spite of the rapid extension of the cotton culture in the southwest, and the increase of crops from an average of two million one hundred thousand bales before 1850 to more than three mill- ion three hundred thousand, the world's demand seemed unlimited, and the price remained at a profit- able level.2 If the prosperity of the whole region might be gauged by the success of this single crop — and southern writers and speakers invariably as- sumed that such was the case — the south was unde- niably on the top wave. Never were prices for slaves higher nor the demand for their labor steadier. From all parts of the "cotton states " railroads and river-steamers brought to the exporting centres the
1 Eighth Census of U, S., Agriculture, 184-191. * Hammond, Cotton Industry, 250, App. 1.
68
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
one never-failing and profitable product. The value of exports of cotton grew from an average amount of sixty million dollars to a hundred millions in the years 185 0-1857; and it was estimated that three- fourths of the total world's supply was furnished by the Gulf states . ' ' Cotton is King, ' ' said the southern planter, and few ventured to contradict him. "In the three million bags of cotton the slave -labor annually throws upon the world for the poor and naked,' ' wrote one, "we are doing more to advance civilization . . . than all the canting philanthropists of New and Old England will do in centuries. Slavery is the backbone of the Northern commercial as it is of the British manufacturing system. . . . Our labor has enabled us to make New England rich." 1
The agricultural prosperity of the west and south was matched by a new industrial prosperity in the northeast, where all kinds of manufacturing felt a great impetus. The completion of the railroad con- nections with the interior offered an opportunity which the business men of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania were not slow to seize upon. A rapid extension of manufactures followed, especial- ly in the staples, such as cotton goods, shoes, house- hold articles, and the cheaper sorts of woollens. The production of pig-iron increased from an esti- mated output of 564,755 tons in 1850 to 883,137 in 1856, and iron manufacturing followed, although lDe Bow's Review, XVII., 284, 365.
i857] TRANSPORTATION 69
more slowly. The optimism of the western farmer was fully equalled by the enthusiasm of the eastern manufacturer.1
In the face of the attractive field for investment offered by this new traffic of east with west, the long- established importance of the ship-building industry was now first threatened. In these years, between 1850 and 1857, American shipping reached its maxi- mum, a flush of prosperity crowning a long period of success, before the inevitable decline resulting from the diversion of the capital once invested in it to more lucrative fields . These were the days of the American clipper-ships, marvels of speed and carrying-power under sail,2 and they were also days of expansion in coasting-trade, new steamship lines being established from one end of the Atlantic seaboard to the other, and to Central and South America. In the trans- atlantic trade, the Collins line, aided by a govern- ment subsidy, built a fleet of paddle-wheel steamers which vigorously competed with the British Cunard mail line. Under the stimulus of the great export and import trade, the American merchant marine grew prodigiously, almost doubling its tonnage be- tween 1850 and 1855, so that although British ves- sels were given reciprocal trading privileges, fully three-quarters of the country's foreign trade was carried on in American bottoms. The change from wood to iron as the standard for marine construction,
1 Swank, Iron in all Ages, 376; Stan wood, Tariff Controversies, II., 87. 2 Harper's Magazine, LXV., 123 Quly, 1882).
7o
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
although officially recognized by the Lloyds in 1854, did not affect the well-being of American shipping during these years of prosperity.1
During this period the steady flow of gold from California powerfully affected the commercial imagi- nation, creating the general sense of an inexhaust- ible reservoir of wealth and stimulating commerce and financial expansion. Nevertheless, although the mints from 1850 to 1857 added an annual aver- age of nearly fifty millions in gold to the coinage, there was no sharp general rise in prices which could be laid to an increase in the currency. The range of prices in 1 850-1 £5 7 appears to have been a result of sanguine spirit and business confidence rather than of inflation. The explanation is partly to be found in the fact that gold became a regular article of export during these years, and two-thirds of the total product, at least, left the country.2
An inevitable concomitant of the expansion of industry and transportation was an expansion in banking, in order to furnish the credit necessary to put the new enterprises into operation. From 1850 to 1857 the number of banks, all under state charters, increased from 824^01416, and the banking capital from $217,000,000 to $343,000,000, while circula- tion and deposits nearly doubled. To meet the ob- ligations there was a specie reserve of less than one-seventh, clearly indicating a speculative spirit.
1 Wells, Our Merchant Marine, 8-1 7 ; Bates, American Marine, 138-145. 2 Dunbar, Economic Essays, 267.
i857l
TRANSPORTATION
71
The optimism and confidence of the country's finan- ciers was shown still more by the increase of loans from $364,000,000 to $684,000,000, the repayment of which rested upon the success of new industrial ventures and the earning power of the new rail- roads.1
The condition of these fourteen hundred banks was far from uniform. In the east, where the insti- tution of clearing-houses was now established, they were careful, and, on the whole, sound; but in some of the western and southern states, notably Illinois, they were recklessly extravagant and speculative. In nine states the revulsion against banks which followed the crisis of 1837 led to their absolute pro- hibition by state constitution or by popular refer- endum ; and in most states attempts were made in these years to regulate and safeguard the practice of banking. No legislation, however, was adequate to secure to bank-notes anything like an approxi- mately equal value in different states, or to prevent rashness in the management of bank capital; but for the time being universal prosperity obscured all doubts.2
The course of foreign trade in these years reflected the expansion of credit and commercial optimism. Exports, mainly of agricultural products, rose from $137,000,000 in 1850 to $338,000,000 in 1857, while imports grew at the same time from $178,000,000 to
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 37 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 2, pp. 358-360.
2 Sumner, Banking in all Nations, I., 416-456. VOL. xvni. — 6
72
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
$360,000,000, thus creating an annual balance against the United States of nearly thirty million dollars.1 This apparent deficit was largely made up by act- ual shipments of California gold and by European investments in American railway projects to an amount variously estimated at from two hundred to five hundred million dollars.2 The fact is also to be remembered that the carrying-trade, still mainly in American hands, earned high freights. Notwith- standing contemporary alarm over an abnormal for- eign trade and reckless importation of luxuries, there is nothing to show that the commerce was beyond the abilities of the country.3
Government finances during these years offered no points of interest or difficulty beyond paying off the debts contracted during the Mexican War, for the annexations of California and Texas, and for the Gadsden purchase, and providing for coining the sudden flood of gold. The coinage acts of 1850 and 1853 practically made gold the standard, with sub- sidiary silver. Reduction of the debt was made possible by a surplus revenue resulting from the heavy importations, and under the provisions of an act of 1853 Secretary Guthrie, during Pierce's ad- ministration, was able to purchase United States se- curities at market prices. In this and other ways the debt was reduced from $68,000,000 in 1850 to
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 37 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 2, p. 223.
2 Rhodes, United States, III., 53.
3 Dunbar, Economic Essays, 268.
i857] TRANSPORTATION
73
less than $29,000,000 in 1857.1 Nevertheless, gold continued to accumulate in the sub-treasuries, and although Guthrie was a firm believer in the sub- treasury system, and had done much to improve its operation,2 he felt this hoarding to be unhealthy, and repeatedly recommended a revision of the cus- toms duties, from which nearly nine-tenths of the revenue was derived.
To diminish the unwelcome surplus, the exist- ing tariff of 1846 was reduced in the last month of Pierce's administration by a bill which passed almost without debate and without eliciting popular interest. Protectionism as a political force seemed dead. The tariff of 1846 probably did not afford certain in- dustries, notably the woollen, sufficient protection to enable them to endure competition from English mills ; but although the woollen men, when the tariff was under consideration, exerted themselves to se- cure relief by getting wool on the free list, they failed. Only the lowest grades were so treated and the situa- tion in the finer woollens remained unaltered. The House and Senate showed great indecision, adopting the most inconsistent amendments, but finally they joined in reducing the rates on the schedules of the tariff of 1846 by one-fifth to one-half. The vote for the bill bore no relation to party or sectional feeling, and seems to have included both advocates of pro- tection and of free-trade. Every Massachusetts and
1 Dewey, Financial Hist, of the U. S., 248-274. 3 Kinley, Independent Treasury, 46-64.
74 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1857
every South Carolina member voted for it. The issue which had been so prominent a generation ear- lier seemed to have dropped out of sight.1
So the country came to the end of Pierce's term in the flood-tide of prosperity, hopefulness, and con- tentment. If there were occasional doubters who queried the security of the foundations for the great expansion of credit, and doubted the immediate re- turns from all the new railways and mills, their voices were drowned in the general assertion of a magnificent industrial, agricultural, and financial future spreading before the " happiest people on God's earth."
1 Stanwood, Tariff Controversies, II., 83-109.
CHAPTER VI
DIPLOMACY AND TROPICAL EXPANSION (1850-1855)
DURING the years after the compromise, the foreign relations of the United States were characterized by the same sense of national impor- tance and spirit of expansion which brought about the annexation of Texas, the Oregon controversy, and the Mexican War.1 A feeling of "manifest des- tiny" was in the air; people looked for additions of territory to the southward, and approved of a policy of national assertion at the expense of neighboring states and of European powers. It was an era of a crude belief in the universal superiority of "Ameri- can institutions," a lofty contempt for the "effete monarchies" of Europe, and a strong sense of the righteousness of any aggressive action which the republic might undertake. Although the secretaries of state during this period were northern men of the older race of statesmen, Clayton, Webster, and Ever- ett under Fillmore, Marcy under Pierce, and Cass under Buchanan ; and were inclined by their political
1 Cf. Garrison, Westward Extension {Am. Nation, XVII.), chaps, i., vi., xi., xiv.
76 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1849
experience and their mature years towards a cau- tious policy, they could not avoid being influenced by the prevailing spirit and showing it in language and action.
The chief obstacle in the way of a vigorous foreign policy, expressing this spirit of "manifest destiny," was the strong dislike which had grown up in the northern states towards any annexation involving an increase of slave territory. This feeling was shared by conservatives and anti-slavery men alike, and its existence, although veiled in the era of politi- cal calm, was known to the statesmen in charge of foreign affairs and had a strong restraining influence. Not even Marcy, the boldest of them all, was inclined to take any radical action without unmistakable signs of northern acquiescence. Nevertheless, so complete was the sectional quiet during Fillmore's term and the first part of Pierce's, that for a time an aggressive policy seemed likely to succeed.
The defiant attitude of the democratic republic towards "European despotism" was illustrated by a series of contentions with Austria. In 1849, Clayton sent an emissary, Dudley A. Mann, with instructions to recognize the Hungarian Republic in case it ap- peared to be firmly established. He found Hungary prostrate and so took no action ; but the purpose of his errand became known to the Austrian govern- ment,1 which instructed Huelsemann, the Austrian charge-J'affaires, to protest against the mission as 1 Curtis, Webster, II. 537.
1850] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION
unfriendly. It fell to Webster to respond, and he yielded so far to the complacency of the time as to write, December, 1850, a spirited reply, denying that the visit was an unfriendly act, and asserting the right of the American people to sympathize with the efforts of any nation to acquire liberty. He con- cluded with a direct comparison between Austria and the United States: "The power of this republic," he said, " at the present moment is spread over a region one of the richest and most fertile on the globe, and of an extent in comparison with which the possessions of the House of Hapsburg are but a patch on the earth's surface. . . . Life, liberty, property, and per- sonal rights are amply secured to all citizens and protected by just and stable laws ; and credit, public and private, is as well established as in any gov- ernment of continental Europe. . . . Certainly the United States may be pardoned, even by those who profess adherence to the principles of absolute gov- ernments, if they entertain an ardent affection for those popular forms of political organization which have so rapidly advanced their own prosperity and happiness, and enabled them in so short a period to bring their country and the hemisphere to which it belongs to the notice and respectful regard — not to say the admiration — of the civilized world." 1
Immediately following this letter, which Webster wrote, as he explained, in hopes of stimulating pride in the Union, the Kossuth craze came to emphasize
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 31 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 9, p. 7.
