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Title: Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2

Author: John George Nicolay and John Hay

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[Illustration: PORTRAIT AND SIGNATURE OF A. LINCOLN.]


ABRAHAM LINCOLN

A HISTORY


BY JOHN G. NICOLAY AND JOHN HAY



VOLUME TWO

New York
The Century Co.
1890




ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. II


ABRAHAM LINCOLN (_Frontispiece_)
From an ambrotype taken for Marcus L. Ward (afterwards Governor of
New Jersey) in Springfield, Ill., May 20, 1860, two days after Mr.
Lincoln's nomination.

GENERAL JOHN W. GEARY
From a photograph taken, in 1866, by Draper and Husted.

MILLARD FILLMORE
From a daguerreotype.

CHARLES SUMNER
From a daguerreotype.

ROGER B. TANEY
From a daguerreotype.

SAMUEL NELSON
From a photograph.

ROBERT J. WALKER
From a daguerreotype.

FREDERICK P. STANTON
From a photograph by Brady.

JOHN CALHOUN
From a painting by D.C. Fabronius, after a photograph by Brady.

ANSON BURLINGAME
From a photograph by William Shaw.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
From a daguerreotype.

DAVID COLBRETH BRODERICK
From a photograph by Brady.

JOHN BROWN
From a photograph by J.W. Black & Co.

HOUSE IN WHICH JOHN BROWN WAS BORN, TORRINGTON, CONNECTICUT
From a photograph lent by Frank B. Sanborn.

CALEB CUSHING
From a photograph by Brady.

W.L. YANCEY
From a photograph by Cook.

GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE
From a daguerreotype taken about 1850, lent by Anson Maltby.

FACSIMILE OF LINCOLN'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE

JOHN BELL
From a photograph by Brady.

GENERAL HENRY A. WISE
From a photograph by Brady.

THE WIGWAM AT CHICAGO IN WHICH LINCOLN WAS NOMINATED

GENERAL ROBERT ANDERSON
From a photograph by Brady.

JAMES BUCHANAN
From a photograph by Brady.

LEWIS CASS
From a photograph by Brady.

GENERAL ROBERT TOOMBS
From a photograph.

JUSTIN S. MORRILL
From a photograph by Brady.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOL. II


CHAPTER I. JEFFERSON DAVIS ON REBELLION

Civil War in Kansas. Guerrillas dispersed by Colonel Sumner. General
P.F. Smith supersedes Sumner. Governor Shannon Removed. Missouri River
Blockaded. Jefferson Davis's Instructions on Rebellion. Acting-Governor
Woodson Proclaims the Territory in Insurrection. Report of General
Smith. John W. Geary Appointed Governor. Inaugural Address. His Military
Proclamations and Measures. Colonel Cooke's "Cannon" Argument. Hickory
Point Skirmish. Imprisonment of Free State Men. End of Guerrilla War.
Removal and Flight of Governor Geary.

CHAPTER II. THE CONVENTIONS OF 1856

Formation of the Republican Party in Illinois. The Decatur Convention.
Action of the "Know-Nothing" Party. Nomination of Fillmore and
Donelson. Democrats of Illinois Nominate William A. Richardson for
Governor. The Davis-Bissell Challenge. The Bloomington Convention.
Bissell Nominated for Governor. Lincoln's Speech at Bloomington. The
Pittsburgh Convention. The Philadelphia Convention. Nomination of
Fremont and Dayton. The Philadelphia Platform. Lincoln Proposed for
Vice-President. The Cincinnati Convention. The Cincinnati Platform.
Nomination of Buchanan and Breckinridge. Buchanan Elected President.
Bissell Elected Governor. Lincoln's Campaign Speeches.

CHAPTER III. CONGRESSIONAL RUFFIANISM

Sumner's Senate Speech on Kansas. Brooks's Assault on Sumner. Action
of the Senate. Action of the House. Resignation and Reelection of
Brooks. Wilson Challenged. Brooks Challenges Burlingame. Sumner's
Malady. Reelection of Sumner. Death of Butler and Brooks. Sumner's
Re-appearance in the Senate.

CHAPTER IV. THE DRED SCOTT DECISION

The Dred Scott Case. Its Origin. The Law of Slavery. Preliminary
Decisions of the Case. Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Case Twice
Argued. Opinion of Justice Nelson. Political Conditions. Mr. Buchanan's
Announcement. The Dred Scott Decision. Opinions by all the Judges.
Opinion of the Court. Dred Scott Declared Not a Citizen. Slavery
Prohibition Declared Unconstitutional. Language of Chief-Justice Taney.
Dissenting Opinions.

CHAPTER V. DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN ON DRED SCOTT

Political Effects of the Dred Scott Decision. Douglas's Springfield
Speech on the Dred Scott Decision. He Indorses Chief-Justice Taney's
Opinion. Freeport Doctrine Foreshadowed. Lincoln's Speech in Reply to
Douglas. Uses of Judicial Decisions. Prospects of the Colored Race in
the United States, Principles of the Declaration of Independence.

CHAPTER VI. THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION

Constitutional Convention Called by the Legislature. Resignation and
Flight of Governor Geary. Walker Appointed Governor. Promises of
Buchanan and his Cabinet. Walker's Kansas Policy. Action of the
Free-State Mass Meeting. Pro-slavery Convention at Lecompton. Election
of Delegates. Governor Walker favors Submission of the Constitution to
Popular Vote. Protests from Southern States. The Walker-Buchanan
Correspondence. Lecompton Constitutional Convention. The October
Election. The Oxford and McGee Frauds. The Lecompton Constitution.
Extra Session of the Legislature. Secretary Stanton's Removal.
Governor Walker's Resignation.

CHAPTER VII. THE REVOLT OF DOUGLAS

Douglas's Quarrel with Buchanan. Buchanan's Silliman Letter. His Annual
Message. Douglas's Speech on Lecompton. Lecompton Constitution Declared
Adopted. Buchanan's Special Message. The Pro-slavery Reaction.
Buchanan's Views on Cuba. The Lecompton Constitution in Congress. The
Crittenden-Montgomery Substitute. The English Bill. The Opposition of
Douglas. The Administration Organ.

CHAPTER VIII. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES

Growing Republican Chances. Illinois Politics in 1858. Candidates for
Senator. The Senatorial Campaign. Lincoln's "House Divided Against
Itself" Speech. Republican Sympathy for Douglas. Horace Greeley's
Attitude. Lincoln on Greeley and Seward. Correspondence Between
Lincoln and Crittenden. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

CHAPTER IX. THE FREEPORT DOCTRINE

The Debate at Ottawa. The Debate at Freeport. The Freeport Doctrine.
Benjamin's Speech on Douglas. The November Election, Douglas Reelected
Senator. Cause of Lincoln's Defeat. Lincoln's Letters on the Result.
Douglas Removed from the Chairmanship of the Senate Committee on
Territories.

CHAPTER X. LINCOLN'S OHIO SPEECHES

Douglas's Tour Through the South. His Advanced Views on Slavery.
Senate Discussion Between Brown and Douglas. Douglas's Letter to
Dorr. Lincoln's Growing Prominence. Lincoln's Correspondence with
Schuyler Colfax. Letter to Canisius. Letter to Pierce and Others.
Douglas's "Harper's Magazine" Article. Lincoln's Ohio Speeches. The
Douglas-Black Controversy. Publication of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

CHAPTER XI. HARPER'S FERRY

John Brown. His Part in the Kansas Civil War. His Plan of Slave
Liberation. Pikes and Recruits. The Peterboro Council. The Chatham
Meeting. Change of Plan. Harper's Ferry. Brown's Campaign. Colonel
Lee, and the U.S. Marines. Capture of Brown. His Trial and Execution.
The Senate Investigation. Public Opinion. Lincoln on John Brown.
Speakership Contest. Election of William Pennington.

CHAPTER XII. LINCOLN'S COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH

Lincoln Invited to Lecture in New York. The Meeting in Cooper Institute.
Public Interest in the Speaker. Lincoln's Speech. His Definition of
"The Question." Historical Analysis. His Admonition to the South. The
Right and Wrong of Slavery. The Duty of the Free States. Criticisms
of the Address. Speeches in New England.

CHAPTER XIII. THE CHARLESTON CONVENTION

The Democratic Party. Its National Convention at Charleston.
Sentiments of the Delegates. Differences North, and South. Douglas as
a Candidate. The Jefferson Davis Senate Resolutions. Caleb Cushing
made Chairman. The Platform Committee. Majority and Minority Reports.
Speech of William L. Yancey. Speech of Senator Pugh. Speech of Senator
Bigler. Second Majority and Minority Reports. Minority Report Adopted.
Cotton State Delegates Secede. Yancey's Prophecy.

CHAPTER XIV. THE BALTIMORE NOMINATIONS

Nomination of Douglas Impossible. Charleston Convention adjourned to
Baltimore. Seceders' Convention in St. Andrew's Hall. Adjourns to meet
at Richmond. Address of Southern Senators. The Davis-Douglas Debate.
Charleston Convention Reassembles at Baltimore. A Second Disruption.
Nomination of Douglas. Nomination of Breckinridge. The Constitutional
Union Convention. Nomination of John Bell.

CHAPTER XV. THE CHICAGO CONVENTION

The Republican Party. The Chicago Convention. Lincoln's Fairness to
Rivals. Chances of the Campaign. The Pivotal States. The Wigwam.
Organization of the Convention. Chicago Platform. Contrast between the
Charleston and Chicago Conventions. The Balloting. Lincoln Nominated
for President. Hamlin Nominated for Vice-President.

CHAPTER XVI. LINCOLN ELECTED

The Presidential Campaign. Parties, Candidates, and Platforms. Pledges
to the Union. The Democratic Schism. Douglas's Campaign Tour. The
"Illinois Rail-splitter." The "Wide Awakes." Lincoln during the
Canvass. Letters about "Know-Nothings." Fusion. The Vote of Maine. The
October States. The Election. The Electoral College. The Presidential
Count. Lincoln Declared Elected.

CHAPTER XVII. BEGINNINGS OF REBELLION

Early Disunion Sentiment. Nullification. The Agitation of 1850. The
Conspiracy of 1856. The "Scarlet Letter." "The 1860 Association."
Governor Gist's Letter to Southern Governors. Replies to Governor
Gist. Conspiracy at Washington.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE CABINET CABAL

Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet. Extracts from Floyd's Diary. Cabinet Conferences
on Disunion. The Drayton-Gist Correspondence. Mr. Trescott's Letters.
Floyd's Sale of Arms. Secretary Thompson's Mission. Jefferson Davis and
the Governor of Mississippi. Jefferson Davis and President Buchanan's
Message.

CHAPTER XIX. FROM THE BALLOT TO THE BULLET

Governor Gist's Proclamation. Caucus of South Carolinians. Governor
Gist's Message. The Disunion Cult. Presidential Electors Chosen.
Effect of Lincoln's Election. Disunion Sentiment. Military
Appropriation. Convention Bill Passed. Charleston Mass-Meeting.

CHAPTER XX. MAJOR ANDERSON

Buchanan and Secession. General Scott and Nullification. "Views"
Addressed to the President. The President's Criticism. Scott's
Rejoinder. The Charleston Forts. Foster's Requisition. Colonel Gardner
asks for Reenforcements. Fitz-John Porter's Inspection Report. Gardner
Relieved from Command. Anderson sent to Charleston.

CHAPTER XXI. THE CHARLESTON FORTS

Anderson's Arrival at Charleston. His Tour of Inspection. Report to
the War Department. The Forts and the Harbor. Anderson asks
reenforcements. Discouraging Reply from Washington. Insurrectionary
Sentiment in Charleston. Floyd's Instructions to Anderson. Colonel
Huger. Anderson's Visit to the Mayor of Charleston.

CHAPTER XXII. THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Mr. Buchanan's Opportunity. Cabinet Opinions on Disunion. Advice to
the President in Preparing his Message. The Message. Arguments on
Slavery. Recommends a National Convention. Arguments on Disunion. The
Powers and Duties of Congress. Coercion Denied. Criticisms of the
Message.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE CHARLESTON CONSPIRATORS

Debate on the Message. Adverse Criticisms. Buchanan's Doctrines and
Policy. Movements of Secession. South Carolina Legislation. Magrath's
Comments. Non-Coercion and Coercion. Fort Moultrie. Intrigue for its
Capture. Governor Gist's Letter. South Carolina's Complaints and
Demands.

CHAPTER XXIV. MR. BUCHANAN'S TRUCE

Return of the _Brooklyn_. The President's Interview with the South
Carolina Delegation. Mr. Buchanan's Truce. Major Buell's Visit to
Anderson. The Buell Memorandum. Character of Instructions.

CHAPTER XXV. THE RETIREMENT OF CASS

Failure of the Concession Policy. Movements towards Secession.
Resignation of Secretary Cobb. Cobb's Secession Address. Resignation
of Secretary Cass. The Buchanan-Floyd Incident. The Conspirators
advise Buchanan. Cass demands Reenforcements. The Cass-Buchanan
Correspondence.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE SENATE COMMITTEE OF THIRTEEN

Secession Debates in the Senate. Speeches of Clingman, Brown, Iverson,
Wigfall, Mason, Jefferson Davis, Hale, Crittenden, Pugh, Douglas.
Powell's Motion for a Select Committee. Speeches of King, Collamer,
Foster, Green, Wade. Senate Committee of Thirteen Appointed.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE HOUSE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE

The President's Message in the House. Compromise Efforts. Motion to
Appoint a Committee of Thirty-Three. Committee Appointed. Corwin made
Chairman. Sickles's Speech. Vallandigham's Speech. McClernand's
Speech. Compromise Propositions. Jenkins's Plan. Noell's Plan. Andrew
Johnson's Plan. Vallandigham's Plan.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CONSPIRACY PROCLAIMED

Hopes of Compromise. Party Pledges to the Union. President Buchanan's
Advice. Nullification and Secession. Estrangement between North and
South. Cabinet Treachery and Intrigue. The Congressional Debates.
Compromise Committees. The Conspirators' Strategy. Elements of
Disturbance. Hopes of Peaceable Secession. Dunn's Resolution. Mr.
Buchanan's Proclamation. Secession Proclaimed.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE FORTY MUSKETS

Captain Foster. His Arrival in Charleston. Condition of Fort Moultrie.
Temporary Defenses. Foster Requests Forty Muskets. The Question of
Arming Workmen. Foster Receives Forty Muskets. Their Return Demanded.
The Alleged Charleston Excitement. Floyd Orders the Muskets Returned.
Foster's Compliance and Comment.




CHAPTER I

JEFFERSON DAVIS ON REBELLION


  [Sidenote] Sumner to Howard, May 16, 1856. Ibid., p. 37.

  [Sidenote] Shannon to Sumner, May 21, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess.
  34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 38.

  [Sidenote] 1856.

  [Sidenote] Shannon to Sumner, June 4, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess.
  34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 45.

While the town of Lawrence was undergoing burning and pillage,
Governor Shannon wrote to Colonel Sumner to say that as the marshal
and sheriff had finished making their arrests, and he presumed had
by that time dismissed the posse, he required a company of United
States troops to be stationed at Lawrence to secure "the safety of
the citizens in both, person and property," asking also a like company
for Lecompton and Topeka. The next day the citizens of Lawrence had
the opportunity to smother their indignation when they saw the embers
of the Free-State Hotel and the scattered fragments of their
printing-presses patrolled and "protected" by the Federal dragoons
whose presence they had vainly implored a few days before. It was time
the Governor should move. The guerrilla bands with their booty spread
over the country, and the free-State men rose in a spirit of fierce
retaliation. Assassinations, house-burnings, expulsions, and
skirmishes broke out in all quarters. The sudden shower of lawlessness
fell on the just and the unjust; and, forced at last to deal out equal
protection, the Governor (June 4) issued his proclamation directing
military organizations to disperse, "without regard to party names, or
distinctions,"[1] and empowering Colonel Sumner to enforce the order.

  [Sidenote] Sumner to Cooper, June 23, 1856. Ibid., p. 50.

  [Sidenote] Sumner to Cooper, August 11, 1856. Ibid., p. 59.

That careful and discreet officer, who had from the first counseled
this policy, at once proceeded to execute the command with his
characteristic energy. He disarmed and dispersed the free-State
guerrillas,--John Brown's among the earliest,--liberated prisoners,
drove the Missourians, including delegate Whitfield and General Coffee
of the skeleton militia, back across their State line, and stationed
five companies along the border to prevent their return. He was so
fortunate as to accomplish all this without bloodshed. "I do not
think," he wrote, June 23, "there is an armed body of either party now
in the Territory, with the exception perhaps of a few freebooters."
The colonel found very soon that he was only too efficient and
faithful. "My measures have necessarily borne hard against both
parties," wrote Sumner to the War Department, "for both have in many
instances been more or less wrong. The Missourians were perfectly
satisfied so long as the troops were employed exclusively against the
free-State party; but when they found that I would be strictly
impartial, that lawless mobs could no longer come from Missouri, and
that their interference with the affairs of Kansas was brought to an
end, then they immediately raised a hue and cry that they were
oppressed by the United States troops." The complaint had its usual
prompt effect at Washington. By orders dated June 27 the colonel was
superseded in his command, and Brigadier-General P.F. Smith was sent
to Leavenworth. Known to be pro-slavery in his opinions, great
advantage was doubtless expected by the conspiracy from this change.
But General Smith was an invalid, and incapable of active service,
and so far as the official records show, the army officers and troops
in Kansas continued to maintain a just impartiality.

  [Sidenote] 1856.

The removal of Governor Shannon a few weeks after Colonel Sumner
once more made Secretary Woodson, always a willing instrument of the
conspiracy, acting Governor. It was under this individual's promptings
and proclamation, Shannon being absent from the Territory, that
Colonel Sumner, before the arrival of the orders superseding him,
forcibly dispersed the free-State Legislature on the 4th of July, as
narrated. For this act the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, was not
slow to send the colonel an implied censure, perhaps to justify his
removal from command; but not a word of reproof went from President
or Secretary of State to the acting Governor.

It has already been stated that for a considerable length of time
after the organization of Kansas Territory the Missouri River was its
principal highway of approach from the States. To anti-slavery men who
were unwilling to conceal their sentiments, this had from the very
first been a route of difficulty and danger. Now that political strife
culminated in civil war, the Missourians established a complete
practical blockade of the river against the Northern men and Northern
goods. Recently, however, the Northern emigration to Kansas had
gradually found a new route through Iowa and Nebraska.

It was about this time that great consternation was created in
pro-slavery circles by the report that Lane had arrived at the Iowa
border with a "Northern army," exaggerated into fabulous numbers,
intent upon fighting his way to Kansas. Parties headed by Lane and
others and aggregating some hundreds had in fact so arrived, and were
more or less provided with arms, though they had no open military
organization. While spies and patrols were on the lookout for marching
companies and regiments, they, concealing their arms, quietly slipped
down in detached parties to Lawrence. Thus reenforced and inspirited,
the free-State men took the aggressive, and by several bold movements
broke up a number of pro-slavery camps and gatherings. Greatly
exaggerated reports of these affairs were promptly sent to the
neighboring Missouri counties, and the Border Ruffians rose for a
third invasion of Kansas.

Governor Shannon, not yet notified of his removal, reported to General
Smith that Lecompton was threatened with an attack. General Smith,
becoming alarmed, called together all his available force for the
protection of the territorial capital, and reported the exigency to
the War Department. All the hesitation which had hitherto
characterized the instructions of Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of
War, in the use of troops otherwise than as an officer's posse,
instantly vanished. The whole Kansas militia was placed under the
orders of General Smith, and requisitions were issued for two
regiments from Illinois and two from Kentucky. "The position of the
insurgents," wrote the Secretary, "as shown by your letter and its
inclosures, is that of open rebellion against the laws and
constitutional authorities, with such manifestation of a purpose to
spread devastation over the land as no longer justifies further
hesitation or indulgence. To you, as to every soldier, whose habitual
feeling is to protect the citizens of his own country, and only to use
his arms against a public enemy, it cannot be otherwise than deeply
painful to be brought into conflict with any portion of his
fellow-countrymen. But patriotism and humanity alike require that
rebellion should be promptly crushed, and the perpetration of the
crimes which now disturb the peace and security of the good people
of the Territory of Kansas should be effectually checked. You will
therefore energetically employ all the means within your reach to
restore the supremacy of the law, always endeavoring to carry out
your present purpose to prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood."[2]

The Secretary had probably cast his eye upon the Platte County
battle-call in the "Weston Argus Extra," which formed one of the
general's inclosures: "So sudden and unexpected has been the attack
of the abolitionists that the law-and-order party was unprepared to
effectually resist them. To-day the bogus free-State government, we
understand, is to assemble at Topeka. The issue is distinctly made up;
either the free-State or pro-slavery party is to have Kansas....
Citizens of Platte County! the war is upon you, and at your very doors.
Arouse yourselves to speedy vengeance and rub out the bloody
traitors."[3]

  [Sidenote] Woodson, proclamation, Aug. 25, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d
  Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 80.

It was perhaps well that the pro-slavery zeal of General Smith was less
ardent than that of Secretary Jefferson Davis, or the American civil
war might have begun in Lawrence instead of Charleston. Upon fuller
information and more mature reflection, the General found that he had
no need of either the four regiments from Illinois and Kentucky, or
Border-Ruffian mobs led by skeleton militia generals, neither of which
he had asked for. Both the militia generals and the Missourians were
too eager even to wait for an official call. General Richardson ordered
out his whole division on the strength of the "Argus Extra" and
neighborhood reports,[4] and the entire border was already in motion
when acting Governor Woodson issued his proclamation declaring the
Territory "to be in a state of open insurrection and rebellion."
General Smith found it necessary to direct his first orders against
the Border-Ruffian invaders themselves. "It has been rumored for
several days," he wrote to his second in command, "that large numbers
of persons from the State of Missouri have entered Kansas, at various
points, armed, with the intention of attacking the opposite party and
driving them from the Territory, the latter being also represented to
be in considerable force. If it should come to your knowledge that
either side is moving upon the other with the view to attack, it will
become your duty to observe their movements and prevent such hostile
collisions."[5]

  [Sidenote] Woodson to Cooke, Sept. 1, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess.
  34th Cong. Vol. III., pp. 90, 91.

  [Sidenote] Cooke to Woodson, Sept. 1, 1856. Ibid., pp. 91, 92.

Lieutenant-Colonel P. St. George Cooke, upon whom this active field
work devolved, because of the General's ill health, concentrated his
little command between Lawrence and Lecompton, where he could to some
extent exert a salutary check upon the main bodies of both parties,
and where he soon had occasion to send a remonstrance to the acting
Governor that his "militia" was ransacking and burning houses.[6] To
the acting Governor's mind, such a remonstrance was not a proper way
to suppress rebellion. He, therefore, sent Colonel Cooke a requisition
to invest the town of Topeka, disarm the insurrectionists, hold them
as prisoners, level their fortifications, and intercept aggressive
invaders on "Lane's trail"; all of which demands the officer prudently
and politely declined, replying that he was there to assist in serving
judicial process, and not to make war on the town of Topeka.

If, as had been alleged, General Smith was at first inclined to regard
the pro-slavery side with favor, its arrogance and excesses soon
removed his prejudices, and he wrote an unsparing report of the
situation to the War Department. "In explanation of the position of
affairs, lately and now, I may remark that there are more than two
opposing parties in the Territory. The citizens of the Territory who
formed the majority in the organization of the territorial government,
and in the elections for its Legislature and inferior officers, form
one party. The persons who organized a State government, and attempted
to put it in operation against the authority of that established by
Congress, form another. A party, at the head of which is a former
Senator from Missouri, and which is composed in a great part of
citizens from that State, who have come into this Territory armed,
under the excitement produced by reports exaggerated in all cases, and
in many absolutely false, form the third. There is a fourth, composed
of idle men congregated from various parts, who assume to arrest,
punish, exile, and even kill all those whom they assume to be bad
citizens; that is, those who will not join them or contribute to their
maintenance. Every one of these has in his own peculiar way (except
some few of the first party) thrown aside all regard to law, and even
honesty, and the Territory under their sway is ravaged from one end to
the other.... Until the day before yesterday I was deficient in force
to operate against all these at once; and the acting Governor of the
Territory did not seem to me to take a right view of affairs. If Mr.
Atchison and his party had had the direction of affairs, they could
not have ordered them more to suit his purpose."[7]

All such truth and exposure of the conspiracy, however, was
unpalatable at Washington; and Secretary Jefferson Davis, while
approving the conduct of Colonel Cooke and expressing confidence
in General Smith, nevertheless curtly indorsed upon his report: "The
only distinction of parties which in a military point of view it is
necessary to note is that which distinguishes those who respect and
maintain the laws and organized government from those who combine for
revolutionary resistance to the constitutional authorities and laws of
the land. The armed combinations of the latter class come within the
denunciation of the President's proclamation and are proper subjects
upon which to employ the military force."[8]

  [Sidenote] "Washington Union," August 1, 1856.

Such was the state of affairs when the third Governor of Kansas, newly
appointed by President Pierce, arrived in the Territory. The Kansas
pro-slavery cabal had upon the dismissal of Shannon fondly hoped that
one of their own clique, either Secretary Woodson or Surveyor-General
John Calhoun, would be made executive, and had set on foot active
efforts in that direction. In principle and purpose they enjoyed the
abundant sympathy of the Pierce Administration; but as the presidential
election of 1856 was at hand, the success of the Democratic party could
not at the moment be endangered by so open and defiant an act of
partisanship. It was still essential to placate the wounded anti-slavery
sensibilities of the Northern States, and to this end John W. Geary, of
Pennsylvania, was nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed
by the Senate. He was a man of character and decision, had gone to the
Mexican war as a volunteer captain, and had been made a colonel and
intrusted with an important command for merit. Afterwards he had
served as postmaster, as alcalde, and as mayor of the city of San
Francisco in the turbulent gold excitements of 1848-9, and was made a
funding commissioner by the California Legislature. Both by nature and
experience, therefore, he seemed well fitted to subdue the civil
commotions of Kansas.

  [Sidenote] Gihon, p. 131.

But the pro-slavery leaders of the Territory were very far from
relishing or desiring qualifications of this character. In one of
their appeals calling upon the Missourians for "assistance in men,
provisions, and munitions, that we may drive out the 'Army of the
North,'" they had given the President and the public a piece of their
mind about this appointment. "We have asked the appointment of a
successor," said they, "who was acquainted with our condition," with
"the capacity to appreciate and the boldness and integrity requisite
faithfully to discharge his duty regardless of the possible effect it
might have upon the election of some petty politician in a distant
State. In his stead we have one appointed who is ignorant of our
condition, a stranger to our people; who, we have too much cause to
fear, will, if no worse, prove no more efficient to protect us than
his predecessors.... We cannot await the convenience in coming of our
newly appointed Governor. We cannot hazard a second edition of
imbecility or corruption!"

Animated by such a spirit, they now bent all their energies upon
concentrating a sufficient force in Kansas to crush the free-State
men before the new Governor could interfere. Acting Governor Woodson
had by proclamation declared the Territory in a state of "open
insurrection and rebellion,"[9] and the officers of the skeleton
militia were hurriedly enrolling the Missourians, giving them arms,
and planting them in convenient camps for a final and decisive
campaign.

  [Sidenote] Gihon, p. 104.

  [Sidenote] Gihon, pp. 104-6.

It was on September 9, 1856, that Governor Geary and his party landed
at Leavenworth. Even on his approach he had already been compelled to
note and verify the evidences of civil war. He had met Governor
Shannon fleeing from the Territory, who drew for him a direful picture
of the official inheritance to which he had come. While this interview
took place, during the landing of the boat at Glasgow, a company of
sixty Missouri Border Ruffians was embarking, with wagons, arms, and
cannon, and with the open declaration that they were bound for Kansas
to hunt and kill "abolitionists." Similar belligerent preparations
were in progress at all the river towns they touched. At Kansas City
the vigilance committee of the blockade boarded and searched the boat
for concealed "abolitionists." Finally arrived at Leavenworth, the
Governor saw a repetition of the same scenes--parades and military
control in the streets, fugitives within the inclosure of the fort,
and minor evidences of lawlessness and terror.

  [Sidenote] Geary to Marcy, Sept. 9, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess.
  34th Cong. Vol. II., p. 88.

Governor Geary went at once to the fort, where he spent the day in
consultation with General Smith. That same evening he wrote to W.L.
Marcy, Secretary of State, a report of the day's impressions which was
anything but reassuring--Leavenworth in the hands of armed men
committing outrages under the shadow of authority; theft and murder in
the streets and on the highways; farms plundered and deserted;
agitation, excitement, and utter insecurity everywhere, and the number
of troops insufficient to compel peace and order. All this was not the
worst, however. Deep in the background stood the sinister apparition of
the Atchison cabal. "I find," wrote he, "that I have not simply to
contend against bands of armed ruffians and brigands whose sole aim and
end is assassination and robbery--infatuated adherents and advocates of
conflicting political sentiments and local institutions--and
evil-disposed persons actuated by a desire to obtain elevated
positions; but worst of all, against the influence of men who have been
placed in authority and have employed all the destructive agents around
them to promote their own personal interests at the sacrifice of every
just, honorable, and lawful consideration.... Such is the condition of
Kansas faintly pictured.... In making the foregoing statements I have
endeavored to give the truth and nothing but the truth. I deem it
important that you should be apprised of the actual state of the case;
and whatever may be the effect of such revelations, they will be given
from time to time without extenuation."

  [Sidenote] Geary, proclamation, Sept. 11, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d
  Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. II., pp. 93-4.

  [Sidenote] Geary to Marcy, Sept. 12, 1856. Ibid., p. 95.

Discouraging as he found his new task of administration, Governor Geary
grappled with it in a spirit of justice and decision. The day following
his interview with General Smith found him at Lecompton, the capital of
the Territory, where the other territorial officials, Woodson, Calhoun,
Donaldson, Sheriff Jones, Lecompte, Cato, and others, constituted the
ever-vigilant working force of the Atchison cabal, precisely as had
been so truthfully represented to him by General Smith, and as he had
so graphically described in his letter to Marcy of the day before.
Paying little heed to their profusely offered advice, he adhered to his
determination to judge for himself, and at once issued an inaugural
address, declaring that in his official action he would do justice at
all hazards, that he desired to know no party and no section, and
imploring the people to bury their past strifes, and devote themselves
to peace, industry, and the material development of the Territory.[10]
As an evidence of his earnestness he simultaneously issued two
proclamations, one disbanding the volunteer or Missouri militia lately
called into service by acting Governor Woodson, and the other commanding
the immediate enrollment of the true citizen militia of Kansas Territory,
this step being taken by the advice of General Smith.

He soon found that he could not govern Kansas with paper proclamations
alone. His sudden arrival at this particular juncture was evidently an
unexpected _contretemps_. While he was preaching and printing his sage
admonitions about peace and prosperity at Lecompton, and laboring to
change the implements of civil war into plowshares and pruning-hooks,
the Missouri raid against Lawrence, officially called into the field by
Woodson's proclamation, was about to deal out destruction to that town.
A thousand Border Ruffians (at least two eye-witnesses say 2500), led
by their recognized Missouri chiefs, were at that moment camped within
striking distance of the hated "New Boston." Their published address,
which declared that "these traitors, assassins, and robbers must now be
punished, must now be taught a lesson they will remember," that "Lane's
army and its allies must be expelled from the Territory," left no doubt
of their errand.

This news reached Governor Geary about midnight of his second day in
Lecompton. One of the brigadiers of the skeleton militia was apparently
in command, and not yet having caught the cue of the Governor's
intentions, reported the force for orders, "in the field, ready for
duty, and impatient to act."[11] At about the same hour the Governor
received a message from the agent he had sent to Lawrence to distribute
copies of his inaugural, that the people of that town were arming and
preparing to receive and repel this contemplated attack of the
Missourians. He was dumfounded at the information; his promises and
policy, upon which, the ink was not yet dry, were already in jeopardy.
Instead of bringing peace his advent was about to open war.

In this contingency the Governor took his measures with true military
promptness. He immediately dispatched to the Missouri camp Secretary
Woodson with copies of his inaugural, and the adjutant-general of the
Territory with orders to disband and muster out of service the Missouri
volunteers,[12] while he himself, at the head of three hundred dragoons
and a light battery, moved rapidly to Lawrence, a distance of twelve
miles. Entering that town at sunrise, he found a few hundred men
hastily organized for defense in the improvised intrenchments and
barricades about the place, ready enough to sell their lives, but
vastly more willing to intrust their protection to the Governor's
authority and the Federal troops.[13] They listened to his speech and
readily promised to obey his requirements.

Since the Missourians had officially reported themselves to him as
subject to his orders, the Governor supposed that his injunctions,
conveyed to them in writing and print, and borne by the secretary and
the adjutant-general of the Territory, would suffice to send them
back at once to their own borders, and he returned to Lecompton to
take up his thorny duties of administration. Though forewarned by
ex-Governor Shannon and by General Smith, Governor Geary did not yet
realize the temper and purpose of either the cabal conspirators or
the Border-Ruffian rank and file. He had just dispatched a military
force in another direction to intercept and disarm a raid about to be
made by a detachment of Lane's men, when news came to him that the
Missourians were still moving upon Lawrence, in increased force, that
his officers had not yet delivered his orders, and that skirmishing
had begun between the outposts.

  [Sidenote] D.W. Wilder, "Annals of Kansas," p. 108. Gihon, p. 152.

Menaced thus with dishonor on one side and contempt on the other, he
gathered all his available Federal troops, and hurrying forward posted
them between Lawrence and the invaders. Then he went to the Missouri
camp, where the true condition of affairs began to dawn upon him. All
the Border-Ruffian chiefs were there, headed by Atchison in person,
who was evidently the controlling spirit, though a member of the
Legislature of the State of Missouri, named Reid, exercised nominal
command. He found his orders unheeded and on every hand mutterings of
impatience and threats of defiance. These invading aliens had not the
least disposition to receive commands as Kansas militia; they invoked
that name only as a cloak to shield them from the legal penalties due
their real character as organized banditti.

The Governor called the chiefs together and made them an earnest
harangue. He explained to them his conciliatory policy, read his
instructions from Washington, affirmed his determination to keep peace,
and appealed personally to Atchison to aid him in enforcing law and
preserving order. That wily chief, seeing that refusal would put him in
the attitude of a law-breaker, feigned a ready compliance, and he and
Reid, his factotum commander, made eloquent speeches "calculated to
produce submission to the legal demands made upon them."[14] Some of
the lesser captains, however, were mutinous, and treated the Governor
to choice bits of Border-Ruffian rhetoric. Law and violence vibrated in
uncertain balance, when Colonel Cooke, commanding the Federal troops,
took the floor and cut the knot of discussion in a summary way. "I felt
called upon to say some words myself," he writes naively, "appealing to
these militia officers as an old resident of Kansas and friend to the
Missourians to submit to the patriotic demand that they should retire,
assuring them of my perfect confidence in the inflexible justice of the
Governor, and that it would become my painful duty to sustain him at
the cannon's mouth."[15] This argument was decisive. The border chiefs
felt willing enough to lead their awkward squads against the slight
barricades of Lawrence, but quailed at the unlooked-for prospect of
encountering the carbines and sabers of half a regiment of regular
dragoons and the grape-shot of a well-drilled light battery. They
accepted the inevitable; and swallowing their rage but still nursing
their revenge, they consented perforce to retire and be "honorably"
mustered out. But for this narrow contingency Lawrence would have been
sacked a second time by the direct agency of the territorial cabal.

[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN W. GEARY.]

  [Sidenote] Examination, Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess. 34th Cong.
  Vol. II., pp. 156-69.

Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate the unequal character of the
contest between the slave-State and the free-State men in Kansas, even
in these manoeuvres and conflicts of civil war, than the companion
exploit to this third Lawrence raid. The day before Governor Geary,
seconded by the "cannon" argument of Colonel Cooke, was convincing the
reluctant Missourians that it was better to accept, as a reward for
their unfinished expedition, the pay, rations, and honorable discharge
of a "muster out," rather than the fine, imprisonment, or halter to
which the full execution of their design would render them liable,
another detachment of Federal dragoons was enforcing the bogus laws
upon a company of free-State men who had just had a skirmish with
a detachment of this same invading army of Border Ruffians, at a
place called Hickory Point. The encounter itself had all the usual
characteristics of the dozens of similar affairs which occurred
during this prolonged period of border warfare--a neighborhood feud;
neighborhood violence; the appearance of organized bands for retaliation;
the taking of forage, animals, and property; the fortifying of two or
three log-houses by a pro-slavery company then on its way to join in
the Lawrence attack, and finally the appearance of a more numerous
free-State party to dislodge them. The besieging column, some 350 in
number, had brought up a brass four-pounder, lately captured from the
pro-slavery men, and with this and their rifles kept up a long-range
fire for about six hours, when the garrison of Border Ruffians capitulated
on condition of being allowed "honorably" to evacuate their stronghold
and retire. The casualties were one man killed and several wounded.

  [Sidenote] Gihon, p. 158.

  [Sidenote] Record of examination, Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess. 34th Cong.
  Vol. II., pp. 156-9.

The rejoicing of the free-State men over this not too brilliant
victory was short-lived. Returning home in separate squads, they were
successively intercepted by the Federal dragoons acting as a posse to
the Deputy United States Marshal,[16] who arrested them on civil writs
obtained in haste by an active member of the territorial cabal, and to
the number of eighty-nine[17] were taken prisoners to Lecompton. So
far the affair had been of such frequent occurrence as to have become
commonplace--a frontier "free fight," as they themselves described and
regarded it. But now it took on a remarkable aspect. Sterling G. Cato,
one of the pro-slavery territorial judges, had been found by Governor
Geary in the Missouri camp drilling and doing duty as a soldier, ready
and doubtless more than willing to take part in the projected sack of
Lawrence. This Federal judge, as open a law-breaker as the Hickory
Point prisoners (the two affairs really forming part of one and the
same enterprise), now seated himself on his judicial bench and
committed the whole party for trial on charge of murder in the first
degree; and at the October term of his court proceeded to try and
condemn to penalties prescribed by the bogus laws some eighteen or
twenty of these prisoners, for offenses in which in equity and good
morals he was personally _particeps criminis_--some of the convicts
being held in confinement until the following March, when they were
pardoned by the Governor.[18] _Inter arma silent leges_, say the
publicists; but in this particular instance the license of guerrilla
war, the fraudulent statutes of the Territory, and the laws of
Congress were combined and perverted with satanic ingenuity in
furtherance of the conspiracy.

The vigorous proceedings of Governor Geary, the forced retirement of
the Missourians on the one hand, and the arrest and conviction of the
free-State partisans on the other, had the effect to bring the
guerrilla war to an abrupt termination. The retribution had fallen
very unequally upon the two parties to the conflict,[19] but this was
due to the legal traps and pitfalls prepared with such artful design
by the Atchison conspiracy, and not to the personal indifference or
ill-will of the Governor. He strove sincerely to restore impartial
administration; he completed the disbandment of the territorial
militia, reenlisting into the Federal service one pro-slavery and one
free-State company for police duty.[20] By the end of September he was
enabled to write to Washington that "peace now reigns in Kansas."
Encouraged by this success in allaying guerrilla strife, he next
endeavored to break up the existing political persecution and
intrigues.

  [Sidenote] Marcy to Geary, August 26, 1856. Gihon, p. 272.

It was not long, however, before Governor Geary became conscious, to
his great surprise and mortification, that he had been nominated and
sent to Kansas as a partisan manoeuvre, and not to institute
administrative reforms; that his instructions, written during the
presidential campaign, to tranquillize Kansas by his "energy,
impartiality, and discretion," really meant that after Mr. Buchanan
was elected he should satisfy the Atchison cabal.

In less than six months after he went to the Territory, clothed with
the executive authority, speaking the President's voice, and
representing the unlimited military power of the republic, he, the
third Democratic Governor of Kansas, was, like his predecessors, in
secret flight from the province he had so trustfully gone to rule,
execrated by his party associates, and abandoned by the Administration
which had appointed him. Humiliating as was this local conspiracy to
plant servitude in Kansas, a more aggressive political movement to
nationalize slavery in all the Union was about to eclipse it.

----------
[1] Shannon, proclamation, June 4, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d
Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 47.

[2] Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, to General Smith, Sept. 3,
1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 29.

[3] August 18, 1856. Senate Executive Documents, 3d Session 34th
Congress. Vol. III., pp. 76-7.

[4] Richardson to General Smith, August 18, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc.,
3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 75.

[5] George Deas, Assistant Adjutant-General to Lieut.-Colonel Cooke,
August 28, 1856. Senate Executive Documents, 3d Session 34th
Congress. Vol. III., p. 85.

[6] Cooke to Deas, August 31, 1856. Ibid., p. 89.

[7] Smith to Cooper, Sept. 10, 1856. Senate Executive Document,
3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., pp. 80, 81.

[8] Sec. War, indorsement, Sept. 23, on letter of Gen. Smith to
Adjutant-General Cooper, Sept. 10, 1856. Senate Executive
Documents, 3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 83.

[9] Woodson, proclamation, August 25, 1856. Senate Executive Documents,
3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 80.

[10] Geary, Inaugural Address, Sept. 11, 1856. Senate Executive
Documents, 3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 116.

[11] General Heiskell to Geary, Sept. 11 and 12, 1856. Senate Ex.
Doc., 3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. II., p. 97.

[12] Geary to Marcy, Sept. 16, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess. 34th
Cong. Vol. II., p. 107.

[13] Colonel Cook to Porter, A.A.G., Sept. 13, 1856. Ibid., Vol.
III., pp. 113, 114.

[14] Colonel Cooke to F.J. Porter, Sept. 16, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc.,
3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 121.

[15] Cooke to Porter, Sept. 16, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess.
34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 122.

[16] Captain Wood to Colonel Cooke, Sept. 16, 1856. Senate Ex.
Doc., 3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III, pp. 123-6.

[17] Geary to Marcy, October 1, 1856. Senate Executive Documents,
3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. II., p. 156.

[18] Gihon, pp. 142-3. Geary, Executive Minutes, Senate Ex. Doc.,
No. 17, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 195.

[19] The Kansas Territorial Legislature, in the year 1859, by which
time local passion had greatly subsided, by law empowered a
non-partisan board of three commissioners to collect sworn testimony
concerning the ravages of the civil war in Kansas, with a view of
obtaining indemnity from the general Government for the individual
sufferers. These commissioners, after a careful examination, made an
official report, from which may be gleaned an interesting summary in
numbers and values of the harvest of crime and destruction which the
Kansas contest produced, and which report can be relied upon, since
eye-witnesses and participants of both parties freely contributed
their testimony at the invitation of the commissioners.

The commissioners fixed the period of the war as beginning about
November 1, 1855, and continuing until about December 1, 1856. They
estimated that the entire loss and destruction of property, including
the cost of fitting out the various expeditions, amounted to an
aggregate of not less than $2,000,000. Fully one-half of this loss,
they thought, was directly sustained by actual settlers of Kansas.
They received petitions and took testimony in 463 cases. They reported
417 cases as entitled to indemnity. The detailed figures and values of
property destroyed are presented as follows:

    "Amount of crops destroyed, $37,349.61; number of buildings burned
    and destroyed, 78; horses taken or destroyed, 368; cattle taken or
    destroyed, 533. Amount of property owned by pro-slavery men,
    $77,198.99; property owned by free-State men, $335,779.04;
    property taken or destroyed by pro-slavery men, $318,718.63;
    property taken or destroyed by free-State men, $94,529.40."

About the loss of life the commissioners say: "Although not within our
province, we may be excused for stating that, from the most reliable
information that we have been able to gather, by the secret warfare of
the guerrilla system, and in well-known encounters, the number of
lives sacrificed in Kansas during the period mentioned probably
exceeded rather than fell short of two hundred.... That the excitement
in the Eastern and Southern States, in 1856, was instigated and kept
up by garbled and exaggerated accounts of Kansas affairs, published in
the Eastern and Southern newspapers, is true, most true; but the half
of what was done by either party was never chronicled!"--House
Reports, 2d Sess. 36th Cong. Vol. III., Part I, pp. 90 and 93.

[20] We quote the following from the executive minutes of Governor
Geary to show that border strife had not entirely destroyed the
kindlier human impulses, which enabled him to turn a portion of the
warring elements to the joint service of peace and order:

    "September 24, 1856. For the purpose of obtaining information
    which was considered of great value to the Territory, the Governor
    invited to Lecompton, Captain [Samuel] Walker, of Lawrence, one of
    the most celebrated and daring leaders of the anti-slavery party,
    promising him a safe-conduct to Lecompton and back again to
    Lawrence. During Walker's visit at the Executive Office, Colonel
    [H.T.] Titus entered, whose house was, a short time since,
    destroyed by a large force under the command of Walker; an offense
    which was subsequently retaliated by the burning of the residence
    of the latter. These men were, perhaps, the most determined
    enemies in the Territory. Through the Governor's intervention, a
    pacific meeting occurred, a better understanding took place,
    mutual concessions were made, and pledges of friendship were
    passed; and, late in the afternoon, Walker left Lecompton in
    company with and under the safeguard of Colonel Titus. Both these
    men have volunteered to enter the service of the United States as
    leaders of companies of territorial militia."--Geary, Executive
    Minutes. Senate Executive Documents, 3d Session 34th Congress,
    Vol. II., pp. 137-8.




CHAPTER II

THE CONVENTIONS OF 1856


  [Sidenote] 1856.

In the State of Illinois, the spring of the year 1856 saw an almost
spontaneous impulse toward the formation of a new party. As already
described, it was a transition period in politics. The disorganization
of the Whig party was materially increased and hastened by the
failure, two years before, to make Lincoln a Senator. On the other
hand, the election of Trumbull served quite as effectively to
consolidate the Democratic rebellion against Douglas in his
determination to make the support of his Nebraska bill a test of party
orthodoxy. Many of the Northern counties had formed "Republican"
organizations in the two previous years; but the name was entirely
local, while the opposition, not yet united, but fighting in factions
against the Nebraska bill, only acknowledged political affinity under
the general term of the "Anti-Nebraska" party.

  [Sidenote] 1856.

In the absence of any existing party machinery, some fifteen editors
of anti-Nebraska newspapers met for conference at Decatur on the 22d
of February and issued a call for a delegate State convention of the
"Anti-Nebraska party," to meet at Bloomington on the 29th of May.
Prominent leaders, as a rule, hesitated to commit themselves by their
presence at Decatur. Not so with Mr. Lincoln. He could not attend the
deliberations as an editor; but he doubtless lent his suggestion and
advice, for we find him among the distinguished guests and speakers at
the banquet which followed the business session, and toasts to his
candidacy as "the next United States Senator" show that his leadership
had suffered no abatement. The assembled editors purposely set the
Bloomington Convention for a somewhat late day in the campaign, and
before the time arrived the political situation in the State was
already much more clearly defined.

  [Sidenote] Davidson and Stuve, "History of Illinois," p. 616.

One factor which greatly baffled the calculations and forecast of
politicians was the Know-Nothing or American party. It was apparent to
all that this order or affiliation had during the past two years
spread into Illinois, as into other States. But as its machinery and
action were secret, and as no general election had occurred since 1854
to exhibit its numerical strength, its possible scope and influence
could only be vaguely estimated. Still it was clearly present as a
positive force. Its national council had in February at Philadelphia
nominated Fillmore and Donelson as a presidential ticket; but the
preponderating Southern membership forced an indorsement of the
Kansas-Nebraska act into its platform, which destroyed the unity and
power of the party, driving the Northern delegates to a bolt.
Nevertheless many Northern voters, indifferent to the slavery issue,
still sought to maintain its organization; and thus in Illinois the
State Council met early in May, ratified the nomination of Fillmore
for President, and nominated candidates for Governor, and other State
officers.

The Democratic party, or rather so much of that party as did not
openly repudiate the policy and principle of the Kansas-Nebraska act,
made early preparations for a vigorous campaign. The great loss in
prestige and numbers he had already sustained admonished Douglas that
his political fortunes hung in a doubtful balance. But he was a bold
and aggressive leader, to whom controversy and party warfare were
rather an inspiration than a discouragement. Under his guidance, the
Democratic State Convention nominated for Governor of Illinois William
A. Richardson, late a member of the House of Representatives, in which
body as chairman of the Committee on Territories he had been the
leader to whom the success of the Nebraska bill was specially
intrusted, and where his parliamentary management had contributed
materially to the final passage of that measure.

Thus the attitude of opposing factions and the unorganized unfolding
of public opinion, rather than any mere promptings or combinations of
leaders, developed the course of the anti-Nebraska men of Illinois.
Out of this condition sprung directly one important element of future
success. Richardson's candidacy, long foreshadowed, was seen to
require an opposing nominee of unusual popularity. He was found in the
person of Colonel William H. Bissell, late a Democratic representative
in Congress, where he had denounced disunion in 1850, and opposed the
Nebraska bill in 1854. He had led a regiment to the Mexican war, and
fought gallantly at the battle of Buena Vista. His military laurels
easily carried him into Congress; but the exposures of the Mexican
campaign also burdened him with a disease which paralyzed his lower
limbs, and compelled retirement from active politics after his second
term. He was now, however, recovering; and having already exhibited
civic talents of a high order, the popular voice made light of his
physical infirmity, and his friends declared their readiness to match
the brains of Bissell against the legs of his opponents.

  [Sidenote] January 23, 1850, Appendix, "Globe," 1849-50, p. 78.

One piece of his history rendered him specially acceptable to young
and spirited Western voters. His service in Congress began amid
exciting debates over the compromise measures of 1850, when the
Southern fire-eaters were already rampant. Seddon, of Virginia, in his
eagerness to depreciate the North and glorify the South, affirmed in a
speech that at the battle of Buena Vista, "at that most critical
juncture when all seemed lost save honor," amid the discomfiture and
rout of "the brave but unfortunate troops of the North through a
mistaken order," "the noble regiment of Mississippians" had snatched
victory from the jaws of death. Replying some days later to Seddon's
innuendo, Bissell, competent by his presence on the battle-field to
bear witness, retorted that when the 2d Indiana gave way, it was
McKee's 2d Kentucky, Hardin's 1st Illinois, and Bissell's 2d Illinois
which had retrieved the fortunes of the hour, and that the vaunted
Mississippi regiment was not within a mile and a half of the scene of
action. Properly this was an issue of veracity between Seddon and
Bissell, of easy solution. But Jefferson Davis, who commanded the
Mississippi regiment in question, began an interchange of notes with
Bissell which from the first smelt of gunpowder. "Were his reported
remarks correct?" asked Davis in substance. Bissell answered, repeating
the language of his speech and defining the spot and the time to which
it applied, adding: "I deem it due, in justice alike to myself and the
Mississippi regiment, to say that I made no charge against that
regiment." Davis persisting, then asked, in substance, whether he
meant to deny General Lane's official report that "the regiment of
Mississippians came to the rescue at the proper time to save the
fortunes of the day." Bissell rejoined: "My remarks had reference to a
different time and place from those referred to by General Lane."

  [Sidenote] Pamphlet, Printed correspondence.

At this point both parties might with great propriety have ended the
correspondence. Sufficient inquiry had been met by generous
explanation. But Davis, apparently determined to push Bissell to the
wall, now sent his challenge. This time, however, he met his match, in
courage. Bissell named an officer of the army as his second,
instructing him to suggest as weapons "muskets, loaded with ball and
buckshot." The terms of combat do not appear to have been formally
proposed between the friends who met to arrange matters, but they were
evidently understood; the affair was hushed up, with the simple
addition to Bissell's first reply that he was willing to award the
Mississippi regiment "the credit due to their gallant and
distinguished services in that battle."

  [Sidenote] 1856.

The Bloomington Convention came together according to call on the 29th
of May. By this time the active and observant politicians of the State
had become convinced that the anti-Nebraska struggle was not a mere
temporary and insignificant "abolition" excitement, but a deep and
abiding political issue, involving in the fate of slavery the fate of
the nation. Minor and past differences were therefore generously
postponed or waived in favor of a hearty coalition on the single
dominant question. A most notable gathering of the clans was the
result. About one-fourth of the counties sent regularly chosen
delegates; the rest were volunteers. In spirit and enthusiasm it was
rather a mass-meeting than a convention; but every man present was in
some sort a leader in his own locality. The assemblage was much more
representative than similar bodies gathered by the ordinary caucus
machinery. It was an earnest and determined council of five or six
hundred cool, sagacious, independent thinkers, called together by a
great public exigency, led and directed by the first minds of the
State. Not only did it show a brilliant array of eminent names, but a
remarkable contrast of former antagonisms: Whigs, Democrats,
Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, Abolitionists; Norman B. Judd, Richard
Yates, Ebenezer Peck, Leonard Swett, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, Owen
Lovejoy, Orville H. Browning, Ichabod Godding, Archibald Williams, and
many more. Chief among these, as adviser and actor, was Abraham
Lincoln.

Rarely has a deliberative body met under circumstances more exciting
than did this one. The Congressional debates at Washington and the
civil war in Kansas were each at a culmination of passion and
incident. Within ten days Charles Sumner had been struck down in the
Senate Chamber, and the town of Lawrence sacked by the guerrilla posse
of Atchison and Sheriff Jones. Ex-Governor Reeder, of that suffering
Territory, addressed the citizens of Bloomington and the
earliest-arriving delegates on the evening of the 28th, bringing into
the convention the very atmosphere of the Kansas conflict.

The convention met and conducted its work with earnestness and
dignity. Bissell, already designated by unmistakable popular
indications, was nominated for governor by acclamation. The candidate
for lieutenant-governor was named in like manner. So little did the
convention think or care about the mere distribution of political
honors on the one hand, and so much, on the other, did it regard and
provide for the success of the cause, that it did not even ballot for
the remaining candidates on the State ticket, but deputed to a
committee the task of selecting and arranging them, and adopted its
report as a whole and by acclamation. The more difficult task of
drafting a platform was performed by another committee, with such
prudence that it too received a unanimous acceptance. It boldly
adopted the Republican name, formulated the Republican creed, and the
convention further appointed delegates to the coming Republican
National Convention.

There were stirring speeches by eloquent leaders, eagerly listened to
and vociferously applauded; but scarcely a man moved from his seat in
the crowded hall until Mr. Lincoln had been heard. Every one felt the
fitness of his making the closing argument and exhortation, and right
nobly did he honor their demand. A silence full of emotion filled the
assembly as for a moment before beginning his tall form stood in
commanding attitude on the rostrum, the impressiveness of his theme
and the significance of the occasion reflected in his thoughtful and
earnest features. The spell of the hour was visibly upon him; and
holding his audience in rapt attention, he closed in a brilliant
peroration with an appeal to the people to join the Republican
standard, to

    Come as the winds come, when forests are rended;
    Come as the waves come, when navies are stranded.

The influence was irresistible; the audience rose and acknowledged the
speaker's power with cheer upon cheer. Unfortunately the speech was
never reported; but its effect lives vividly in the memory of all who
heard it, and it crowned his right to popular leadership in his own
State, which thereafter was never disputed.

  [Sidenote] 1856.

The organization of the Republican party for the nation at large
proceeded very much in the same manner as that in the State of
Illinois. Pursuant to separate preliminary correspondence and calls
from State committees, a general meeting of prominent Republicans and
anti-Nebraska politicians from all parts of the North, and even from a
few border slave-States, came together at Pittsburgh on Washington's
birthday, February 22. Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania sent the
largest contingents; but around this great central nucleus were
gathered small but earnest delegations aggregating between three and
four hundred zealous leaders, representing twenty-eight States and
Territories. It was merely an informal mass convention; but many of
the delegates were men of national character, each of whose names was
itself a sufficient credential. Above all, the members were cautious,
moderate, conciliatory, and unambitious to act beyond the requirements
of the hour. They contented themselves with the usual parliamentary
routine; appointed a committee on national organization; issued a call
for a delegate convention; and adopted and put forth a stirring
address to the country. Their resolutions were brief and formulated
but four demands: the repeal of all laws which allow the introduction
of slavery into Territories once consecrated to freedom; resistance by
constitutional means to slavery in any United States Territory; the
immediate admission of Kansas as a free-State, and the overthrow of
the present national Administration.

In response to the official call embodied in the Pittsburgh address,
the first National Convention of the Republican party met at
Philadelphia on the 17th of June, 1856. The character and dignity of
the Pittsburgh proceedings assured the new party of immediate prestige
and acceptance; with so favorable a sponsorship it sprang full-armed
into the political conflict. That conflict which opened the year with
the long congressional contest over the speakership, and which found
its only solution in the choice of Banks by a plurality vote, had been
fed by fierce congressional debates, by presidential messages and
proclamations, by national conventions, by the Sumner assault, by the
Kansas war; the body politic throbbed with activity and excitement in
every fiber. Every free-State and several border States and
Territories were represented in the Philadelphia Convention; its
regular and irregular delegates counted nearly a thousand local
leaders, full of the zeal of new proselytes; Henry S. Lane, of
Indiana, was made its permanent chairman.

The party was too young and its prospect of immediate success too
slender to develop any serious rivalry for a presidential nomination.
Because its strength lay evidently among the former adherents of the
now dissolved and abandoned Whig party, William H. Seward of course
took highest rank in leadership; after him stood Salmon P. Chase as
the representative of the independent Democrats, who, bringing fewer
voters, had nevertheless contributed the main share of the courageous
pioneer work. It is a just tribute to their sagacity that both were
willing to wait for the maturer strength and riper opportunities of
the new organization. Justice John McLean, of the Supreme Bench, an
eminent jurist, a faithful Whig, whose character happily combined both
the energy and the conservatism of the great West, also had a large
following; but as might have been expected, the convention found a
more typical leader, young in years, daring in character, brilliant in
exploit; and after one informal ballot it nominated John C. Fremont,
of California. The credit of the selection and its successful
management has been popularly awarded to Francis P. Blair, senior,
famous as the talented and powerful newspaper lieutenant of President
Jackson; but it was rather an intuitive popular choice, which at the
moment seemed so appropriate as to preclude necessity for artful
intrigue.

[Illustration: MILLARD FILLMORE.]

There was a dash of romance in the personal history of Fremont which
gave his nomination a high popular relish. Of French descent, born in
Savannah, Georgia, orphaned at an early age, he acquired a scientific
education largely by his own unaided efforts in private study; a sea
voyage as teacher of mathematics, and employment in a railroad survey
through the wilderness of the Tennessee Mountains, developed the taste
and the qualifications that made him useful as an assistant in
Nicollet's scientific exploration of the great plateau where the
Mississippi River finds its sources, and secured his appointment as
second lieutenant of topographical engineers. These labors brought him
to Washington, where the same Gallic restlessness which made the
restraint of schools insupportable, brought about an attachment,
elopement, and marriage with the daughter of Senator Thomas H. Benton,
of Missouri.

Reconciliation followed in good time; and the unexplored Great West
being Benton's peculiar hobby, through his influence Fremont was sent
with an exploring party to the Rocky Mountains. Under his command
similar expeditions were repeated again and again to that mysterious
wonderland; and never were the wildest fictions read with more avidity
than his official reports of daily adventure, danger and discovery, of
scaling unclimbed mountains, wrecking his canoes on the rapids of
unvisited rivers, parleying and battling with hostile Indians, and
facing starvation while hemmed in by trackless snows. One of these
journeys had led him to the Pacific coast when our war with Mexico let
loose the spirit of revolution in the Mexican province of California.
With his characteristic restless audacity Fremont joined his little
company of explorers to a local insurrectionary faction of American
settlers, and raised a battalion of mounted volunteers. Though acting
without Government orders, he cooperated with the United States naval
forces sent to take possession of the California coast, and materially
assisted in overturning the Mexican authority and putting the remnant
of her military officials to flight. At the close of the conquest he
was for a short time military governor; and when, through the famous
gold discoveries, California was organized as a State and admitted to
the Union, Fremont became for a brief period one of her first United
States Senators.

So salient a record could not well be without strong contrasts, and of
these unsparing criticism took advantage. Hostile journals delineated
Fremont as a shallow, vainglorious, "woolly-horse," "mule-eating,"
"free-love," "nigger-embracing" black Republican; an extravagant,
insubordinate, reckless adventurer; a financial spendthrift and
political mountebank. As the reading public is not always skillful in
winnowing truth from libel when artfully mixed in print, even the
grossest calumnies were not without their effect in contributing to
his defeat. But to the sanguine zeal of the new Republican party, the
"Pathfinder" was a heroic and ideal leader; for, upon the vital point
at issue, his anti-slavery votes and clear declarations satisfied every
doubt and inspired unlimited confidence.

However picturesquely Fremont for the moment loomed up as the
standard-bearer of the Republican party, historical interest centers
upon the second act of the Philadelphia Convention. It shows us how
strangely to human wisdom vibrate the delicately balanced scales of
fate; or rather how inscrutable and yet how unerring are the
far-reaching processes of divine providence. The principal candidate
having been selected without contention or delay, the convention
proceeded to a nomination for Vice-President. On the first informal
ballot William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, received 259 votes and
Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, 110; the remaining votes being scattered
among thirteen other names.[1] The dominating thought of the
convention being the assertion of principle, and not the promotion of
men, there was no further contest;[2] and though Mr. Dayton had not
received a majority support, his nomination was nevertheless at once
made unanimous. Those who are familiar with the eccentricities of
nominating conventions when in this listless and drifting mood know
how easily an opportune speech from some eloquent delegate or a few
adroitly arranged delegation caucuses might have reversed this result;
and imagination may not easily construct the possible changes in
history which a successful campaign of the ticket in that form might
have wrought. What would have been the consequences to America and
humanity had the Rebellion, even then being vaguely devised by
Southern Hotspurs, burst upon the nation in the winter of 1856, with
the nation's sword of commander-in-chief in the hand of the impulsive
Fremont, and Lincoln, inheriting the patient wariness and cool blood
of three generations of pioneers and Indian-fighters, wielding only
the powerless gavel of Vice-President? But the hour of destiny had not
yet struck.

The platform devised by the Philadelphia Convention was unusually bold
in its affirmations, and most happy in its phraseology. Not only did
it "deny the authority of Congress, or of a territorial legislature,
of any individual or association of individuals, to give legal
existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States"; it
further "Resolved, That the Constitution confers upon Congress
sovereign power over the Territories of the United States for their
government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the
right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those
twin relics of barbarism--polygamy and slavery." At Buchanan, recently
nominated by the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, it
aimed a barbed shaft: "Resolved, That the highwayman's plea that
'might makes right,' embodied in the Ostend circular, was in every
respect unworthy of American diplomacy, and would bring shame and
dishonor upon any government or people that gave it their sanction."
It demanded the maintenance of the principles of the Declaration of
Independence, of the Federal Constitution, of the rights of the
States, and the union of the States. It favored a Pacific railroad,
congressional appropriations for national rivers and harbors; it
affirmed liberty of conscience and equality of rights; it arraigned
the policy of the Administration; demanded the immediate admission of
Kansas as a State, and invited "the affiliation and cooeperation of men
of all parties, however differing from them in other respects, in
support of the principles declared."

The nominees and platform of the Philadelphia Convention were accepted
by the opposition voters of the free-States with an alacrity and an
enthusiasm beyond the calculation of even the most sanguine; and in
November a vote was recorded in their support which, though then
unsuccessful, laid the secure foundation of an early victory, and
permanently established a great party destined to carry the country
through trials and vicissitudes equal in magnitude and results to any
which the world had hitherto witnessed.

In that year none of the presidential honors were reserved for the
State of Illinois. While Lincoln thus narrowly missed a nomination for
the second place on the Republican ticket, his fellow-citizen and
competitor, Douglas, failed equally to obtain the nomination he so
much coveted as the candidate of the Democratic party. The Democratic
National Convention had met at Cincinnati on the 2d day of June, 1856.
If Douglas flattered himself that such eminent services as he had
rendered the South would find this reward, his disappointment must
have been severe. While the benefits he had conferred were lightly
estimated or totally forgotten, former injuries inflicted in his name
were keenly remembered and resented. But three prominent candidates,
Buchanan, Pierce, and Douglas, were urged upon the convention. The
indiscreet crusade of Douglas's friends against "old fogies" in 1852
had defeated Buchanan and nominated Pierce; now, by the turn of
political fortune, Buchanan's friends were able to wipe out the double
score by defeating both Pierce and Douglas. Most of the Southern
delegates seem to have been guided by the mere thought of present
utility; they voted to renominate Pierce because of his subservient
Kansas policy, forgetting that Douglas had not only begun it, but was
their strongest ally to continue it. When after a day of fruitless
balloting they changed their votes to Douglas, Buchanan, the so-called
"old fogy," just returned from the English mission, and therefore not
handicapped by personal jealousies and heart-burnings, had secured the
firm adhesion of a decided majority mainly from the North.[3]

The "two-thirds rule" was not yet fulfilled, but at this juncture the
friends of Pierce and Douglas yielded to the inevitable, and withdrew
their favorites in the interest of "harmony." On the seventeenth
ballot, therefore, and the fifth day of the convention, James
Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, became the unanimous nominee of the
Democratic party for President, and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky,
for Vice-President.

The famous "Cincinnati platform" holds a conspicuous place in party
literature for length, for vigor of language, for variety of topics,
for boldness of declaration; and yet, strange to say, its chief merit
and utility lay in the skillful concealment of its central thought and
purpose. About one-fourth of its great length is devoted to what to
the eye looks like a somewhat elaborate exposition of the doctrines of
the party on the slavery question. Eliminate the verbiage and there
only remains an indorsement of the "principles contained in the
organic laws establishing the Territory of Kansas and Nebraska"
(non-interference by Congress with slavery in State and Territory, or
in the District of Columbia); and the practical application of "the
principles" is thus further defined: "Resolved, That we recognize the
right of the people of all the Territories, including Kansas and
Nebraska, acting through the legally and fairly expressed will of a
majority of actual residents, and whenever the number of their
inhabitants justifies it, to form a constitution with or without
domestic slavery, and be admitted into the Union upon terms of perfect
equality with the other States."

We have already seen how deliberately the spirit and letter of "the
principle" was violated by the Democratic National Administration of
President Pierce, and by nearly all the Democratic Senators and
Representatives in Congress; and we shall see how the more explicit
resolution was again even more flagrantly violated by the Democratic
National Administration and party under President Buchanan.

For the time, however, these well-rounded phrases were especially
convenient: first, to prevent any schism in the Cincinnati Convention
itself, and, secondly, to furnish points for campaign speeches;
politicians not having any pressing desire, nor voters the requisite
critical skill, to demonstrate how they left untouched the whole brood
of pertinent queries which the discussion had already raised, and
which at its next national convention were destined to disrupt and
defeat the Democratic party. For this occasion the studied ambiguity
of the Cincinnati platform made possible a last cooeperation of North
and South, in the face of carefully concealed mental reservations, to
secure a presidential victory.

It is not the province of this work to describe the incidents of the
national canvass, but only to record its results. At the election of
November, 1856, Buchanan was chosen President. The popular vote in the
nation at large stood: Buchanan, 1,838,169; Fremont, 1,341,264;
Fillmore, 874,534. By States Buchanan received the votes of fourteen
slave-States and five free-States, a total of 174 electors; Fremont
the vote of eleven free-States, a total of 114 electors; and Fillmore
the vote of one slave-State, a total of eight electors.[4]

In the campaign which preceded Mr. Buchanan's election, Mr. Lincoln,
at the head of the Fremont electoral ticket for Illinois, took a
prominent part, traversing the State in every direction, and making
about fifty speeches. Among the addresses which he thus delivered in
the different counties, it is interesting to read a fragment of a
speech he made at Galena, Illinois, discussing the charge of
"sectionalism," the identical pretext upon which the South inaugurated
its rebellion against his Administration four years afterwards:

    You further charge us with being disunionists. If you mean that it
    is our aim to dissolve the Union, I for myself answer that it is
    untrue; for those who act with me I answer that it is untrue. Have
    you heard us assert that as our aim? Do you really believe that
    such is our aim? Do you find it in our platform, our speeches, our
    conventions, or anywhere? If not, withdraw the charge.

    But you may say that though it is not our aim, it will be the
    result, if we succeed, and that we are therefore disunionists in
    fact. This is a grave charge you make against us, and we certainly
    have a right to demand that you specify in what way we are to
    dissolve the Union. How are we to effect this?

    The only specification offered is volunteered by Mr. Fillmore in
    his Albany speech. His charge is that if we elect a President and
    Vice-President both from the free-States it will dissolve the
    Union. This is open folly. The Constitution provides that the
    President and Vice-President of the United States shall be of
    different States; but says nothing as to the latitude and longitude
    of those States. In 1828 Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, and John C.
    Calhoun, of South Carolina, were elected President and
    Vice-President, both from slave-States; but no one thought of
    dissolving the Union then on that account. In 1840 Harrison, of
    Ohio, and Tyler, of Virginia, were elected. In 1841 Harrison died
    and John Tyler succeeded to the presidency, and William R. King, of
    Alabama, was elected acting Vice-President by the Senate; but no
    one supposed that the Union was in danger. In fact, at the very
    time Mr. Fillmore uttered this idle charge, the state of things in
    the United States disproved it. Mr. Pierce, of New Hampshire, and
    Mr. Bright, of Indiana, both from free-States, are President and
    Vice-President, and the Union stands and will stand. You do not
    pretend that it ought to dissolve the Union, and the facts show
    that it won't; therefore the charge may be dismissed without
    further consideration.

  [Sidenote] Galena "Advertiser," copied into the Illinois "State
  Journal," August 8, 1856.

    No other specification is made, and the only one that could be made
    is, that the restoration of the restriction of 1820 making the
    United States territory free territory would dissolve the Union.
    Gentlemen, it will require a decided majority to pass such an act.
    We, the majority, being able constitutionally to do all that we
    purpose, would have no desire to dissolve the Union. Do you say
    that such restriction of slavery would be unconstitutional, and
    that some of the States would not submit to its enforcement? I
    grant you that an unconstitutional act is not a law; but I do not
    ask and will not take your construction of the Constitution. The
    Supreme Court of the United States is the tribunal to decide such a
    question, and we will submit to its decisions; and if you do also,
    there will be an end of the matter. Will you? If not, who are the
    disunionists, you or we? We, the majority, would not strive to
    dissolve the Union; and if any attempt is made it must be by you,
    who so loudly stigmatize us as disunionists.

    But the Union, in any event, will not be dissolved. We don't want
    to dissolve it, and if you attempt it we won't let you. With the
    purse and sword, the army and navy and treasury in our hands and at
    our command, you could not do it. This government would be very
    weak indeed if a majority with a disciplined army and navy and a
    well-filled treasury could not preserve itself, when attacked by an
    unarmed, undisciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk about
    the dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We do
    not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not.