78 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1853
the popular sympathy with republican aspirations, and the general detestation of Austria and Russia.1 In 1853 a similar opportunity was presented to Marcy, when Martin Koszta, a Hungarian refugee to the United States, who had declared his intention of becoming a citizen, returned to Europe before com- pleting his naturalization and was seized by an Austrian cruiser in a Turkish port. Captain Ingra- ham, of the United States man-of-war St. Louis, took the bold step of forcing the Austrian vessel to release Koszta, and Huelsemann promptly presented a de- mand for reparation and the disavowal of his be- havior; but Marcy, in a long despatch, absolutely refused any conciliatory action and justified Ingra- ham's course.2
National scorn of monarchical customs was also amusingly exhibited by a circular, issued when Marcy took charge of the state department, which ad- vised American representatives at foreign courts not to wear any ceremonial uniforms, but to appear " like Franklin, in the simple costume of an American citi- zen." The sensation produced at several European capitals by the appearance of American ministers in ordinary civilian clothes was as ludicrous as it was genuine ; and in Prussia, Spain, and France they were practically compelled to invent a court dress. Mason, at Paris, chose a fancy costume concocted by a Dutch tailor after the model of the servants of the Austrian
1 See above, p. 30.
2 Senate Exec. Docs., 33 Cong., 1 Sess., No. i, pp. 25-49.
1854] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION
legation. Buchanan, at London, provoked sneers in Conservative newspapers and had some difficulties with the master of ceremonies, but was finally al- lowed to attend in the " ordinary dress of an Ameri- can citizen," to which, in order to distinguish himself from the court servants, he thoughtfully added a small sword. By this episode, as by the Austrian correspondence, notice was served upon Europe of the independent, democratic standards of the Amer- ican republic.1
In diplomatic dealings involving positive action, the United States showed a vigorous attitude in minor matters in the far east. Under Webster and Marcy the Japanese government was obliged to re- ceive the expedition of Commodore Perry in 1853, and to make a commercial treaty the next year, which opened Japanese ports to American trade and began the process of introducing western civiliza- tion.2 Marcy went so far as to attempt to annex Hawaii, a step from which Webster had recoiled, and his plan was only wrecked by the death of the Hawaiian king in 185 4. 3 Nearer home, a boundary question, arising over the line laid down in the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo with Mexico, was settled in 1853 by purchasing, through James Gadsden, a strip of territory to the south of the Gila River, in order
1 Senate. Exec. Docs., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 31; Curtis, Bu* chanan, II., 114.
2 Nitobe, The U . S. and Japan, 37-69.
8 Callahan, Am. Relations in the Pacific, 120-123.
8o PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1849
that a future Southern Pacific railroad might run wholly over United States soil.1
In like manner the long-standing quarrel between Canadian authorities and New England fishermen, over the privileges granted by the treaty of 181 8, was settled in this period. The Canadian govern- ment was eager to purchase commercial reciprocity, using the fisheries as a make-weight ; but no treaty could be obtained, although an emissary made a fruit- less visit to Washington in 1851. After this failure the Canadians resorted to the use of British men-of- war to seize suspected fishermen, which stirred up great indignation in New England, but led to no action until, in Marcy's regime, Lord Elgin visited Washington and succeeded in securing the ratifica- tion of a reciprocity treaty in 1854. This granted equal fishing rights (inshore and river fishing except- ed) in return for commercial concessions.2 The kind of diplomacy used by Lord Elgin was described by Laurence Oliphant of his suite, as "chaffing Yan- kees and slapping them on the back. " "If you have got to deal with hogs," he queried, "what are you to do?" 3
The really serious problems of these years, how- ever, were those connected with southern expansion. The first related to Cuba, the annexation of which was ardently desired in the southern states, partly
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 32 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 97.
2 Henderson, Am. Diplomatic Questions, 504 et seq. 8 Oliphant, Oliphant, 109, 120.
1851] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION Si
as an expression of the general spirit of expansion, but more from the desire for slave territory. " If we hold Cuba," wrote one enthusiast, "we will hold the destiny of the richest and most increased com- merce that has ever dazzled the cupidity of man. And with that commerce we can control the power of the world. . . . The world will fall back upon African labor, governed and owned in some shape or form by the white man, as it always has been. . . . We, too, are in the hands of a superintending Providence to work out the real regeneration of mankind." 1
The other problem related to the control of the isthmus of Central America, which suddenly became important after 1848 as a link in the sea -passage to California. In the case of each of these regions the desires of the southern people were so keen that they led to repeated attempts by adventurers to gain military control in the hope of bringing about an eventual annexation. Whenever the govern- ment, impelled by popular interest, took any steps towards carrying out the expansionist dreams, it encountered the direct opposition of Great Britain in each field ; and the diplomatic dealings which re- sulted were not confined to Spain or the petty Cen- tral American republics, but bore the character of a duel with a determined and persistent adversary and rival.
1 De Bow's Review, XVII., 281 (September, 1854); Callahan, Cuba and International Relations, 198-228.
82 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1848
The first steps towards Cuban annexation in this period were taken under Polk, in 1848, when Saun- ders, the American representative at Madrid, was instructed to sound the Spanish government. The prompt reply he received from the minister of foreign affairs was typical of the Spanish attitude on the question from this time until the crisis half a century later. He was told that " it was more than any min- ister would dare to entertain such a proposition; . . . such was the feeling of the country that sooner than see the island transferred to any power they would prefer seeing it sunk in the ocean." 1 In the face of such a determined position no further action was taken by the United States, but the idea was spread in the south by Spanish refugees that Cuba itself was ready to revolt, resulting in a series of filibustering attempts, engineered by Narcisso Lopez, an adventurer from South America. Although the Spanish minister at Washington, the persistent Cal- deron de la Barca, was kept well informed of the progress of every plot and poured a stream of angry notes upon the state department, nothing could pre- vent the raiders from acting. Clayton and Webster were honestly desirous to preserve neutrality, but the sympathy of nine-tenths of the southern people was so strongly with Lopez that the laws could not be enforced. Taylor issued a proclamation against fili- bustering in 1849 and managed to prevent the de- parture of the first expedition, but the second one
1 House Exec. Docs., 32 Cong., 1 Sess.; No. 121, p. 58.
1851] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION 83
escaped, only to fail miserably, Lopez taking refuge at Key West, while a number of his followers were caught and tried for piracy.1
Clayton used his utmost efforts to secure the re- lease of these men, going so far as to threaten a "sanguinary war" in case the prisoners were not sent home to meet the merited punishment of "the indignant frowns of their fellow-citizens," 2 but it was not until Webster became secretary that their release was accomplished through Barringer, the minister at Madrid. Meanwhile, Lopez was trium- phantly acquitted by a southern jury when tried on the charge of violating the neutrality laws, gathered a new force, undisturbed by Calderon's heated protests, and made a second descent on the island in August, 185 1. He found no support, was driven to the hills, captured, and promptly garroted; while fifty of his followers, including young men from prominent southern families, were shot after a summary court-martial. When the news of this severity reached New Orleans, the centre of filibus- tering sympathy, a mob wrecked the Spanish con- sulate, defaced a portrait of the queen, and looted Spanish shops.3
In this affair the United States was so clearly in the wrong that aggressive action was out of the
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 31 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, p. 3.
2 Clayton to Calderon, July 9, Clayton to Barringer, July 1, Senate Exec. Docs., 31 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41.
3 House Exec. Docs., 32 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 2, p. 26.
84
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1851
question. Webster offered reparation for the insult, and recommended that Congress make indemnity for the damage, but although this straightforward action secured the release of the surviving prisoners, relations with Spain continued to be strained.1 The Cuban administration adopted a suspicious and ar- bitrary attitude towards Americans, and the last months of Fillmore's term were filled with com- plaints from traders of intolerable exactions and extortions for which no redress could be obtained, smce the Spanish captain-general had no diplomatic functions and declined to deal with American consuls or agents.2
The unconciliatory attitude of the Spanish gov- ernment at this time was undoubtedly due to a sense of British support. In 185 1 the British and French ministers announced at Washington that their men- of-war had orders to prevent filibustering, which brought out from Crittenden, acting secretary dur- ing an illness of Webster, a strong protest. Later, in April, 1852, at the suggestion of the Spanish gov- ernment, England proposed a tripartite agreement, by which Great Britain, France, and the United States should mutually renounce any purpose of annexing Cuba; but Everett firmly declined to be drawn into any such arrangement, on the ground of
1 House Exec. Docs., 32 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 19, pp. 2-7.
2 Ibid., 33 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 86; Latane, Diplomacy of the U. S. in Regard to Cuba, 232-239; Callahan, Cuba and Interna- tional Relations, 221-255.
1853] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION 85
I
the peculiar interests of the United States in the ; island.1
When Pierce assumed office, the whole country undoubtedly looked for vigorous action in foreign affairs, especially the annexation of Cuba; and Marcy, his secretary, was expected to take the mat- ter promptly in hand. Marcy, however, although not averse to annexation, was conservative, cold- blooded, and lawyer -like, and unwilling to take decisive steps without a perfectly secure footing. This caution fell far short of the desires of the south- ern Democrats and, for the moment, of the northern party leaders; for in 1853 the exasperation in com- mercial centres over the unfriendly Spanish policy in Cuba was such that a war might not have been unpopular. The new minister at Madrid was Pierre Soule, of Louisiana, a hot-headed Frenchman, an avowed annexationist, and a sympathizer with filibusters, a man contrasting strongly with his Whig predecessor, the firm yet cautious Barringer. Marcy's instructions to Soule bade him be slow to raise the question of annexation, in view of the ex- isting irritation of Spanish feeling ; but directed him to press for reparation for outrages in Cuba and es- pecially to demand the conferring of sufficient diplo- matic power upon the Cuban captain-general to per- mit complaints to be lodged with him without the
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 32 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 1, pp. 74, 76; 2 Sess., No. 63.
86 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
necessity of waiting weeks and months for replies from Madrid.1
Soule's career in Spain was a series of blunders. At the outset, finding no business of a pressing char- acter, he vented his temper in a duel with the French ambassador.2 Soon news came from Cuba which seemed to the excitable minister the proper pretext for a diplomatic rupture. The cargo of the steamer Black Warrior, which for months had been making trips to Havana without molestation, was suddenly condemned for the violation of an obsolete harbor regulation, a crowning example of the irritating policy of the Cuban authorities. The hot-heads in the United States clamored for war, and Congress resounded with angry speeches; but Soule, in his rashness, threw away whatever tactical advantages this situation had given him. After presenting a claim for damages on April 8, and receiving no reply for three days, he sent a second note demanding reparation within forty-eight hours, under threat of asking for his passports. Such hasty action trans- ferred the grievance to the other side, now repre- sented by the former minister to Washington, Calderon de la Barca ; and since Soule was left with- out support from Marcy the whole affair evaporated in bluster. In spite of Soule's angry arguments that Spain needed to be taught a lesson, Marcy would make no ultimatum ; for events at home had begun
1 Marcy to Soule, July 23, 1853, House Exec. Docs., 33 Cong., 2 Sess.,No. 93, p. 3. 2 Rhodes, United States, II., 11-15.
1854] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION 87
to appear so threatening that the secretary was re- solved to invite no foreign complication.1 In 1855 the United States accepted a tardy apology and reparation for the Black Warrior seizure, and the incident was closed.