With three presidential tickets in the field--with the Democrats
seeking the election of Buchanan and Breckinridge, the Americans, or
Know-Nothings, asking votes for Fillmore and Donelson, and the
Republicans making proselytes for Fremont and Dayton--the political
campaign of 1856 was one of unabated activity and excitement. In the
State of Illinois the contest resulted in a drawn battle. The American
party held together with tolerable firmness in its vote for President,
but was largely disintegrated in its vote on the ticket for State
officers. The consequence was that Illinois gave a plurality of 9164
for Buchanan, the Democratic candidate for President, while at the
same time it gave a plurality of 4729 for Bissell, the Republican
candidate for Governor.[5]

Half victory as it was, it furnished the Illinois Republicans a
substantial hope of the full triumph which they achieved four years
later. About a month after this election, at a Republican banquet
given in Chicago on the 10th of December, 1856, Abraham Lincoln spoke
as follows, partly in criticism of the last annual message of
President Pierce, but more especially pointing out the rising star of
promise:

    We have another annual presidential message. Like a rejected
    lover making merry at the wedding of his rival, the President
    felicitates himself hugely over the late presidential election.
    He considers the result a signal triumph of good principles and
    good men, and a very pointed rebuke of bad ones. He says the
    people did it. He forgets that the "people," as he complacently
    calls only those who voted for Buchanan, are in a minority of the
    whole people by about four hundred thousand votes--one full tenth
    of all the votes. Remembering this, he might perceive that the
    "rebuke" may not be quite as durable as he seems to think--that
    the majority may not choose to remain permanently rebuked by that
    minority.

    The President thinks the great body of us Fremonters, being
    ardently attached to liberty, in the abstract, were duped by a
    few wicked and designing men. There is a slight difference of
    opinion on this. We think he, being ardently attached to the hope
    of a second term, in the concrete, was duped by men who had
    liberty every way. He is the cat's-paw. By much dragging of
    chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws are burnt
    off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit for further
    use. As the fool said of _King Lear_, when his daughters had
    turned him out-of-doors, "He's a shelled peascod." [That's a
    sheal'd peascod.]

    So far as the President charges us "with a desire to change the
    domestic institutions of existing States," and of "doing
    everything in our power to deprive the Constitution and the laws
    of moral authority," for the whole party on belief, and for
    myself on knowledge, I pronounce the charge an unmixed and
    unmitigated falsehood.

  [Sidenote] Illinois "State Journal," December 16, 1856.

    Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public
    opinion can change the government practically just so much.
    Public opinion, on any subject, always has a "central idea," from
    which all its minor thoughts radiate. That "central idea" in our
    political public opinion at the beginning was, and until recently
    has continued to be, "the equality of men." And although it has
    always submitted patiently to whatever of inequality there seemed
    to be as matter of actual necessity, its constant working has
    been a steady progress towards the practical equality of all men.
    The late presidential election was a struggle by one party to
    discard that central idea and to substitute for it the opposite
    idea that slavery is right in the abstract, the workings of which
    as a central idea may be the perpetuity of human slavery and its
    extension to all countries and colors. Less than a year ago the
    Richmond "Enquirer," an avowed advocate of slavery, regardless of
    color, in order to favor his views, invented the phrase "State
    equality," and now the President, in his message, adopts the
    "Enquirer's" catch-phrase, telling us the people "have asserted
    the constitutional equality of each and all of the States of the
    Union as States." The President flatters himself that the new
    central idea is completely inaugurated; and so indeed it is, so
    far as the mere fact of a presidential election can inaugurate
    it. To us it is left to know that the majority of the people have
    not yet declared for it, and to hope that they never will. All of
    us who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are a
    majority of four hundred thousand. But in the late contest we
    were divided between Fremont and Fillmore. Can we not come
    together for the future? Let every one who really believes, and
    is resolved, that free society is not and shall not be a failure,
    and who can conscientiously declare that in the past contest he
    has done only what he thought best, let every such one have
    charity to believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let
    bygones be bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and with
    steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old
    "central ideas" of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is
    with us; God is with us. We shall again be able not to declare
    that "all States as States are equal," nor yet that "all citizens
    as citizens are equal," but to renew the broader, better
    declaration, including both these and much more, that "all men
    are created equal."

Though these fragments of addresses give us only an imperfect
reflection of the style of Mr. Lincoln's oratory during this period,
they nevertheless show its essential characteristics, a pervading
clearness of analysis, and that strong tendency to axiomatic
definition which gives so many of his sentences their convincing force
and durable value. They also show us the combination, not often found
in such happy balance, of the politician's discernment of fact with
the statesman's wisdom of theory--how present forces of national life
are likely to be moved by future impulses of national will. The
politician could see the four hundred thousand voters who would give
victory to some party in the near future. It required the wisdom of
the statesman to divine that the public opinion which would direct
how these votes were to be cast, could most surely be created by an
appeal to those generous "central ideas" of the human mind which
favor equality against caste and freedom against slavery. Perhaps
the most distinctively representative quality these addresses exhibit
is the patriotic spirit and faith which led him to declare so
dogmatically in this campaign of 1856, what the nation called upon
him a few years later to execute by the stern powers of war, "We do
not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not."

----------
[1] For David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, 43; Preston King, of New York,
9; Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, 36; Thomas H. Ford, of Ohio, 7;
Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, 3; Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, 15;
William F. Johnston, of Pennsylvania, 2; Nathaniel P. Banks, of
Massachusetts, 46; Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, 7; William
Pennington, of New Jersey, 1; ---- Carey, of New Jersey, 3; S.C.
Pomeroy, of Kansas, 8; J.R. Giddings, of Ohio, 2. The vote in detail
for Lincoln was: Maine, 1; New Hampshire, 8; Massachusetts, 7; Rhode
Island, 2; New York, 3; Pennsylvania, 11; Ohio, 2; Indiana, 26;
Illinois, 33; Michigan, 5; and California, 12.

[2] Mr. T.S. Van Dyke, son of one of the delegates, kindly writes
us: "Nothing that Mr. Lincoln has ever written is more characteristic
than the following note from him to my father just after the
convention--not for publication, but merely as a private expression
of his feelings to an old acquaintance:

    "SPRINGFIELD, ILL.,
    "June 27, 1856.
    "Hon. JOHN VAN DYKE.

    "MY DEAR SIR: Allow me to thank you for your kind notice of me in
    the Philadelphia Convention.

    "When you meet Judge Dayton present my respects, and tell him I
    think him a far better man than I for the position he is in, and
    that I shall support both him and Colonel Fremont most cordially.
    Present my best respects to Mrs. V., and believe me,

    "Yours truly,

    "A. LINCOLN."

[3] On the sixteenth ballot Buchanan received 168 votes, of which 121
were from the free-States and 47 from the slave-States; Douglas
received 122 votes, of which 49 were from the free-States and 73 from
the slave-States; Cass received 6 votes, all from the free-States;
Pierce had been finally dropped on the previous ballot.--"Proceedings
of the Cincinnati Convention," p. 45.

[4] The vote more in detail was as follows:

For Buchanan, slave-States, Alabama, 9; Arkansas, 4; Delaware, 3;
Florida, 3; Georgia, 10; Kentucky, 12; Louisiana, 6; Mississippi, 7;
Missouri, 9; North Carolina, 10; South Carolina, 8; Tennessee, 12;
Texas, 4; Virginia, 15. Free States, California, 4; Illinois, 11;
Indiana, 13; New Jersey, 7; Pennsylvania, 27. Total, 174.

For Fremont, free-States, Connecticut, 6; Iowa, 4; Maine, 8;
Massachusetts, 13; Michigan, 6; New Hampshire, 5; New York, 35; Ohio,
23; Rhode Island, 4; Vermont, 5; Wisconsin, 5. Total, 114.

For Fillmore, slave-State, Maryland, 8.

[5] For President, Buchanan (Democrat), 105,344; Fremont (Republican),
96,180; Fillmore (American), 37,451. For Governor, Richardson (Democrat),
106,643; Bissell (Republican), 111,372; Morris (American), 19,241.




CHAPTER III

CONGRESSIONAL RUFFIANISM


The official reports show that the proceedings of the American
Congress, while in the main conducted with becoming propriety and
decorum, have occasionally been dishonored by angry personal
altercations and scenes of ruffianly violence. These disorders
increased as the great political struggle over the slavery question
grew in intensity, and reached their culmination in a series of
startling incidents.

Charles Sumner, one of the Senators from the State of Massachusetts,
had become conspicuous, in the prevailing political agitation, for
his aggressive and radical anti-slavery speeches in the Senate and
elsewhere. The slavery issue had brought him into politics; he had
been elected to the United States Senate by the coalition of a small
number of Free-soilers with the Democrats in the Massachusetts
Legislature.

The slavery question, therefore, became the dominant principle and
the keynote of his public career. He was a man of liberal culture, of
considerable erudition in the law, of high literary ability, and he
had attained an enviable social eminence. Of large physical frame and
strength, gifted with a fine presence and a sonorous voice, fearless
and earnest in his opposition to slavery, Charles Sumner was one of
the favorite orators of the early declamatory period of the Republican
party.

He joined unreservedly in the exciting Senate debates, provoked by the
rival applications from Kansas for her admission as a State. On the
19th and 20th of May, 1856, he delivered an elaborate speech in the
Senate, occupying two days. It was one of his greatest efforts, and
had been prepared with his usual industry. In character it was a
philippic rather than an argument, strong, direct, and aggressive, in
which classical illustration and acrimonious accusation were blended
with great effect.

It described what he called "The Crime against Kansas"; and the
excuses for the crime he denominated the apology tyrannical, the
apology imbecile, the apology absurd, and the apology infamous.
"Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy," he continued, "all unite
to dance, like the weird sisters, about this crime."

In the course of his speech he alluded, among others, to A.P. Butler,
of South Carolina, and in reply to some severe strictures by that
Senator during preceding debates, indulged in caustic personal
criticism upon his course and utterance, as well as upon the State
which he represented.

    With regret [said Sumner], I come again upon the Senator from
    South Carolina [Mr. Butler], who, omnipresent in this debate,
    overflowed with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas had
    applied for admission as a State; and with incoherent phrases
    discharged the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her
    representative and then upon her people. There was no extravagance
    of the ancient parliamentary debate which he did not repeat; nor
    was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not make,
    with so much of passion, I am glad to add, as to save him from the
    suspicion of intentional aberration. But the Senator touches
    nothing which he does not disfigure--with error, sometimes of
    principle, sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy,
    whether in stating the Constitution or in stating the law, whether
    in details of statistics or the diversions of scholarship. He
    cannot open his mouth but out there flies a blunder.

[Illustration: CHARLES SUMNER.]

Butler was not present in the Senate on either day; what he might have
said or done, had he been there, can only be conjectured. The immediate
replies from Douglas and others were very bitter. Among pro-slavery
members of both Houses there was an under-current of revengeful
murmurs. It is possible that this hostile manifestation may have
decided a young member of the House, Preston S. Brooks, a nephew of
Senator Butler, to undertake retaliation by violence. Acquainting
Henry A. Edmundson, another member, with his design, he waited on two
different occasions at the western entrance to the Capitol grounds to
encounter Mr. Sumner, but without meeting him.

  [Sidenote] 1856.

On the 22d of May, two days after the speech, Brooks entered the
Senate Chamber on the same errand. The session had been short, and
after adjournment Sumner remained at his desk, engaged in writing. The
sessions were at that time held in the old Senate Chamber, now
occupied by the Supreme Court. The seats were arranged in semicircles,
with a railing to separate them from a narrow lobby or open space next
the wall; a broad aisle ran from the main door to the desk of the
presiding officer. Mr. Sumner's seat was in the outside row next to
the railing, at the second desk to the right from the entrance and the
main aisle. Occupied with his work, Mr. Sumner did not notice Mr.
Brooks, sitting across the aisle to his left, and where in
conversation with a friend he was manifesting his impatience that a
lady seated near Mr. Sumner did not take her departure from the
chamber. Almost at that moment she arose and went out; quickly
afterwards Brooks got up and advanced to the front of Sumner's desk.
The act attracted the attention of Brooks's friend; he was astonished,
amid the bitterness of party feeling, to see a South Carolina
Representative talk to a Massachusetts Senator. His astonishment was
quickly corrected. Leaning upon the desk and addressing Sumner with a
rapid sentence or two, to the effect that he had read his speech, that
it was a libel upon his absent relative, and that he had come to
punish him for it, Brooks began striking him on the head with a
gutta-percha walking-cane, of the ordinary length and about an inch in
diameter.

Surprised, blinded and stunned by the blows, Sumner's first instinct
was to grapple with his assailant. This effort, however, was futile;
the desk was between them, and being by his sitting posture partially
under it, Sumner was prevented from rising fully to his feet until he
had by main strength, in his struggles, wrenched it from its
fastenings on the floor. In his attempt to follow Brooks they became
turned, and from between the desks moved out into the main aisle. By
this time, through the repetition of the heavy blows and loss of
blood, Sumner became unconscious. Brooks, seizing him by the
coat-collar, continued his murderous attack till Sumner, reeling in
utter helplessness, sank upon the floor beside the desk nearest the
aisle, one row nearer the center of the chamber than his own. The
witnesses variously estimated the number of blows given at from ten to
thirty. Two principal wounds, two inches long and an inch deep, had
been cut on the back of Sumner's head; and near the end of the attack,
Brooks's cane was shivered to splinters.

There were perhaps ten or fifteen persons in the chamber, and after
the first momentary pause of astonishment half a dozen started to
interfere. Before they reached the spot, however, Lawrence M. Keitt,
another South Carolina Representative, came rushing down the main
aisle, brandishing his cane, and with imprecations warning lookers-on
to "let them alone." Among those hastening to the rescue, Mr. Morgan
arrived first, just in time to catch and sustain the Senator as he
fell. Another bystander, who had run round outside the railing, seized
Brooks by the arm about the same instant; and the wounded man was
borne to an adjoining room, where he was cared for by a hastily
summoned physician.

Among Mr. Sumner's friends the event created a certain degree of
consternation. The language which provoked the assault, whatever might
be thought of its offensive character, was strictly parliamentary,
uninterrupted either by the chair or by any member. The assault itself
was so desperate and brutal that it implied a vindictiveness deeper
than mere personal revenge. This spirit of bullying, this resort to
violence, had recently become alarmingly frequent among members of
Congress, especially as it all came from the pro-slavery party.
Since the beginning of the current session, a pro-slavery member from
Virginia had assaulted the editor of a Washington newspaper; another
pro-slavery member, from Arkansas, had violently attacked Horace
Greeley on the street; a third pro-slavery member, from California, had
shot an unoffending waiter at Willard's Hotel. Was this fourth instance
the prelude of an intention to curb or stifle free Congressional
debate? It is probable that this question was seriously considered at
the little caucus of Republican Senators held that night at the house
of Mr. Seward. The Republicans had only a slender minority in the
Senate, and a plurality in the House; they could do nothing but resolve
on a course of parliamentary inquiry, and agree on an attitude of
defense.

Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, made a very brief announcement of
the occurrence to the Senate on the following day, and it at once
became apparent that the transaction would assume an almost strictly
party character. As no Democratic Senator proposed an inquiry, Mr.
Seward moved for a committee of investigation; upon which James M.
Mason, of Virginia, proposed that the committee should be elected by
ballot. The result was that no Republican was chosen upon it; and the
committee reached the conclusion that it had no power in the premises,
except to report the occurrence to the House. In the House the usual
committee from the three parties was raised, resulting in two reports.
The minority, sustained by the vote of sixty members, pleaded a want
of jurisdiction. The majority recommended the expulsion of Brooks, and
expressed disapprobation by the House of the course of his colleague,
Edmundson, in countenancing the assault, and of the act of Keitt in
his personal interference. But the necessary two-thirds vote for the
expulsion of Brooks could not be obtained; a vote of censure was
therefore passed by a large majority. The discussion of the report and
resolutions occupied the House several days, and whatever effort
members made to disguise their motives, their actions, either of
condemnation or of excuse, arose in the main clearly enough from their
party relations. Under the forms of parliamentary debate, the South
and the North were breathing mutual recrimination and defiance.

The public of both sections took up the affair with equal party zeal.
From the North came resolutions of legislatures, outbursts of
indignation in meetings and addresses, and the denunciation of Brooks
and his deed in the newspapers. In the South the exactly opposite
sentiment predominated. Brooks was defended and eulogized, and
presented with canes and pitchers as testimonials to his valor. When
the resolution of censure had been passed, he at once resigned his
seat in the House, and going home to his constituents, was immediately
reelected. Within three weeks he reappeared at the bar of the House,
with a new commission from his Governor, and was sworn in and
continued his service as before. The arrogant address which preceded
his resignation contained the remarkable intimation that much more
serious results might have grown out of the incident. "No act of
mine," he said, "on my personal account, shall inaugurate revolution;
but when you, Mr. Speaker, return to your own home, and hear the
people of the great North--and they are a great people--speak of me as
a bad man, you will do me the justice to say that a blow struck by me
at this time would be followed by a revolution; and this I know."

Under the state of public sentiment then prevailing at the South, it
would have been strange if the extraordinary event and the succeeding
debate had not provoked other similar affairs. Mr. Sumner's colleague,
Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts (afterwards Vice-President of
the United States), in his speech characterized the assault as
"brutal, murderous, and cowardly." For this language Brooks sent him a
challenge. Wilson wrote a reply declining the encounter, but in the
same letter announcing that "I religiously believe in the right of
self-defense, in its broadest sense."

One of the sharpest denunciations of the assault was made by Anson
Burlingame, a Massachusetts Representative (afterwards United States
Minister to China, and still later Chinese Minister to the United
States). "I denounce it," he said, "in the name of the Constitution it
violates. I denounce it in the name of the sovereignty of
Massachusetts, which was stricken down by the blow. I denounce it in
the name of humanity. I denounce it in the name of civilization, which
it outraged. I denounce it in the name of that fair-play which bullies
and prize-fighters respect." For this, after some efforts had been
made by friends to bring about an amicable understanding, Brooks sent
him also a challenge. Mr. Burlingame accepted the challenge, and his
second designated the Clifton House in Canada as the rendezvous and
rifles as weapons. Burlingame at once started on the journey; but
Brooks declined to go, on the excuse that his life would not be safe
on such a trip through the North.

Broadened into national significance by all these attendant
circumstances, the Sumner assault became a leading event in the great
slavery contest between the South and North. It might well rank as one
of the episodes of the civil war then raging in Kansas, out of which
it had in reality grown, and with which it was intertwined in motive,
act, and comment. In result the incident was extremely damaging to the
South, for it tended more than any single Border-Ruffian crime in
Kansas to unite hesitating and wavering opinion in the North against
the alarming flood of lawlessness and violence, which as a rule found
its origin and its defense in the ranks of the pro-slavery party.
Certainly no phase of the transaction was received by the North with
such popular favor as some of the bolder avowals by Northern
Representatives of their readiness to fight, and especially by
Burlingame's actual acceptance of the challenge of Brooks.

The shock of the attack, and the serious wounds received by Mr.
Sumner, produced a spinal malady, from which he rallied with great
difficulty, and only after severe medical treatment and years of
enforced abstinence from work. As the constituents of Brooks sent him
back to the House, so also the Legislature of Massachusetts, in
January, 1857, with but few dissenting votes, reelected Sumner to a
new senatorial term, beginning the 4th of March. He came to Washington
and was sworn in, but within a few days sailed for Europe, and during
the greater part of the long interim between that time and the
succeeding Presidential campaign his seat in the Senate remained
vacant.

It was on the 4th of June, 1860, that he again raised his voice in
debate. Some changes had occurred: both Butler and Brooks were
dead;[1] the Senate was assembled in its new hall in the north wing
of the Capitol extension. But in the main the personnel and the spirit
of the pro-slavery party still confronted him. "Time has passed," he
said, "but the question remains." A little more than four years
before, he had essayed to describe "The Crime against Kansas"; now, in
an address free from offensive personalities but more unsparing in
rhetoric and stronger in historical arraignment, he delineated what he
named the "Barbarism of Slavery." Picturing to ourselves the orator,
the circumstances, and the theme, we can comprehend the exaltation
with which he exclaimed in his exordium: "Slavery must be resisted not
only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social,
economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest; nor is it any strife
of rival factions--of White and Red Roses; of theatric Neri and
Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong, between
Good and Evil.... Grander debate has not occurred in our history,
rarely in any history; nor can this debate close or subside except
with the triumph of Freedom."

With this speech Sumner resumed his place as a conspicuous figure and
an indefatigable energy in national politics and legislation, tireless
in attacking and pursuing slavery until its final overthrow.

----------
[1] Preston S. Brooks died in Washington, January 27, 1857; Andrew P.
Butler died in South Carolina, May 25, 1857.




CHAPTER IV

THE DRED SCOTT DECISION


  [Sidenote] 1854.

  [Sidenote] March 6, 1857.

Deep and widespread as hitherto had been the slavery agitation created
by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and by the consequent civil
war in Kansas, an event entirely unexpected to the public at large
suddenly doubled its intensity. This was the announcement, two days
after Buchanan's inauguration, of the decision of the Supreme Court of
the United States in the Dred Scott case. This celebrated case had
arisen as follows:

Two or three years before the Nebraska bill was thought of, a suit was
begun by a negro named Dred Scott, in a local court in St. Louis,
Missouri, to recover the freedom of himself and his family from
slavery. He alleged that his master, one Dr. Emerson, an army surgeon,
living in Missouri, had taken him as his slave to the military post at
Rock Island, in the State of Illinois, and afterwards to Fort
Snelling, situated in what was originally Upper Louisiana, but was at
that time part of Wisconsin Territory, and now forms part of
Minnesota. While at this latter post Dred Scott, with his master's
consent, married a colored woman, also brought as a slave from
Missouri, and of this marriage two children were born. All this
happened between the years 1834 and 1838. Afterwards Dr. Emerson
brought Dred Scott and his family back to Missouri. In this suit they
now claimed freedom, because during the time of residence with their
master at these military posts slavery was there prohibited by
positive law; namely, at Bock Island by the ordinance of 1787, and
later by the Constitution of Illinois; at Fort Snelling by the
Missouri Compromise acts of 1820, and other acts of Congress relating
to Wisconsin Territory.

The local court in St. Louis before which this action was brought
appears to have made short work of the case. It had become settled
legal doctrine by Lord Mansfield's decision in the Somersett case,
rendered four years before our Declaration of Independence, that "the
state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being
introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only positive
law.... It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but
positive law." The learned chief-justice therefore ordered that
Somersett, being claimed as a Virginia slave brought by his master
into England, when it was attempted to carry him away against his
will, should be discharged from custody or restraint, because there
was no positive law in England to support slavery. The doctrine was
subsequently modified by another English chief-justice, Lord Stowell,
in 1827, to the effect that absence of positive law to support slavery
in England only operates to suspend the master's authority, which is
revived if the slave voluntarily returns into an English colony where
slavery does exist by positive law.

The States of the Union naturally inherited and retained the common
law of England, and the principles and maxims of English jurisprudence
not necessarily abrogated by the change of government, and among
others this doctrine of Lord Mansfield. Unlike England, however, where
there was no slavery and no law for or against it, some of the
American States had positive laws establishing slavery, others
positive laws prohibiting it. Lord Mansfield's doctrine, therefore,
enlarged and strengthened by American statutes and decisions, had come
to be substantially this: Slavery, being contrary to natural right,
exists only by virtue of local law; if the master takes his slave for
permanent residence into a jurisdiction where slavery is prohibited,
the slave thereby acquires a right to his freedom everywhere. On the
other hand, Lord Stowell's doctrine was similarly enlarged and
strengthened so as to allow the master right of transit and temporary
sojourn in free-States and Territories without suspension or
forfeiture of his authority over his slave. Under the complex American
system of government, in which the Federal Union and the several
States each claim sovereignty and independent action within certain
limitations, it became the theory and practice that towards each other
the several States occupied the attitude of foreign nations, which
relation was governed by international law, and that the principle of
comity alone controlled the recognition and enforcement by any State
of the law of any other State. Under this theory, the courts of slave
States had generally accorded freedom to slaves, even when acquired by
the laws of a free-State, and reciprocally the courts of free-States
had enforced the master's right to his slave where that right depended
on the laws of a slave-State. In this spirit, and conforming to this
established usage, the local court of Missouri declared Dred Scott and
his family free.

The claimant, loath to lose these four human "chattels," carried the
case to the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, where at its March
term, 1852, it was reversed, and a decree rendered that these negroes
were not entitled to freedom. Three judges formed the court, and two
of them joined in an opinion bearing internal evidence that it was
prompted, not by considerations of law and justice, but by a spirit of
retaliation growing out of the ineradicable antagonism of freedom and
slavery.

  [Sidenote] Scott, J., 15 Mo. Reports, pp. 582-6.

    Every State [says the opinion] has the right of determining how
    far, in a spirit of comity, it will respect the laws of other
    States. Those laws have no intrinsic right to be enforced beyond
    the limits of the State for which they were enacted. The respect
    allowed them will depend altogether on their conformity to the
    policy of our institutions. No State is bound to carry into effect
    enactments conceived in a spirit hostile to that which pervades
    her own laws.... It is a humiliating spectacle to see the courts
    of a State confiscating the property of her own citizens by the
    command of a foreign law.... Times now are not as they were when
    the former decisions on this subject were made. Since then not
    only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and
    fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought
    in the pursuit of measures whose inevitable consequence must be
    the overthrow and destruction of our Government. Under such
    circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show
    the least countenance to any measure which might gratify this
    spirit. She is willing to assume her full responsibility for the
    existence slavery within her limits, nor does she seek to share or
    divide it with others.

To this partisan bravado the third judge replied with a dignified
rebuke; in his dissenting opinion he said:

  [Sidenote] Gamble, J., 15 Mo. Reports, pp. 589-92.

    As citizens of a slave-holding State, we have no right to complain
    of our neighbors of Illinois, because they introduce into their
    State Constitution a prohibition of slavery; nor has any citizen
    of Missouri who removes with his slave to Illinois a right to
    complain that the fundamental law of the State to which he
    removes, and in which he makes his residence, dissolves the
    relation between him and his slave. It is as much his own
    voluntary act as if he had executed a deed of emancipation....
    There is with me nothing in the law relating to slavery which
    distinguishes it from the law on any other subject, or allows any
    more accommodation to the temporary public excitements which are
    gathered around it.... In this State it has been recognized from
    the beginning of the government, as a correct position in law,
    that a master who takes his slave to reside in a State or Territory
    where slavery is prohibited thereby emancipates his slave. [Citing
    cases.] ... But the Supreme Court of Missouri, so far from
    standing alone on this question, is supported by the decisions of
    other slave-States, including those in which it may be supposed
    there was the least disposition to favor emancipation. [Citing
    cases.] ... Times may have changed, public feeling may have
    changed, but principles have not and do not change; and in my
    judgment there can be no safe basis for judicial decision but in
    those principles which are immutable.

These utterances, it must be remembered, occurred in the year 1852,
when all slavery agitation was supposed to have been forever settled.
They show conclusively that the calm was superficial and delusive, and
that this deep-reaching contest was still, as before the adjustment of
1850, actually transforming the various institutions of society.
Gradually, and as yet unnoticed by the public, the motives disclosed
in these opinions were beginning to control courts of justice, and
popular discussion and excitement were not only shaping legislation,
but changing the tenor of legal decisions throughout the country.

Not long after the judgment by the Supreme Court of Missouri, Dred
Scott and his family were sold to a man named Sandford, who was a
citizen of New York. This circumstance afforded a ground for bringing
a similar action in a Federal tribunal, and accordingly Dred Scott
once more sued for freedom, in the United States Circuit Court at St.
Louis.[1] The case was tried in May, 1854, and a decree rendered that
they "were negro slaves, the lawful property" of Sandford. As a final
effort to obtain justice, they appealed by writ of error to the
Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal of
the nation.

Before this court of last resort the case was argued a first time in
the spring of 1856. The country had been for two years in a blaze of
political excitement. Civil war was raging in Kansas; Congress was in
a turmoil of partisan discussion; a Presidential election was
impending, and the whole people were anxiously noting the varying
phases of party politics. Few persons knew there was such a thing as
the Dred Scott case on the docket of the Supreme Court; but those few
appreciated the importance of the points it involved, and several
distinguished lawyers volunteered to take part in the argument.[2] Two
questions were presented to the court: First, Is Dred Scott a citizen
entitled to sue? Secondly, Did his residence at Rock Island and at
Fort Snelling, under the various prohibitions of slavery existing
there, work his freedom?

The Supreme Court was composed of nine justices; namely, Chief-Justice
Taney and Associate Justices McLean, Wayne, Catron, Daniel, Nelson,
Grier, Curtis, and Campbell. There was at once manifested among the
judges not only a lively interest in the questions presented, but a
wide difference of views as to the manner of treating them.
Consultations of the Supreme Court are always shrouded in inviolable
secrecy, but the opinions afterwards published indicate that the
political aspects of slavery, which were then convulsing the country,
from the very first found a certain sympathy and reflection in these
grave judicial deliberations. The discussions yet turned upon certain
merely technical rules to be applied to the pleadings under review;
and ostensibly to give time for further examination, the case was
postponed and a re-argument ordered for the next term. It may,
however, be suspected that the nearness of the Presidential election
had more to do with this postponement than did the exigencies of the
law.[3]

[Illustration: ROGER B. TANEY.]

The Presidential election came, and Mr. Buchanan was chosen. Soon
after, the court met to begin its long winter term; and about the
middle of December, 1856, the Dred Scott case was once more
elaborately argued. Again occupying the attention of the court for
four successive days, as it had also done in the first hearing, the
eminent counsel, after passing lightly over mere technical subtleties,
discussed very fully what was acknowledged to be the leading point in
the controversy; namely, whether Congress had power under the
Constitution to prohibit slavery in the Federal Territories, as it had
done by the Missouri Compromise act and various other laws. It was
precisely the policy, or impolicy, of this and similar prohibitions
which formed the subject of contention in party politics. The question
of their constitutional validity was certain to take even a higher
rank in public interest.

When after the second argument the judges took up the case in
conference for decision, the majority held that the judgment of the
Missouri Federal tribunal should simply be affirmed on its merits. In
conformity to this view, Justice Nelson was instructed to prepare an
opinion to be read as the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United
States. Such a paper was thereupon duly written by him, of the
following import: It was a question, he thought, whether a temporary
residence in a free-State or Territory could work the emancipation of
a slave. It was the exclusive province of each State, by its
Legislature or courts of justice, to determine this question for
itself. This determined, the Federal courts were bound to follow the
State's decision. The Supreme Court of Missouri had decided Dred Scott
to be a slave. In two cases tried since, the same judgment had been
given. Though former decisions had been otherwise, this must now be
admitted as "the settled law of the State," which, he said, "is
conclusive of the case in this court."

This very narrow treatment of the points at issue, having to do with
the mere lifeless machinery of the law, was strikingly criticised in
the dissenting opinion afterwards read by Justice McLean, a part of
which, by way of anticipation, may properly be quoted here. He denied
that it was exclusively a Missouri question.

  [Sidenote] 19 Howard, pp. 555-64.

    It involves a right claimed under an act of Congress and the
    Constitution of Illinois, and which cannot be decided without the
    consideration and construction of those laws.... Rights sanctioned
    for twenty-eight years ought not and cannot be repudiated, with any
    semblance of justice, by one or two decisions, influenced, as
    declared, by a determination to counteract the excitement against
    slavery in the free-States.... Having the same rights of
    sovereignty as the State of Missouri in adopting a constitution, I
    can perceive no reason why the institutions of Illinois should not
    receive the same consideration as those of Missouri.... The
    Missouri court disregards the express provisions of an act of
    Congress and the Constitution of a sovereign State, both of which
    laws for twenty-eight years it had not only regarded, but carried
    into effect. If a State court may do this, on a question involving
    the liberty of a human being, what protection do the laws afford?

  [Sidenote] Campbell to Tyler, Samuel Tyler. "Life of Taney," pp.
  383-4.

Had the majority of the judges carried out their original intention,
and announced their decision in the form in which Justice Nelson,
under their instruction, wrote it, the case of Dred Scott would, after
a passing notice, have gone to a quiet sleep under the dust of the law
libraries. A far different fate was in store for it. The nation was
then being stirred to its very foundation by the slavery agitation.
The party of pro-slavery reaction was for the moment in the ascendant;
and as by an irresistible impulse, the Supreme Court of the United
States was swept from its hitherto impartial judicial moorings into
the dangerous seas of polities.

  [Sidenote] Campbell to Tyler, Tyler, p. 384.

Before Judge Nelson's opinion was submitted to the judges in
conference for final adoption as the judgment of the court a movement
seems to have taken place among the members, not only to change the
ground of the decision, but also greatly to enlarge the field of
inquiry. It is stated by one of the participants in that memorable
transaction (Justice Campbell) that this occurred "upon a motion of
Mr. Justice Wayne, who stated that the case had created public
interest and expectation, that it had been twice argued, and that an
impression existed that the questions argued would be considered in
the opinion of the court." He further says that "the apprehension had
been expressed by others of the court, that the court would not
fulfill public expectation or discharge its duties by maintaining
silence upon these questions; and my impression is, that several
opinions had already been begun among the members of the court, in
which a full discussion of the case was made, before Justice Wayne
made this proposal."

The exact time when this movement was begun cannot now be ascertained.
The motives which prompted it can be inferred by recalling
contemporaneous political events. A great controversy divided public
opinion, whether slavery might be extended or should be restricted.
The Missouri Compromise had been repealed to make such an extension
possible. The terms of that repeal were purposely couched in ambiguous
language. Kansas and Nebraska were left "perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to
the Constitution of the United States." Whether under the Constitution
slavery could be excluded from the Federal Territories was affirmed by
Northern and denied by Southern Democrats. Northern and Southern
Democrats, acting together in the Cincinnati National Convention, had
ingeniously avoided any solution of this difference.

A twofold interpretation had enabled that party to elect Mr. Buchanan,
not by its own popular strength, but by the division of its opponents.
Notwithstanding its momentary success, unless it could develop new
sources of strength the party had only a precarious hold upon power.
Its majority in the Senate was waning. In Kansas free-State emigration
was outstripping the South in numbers and checkmating her in border
strife. According to the existing relative growth in sectional
representation and sectional sentiment, the balance of power was
slowly but steadily passing to the North.

Out of this doubt and difficulty there was one pathway that seemed
easy and certain. All the individual utterances from the Democratic
party agreed that the meaning of the words "subject to the
Constitution" was a question for the courts. This was the original
compact between Northern and Southern Democrats in caucus when Douglas
consented to repeal. Douglas, shorn of his prestige by his defeat for
the Presidential nomination, must accept conditions from his
successful rival. The Dred Scott case afforded the occasion for a
decision. Of the nine judges on the Supreme Bench seven were
Democrats, and of these five were appointed from slave-States. A
better opportunity for the South to obtain a favorable dictum could
never be expected to arise. A declaration by the Supreme Court of the
United States that under the Constitution Congress possessed no power
to prohibit slavery in the Federal Territories would by a single
breath end the old and begin a new political era. Congress was in
session and the political leaders were assembled at Washington.
Political topics excluded all other conversation or thought. Politics
reddened the plains of Kansas; politics had recently desecrated the
Senate chamber with a murderous personal assault; politics contended
greedily for the spoils of a new administration: politics nursed a
tacit conspiracy to nationalize slavery. The slavery sentiment ruled
society, ruled the Senate, ruled the Executive Mansion. It is not
surprising that this universal influence flowed in at the open door of
the national hall of justice--that it filtered through the very walls
which surrounded the consulting-room of the Supreme Court.

  [Sidenote] Wayne, J., Opinion in the Dred Scott case, 19 Howard,
  pp. 454-5.