Meanwhile, Soule made a final false step, which led to the collapse of his diplomatic career. Marcy in- structed him to join with Mason, minister to France, and Buchanan, minister to England, in conferring upon a policy to be followed by the United States towards Cuba, and the three ministers met according- ly, at Ostend, in the summer of 1854. The result was the draught of a manifesto which was sent to Marcy in October, to the effect that Spain ought to sell Cuba to the United States ; that Cuba was necessary for the safety of slavery in the southern states of the Union; and that if Spain, "dead to the voice of her own interest and actuated by ... a false sense of honor, should refuse to sell Cuba," then, in case the internal peace of the Union was endangered, "by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power." 2 In transmitting this surprising document, Soule added that now was the time to declare war upon Spain, since England and France were involved in the Crimean struggle and would be unable to inter- pose.
Marcy, however, received the manifesto with ill-
1 House Exec. Docs., 33 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 93, pp. 30-120.
2 Ibid., 127-132.
VOL. XVIII. 7
88 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1849
concealed surprise, and replied in a note which ironi- cally assumed that " It was not intended by yourself or your colleagues to offer to Spain the alternative of cession or seizure."1 When the correspondence and the manifesto were published in March, 1855, the unsparing condemnation expressed in the north showed that the time had gone by when an aggres- sive Cuban policy could receive support or acquies- cence from a united public. Soule resigned in dis- gust and the Cuban episode came to an end.2
The Central American question brought the United States into conflict with an equally pertinacious and more formidable antagonist. Great Britain was first in the field with the colony of Belize on the coast of Honduras and a traditional but ill-defined protec- torate over the obscure tribe of Mosquito Indians on the eastern shore of Nicaragua. When the impor- tance of the isthmian transit became visible, espe- cially the Nicaragua route, a sudden scramble began for its control. Chatfield, the British representative, showed a tendency to stretch the elastic Mosquito protectorate over the San Juan River — the eastern part of the Nicaragua passage — and in 1849 caused the occupation of Tigre Island, on the coast of Hon- duras, to command the western end. Hise, the American minister sent by Polk, met this move by
1 House Exec. Docs., 33 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 93, p. 135.
2 Latane, Diplomacy of the U. S. in Regard to Cuba, 240-249; Callahan, Cuba and International Relations, 257-288; Webster, "Mr. Marcy, the Cuban Question," in Pol. Sci. Quart., VIII., 1-32 (March, 1893).
i855] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION 89
securing a treaty from Nicaragua which gave the United States exclusive privileges over the canal route; and when this failed of ratification by the Senate, Squier, his successor, made another treaty, securing somewhat less extensive privileges, and, in addition, induced Honduras to cede Tigre Island, which the British had occupied, to the United States.1
Each country protested vigorously against the actions of the other's agents, but after a year of negotiations, Clayton agreed with Sir Henry Bulwer, in 1850, upon a treaty which compromised the rival claims. Each country promised to aid in the con- struction of an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua, to guarantee its neutrality, and explicitly to re- nounce any "dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast or any part of Central America." The principle of neutrality was to be extended to any other canal that might be built, and other powers were invited to join in the neutralization of the region.2 This arrangement was regarded at the time as a substantial triumph for the United States, and during the next two years Webster labored vainly to settle the dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, concerning their boundary in the vicinity of the San Juan River, where an American "Accessory
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 31 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 43; Travis, Clayton* Bulwer Treaty, 31-71; Henderson, Am. Diplomatic Questions, 106-123; Keasbey, Nicaragua Canal, chaps, x., xi.
2 MacDonald, Select Documents, 373.
9°
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1852
Transit Company" was now operating a line of steamers.
As time went on, however, the conditions on the isthmus did not seem to square with the state of things assumed in the treaty. While Great Britain abandoned Tigre Island, she still retained the Mosqui- to protectorate as well as Belize ; and in the summer of 1852 took the step of annexing some islands off the Honduras coast and erecting them into the col- ony of " The Bay Islands." At the same time Grey- town, a trading-post in Nicaragua at the mouth of the San Juan River, was established as a "free city" through the active support of the British represent- ative in the so - called Mosquito protectorate. In 185 1 this mushroom sovereignty endeavored to levy port dues upon the steamers of the Transit Company, and when one of these, the Prometheus, refused to pay, it was fired upon by a British man-of-war. These actions could not fail to create an impression in the United States that England was deliberately violating the Clayton - Bulwer treaty, and caused wide-spread indignation.1
Finally, in the last session of Congress in Fillmore's term, it was brought to light in a heated debate in the Senate, that before signing the treaty in 1850, Sir Henry Bulwer had left with Clayton a memo- randum stating that the British government did not construe its renunciation of "dominion" in Central America to apply to Belize "or any of its dependen-
1 Senate Exec. Docs., 33 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 8.
1853] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION
cies." This explained the recent action of England and made it clear that Clayton, in allowing this memorandum to stand as an unacknowledged part of the treaty, had deprived his work of much of its value. The whole subject was accordingly re- opened.1
When Marcy assumed office he took up the prob- lem in a resolute fashion, making a direct attack upon the British position by instructing Buchanan to in- sist upon a renunciation by Great Britain of the shadowy Mosquito protectorate. Marcy's language was that of an aggrieved party and was so vigorous that Lord Clarendon termed it "hostile." 2 He not only stigmatized the retention of the Bay Islands and the Mosquito claim as a violation of the treaty and a mere " convenience to sustain British preten- sions," but denied any legal basis for the Belize Colony.3 To this Clarendon replied emphatically that the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was not meant to be renunciatory and would not be so construed by the British government. Meanwhile, to aggravate the situation, an explosion took place at the self- styled "free city" of Grey town. The Accessory Transit Company continued to be embroiled with the "City" government, its buildings being saved
1 Cong. Globe, 32 Cong., 2 Sess., 237; Lawrence, Disputed Questions, 89-103.
2 Clarendon to Crampton, July 22, 1853, Brit, and For. State Papers, XLII., 253.
3 Marcy to Buchanan, July 2, 1853, Senate Exec. Docs., 34 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 1, p. 42.
II
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
from destruction only by the interposition of the United States vessel the Cyane; until in June, 1854, an affray occurred in which one of the officers of the company's steamers killed an individual, and a mob, in revenge, attacked the United States consul. Thereupon Lieutenant Hollins, of the Cyane, de- manded reparation, and, in default, bombarded and destroyed the town; while the commander of a British vessel present at the time protested that only inferior strength prevented him from interpos- ing. Each government seemed inclined to maintain its position stiffly, and the action of the United States showed a willingness to resort to force.1
At this juncture, when the United States had embarked in a serious controversy with Great Brit- ain, marked by every sign of ill-temper, and while Great Britain was embarrassed by the outbreak of the Crimean War, Marcy contented himself with fur- nishing arguments to Buchanan and hinting at the abrogation of the treaty, but took no definite action. The quarrel which had begun so threateningly dwin- dled to a mere diplomatic fencing between the pa- tient and courteous Buchanan and the British foreign secretary, in such spare moments as the latter could afford in the midst of his serious European compli- cations.2
Gravis, Clayton - Bulwer Treaty, 153 et seq.; Senate Exec. Docs., 33 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 85.
2 Marcy to Buchanan, June 12, 1854, Senate Exec. Docs., 34 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 1, p. 67.
1854] DIPLOMACY AND EXPANSION
The influence which put a veto upon an aggres- sive policy towards Spain and restrained Marcy from pushing the Central American controversy with vigor was a sudden violent tempest of sectional feeling and an overwhelming defeat of the Pierce administration at the polls. The attention of the country was wholly engrossed with a renewal of the slavery controversy, and Marcy was far too pru- dent to commit the administration to any grave foreign policy in such a crisis. The time for south- ern expansion as a means for increasing slave terri- tory had gone by.1
1 This subject is continued in chap, xviii., below.
CHAPTER VII
THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL (1853-1854)
THE divergent interests of the sections were such that the calm produced by the general acqui- escence in the compromise of 1850 could not have endured indefinitely; sooner or later the slumber- ing antagonism must have been aroused. Never- theless, the measure which disturbed the national quiet and led to a sudden sharp revival of the sec- tional struggle, seems to have been at that time an undeniable political blunder. At the opening of the session of Congress in December, 1853, there was no federal territory where the status of slavery was not fixed by some law bearing the character of an agree- ment between the sections ; and the federal govern- ment and most of the state governments were in the hands of a party committed to the carrying-out of the compromise measures. In his first annual mes- sage, Pierce congratulated the country upon its calm, and added: ' 1 That this repose is to suffer no shock during my official term if I have power to avert it, those who placed me here may be assured." 1
1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, V., 222.
1854] KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL
95
Among minor matters requiring consideration at this time was that of a territorial organization for the region known as Nebraska, comprising that part of the old Louisiana purchase west of Iowa and Mis- souri. It was still mainly left to Indian tribes, and had few white inhabitants, but there was a growing desire in western Missouri for a chance to settle in the territory, and a need for protecting the transcon- tinental wagon route. Hence, Douglas, of Illinois, introduced a series of bills for that purpose, one of which passed the House in 1853, but was blocked in the Senate. Nothing in the bill nor in the language of any of its supporters indicated the idea that the prohibition of slavery in Nebraska by the Missouri Compromise was affected.1 There was, therefore, nothing to connect the proposed measure with any danger to the political calm.
January 4, 1854, Douglas reported to the Senate from the committee on territories a new Nebraska bill which added to the formal sections a proviso permitting the territory to enter the Union when it became a state, "with or without slavery." The accompanying report said, in substance, that since many southerners thought the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and since the principle of non- intervention had been established by the compromise of 1850, it was advisable to treat all territories as New Mexico and Utah had been dealt with.2 The
1 Cong. Globe, 32 Cong., 2 Sess., 11 13 (March 3, 1853).
2 Senate Reports, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 15.
96
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
bill apparently left the existing prohibition of slavery undisturbed and yet indirectly authorized the in- habitants to disregard it.
Douglas appears to have introduced this singular and startling proposition entirely on his own mo- tion,1 and its purpose seems to have been nothing more nor less than an effort on the part of a presi- dential candidate to secure favor in a quarter where he lacked popularity. Douglas was too thorough a Democrat in person and in feeling to be regarded with sympathy by the aristocratic south, and if he was to be successful in the Democratic national con- vention of 1856, he saw that he must somehow gain southern approbation. He undoubtedly thought that by applying the "principle of non-interven- tion," so successful in allaying discord since 1850, he could win the applause of the south and retain the support of all conservatives at the north who were committed to upholding as a finality the similar ar- rangement in the cases of Utah and New Mexico. That his bill would produce a revolution in politics and do more than any one thing to precipitate civil war never entered his head. His action was based on a total failure to comprehend the veiled sectional- ism of the time and a still deeper inability to grasp the moral bearing of the anti-slavery feeling of the north. At no time in all his relations with the sla- very controversy did Douglas show any other cri- terion than that of immediate political success ; and 1 Cong. Globe, 33 Cong., 2 Sess., 216.
1 854] KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL
hence all his energy and ability led him ultimately to disaster.
Instantly the question rose as to the exact mean- ing of the bill, and Douglas was promptly obliged to forsake his vagueness, for on January 16 Dixon, of Kentucky, offered an amendment expressly repealing the Missouri Compromise ; and the next day Sumner responded by offering one expressly reaffirming that clause. It now became necessary for Douglas to commit himself, and with reluctance he decided to risk everything, to accept the principle of the Dixon amendment, and to take the consequences.1 The first step was to secure the approval of the president, and in this Jefferson Davis, secretary of war, acted as intermediary. In an interview on January 22, Pierce gave his assent,2 for he too was thinking of 1856 and could not risk offending southern sup- porters. Pierce's conduct has been severely criti- cised in view of his pledge to allow no disturbance of the existing repose. A far-sighted leader would have foreseen the dangers involved in such a radical proposal as the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; but Pierce was not far-sighted nor was he in any sense a leader. He was simply a man of moderate abilities, 'good intentions, and personally attractive qualities, who was wholly dominated by his party and its acknowledged leaders.
1 Dixon, Hist, of Missouri Compromise, 442-450.
2 Davis, Confederate Government, I., 28; Webster, "The Re- sponsibility for Secession," in Pol. Set. Quart., VIII., 278.
98 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
The bill was again reported by Douglas on the 24th, with new provisions, by which the Missouri Compromise was openly repealed, on the ground that it was " superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850," and the territory was divided into two parts, that lying west of Missouri to be called Kansas, the rest to remain as Nebraska. It was clearly intended by this last change to prepare Kansas for settlement by the Missourians; while Nebraska, with the larger limits, was left to the slower process of northern immigration. At the same time the Washington Union, reputed to be Pierce's organ, printed an editorial saying that the administration approved the Kansas-Nebraska bill and regarded it as "a test of Democratic ortho- doxy." 1 The proposition was now fairly before the country.
By this time the public at the north realized that something startling was under way, and newspapers began to spread the alarm that Douglas and the administration were attempting to open the terri- tories to slavery and disturb the existing equilibrium. Whig and Democratic, as well as Free Soil, papers grew extremely bitter in their comments when the bill was reported in its second form. Then appeared, January 24, a solemn and impassioned protest, writ- ten by Chase and signed by the group of third-party men in Congress, entitled the "Appeal of the Inde-
1 January 24, 1854: quoted by Rhodes, United States, I., 441; cf. Webster, in Pol. Sci. Quart., VIII., 227.
1854] KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL
pendent Democrats in Congress to the people of the United States." They called upon the people of the north to oppose the passage of the bill by every pos- sible means of protest; they arraigned it in strong language as " a gross violation of a sacred pledge ; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights ; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot " ; they called the repeal- ing clause, with its reference to the compromise of 1850, "a manifest falsification of the truth of His- tory"; they accused Douglas of criminal ambition, and in conclusion they asked: "Will the people per- mit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game ? " 1 By the time de- bate opened, the interest of the whole country was concentrated upon the measure, and sectional pas- sions were rising with alarming rapidity.
Then followed one of the most desperate contests in the history of Congress. In the Senate the debate lasted from January 30, almost without interrup- tion, until March 3. It was seen from the start that, with the Democratic administration and most of the southern Whigs to aid him, Douglas was secure of passing his bill through the Senate ; but the debating strength of the minority was totally unexpected, and the country hung upon the speeches with unrelaxing tension. Douglas began with a savage personal at- tack upon Chase and the Independent Democrats, whom he accused of having " applied coarse epithets by name" to him in their address, and of stirring
1 National Era, January 24, 1854; cf. Hart, Chase, 138-143.
IOO
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
the alarm of the north by deception. "This tor- nado," he cried, "has been raised by Abolitionists and Abolitionists alone. They have made an impres- sion upon the public mind . . . by a falsification of the law and of the facts." 1
On the other side the assailants of the bill replied with exasperating emphasis, especially Chase, who in this debate reached in many respects the highest point of his senatorial career. He spoke not merely for the small third-party group, but for the entire north, and in strength of argument, boldness, and directness of attack he took the leadership. He tore the sham features from the bill with merciless hand. "The truth is," he said, "the Compromise acts of 1850 were not intended to introduce any principle of territorial organization to any other territory except that covered by them. . . . Senators, will you unite in a statement which you know to be contradicted by the history of the country? ... If you wish to break up the time-honored compact embodied in the Missouri Compromise, ... do it openly, do it boldly. Repeal the Missouri prohibition. Do not declare it 'inoperative' because 'superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850/ . . . You may pass it here," he continued, "it may become law. But its effect will be to satisfy all thinking men that no com- promises with slavery will endure, except so long as they serve the interests of slavery. . . . This discus- sion will hasten the inevitable reorganization of par- 1 Cong. Globe, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., 279.
1854] KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 101
ties upon the new issues. ... It will light up a fire in the country which may, perhaps, consume those who kindle it." 1
Besides Chase, Sumner spoke for the Free Dem- ocrats, Seward for the anti-slavery Whigs, and Ev- erett for the Webster Whigs, all opposing the bill on the ground of its violation of national faith. Another recruit was Chase's colleague, Wade, who up to this time had made no strong impression on the Senate, but who now found a proper field for his rough and aggressive manner in assailing the south and the Democrats. Without Douglas's wonderful adroitness he had much of Douglas's strength in in- vective, and was from this time among the foremost northern combatants.
On the other side long speeches were made by the leading southern senators; but the real defence of the bill rested with Douglas, who showed in this con- test an ability in parliamentary combat unequalled by any of his opponents. His arguments, whether good or bad, were presented in such a manner as to appear plausible and reasonable. He dwelt at length upon the futility of mere laws to exclude or establish slavery in any territory, asserting that the Northwest Ordinance, the Missouri Compromise, and the Oregon act had been mere superfluities, the real decision in every case having been made by the settlers in those regions. Hence he insisted upon the universal ap- plicability of the "principle of non-intervention/' 1 Cong. Globe, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., App., 139, 140.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
claiming the authority of Clay for its support. Fur- ther, he repeatedly assailed the Missouri Compromise as in no sense a real compact, and by continually attacking minor defects in his opponents' reasoning made it appear that they and not he were on the defensive before the country.
In the final session Douglas kept up a running debate single-handed against Seward, Sumner, Ever- ett, and Chase, and showed himself more than their equal, closing by a series of bitterly personal attacks upon Chase and Sumner. He accused them of enter- ing the Senate "by corrupt bargain, or a dishonor- able coalition in which their character, principles and honor were set up at public auction or private sale. . . . Why," he concluded, "can we not adopt the principle of this bill as a rule of action in all terri- torial organizations ? Why can we not deprive these agitators of their vocation? ... I believe that the peace, the harmony and the perpetuity of the union require us to go back to the doctrines of the Revolu- tion, to the principles of the Constitution, to the principles of the Compromise of 1850, and leave the people, under the Constitution, to do as they may see proper in respect to their own internal affairs." 1
However much Douglas might attempt to restate his proposition in a form more attractive to the north, the issue was the naked one of opening to the introduction of slaves a territory from which they had hitherto been excluded. Chase and Sum- 1 Cong. Globe, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., App., 337, 338.
1854] KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 103
ner continually offered amendments designed to em- phasize this fact, but their propositions were voted down without ceremony by the administration ma- jority. The only amendments of importance were two providing that the old laws of Louisiana recog- nizing slavery should not be revived; and limiting the right to acquire and hold land to American citi- zens. Douglas further accepted an amendment elim- inating the equivocal phrase " superseded by" the compromise of 1850, and substituting the words " inconsistent with." A proviso was also added, declaring it to be "the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way." Benton sneered at this as "a little stump speech injected in the belly of the bill." 1 In this form the measure was finally passed, March 3, 1854, by a vote of 37 to 14. The majority was composed of 28 Dem- ocrats, northern and southern, and 9 southern Whigs. The minority comprised 2 Free-Soilers, 6 northern Whigs, 1 southern Whig — Bell, of Tennessee — 4 northern Democrats, and 1 southern Democrat — Houston, of Texas.
The struggle was now transferred to the House, but when, on motion of Richardson, of Illinois, Doug- las's lieutenant, the bill was taken up on March 21, it was placed on the calendar of the committee of the 1 Cong. Globe, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., App., 559.
VOL. XVIII. — 8
164 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
whole by a vote of no to 95. With fifty others ahead of it, the measure seemed placed beyond the reach of legislation ; but it was generally recognized that it was not dead, The willingness of the " Hard ' ' faction of New York Democrats to harass the presi- dent caused this apparent defeat, and not a genuine opposition to the bill. Still for weeks it was in abeyance and the country remained in suspense.
Meanwhile the members of Congress and the ad- ministration were treated to an explosion of fury in the north which surpassed anything in the memory of living men. At a breath the contented calm of 1853 vanished in a storm of anger towards Douglas, Pierce, and the south. From outraged conservatives who saw their cherished compromise disturbed, to radical anti-slavery men who fiercely welcomed the bill as an unmasking of the perfidy of the " slave power," arose a tempest of protest. Editorials and public letters were followed by meetings, without distinction of party, to denounce the bill, at first singly in the large cities, then by dozens, scores, hun- dreds in nearly every county and town of the free states. Five northern legislatures passed resolutions of protest. Ministers of all denominations preached sermons against "the Nebraska iniquity," and from them and from thousands of others petitions and remonstrances of every sort began to pour in upon Congress.1
On the other side the bill received scant applause. 1 Rhodes, United States, I., 463-488
1854] KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 105
Those in the northern states who did not object to it were silent in the tumult of denunciation, and only a few administration newspapers attempted any de- fence of the measure. Three Democratic legislat- ures refused to take any action in the matter, and the only one to pass approving resolutions was that of Illinois, Douglas's own constituency. In the south the general feeling was at first indifference, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under Douglas's leadership was regarded as a northern affair; but when the rising anti-slavery excitement became evident, southern newspapers rallied to up- hold Pierce. Still, vigorous popular support to counterbalance the northern agitation was lacking.
In the face of this storm the administration showed a fighting spirit. However much Pierce may have regretted the demon he had conjured up, Doug- las and Davis were not the men to yield, and it soon appeared that every sort of official pressure was to be used to put the bill through the House. The cabinet, excepting Marcy and McClelland, who held aloof, worked heartily to whip waverers into line by the use of patronage; and the Union, the administra- tion mouth-piece, let it be clearly understood that no Democrat who forsook his party at this crisis could hope for further favors.1
On May 8, accordingly, with a majority stiffened up by these means, Richardson, of Illinois, strongly aided by Stephens, of Georgia, forced the fighting.