The judges were, after all, but men. They dined, they talked, they
exchanged daily personal and social courtesies with the political
world. Curiosity, friendship, patriotism, led them to the floors of
Congress to listen to the great debates. Official ceremony called
them into the presence of the President, of legislators, of diplomats.
They were feasted, flattered, questioned, reminded of their great
opportunity, tempted with the suggestion of their supreme authority.[4]
They could render their names illustrious. They could honor their
States. They could do justice to the South. They could perpetuate
their party. They could settle the slavery question. They could end
sectional hatred, extinguish civil war, preserve the Union, save their
country. Advanced age, physical feebleness, party bias, the political
ardor of the youngest and the satiety of the eldest, all conspired to
draw them under the insidious influence of such considerations. One of
the judges in official language frankly avowed the motive and object
of the majority of the court. "The case," he wrote, "involves private
rights of value, and constitutional principles of the highest
importance, about which there had become such a difference of opinion
that the peace and harmony of the country required the settlement of
them by judicial decision." This language betrays the confusion of
ideas and misconception of authority which tempted the judges beyond
their proper duty. Required only to decide a question of private
rights, they thrust themselves forward to sit as umpires in a quarrel
of parties and factions.

  [Sidenote] Campbell to Tyler, Tyler, p. 384.

  [Sidenote] Nelson to Tyler, Tyler, p. 385.

In an evil hour they yielded to the demands of "public interest," and
resolved to "fulfill public expectation." Justice Wayne "proposed that
the Chief-Justice should write an opinion on all of the questions as
the opinion of the court. This was assented to, some reserving to
themselves to qualify their assent as the opinion might require.
Others of the court proposed to have no question, save one, discussed."
The extraordinary proceeding was calculated to touch the pride of
Justice Nelson. He appears to have given it a kind of sullen
acquiescence. "I was not present," he wrote, "when the majority
decided to change the ground of the decision, and assigned the
preparation of the opinion to the Chief-Justice; and when advised of
the change I simply gave notice that I should read the opinion I had
prepared as my own, and which is the one on file." From this time the
pens of other judges were busy, and in the inner political circles of
Washington the case of Dred Scott gradually became a shadowy and
portentous _cause celebre_.

The first intimation which the public at large had of the coming new
dictum was given in Mr. Buchanan's inaugural. The fact that he did
not contemplate such an announcement until after his arrival in
Washington[5] leads to the inference that it was prompted from high
quarters. In Congressional and popular discussions the question of the
moment was at what period in the growth of a Territory its voters
might exclude or establish slavery. Referring to this Mr. Buchanan
said: "It is a judicial question, which legitimately belongs to the
Supreme Court of the United States, before whom it is now pending, and
will, it is understood, be speedily and finally settled. To their
decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully submit,
whatever this may be."

The popular acquiescence being thus invoked by the Presidential voice
and example, the court announced its decision two days afterwards--March
6, 1857. The essential character of the transaction impressed itself
upon the very form of the judgment, if indeed it may be called at all
by that name. Chief-Justice Taney read the opinion of the court.
Justices Nelson, Wayne, Daniel, Grier, Catron, and Campbell each read a
separate and individual opinion, agreeing with the Chief-Justice on
some points, and omitting or disagreeing on others, or arriving at the
same result by different reasoning, and in the same manner differing
one from another. The two remaining associate justices, McLean and
Curtis, read emphatic dissenting opinions. Thus the collective
utterance of the bench resembled the speeches of a town meeting rather
than the decision of a court, and employed 240 printed pages of learned
legal disquisition to order the simple dismissal of a suit. The opinion
read by Chief-Justice Taney was long and elaborate, and the following
were among its leading conclusions:

That the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the
United States do not include nor refer to negroes otherwise than as
property; that they cannot become citizens of the United States nor
sue in the Federal courts. That Dred Scott's claim to freedom by
reason of his residence in Illinois was a Missouri question, which
Missouri law had decided against him. That the Constitution of the
United States recognizes slaves as property, and pledges the Federal
Government to protect it; and that the Missouri Compromise act and
like prohibitory laws are unconstitutional. That the Circuit Court of
the United States had no jurisdiction in the case and could give no
judgment in it, and must be directed to dismiss the suit.

This remarkable decision challenged the attention of the whole people
to a degree never before excited by any act of their courts of law.
Multiplied editions were at once printed,[6] scattered broadcast over
the land, read with the greatest avidity, and earnestly criticised.

The public sentiment regarding it immediately divided, generally on
existing party lines--the South and the Democrats accepting and
commending, the North and the Republicans spurning and condemning it.
The great anti-slavery public was not slow in making a practical
application of its dogmas: that a sweeping and revolutionary
exposition of the Constitution had been attempted when confessedly
the case and question had no right to be in court; that an evident
partisan dictum of national judges had been built on an avowed
partisan decision of State judges; that both the legislative and
judicial authority of the nation had been trifled with; that the
settler's "sovereignty" in Kansas consisted only of a Southern
planter's right to bring his slaves there; and that if under the
"property" theory the Constitution carries slavery to the Territories,
it would by the same inevitable logic carry it into free-States.

But much more offensive to the Northern mind than his conclusions of
law were the language and historical assertions by which Chief-Justice
Taney strove to justify them.

  [Sidenote] 19 Howard, p. 407.

    In the opinion of the court [said he] the legislation and
    histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration
    of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had
    been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had
    become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the
    people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in
    that memorable instrument. It is difficult at this day to realize
    the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race
    which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the
    world at the time of the Declaration of Independence and when the
    Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the
    public history of every European nation displays it in a manner
    too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before
    been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit
    to associate with the white race, either in social or political
    relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the
    white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly
    and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought
    and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and
    traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.

Quoting the provisions of several early slave codes, he continued:

  [Sidenote] Ibid., p. 409.

    They show that a perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to
    be erected between the white race and the one which they had
    reduced to slavery and governed as subjects with absolute and
    despotic power, and which they then looked upon as so far below
    them in the scale of created beings that intermarriages between
    white persons and negroes or mulattoes were regarded as unnatural
    and immoral, and punished as crimes, not only in the parties, but
    in the person who joined them in marriage. And no distinction in
    this respect was made between the free negro or mulatto and the
    slave, but this stigma, of the deepest degradation, was fixed upon
    the whole race.

Referring to the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, which
asserts that all men are created equal, he remarked:

  [Sidenote] 19 Howard, p. 410.

    The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole
    human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at
    this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute,
    that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included,
    and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this
    declaration; for if the language, as understood in that day, would
    embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the
    Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly
    inconsistent with the principles they asserted, and instead of the
    sympathy of mankind, to which they so confidently appealed, they
    would have deserved and received universal rebuke and reprobation.

He then applied the facts thus assumed as follows:

  [Sidenote] Ibid., pp. 425-6.

    The only two provisions which point to them and include them treat
    them as property, and make it the duty of the Government to
    protect it; no other power in relation to this race is to be found
    in the Constitution.... No one, we presume, supposes that any
    change in public opinion or feeling in relation to this
    unfortunate race, in the civilized nations of Europe or in this
    country, should induce the court to give to the words of the
    Constitution a more liberal construction in their favor than
    they were intended to bear when the instrument was framed and
    adopted.... It is not only the same in words, but the same in
    meaning, and delegates the same powers to the Government, and
    reserves and secures the same rights and privileges to the
    citizen; and as long as it continues to exist in its present form,
    it speaks not only in the same words but with the same meaning and
    intent with which it spoke when it came from the hands of its
    framers and was voted on and adopted by the people of the United
    States.

This cold and pitiless historical delineation of the bondage,
ignorance, and degradation of the unfortunate kidnaped Africans and
their descendants in a by-gone century, as an immutable basis of
constitutional interpretation, was met by loud and indignant protest
from the North. The people and press of that section seized upon the
salient phrase of the statement, and applying it in the present tense,
accused the Chief-Justice with saying that "a negro has no rights
which a white man is bound to respect." This was certainly a
distortion of his exact words and meaning; yet the exaggeration was
more than half excusable, in view of the literal and unbending rigor
with which he proclaimed the constitutional disability of the entire
African race in the United States, and denied their birthright in the
Declaration of Independence. His unmerciful logic made the black
before the law less than a slave; it reduced him to the status of a
horse or dog, a bale of dry-goods or a block of stone. Against such a
debasement of any living image of the Divine Maker the resentment of
the public conscience of the North was quick and unsparing.

Had Chief-Justice Taney's delineation been historically correct, it
would have been nevertheless unwise and unchristian to embody it in
the form of a disqualifying legal sentence and an indelible political
brand. But its manifest untruth was clearly shown by Justice Curtis in
his dissenting opinion. He reminded the Chief-Justice that at the
adoption of the Constitution:

  [Sidenote] 19 Howard, p. 582.

    In five of the thirteen original States colored persons then
    possessed the elective franchise, and were among those by whom the
    Constitution was ordained and established. If so, it is not true
    in point of fact that the Constitution was made exclusively by the
    white race, and that it was made exclusively for the white race is
    in my opinion not only an assumption not warranted by anything in
    the Constitution, but contradicted by its opening declaration that
    it was ordained and established by the people of the United States
    for themselves and their posterity; and as free colored persons
    were then citizens of at least five States, and so in every sense
    part of the people of the United States, they were among those for
    whom and whose posterity the Constitution was ordained and
    established.

Elsewhere in the same opinion he said:

  [Sidenote] Ibid., pp. 574-5.

    I shall not enter into an examination of the existing opinions of
    that period respecting the African race, nor into any discussion
    concerning the meaning of those who asserted in the Declaration of
    Independence that all men are created equal; that they are endowed
    by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these
    are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My own opinion
    is, that a calm comparison of these assertions of universal
    abstract truths, and of their own individual opinions and acts,
    would not leave these men under any reproach of inconsistency;
    that the great truths they asserted on that solemn occasion they
    were ready and anxious to make effectual; wherever a necessary
    regard to circumstances, which no statesman can disregard without
    producing more evil than good, would allow; and that it would not
    be just to them, nor true in itself, to allege that they intended
    to say that the Creator of all men had endowed the white race
    exclusively with the great natural rights which the Declaration of
    Independence asserts.

Justice McLean, in his dissenting opinion, completed the outline of
the true historical picture in accurate language:

  [Sidenote] 19 Howard, pp. 537-8.

    I prefer the lights of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, as a means of
    construing the Constitution in all its bearings, rather than to
    look behind that period into a traffic which is now declared to be
    piracy, and punished with death by Christian nations. I do not
    like to draw the sources of our domestic relations from so dark a
    ground. Our independence was a great epoch in the history of
    freedom; and while I admit the Government was not made especially
    for the colored race, yet many of them were citizens of the New
    England States, and exercised the rights of suffrage when the
    Constitution was adopted, and it was not doubted by any
    intelligent person that its tendencies would greatly ameliorate
    their condition.

    Many of the States on the adoption of the Constitution, or shortly
    afterwards, took measures to abolish slavery within their
    respective jurisdictions; and it is a well-known fact that a
    belief was cherished by the leading men, South as well as North,
    that the institution of slavery would gradually decline until it
    would become extinct. The increased value of slave labor, in the
    culture of cotton and sugar, prevented the realization of this
    expectation. Like all other communities and States, the South were
    influenced by what they considered to be their own interests. But
    if we are to turn our attention to the dark ages of the world, why
    confine our view to colored slavery? On the same principles white
    men were made slaves. All slavery has its origin in power and is
    against right.

To the constitutional theory advanced by the Chief-Justice, that
Congress cannot exercise sovereign powers over Federal Territories,
and hence cannot exclude slave property from them, Justices McLean and
Curtis also opposed a vigorous and exhaustive argument, which the most
eminent lawyers and statesmen of that day deemed conclusive. The
historical precedents alone ought to have determined the issue. "The
judicial mind of this country, State and Federal," said McLean, "has
agreed on no subject within its legitimate action with equal unanimity
as on the power of Congress to establish Territorial governments. No
court, State or Federal, no judge or statesman, is known to have had
any doubts on this question for nearly sixty years after the power was
exercised."

  [Sidenote] 19 Howard, p. 619.

And Curtis added: "Here are eight distinct instances, beginning with
the first Congress, and coming down to the year 1848, in which
Congress has excluded slavery from the territory of the United States;
and six distinct instances in which Congress organized governments of
Territories by which slavery was recognized and continued, beginning
also with the first Congress, and coming down to the year 1822. These
acts were severally signed by seven Presidents of the United States,
beginning with General Washington, and coming regularly down as far as
Mr. John Quincy Adams, thus including all who were in public life when
the Constitution was adopted. If the practical construction of the
Constitution, contemporaneously with its going into effect, by men
intimately acquainted with its history from their personal
participation in framing and adopting it, and continued by them
through a long series of acts of the gravest importance, be entitled
to weight in the judicial mind on a question of construction, it would
seem to be difficult to resist the force of the acts above adverted
to."

[Illustration: SAMUEL NELSON.]

----------
[1] The declaration in the case of Dred Scott vs. John F.A. Sandford
was filed in the clerk's office of the Circuit Court of the United
States for the district of Missouri on the second day of November,
1853. The trespass complained of is alleged to have occurred on the
first day of January, 1853.--Manuscript Records of the Supreme Court
of the United States.

[2] At the first hearing Montgomery Blair argued the case for Dred
Scott, and Senator Geyer, of Missouri, and ex-Attorney-General Reverdy
Johnson, of Maryland, for the claimant. At the second hearing Mr.
Blair and George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston, argued the case on behalf
of Dred Scott, and Mr. Greyer and Mr. Johnson again made the argument
for the claimant. All of them performed the service without
compensation.

[3] "The court will not decide the question of the Missouri Compromise
line--a majority of the judges being of opinion that it is not
necessary to do so. (This is confidential.) The one engrossing subject
in both Houses of Congress and with all the members is the Presidency;
and upon this everything done and omitted, except the most ordinary
necessities of the country, depends."--[Letter of Justice Curtis to
Mr. Ticknor, April 8, 1856. G.T. Curtis, "Life of B.R. Curtis," Vol.
I., p. 180.]

[4] A striking example may be found in the utterance of Attorney-General
Caleb Cushing, of the retiring Pierce Administration, in a little
parting address to the Supreme Court, March 4, 1857:

    "Yours is not the gauntleted hand of the soldier, nor yours the
    voice which commands armies, rules cabinets, or leads senates; but
    though you are none of these, yet you are backed by all of them.
    Theirs is the external power which sustains your moral authority;
    you are the incarnate mind of the political body of the nation. In
    the complex institutions of our country you are the pivot point
    upon which the rights and liberties of all, government and people
    alike, turn; or, rather, you are the central light of constitutional
    wisdom around which they perpetually revolve. Long may this court
    retain the confidence of our country as the great conservators,
    not of the private peace only, but of the sanctity and integrity
    of the Constitution."--"National Intelligencer," March 5, 1857.

[5] "Mr. Buchanan was also preparing his inaugural address with his
usual care and painstaking, and I copied his drafts and recopied them
until he had prepared it to his satisfaction. It underwent no alteration
after he went to the National Hotel in Washington, except that he there
inserted a clause in regard to the question then pending in the Supreme
Court, as one that would dispose of a vexed and dangerous topic by the
highest judicial authority of the land."--Statement of James Buchanan
Henry (President Buchanan's private secretary) in the "Life of James
Buchanan," by George Ticknor Curtis, Vol. II., p. 187.

[6] "It may not be improper for me here to add that so great an
interest did I take in that decision, and in its principles being
sustained and understood in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, that I took
the trouble at my own cost to print or have printed a large edition of
that decision to scatter it over the State; and unless the mails have
miscarried, there is scarcely a member elected to the Legislature who
has not received a copy with my frank."--Vice-president Breckinridge,
Frankfort Speech, December, 1859.




CHAPTER V

DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN ON DRED SCOTT


Manifestly, when the educated intellects of the learned judges
differed so radically concerning the principles of law and the facts
of history applicable to the Dred Scott question, the public at large
could hardly be expected to receive the new dogmas without similar
divergence of opinion. So far from exercising a healing influence,
the decision widened immensely the already serious breach between
the North and the South. The persons immediately involved in the
litigation were quickly lost sight of;[1] but the constitutional
principle affirmed by the court was defended by the South and
denounced by the North with zeal and acrimony. The Republican party
did not further question or propose to disturb the final judgment in
the case; but it declared that the Dred Scott doctrines of the Supreme
Court should not be made a rule of political action, and precisely
this the South, together with the bulk of the Northern Democrats,
insisted should be done.

  [Sidenote] 19 Howard, pp. 460-1.

A single phase of the controversy will serve to illustrate the general
drift of the discussion throughout the Union. Some three months after
the delivery of the opinion of the court, Senator Douglas found
himself again among his constituents in Illinois, and although there
was no political campaign in progress, current events and the roused
state of public feeling seemed to require that he should define his
views in a public speech. It marks his acuteness as a politician that
he already realized what a fatal stab the Dred Scott decision had
given his vaunted principle of "Popular Sovereignty," with which he
justified his famous repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He had ever
since argued that Congressional prohibition of slavery was obsolete
and useless, and that the choice of slavery or freedom ought to be
confided to the local Territorial laws, just as it was confided to
local State constitutions. But the Dred Scott decision announced that
slaves were property which Congress could not exclude from the
Territories, adding also the inevitable conclusion that what Congress
could not do a Territorial Legislature could not.

Difficult as this made his task of reconciling his favorite theory
with the Dred Scott decision, such was his political boldness, and
such had been his skill and success in sophistry, that he undertook
even this hopeless effort. Douglas, therefore, made a speech at
Springfield, Illinois, on the 12th of June, 1857, in which he broadly
and fully indorsed and commended the opinion of Chief-Justice Taney
and his concurring associates, declaring that "Their judicial
decisions will stand in all future time, a proud monument to their
greatness, the admiration of the good and wise, and a rebuke to the
partisans of faction and lawless violence. If unfortunately any
considerable portion of the people of the United States shall so far
forget their obligations to society as to allow the partisan leaders
to array them in violent resistance to the final decision of the
highest judicial tribunal on earth, it will become the duty of all the
friends of order and constitutional government, without reference to
past political differences, to organize themselves and marshal their
forces under the glorious banner of the Union, in vindication of the
Constitution and supremacy of the laws over the advocates of faction
and the champions of violence."

Proceeding then with a statement of the case, he continued: "The
material and controlling points in the case, those which have been
made the subject of unmeasured abuse and denunciation, may be thus
stated: 1st. The court decided that under the Constitution of the
United States, a negro descended from slave parents is not and cannot
be a citizen of the United States. 2d. That the act of March 6, 1820,
commonly called the Missouri Compromise act, was unconstitutional and
void before it was repealed by the Nebraska act, and consequently did
not and could not have the legal effect of extinguishing a master's
right to his slave in that Territory. While the right continues in
full force under the guarantees of the Constitution, and cannot be
divested or alienated by an act of Congress, it necessarily remains a
barren and a worthless right, unless sustained, protected, and
enforced by appropriate police regulations and local legislation,
prescribing adequate remedies for its violation. These regulations and
remedies must necessarily depend entirely upon the will and wishes of
the people of the Territory, as they can only be prescribed by the
local legislatures. Hence the great principle of popular sovereignty
and self-government is sustained and firmly established by the
authority of this decision."

It is scarcely possible that Douglas convinced himself by such a
glaring _non sequitur_; but he had no other alternative. It was a
desperate expedient to shield himself as well as he might from the
damaging recoil of his own temporizing statesmanship. The declaration
made thus early is worthy of historical notice as being the substance
and groundwork of the speaker's famous "Freeport doctrine," or theory
of "unfriendly legislation," to which Lincoln's searching interrogatories
drove him in the great Lincoln-Douglas debates of the following year.
Repeated and amplified at that time, it became in the eyes of the South
the unpardonable political heresy which lost him the Presidential
nomination and caused the rupture of the Democratic National
Convention at Charleston in the summer of 1860. For the moment, however,
 the sophism doubtless satisfied his many warm partisans. He did not
dwell on the dangerous point, but trusted for oratorical effect rather
to his renewed appeals to the popular prejudice against the blacks, so
strong in central Illinois, indorsing and emphasizing Chief-Justice
Taney's assertion that negroes were not included in the words of the
Declaration of Independence, and arguing that if the principle of
equality were admitted and carried out to its logical results, it
would necessarily lead not only to the abolition of slavery in the
slave-States, but to the general amalgamation of the two races.

The Republican party of Illinois had been greatly encouraged and
strengthened by its success in electing the State officers in the
previous autumn; and as their recognized leader and champion, Lincoln
made a reply to this speech some two weeks later, June 26, 1857, also
at Springfield. Though embracing other topics, the question of the
hour, the Dred Scott decision, was nevertheless its chief subject. The
extracts here presented from it will give the reader some idea of its
power of statement and eloquence:

    And now [said Mr. Lincoln] as to the Dred Scott decision. That
    decision declares two propositions--first, that a negro cannot sue
    in the United States courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot
    prohibit slavery in the Territories. It was made by a divided
    court--dividing differently on the different points. Judge Douglas
    does not discuss the merits of the decision, and in that respect I
    shall follow his example, believing I could no more improve on
    McLean and Curtis, than he could on Taney. He denounces all who
    question the correctness of that decision, as offering violent
    resistance to it. But who resists it? Who has, in spite of the
    decision, declared Dred Scott free, and resisted the authority of
    his master over him? Judicial decisions have two uses--first, to
    absolutely determine the case decided, and, secondly, to indicate
    to the public how other similar cases will be decided when they
    arise. For the latter use they are called "precedents" and
    "authorities." We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more)
    in obedience to and respect for the judicial department of
    government. We think its decisions on constitutional questions,
    when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases
    decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be
    disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in
    that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we
    think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that
    made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do
    what we can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to
    it. Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as
    precedents according to circumstances. That this should be so,
    accords both with common sense and the customary understanding of
    the legal profession. If this important decision had been made by
    the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent
    partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation,
    and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our
    history, and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts
    which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had
    been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed
    and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be,
    perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to
    acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it
    wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not
    resistance, it is not factions, it is not even disrespectful, to
    treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine
    for the country.

Rising above all questions of technical construction to the broad and
universal aspects of the issue, Mr. Lincoln continued:

    The Chief-Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes as
    a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more
    favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This
    assumption is a mistake. In some trifling particulars the
    condition of that race has been ameliorated; but as a whole, in
    this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the
    other way; and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so
    hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two of the five
    States--New Jersey and North Carolina--that then gave the free
    negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away;
    and in a third--New York--it has been greatly abridged; while it
    has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional
    State, though the number of the States has more than doubled. In
    those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure,
    emancipate their slaves; but since then such legal restraints have
    been made upon emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition. In
    those days, legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish
    slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite
    fashionable for State constitutions to withhold that power from
    the legislatures. In those days, by common consent, the spread of
    the black man's bondage to the new countries was prohibited; but
    now Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibition,
    and the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would. In
    those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by
    all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the
    bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and
    sneered at, and construed and hawked at, and torn, till if its
    framers could rise from their graves they could not at all
    recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining
    against him. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, philosophy
    follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They
    have him in his prison house, they have searched his person and
    left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have
    closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it
    were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be
    unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the
    hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred
    different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what
    invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can he
    produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete
    than it is....

    There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people
    at the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and
    black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope
    upon the chances of his being able to appropriate the benefit of
    this disgust to himself. If he can by much drumming and repeating
    fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he
    can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope
    as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for
    lugging it in, from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He
    finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of
    Independence includes _all_ men, black as well as white, and
    forthwith he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and
    proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only
    because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with
    negroes. He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now
    I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes that
    because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily
    want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can just
    leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal;
    but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own
    hands, without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal and
    the equal of all others.

    Chief-Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits
    that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include
    the whole human family; but he and Judge Douglas argue that the
    authors of that instrument did not intend to include negroes, by
    the fact that they did not at once actually place them on an
    equality with the whites. Now this grave argument comes to just
    nothing at all by the other fact that they did not at once or ever
    afterwards actually place all white people on an equality with one
    another. And this is the staple argument of both the Chief-Justice
    and the Senator, for doing this obvious violence to the plain,
    unmistakable language of the Declaration.

    I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include
    all men; but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all
    respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size,
    intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined
    with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all
    men created equal--equal with "certain inalienable rights, among
    which, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they
    said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious
    untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor
    yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In
    fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to
    declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as
    fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a
    standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all,
    and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for,
    and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated,
    and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and
    augmenting; the happiness and value of life to all people of all
    colors everywhere. The assertion that "all men are created equal"
    was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great
    Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that but
    for future use. Its authors meant it to be, as, thank God, it is
    now proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in after
    times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths
    of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed
    tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair
    land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them
    at least one hard nut to crack.

----------
[1] The ownership of Dred Scott and his family passed by inheritance
to the family of a Massachusetts Republican member of Congress. The
following telegram, copied from the "Providence Post" into the
"Washington Union," shows the action of the new owner: "St. Louis, May
26 [1857]. Dred Scott with his wife and two daughters were emancipated
to-day by Taylor Blow, Esq. They had been conveyed to him by Mr.
Chaffee for that purpose."




CHAPTER VI

THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION


The year 1857 brings us to a decided change in the affairs of Kansas,
but with occurrences no less remarkable. Active civil war gradually
ceased in the preceding autumn--a result due to the vigorous and
impartial administration of Governor Geary and the arrival of the
inclement winter weather.

  [Sidenote] Geary to Marcy, Jan. 19, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 17,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 131.

  [Sidenote] Geary, Veto Message, Feb. 18, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.
  No. 17, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 167.

On the evening of the day the Legislature met (January 12, 1857), the
pro-slavery party held a large political convention, in which it was
confessed that they were in a hopeless minority in the Territory, and
the general conclusion was reached that it was no longer worth while
to attempt to form a slave-State in Kansas.[1] Many of its hitherto
active leaders immediately and definitely abandoned the struggle. But
the Missouri cabal, intrenched in the various territorial and county
offices, held to their design, though their labors now assumed a
somewhat different character. They denounced Governor Geary in their
resolutions, and devised legislation to further their intrigues. By
the middle of February, under their inspiration, a bill providing for
a convention to frame a State constitution was perfected and enacted.
The Governor immediately sent the Legislature his message, reminding
them that the leading idea of the organic act was to leave the actual
_bona fide_ inhabitants of the Territory "perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way," and vetoing
the bill because "the Legislature has failed to make any provision to
submit the constitution when framed to the consideration of the people
for their ratification or rejection." The Governor's argument was
wasted on the predetermined legislators. They promptly passed the act
over his veto.

The cabal was in no mood to be thwarted, and under a show of outward
toleration, if not respect, their deep hostility found such means of
making itself felt that the Governor began to receive insult from
street ruffians, and to become apprehensive for his personal safety.
In such a contest he was single-handed against the whole pro-slavery
town of Lecompton. The foundation of his authority was gradually
sapped; and finding himself no longer sustained at Washington, where
the private appeals and denunciations of the cabal were more
influential than his official reports, he wrote his resignation on
the day of Buchanan's inauguration, and a week later left the Territory
in secrecy as a fugitive. Thus, in less than three years, three
successive Democratic executives had been resisted, disgraced, and
overthrown by the political conspiracy which ruled the Territory; and
Kansas had indeed become, in the phraseology of the day, "the
graveyard of governors."

The Kansas imbroglio was a political scandal of such large
proportions, and so clearly threatened a dangerous schism in the
Democratic party, that the new President, Buchanan, and his new
Cabinet, proceeded to its treatment with the utmost caution. The
subject was fraught with difficulties not of easy solution. The South,
to retain her political supremacy, or even her equality, needed more
slave-States to furnish additional votes in the United States Senate.
To make a slave-State of Kansas, the Missouri Compromise had been
repealed, and a bogus legislature elected and supported by the
successive Missouri invasions and the guerrilla war of 1856. All these
devices had, however, confessedly failed of their object. Northern
emigration and anti-slavery sentiment were clearly in possession of
Kansas, and a majority of voters stood ready upon fair occasion to
place her in the column of free-States. It had become a game on the
chess-board of national politics. The moving pieces stood in Missouri
and Kansas, but the players sat in Washington. In reality it was a
double game. There was plot and under-plot. Beneath the struggle
between the free-States and the slave-States were the intrigue and
deception carried on between Northern Democrats and Southern
Democrats. The Kansas-Nebraska act was a double-tongued statute, and
the Cincinnati platform a Janus-faced banner. Momentary victory was
with the Southern Democrats, for they had secured the nomination and
election of President Buchanan--"a Northern man with Southern
principles."

  [Sidenote] Walker to Cass, July 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 32.

  [Sidenote] Walker to Cass, Dec. 15, 1857. Ibid., p. 122.

Determined to secure whatever prestige could be derived from high
qualification and party influence, Buchanan tendered the vacant
governorship of Kansas to his intimate personal and political friend,
Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, a man of great ability and national
fame, who had been Senator and Secretary of the Treasury. Walker,
realizing fully the responsibility and danger of the trust, after
repeated refusals finally accepted upon two distinct conditions: first,
that General Harney should be "put in special command in Kansas with a
large body of troops, and especially of dragoons and a battery," and
retained there subject to his military directions until the danger
was over; and second, that he "should advocate the submission of the
constitution to the vote of the people for ratification or rejection."

  [Sidenote] March 7, 1856. June 25, 1856.

This latter had now become a vital point in the political game. The
recent action of the Territorial Legislature and Geary's already
mentioned veto message were before the President and his Cabinet.[2]
But much more important than these moves in Kansas was the prior
determination of prominent Washington players. During the Kansas civil
war and the Presidential campaign of the previous year, by way of
offset to the Topeka Constitution, both Senator Douglas and Senator
Toombs wrote and introduced in the Senate bills to enable Kansas to
form a State constitution. The first by design, and the second by
accident, contained a clause to submit such constitution, when formed,
to a vote of the people. Both these bills were considered not only by
the Senate Committee on Territories, of which Douglas was chairman,
but also by a caucus of Democratic Senators. Said Senator Bigler: "It
was held, by those most intelligent on the subject, that in view of
all the difficulties surrounding that Territory, [and] the danger of
any experiment at that time of a popular vote, it would be better that
there should be no such provision in the Toombs bill; and it was my
understanding, in all the intercourse I had, that that convention
would make a constitution and send it here without submitting it to
the popular vote."[3]

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Milwaukee Speech, October 13, 1860.

This Toombs bill was, after modification in other respects, adopted by
Douglas, and duly passed by the Senate; but the House with an
opposition majority refused its assent. All these preliminaries were
well known to the Buchanan Cabinet, and of course also to Douglas. It
is fair to assume that under such circumstances Walker's emphatic
stipulation was deliberately and thoroughly discussed. Indeed,
extraordinary urging had been necessary to induce him to reconsider
his early refusals. Douglas personally joined in the solicitation.
Because of the determined opposition of his own family, Walker had
promised his wife that he would not go to Kansas without her consent;
and President Buchanan was so anxious on the point that he personally
called on Mrs. Walker and persuaded her to waive her objections.[4]
Under influences like these Walker finally accepted the appointment,
and the President and Cabinet acquiesced in his conditions without
reserve. He wrote his inaugural address in Washington, using the
following language: "I repeat then as my clear conviction that unless
the convention submit the constitution to the vote of the actual
resident settlers, and the election be fairly and justly conducted,
the constitution will be and ought to be rejected by Congress."

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Milwaukee Speech, October 13, 1860.

He submitted this draft of his inaugural to President Buchanan, who
read and approved the document and the promise. Secretary Cass wrote
his official instructions in accordance with it. On Walker's journey
West he stopped at Chicago and submitted his inaugural to Douglas, who
also indorsed his policy. The new Governor fondly believed he had
removed every obstacle to success, and every possibility of
misunderstanding or disapproval by the Administration, such as had
befallen his predecessors. But President Buchanan either deceived him
at the beginning, or betrayed him in the end.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Testimony, Covode Committee Report, p. 109.

With Governor Walker there was sent a new Territorial secretary.
Woodson, who had so often abused his powers during his repeated
service as acting Governor, was promoted to a more lucrative post to
create the vacancy. Frederick P. Stanton, of Tennessee, formerly a
representative in Congress, a man of talent and, as the event proved,
also a man of courage, was made secretary. Both Walker and Stanton
being from slave-States, it may be presumed that the slavery question
was considered safe in their hands. Walker, indeed, entertained
sentiments more valuable to the South in this conjuncture. He believed
in the balance of power; he preferred that the people of Kansas should
make it a slave-State; he was "in favor of maintaining the equilibrium
of the Government by giving the South a majority in the Senate, while
the North would always necessarily have a majority in the House of
Representatives." Both also entered on their mission with the feelings
entertained by the President and Democratic party; namely, that the
free-State men were a mischievous insurrectionary faction, willfully
disturbing the peace and defying the laws. Gradually, however, their
personal observation convinced them that this view was a profound
error.

  [Sidenote] Walker to Buchanan, June 28, 1857. Ibid., p. 115.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Testimony. Ibid., p. 107.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Inaugural, May 27, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 11.

Governor Walker arrived in the Territory late in May, and it required
but short investigation to satisfy him that any idea of making Kansas
a slave-State was utterly preposterous. Had everything else been
propitious, climate alone seemed to render it impossible. But popular
sentiment was also overwhelmingly against it; he estimated that the
voters were for a free-State more than two to one. All the efforts of
the pro-slavery party to form a slave-State seemed to be finally
abandoned. If he could not make Kansas a slave-State, his next desire
was to make her a Democratic State. "And the only plan to accomplish
this was to unite the free-State Democrats with the pro-slavery party,
and all those whom I regarded as conservative men, against the more
violent portion of the Republicans." He, therefore, sought by fair
words to induce the free-State men to take part in the election of
delegates to the constitutional convention. His inaugural address,
quoting the President's instructions, promised that such election
should be free from fraud and violence; that the delegates should be
protected in their deliberations; and that if unsatisfactory, "you may
by a subsequent vote defeat the ratification of the constitution."

[Illustration: ROBERT J. WALKER.]

  [Sidenote] Walker, Topeka Speech, June 6, 1857, in "Washington
  Union" of June 27, 1857.

This same policy was a few weeks later urged at Topeka, where a mass
meeting of the free-State men was called to support and instruct
another sitting of the "insurrectionary" free-State Legislature
elected under the Topeka Constitution. The Governor found a large
assemblage, and a very earnest discussion in progress, whether the
"Legislature" should pursue only nominal action, such as would in
substance amount to a petition for redress of grievances, or whether
they should actually organize their State government, and pass a
complete code of laws. The moderate free-State men favored the former,
the violent and radical the latter, course. When their mass meeting
adjourned, they called on the Governor at his lodgings; he made a
speech, in which he renewed the counsels and promises of his inaugural
address. "The Legislature," said he, "has called a convention to
assemble in September next. That constitution they will or they will
not submit to the vote of a majority of the then actual resident
settlers of Kansas. If they do not submit it, I will join you,
fellow-citizens, in lawful opposition to their course. And I cannot
doubt, gentlemen, that one much higher than I, the Chief Magistrate
of the Union, will join you in that opposition." His invitation to
them to participate in the election of a convention produced no
effect; they still adhered to their resolve to have nothing to do
with any affirmative proceedings under the bogus laws or Territorial
Legislature. But the Governor's promise of a fair vote on the
constitution was received with favor. "Although this mass convention,"
reports the Governor, "did not adopt fully my advice to abandon the
whole Topeka movement, yet they did vote down by a large majority the
resolutions prepared by the more violent of their own party in favor
of a complete State organization and the adoption of a code of State
laws."

  [Sidenote] Walker to Cass, July 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 27.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., p. 29.

  [Sidenote] Walker to Cass, July 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 30.