1 March 7, March 22, 1854.
io6 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
The original Kansas-Nebraska bill was too deeply buried for resurrection, but by laying aside eighteen other bills in succession, another Nebraska bill, in- troduced into the House earlier in the session, was finally reached, and to this Richardson moved the Senate bill as a substitute. This manoeuvre was successful by a vote of about 109 to 88, but the oppo- sition, keyed up to unwonted obstinacy by the popu- lar excitement, were not discouraged from a desperate resistance. On May 11 Richardson moved to close debate, whereat the minority, led by Campbell, of Ohio, Mace, of Indiana, and Washburne, of Illinois, began a contest of determined filibustering. For over two days, in continuous session, the minority consumed time by incessant roll-calls, motions to ad- journ, requests to be excused from voting, and every other device within the rules of the House, while feel- ing ran continually higher, language grew harsher, and popular excitement grew more intense. The Senate was unable to keep a quorum, for its mem- bers were watching from the galleries while Douglas steered affairs on the floor of the House. Finally, late in the second night, when all were angry and many were inflamed with liquor, a personal alterca- tion between Campbell and Stephens and Seward, of Georgia, nearly brought on a free fight.1 Only the utmost exertions of the speaker, Boyd, of Kentucky, succeeded in securing an adjournment.
1 Cong. Globe, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., 1183; Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, 224.
1854] KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 107
Then followed more days of bitter altercation, but, on a second trial, Richardson obtained a vote to close debate on May 20. The opposition could not have had any real hope of defeating the bill by obstruction, for there was no fixed end to the session nor was there any sign of weakening among the majority; yet, led by the indefatigable Campbell, they still fought on with dilatory motions and amendments until, by a clever trick, Stephens man- aged to force a vote on the night of May 22. The bill passed, 113 to 100. The majority was composed of 101 Democrats, northern and southern, and 12 southern Whigs; the minority comprised no less than 42 northern Democrats and 2 southern ones who defied the administration, together with 45 northern and 7 southern Whigs and 4 Free Demo- crats. Since the bill as passed left out the provision restricting land-holding to citizens, it went back to the Senate, which concurred, after a brief debate, on May 25, by 35 to 12. May 30 Pierce signed it, and the Kansas-Nebraska bill became law.
No act more fateful in character ever passed the Congress of the United States, for it set in motion the train of political changes which led straight to the Civil War. It was the direct cause of a radical alteration of northern political feeling, of the total failure of the compromising or Union policy of 1850, and of the destruction of both the national parties. The suddenness of its introduction, the recklessness of its disturbance of the territorial situation, were
io8 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
such as to make an instant powerful impression ; and the members of Congress who passed it realized, when the session finally ended in August, that they had begun a political revolution whose end no man could foresee.
CHAPTER VIII
PARTY CHAOS IN THE NORTH (1854)
UPON parties, the sudden anger which swept the north in 1854 produced revolutionary effects. At the opening of the year the Democratic party controlled the federal government and most of the state governments north and south, and was loyally supported in each section: The opposing Whig party, though discouraged by defeat and conscious of sharp differences between its southern and north- ern wings, was still formidable in numbers and not without hope of recovering, as the Democrats had recovered after 1840. That the Free Democratic party should ever supplant it as the rival of the Democrats was beyond the bounds of probability, for the third party was weakened by its radicalism and discredited by its habit of coalitions in nearly every state for the sake of gaining office.
All calculations based on previous experience were upset, however, by the craze of anger and excite- ment over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The Whig party, paralyzed by differences between its northern and southern wings, could reap no ad-
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
vantage from the blunder of the Pierce adminis- tration, for most of its northern members, turning in despair from the old organization as something stale and inadequate, welcomed the opportunity to unite with anti-slavery Democrats and Free-Soilers in order to administer a stunning rebuke to the party in power. The more radical anti-slavery men favored a sectional northern party formed to com- bat the south and the extension of slavery. Others desired not so much a new anti-southern as a new anti - Democratic organization. It was an oppor- tunity where a great leader, a man of the Clay or Webster stamp, was needed to assume control; or in default of such a personality, a group of men able to direct public action. No such leaders appeared, however, and the new forces worked themselves out at random in the several states, with the result that the political tornado which now blew the Whig party to fragments left chaos in its place.
The radicals acted first : even before the passage of the bill an outcry went up for a new party; in April the first steps were taken, and by June the newspapers throughout the north were filled with appeals for a union of all honest men to rebuke the broken faith and violated pledges of the south. The members of Congress who had opposed the bill joined in issuing an address calling for united action in the next congressional election, and a number of them fell in heartily with the new party idea.1 There was 1 Wilson, Slave Power, II., 410.
PARTY CHAOS
in
nothing, however, resembling any central control, and the leaders in the state elections were left un- trammelled and unaided.
The region where the desire for a new anti-sla very- organization proved strongest was the "Old North- west." There Whiggery was less popular, for the party had been in a minority for years and the name had little of the social prestige which attached to it in the east and south. Consequently the opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska bill were able in these states to form a coalition in the summer of 1 854. In Michi- gan a state mass convention at Jackson nominated, on July 6, a mixed ticket of Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers, and adopted a new name, that of Re- publicans. Their resolutions, the first Republican party platform, placed the new body squarely on anti-slavery grounds by declaring slavery a "moral, social and political evil," denouncing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as "an open and undis- guised breach of faith," demanding the repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska act and the fugitive-slave law, and pledging the party to act under the name Republican " against the schemes of an aristocracy the most re- volting and the most repressive the earth has ever witnessed." 1 In Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana sim- ilar " people's " conventions met July 13, the anniver- sary of the Northwest Ordinance, brought about a union of anti-slavery elements, and organized for the fall campaign. Their enthusiasm, the vigor of their
1 Curtis, Republican Party, I., 188-190.
H2 PARTIES AND SLAVERY 1854
resolutions, and the promptness with which the Whig and Free Soil parties vanished in these states re- vealed the deep feeling aroused by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In the two other western states the same result was attained by Whig and Free Soil fusion. In Iowa, the Free Democratic party withdrew its own ticket and indorsed Grimes, the Whig candidate for governor, who ran on an anti-Nebraska platform.1 In Illinois, an attempt to form an anti-Nebraska party proved abortive, since the movement fell into the hands of radical Free-Soilers with whom Illinois Whigs had little in common, yet the elements of opposition finally man- aged to unite on a state ticket.2
In congressional nominations the same process was carried through ; in nearly every district in the north the opponents of the administration uniting upon a distinctively anti-Nebraska candidate. In this way there appeared the beginnings of a purely sectional northern party, whose controlling senti- ment was indignation towards the south and a de- termination to oppose the extension of slavery by restoring the Missouri Compromise, or by some new means of effectual restriction.
This movement, however, although the logical out- come of the crisis, failed in the eastern states owing to two obstacles, one foreseen and one utterly unex-
1 Salter, Grimes, 33.
2 Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 295; Harris, Negro Servitude in Illinois, 189.
1 8 54] PARTY CHAOS 113
pected. As was apprehended from the start, the conservative elements of the Whig party in the states east of Ohio refused to abandon their ranks. The Whig state convention of Massachusetts, while declaring itself "unalterably opposed to the exten- sion of slavery over one foot of territory now free," resolved "that the Whig party of Massachusetts, ever true to liberty, the Constitution, and the Union, needs not to abandon its organization or change its principles."1 With many anti- slavery Whigs the position of Senator Seward was decisive. He was without doubt the leader of anti-slavery sentiment in the party in the greatest state in the Union, and his political weight was such that, had he chosen, he could have decided the immediate formation of a strong northern organization. But Seward and Weed, his mentor, were thorough-going, practical politicians, and hesitated to leave the safe shelter of the regular Whig organization for the doubtful ad- vantages of a tumultuous popular movement. In the Nebraska debate, Seward had been careful to speak always as the Whig, and now he concerned himself mainly with securing his re-election as sena- tor.2 In two eastern states, New York and Vermont, the anti-Nebraska men adopted the Whig ticket; elsewhere they let it alone. The only eastern state where the Republican party as such was successfully
1 Boston Advertiser, August 17, 1854.
2 Bancroft, Seward, I., 367; Scisco, Political Nativism, 114 et seq.
ii4 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1850
formed was Maine, where a coalition of Free-Soilers and Temperance Democrats adopted the name.1 In Massachusetts a convention was called to form the party but it proved almost a fiasco.
These hesitating movements of undecided Whigs were rendered unimportant by a totally unexpected political phenomenon which suddenly burst upon the scene. In the spring of 1854 it began to be rumored that a new secret political society was spreading everywhere, and by summer it was evident that this body, whose members affected ignorance of its name, principles, or officers, was going to play a strong part in the coming elections.2 The " Order of the Star- Spangled Banner" had been in existence since 1850 as one of several societies opposed to the influence of foreigners and Catholics in politics. The presence of immigrants of alien speech and clannish habits, visibly controlled by their priests, was resented by American-born working-men as early as 1843, when Native American parties were formed in municipal elections in some of the large cities. This movement died down, but after 1850 the rapid influx of Irish and Germans, who stayed in the cities, and seemed to be debasing local politics besides competing with native working-men, led to a revival of alarm.3
At the same time a number of incidents in the
1 Willey, Anti-Slavery Cause, 436-449.
2 Scisco, Political Nativism, chap. ii.
3 Haynes, "Causes of Know-Nothing Success," in Am. Hist. Rev., HI., 67.
PARTY CHAOS
United States, joined to the known reactionary policy of Pope Pius IX., rendered the Roman church offensive to radicals. Archbishop Hughes, an ag- gressive prelate, attacked the New York public school system, objecting especially to the use of the Bible. Then, in 1853, when Bedini, a papal nuncio, came to America to settle a question of the owner- ship of church property at issue between the bishop of Buffalo and the trustees of the church, his decision in favor of the bishop was regarded as unfriendly and his mission was resented as an attempt at dictation.1 In 1853 and 1854 agitators began to appear who de- nounced Jesuits, the pope, the Catholic clergy, and Catholicism as dangerous to the state. Prominent among these was Alessandro Gavazzi, an ex-priest who had been active in the revolution of 1848 and now made tours of England and the United States, stirring great public interest by his savage attacks upon the papacy and the Catholic church. Soon riots began between the Catholic Irish and the "Know-Nothings," as the members of the secret orders were commonly called, and the year 1854 was marked by tumults of alarming proportions in New York and other large cities, where an agitator styling himself "the angel Gabriel" followed in Gavazzi's track.2
Of course this movement had no connection with the Kansas-Nebraska excitement; yet it was un-
1 Schmeckebier, Know-Nothing Party in Maryland, 46-60.
2 Scisco, Political Nativism, 84-105.
n6 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
deniably hostile to the party which contained within its ranks the Germans and Irish. Accordingly, when the wrath over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise spread like wildfire over the north, thousands of men who burned to rebuke the Pierce administration, but saw no hope in the conservative Whig organiza- tion, found this new, aggressively American order ready to receive them. Secrecy and the charm of novelty had for the moment a powerful effect ; and the "Order of the Star-Spangled Banner" suddenly grew to double, triple, and finally a hundredfold. Other similar orders flourished, and by the end of the summer of 1854 the anti-Nebraska excitement was paralleled by a new and unexpected anti-foreign agitation.
The order was well suited for sudden expansion, for its guidance lay in the hands of a few men, the initiates of the highest of the three ' 'degrees" con- ferred, who alone knew the order's name and were eligible for its dignities. The local councils were united by a grand council for each state, and, after 1854, by a national council, whose decisions were binding upon the whole body. Since the men who directed this new institution were, as a rule, little known in public life, the Whig and Democratic lead- ers were at first contemptuous and indifferent. Later, as the craze spread, the old-line politicians became alarmed but could exert no influence. Some, seeing a chance for personal advantage, joined the order, but more waited to see what the outcome would be.
PARTY CHAOS
117
One thing became steadily clearer, that thousands of anti-slavery men were rushing into this secret society as the best way to strike at the administra- tion, regardless of the utter absence of relation be- tween the anti-Catholic issue and the Kansas-Ne- braska act. By the autumn, in spite of the profound mystery attached to the movements of the Know- Nothings, it was known that they had nominated tickets in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsyl- vania, and all were curious to see how the experiment would turn out.
Against this storm of angry but confused attack, the Democratic party, too firmly committed to avoid the issue, made a sullen though stubborn fight. In the south neither the anti-Nebraska nor the " Know- Nothing" movements had any effect this year; but in the north the party found itself at a great disad- vantage with no effective reply to its opponents. Few of the Democratic newspapers defended the Kansas-Nebraska act in more than a perfunctory way, yet the party stood unflinchingly by Douglas's "principle of non-intervention" with slavery in the territories, and raised the cry of intolerance against the new Native Americans. The campaign went on with great fury. Congressional and state candi- dates thundered on the stump against the adminis- tration, ringing the changes on the " Nebraska swin- dle," "perfidy," "enormity," and "outrage." Doug- las was the target for unmeasured abuse, hailed as Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot, insulted in pub-
n8 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
lie speeches and private letters, and burned in effigy from Maine to Illinois.1 When he appeared before the people of Chicago to defend his work, he was howled down and threatened with stones and pistols until, having faced his opponents with unbending courage for hours, he yielded to his friends and aban- doned the effort.2 The north had known no such campaign since the days of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."
When the elections came off, the results of the year of excitement became visible. In the north- west, where the opposition was united in an anti- Nebraska or Republican fusion, it carried every state except Illinois ; but in the eastern states the confu- sion of parties almost defied description. Voters were confronted with three or even four tickets: Republican, anti-Nebraska, Peoples', Fusion, Know- Nothing, Free Soil, Whig, Democratic, "Hard" and "Soft" Democrat, anti-Maine Law or "Rum" Dem- ocrat, and Temperance candidates. The Republican or Whig-Free- Soil-Temperance fusion carried Maine, Vermont, and, by a narrow margin, New York; but these successes were cast into the shadow by the astoundingly sudden rise of the Know-Not hings. This hitherto unknown party, with no public cam- paign at all, cast over one-quarter of the total vote in New York, more than two-fifths in Pennsylvania, and nearly two -thirds in Massachusetts, electing
1 Cutts, Constitutional and Party Questions, 96, 98-101. 3 Sheahan, Douglas, 271.
PARTY CHAOS
119
every state officer and nearly every member of the legislature. In other states great numbers of the candidates elected as Republicans or anti-Nebraska men were also Know-Not hings, and the effect of the rebuke to the Pierce administration was almost lost sight of in the general amazement over the rise of the new order. Douglas did not hesitate to claim that the whole anti-Nebraska campaign had mis- carried.1
There could be no doubt, however, that the Demo- crats suffered a severe defeat. Nine states had been taken from their control, and among the congressmen elected up to January, 1855, there was an actual loss to the administration of sixty-two seats. Moreover, the legislatures of a number of northern states chose senators in the winter of 1855, all of whom, wheth- er Know -Nothing or not, were undoubtedly anti- slavery in principles. Prominent among those re- elected were Seward from New York and Hale from New Hampshire; among new senators, Colla- mer, a Seward Whig from Vermont, and Lyman Trumbull, an anti-slavery Democrat from Illinois. The verdict here was unmistakable
At the end of 1854 the future of politics seemed all guesswork, for the tempest over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was dying down and the Know- Nothings occupied for the moment the place of chief public interest. The last session of the thirty-third Congress was tame and uninteresting, with some dis-
1 Congressional Globe, 33 Cong., 2 Sess., App. 216.
VOL. XVIII. 9
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cussion of the anti-foreign craze and slight reference to the slavery question. There seemed to be noth- ing pressing for an Anti-Nebraska party to do but to await the actual working of affairs in the territory; and, meanwhile, it looked as though the result of the whole episode was to be the creation of a national party on the anti-Catholic issue. Nothing in Ameri- can political history is more remarkable than the way in which the voters of the northern states re- sponded to the excitement of 1854. Except in the northwest, their action was so far from being what any one would have predicted that it seemed scarcely credible. The diversion of the fierce anti-southern anger of the eastern states into the construction of a party whose professed principles were absolutely un- related to the measures which caused the upheaval seemed utterly inexplicable on rational grounds. The outcome remained to be seen.
CHAPTER IX
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY IN KANSAS (1854-1856)
THE immediate result of the Kansas - Nebraska act was to revolutionize parties in the north; but its ultimate outcome was to lead the country to the verge of civil war by creating an intense rivalry in the territory which it opened to settlement. When the bill passed, the general opinion was that while Nebraska would develop into a free community, Kansas was practically assured as a slave state ; for its geographical position marked it out as the field for immigration from Missouri, the lower Mississippi Valley, and Kentucky and Tennessee, rather than from the states to the north of the Ohio River. Although the southern leaders did not initiate the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, they gladly wel- comed the apparently undoubted opportunity to gain an additional slave state to counterbalance California in the Senate. The first settlers in Kan- sas came from western Missouri, and before the end of 1854 many of them took up claims along the Mis- souri and Kansas rivers, founding the little towns of Kickapoo, Leavenworth, and Atchison, and bringing
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a few slaves with them. " Popular sovereignty," as established by Douglas, seemed to mean exactly what the southern leaders desired.
But the indignation among northern men over the opening of Kansas and Nebraska to slave-holders now led to an entirely unforeseen attempt to turn the principle of 1 'popular sovereignty " against the south itself, by securing a majority of anti-slavery settlers in Kansas, the very region conceded to the slave-holders. Even before the passage of the bill, steps were taken which led to the formation of a New England Emigrant Aid Society, organized by Eli Thayer, of Worcester, and largely supported by Amos Lawrence and others of the wealthiest and most prominent men of Massachusetts.1 The pur- pose of this corporation was to assist the emigra- tion of genuine settlers — not necessarily abolitionists or even anti-Nebraska men — who were unwilling to see Kansas made into a slave state; the society did not enlist men as recruits, but was ready to assist applicants by loaning capital for mills and hotels and by furnishing supplies and transporta- tion. In the summer of 1854 the first band of northern settlers reached Kansas, and others soon followed. With them, although not under the au- spices of the society, came other immigrants from New York and the states of the "Old Northwest," looking for farms in the fertile valleys of the Kansas and its tributaries. Soon a new community, hold-
1 Thayer, Kansas Crusade, chap. ii.
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
123
ing aloof from the Missourian settlements, was plant- ed near the town of Lawrence, named in honor of the principal patron of the Emigrant Aid Society, and the country became aware that the settlement of the territory was taking on an unusual and ominous form.1
This "invasion" of Kansas by northern immi- grants brought sharply to the front one of the many hazy points in Douglas's "popular sovereignty." When, under the law, was the decision to be made regarding the existence of slavery ? Must it be post- poned till a state constitution was framed, or could it be made at any earlier time? The full southern theory, announced by Calhoun as early as 1847, and held by most southerners in 1854, was that there could be no interference with slavery by either Con- gress or the territorial legislature, no community ex- cept a state being competent to make a decision. Douglas would not commit himself on this point, but a very general impression prevailed in the north that the principle of popular or "squatter sovereignty" would permit the inhabitants of a territory to decide the point for themselves as soon as they chose. All saw, northern and southern men alike, that in de- fault of any positive protection of slavery by law, actual control of the territorial government by anti- slavery men would effectually prevent Kansas from ever becoming a slave state.
xCf. contemporary accounts of the difficulties in Kansas, in Hart, Am. Hist, told by Contemporaries, IV., §§ 36-40.
124 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
This danger was perceived as soon as the organized eastern emigration began, and a thrill of indignation ran through Missouri and the entire south.1 The actual purpose of the Emigrant Aid Society was wholly misunderstood, and the extent of its opera- tions exaggerated beyond all measure. It was be- lieved to be a corporation with unbounded resources, formed for the purpose of holding Kansas by force, sending out hordes of mercenaries, mostly abolition- ists, enemies of God and man, provisioned, and armed to the teeth to seize Kansas from legitimate southern emigrants. They are "a band of Hessian mercenaries," said a committee of Missourians, in an address to the people of the United States. "To call these people emigrants is a sheer perversion of language. They were not sent to cultivate the soil. . . . They have none of the marks of the old pio- neers. If not clothed and fed by the same power which has effected their transportation they would starve. They are hirelings — an army of hirelings. . . . They are military colonies of reckless and des- perate fanatics." 2
The sense of unfairness and unjust aggression which the operations of the Emigrant Aid Society, as seen through these distorted rumors, excited in the south, was as keen in its way as the northern indignation had been over the repeal of the slavery restriction. The Missourians and southerners in
1 Carr, Missouri, 241-256.
2 Richmond Enquirer, October 5, 1855.
i854] POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 125
general felt that the attempt to settle Kansas with northern emigrants was a direct effort to take from them what was rightfully theirs, and they were at once driven into a counter - effort to defeat this aggression by controlling the territorial government from the start in the interests of slavery.1 The con- test thus begun not only convulsed Kansas, but speedily shook the country from end to end.
The first open conflict between the opposing forces came in the autumn of 1854. The territorial governor, appointed by Pierce to carry the Kansas - Nebraska act into effect, was Andrew H. Reeder, a Pennsylvania Democrat, who announced his entire willingness to see Kansas become a slave state, a man of an excitable temperament, wholly unprepared and to a large degree unfitted for the task which he found thrust upon him. No sooner had he arrived and named November 29 for the election of a terri- torial delegate than the storm broke. On that day over sixteen hundred armed men from the western counties of Missouri, who had been organized in " Blue Lodges" for the purpose of making Kansas a slave state, marched into the territory under the leadership of United States Senator Atchison, and cast votes for Whitfield, a former Indian agent and a southerner, as territorial delegate. Owing possi- bly to the general confusion in the region, as well as to his desire to avoid trouble, Reeder raised no ob- jection to this illegality ; nor did the House hesitate 1 Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, 344.
126 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1854
to admit Whitfield to a seat in December, 1854, and the Missourian invasion, although known in the east, aroused little comment in the whirl of the Republican and Know-Nothing campaign.
During the winter of 185 4- 1855, the Missourians appealed to the south to prevent the swamping of the slave-holders in Kansas by a flood of New Eng- land abolitionists. More money, more settlers and arms must be supplied if Kansas was to be kept as a slave state. "Two thousand slaves actually in Kansas," urged B. P. Stringfellow, a Missouri leader, " will make a slave state out of it. Once fairly there nobody will disturb them." 1 By the spring of 1855 the excitement in Missouri had become intense, and when Reeder ordered the election of a territorial leg- islature for March 30, it was felt that the decisive moment was at hand. Although a census of the territory, taken in February, 1855, showed that out of a total of 8601 inhabitants more than half came from the south, and less than seven hundred came from New England, the Missourians felt it would not do to leave anything to chance. On the election day, at least five thousand armed and organized men, led by Atchison, Stringfellow, and others, invaded the ter- ritory, took possession of the polls in nearly every district, overawed or drove away the election judges, and cast 6307 ballots.2 The northern immigrants,
1 Spring, Kansas, 27.
2 House Reports, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 200, pp. 9-35; Robin* son, Kansas, 27.
1855] POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 127
most of them utterly unused to violence, and all un- prepared for such a performance, were too astound- ed and alarmed to make any effective protest ; and when Reeder was called upon to declare the returns he found himself surrounded by Missourians, while he had scarcely any independent supporters.