If the Governor was gratified at this result as indicative of probable
success in his official administration, he rejoiced yet more in its
significance as a favorable symptom of party politics. "The result of
the whole discussion at Topeka," he reported, "was regarded by the
friends of law and order as highly favorable to their cause, and as
the commencement of a great movement essential to success; viz., the
separation of the free-State Democrats from the Republicans, who had
to some extent heretofore cooperated under the name of the free-State
party." Another party symptom gave the Governor equal, if not greater,
encouragement. On the 2d and 3d of July the "National Democratic" or
pro-slavery party of the Territory met in convention at Lecompton. The
leaders were out in full force. The hopelessness of making Kansas a
slave-State was once more acknowledged, the Governor's policy
indorsed, and a resolution "against the submission of the constitution
to a vote of the people was laid on the table as a test vote by
forty-two to one." The Governor began already to look upon his
counsels and influence as a turning-point in national destiny.
"Indeed," he wrote, "it is universally admitted here that the only
real question is this: whether Kansas shall be a conservative,
constitutional, Democratic, and ultimately free-State, or whether it
shall be a Republican and abolition State; and that the course pursued
by me is the only one which will prevent the last most calamitous
result, which, in my opinion, would soon seal the fate of the
republic."

  [Sidenote] F.P. Stanton's Speech, Philadelphia, February 8, 1858.
  Pamphlet.

In his eagerness to reform the Democratic party of Kansas, and to
strengthen the Democratic party of the nation against the assaults and
dangers of "abolitionism," the Governor was not entirely frank; else
he would at the same time have reported, what he was obliged later to
explain, that the steps taken to form a constitution from which he
hoped so much were already vitiated by such defects or frauds as to
render them impossible of producing good fruit. The Territorial law
appointing the election of delegates provided for a census and a
registry of voters, to be made by county officers appointed by the
Territorial Legislature. These officers so neglected or failed to
discharge their duty, that in nearly half the organized counties of
the interior no attempt whatever was made to obtain the census or
registration; and in the counties lying on the Missouri border, where
the pro-slavery party was strong, the work of both was exceedingly
imperfect, and in many instances with notorious discrimination against
free-State voters. While the disfranchised counties had a comparatively
sparse population, the number of voters in them was too considerable
to be justly denied their due representation.[5] The apportionment of
delegates was based upon this defective registration and census, and
this alone would have given the pro-slavery party a disproportionate
power in the convention. But at the election of delegates on the 15th
of June, the free-State men, following their deliberate purpose and
hitherto unvarying practice of non-conformity to the bogus laws,
abstained entirely from voting. "The consequence was that out of the
9250 voters whose names had been registered ... there were in all
about 2200 votes cast, and of these the successful candidate received
1800."

  [Sidenote] Walker to Buchanan, June 28, 1857. Report Covode
  Committee, p. 118.

"The black Republicans," reported the Governor, "would not vote, and
the free-State Democrats were kept from voting by the fear that the
constitution would not be submitted by the convention, and that by
voting they committed themselves to the proceeding of the convention.
But for my inaugural, circulated by thousands, and various speeches
all urging the people to vote, there would not have been one thousand
votes polled in the Territory, and the convention would have been a
disastrous failure."

But this was not the only evil. The apportionment of the members of
the Territorial Legislature to be chosen the ensuing autumn was also
based upon this same defective registry and census. Here again
disproportionate power accrued to the pro-slavery party, and the
free-State men loudly charged that it was a new contrivance for the
convenience of Missouri voters. Governor Walker publicly deplored all
these complications and defects; but he counseled endurance, and
constantly urged in mitigation that in the end the people should have
the privilege of a fair and direct vote upon their constitution. That
promise he held aloft as a beacon-light of hope and redress. This
attitude and policy, frequently reported to Washington, was not
disavowed or discouraged by the President and Cabinet.

The Governor, however, soon found a storm brewing in another quarter.
When the newspapers brought copies of his inaugural address, his
Topeka speech, and the general report of his Kansas policy back to the
Southern States, there arose an ominous chorus of protest and
denunciation from the whole tribe of fire-eating editors and
politicians. What right had the Governor to intermeddle? they
indignantly demanded. What call to preach about climate, what business
to urge submission of the constitution to popular vote, or to promise
his own help to defeat it if it were not submitted; what authority to
pledge the President and Administration to such a course! The
convention was sovereign, they claimed, could do what it pleased, and
no thanks to the Governor for his impertinent advice. The Democratic
State Convention of Georgia took the matter in hand, and by resolution
denounced Walker's inaugural address, and asked his removal from
office. The Democratic State Convention of Mississippi followed suit,
and called the inaugural address an unjust discrimination against the
rights of the South, and a dictatorial intermeddling with the high
public duty intrusted to the convention.

Walker wrote a private letter to Buchanan, defending his course, and
adding: "Unless I am thoroughly and cordially sustained by the
Administration here, I cannot control the convention, and we shall
have anarchy and civil war. With that cordial support the convention
(a majority of whose delegates I have already seen) will do what is
right. I shall travel over the whole Territory, make speeches, rouse
the people in favor of my plan, and see all the delegates. But your
cordial support is indispensable, and I never would have come here,
unless assured by you of the cordial cooeperation of all the Federal
officers.... The extremists are trying your nerves and mine, but what
can they say when the convention submits the constitution to the
people and the vote is given by them? But we must have a slave-State
out of the south-western Indian Territory, and then a calm will
follow; Cuba be acquired with the acquiescence of the North; and your
Administration, having in reality settled the slavery question, be
regarded in all time to come as a re-signing and re-sealing of the
constitution.... I shall be pleased soon to hear from you. Cuba! Cuba!
(and Porto Rico, if possible) should be the countersign of your
Administration, and it will close in a blaze of glory."[6]

The Governor had reason to be proud of the full and complete
reendorsement which this appeal brought from his chief. Under date of
July 12, 1857, the President wrote in reply: "On the question of
submitting the constitution to the _bona fide_ resident settlers of
Kansas I am willing to stand or fall. In sustaining such a principle
we cannot fall. It is the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; the
principle of popular sovereignty; and the principle at the foundation
of all popular government. The more it is discussed the stronger it
will become. Should the convention of Kansas adopt this principle, all
will be settled harmoniously, and with the blessing of Providence you
will return triumphantly from your arduous, important, and responsible
mission. The strictures of the Georgia and Mississippi Conventions
will then pass away and be speedily forgotten. In regard to Georgia,
our news from that State is becoming better every day; we have not yet
had time to hear much from Mississippi. Should you answer the
resolution of the latter, I would advise you to make the great
principle of the submission of the constitution to the _bona fide_
residents of Kansas conspicuously prominent. On this you will be
irresistible."[7]

The delegates to the constitutional convention, chosen in June, met
according to law at Lecompton, September 7, and, having spent five
days in organization, adjourned their session to October 19. The
object of this recess was to await the issue of the general election
of October 5, at which a full Territorial Legislature, a delegate to
Congress, and various county officers were to be chosen.

  [Sidenote] Wilder, p. 133.

By the action of the free-State men this election was now made a
turning-point in Kansas politics. Held together as a compact party
by their peaceful resistance to the bogus laws, emigration from the
North had so strengthened their numbers that they clearly formed a
majority of the people of the Territory. A self-constituted and
self-regulated election held by them for sundry officials under their
Topeka Constitution, revealed a numerical strength of more than seven
thousand voters. Feeling that this advantage justified them in
receding from their attitude of non-conformity, they met in convention
towards the end of August, and while protesting against the "wicked
apportionment," resolved that "whereas Governor Walker has repeatedly
pledged himself that the people of Kansas should have a full and fair
vote, before impartial judges, at the election to be held on the first
Monday in October, ... we the people of Kansas, in mass convention
assembled, agree to participate in said election."

  [Sidenote] Oct. 5, 1857.

Governor Walker executed his public promises to the letter. A movement
of United States troops to Utah was in progress, and about two
thousand of these were detained by order until after election day.
Stationed at ten or twelve different points in the Territory, they
served by their mere presence to overawe disorder, and for the first
time in the history of Kansas the two opposing parties measured their
strength at the ballot-box. The result was an overwhelming triumph for
the free-State party. For delegate in Congress, Ransom, the Democratic
candidate, received 3799 votes; Parrott, the Republican candidate,
7888--a free-State majority of 4089. For the Legislature, even under
the defective apportionment, the council stood 9 free-State members
to 4 Democrats, and the House 24 free-State members to 15 Democrats.

  [Sidenote] Stanton, Speech at Philadelphia, February 8, 1858.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Proclamation, October 19, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.
  No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 103.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Proclamation, Oct. 22, 1857. Ibid., pp. 104-6.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Proclamation, October 19, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.
  No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 104.

That the pro-slavery cabal would permit power to slip from their grasp
without some extraordinary effort was scarcely to be expected. When
the official returns were brought from the various voting-places to
the Governor's office, there came from Oxford, a single precinct in
Johnson County, "a roll of paper, forty or fifty feet long, containing
names as thickly as they could be written," and a large part of which
were afterwards discovered to have been literally copied from an old
Cincinnati directory. This paper purported to be a return of 1628
votes for the eleven pro-slavery candidates for the Legislature in
that district, and if counted it would elect eight members of the
House and three of the council by a trifling majority, and thereby
change the political complexion and power of the Legislature.
Inspection showed the document to be an attempt to commit a stupendous
fraud; and after visiting the locality ("a village with six houses,
including stores, and without a tavern") and satisfying himself of the
impossibility of such a vote from such a place, Governor Walker
rejected the whole return from Oxford precinct for informality, and
gave certificates of election to the free-State candidates elected as
appeared by the other regular returns. A similar paper from McGee
County with more than 1200 names was treated in like manner. Judge
Cato issued his writ of mandamus to compel the Governor to give
certificates to the pro-slavery candidates, but without success. The
language of Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton in a proclamation
announcing their action deserves remembrance and imitation. "The
consideration that our own party by this decision will lose the
majority in the legislative assembly does not make our duty in the
premises less solemn and imperative. The elective franchise would be
utterly valueless, and free government itself would receive a deadly
blow, if so great an outrage as this could be shielded under the cover
of mere forms and technicalities. We cannot consent in any manner to
give the sanction of our respective official positions to such a
transaction. Nor can we feel justified to relieve ourselves of the
proper responsibility of our offices, in a case where there is no
valid return, by submitting the question to the legislative assembly,
and in that very act giving the parties that might claim to be chosen
by this spurious vote the power to decide upon their own election."

The decisive free-State victory, the Oxford and McGee frauds,[8] and
the Governor's fearless action in exposing and rejecting them, called
forth universal comment; and under the new political conditions which
they revealed, created intense interest in the further proceedings of
the Lecompton Constitutional Convention. That body reassembled
according to adjournment on the 19th of October. Elected in the
preceding June without any participation by free-State voters, the
members were all of the pro-slavery party, and were presided over by
John Calhoun, the same man who, as county surveyor of Sangamon County,
Illinois, employed Abraham Lincoln as his deputy in 1832.

At the June election, while he and his seven colleagues from Douglas
County were yet candidates for the convention, they had circulated a
written pledge that they would submit the constitution to the people
for ratification. This attitude was generally maintained by them till
the October election. But when by that vote they saw their faction
overwhelmed with defeat, they and others undertook to maintain
themselves in power by an unprecedented piece of political jugglery.
Calhoun, who was surveyor-general of the Territory, employed a large
number of subordinates, and was one of the most able and unscrupulous
leaders in the pro-slavery cabal. A large majority of the convention
favored the establishment of slavery; only the question of a popular
vote on ratification or rejection excited controversy.

An analysis shows that the principle of delegated authority had become
attenuated to a remarkable degree. The defective registration excluded
a considerable number (estimated at about one-sixth) of the legal
voters. Of the 9250 registered, only about 2200 voted, all told. Of
these 2200, only about 1800 votes were given for the successful
candidates for delegate. Of the whole sixty delegates alleged to have
been chosen, "but forty-three," says a Committee Report, "participated
in the work of the convention. Sessions were held without a quorum,
and the yeas and nays often show that but few above thirty were
present. It is understood, and not denied, that but twenty-eight of
these--less than half of a full house of sixty--decided the
pro-slavery or free-State question; and upon the question of
submission of their work to the will of the people, the pro-slavery
party carried the point by a majority of two votes only. It is quite
in keeping with the character of this body and its officers to find
the journal of its proceedings for the last days missing."[9]

Their allotted task was completed in a short session of about three
weeks; the convention adjourned November 7, forty-three of the fifty
delegates present having been induced to sign the constitution. When
the document was published the whole country was amazed to see what
perversity and ingenuity had been employed to thwart the unmistakable
popular will. Essentially a slave-State constitution of the most
pronounced type, containing the declaration that the right of property
in slaves is "before and higher than any constitutional sanction," it
made the right to vote upon it depend on the one hand on a test oath
to "support this constitution" in order to repel conscientious
free-State voters, and on the other hand on mere inhabitancy on the
day of election to attract nomadic Missourians; it postponed the right
to amend or alter for a period of seven years; it kept the then
existing territorial laws in force until abrogated by State
legislation; it adopted the late Oxford fraud as a basis of
apportionment; it gave to Calhoun, the presiding officer, power to
designate the precincts, the judges of election, and to decide finally
upon the returns in the vote upon it, besides many other questionable
or inadmissible provisions. Finally the form of submission to popular
vote to be taken on the 21st of December was prescribed to be,
"constitution with slavery" or "constitution with no slavery," thus
compelling the adoption of the constitution in any event.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Testimony, Report Covode Committee, p. 110.

  [Sidenote] Martin, Testimony, Report Covode Committee, p. 159.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., pp. 170-1.

There is a personal and political mystery underlying this transaction
which history will probably never solve. Only a few points of
information have come to light, and they serve to embarrass rather
than aid the solution. The first is that Calhoun, although the friend
and protege of Douglas, and also himself personally pledged to
submission, came to the Governor and urged him to join in the new
programme as to slavery,--alleging that the Administration had changed
its policy, and now favored this plan,--and tempted Walker with a
prospect of the Presidency if he would concur. Walker declared such a
change impossible, and indignantly spurned the proposal. The second is
that one Martin, a department clerk, was, after confidential
instructions from Secretary Thompson and Secretary Cobb, of Buchanan's
Cabinet, sent to Kansas in October, ostensibly on department business;
that he spent his time in the lobby and the secret caucuses of the
convention. Martin testifies that these Cabinet members favored
submission, but that Thompson wished it understood that he was
unwilling to oppose the admission of Kansas "if a pro-slavery
constitution should be made and sent directly to Congress by the
convention." A wink was as good as a nod with that body, or rather
with the cabal which controlled it; and after a virtuous dumb-show of
opposition, it made a pretense of yielding to the inevitable, and
acted on the official suggestion. This theory is the more plausible
because Martin testifies further that he himself drafted the slavery
provision which was finally adopted. The third point is that the
President inexcusably abandoned his pledges to the Governor and
adopted this Cobb-Thompson-Calhoun contrivance, instead of keeping his
word and dismissing Calhoun, as honor dictated. This course becomes
especially remarkable in view of the fact that the change did not
occur until after Walker's rejection of the fraudulent Oxford returns,
which action placed the legislative power of the Territory in the
hands of the newly elected free-State Legislature, as already related.
On the same day (October 22, 1857) on which Walker and Stanton issued
their proclamation rejecting the fraudulent returns, President
Buchanan wrote another highly commendatory letter to Governor Walker.
As it has never before been published, its full text will have special
historical interest.

    WASHINGTON CITY,
    22d October, 1857.

    MY DEAR SIR: I have received your favor of the tenth instant by
    Captain Pleasonton and am rejoiced to learn from you, what I had
    previously learned from other less authentic sources, that the
    convention of Kansas will submit the constitution to the people.
    It is highly gratifying that the late election passed off so
    peacefully; and I think we may now fairly anticipate a happy
    conclusion to all the difficulties in that Territory. Your
    application for a month's leave of absence has been granted to
    commence after the adjournment of the convention. During its
    session your presence will be too important to be dispensed with.
    I shall be glad to see you before you publish anything. The whole
    affair is now gliding along smoothly. Indeed, the revulsion in the
    business of the country seems to have driven all thoughts of
    "bleeding Kansas" from the public mind. When and in what manner
    anything shall be published to revive the feeling, is a question
    of serious importance. I am persuaded that with every passing day
    the public are more and more disposed to do you justice. You
    certainly do injustice to Harris, the editor of the "Union." In
    the beginning I paid some attention to the course of the paper in
    regard to yourself, and I think it was unexceptionable: I know he
    stood firm amidst a shower of abuse from the extremists. I never
    saw nor did I ever hear of the communication published in the
    "Union" to which you refer, and Harris has no recollection of it.
    I requested him to find me the number and send it to me; but this
    he has not done. He is not responsible in any degree for the
    non-publication of the letters to which you refer.[10] I knew
    nothing of them until after the receipt of yours; and upon inquiry
    I found their publication had been prevented by Mr. Cobb under a
    firm conviction that they would injure both yourself and the
    Administration.

    Whether he judged wisely or not I cannot say, for I never saw
    them. That he acted in fairness and friendship I have not a doubt.
    He was anxious that General Whitfield should publish a letter and
    prepared one for him, expecting he would sign it before he left.
    He sent this letter after him for his approval and signature; but
    it has not been returned. I know not what are its contents.
    General W. doubtless has the letter in his possession. Beyond all
    question, the motives of Mr. Cobb were proper. Mrs. Walker and
    Mrs. Bache have just left me after a half hour's very agreeable
    conversation. Mrs. Walker desires me to inform you the family are
    all well and sends her love.

    From your friend, very respectfully,

    JAMES BUCHANAN.

    Hon. ROBERT J. WALKER.[11]

  [Sidenote] Report Covode Committee, p. 111.

The question naturally occurs, for whom did Calhoun speak when he
approached Governor Walker, offering him the bribe of the Presidency
and assuring him that the Administration had changed its mind? That
was before, or certainly not long after, the probable receipt of this
letter in Kansas, for the Governor left the Territory (November 16)
about one week after the adjournment of the Lecompton Convention. The
question becomes still more pressing owing to Governor Walker's
testimony that when he reached Washington, "the President himself
distinctly and emphatically assured me that he had not authorized
anybody to say that he had approved of that [Lecompton] programme." On
whose authority, then, did Calhoun declare that the Administration had
changed its mind?

[Illustration: FREDERICK P. STANTON.]

  [Sidenote] John Bell, Senate Speech, March 18, 1858.

This query brings us to another point in President Buchanan's letter
of October 22, in which he mentions that Secretary Cobb, of his
Cabinet, had without his knowledge suppressed the publication of
certain letters in the "Washington Union." These were, as we learn
elsewhere, the letters in which some of the Kansas pro-slavery leaders
repeated their declaration of the hopelessness of any further contest
to make Kansas a slave-State. Why this secret suppression by Secretary
Cobb? There is but one plausible explanation of this whole chain of
contradictions. The conclusion is almost forced upon us that a Cabinet
intrigue, of which the President was kept in ignorance, was being
carried on, under the very eyes of Mr. Buchanan, by those whom he
himself significantly calls "the extremists"--a plot to supersede his
own intentions and make him falsify his own declarations. As in the
case of similar intrigues by the same agents a few years later, he had
neither the wit to perceive nor the will to resist.

  [Sidenote] Stanton, Philadelphia Speech, Feb. 8, 1858.

The protest of the people of the Territory against the extraordinary
action of the Lecompton Convention almost amounted to a popular
revolt. This action opened a wide door to fraud, and invited Missouri
over to an invasion of final and permanent conquest. Governor Walker
had quitted the Territory on his leave of absence, and Secretary
Stanton was acting Governor. "The people in great masses," he says,
"and the Legislature that had been elected, with almost a unanimous
voice called upon me to convene the Legislature, in order that they
might take such steps as they could to counteract the misfortune which
they conceived was about to befall them in the adoption of this
constitution," As already stated, Stanton had come to Kansas with the
current Democratic prejudices against the free-State party. But his
whole course had been frank, sincere, and studiously impartial, and
the Oxford fraud had completely opened his eyes. "I now discovered for
the first time to my entire satisfaction why it was that the great
mass of the people of the Territory had been dissatisfied with their
government, and were ready to rebel and throw it off."

Having, like Walker, frequently and earnestly assured the people of
their ultimate right to ratify or reject the work of the convention,
he was personally humiliated by the unfairness and trickery of which
that body was guilty. Under the circumstances he could not hesitate in
his duty. By proclamation he convened the new Legislature in extra
session.

The members respected the private pledge they had given him to engage
in no general legislation; but provided by law for an investigation of
the Oxford and McGee frauds, and for an election to be held on January
4, 1858 (the day fixed by the Lecompton Constitution for the election
of State officers and a State legislature), at which the people might
vote for the Lecompton Constitution or against it. Thus in the course
of events two separate votes were taken on this notorious document.
The first, provided for in the instrument itself, took place on the
21st of December, 1857. Detachments of troops were stationed at
several points; the free-State men abstained from voting; the election
was peaceable; and in due time Calhoun proclaimed that 6143 ballots
had been cast "for the constitution with slavery," and 589 "for the
constitution with no slavery." But the subsequent legislative
investigation disclosed a gross repetition of the Oxford fraud, and
proved the actual majority, in a onesided vote, to have been only
3423. The second election occurred on January 4, 1858, under authority
of the legislative act. At this election the pro-slavery party voted
for the State officers, but in its turn abstained from voting on the
constitution, the result being--against the Lecompton Constitution,
10,226; for the Lecompton Constitution with slavery, 138; for the
Lecompton Constitution without slavery, 24.[12]

This emphatic rejection of the Lecompton Constitution by a direct vote
of the people of Kansas sealed its fate. We shall see further on what
persistent but abortive efforts were made in Congress once more to
galvanize it into life. The free-State party were jubilant; but the
pro-slavery cabal, foiled and checked, was not yet dismayed or
conquered. For now there was developed, for the first time in its full
proportions, the giant pro-slavery intrigue which proved that the
local conspiracy of the Atchison-Missouri cabal was but the image and
fraction of a national combination, finding its headquarters in the
Administration, first of President Pierce, and now of President
Buchanan; working patiently and insidiously through successive efforts
to bring about a practical subversion of the whole theory and policy
of the American Government. It linked the action of Border Ruffians,
presidential aspirants, senates, courts, and cabinets into efficient
cooeperation; leading up, step by step, from the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, through the Nebraska bill, border conquest, the Dred Scott
decision, the suppression of the submission clause in the Toombs bill,
and the extraordinary manipulation and machinery of the Lecompton
Constitution, towards the final overthrow of the doctrine that "all
men are created equal," and the substitution of the dogma of property
in man; towards the judicial construction that property rights in
human beings are before and above constitutional sanction, and that
slavery must find protection and perpetuity in States as well as in
Territories.

  [Sidenote] Cass to Stanton, December 2, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.
  No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., pp. 112-13.

  [Sidenote] Cass to Stanton, December 8, 1857. Ibid., p. 113.

  [Sidenote] Cass to Denver, December 11th, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No.
  8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 120.

The first weather-sign came from Washington. On the day after Acting
Governor Stanton convened the October Legislature in special session,
and before news of the event reached him, Secretary Cass transmitted
to him advance copies of the President's annual message, in which the
Lecompton Constitution was indorsed in unqualified terms. A week later
he was admonished to conform to the views of the President in his
official conduct. At this point the State Department became informed
of what had taken place, and the acting Governor had short shrift. On
December 11 Cass wrote to J.W. Denver, Esq.: "You have already been
informed that Mr. Stanton has been removed from the office of
Secretary of the Territory of Kansas and that you have been appointed
in his place." Cass further explained that the President "was
surprised to learn that the secretary and acting Governor had, on the
1st of December, issued his proclamation for a special session of the
Territorial Legislature on the 7th instant, only a few weeks in
advance of its regular time of meeting, and only fourteen days before
the decision was to be made on the question submitted by the
convention. This course of Mr. Stanton, the President seriously
believes, has thrown a new element of discord among the excited people
of Kansas, and is directly at war, therefore, with the peaceful policy
of the Administration. For this reason he has felt it his duty to
remove him."

Walker, already in Washington on leave of absence, could no longer
remain silent. He was as pointedly abandoned and disgraced by the
Administration as was his subordinate. In a dignified letter
justifying his own course, which, he reminded them, had never been
criticized or disavowed, he resigned the governorship. "From the
events occurring in Kansas as well as here," he wrote, "it is evident
that the question is passing from theories into practice; and that as
governor of Kansas I should be compelled to carry out new
instructions, differing on a vital question from those received at the
date of my appointment. Such instructions I could not execute
consistently with my views of the Federal Constitution, of the Kansas
and Nebraska bill, or with my pledges to the people of Kansas." "The
idea entertained by some that I should see the Federal Constitution
and the Kansas-Nebraska bill overthrown and disregarded, and that,
playing the part of a mute in a pantomime of ruin, I should acquiesce
by my silence in such a result, especially where such acquiescence
involved, as an immediate consequence, a disastrous and sanguinary
civil war, seems to me most preposterous."[13]

The conduct and the language of Walker and Stanton bear a remarkable
significance when we remember that they had been citizens of slave
States and zealous Democratic partisans, and that only hard practical
experience and the testimony of their own eyes had forced them to join
their predecessors in the political "graveyard." "The ghosts on the
banks of the Styx," said Seward, "constitute a cloud scarcely more
dense than the spirits of the departed Governors of Kansas, wandering
in exile and sorrow for having certified the truth against falsehood
in regard to the elections between Freedom and Slavery in Kansas."

----------
[1] January 12, 1857, Wilder, p. 113. Bell, Speech in Senate, March
18, 1858. Appendix "Globe," p. 137.

[2] Geary to Marcy, Feb. 21, 1857, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 17, 1st Sess.
35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 178.

[3] Bigler, Senate Speech, Dec. 9, 1857. "Globe," p. 21. See also
Bigler, Dec. 21, 1857. "Globe," p. 113.

[4] Walker, Testimony before the Covode Committee. Reports of
Committees H.R. 1st Sess. 36th Cong. Vol. V., pp. 105-6.

[5] "These fifteen counties in which there was no registry gave a
much larger vote at the October election, even with the six months'
qualification, than the whole vote given to the delegates who signed
the Lecompton Constitution on the 7th November last."--[Walker to
Cass, December 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong.
Vol. I, p. 128.]

[6] Walker to Buchanan, June 28, 1857. Report Covode Committee, pp.
117-19.

[7] Buchanan to Walker, July 12, 1857. Report Covode Committee, p.
112.

[8] The ingenuity which evolved 1600 Kansas votes from an old
Cincinnati directory and 1200 more from an uninhabited county, was not
exhausted by that prodigious labor. The same influences, and perhaps
the same manipulators, produced a companion piece known by the name
of the "candle-box fraud." At the election of January 4, 1858, for
officers under the Lecompton Constitution, the returns from Delaware
Agency underwent such suspicious handling that an investigating
commission of the Legislature, by aid of a search-warrant, found them
secreted in a candle-box buried under a woodpile near Calhoun's
"surveyor-general's office" at Lecompton. A forged list of 379 votes
had been substituted for the original memorandum of only forty-three
votes which had been cut from the certificate of the judges; the votes
on the forged list being intended for the pro-slavery candidates.
During the investigation Calhoun was arrested, but liberated by Judge
Cato on _habeas corpus_, after which he immediately went to Missouri,
and from there to Washington. The details and testimony are found in
House Com. Reports, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. III, Report No. 377.

[9] Minority Report, Select Com. of Fifteen. Report No. 377, page 109,
Vol. III., H.R. Reports, 1st Sess. 35th Cong.

This "missing link," no less than the remaining portion of the journal
printed in the proceedings of the investigating committee, is itself
strong circumstantial proof of the imposture underlying the whole
transaction. Many sections of the completed constitution are not even
mentioned in the journal; it does not contain the submission clause of
the schedule, and the authenticity of the document rests upon the
signature and the certificate of John Calhoun without other
verification.

[10] "Dr. Tebbs and General Whitfield a month since left very strong
letters for publication with the editor of the 'Union' which he
promised to publish. His breach of this promise is a gross outrage. If
not published immediately our success in convention materially depends
on my getting an immediate copy at Lecompton. My friends here all
regard now the 'Union' as an enemy and encouraging by its neutrality
the fire-eaters not to submit the constitution. Very well, the facts
are so clear that I can get along without the 'Union,' but he had no
right to suppress Dr. Tebbs's letter. I shall in due time expose that
transaction."--Extract from a letter of Robert J. Walker to James
Buchanan, dated October, 1857.

[11] For this autograph letter and other interesting manuscripts, we
are indebted to General Duncan S. Walker, a son of the Governor, now
residing in Washington, D.C.

[12] Under an Act of Congress popularly known as the "English Bill,"
this same Lecompton Constitution was once more voted upon by the
people of Kansas on August 2, 1858, with the following result: for the
proposition, 1788; against it, 11,300.--Wilder, "Annals of Kansas,"
pp. 186-8.

[13] Walker to Cass, Dec. 16, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8, 1st Sess.,
35th Cong. Vol. I., pp. 131, 130.




CHAPTER VII

THE REVOLT OF DOUGLAS


The language of President Buchanan's annual message, the summary
dismissal of Acting Governor Stanton, and the resignation of Governor
Walker abruptly transferred the whole Lecompton question from Kansas
to Washington; and even before the people of the Territory had
practically decided it by the respective popular votes of December
21,1857, and January 4,1858, it had become the dominant political
issue in the Thirty-fifth Congress, which convened on December 7,
1857. The attitude of Senator Douglas on the new question claimed
universal attention. The Dred Scott decision, affirming constitutional
sanction and inviolability for slave property in Territories, had
rudely damaged his theory. But we have seen how in his Springfield
speech he ingeniously sought to repair and rehabilitate "popular
sovereignty" by the sophism that a master's abstract constitutional
right to slave property in a Territory was a "barren and a worthless
right unless sustained, protected, and enforced by appropriate police
regulations," which could only be supplied by the local Territorial
Legislatures; and that the people of Kansas thus still possessed the
power of indirect prohibition.

  [Sidenote] 1857.

To invent and utter this sophism for home consumption among his
distant constituents on the 12th of June (a few days before the
Lecompton delegates were elected), and in so unobtrusive a manner as
scarcely to attract a ripple of public notice, was a light task
compared with that which confronted him as Senator, at the meeting of
Congress in December, in the light of John Calhoun's doings and
powers, of the scandal of the Oxford fraud, and of the indignation of
Northern Democrats against the betrayal of Walker and Stanton.

One of his first experiences was a personal quarrel with Buchanan.
When he reached Washington, three days before the session, he went to
the President to protest against his adopting the Lecompton
Constitution and sending it to Congress for acceptance. Buchanan
insisted that he must recommend it in his annual message. Douglas
replied that he would denounce it as soon as it was read. The
President, excited, told him "to remember that no Democrat ever yet
differed from an administration of his own choice without being
crushed. Beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives."

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Milwaukee Speech, October 13, 1860.

"Mr. President," retorted Douglas, "I wish you to remember that
General Jackson is dead."

In the election of Mr. Buchanan as President the South had secured a
most important ally for the work of pro-slavery reaction. Trained in
the belief that the South had hitherto been wronged, he was ready on
every occasion to appear as her champion for redress; and Southern
politicians were now eager to use his leadership to make their views
of public policy and constitutional duty acceptable to the North.
Respectable in capacity but feeble in will, he easily submitted to
control and guidance from a few Southern leaders of superior
intellectual force. In his inaugural, he sought to prepare public
opinion for obedience to the Dred Scott decision, and since its
publication he had undertaken to interpret its scope and effect.
Replying to a memorial from certain citizens of New England, he
declared in a public letter, "Slavery existed at that period, and
still exists in Kansas, under the Constitution of the United States.
This point has at last been finally decided by the highest tribunal
known to our laws. How it could ever have been seriously doubted is a
mystery."[1] In the same letter he affirmed the legality of the
Lecompton Convention, though he yet clearly expressed his expectation
that the constitution to be framed by it would be submitted to the
popular vote for "approbation or rejection."

  [Sidenote] 1857.

But when that convention adjourned, and made known its cunningly
devised work, the whole South instantly became clamorous to secure the
sectional advantages which lay in its technical regularity, its strong
affirmance of the "property" theory, and the extraordinary power it
gave to John Calhoun to control the election and decide the returns.
This powerful reactionary movement was not lost upon Mr. Buchanan. He
reflected it as unerringly as the vane moves to the change of the
wind. Long before the meeting of Congress, the Administration organ,
the "Washington Union," heralded and strongly supported the new
departure. When, on the 8th of December, the President's annual
message was transmitted and read, the Lecompton Constitution, as
framed and submitted, was therein warmly indorsed and its acceptance
indicated as the future Administration policy.

  [Sidenote] Buchanan, Annual Message, December 8, 1857.

The language of this message discloses with what subtle ingenuity
words, phrases, definitions, ideas, and theories were being invented
and plied to broaden and secure every conquest of the pro-slavery
reaction. An elaborate argument was made to defend the enormities of
the Lecompton Constitution. The doctrine of the Silliman letter, that
"slavery exists in Kansas under the Constitution of the United
States," was assumed as a conceded theory. "In emerging from the
condition of territorial dependence into that of a sovereign State,"
the people might vote "whether this important domestic institution
should or should not continue to exist." "Domestic institutions" was
defined to mean slavery. "Free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions"--the phrase employed in the Kansas-Nebraska act--was
construed to mean a vote to continue or discontinue slavery. And "if
any portion of the inhabitants shall refuse to vote, a fair
opportunity to do so having been presented, ... they alone will be
responsible for the consequences." "Should the constitution without
slavery be adopted by the votes of the majority, the rights of
property in slaves now in the Territory are reserved.... These slaves
were brought into the Territory under the Constitution of the United
States and are now the property of their masters. This point has at
length been finally decided by the highest judicial tribunal of the
country."

However blind Buchanan might be to the fact that this extreme
interpretation shocked and alarmed the sentiment of the North; that if
made before the late Presidential campaign it would have defeated his
own election; and that if rudely persisted in, it might destroy the
Democratic ascendency in the future, the danger was obvious and
immediately vital to Douglas. His senatorial term was about to expire.
To secure a reelection he must carry the State of Illinois in 1858,
which had on an issue less pronounced than this defeated his colleague
Shields in 1854, and his lieutenant Richardson in 1856. But more than
this, his own personal honor was as much involved in his pledges to
the voters of Illinois as had been that of Governor Walker to the
voters of Kansas. His double-dealing caucus bargain had thus placed
him between two fires--party disgrace at Washington and popular
disgrace in Illinois. In such a dilemma his choice could not be
doubtful. At all risk he must endeavor to sustain himself at home.

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Senate Speech, December 9, 1857. "Globe," p. 18.

He met the encounter with his usual adroitness and boldness. Assuming
that the President had made no express recommendation, he devoted his
speech mainly to a strong argument of party expediency, repelling
without reserve and denouncing without stint the work of the Lecompton
Convention. "Stand by the doctrine," said he, "that leaves the people
perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions for themselves,
in their own way, and your party will be united and irresistible in
power. Abandon that great principle and the party is not worth saving,
and cannot be saved after it shall be violated. I trust we are not to
be rushed upon this question. Why shall it be done? Who is to be
benefited? Is the South to be the gainer? Is the North to be the
gainer? Neither the North nor the South has the right to gain a
sectional advantage by trickery or fraud.... But I am told on all
sides, 'Oh! just wait; the pro-slavery clause will be voted down.'
That does not obviate any of my objections; it does not diminish any of
them. You have no more right to force a free-State constitution on
Kansas than a slave-State constitution. If Kansas wants a slave-State
constitution she has a right to it; if she wants a free-State
constitution she has a right to it. It is none of my business which
way the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted down
or voted up. Do you suppose, after the pledges of my honor that I
would go for that principle and leave the people to vote as they
choose, that I would now degrade myself by voting one way if the
slavery clause be voted down, and another way if it be voted up? I
care not how that vote may stand.... Ignore Lecompton; ignore Topeka;
treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair
bill--the one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit;
have a fair election--and you will have peace in the Democratic party,
and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a
fair vote. They will never be satisfied without it.... But if this
constitution is to be forced down our throats in violation of the
fundamental principle of free government, under a mode of submission
that is a mockery and insult, I will resist it to the last."