Had Reeder possessed the courage to declare the entire election fraudulent, the history of the territory and of the country might have been different ; but he did no more than to throw out returns from seven contested districts, and gave certificates of election to the remaining members, who, when they met as a legislature, promptly unseated the seven Free-Soil- ers. Kansas was thus organized with a legislature composed wholly of pro -slavery men, and the south scored the first success in the contest. The victory was won, however, by fraud and violence, and the whole theory of peaceful " popular sovereignty" vanished into thin air.
Very significant were the different ways in which the two sections regarded this election. Upon the people of the north it produced an impression of horror and disgust. "The impudence of this at- tempt," said Greeley, "is paralleled only by its atrocity. ... If a man can be found in the Free State to counsel the surrender of Kansas to the Slave power, he is a coward and slave in soul." 1 In the south, on the contrary, it was universally regarded as an act of justifiable self-defence against the un-
1 N. Y. Tribune, April 12, 1855.
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fair encroachments of the north; one invasion had simply been answered by another one in behalf of the right. In no clearer way could the differing standards of the north and the south be contrasted.
To the unfortunate Reeder now fell the duty of co-operating as governor with the legislature chosen by the 4 'Border Ruffians," as the Missourians began to be called. First he showed by his conduct what a revolution had been worked by his six months' experience in his views regarding slavery and slave- holders, for in returning to Washington to consult the president, he made a speech in Pennsylvania which told the story of the election in detail.1 When he reached Washington he found himself the object of a growing southern dislike and suspicion. His failure to oppose the northern invaders, his refusal to co-operate with the Missourians, and still more his letters and speeches, earned him in southern eyes the epithets of " incompetent," "corrupt," " traitor," and " scoundrel."
Reeder found Pierce much disturbed by the grow- ing excitement in the south over Kansas affairs, and unable or unwilling to give him any support. He showed so plainly that he would welcome Reeder 's resignation that the governor offered to do so, pro- vided Pierce would give him a written statement approving his conduct; but this Pierce dared not do.2 After fruitless interviews, Reeder returned to
1 N. Y. Times, May r, 1855.
2 House Reports, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., No. ?qo, p. 937.
iSSSl POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
Kansas, with the eyes of the whole country upon him, but sure that his official career was to be a short one. The territorial legislature met in July, at Pawnee, a town without inhabitants, according to contemporary accounts, where Reeder had taken up a quantity of land. The governor's message was conciliatory, but the legislature disregarded him utterly, and, in spite of his indignant protest, ad- journed to another settlement, Shawnee Mission, on the Missouri border, where it proceeded to enact a set of laws which won immediate notoriety. Re- gardless of the Calhoun theory of the impotence of a mere territorial legislature over slavery, it passed statutes to establish and protect the institution in the territory, adopting for the purpose the text of the Missouri slave code.
The principal statute, entitled "An act to punish offences against slave property," inflicted the death penalty for inciting a slave insurrection; death or ten years at hard labor for aiding a slave to escape ; and two years at hard labor for denying "by speak- ing or writing," or by printing or introducing any printed matter, "the right of persons to hold slaves in this territory.' ' The last section also was note- worthy. "No person," it ran, "who is conscien- tiously opposed to holding slaves or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this territory, shall sit as jurors on the trial of any prosecution for any violation of any of the sections of this act." 1 The 1 Tribune Almanac, 1855, p. 13.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1855
news' of this legislation intensified the rising anger of the north. "This will suffice," said the Tribune, "if enforced, to hang nearly every anti-slavery man in the territory. . . . And upheld we presume it will be." 1 Reeder remained in office but a short time, being removed on August 15, nominally because of land speculation and "lack of sympathy with the people," but everybody knew that it was owing to his refusal to adapt himself to the pro-slavery Demo- crats.2
By this time the country was aware that a new and serious "Kansas question" was shaping itself. The anti-slavery indignation of the north, which had dwindled in the winter of 1855, now rapidly re- vived at what appeared the violent and ruthless determination on the part of the Missourians to make Kansas slave territory with or without law, justice, or a majority of voters. The south, equally aroused, was now thoroughly committed to the effort to defeat the lawless invasions of the northerners, and raised a universal voice of approval over the Missourian exploits. The Georgia Democratic con- vention of June 5, 1855, resolved, "That we sympa- thize with the friends of the slavery cause in Kansas in their manly efforts to maintain their rights and the interests of the southern people, and that we rejoice at their recent victories over the paid advent- urers and Jesuitical horde of northern abolitionism
1 N. Y. Tribune, August 16, 1855.
2 House Reports, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 200, p. 944.
i855] POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 131
. . . that the deep interest taken by the people of Missouri ... is both natural and proper, and that it is their right and duty to extend to their southern brethren in the territory every legitimate and honor- able sympathy and support." 1
In the summer of 1855 the situation in Kansas was further complicated by the sudden action of the northern settlers, who had hitherto played a passive part. Led by Dr. Charles Robinson, an aggressive, cool-headed politician, an agent of the Emigrant Aid Society, who had been in California in 1849, 2 the northerners determined to give a new demonstration of "popular sovereignty" by repudiating the terri- torial legislature as illegal and seeking admission to the Union under a state constitution. At the same time they prepared to meet force with force in case the "Border Ruffians" again invaded the territory. Rifles and ammunition were sent for, men were drilled, and "Jim" Lane, a reckless, volatile man from Indiana, with little soundness of judgment but with great natural oratorical ability, became the military chief. During September and October several mass conventions organized a "Free State party" and provided for a constitutional convention, which met duly at Topeka, October 23, comprising only delegates elected by the Free State settlers, and drew up the "Topeka Constitution" prohibiting slavery. It is worthy of note that the convention
1 Richmond Enquirer, June 11, 1855.
2 Blackmar, Robinson, chaps, ii., iii.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1855
also submitted to popular vote, simultaneously with the constitution, an ordinance prohibiting the en- trance of negroes, free or slave, into the state, a fact indicating how far from abolitionist the northern settlers were. 1 During this time occurred the regular election of a territorial delegate ; but the Free State men conducted a separate election of their own, and unanimously sent Reeder to contest the seat to which Whitfield had been re-elected by all the pro- slavery votes.
This policy of the northern settlers stirred the southern element to lively indignation and contempt. The whole south regarded the Free State movement as a trick by which the " abolitionists,' ' defeated in the election of the territorial legislature, sought none the less to gain control of the region. Missourians began to utter threats of violence, and when Shannon of Ohio, the new governor, arrived on the scene, he found the situation growing daily more menacing. Shannon, a Douglas Democrat, favorably disposed to the southern claim for Kansas, easily accepted the pro-slavery view that the Topeka constitution was a revolutionary proceeding, and in his inaugural address clearly showed that he meant to oppose the northerners. He even presided at a meeting at Leaven- worth where the pro-slavery sympathizers organized themselves into a " Law-and-Order party" to oppose the treasonable plans of the Free State people, and in a speech declared "The President is behind you!" 2
1 Holloway, Kansas, 196. 2 Spring, Kansas, 84.
1855] POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 133
By this time it was evident that " popular sover- eignty" was producing serious consequences. There were two communities in the same territory, living in separate towns and governed by separate laws. The slightest event might cause a collision, for the Missourians were true frontiersmen, habituated to the ready use of knife or gun and only waiting for a pretext to "clean out the abolition crowd." Cases of brawls and shooting became frequent. Finally, in late November, just before the time set by the Free State men for a vote upon their constitution, an episode occurred which nearly brought on civil war. A Free State man who had been arrested by Sheriff Jones, a red - hot Missourian, for uttering threats against a pro-slavery murderer, was freed by a band of northerners and taken to Lawrence. Without further delay the infuriated sheriff sent word to Missouri, and later, as an after-thought, to Shannon ; and at once about fifteen hundred excited " Border Ruffians " swarmed into the territory, to be joined by the pro-slavery, territorial, "Law-and- Order" militia. The town of Lawrence was found, however, to be surrounded by earthworks, behind which lay several hundred Free State men armed in part with the dreaded Sharps rifles, and the invad- ing force hesitated to attack. This gave time for the cooler heads on each side to work for peace; and finally Shannon, upon visiting the scene, saw that the Free State town had done nothing in the eye of the law to call for any such attack, and drew up a
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sort of treaty of peace. The Missourians withdrew in great disgust and freely announced that they were simply biding their time.1
After this bloodless affair, somewhat absurdly called the "Wakarusa War," the Free State party carried through the rest of its programme undis- turbed, except by a few brawls and shooting affrays. The Topeka constitution was ratified on December 15, and the ordinance excluding negroes adopted, and on January 15,1856^ governor and a legislature were elected. On March 4 the Topeka legislature met, and, following the cautious advice of Robinson, the governor, made no attempt for the moment to as- sume jurisdiction over the pro-slavery settlements, but adopted a memorial to Congress asking for ad- mission to the Union, and adjourned until the sum- mer to await events.
Such was the astounding result of a year and a half of " popular sovereignty" in Kansas. The or- ganized immigration from New England; the Mis- sourian retort of fraud and intimidation ; the illegal voting, and the extreme pro-slavery action of the Shawnee Mission legislature were utterly beyond the imagination of the senators and representatives who passed the bill in 1854. On the other hand, the at- tempted imitation of California by the Free State men, involving a defiance of the territorial authori- ties and an ignoring of nearly one-half of the actual inhabitants of the territory, was a total surprise to
1 Robinson, Kansas, 138; Holloway, Kansas, 249.
1856] POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
the eastern anti-Nebraska men. The settlers in Kansas, without direction from any quarter, took affairs into their own hands, and created a political situation as exciting as the original Kansas ques- tion, and far more ominous. The time had come when the federal government could not avoid taking a hand. The rival organizations, the contesting delegates, and the imminent danger of war between the factions forced Congress and the president to act. When the thirty-fourth Congress, chosen in the months of political upheaval, met in December, 1855, the attention of the whole country was fo- cussed upon the struggle for control of the territory, and sectional passions were deeply involved.
VOL. XVIII. — IO
CHAPTER X
THE FAILURE OF THE KNOW-NOTHING PARTY (1854-1856)
WHILE the course of events in Kansas was lead- ing, through violence and illegality, to the verge of civil war, national political organization was also passing through a crisis. The question before the country after the election of 1854 was whether an anti-slavery party should win the support of north- ern voters, or whether the old Whig party, compris- ing southern as well as northern members, should be revived under some new form. As the sudden anger over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise died away, and the issue of the control of the ter- ritorial government did not for a year come before Congress, old political traditions tended to draw men into organizations which claimed to be national rather than sectional, and which avoided the old danger of arousing the south and endangering the stability of the Union.
These feelings worked strongly against the Repub- lican party in the year 1855, and aided a vigorous effort, which now began, to create a successor to the old Whig party through the expansion of the Know-
1854] FAILURE OF KNOW-NOTHINGS 137
Nothings into a national organization. The nation- al council of November, 1854, adopted a new Union oath which placed the order on much the same basis as the 1 ' Union -saving" compromisers of 1850 and 1851. "You will discourage and denounce," it ran, " any attempt coming from any quarter ... to destroy or subvert it or to weaken its bonds, . . . and you will use your influence to procure an amicable adjust- ment of all political discontents or differences which may- threaten its injury or overthrow. You do fur- ther promise and swear that you will not vote for any one . . . whom you know or believe to be in favor of a dissolution of the Union ... or who is endeavoring to produce that result." 1
This action paved the way for others besides anti- slavery and anti-foreign enthusiasts to enter the organization; and in the winter and spring of 1855 councils were formed all over the United States, honey - combing the local Republican or anti- Ne- braska coalitions of the west with a Know-Nothing oath-bound membership, and practically absorbing the entire southern Whig body.2
By the spring of 1855 the wildest claims were made for the order ; it was said to have a sworn enrol- ment of over a million voters and to be able to con- trol every city and nearly every state3 in the Union.
1 Scisco, Political Nativism, 137; Cluskey. Political Text Book, 66. 3 Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy , 354-357.
'Wilson, Slave Power, II., 422; Whitney, Defence of Am. Policy, 285.
138 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1855
The spring elections turned over Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut into the hands of the Know-Nothings, and thus gave color to these asser- tions; but the Virginia campaign in May, 1855, showed that in the south the Know-Nothings were merely the Whigs under a new name. Henry A. Wise, the Democratic candidate for governor, made a powerful canvass of the state and was successful, after a savage contest, by ten thousand majority.1 Thenceforward the extravagant claims for the Know- Nothings were discounted, but although it was seen that it could not revolutionize the south, its control of the north was not yet disproved.
By this time, however, two obstacles to the tri- umphant progress of the Know-Nothing party were becoming visible. In the first place, the attitude of its northern and southern members was fundament- ally different on slavery matters. The New England Know - Nothings were anti - slavery men, who had joined the society in order to strike at the Pierce administration; and when they gained control of a state they enacted laws to obstruct the return of fugitive slaves, passed resolutions denouncing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and elected anti- slavery men to the United States Senate.2 But the southern Know-Nothings, although old Whigs, and strongly Unionist, were equally pro -slavery, and the
1 Hambleton, Political Campaign in Virginia, 233.
2 Wilson, Slave Power, II., 424; Haynes, A Know-Nothing Legislature (Am. Hist. Assoc., Report, 1896), p. 77.
1855] FAILURE OF KNOW-NOTHINGS 139
chief ground of attack against them by the southern Democrats was not so much their secret and prescrip- tive platform as the fact of their being in the same order with the New England Americans. " Know- Not hingism," said a Virginia Democratic address, " has its origin and growth in those quarters of the Union where Abolitionism is most powerful. . . . Every election in which Northern Know-Nothing- ism has triumphed has inured to the benefit of Abo- litionism. . . . We appeal to Southern men, without distinction of party, to ponder the consequences be- fore they cooperate with this organization."1 The danger of sectional difficulty in the new Union party was visible almost as soon as it was created.
The other weakness of the new party lay in the fact that it was almost without strong leaders. Ex- cept in the northernmost slave states, where such men as Clayton, of Delaware, and Bell, of Tennessee, gave it some support, the conservative Whigs who might have been in sympathy with its non-sectional and Unionist aspirations recoiled in disgust from its riotous and proscriptive character and its secret ma- chinery. Such men as Winthrop and Choate, of Massachusetts, representing the Webster tradition, were entirely out of sympathy with it. In the south, such influential men as Stephens and Toombs, of Georgia, and Benjamin, of Louisiana, went squarely over to the Democratic party. " I know of but one
1 Hambleton, Political Campaign in Virginia, 127; Richmond Enquirer, March 6, 1855.
140 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1855
class of people," said Stephens, "that I look upon as dangerous to the country. . . . This class of men at the North, of which the Massachusetts, New Hamp- shire and Connecticut legislatures are but samples, I consider as our worst enemies; and to put them down I will join as political allies, now and forever, all true patriots at the North and South, whether native or adopted. . . . Their very organization is not only anti-American, anti-Republican, but at war with the fundamental law of the Union and therefore revolutionary in its character." 1
The abler anti-slavery leaders at the north in like manner held aloof from the movement. Seward, Chase, and Sumner refused to countenance the party, and Greeley, in the Tribune, openly scoffed at it, declaring, in a phrase which became permanently attached to it, that "it would seem as devoid of the elements of permanence as an anti-Cholera or anti- Potato -rot party would be." 2 Almost the only strong leader in the north was Wilson, of Massachu- setts, a sincere anti- slavery man whose political career showed boldness, shrewdness, and a light re- gard of party ties. Using the Know-Nothing party simply as a means to secure the redemption of Massachusetts from the "Cotton Whigs," and bring about his own election to the Senate, he was entirely willing to destroy it in the interests of the anti- slavery cause.3 Left, then, to the management of
1 Cleveland, Stephens, 468, 480.
''Tribune Almanac, 1855, p. 23. 3 Wilson, Slave Power, II., 423.
i8$5] FAILURE OF KNOW-NOTHINGS 141
men new to public life or drawn from the ranks of minor politicians, the party showed no efficient leadership.
When the national council of the order met, in June, 1855, at Philadelphia, the differences between northern and southern Know-Nothings led to a sharp contest over the attitude of the body upon slavery in the territories. Anti-Catholic and anti-foreign dec- larations were unanimously accepted; but it took days of hot debate before the council, by a vote of 80 to 59, could adopt the following resolution : " Pre- termitting any opinion upon the power of Congress to establish or prohibit slavery in the territories, it is the sense of this National Council that Congress ought not to legislate on the subject of slavery with- in the territories of the United States, and that any interference by Congress with slavery as it exists in the District of Columbia would be ... a breach of the National faith." 1 From this time on the order stood committed to the familiar policy of expressly conciliating the south.
f By this time the practical identity of the Know- Nothing, or American party, as it now styled itself, with the Whigs was manifest in membership and character. A year of pretence at mystery had ex- hausted the efficacy of that device, and when the proceedings of the national council were reported, unchecked, to newspapers day by day, it was evi- dent that the oaths, grips, passwords, and ritual had
* Wilson, Slave Power, II., 423-433.
PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1855
ceased to serve their purpose.1 From this time the state organizations ordinarily held open conventions and went before the voters as the "American party,' ' although in popular language the name Know-Noth- ing lingered on. In the elections of 1855 the south- ern Know - Nothings carried Maryland, Kentucky, and Texas, and cast a respectable minority in other states; in the extreme west, also as a pro-slavery party, they carried California; but in the north, although they carried New York — where the irrecon- cilable "Hard" and "Soft" Democrats still ran separate tickets — their vote fell off badly in Massa- chusetts and Pennsylvania, for not even the repudia- tion of the troublesome twelfth section of the Phila- delphia platform could hold anti-slavery members.2 The Republicans also lost ground, being unable to gain in the states where the Know-Nothings were strong. Their only victory was in Ohio, which elect- ed Chase governor over both a Democratic competi- tor and a candidate supported by Whigs and Know- Nothings. At the expense of these two parties the Democrats profited, making a bold campaign in every state, denouncing the sectionalism of the Re- publicans and the proscriptive aims of the Ameri- cans. They carried five southern states, and regained Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine, the last through Whig assistance. On the whole, the year ended with the political future still doubtful. It looked very
1 Merriam, Bowles, I., 138.
2 Scisco, Political Nativism, 154-169.
1855] FAILURE OF KNOW-NOTHINGS
much as if the old situation had returned, with the Know-Nothings occupying the place of the Whigs, the Republicans standing as an enlarged Free Soil party, and the Democrats likely to maintain them- selves against a divided opposition.
But by this time the rising excitement over the situation in Kansas began to influence the situa- tion. The enthusiasm of the people of the north for the Free State cause in Kansas resembled that of a country at the beginning of a war. Newspapers were crowded with inflammatory editorials, articles, and extracts from letters of northern emigrants de- scribing acts of violence and cruelty.1 Public meet- ings were held everywhere, in which speakers made urgent appeals for volunteers, subscriptions, and arms for Kansas. One such, at New Haven, Con- necticut, attained national fame. After an address by Henry Ward Beecher, fifty rifles were subscribed for to fit out a party of emigrants sent under the auspices of the Congregationalist clergy and church- members of the city.2 Beecher 's advocacy of the use of Sharps rifles by the Kansas settlers led to their being termed " Beecher's Bibles " by friend and foe.
On the other side, the south was thrilled with anger and alarm. Atchison, of Missouri, made ur- gent appeal for southern aid, reiterating that the future of the institution of slavery was bound up in
1 Thayer, Kansas Crusade, 164 et seq.
2 N. Y. Independent, March 26, 1856.
144 PARTIES AND SLAVERY [1855
the outcome of the contest for Kansas. " If Kansas is abolit ionized/' he wrote, "Missouri ceases to be a slave state, New Mexico becomes a free state, Califor- nia remains a free state ; but if we secure Kansas as a slave state, Missouri is secure, New Mexico and southern California, if not the whole of it, becomes a slave state ; in a word, the prosperity or ruin of the whole south depends on the Kansas struggle." 1 In response to such appeals, an agitation for money and men spread over the south, with public meet- ings, fiery speeches, subscriptions, and the raising of companies of emigrants.2 Attempts were even made in the Alabama and Georgia legislatures to pass acts offering state aid to Kansas emi- grants.
Yet, although southern feeling was deeply stirred, the results of this agitation did not equal those of the simultaneous northern propaganda ; and the only important reinforcement provided in the winter of 1856 was a company of less than three hundred men raised by Colonel Buford, of Alabama, largely at his own personal expense. This force, which went un- armed, in deference to a proclamation of President Pierce, set forth from Montgomery with gifts of Bibles, amid prayers and enthusiastic popular sym- pathy; but upon its arrival in the territory it was immediately armed as part of the territorial militia. By the end of February it was clear that the coming
lN. Y. Tribune, November 7, 1855. 2 De Bow's Review, June, 1856, p. 741,
1855] FAILURE OF KNOW-NOTHINGS 145
spring would find men swarming into Kansas, with what results no one could foresee.1
In the midst of this increasing excitement, the ill-fated American party tore itself to pieces upon the unavoidable issue. The first proof of its fatal weakness appeared in a contest for the speakership of the House of Representatives, which delayed the conduct of all public business from the meeting of Congress in December, 1855, until the end of February, 1856. The regular administration Demo- crats numbered only seventy-five in place of the one hundred and fifty-nine who controlled the previous Congress, and their candidate was Richardson. The opposition, elected in the political whirlwind of 1854, was too heterogeneous to combine. The largest sin- gle group comprised about one hundred and seven- teen Americans, leaving about forty " straight" Re- publicans and a number of independents. But of the Know-Nothing plurality, only about forty could be held together in support of Fuller, of Pennsylvania, the avowedly American candidate. Nearly all the rest joined the Republicans in voting for Banks, of Massachusetts, who had just abandoned the Know- Nothing party for the Republican. For weeks, running into months, the tripartite struggle went on, in an irregular running debate, mainly on