President Buchanan and the strong pro-slavery faction which was
directing his course paid no attention whatever to this proposal of a
compromise. Shylock had come into court to demand his bond, and would
heed no pleas of equity or appeals to grace. The elections of December
21 and January 4 were held in due time, and with what result we have
already seen. John Calhoun counted the votes on January 13 and
declared the "Lecompton Constitution with slavery" adopted, prudently
reserving, however, any announcement concerning the State officers or
Legislature under it. This much accomplished, he hurried away to
Washington, where he was received with open arms by the President and
his advisers, who at once proceeded with a united and formidable
effort to legalize the transparent farce by Congressional sanction.

On the second day of February, 1858, President Buchanan transmitted to
Congress the Lecompton Constitution, "received from J. Calhoun, Esq.,"
and "duly certified by himself." The President's accompanying special
message argues that the organic law of the Territory conferred the
essential rights of an enabling act; that the free-State party stood
in the attitude of willful and chronic revolution; that their various
refusals to vote were a sufficient bar to complaint and objection;
that the several steps in the creation and work of the Lecompton
Convention were regular and legal. "The people of Kansas have, then,
'in their own way,' and in strict accordance with the organic act,
framed a constitution and State government, have submitted the
all-important question of slavery to the people, and have elected a
governor, a member to represent them in Congress, members of the State
Legislature, and other State officers. They now ask admission into the
Union under this constitution, which is Republican in form. It is for
Congress to decide whether they will admit or reject the State which
has thus been created. For my own part I am decidedly in favor of its
admission and thus terminating the Kansas question."

  [Sidenote] 1858.

The vote of January 4 against the constitution he declared to be
illegal because it was "held after the Territory had been prepared for
admission into the Union as a sovereign State, and when no authority
existed in the Territorial Legislature which could possibly destroy
its existence or change its character." His own inconsistency was
lightly glossed over. "For my own part, when I instructed Governor
Walker in general terms, in favor of submitting the constitution to
the people, I had no object in view except the all-absorbing question
of slavery.... I then believed, and still believe, that under the
organic act, the Kansas Convention were bound to submit this
all-important question of slavery to the people. It was never,
however, my opinion that independently of this act they would have
been bound to submit any portion of the constitution to a popular
vote, in order to give it validity."

To the public at large, the central point of interest in this special
message, however, was the following dogmatic announcement by the
President: "It has been solemnly adjudged by the highest judicial
tribunal known to our laws that slavery exists in Kansas by virtue of
the Constitution of the United States. Kansas is, therefore, at this
moment as much a slave-State as Georgia or South Carolina. Without
this, the equality of the sovereign States composing the Union would
be violated, and the use and enjoyment of a territory acquired by the
common treasure of all the States would be closed against the people
and the property of nearly half the members of the Confederacy.
Slavery can, therefore, never be prohibited in Kansas except by means
of a constitutional provision and in no other manner can this be
obtained so promptly, if a majority of the people desire it, as by
admitting it into the Union under its present constitution."

In the light of subsequent history this extreme pro-slavery programme
was not only wrong in morals and statesmanship, but short-sighted and
foolhardy as a party policy. But to the eyes of President Buchanan
this latter view was not so plain. The country was apparently in the
full tide of a pro-slavery reaction. He had not only been elected
President, but the Democratic party had also recovered its control of
Congress. The presiding officer of each branch was a Southerner. Out
of 64 members of the Senate, 39 were Democrats, 20 Republicans, and
five Americans or Know-Nothings. Of the 237 members of the House, 131
were Democrats, 92 Republicans, and 14 Americans. Here was a clear
majority of fourteen in the upper and twenty-five in the lower House.
This was indeed no longer the formidable legislative power which
repealed the Missouri Compromise, but it seemed perhaps a sufficient
force to carry out the President's recommendation. His error was in
forgetting that this apparent popular indorsement was secured to him
and his party by means of the double construction placed upon the
Nebraska bill and the Cincinnati platform, by the caucus bargain
between the leaders of the South and the leaders of the North. The
moment had come when this unnatural alliance needed to be exposed and
in part repudiated.

The haste with which the Southern leaders advanced step by step,
forced every issue, and were now pushing their allies to the wall was,
to say the least, bad management, but it grew logically out of their
situation. They were swimming against the stream. The leading forces
of civilization, population, wealth, commerce, intelligence, were
bearing them down. The balance of power was lost. Already there were
sixteen free-States to fifteen slave-States. Minnesota and Oregon,
inevitably destined also to become free, were applying for admission
to the Union.

  [Sidenote] Official Manifesto, Oct. 8, 1754.

  [Sidenote] Senator Brown to Adams, June 18, 1856. Greeley, "Am.
  Conflict," Vol. I., p. 278.

  [Sidenote] Official proceedings, Pamphlet.

Still, the case of the South was not hopeless. Kansas was apparently
within their grasp. Existing law provided for the formation and
admission of four additional States to be carved out of Texas, which
would certainly become slave-States. Then there remained the possible
division of California, and a race for the possession of New Mexico
and Arizona. Behind all, or, more likely, before all except Kansas, in
the order of desired events, was the darling ambition of President
Buchanan, the annexation of Cuba. As United States Minister to England
he had publicly declared that if Spain refused to sell us that coveted
island we should be justified in wresting it from her by force; as
Presidential candidate he had confidentially avowed, amid the first
blushes of his new honor, "If I can be instrumental in settling the
slavery question upon the terms I have mentioned, and then add Cuba to
the Union, I shall, if President, be willing to give up the ghost, and
let Breckinridge take the government." Thus, even excluding the more
problematical chances which lay hidden in filibustering enterprises,
there was a possibility, easily demonstrable to the sanguine, that a
decade or two might change mere numerical preponderance from the free
to the slave-States. Nor could this possibility be waved aside by any
affectation of incredulity. Not alone Mr. Buchanan but the whole
Democratic party was publicly pledged to annexation. "Resolved," said
the Cincinnati platform, "that the Democratic party will expect of the
next Administration that every proper effort be made to insure our
ascendency in the Gulf of Mexico"; while another resolution declaring
sympathy with efforts to "regenerate" Central America was no less
significant.

[Illustration: JOHN CALHOUN.]

But to accomplish such marvels, they must not sit with folded hands.
The price of slavery was fearless aggression. They must build on a
deeper foundation than Presidential elections, party majorities, or
even than votes in the Senate. The theory of the government must be
reversed, the philosophy of the republic interpreted anew. In this
subtler effort they had made notable progress. By the Kansas-Nebraska
act they had paralyzed the legislation of half a century. By the Dred
Scott decision they had changed the Constitution and blighted the
Declaration of Independence. By the Lecompton trick they would show
that in conflict with their dogmas the public will was vicious, and in
conflict with their intrigues the majority powerless. They had the
President, the Cabinet, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, and,
by no means least in the immediate problem, John Calhoun with his
technical investiture of far-reaching authority. The country had
recovered from the shock of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and
rewarded them with Buchanan. Would it not equally recover from the
shock of the Lecompton Constitution?

It was precisely at this point that the bent bow broke. The great bulk
of the Democratic party followed the President and his Southern
advisers, even in this extreme step; but to a minority sufficient to
turn the scale the Lecompton scandal had become too offensive for
further tolerance.

In the Senate, with its heavy Democratic majority, the Administration
easily secured the passage of a bill to admit Kansas with the
Lecompton Constitution. Out of eleven Democratic Senators from free
States, only three--Douglas of Illinois, Broderick of California, and
Stuart of Michigan--took courage to speak and vote against the
measure. In the House of Representatives, however, with a narrower
margin of political power, the scheme, after an exciting discussion
running through about two months, met a decisive defeat. A formidable
popular opposition to it had developed itself in the North, in which
speeches and letters from Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton in
denunciation of it were a leading feature and a powerful influence.
The lower House of Congress always responds quickly to currents of
public sentiment; but in this case it caught direction all the more
promptly because its members were to be chosen anew in the ensuing
autumn. However much they might have party subordination and success
at heart, some of them felt that they could not defend before their
anti-slavery constituencies the Oxford frauds, the Calhoun
dictatorship, the theory that slave property is above constitutional
sanction, and the dogma that "Kansas is therefore at this moment as
much a slave-State as Georgia or South Carolina." When the test vote
was taken on April 1, out of the 53 Democratic representatives from
the free-States 31 voted for Lecompton; but the remaining 22,[2]
joining their strength to the opposition, passed a substitute,
originating with Mr. Crittenden of the Senate, which in substance
directed a resubmission of the Lecompton Constitution to the people of
Kansas;--if adopted, the President to admit the new State by a simple
proclamation; if rejected, the people to call a convention and frame a
new instrument.

As the October vote had been the turning-point in the local popular
struggle in the Territory, this adoption of the Crittenden-Montgomery
substitute, by a total vote of 120 to 112 in the House of
Representatives, was the culmination of the National intrigue to
secure Kansas for the South. It was a narrow victory for freedom; a
change of 5 votes would have passed the Lecompton bill and admitted
the State with slavery, and a constitutional prohibition against any
change for seven years to come. With his authority to control election
returns, there is every reason to suppose that Calhoun would have set
up a pro-slavery State Legislature, to choose two pro-slavery
senators, whom in its turn the strong Lecompton majority in the United
States Senate would have admitted to seats; and thus the whole chain
of fraud and usurpation back to the first Border-Ruffian invasion of
Kansas would have become complete, legal, and irrevocable, on plea of
mere formal and technical regularity.

Foiled in its main object, the Administration made another effort
which served to break somewhat the force and humiliation of its first
and signal defeat. The two Houses of Congress having disagreed as
stated, and each having once more voted to adhere to its own action,
the President managed to make enough converts among the anti-Lecompton
Democrats of the House to secure the appointment of a committee of
conference. This committee devised what became popularly known as the
"English bill," a measure which tendered a land grant to the new
State, and provided that on the following August 3d the people of
Kansas might vote "proposition accepted" or "proposition rejected."
Acceptance should work the admission of the State with the Lecompton
Constitution, while rejection should postpone any admission until her
population reached the ratio of representation required for a member
of the House. "Hence it will be argued," exclaimed Douglas, "in one
portion of the Union that this is a submission of the constitution,
and in another portion that it is not." The English bill became a law;
but the people of Kansas once more voted to reject the "proposition"
by nearly ten thousand majority.

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Senate Speech, March 22, 1858. App. "Globe,"
  pp. 199, 200.

Douglas opposed the English bill as he had done the Lecompton bill,
thus maintaining his attitude as the chief leader of the
anti-Lecompton opposition. In proportion as he received encouragement
and commendation from Republican and American newspapers, he fell
under the ban of the Administration journals. The "Washington Union"
especially pursued him with denunciation. "It has read me out of the
Democratic party every other day, at least, for two or three months,"
said he, "and keeps reading me out; and, as if it had not succeeded,
still continues to read me out, using such terms as 'traitor,'
'renegade,' 'deserter,' and other kind and polite epithets of that
nature." He explained that this arose from his having voted in the
Senate against its editor for the office of public printer; but he
also pointed out that he did so because that journal had become
pro-slavery to the point of declaring "that the emancipation acts of
New York, of New England, of Pennsylvania, and of New Jersey were
unconstitutional, were outrages upon the right of property, were
violations of the Constitution of the United States." "The proposition
is advanced," continued he, "that a Southern man has a right to move
from South Carolina with his negroes into Illinois, to settle there
and hold them there as slaves, anything in the constitution and laws
of Illinois to the contrary notwithstanding." Douglas further
intimated broadly that the President and Cabinet were inspiring these
editorials of the Administration organ, as part and parcel of the same
system and object with which they were pushing the Lecompton
Constitution with its odious "property" doctrine; and declared, "if my
protest against this interpolation into the policy of this country or
the creed of the Democratic party is to bring me under the ban, I am
ready to meet the issue."

He had not long to wait for the issue. The party rupture was radical,
not superficial. It was, as he had himself pointed out, part of the
contest for national supremacy between slavery and freedom. From time
to time he still held out the olive-branch and pointed wistfully to
the path of reconciliation. But the reactionary faction which ruled
Mr. Buchanan never forgave Douglas for his part in defeating Lecompton,
and more especially for what they alleged to be his treachery to his
caucus bargain, in refusing to accept and defend all the logical
consequences of the Dred Scott decision.

----------
[1] Buchanan to Silliman and others, Aug. 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.
No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 74.

[2] From California, 1; Illinois, 5; Indiana, 3; New Jersey, 1; New
York, 2; Ohio, 6; Pennsylvania, 4. For Lecompton: California, 1;
Connecticut, 2; Indiana, 3; New Jersey, 2; New York, 10; Ohio, 2;
Pennsylvania, 11.




CHAPTER VIII

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES


The anti-Lecompton recusancy of Douglas baffled the plotting
extremists of the South, and created additional dissension in the
Democratic ranks; and this growing Democratic weakness and the
increasing Republican ardor and strength presaged a possible
Republican success in the coming Presidential election. While this
condition of things gave national politics an unusual interest, the
State of Illinois now became the field of a local contest which for
the moment held the attention of the entire country in such a degree
as to involve and even eclipse national issues.

In this local contest in Illinois, the choice of candidates on both
sides was determined long beforehand by a popular feeling, stronger
and more unerring than ordinary individual or caucus intrigues.
Douglas, as author of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, as a
formidable Presidential aspirant, and now again as leader of the
anti-Lecompton Democrats, could, of course, have no rival in his party
for his own Senatorial seat. Lincoln, who had in 1854 gracefully
yielded his justly won Senatorial honors to Trumbull, and who alone
bearded Douglas in his own State throughout the whole anti-Nebraska
struggle, with anything like a show of equal political courage and
intellectual strength, was as inevitably the leader and choice of the
Republicans. Their State convention met in Springfield on the 16th of
June, 1858, and, after its ordinary routine work, passed with
acclamation a separate resolution, which declared "that Abraham
Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois
for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas."
The proceedings of the convention had consumed the afternoon, and an
adjournment was taken. At 8 o'clock that same evening, the convention
having reassembled in the State-house, Lincoln appeared before it, and
made what was perhaps the most carefully prepared speech of his whole
life. Every word of it was written, every sentence had been tested;
but the speaker delivered it without manuscript or notes. It was not
an ordinary oration, but, in the main, an argument, as sententious and
axiomatic as if made to a bench of jurists. Its opening sentences
contained a political prophecy which not only became the ground-work
of the campaign, but heralded one of the world's great historical
events. He said:

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 1.

    "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending,
    we could better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far
    into the fifth year since a policy was initiated, with the avowed
    object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery
    agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has
    not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion
    it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and
    passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe
    this Government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half
    free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect
    the house to fall--but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It
    will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents
    of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it
    where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
    course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it
    forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old
    as well as new, North as well as South."

Then followed his demonstration, through the incidents of the Nebraska
legislation, the Dred Scott decision, and present political theories
and issues, which would by and by find embodiment in new laws and
future legal doctrines. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the
language of the Nebraska bill, which declared slavery "subject to the
Constitution," the Dred Scott decision, which declared that "subject
to the Constitution" neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature
could exclude slavery from a Territory--the argument presented point
by point and step by step with legal precision the silent subversion
of cherished principles of liberty. "Put this and that together," said
he, "and we have another nice little niche, which we may ere long see
filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the
Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude
slavery from its limits.... Such a decision is all that slavery now
lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.... We shall lie down,"
continued the orator, "pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri
are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the
reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave
State."

His peroration was a battle-call: "Our cause, then, must be intrusted
to and conducted by its own undoubted friends, those whose hands are
free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result. Two
years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred
thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to
a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of
strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered from the
four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the
constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we
brave all then to falter now?--now, when that same enemy is wavering,
dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not
fail--if we stand firm we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate
or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the victory is sure to
come."

  [Sidenote] See O.J. Hollister, "Life of Colfax," pp. 119-22.

  [Sidenote] J. Watson Webb to Bates, June 9, 1858. MS.

Lincoln's declaration that the cause of slavery restriction "must be
intrusted to its own undoubted friends" had something more than a
general meaning. We have seen that while Douglas avowed he did not
care "whether slavery was voted down or voted up" in the Territories,
he had opposed the Lecompton Constitution on the ground of its
non-submission to popular vote, and that this opposition caused the
Buchanan Democrats to treat him as an apostate. Many earnest
Republicans were moved to strong sympathy for Douglas in this
attitude, partly for his help in defeating the Lecompton iniquity,
partly because they believed his action in this particular a prelude
to further political repentance, partly out of that chivalric
generosity of human nature which sides with the weak against the
strong. In the hour of his trial and danger many wishes for his
successful reelection came to him from Republicans of national
prominence. Greeley, in the New York "Tribune" as well as in private
letters, made no concealment of such a desire. Burlingame, in a fervid
speech in the House of Representatives, called upon the young men of
the country to stand by the Douglas men. It was known that Colfax and
other influential members of the House were holding confidential
interviews with Douglas, the object of which it was not difficult to
guess. There were even rumors that Seward intended to interfere in his
behalf. This report was bruited about so industriously that he felt it
necessary to permit a personal friend to write an emphatic denial, so
that it might come to Lincoln's knowledge. On the other hand,
newspapers ventured the suggestion that Lincoln might retaliate by a
combination against Seward's Presidential aspirations.

  [Sidenote] Wentworth to Lincoln, April 19, 1858. MS.

Rival politicians in Illinois were suspicious of each other, and did
not hesitate to communicate their suspicions to Lincoln. Personal
friends, of course, kept him well informed about these various
political under-currents, and an interesting letter of his shows that
he received and treated the matter with liberal charity. "I have never
said or thought more," wrote he, "as to the inclination of some of our
Eastern Republican friends to favor Douglas, than I expressed in your
hearing on the evening of the 21st April, at the State Library in this
place. I have believed--do believe now--that Greeley, for instance,
would be rather pleased to see Douglas reelected over me or any other
Republican; and yet I do not believe it is so because of any secret
arrangement with Douglas--it is because he thinks Douglas's superior
position, reputation, experience, and ability, if you please, would
more than compensate for his lack of a pure Republican position, and,
therefore, his reelection do the general cause of Republicanism more
good than would the election of any one of our better undistinguished
pure Republicans. I do not know how you estimate Greeley, but I
consider him incapable of corruption or falsehood. He denies that he
directly is taking part in favor of Douglas, and I believe him.[1]
Still his feeling constantly manifests itself in his paper, which,
being so extensively read in Illinois, is, and will continue to be, a
drag upon us. I have also thought that Governor Seward, too, feels
about as Greeley does; but not being a newspaper editor, his feeling
in this respect is not much manifested. I have no idea that he is, by
conversation or by letter, urging Illinois Republicans to vote for
Douglas."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Wilson, June 1, 1858. MS.

"As to myself, let me pledge you my word that neither I nor my
friends, so far as I know, have been setting stake against Governor
Seward. No combination has been made with me, or proposed to me, in
relation to the next Presidential candidate. The same thing is true in
regard to the next Governor of our State. I am not directly or
indirectly committed to any one; nor has any one made any advance to
me upon the subject. I have had many free conversations with John
Wentworth; but he never dropped a remark that led me to suspect that
he wishes to be Governor. Indeed it is due to truth to say that while
he has uniformly expressed himself for me, he has never hinted at any
condition. The signs are that we shall have a good convention on the
16th, and I think our prospects generally are improving some every
day. I believe we need nothing so much as to get rid of unjust
suspicions of one another."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Crittenden, July 7, 1858. Mrs. Coleman, "Life
  of Crittenden," Vol. II., p. 162.

  [Sidenote] Crittenden to Lincoln, July 29, 1858. Ibid., p. 163.

  [Sidenote] Crittenden to Dickey, August 1, 1858. Ibid., p. 164.

While many alleged defections were soon disproved by the ready and
loyal avowals of his friends in Illinois and elsewhere, there came to
him a serious disappointment from a quarter whence he little expected
it. Early in the canvass Lincoln began to hear that Crittenden, of
Kentucky, favored the reelection of Douglas, and had promised so to
advise the Whigs of Illinois by a public letter. Deeming it well-nigh
incredible that a Kentucky Whig like Crittenden could take such a
part against an Illinois Whig of his own standing and service, to help
a life-long opponent of Clay and his cherished plans, Lincoln
addressed him a private letter making the direct inquiry. "I do not
believe the story," he wrote, "but still it gives me some uneasiness.
If such was your inclination, I do not believe you would so express
yourself. It is not in character with you as I have always estimated
you." Crittenden's reply, however, confirmed his worst fears. He said
he and Douglas had acted together to oppose Lecompton. For this
Douglas had been assailed, and he thought his reelection was necessary
to rebuke the Buchanan Administration. In addition Crittenden also
soon wrote the expected letter for publication, in which phraseology
of apparent fairness covered an urgent appeal in Douglas's behalf.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 4-5.

In the evenly balanced and sensitive condition of Illinois politics
this ungracious outside interference may be said to have insured
Lincoln's defeat. While it gave him pain to be thus wounded in the
house of his friends, he yet more deeply deplored the inexcusable
blunder of leaders whose misplaced sympathy put in jeopardy the
success of a vital political principle. In his convention speech he
had forcibly stated the error and danger of such a step. "How can he
[Douglas] oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about
it. His avowed mission is impressing the 'public heart' to care
nothing about it.... For years he has labored to prove it a sacred
right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can
he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they
can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper
in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the
whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property.... Now
as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question
his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him.
Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that
our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to
have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly he is not now
with us--he does not pretend to be--he does not promise ever to be."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln, Springfield Speech, July 17, 1858. Debates,
  p. 55.

Lincoln in nowise underrated the severity of the political contest in
which he was about to engage. He knew his opponent's strong points as
well as his weak ones--his energy, his adroitness, the blind devotion
of his followers, his greater political fame. "Senator Douglas is of
world-wide renown," he said. "All the anxious politicians of his
party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking
upon him as certainly at no distant day to be the President of the
United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face
post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments,
charge-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in
wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.
And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long,
they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the
party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with
greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him
marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the
days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his
favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.
In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages
were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all taken together, that
the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon
principle, and principle alone."

  [Sidenote] 1858.

Douglas and his friends had indeed entered upon the canvass with an
unusual flourish of trumpets. Music, banners, salutes, fireworks,
addresses, ovation, and jubilation with enthusiasm genuine and
simulated, came and went in almost uninterrupted sequence; so much of
the noise and pomp of electioneering had not been seen since the
famous hard-cider campaign of Harrison. The "Little Giant," as he was
proudly nicknamed by his adherents, arrived in Illinois near
midsummer, after elaborate preparation and heralding, and made
speeches successively at Chicago, Bloomington, and Springfield on the
9th, 16th, and 17th of July. The Republicans and their candidate were
equally alert to contest every inch of ground. Mr. Lincoln made
speeches in reply at Chicago on the 10th and at Springfield on the
evening of Douglas's day address; and in both instances with such
force and success as portended a fluctuating and long-continued
struggle.

[Illustration: ANSON BURLINGAME.]

For the moment the presence of Douglas not only gave spirit and fresh
industry to his followers, but the novelty impressed the indifferent
and the wavering. The rush of the campaign was substituting excitement
for inquiry, blare of brass bands and smoke of gunpowder for
intelligent criticism. The fame and prestige of the "Little Giant" was
beginning to incline the vibrating scale. Lincoln and his intimate
political advisers were not slow to note the signs of danger; and the
remedy devised threw upon him the burden of a new responsibility. It
was decided in the councils of the Republican leaders that Lincoln
should challenge Douglas to joint public debate.

The challenge was sent by Lincoln on July 24; Douglas proposed that
they should meet at the towns of Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro,
Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton, each speaker alternately to
open and close the discussion; Douglas to speak one hour at Ottawa,
Lincoln to reply for an hour and a half, and Douglas to make a half
hour's rejoinder. In like manner Lincoln should open and close at
Freeport, and so on alternately. Lincoln's note of July 31 accepted
the proposal as made. "Although by the terms," he wrote, "as you
propose, you take four openings and closes to my three, I accede and
thus close the arrangement." Meanwhile each of the speakers made
independent appointments for other days and places than these seven;
and in the heat and dust of midsummer traveled and addressed the
people for a period of about one hundred days, frequently making the
necessary journeys by night, and often speaking two and sometimes even
three times in a single day. Thus to the combat of intellectual skill
was added a severe ordeal of physical endurance.[2]

Lincoln entered upon the task which his party friends had devised with
neither bravado nor misgiving. He had not sought these public
discussions; neither did he shrink from them. Throughout his whole
life he appears to have been singularly correct in his estimate of
difficulties to be encountered and of his own powers for overcoming
them. Each of these seven meetings, comprising both the Republican and
Democratic voters of the neighboring counties, formed a vast, eager,
and attentive assemblage. It needed only the first day's experience to
show the wisdom of the Republican leaders in forcing a joint
discussion upon Douglas. Face to face with his competitor, he could no
longer successfully assume airs of superiority, or wrap himself in his
Senatorial dignity and prestige. They were equal spokesmen, of equal
parties, on an equal platform, while applause and encouragement on one
side balanced applause and encouragement on the other.

In a merely forensic sense, it was indeed a battle of giants. In the
whole field of American politics no man has equaled Douglas in the
expedients and strategy of debate. Lacking originality and
constructive logic, he had great facility in appropriating by
ingenious restatement the thoughts and formulas of others. He was
tireless, ubiquitous, unseizable. It would have been as easy to hold a
globule of mercury under the finger's tip as to fasten him to a point
he desired to evade. He could almost invert a proposition by a
plausible paraphrase. He delighted in enlarging an opponent's
assertion to a forced inference ridiculous in form and monstrous in
dimensions. In spirit he was alert, combative, aggressive; in manner,
patronizing and arrogant by turns.

Lincoln's mental equipment was of an entirely different order. His
principal weapon was direct, unswerving logic. His fairness of
statement and generosity of admission had long been proverbial. For
these intellectual duels with Douglas, he possessed a power of
analysis that easily outran and circumvented the "Little Giant's" most
extraordinary gymnastics of argument. But, disdaining mere quibbles,
he pursued lines of concise reasoning to maxims of constitutional law
and political morals. Douglas was always forcible in statement and
bold in assertion; but Lincoln was his superior in quaint originality,
aptness of phrase, and subtlety of definition; and oftentimes
Lincoln's philosophic vision and poetical fervor raised him to flights
of eloquence which were not possible to the fiber and temper of his
opponent.

It is, of course, out of the question to abridge the various
Lincoln-Douglas discussions of which the text fills a good-sized
volume. Only a few points of controversy may be stated. Lincoln's
convention speech, it will be remembered, declared that in his belief
the Union could not endure permanently half slave and half free, but
must become all one thing or all the other. Douglas in his first
speech of the campaign attacked this as an invitation to a war of
sections, declaring that uniformity would lead to consolidation and
despotism. He charged the Republicans with intent to abolish slavery
in the States; said their opposition to the Dred Scott decision was a
desire for negro equality and amalgamation; and prescribed his dogma
of popular sovereignty as a panacea for all the ills growing out of
the slavery agitation.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 75.

To this Lincoln replied that Republicans did not aim at abolition in
the slave-States, but only the exclusion of slavery from free
Territories; they did not oppose the Dred Scott decision in so far as
it concerned the freedom of Dred Scott, but they refused to accept its
dicta as rules of political action. He repelled the accusation that
the Republicans desired negro equality or amalgamation, saying: "There
is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will
probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of
perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there
must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the
race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said
anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this
there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all
the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence--the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he
is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge
Douglas he is not my equal in many respects--certainly not in color,
perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment; but in the right to
eat the bread without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand
earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of
every living man."

In return he pressed upon Douglas his charge of a political conspiracy
to nationalize slavery, alleging that his "don't care" policy was but
the convenient stalking-horse under cover of which a new Dred Scott
decision would make slavery lawful everywhere.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., p. 82.

    It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under
    the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided
    that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial
    Legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the
    whole thing is done. This being true, and this being the way, as I
    think, that slavery is to be made national, let us consider what
    Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end. In the first place,
    let us see what influence he is exerting on public sentiment. In
    this and like communities public sentiment is everything. With
    public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can
    succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper
    than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes
    statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

    The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not
    tolerate the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least
    degree of wrong about it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas's
    arguments. He says he "don't care whether it is voted up or voted
    down" in the Territories. I do not care myself, in dealing with
    that expression, whether it is intended to be expressive of his
    individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the national
    policy he desires to have established. It is alike valuable for my
    purpose. Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in
    slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in
    it; because no man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong
    is voted up or voted down. He may say he don't care whether an
    indifferent thing is voted up or down, but he must logically have
    a choice between a right thing and a wrong thing. He contends that
    whatever community wants slaves has a right to have them. So they
    have, if it is not a wrong. But if it is a wrong, he cannot say
    people have a right to do wrong. He says that upon the score of
    equality slaves should be allowed to go into a new Territory, like
    other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference
    between it and other property. If it and other property are equal,
    his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is
    wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a
    comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over everything
    in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the
    shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the
    Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the
    shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments--it everywhere
    carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 233-4.

    That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in
    this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself
    shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two
    principles--right and wrong--throughout the world. They are the
    two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of
    time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common
    right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is
    the same principle, in whatever shape it develops itself. It is
    the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and
    I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the
    mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation
    and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as
    an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical
    principle.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 56.

As to the vaunted popular sovereignty principle, Lincoln declared it
"the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a
community.... Does he mean to say that he has been devoting his life
to securing to the people of the Territories the right to exclude
slavery from the Territories? If he means so to say, he means to
deceive; because he and every one knows that the decision of the
Supreme Court, which he approves and makes especial ground of attack
upon me for disapproving, forbids the people of a Territory to exclude
slavery. This covers the whole ground from the settlement of a
Territory till it reaches the degree of maturity entitling it to form
a State constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the
Judge is not sustaining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing
it. He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of
the Territories has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during
their territorial existence."

By no means the least interesting of the many points touched in these
debates is Lincoln's own estimate of the probable duration of slavery,
or rather of the least possible period in which "ultimate extinction"
could be effected, even under the most favorable circumstances.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 157.

    Now, at this day in the history of the world [said he, in the
    Charleston debate], we can no more foretell where the end of this
    slavery agitation will be than we can see the end of the world
    itself. The Nebraska-Kansas bill was introduced four years and a
    half ago, and if the agitation is ever to come to an end, we may
    say we are four years and a half nearer the end. So too we can say
    we are four years and a half nearer the end of the world; and we
    can just as clearly see the end of the world as we can see the end
    of this agitation. The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If
    Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the
    earth's surface, this vexed question would still be among us. I
    say then there is no way of putting an end to the slavery
    agitation amongst us, but to put it back upon the basis where our
    fathers placed it, no way but to keep it out of our new
    Territories--to restrict it forever to the old States where it now
    exists. Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in
    the course of ultimate extinction. That is one way of putting an
    end to the slavery agitation.

    The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his
    friends have their way and plant slavery over all the States;
    cease speaking of it as in any way a wrong; regard slavery as one
    of the common matters of property and speak of negroes as we do of
    our horses and cattle. But while it drives on in its state of
    progress as it is now driving, and as it has driven for the last
    five years, I have ventured the opinion, and I say to-day that we
    will have no end to the slavery agitation until it takes one turn
    or the other. I do not mean to say that when it takes a turn
    towards ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year,
    nor in two years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way
    ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at
    least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in
    God's own good time, I have no doubt.

But the one dominating characteristic of Lincoln's speeches is their
constant recurrence to broad and enduring principles, their
unremitting effort to lead public opinion to loftier and nobler
conceptions of political duty; and nothing in his career stamps him so
distinctively an American as his constant eulogy and defense of the
philosophical precepts of the Declaration of Independence. The
following is one of his indictments of his political opponents on this
point:

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 225.

    At Galesburg the other day, I said, in answer to Judge Douglas,
    that three years ago there never had been a man, so far as I knew
    or believed, in the whole world, who had said that the Declaration
    of Independence did not include negroes in the term "all men." I
    re-assert it to-day. I assert that Judge Douglas and all his
    friends may search the whole records of the country, and it will
    be a matter of great astonishment to me if they shall be able to
    find that one human being three years ago had ever uttered the
    astounding sentiment that the term "all men" in the Declaration
    did not include the negro. Do not let me be misunderstood. I know
    that more than three years ago there were men who, finding this
    assertion constantly in the way of their schemes to bring about
    the ascendency and perpetuation of slavery, denied the truth of
    it. I know that Mr. Calhoun and all the politicians of his school
    denied the truth of the Declaration. I know that it ran along in
    the mouth of some Southern men for a period of years, ending at
    last in that shameful though rather forcible declaration of
    Pettit, of Indiana, upon the floor of the United States Senate,
    that the Declaration of Independence was in that respect "a
    self-evident lie" rather than a self-evident truth. But I say,
    with a perfect knowledge of all this hawking at the Declaration
    without directly attacking it, that three years ago there never
    had lived a man who had ventured to assail it in the sneaking way
    of pretending to believe it and then asserting it did not include
    the negro. I believe the first man who ever said it was
    Chief-Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, and the next to him
    was our friend, Stephen A. Douglas. And now it has become the
    catchword of the entire party. I would like to call upon his
    friends everywhere to consider how they have come in so short a
    time to view this matter in a way so entirely different from their
    former belief; to ask whether they are not being borne along by an
    irresistible current, whither they know not?

In the joint debates, however, argument and oratory were both hampered
by the inexorable limit of time. For the full development of his
thought, the speeches Lincoln made separately at other places afforded
him a freer opportunity. A quotation from his language on one of these
occasions is therefore here added, as a better illustration of his
style and logic, where his sublime theme carried him into one of his
more impassioned moods:

    The Declaration of Independence was formed by the representatives
    of American liberty from thirteen States of the Confederacy,
    twelve of which were slave-holding communities. We need not
    discuss the way or the reason of their becoming slave-holding
    communities. It is sufficient for our purpose that all of them
    greatly deplored the evil and that they placed a provision in the
    Constitution which they supposed would gradually remove the
    disease by cutting off its source. This was the abolition of the
    slave trade. So general was the conviction, the public
    determination, to abolish the African slave trade, that the
    provision which I have referred to as being placed in the
    Constitution declared that it should not be abolished prior to the
    year 1808. A constitutional provision was necessary to prevent the
    people, through Congress, from putting a stop to the traffic
    immediately at the close of the war. Now if slavery had been a
    good thing, would the fathers of the republic have taken a step
    calculated to diminish its beneficent influences among themselves,
    and snatch the boon wholly from their posterity? These
    communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall,
    said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be
    self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are
    endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
    among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This
    was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe.
    This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the
    justice of the Creator to his creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all
    his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their
    enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and
    likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded,
    and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race
    of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the
    farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children,
    and their children's children, and the countless myriads who
    should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they
    were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and
    so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in
    the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should
    set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men,
    or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty,
    and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again
    to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the
    battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and
    mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be
    extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to
    limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of
    liberty was being built.

    Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting
    with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if
    you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its
    grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you
    have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal
    in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty,
    let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose
    waters spring close by the blood of the revolution. Think nothing
    of me--take no thought for the political fate of any man
    whomsoever--but come back to the truths that are in the
    Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you
    choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not
    only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to
    death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do
    claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an
    anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and
    insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am
    nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that
    immortal emblem of Humanity--the Declaration of American
    Independence.[3]

----------
[1] It is interesting to compare with Lincoln's letter one from Greeley
to a Chicago editor on the same subject:

    "NEW YORK,
    "July 24, 1858.

    "MY FRIEND: You have taken your own course--don't try to throw the
    blame on others. You have repelled Douglas, who might have been
    conciliated and attached to our own side, whatever he may _now_
    find, it necessary to say, or do, and instead of helping us in
    other States, you have thrown a load upon us that may probably
    break us down. You knew what was the almost unanimous desire of
    the Republicans of other States; and you spurned and insulted
    them. Now go ahead and fight it through. You are in for it, and
    it does no good to make up wry faces. What I have said in the
    'Tribune' since the fight was resolved on, has been in good faith,
    intended to help you through. If Lincoln would fight up to the
    work also, you might get through--if he apologizes, and retreats,
    he is lost, and all others go down with him. His first Springfield
    speech (at the convention) was in the right key; his Chicago
    speech was bad; and I fear the new Springfield speech is worse. If
    he dare not stand on broad Republican ground, he cannot stand at
    all. That, however, is _his_ business; he is nowise responsible
    for what I say. I shall stand on the broad anti-slavery ground,
    which I have occupied for years. I cannot change it to help your
    fight; and I should only damage you if I did. You have got your
    Elephant--you would have him--now shoulder him! He is not so very
    heavy, after all. As I seem to displease you equally when I try to
    keep you out of trouble, and when, having rushed in in spite of
    me, I try to help you in the struggle you have unwisely provoked,
    I must keep neutral, so far as may be hereafter. Yours,

    (Signed) "HORACE GREELEY.

    "J. MEDILL, Esq., Chicago, (very) Ill.

    "What have I ever said in favor of 'Negro equality' with reference
    to your fight? I recollect nothing."

The above is from a manuscript copy of Greeley's letter, but it bears
internal evidence of genuineness.

[2] "Last year in the Illinois canvass I made just 130 speeches."--
[Douglas, Wooster (O.) Speech.] This was between July 9 and November
2, 1858, just 100 days, exclusive of Sundays.

[3] Lincoln's Lewiston Speech, August 17, 1858. Chicago "Press and
Tribune."




CHAPTER IX

THE FREEPORT DOCTRINE


  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 68.

What has thus far been quoted has been less to illustrate the leading
lines of discussion, than to explain more fully the main historical
incident of the debates. In the first joint discussion at Ottawa, in
the northern or anti-slavery part of Illinois, Douglas read a series of
strong anti-slavery resolutions which he erroneously alleged Lincoln
had taken part in framing and passing. He said: "My object in reading
these resolutions was to put the question to Abraham Lincoln this day
whether he now stands and will stand by each article in that creed and
carry it out.... I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions in
order that when I trot him down to lower Egypt[1] I may put the same
questions to him."[2]

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 87.

In preparing a powerful appeal to local prejudice, Douglas doubtless
knew he was handling a two-edged sword; but we shall see that he
little appreciated the skill with which his antagonist would wield the
weapon he was placing in his hands. At their second joint meeting, at
Freeport, also in northern Illinois, Lincoln, who now had the opening
speech, said, referring to Douglas's speech at Ottawa: "I do him no
injustice in saying that he occupied at least half of his reply in
dealing with me as though I had refused to answer his interrogatories.
I now propose that I will answer any of the interrogatories, upon
condition that he will answer questions from me not exceeding the same
number. I give him an opportunity to respond. The judge remains
silent. I now say that I will answer his interrogatories, whether he
answers mine or not; and that after I have done so, I shall propound
mine to him."

Lincoln then read his answers to the seven questions which, had been
asked him, and proposed four in return, the second one of which ran as
follows: "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful
way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude
slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a State
constitution?"[3]

To comprehend the full force of this interrogatory, the reader must
recall the fact that the "popular sovereignty" of the Nebraska bill
was couched in vague language, and qualified with the proviso that it
was "subject to the Constitution." The caucus which framed this
phraseology agreed, as a compromise between Northern and Southern
Democrats, that the courts should interpret and define the
constitutional limitations, by which all should abide. The Dred Scott
decision declared in terms that Congress could not prohibit slavery in
Territories nor authorize a Territorial Legislature to do so. The Dred
Scott decision had thus annihilated "popular sovereignty," Would
Douglas admit his blunder in law, and his error in statesmanship?

He had already faced and partly evaded this dilemma in his Springfield
speech of 1857, but that was a local declaration and occurred before
his Lecompton revolt, and the ingenious sophism then put forth had
attracted little notice. Since that time things had materially
changed. He had opposed Lecompton, become a party recusant, and been
declared a party apostate. His Senatorial term was closing, and he had
to look to an evenly balanced if not a hostile constituency for
reelection. The Buchanan Administration was putting forth what feeble
strength it had in Illinois to insure his defeat. His Democratic
rivals were scrutinizing every word he uttered. He stood before the
people to whom he had pledged his word that the voters of Kansas might
regulate their own domestic concerns. They would tolerate no juggling
nor evasion. There remained no resource but to answer _Yes_, and he
could conjure up no justification of such an answer except the hollow
subterfuge he had invented the year before.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Asbury, July 31, 1858.

Lincoln clearly enough comprehended the dilemma and predicted the
expedient of his antagonist. He had framed his questions and submitted
them to a consultation of shrewd party friends. This one especially
was the subject of anxious deliberation and serious disagreement.
Nearly a month before, Lincoln in a private letter accurately
foreshadowed Douglas's course on this question. "You shall have hard
work to get him directly to the point whether a Territorial
Legislature has or has not the power to exclude slavery. But if you
succeed in bringing him to it--though he will be compelled to say it
possesses no such power--he will instantly take ground that slavery
cannot actually exist in the Territories unless the people desire it,
and so give it protection by Territorial legislation. If this offends
the South, he will let it offend them, as at all events he means to
hold on to his chances in Illinois." There is a tradition that on the
night preceding this Freeport debate Lincoln was catching a few hours'
rest, at a railroad center named Mendota, to which place the
converging trains brought after midnight a number of excited
Republican leaders, on their way to attend the great meeting at the
neighboring town of Freeport. Notwithstanding the late hour, Mr.
Lincoln's bedroom was invaded by an improvised caucus, and the ominous
question was once more brought under consideration. The whole drift of
advice ran against putting the interrogatory to Douglas; but Lincoln
persisted in his determination to force him to answer it. Finally his
friends in a chorus cried out, "If you do, you can never be Senator."
"Gentlemen," replied Lincoln, "I am killing larger game; if Douglas
answers, he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a
hundred of this."

When Lincoln had finished his opening speech in the Freeport debate,
and Douglas in his reply came to interrogatory number two, which
Lincoln had propounded, he answered as follows:

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 95.

    The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is, Can the
    people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any
    citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits,
    prior to the formation of a State constitution? I answer
    emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times
    from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a
    Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits,
    prior to the formation of a State constitution. Mr. Lincoln knew
    that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me
    argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State in
    1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to
    be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not
    what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract
    question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under
    the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it
    or exclude it, as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot
    exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local
    police regulations. Those police regulations can only be
    established by the local Legislature, and if the people are
    opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body
    who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the
    introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are
    for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no
    matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that
    abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave
    Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the
    Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on
    that point.

[Illustration: STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.]

The remarkable theory here proposed was immediately taken up and
exhaustively discussed by the leading newspapers in all parts of the
Union, and thereby became definitely known under the terms "unfriendly
legislation" and "Freeport doctrine." Mr. Lincoln effectually disposed
of it in the following fashion in the joint debate at Alton:

  [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 234-5.

    I understand I have ten minutes yet. I will employ it in saying
    something about this argument Judge Douglas uses, while he
    sustains the Dred Scott decision, that the people of the
    Territories can still somehow exclude slavery. The first thing I
    ask attention to is the fact that Judge Douglas constantly said,
    before the decision, that whether they could or not, was a
    question for the Supreme Court. But after the court has made the
    decision he virtually says it is not a question for the Supreme
    Court, but for the people. And how is it he tells us they can
    exclude it? He said it needs "police regulations," and that admits
    of "unfriendly legislation." Although it is a right established by
    the Constitution of the United States to take a slave into a
    Territory of the United States and hold him as property, yet
    unless the Territorial Legislature will give friendly legislation,
    and, more especially, if they adopt unfriendly legislation, they
    can practically exclude him. Now, without meeting this proposition
    as a matter of fact, I pass to consider the real constitutional
    obligation. Let me take the gentleman who looks me in the face
    before me, and let us suppose that he is a member of the
    Territorial Legislature. The first thing he will do will be to
    swear that he will support the Constitution of the United States.
    His neighbor by his side in the Territory has slaves and needs
    Territorial legislation to enable him to enjoy that constitutional
    right. Can he withhold the legislation which his neighbor needs
    for the enjoyment of a right which is fixed in his favor in the
    Constitution of the United States, which he has sworn to support?
    Can he withhold it without violating his oath? and more
    especially, can he pass unfriendly legislation to violate his
    oath? Why this is a monstrous sort of talk about the Constitution
    of the United States! There has never been as outlandish or
    lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any respectable man on earth.
    I do not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in a
    Territory of the United States. I believe the decision was
    improperly made, and I go for reversing it. Judge Douglas is
    furious against those who go for reversing a decision. But he is
    for legislating it out of all force, while the law itself stands.
    I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doctrine uttered
    from the mouth of a respectable man.

The announcement and subsequent defense by Douglas of his "Freeport
doctrine" proved, as Lincoln had predicted, something more important
than a mere campaign incident. It was the turning-point in Douglas's
political fortunes. With the whole South, and with a few prominent
politicians of the North, it served to put him outside the pale of
party fellowship. Compared with this his Lecompton revolt had been a
venial offense. In that case he had merely contended for the machinery
of a fair popular vote. This was the avowal of a principle as
obnoxious to the slavery propaganda as the unqualified abolitionism of
Giddings and Lovejoy. Henceforth all hope of reconciliation,
atonement, or chance of Presidential nomination by the united
Democratic party was out of the question. Before this, newspaper
zealots had indeed denounced him for his Lecompton recusancy as a
traitor and renegade, and the Administration had endeavored to secure
his defeat; now, however, in addition, the party high-priests put him
under solemn ban of excommunication. How they felt and from what
motives they acted is stated with singular force and frankness in a
Senate speech, soon after the Charleston Convention, by Senator Judah
P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, one of the ablest and most persistent of
the conspirators to nationalize slavery, and who, not long after, was
one of the principal actors in the great rebellion:

    Up to the years 1857 and 1858 no man in this nation had a higher
    or more exalted opinion of the character, the services, and the
    political integrity of the Senator from Illinois [Douglas] than I
    had.... Sir, it has been with reluctance and sorrow that I have
    been obliged to pluck down my idol from his place on high, and to
    refuse to him any more support or confidence as a member of the
    party. I have done so, I trust, upon no light or unworthy ground.
    I have not done so alone. The causes that have operated on me have
    operated on the Democratic party of the United States, and have
    operated an effect which the whole future life of the Senator will
    be utterly unable to obliterate. It is impossible that confidence
    thus lost can be restored. On what ground has that confidence been
    forfeited, and why is it that we now refuse him our support and
    fellowship? I have stated our reasons to-day. I have appealed to
    the record. I have not followed him back in the false issue or the
    feigned traverse that he makes in relation to matters that are not
    now in contest between him and the Democratic party. The question
    is not what we all said or believed in 1850 or in 1856. How idle
    was it to search ancient precedents and accumulate old quotations
    from what Senators may have at different times said in relation to
    their principles and views. The precise point, the direct
    arraignment, the plain and explicit allegation made against the
    Senator from Illinois is not touched by him in all of his speech.

  [Sidenote] Benjamin, Senate Speech, May 22, 1860. Pamphlet.

    We accuse him for this, to wit: that having bargained with us upon
    a point upon which we were at issue, that it should be considered
    a judicial point; that he would abide the decision; that he would
    act under the decision, and consider it a doctrine of the party;
    that having said that to us here in the Senate, he went home, and
    under the stress of a local election, his knees gave way; his
    whole person trembled. His adversary stood upon principle and was
    beaten; and lo! he is the candidate of a mighty party for the
    Presidency of the United States. The Senator from Illinois
    faltered. He got the prize for which he faltered; but lo! the
    grand prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp because of
    his faltering in his former contest, and his success in the
    canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, has cost
    him the loss of the Presidency of the United States.

  [Sidenote] 1858.

The Senatorial canvass in Illinois came to a close with the election
on the 2d of November and resulted in a victory for Douglas. The
Republicans, on their State ticket, polled 125,430 votes; the Douglas
Democrats, 121,609; the Buchanan Democrats, 5071. By this plurality
the Republican State officers were chosen. But in respect to members
of the Legislature the case stood differently, and when in the
following January the Senatorial election took place in joint session
of the two Houses, Douglas received the vote of every Democrat, 54
members, and Lincoln the vote of every Republican, 46 members,
whereupon Douglas was declared elected Senator of the United States
for six years from the 4th of March, 1859.

The main cause of Lincoln's defeat was the unfairness of the existing
apportionment, which was based upon the census of 1850. A fair
apportionment, based on the changes of population which had occurred,
would have given northern Illinois a larger representation; and it was
there the Republicans had recruited their principal strength in the
recent transformation of parties. The Republicans estimated that this
circumstance caused them a loss of six to ten members.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln, Cincinnati Speech, Sept. 17, 1859. Debates,
  p. 263.

But the unusual political combinations also had a large influence on
the result. Lincoln, in an Ohio speech made in the following year,
addressing himself to Kentuckians, thus summarized the political
forces that contributed to his defeat: "Douglas had three or four very
distinguished men of the most extreme anti-slavery views of any men in
the Republican party expressing their desire for his reelection to the
Senate last year. That would of itself have seemed to be a little
wonderful, but that wonder is heightened when we see that Wise, of
Virginia, a man exactly opposed to them, a man who believes in the
divine right of slavery, was also expressing his desire that Douglas
should be reelected; that another man that may be said to be kindred
to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your own State,
was also agreeing with the anti-slavery men in the North, that Douglas
ought to be reelected. Still to heighten the wonder, a Senator from
Kentucky, whom I have always loved with an affection as tender and
endearing as I have ever loved any man, who was opposed to the
anti-slavery men for reasons which seemed sufficient to him and equally
opposed to Wise and Breckinridge, was writing letters to Illinois to
secure the reelection of Douglas. Now that all these conflicting
elements should be brought, while at daggers' points with one another,
to support him, is a feat that is worthy for you to note and consider.
It is quite probable that each of these classes of men thought, by the
reelection of Douglas, their peculiar views would gain something; it
is probable that the anti-slavery men thought their views would gain
something; that Wise and Breckinridge thought so too, as regards their
opinions; that Mr. Crittenden thought that his views would gain
something although he was opposed to both these other men. It is
probable that each and all of them thought they were using Douglas,
and it is yet an unsolved problem whether he was not using them all."

After a hundred consecutive days of excitement, of intense mental
strain, and of unremitting bodily exertion, after speech-making and
parades, music and bonfires, it must be something of a trial to face
at once the mortification of defeat, the weariness of intellectual and
physical reaction, and the dull commonplace of daily routine. Letters
written at this period show that under these conditions Mr. Lincoln
remained composed, patient, and hopeful. Two weeks after election he
wrote thus to Mr. Judd, a member of the Legislature and Chairman of
the Republican State Central Committee: "I have the pleasure to inform
you that I am convalescing and hoping these lines may find you in the
same improving state of health. Doubtless you have suspected for some
time that I entertain a personal wish for a term in the United States
Senate; and had the suspicion taken the shape of the direct charge I
think I could not have truthfully denied it. But let the past as
nothing be. For the future my view is that the fight must go on. The
returns here are not yet complete, but it is believed that Dougherty's
vote will be slightly greater than Miller's majority over Fondey. We
have some 120,000 clear Republican votes. That pile is worth keeping
together. It will elect a State ticket two years hence."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Judd, Nov. 15, 1858.

"In that day I shall fight in the ranks, but shall be in no one's way
for any of the places. I am especially for Trumbull's reelection; and,
by the way, this brings me to the principal object of this letter. Can
you not take your draft of an apportionment bill and carefully revise
it till it shall be strictly and obviously just in all particulars,
and then by an early and persistent effort get enough of the enemies'
men to enable you to pass it? I believe if you and Peck make a job of
it, begin early and work earnestly and quietly, you can succeed in it.
Unless something be done, Trumbull is inevitably beaten two years
hence. Take this into serious consideration."

  [Sidenote] Ibid., Nov. 16, 1858.

On the following day he received from Mr. Judd a letter informing him
that the funds subscribed for the State Central Committee did not
suffice to pay all the election bills, and asking his help to raise
additional contributions. To this appeal Lincoln replied: "Yours of
the 15th is just received. I wrote you the same day. As to the
pecuniary matter, I am willing to pay according to my ability, but I
am the poorest hand living to get others to pay. I have been on
expenses so long without earning anything that I am absolutely without
money now for even household purposes. Still, if you can put in $250
for me towards discharging the debt of the committee, I will allow it
when you and I settle the private matter between us. This, with what I
have already paid, and with an outstanding note of mine, will exceed
my subscription of $500. This, too, is exclusive of my ordinary
expenses during the campaign, all which being added to my loss of time
and business, bears pretty heavily upon one no better off in world's
goods than I; but as I had the post of honor, it is not for me to be
over-nice. You are feeling badly--'And this too shall pass away.'
Never fear."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Dr. Henry, Nov. 19, 1858. MS.

The sting of personal defeat is painful to most men, and doubtless it
was so to Lincoln. Yet he regarded the passing struggle as something
more than a mere scramble for office, and drew from it the consolation
which all earnest workers feel in the consciousness of a task well
done. Thus he wrote to a friend on November 19: "You doubtless have
seen ere this the result of the election here. Of course I wished, but
I did not much expect, a better result.... I am glad I made the late
race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the
age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out
of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks
which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Asbury, November 19, 1858.

To these one other letter may be added, showing his never-failing
faith in the political future. To a personal friend in Quincy,
Illinois, who had watched the campaign with unusual attention, Lincoln
wrote that same day: "Yours of the 13th was received some days ago.
The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty must not be
surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats. Douglas had
the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest, both as the best
means to break down and to uphold the slave interest. No ingenuity can
keep these antagonistic elements in harmony long. Another explosion
will soon come."

  [Sidenote] 1858.

Douglas was also greatly exhausted by the wearing labors of the
campaign; but he had the notable triumph of an assured reelection to
the Senate and the congratulations of his enthusiastic friends to
sustain and refresh him. Being an indefatigable worker, he was already
organizing a new and more ambitious effort. Three weeks after election
he started on a brief tour to the Southern States, making speeches at
Memphis and New Orleans, of which further mention will be made in the
next chapter. Perhaps he deemed it wise not to proceed immediately to
Washington, where Congress convened on the first Monday of December,
and thus to avoid a direct continuance of his battle with the Buchanan
Administration. If so, the device proved ineffectual. The President
and his partisans were determined to put the author of the "Freeport
doctrine" under public ban, and to that end, when Congress organized,
one of the first acts of the Senate majority was to depose Douglas
from his place as chairman of the Committee on Territories, which he
had held in that body for eleven years.

----------
[1] A local nickname by which the southern or pro-slavery portion of
Illinois was familiarly known.

[2] DOUGLAS'S QUESTIONS AND LINCOLN'S ANSWERS.

    "_Question_ 1. 'I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as
    he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the
    fugitive-slave law?'

    _Answer_. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the
    unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law.

    _Q_. 2. 'I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day,
    as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave-States
    into the Union even if the people want them?'

    _A_. I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the
    admission of any more slave-States into the Union.

    _Q_. 3. 'I want to know whether he stands pledged against the
    admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution
    as the people of that State may see fit to make?'

    _A_. I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State
    into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that
    State may see fit to make.

    _Q_. 4. 'I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the
    abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?'

    _A_. I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in
    the District of Columbia.

    _Q_. 5. 'I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the
    prohibition of the slave trade between the different States?'

    _A_. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade
    between the different States.

    _Q_. 6. 'I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit
    slavery in all the Territories of the United States, north as well
    as south of the Missouri Compromise line?'

    _A_. I am impliedly if not expressly pledged to a belief in the
    right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United
    States Territories.

    _Q_. 7. 'I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the
    acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first
    prohibited therein?'

    _A_. I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of
    territory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose
    such acquisition accordingly as I might think such acquisition
    would or would not aggravate the slavery question among
    ourselves."--Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 88.

[3] LINCOLN'S QUESTIONS.

    "_Question_ 1. If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
    unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution,
    and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have the
    requisite number of inhabitants according to the English
    bill,--some 93,000,--will you vote to admit them?

    _Q_. 2. Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful
    way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude
    slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a State
    constitution?

    _Q_. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide
    that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in
    favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as
    a rule of political action?

    _Q_. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in
    disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the
    slavery question?"--Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 90.





CHAPTER X

LINCOLN'S OHIO SPEECHES


When Lincoln, in opening the Senatorial campaign of Illinois, declared
that the Republican cause must be intrusted to its own undoubted
friends "who do care for the result," he displayed a much better
understanding of the character and aims of his opponent than those
who, not so well informed, desired the adoption of a different course.
Had the wishes of Greeley and others prevailed, had Douglas been
adopted by the Illinois Republicans, the party would have found itself
in a fatal dilemma, No sooner was the campaign closed than Douglas,
having entered on his tour through the South, began making speeches,
apparently designed to pave his way to a nomination for President by
the next Democratic National Convention. Realizing that he had lost
ground by his anti-Lecomptonism, and especially by his Freeport
doctrine, and having felt in the late campaign the hostility of the
Buchanan Administration, he now sought to recover prestige by
publishing more advanced opinions indirectly sustaining and defending
slavery.

Hitherto he had declared he did not care whether slavery was voted
down or voted up. He had said he would not argue the question whether
slavery was right or wrong. He had adopted Taney's assertion that the
negro had no share in the Declaration of Independence. He had asserted
that uniformity was impossible, but that freedom and slavery might
abide together forever. But now that the election was over and a new
term in the Senate secure, he was ready to conciliate pro-slavery
opinion with stronger expressions. Hence, in a speech at Memphis, he
cunningly linked together in argument unfriendly legislation, slavery,
and annexation. He said: "Whenever a Territory has a climate, soil,
and production making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage
slave property, they will pass a slave code."

Wherever these preclude the possibility of slavery being profitable,
they will not permit it. On the sugar plantations of Louisiana it was
not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the
negro and the crocodile. He would say that between the negro and the
crocodile, he took the side of the negro; but between the negro and
the white man, he would go for the white man. The Almighty has drawn
the line on this continent, on the one side of which the soil must be
cultivated by slave labor; on the other by white labor. That line did
not run on 36 and 30' [the Missouri Compromise line], for 36 and 30'
runs over mountains and through valleys. But this slave line, he said,
meanders in the sugar-fields and plantations of the South, and the
people living in their different localities and in the Territories
must determine for themselves whether their "middle bed" is best
adapted to slavery or free labor.

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Memphis Speech, Nov. 29, 1858. Memphis "Eagle
  and Enquirer."

Referring to annexation, he said our destiny had forced us to acquire
Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California. "We have now
territory enough, but how long will it be enough? One hive is enough
for one swarm of bees, but a new swarm comes next year and a new hive
is wanted." Men may say we shall never want anything more of Mexico,
but the time would come when we would be compelled to take more.
Central America was half-way to California and on the direct road. The
time will come when our destiny, our institutions, our safety will
compel us to have it. "So it is," concluded he, "with the island of
Cuba.... It is a matter of no consequence whether we want it or not;
we are compelled to take it, and we can't help it".

  [Sidenote] Douglas, New Orleans Speech, Dec. 6, 1858. Pamphlet.

When Douglas reached New Orleans he substantially repeated these
declarations in another long speech, and, as if he had not yet placed
himself in entire harmony with Southern opinion, he added a sentiment
almost as remarkable as the "mudsill" theory of Hammond, or the later
"cornerstone" doctrine of Stephens: "It is a law of humanity," said
he, "a law of civilization, that whenever a man or a race of men show
themselves incapable of managing their own affairs, they must consent
to be governed by those who are capable of performing the duty. It is
on this principle that you establish those institutions of charity for
the support of the blind, or the deaf and dumb, or the insane. In
accordance with this principle, I assert that the negro race, under
all circumstances, at all times, and in all countries, has shown
itself incapable of self-government."

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Baltimore Speech, Jan. 5, 1859. Pamphlet.

Once more, in a speech at Baltimore, Douglas repeated in substance
what he had said at Memphis and New Orleans, and then in the beginning
of January, 1859, he reached Washington and took his seat in the
Senate. Here he began to comprehend the action of the Democratic
caucus in deposing him from the chairmanship of the Committee on
Territories. His personal influence and prestige among the Southern
leaders were gone. Neither his revived zeal for annexation, nor his
advanced views on the necessity for slave labor, restored his
good-fellowship with the extremists. Although, pursuant to a
recommendation in the annual message, a measure was then pending in
the Senate to place thirty millions in the hands of President Buchanan
with which to negotiate for Cuba, the attitude of the pro-slavery
faction was not one of conciliation, but of unrelenting opposition to
him.

  [Sidenote] Brown, Senate Speech, Feb. 28, 1859. "Globe," pp. 1241
  _et seq_.

Towards the close of the short session this feeling broke out in an
open demonstration. On February 23, while an item of the appropriation
bill was under debate, Senator Brown, of Mississippi, said he wanted
the success of the Democratic party in 1860 to be a success of
principles and not of men. He neither wanted to cheat nor be cheated.
Under the decision of the Supreme Court the South would demand
protection for slavery in the Territories. If he understood the
Senator from Illinois, Mr. Douglas, he thought a Territorial
Legislature might by non-action or by unfriendly action rightfully
exclude slavery. He dissented from him, and now he would like to know
from other Senators from the North what they would do: "If the
Territorial Legislature refuses to act, will you act? If it pass
unfriendly acts, will you pass friendly? If it pass laws hostile to
slavery, will you annul them and substitute laws favoring slavery in
their stead?... I would rather," concluded he "see the Democratic
party sunk, never to be resurrected, than to see it successful only
that one portion of it might practice a fraud on another."

  [Sidenote] Brown, Senate Speech, Feb. 28, 1859. "Globe," pp. 1246-7.

Douglas met the issue, and defended his Freeport doctrine without
flinching. The Democracy of the North hold, said he, that "if you
repudiate the doctrine of non-intervention, and form a slave code by
act of Congress, where the people of a Territory refuse it, you must
step off the Democratic platform. I tell you, gentlemen of the South,
in all candor, I do not believe a Democratic candidate can ever carry
any one Democratic State of the North on the platform that it is the
duty of the Federal Government to force the people of a Territory to
have slavery when they do not want it."

The discussion extended itself to other Senators; Jefferson Davis, of
Mississippi, Clay, of Alabama, Mason, of Virginia, and Gwin, of
California, seconded the demands and arguments of Brown; while Pugh,
of Ohio, Broderick, of California, and Stuart, of Michigan, came to
the help and defense of Douglas and non-intervention. Several
Republicans drifted into the debate on behalf of the position and
principles of their party, which of course differed from those of both
Brown and Douglas. The discussion was continued to a late hour, and
finally came to an end through mere lapse of time, but not until an
irreparable schism in the Democratic party had been opened.

  [Sidenote] Douglas to Dorr, June 22, 1859. Baltimore "Sun," June
  24, 1859.

Silence upon so vital an issue could not long be maintained. In the
following June, an Iowa friend wrote to Douglas to inquire whether he
would be a candidate for the Presidential nomination at the coming
Charleston Convention. Douglas replied that party issues must first
be defined. If the Democracy adhered to their former principles,
 his friends would be at liberty to present his name. "If, on the
contrary," continued he, "it shall become the policy of the Democratic
party, which I cannot anticipate, to repudiate these their
time-honored principles, on which we have achieved so many patriotic
triumphs, and in lieu of them the convention shall interpolate into
the creed of the party such new issues as the revival of the African
slave-trade, or a Congressional slave-code for the Territories, or the
doctrine that the Constitution of the United States either establishes
or prohibits slavery in the Territories beyond the power of the people
legally to control it, as other property--it is due to candor to say
that, in such an event, I could not accept the nomination if tendered
to me."

  [Sidenote] Ray to Lincoln, July 27, 1858. MS.

We must leave the career of Douglas for a while, to follow up the
personal history of Lincoln. The peculiar attitude of national
politics had in the previous year drawn the attention of the whole
country to Illinois in a remarkable degree. The Senatorial campaign
was hardly opened when a Chicago editor, whose daily examination of a
large list of newspaper exchanges brought the fact vividly under his
observation, wrote to Lincoln: "You are like Byron, who woke up one
morning and found himself famous. People wish to know about you. You
have sprung at once from the position of a capital fellow, and a
leading lawyer in Illinois, to a national reputation."

[Illustration: DAVID COLBRETH BRODERICK.]

  [Sidenote] David Davis to Lincoln, Nov. 7, 1858. MS.

The compliment was fully warranted; the personal interest in Lincoln
increased daily from the beginning to the end of the great debates.
The Freeport doctrine and its effect upon the Democratic party gave
these discussions both present significance and a growing interest for
the future. Another friend wrote him, a few days after election: "You
have made a noble canvass, which, if unavailing in this State, has
earned you a national reputation, and made you friends everywhere."

  [Sidenote] Delahay to Lincoln, March 15, 1859. MS.

  [Sidenote] Dorsheimer to Chase, Sept. 12, 1859. MS.

  [Sidenote] Kasson to Lincoln, Sept. 13, 1859. MS.

  [Sidenote] Kirkpatrick to Lincoln, Sept. 15, 1859. MS.

  [Sidenote] Weed to Judd, Oct. 21, 1859. MS.

  [Sidenote] Dennison to Trumbull, July 21, 1859. MS.

That this was not the mere flattery of partial friends became manifest
to him by other indications; by an increased correspondence filled
with general commendation, and particularly by numerous invitations to
deliver speeches in other States. The Republican Central Committee of
New Hampshire wrote him that if Douglas came, as was expected, to that
State, they desired Lincoln to come and answer him. The Central
Committee of Minnesota wished him to come there and assist in their
canvass. There was an incessant commotion in politics throughout the
whole North, and as the season advanced calls came from all quarters.
Kansas wanted him; Buffalo, Des Moines, Pittsburgh wanted him; Thurlow
Weed telegraphed: "Send Abraham Lincoln to Albany immediately." Not
only his presence, but his arguments, and ideas, were in demand.
Dennison, making the canvass for Governor of Ohio, asked for a report
of his debates for campaign "material."

That men in all parts of the Union were thus turning to him for help
and counsel was due, not alone to the publicity and credit he had
gained in his debates with Douglas in the previous year; it grew quite
as much out of the fact that by his sagacity and courage he had made
himself the safest, as well as the most available, rallying-point of
the Republican party and exponent of Republican doctrine. The
Lecompton quarrel in the Democratic party had led many prominent
Republicans on a false trail. In Douglas's new attitude, developed by
his Southern speeches and his claim to readmission into regular
Democratic fellowship, these leaders found themselves at fault,
discredited by their own course. Lincoln, on the contrary, not only
held aloft the most aggressive Republican banner, but stood nearest
the common party enemy, and was able to offer advice to all the
elements of the Republican party, free from any suspicion of intrigue
with foe or faction. The causes of his Senatorial defeat thus gave him
a certain party authority and leadership, which were felt if not
openly acknowledged. On his part, while never officious or obtrusive,
he was always ready with seasonable and judicious suggestions,
generous in spirit and comprehensive in scope, and which looked beyond
mere local success.

Thus he wrote from Springfield to Schuyler Colfax (afterwards
Vice-President of the United States), July 6, 1859: "I much regret not
seeing you while you were here among us. Before learning that you were
to be at Jacksonville on the 4th, I had given my word to be at another
place. Besides a strong desire to make your personal acquaintance, I
was anxious to speak with you on politics a little more fully than I
can well do in a letter. My main object in such conversation would be
to hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks generally, and
particularly for the contest of 1860. The point of danger is the
temptation in different localities to 'platform' for something which
will be popular just there, but which, nevertheless, will be a
firebrand elsewhere, and especially in a national convention. As
instances, the movement against foreigners in Massachusetts; in New
Hampshire, to make obedience to the fugitive-slave law punishable as a
crime; in Ohio, to repeal the fugitive-slave law; and, squatter
sovereignty, in Kansas. In these things there is explosive matter
enough to blow up half a dozen national conventions, if it gets into
them; and what gets very rife outside of conventions is very likely to
find its way into them. What is desirable, if possible, is that in
every local convocation of Republicans a point should be made to avoid
everything which will disturb Republicans elsewhere. Massachusetts
Republicans should have looked beyond their noses, and then they could
not have failed to see that tilting against foreigners would ruin us
in the whole Northwest. New Hampshire and Ohio should forbear tilting
against the fugitive-slave law in such way as to utterly overwhelm us
in Illinois with the charge of enmity to the Constitution itself.
Kansas, in her confidence that she can be saved to freedom on
'squatter sovereignty,' ought not to forget that to prevent the spread
and nationalization of slavery is a national concern, and must be
attended to by the nation. In a word, in every locality we should look
beyond our noses; and at least say nothing on points where it is
probable we shall disagree. I write this for your eye only; hoping,
however, if you see danger as I think I do, you will do what you can
to avert it. Could not suggestions be made to leading men in the State
and Congressional conventions, and so avoid, to some extent at least,
these apples of discord."[1]

  [Sidenote] Colfax to Lincoln, July 14, 1859. MS.

By this time Colfax was cured of his late coquetting with Douglas, and
he replied: "The suggestions you make have occurred to me.... Nothing
is more evident than that there is an ample number of voters in the
Northern States, opposed to the extension and aggressions of slavery
and to Democratic misrule, to triumphantly elect a President of the
United States. But it is equally evident that making up this majority
are men of all shades and gradations of opinion, from the conservative
who will scarcely defend his principles for fear of imperiling peace,
to the bold radical who strikes stalwart blows regardless of policy or
popularity. How this mass of mind shall be consolidated into a
victorious phalanx in 1860 is the great problem, I think, of our
eventful times. And he who could accomplish it is worthier of fame
than Napoleon or Victor Emmanuel.... In this work, to achieve success,
and to achieve it without sacrifice of essential principle, you can do
far more than one like myself, so much younger. Your counsel carries
great weight with it; for, to be plain, there is no political letter
that falls from your pen which is not copied throughout the Union."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Canisius, May 17, 1859.

This allusion was called out by two letters which Lincoln had written
during the year; one declaring his opposition to the waning fallacy of
know-nothingism, in which he also defined his position on "fusion."
Referring to a provision lately adopted by Massachusetts to restrict
naturalization, he wrote: "Massachusetts is a sovereign and
independent State; and it is no privilege of mine to scold her for
what she does. Still, if from what she has done, an inference is
sought to be drawn as to what I would do, I may, without impropriety,
speak out, I say then, that, as I understand the Massachusetts
provision, I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other
place where I have a right to oppose it. Understanding the spirit of
our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to
whatever tends to degrade them. I have some little notoriety for
commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro; and I should be
strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the
existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and
speaking different languages from myself. As to the matter of fusion,
I am for it, if it can be had on Republican grounds; and I am not for
it on any other terms. A fusion on any other terms would be as foolish
and unprincipled. It would lose the whole North, while the common
enemy would still carry the whole South. The question of men is a
different one. There are good patriotic men and able statesmen in the
South whom I would cheerfully support, if they would now place
themselves on Republican ground, but I am against letting down the
Republican standard a hair's breadth."

The other was a somewhat longer letter, to a Boston committee which
had invited him to a festival in honor of Jefferson's birthday.
"Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two great political
parties were first formed in this country; that Thomas Jefferson was
the head of one of them, and Boston the headquarters of the other, it
is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend
politically from the party opposed to Jefferson, should now be
celebrating his birthday, in their own original seat of empire, while
those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to
breathe his name everywhere...."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Pierce and others, April 6, 1859.

"But, soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of
Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. One would state with
great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the
simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but nevertheless he would
fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms.
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free
society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of
success. One dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another
bluntly calls them 'self-evident lies.' And others insidiously argue
that they apply only to 'superior races.' These expressions, differing
in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the
principles of free government, and restoring those of classification,
caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned
heads plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners
and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will
subjugate us. This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no
slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others
deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long
retain it. All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete
pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people,
had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely
revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and
all times, and so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming
days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers
of re-appearing tyranny and oppression."

Lincoln's more important political work of the year 1859 was the part
he took in the canvass in the State of Ohio, where a governor was to
be chosen at the October election, and where the result would decide
not merely the present and local strength of the rival candidates, but
also to some extent indicate the prospects and probabilities of the
Presidential campaign of 1860. The Ohio Democrats had called Douglas
into their canvass, and the Republicans, as soon as they learned the
fact, arranged that Lincoln should come and answer him. There was a
fitness in this, not merely because Lincoln's joint debates with him
in Illinois in the previous summer were so successful, but also
because Douglas in nearly every speech made since then, both in his
Southern tour and elsewhere, alluded to the Illinois campaign, and to
Lincoln by name, especially to what he characterized as his political
heresies. By thus everywhere making Lincoln and Lincoln's utterances a
public target, Douglas himself, in effect, prolonged and extended the
joint debates over the whole Union. Another circumstance added to the
momentary interest of the general discussion. Douglas was by nature
aggressive. Determined to hold his Northern followers in the new
issues which had grown out of his Freeport doctrine, and the new
antagonisms which the recent slave code debate in the Senate revealed,
he wrote and published in "Harper's Magazine" for September, 1859, a
political article beginning with the assertion that "Under our complex
system of government it is the first duty of American statesmen to
mark distinctly the dividing-line between Federal and Local
authority." Quoting both the paragraph of Lincoln's Springfield speech
declaring that "a house divided against itself cannot stand," and the
paragraph from Seward's Rochester speech, announcing the
"irrepressible conflict," Douglas made a long historical examination
of his own theory of "non-intervention" and "popular sovereignty," and
built up an elaborate argument to sustain his course. The novelty of
this appeal to the public occasioned general interest and varied
comment, and the expedient seemed so ingenious as to excite the envy
of Administration Democrats. Accordingly, Attorney-General Black, of
President Buchanan's Cabinet, at "the request of friends," wrote,
printed, and circulated an anonymous pamphlet in answer, in which he
admitted that Douglas was "not the man to be treated with a disdainful
silence," but characterized the "Harper" essay as "an unsuccessful
effort at legal precision; like the writing of a judge who is trying
in vain to give good reasons for a wrong decision on a question of law
which he has not quite mastered." Douglas, in a speech at Wooster,
Ohio, criticized this performance of Black's. Reply and rejoinder on
both sides followed in due time; and this war of pamphlets was one of
the prominent political incidents of the year.

Thus Lincoln's advent in the Ohio campaign attracted much more than
usual notice. He made but two speeches, one at Columbus, and one at
Cincinnati, at each of which places Douglas had recently preceded him.
Lincoln's addresses not only brought him large and appreciative
audiences, but they obtained an unprecedented circulation in print. In
the main, they reproduced and tersely re-applied the ideas and
arguments developed in the Senatorial campaign in Illinois, adding,
however, searching comments on the newer positions and points to which
Douglas had since advanced. There is only space to insert a few
disconnected quotations:

    Now, what is Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty? It is as a
    principle no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave
    of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a
    right to object....

    If you will read the copyright essay, you will discover that Judge
    Douglas himself says, a controversy between the American Colonies
    and the Government of Great Britain began on the slavery question
    in 1699, and continued from that time until the Revolution; and,
    while he did not say so, we all know that it has continued with
    more or less violence ever since the Revolution....

    Take these two things and consider them together; present the
    question of planting a State with the institution of slavery by
    the side of a question of who shall be Governor of Kansas for a
    year or two, and is there a man here, is there a man on earth, who
    would not say the governor question is the little one, and the
    slavery question is the great one? I ask any honest Democrat if
    the small, the local, the trivial and temporary question is not,
    Who shall be governor? while the durable, the important, and the
    mischievous one is, Shall this soil be planted with slavery? This
    is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in Judge Douglas's mind
    from his peculiar structure. I suppose the institution of slavery
    really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash
    upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back
    does not hurt him....

    The Dred Scott decision expressly gives every citizen of the
    United States a right to carry his slaves into the United States
    Territories. And now there was some inconsistency in saying that
    the decision was right, and saying, too, that the people of the
    Territory could lawfully drive slavery out again. When all the
    trash, the words, the collateral matter was cleared away from it,
    all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity; no
    less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it
    has a lawful right to be....

    The Judge says the people of the Territories have the right, by
    his principle, to have slaves if they want them. Then I say that
    the people in Georgia have the right to buy slaves in Africa if
    they want them, and I defy any man on earth to show any
    distinction between the two things--to show that the one is either
    more wicked or more unlawful; to show on original principles, that
    one is better or worse than the other; or to show by the
    Constitution, that one differs a whit from the other. He will tell
    me, doubtless, that there is no constitutional provision against
    people taking slaves into the new Territories, and I tell him that
    there is equally no constitutional provision against buying slaves
    in Africa....

    Then I say, if this principle is established, that there is no
    wrong in slavery, and whoever wants it has a right to have it;
    that it is a matter of dollars and cents; a sort of question how
    they shall deal with brutes; that between us and the negro here
    there is no sort of question, but that at the South the question
    is between the negro and the crocodile; that it is a mere matter
    of policy; that there is a perfect right according to interest to
    do just as you please--when this is done, where this doctrine
    prevails, the miners and sappers will have formed public opinion
    for the slave trade....

  [Sidenote] Lincoln, Columbus Speech, Sept. 16, 1859. Debates, pp.
  253-54

    Public opinion in this country is everything. In a nation like
    ours this popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have
    already wrought a change in the public mind to the extent I have
    stated. There is no man in this crowd who can contradict it. Now,
    if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody, I ask
    you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be
    plastered on layer after layer, until very soon you are prepared
    to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute. If public
    sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn
    of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is
    constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular
    sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further until your
    minds, now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all
    these things; and you will receive and support, or submit to, the
    slave trade revived with all its horrors, a slave code enforced in
    our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up
    into the very heart of the free North.

    This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing
    for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and
    perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general
    welfare. We believe--nay, we know, that this is the only thing
    that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself....

  [Sidenote] Lincoln Cincinnati Speech, Sept. 17, 1859. Debates, pp.
  267-8.

    I say we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the
    States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and
    the general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not
    withhold an efficient fugitive-slave law, because the Constitution
    requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law. But
    we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because
    neither the Constitution nor the general welfare requires us to
    extend it. We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade,
    and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code. We must
    prevent each of these things being done by either congresses or
    courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters
    of both congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution,
    but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

  [Sidenote] Parsons and others to Lincoln, Dec. 7, 1859. Debates,
  preface.

The Ohio Republicans gained a decided success at the October election.
Ascribing this result in a large measure to the influence of Lincoln's
speeches, the State Executive Committee resolved to publish in cheap
book form the full Illinois joint debates and the two Ohio addresses,
to serve as campaign material for the ensuing year. "We regard them,"
wrote the committee to Lincoln, "as luminous and triumphant
expositions of the doctrines of the Republican party, successfully
vindicated from the aspersions of its foes, and calculated to make a
document of great practical service to the Republican party in the
approaching Presidential contest."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Parsons and others, Dec. 19, 1859. Ibid.

Lincoln, thanking them for the flattering terms of their request,
explained in his reply: "The copies I send you, are as reported and
printed by the respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself at the
time--that is, his by his friends, and mine by mine. It would be an
unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his, and
the changes I have made in mine, you perceive, are verbal only, and
very few in number. I wish the reprint to be precisely as the copies I
send, without any comment whatever."

The enterprise proved a success beyond the most sanguine expectations.
A Columbus firm undertook the publication, itself assuming all
pecuniary risk. Three large editions were sold directly to the public,
without any aid from or any purchase by the committee--the third
edition containing the announcement that up to that date, June 16,
1860, thirty thousand copies had already been circulated.[2]

----------
[1] Partly printed in Hollister, "Life of Colfax," p. 146. We are
indebted to Mrs. Colfax for the full manuscript text of this and other
valuable letters which we have used.

[2] The preface to this third edition contains a letter from Douglas,
alleging that injustice had been done him because, "the original
reports as published in the 'Chicago Times,' although intended to be
fair and just, were necessarily imperfect, and in some respects
erroneous"; charging at the same time that Lincoln's speeches had been
revised, corrected, and improved.[A] To this the publishers replied:
"The speeches of Mr. Lincoln were never 'revised, corrected, or
improved' in the sense you use those words. Remarks by the crowd which
were not responded to, and the reporters' insertions of 'cheers,'
'great applause,' and so forth, which received no answer or comment
from the speaker, were by our direction omitted, as well from Mr.
Lincoln's speeches as yours, as we thought their perpetuation in book
form would be in bad taste, and were in no manner pertinent to, or a
part of, the speech."[B] And the publishers add a list of their
corrections.

    [A] Douglas to Follet, Foster & Co., June 9, 1860. Debates, third
    edition, preface.

    [B] Follet, Foster & Co. to Douglas, June 16, 1860. Ibid.




CHAPTER XI

HARPER'S FERRY


There now occurred another strange event which, if it had been
specially designed as a climax for the series of great political
sensations since 1852, could scarcely have been more dramatic. This
was John Brown's invasion of Harper's Ferry in order to create a slave
insurrection. We can only understand the transaction as far as we can
understand the man, and both remain somewhat enigmatical.

Of Puritan descent, John Brown was born in Connecticut in the year
1800. When he was five years old, the family moved to Ohio, at that
time a comparative wilderness. Here he grew up a strong, vigorous boy
of the woods. His father taught him the tanner's trade; but a restless
disposition drove him to frequent changes of scene and effort when he
grew to manhood. He attempted surveying. He became a divinity student.
He tried farming and tanning in Pennsylvania, and tanning and
speculating in real estate in Ohio. Cattle-dealing was his next
venture; from this to sheep-raising; and by a natural transition to
the business of a wool-factor in Massachusetts. This not succeeding,
he made a trip to Europe. Returning, he accepted from Gerrit Smith a
tract of mountain land in the Adirondacks, where he proposed to found
and foster colonies of free negroes. This undertaking proved abortive,
like all his others, and he once more went back to the wool business
in Ohio.

Twice married, nineteen children had been born to him, of whom eleven
were living when, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill plunged the
country into the heat of political strife. Four of his sons moved away
to the new Territory in the first rush of emigrants; several others
went later. When the Border-Ruffian hostilities broke out, John Brown
followed, with money and arms contributed in the North. With his sons
as a nucleus, he gathered a little band of fifteen to twenty
adventurers, and soon made his name a terror in the lawless guerrilla
warfare of the day. His fighting was of the prevailing type,
justifiable, if at all, only on the score of defensive retaliation,
and some of his acts were as criminal and atrocious as the worst of
those committed by the Border Ruffians.[1] His losses, one son
murdered, another wounded to the death, and a third rendered insane
from cruel treatment, are scarcely compensated by the transitory
notoriety he gathered in a few fool-hardy skirmishes.

  [Sidenote] James Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 48.

  [Sidenote] Sanborn, in the "Atlantic," April, 1872.

These varied experiences give us something of a clue to his character:
a strong will; great physical energy; sanguine, fanatical temperament;
unbounded courage and little wisdom; crude, visionary ideality; the
inspiration of biblical precepts and Old Testament hero-worship; and
ambition curbed to irritation by the hard fetters of labor, privation,
and enforced endurance. In association, habit, language, and conduct,
he was clean, but coarse; honest, but rude. In disposition he mingled
the sacrificing tenderness with the sacrificial sternness of his
prototypes in Jewish history. He could lay his own child on the altar
without a pang. The strongest element of his character was religious
fanaticism. Taught from earliest childhood to "fear God and keep his
commandments," he believed firmly in the divine authenticity of the
Bible, and memorized much of its contents. His favorite texts became
literal and imperative mandates; he came to feel that he bore the
commission and enjoyed the protection of the Almighty. In his Kansas
camps he prayed and saw visions; believed he wielded the sword of the
Lord and of Gideon; had faith that the angels encompassed him. He
desired no other safeguard than his own ideas of justice and his own
convictions of duty. These ideas and convictions, however, refused
obedience to accepted laws and morals, and were mere fantastic and
pernicious outgrowths of his religious fanaticism. His courage partook
of the recklessness of insanity. He did not count odds. "What are five
to one?" he asked; and at another time he said, "One man in the right,
ready to die, will chase a thousand." Perhaps he even believed he held
a charmed life, for he boasted that he had been fired at thirty times
and only his hair had been touched. In personal appearance he was tall
and slender, with rather a military bearing. He had an impressive,
half-persuasive, half-commanding manner. He was always very secretive,
affected much mystery in movements, came and went abruptly, was direct
and dogmatic to bluntness in his conversation. His education was
scant, his reading limited; he wrote strong phrases in bad
orthography. If we may believe the intimations from himself and those
who knew him best, he had not only acquired a passionate hatred of the
institution of slavery, but had for twenty years nursed the longing to
become a liberator of slaves in the Southern States. To this end he
read various stories of insurrections, and meditated on the
vicissitudes, chances, and strategy of partisan warfare. A year's
border fighting in Kansas not only suddenly put thought into action,
but his personal and family sacrifices intensified his visionary
ambition into a stern and inflexible purpose.

[Illustration: JOHN BROWN.]

It is impossible to trace exactly how and when the Harper's Ferry
invasion first took practical shape in John Brown's mind, but the
indications are that it grew little by little out of his Kansas
experience. His earliest collisions with the Border Ruffians occurred
the spring and summer of 1856. In the autumn of that year the United
States troops dispersed his band, and generally suppressed the civil
war. In January, 1857, we find him in the Eastern States, appealing
for arms and supplies to various committees and in various places,
alleging that he desired to organize and equip a company of one
hundred minute-men, who were "mixed up with the people of Kansas," but
who should be ready on call to rush to the defense of freedom. This
appeal only partly succeeded. From one committee he obtained authority
as agent over certain arms stored in Iowa, the custody and control of
which had been in dispute. From another committee he obtained a
portion of the clothing he desired. From still other sources he
received certain moneys, but not sufficient for his requirements. Two
circumstances, however, indicate that he was practicing a deception
upon the committees and public. He entered into a contract with a
blacksmith, in Collinsville, Connecticut, to manufacture him 1000
pikes of a certain pattern,[2] to be completed in 90 days, and paid
$550 on the contract. There is no record that he mentioned this matter
to any committee. His proposed Kansas minute-men were only to be one
hundred in number, and the pikes could not be for them; his
explanation to the blacksmith, that they would be a good weapon of
defense for Kansas settlers, was clearly a subterfuge. These pikes,
ordered about March 23, 1857, were without doubt intended for his
Virginia invasion; and in fact the identical lot, finished after long
delay, under the same contract, were shipped to him in September,
1859, and were actually used in his Harper's Ferry attempt. The other
circumstance is that, about the time of his contract for the pikes, he
also, without the knowledge of committees or friends, engaged an
adventurer, named Forbes, to go West and give military instruction to
his company--a measure neither useful nor practicable for Kansas
defense. These two acts may be taken as the first preparation for
Harper's Ferry.

But merely to conceive great enterprises is not to perform them, and
every after-step of John Brown reveals his lamentable weakness and
utter inadequacy for the heroic role to which he fancied himself
called. His first blunder was in divulging all his plans to Forbes, an
utter stranger, while he was so careful in concealing them from
others. Forbes, as ambitious and reckless as himself, of course soon
quarreled with him, and left him, and endeavored first to supplant and
then betray him.

  [Sidenote] Realf, Testimony Mason Report, p. 91. Ibid., pp. 91-4.

Meanwhile, little by little, Brown gathered one colored and six white
confederates from among his former followers in Kansas, and assembled
them for drill and training in Iowa; four others joined him there.
These, together with his son Owen, counted, all told, a band of twelve
persons engaged for, and partly informed of, his purpose. He left them
there for instruction during the first three months of the year 1858,
while he himself went East to procure means.

  [Sidenote] "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 51.

At the beginning of February, 1858, John Brown became, and remained
for about a month, a guest at the house of Frederick Douglass, in
Rochester, New York. Immediately on his arrival there he wrote to a
prominent Boston abolitionist, T.W. Higginson: "I now want to get, for
the perfecting of by far the most important undertaking of my whole
life, from $500 to $800 within the next sixty days. I have written
Rev. Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns, and F.B. Sanborn, Esquires,
on the subject."

  [Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 438.

Correspondence and mutual requests for a conference ensued, and
finally these Boston friends sent Sanborn to the house of Gerrit
Smith, in Peterboro, New York, where a meeting had been arranged.
Sanborn was a young man of twenty-six, just graduated from college,
who, as secretary of various Massachusetts committees, had been the
active agent for sending contributions to Kansas. He arrived on the
evening of Washington's birthday, February 22, 1858, and took part in
a council of conspiracy, of which John Brown was the moving will and
chief actor.

  [Sidenote] "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 52. Sanborn in "Atlantic,"
  March, 1875, p. 329; also, Mason Report, pp. 48-59.

Brown began by reading to the council a long document which he had
drafted since his stay in Rochester. It called itself a "Provisional
Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,"
which, as it explained, looked to no overthrow of States or
dissolution of the Union, but simply to "amendment and repeal." It was
not in any sense a reasonable project of government, but simply an
ill-jointed outline of rules for a proposed slave insurrection. The
scheme, so far as any comprehension of it may be gleaned from the
various reports which remain, was something as follows:

  [Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 55.

  [Sidenote] Blair, Testimony, Mason Report, pp. 121-5.

  [Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 438.

Somewhere in the Virginia mountains he would raise the standard of
revolt and liberation. Enthusiasts would join him from the free
States, and escaped blacks come to his help from Canada. From Virginia
and the neighboring slave-States of North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, fugitive slaves, with their
families, would flock to his camps. He would take his supplies,
provisions, and horses by force from the neighboring plantations.
Money, plate, watches, and jewelry would "constitute a liberal safety
or intelligence fund." For arms, he had 200 Sharps rifles, and 200
revolvers, with which he would arm his best marksmen. His ruder
followers, and even the women and children, he would arm with pikes to
defend the fortifications. He would construct defenses of palisades
and earth-works. He would use natural strongholds; find secret
mountain-passes to connect one with another; retreat from and evade
attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain and indefinitely
prolong a guerrilla war, of which the Seminole Indians in Florida and
the negroes in Hayti afforded examples. With success, he would enlarge
the area of his occupation so as to include arable valleys and
low-lands bordering the Alleghany range in the slave-States; and here
he would colonize, govern, and educate the blacks he had freed, and
maintain their liberty. He would make captures and reprisals,
confiscate property, take, hold, and exchange prisoners and especially
white hostages and exchange them for slaves to liberate. He would
recognize neutrals, make treaties, exercise humanity, prevent crime,
repress immorality, and observe all established laws of war. Success
would render his revolt permanent, and in the end, through "amendment
and repeal," abolish slavery. If, at the worst, he were driven from
the mountains he would retreat with his followers through the free
States to Canada. He had 12 recruits drilling in Iowa, and a
half-executed contract for 1000 pikes in Connecticut; furnish him $800
in money and he would begin operations in May.

  [Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," March, 1875, p. 329.

  [Sidenote] Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 206.

  [Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 52.

This, if we supply continuity and arrangement to his vagaries, must
have been approximately what he felt or dreamily saw, and outlined in
vigorous words to his auditors. His listening friends were dumfounded
at the audacity as well as heart-sick at the hopelessness of such an
attempt. They pointed out the almost certainty of failure and
destruction, and attempted to dissuade him from the mad scheme; but to
no purpose. They saw they were dealing with a foregone conclusion; he
had convoked them, not to advise as to methods, but to furnish the
means. All reasonable argument he met with his rigid dogmatic
formulas, his selected proverbs, his favorite texts of Scripture. The
following, preserved by various witnesses as samples of his sayings at
other times, indicate his reasoning on this occasion: "Give a slave a
pike and you make him a man. I would not give Sharps rifles to more
than ten men in a hundred, and then only when they have learned to use
them. A ravine is better than a plain. Woods and mountain-sides can be
held by resolute men against ten times their force. Nat Turner, with
fifty men, held Virginia five weeks; the same number, well organized
and armed, can shake the system out of the State." "A few men in the
right, and knowing they are right, can overturn a king. Twenty men in
the Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in two years." "If God
be for us, who can be against us? Except the Lord keep the city, the
watchman waketh but in vain."

  [Sidenote] Ibid., March, 1875, p. 329.

  [Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 439.

  [Sidenote] Sanborn, "Atlantic," July, 1872, pp. 53-4.

One of the participants relates, that--"When the agitated party broke
up their council for the night, it was perfectly plain that Brown
could not be held back from his purpose." The discussion of the
friends on the second day (February 23) was therefore only whether
they should aid him, or oppose him, or remain indifferent. Against
every admonition of reason, mere personal sympathy seems to have
carried a decision in favor of the first of these alternatives. "You
see how it is," said the chief counselor, Gerrit Smith; "our dear old
friend has made up his mind to this course and cannot be turned from
it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must support him." Brown
has left an exact statement of his own motive and expectation, in a
letter to Sanborn on the following day. "I have only had this one
opportunity in a life of nearly sixty years ... God has honored but
comparatively a very small part of mankind with any possible chance
for such mighty and soul-satisfying rewards ... I expect nothing but
to endure hardness, but I expect to effect a mighty conquest, even
though it be like the last victory of Samson."

  [Sidenote] Realf, Testimony, Mason Report, p. 99.

Nine days later Brown went to Boston, where the conspiracy was
enlarged and strengthened by the promises and encouragements of a
little coterie of radical abolitionists.[3] Within the next two months
the funds he desired were contributed and sent him. Meanwhile Brown
returned West, and moved his company of recruits from Iowa, by way of
Chicago and Detroit, to the town of Chatham, in Canada West, arriving
there about the 1st of May. By written invitations, Brown here called
together what is described as "a quiet convention of the friends of
freedom," to perfect his organization. On the 8th of May, 1858, they
held a meeting with closed doors, there being present the original
company of ten or eleven white members and one colored, whom Brown had
brought with him, and a somewhat miscellaneous gathering of negro
residents of Canada. Some sort of promise of secrecy was mutually
made; then John Brown, in a speech, laid his plan before the meeting.
One Delany, a colored doctor, in a response, promised the assistance
of all the colored people in Canada. The provisional constitution
drafted by Brown at Rochester was read and adopted by articles, and
about forty-five persons signed their names to the "Constitution," for
the "proscribed and oppressed races of the United States." Two days
afterwards, the meeting again convened for the election of officers;
John Brown was elected commander-in-chief by acclamation; other
members were by the same summary method appointed secretary of war,
secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and two of them members
of congress. The election of a president was prudently postponed.

This Chatham Convention cannot claim consideration as a serious
deliberative proceeding. John Brown was its sole life and voice. The
colored Canadians were nothing but spectators. The ten white recruits
were mere Kansas adventurers, mostly boys in years and waifs in
society, perhaps depending largely for livelihood on the employment or
bounty, precarious as it was, of their leader. Upon this reckless,
drifting material the strong despotic will, emotional enthusiasm, and
mysterious rhapsodical talk of John Brown exercised an irresistible
fascination; he drew them by easy gradations into his confidence and
conspiracy. The remaining element, John Brown's son in the Chatham
meeting, and other sons and relatives in the Harper's Ferry attack,
are of course but the long educated instruments of the father's
thought and purpose.

  [Sidenote] Stearns to Brown, May 14, 1858: Howe, Testimony, Mason
  Report, p. 177.

With funds provided, with his plan of government accepted, and himself
formally appointed commander-in-chief, Brown doubtless thought his
campaign about to begin; it was however destined to an unexpected
interruption. The discarded and disappointed adventurer Forbes had
informed several prominent Republicans in Washington City that Brown
was meditating an unlawful enterprise; and the Boston committee,
warned that certain arms in Brown's custody, which had been
contributed for Kansas defense, were about to be flagrantly misused,
dared not incur the public odium of complicity in such a deception and
breach of faith. The Chatham organization was scarcely completed when
Brown received word from the Boston committee that he must not use the
arms (the 200 Sharps rifles and 200 revolvers) which had been
intrusted to him for any other purpose than for the defense of Kansas.
Brown hurried to Boston; but oral consultation with his friends
confirmed the necessity for postponement; and it was arranged that, to
lull suspicion, he should return to Kansas and await a more favorable
opportunity. He yielded assent, and that fall and winter performed the
exploit of leading an armed foray into Missouri, and carrying away
eleven slaves to Canada--an achievement which, while to a certain
degree it placed him in the attitude of a public outlaw, nevertheless
greatly increased his own and his followers' confidence in the success
of his general plan. Gradually the various obstacles melted away.
Kansas became pacified. The adventurer Forbes faded out of sight and
importance. The disputed Sharps rifles and revolvers were transferred
from committee to committee, and finally turned over to a private
individual to satisfy a debt. He in turn delivered them to Brown
without any hampering conditions. The Connecticut blacksmith finished
and shipped the thousand pikes. The contributions from the Boston
committee swelled from one to several thousands of dollars. The
recruits, with a few changes, though scattered in various parts of the
country, were generally held to their organization and promise, and
slightly increased in number. The provisional constitution and sundry
blank commissions were surreptitiously printed, and captains and
lieutenants appointed by the signature of John Brown "Commander-in-Chief,"
countersigned by the "Secretary of War."

Gradually, also, the commander-in-chief resolved on an important
modification of his plan: that, instead of plunging at once into the
Virginia mountains, he would begin by the capture of the United States
armory and arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Two advantages seem to have
vaguely suggested themselves to his mind as likely to arise from this
course: the possession of a large quantity of Government arms, and the
widespread panic and moral influence of so bold an attempt. But it
nowhere appears that he had any conception of the increased risk and
danger it involved, or that he adopted the slightest precaution to
meet them.

Harper's Ferry was a town of five thousand inhabitants, lying between
the slave-States of Maryland and Virginia, at the confluence of the
Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers, where the united streams flow
through a picturesque gap in the single mountain-range called the Blue
Ridge. The situation possesses none of the elements which would make
it a defensible fastness for protracted guerrilla warfare, such as was
contemplated in Brown's plan. The mountains are everywhere
approachable without difficulty; are pierced by roads and farms in all
directions; contain few natural resources for sustenance, defense, or
concealment; are easily observed or controlled from the plain by
superior forces. The town is irregular, compact, and hilly; a bridge
across each stream connects it with the opposite shores, and the
Government factory and buildings, which utilized the water-power of
the Potomac, lay in the lowest part of the point of land between the
streams. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the Potomac bridge.

On the 4th of July, 1859, John Brown, under an assumed name, with two
sons and another follower, appeared near Harper's Ferry, and soon
after rented the Kennedy Farm, in Maryland, five miles from town,
where he made a pretense of cattle-dealing and mining; but in reality
collected secretly his rifles, revolvers, ammunition, pikes, blankets,
tents, and miscellaneous articles for a campaign. His rather eccentric
actions, and the irregular coming and going of occasional strangers at
his cabin, created no suspicion in the neighborhood. Cautiously
increasing his supplies, and gathering his recruits, he appointed the
attack for the 24th of October; but for some unexplained reason (fear
of treachery, it is vaguely suggested) he precipitated his movement in
advance of that date. From this point the occurrences exhibit no
foresight or completeness of preparation, no diligent pursuit of an
intelligent plan, nor skill to devise momentary expedients; only a
blind impulse to act.

On Sunday evening, October 16, 1859, Brown gave his final orders,
humanely directing his men to take no life where they could avoid it.
Placing a few pikes and other implements in his one-horse wagon, he
started with his company of eighteen followers at 8 o'clock in the
evening, leaving five men behind. They cut the telegraph wires on the
way, and reached Harper's Ferry about 11 o'clock. He himself broke
open the armory gates, took the watchmen prisoners, and made that
place his headquarters. Separating his men into small detachments, he
took possession of, and attempted to hold, the two bridges, the
arsenal, and the rifle-factory. Next he sent six of his men five miles
into the country to bring in several prominent slaveowners and their
slaves. This was accomplished before daylight, and all were brought as
prisoners to Brown at the armory. With them they also brought a large
four-horse farm wagon, which he now sent to transfer arms from the
Kennedy farm to a school-house on the Maryland side of the Potomac,
about one mile from the town.

Meanwhile, about midnight of Sunday, they detained the railroad train
three hours, but finally allowed it to proceed. A negro porter was
shot on the bridge. The town began to be alarmed. Citizens were
captured at various points, and brought to swell the number of
prisoners at the armory, counting forty or fifty by morning. Still,
not until daylight, and even until the usual hour of rising on Monday
morning, did the town comprehend the nature and extent of the trouble.

What, now, did Brown intend to do? What result did he look for from
his movement thus far? Amid his conflicting acts and contradictory
explanations, the indications seem clear only on two or three points.
Both he and his men gave everybody to understand without reserve that
they had come not to kill whites, but only to liberate slaves. Soon,
also, he placed pikes in the hands of his black prisoners. But that
ceremony did not make soldiers of them, as his favorite maxim taught.
They held them in their hands with listless indifference, remaining
themselves, as before, an incumbrance instead of a reenforcement. He
gave his white prisoners notice that he would hold them as hostages,
and informed one or two that, after daylight, he would exchange them
for slaves. Before the general fighting began, he endeavored to effect
an armistice or compromise with the citizens, to stop bloodshed, on
condition that he be permitted to hold the armory and retain the
liberated negroes. All this warrants the inference that he expected to
hold the town, first, by the effect of terror; secondly, by the
display of leniency and kindness; and supposed that he could remain
indefinitely, and dictate terms at his leisure. The fallacy of this
scheme became quickly apparent.

As the day dawned upon the town and the truth upon the citizens, his
situation in a military point of view was already hopeless--eighteen
men against perhaps 1000 adults, and these eighteen scattered in four
or five different squads, without means of mutual support,
communication, or even contingent orders! Gradually, as the startled
citizens became certain of the insignificant numbers of the
assailants, an irregular street-firing broke out between Brown's
sentinels and individuals with firearms. The alarm was carried to
neighboring towns, and killed and wounded on both sides augmented the
excitement. Tradition rather than definite record asserts that some of
Brown's lieutenants began to comprehend that they were in a trap, and
advised him to retreat. Nearly all his eulogists have assumed that
such was his original plan, and his own subsequent excuses hint at
this intention. But the claim is clearly untenable. He had no means of
defensive retreat--no provisions, no transportation for his arms and
equipage, no supply of ammunition. The suggestion is an evident
afterthought.

Whether from choice or necessity, however, he remained only to find
himself more and more closely pressed. By Monday noon the squad in the
rifle-works, distant one mile from the armory, had been driven out,
killed, and captured. The other squads, not so far from their leader,
joined him at the armory, minus their losses. Already he was driven to
take refuge with his diminished force in the engine-house, a low,
strong brick building in the armory yard, where they barricaded doors
and improvised loop-holes, and into which they took with them ten
selected prisoners as hostages. But the expedient was one of
desperation. By this movement Brown literally shut himself up in his
own prison, from which escape was impossible.

A desultory fire was kept up through doors and loop-holes. But now the
whole country had become thoroughly aroused, and sundry military
companies from neighboring towns and counties poured into Harper's
Ferry. Brown himself at length realized the hopelessness of his
position, and parleyed for leave to retreat across the river on
condition of his giving up his prisoners; but it was too late.
President Buchanan also took prompt measures; and on Monday night a
detachment of eighty marines from the Washington navy-yard, under
command of Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the United States army,
the same who afterwards became the principal leader of the Confederate
armies in the rebellion, reached the scene of action, and were
stationed in the armory yard so as to cut off the insurgents from all
retreat. At daylight on Tuesday morning Brown was summoned to
surrender at discretion, but he refused. The instant the officer left
the engine-house a storming-party of marines battered in the doors; in
five minutes the conflict was over. One marine was shot dead in the
assault; Brown fell under severe sword and bayonet wounds, two of his
sons lay dead or dying, and four or five of his men were made
prisoners, only two remaining unhurt. The great scheme of liberation
built up through nearly three years of elaborate conspiracy, and
designed to be executed in defiance of law, by individual enterprise
with pikes, rifles, forts, guerrilla war, prisoners, hostages, and
plunder, was, after an experimental campaign of thirty-six hours, in
utter collapse. Of Brown's total force of twenty-two men, ten were
killed, five escaped, and seven were captured, tried, and hanged. Of
the townspeople, five had been killed and eight wounded.

[Illustration: HOUSE IN WHICH JOHN BROWN WAS BORN, TORRINGTON,
CONNECTICUT.]

  [Sidenote] Sanborn in the "Atlantic," Dec. 1875. p. 718.

While John Brown's ability for military leadership was too
insignificant even for comment, his moral and personal courage
compelled the admiration of his enemies. Arraigned before a Virginia
court, the authorities hurried through his trial for treason,
conspiracy, and murder, with an unseemly precipitancy, almost
calculated to make him seem the accuser, and the commonwealth the
trembling culprit. He acknowledged his acts with frankness, defended
his purpose with a sincerity that betokened honest conviction, bore
his wounds and met his fate with a manly fortitude. Eight years
before, he had written, in a document organizing a band of colored
people in Springfield, Massachusetts, to resist the fugitive-slave
law: "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. The
trial for life of one bold, and to some extent successful, man, for
defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy
throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and sufferings of
more than three millions of our submissive colored population." Even
now, when mere Quixotic knight-errantry and his own positive violation
of the rights of individuals and society had put his life in forfeit,
this sympathy for his boldness and misfortune came to him in large
measure. Questioned by Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and
Representative Vallandigham about his accomplices, he refused to say
anything except about what he had done, and freely took upon himself
the whole responsibility. He was so warped by his religious training
as to have become a fatalist as well as a fanatic. "All our actions,"
he said to one who visited him in prison, "even all the follies that
led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was
made." Perverted Calvinistic philosophy is the key which unlocks the
mystery of Brown's life and deeds.

He was convicted, sentenced, and hanged on the 2d of December.
Congress met a few days afterwards, and the Senate appointed an
investigating committee to inquire into the seizure of the United
States armory and arsenal. The long and searching examination of many
witnesses brought out with sufficient distinctness the varied personal
plottings of Brown, but failed to reveal that half a dozen radical
abolition clergymen of Boston were party to the conspiracy; nor did
they then or afterwards justify their own conduct by showing that
Christ ever counseled treason, abetted conspiracy, or led rebellion
against established government. From beginning to end, the whole act
was reprehensible, and fraught with evil result. Modern civilization
and republican government require that beyond the self-defense
necessary to the protection of life and limb, all coercive reform
shall act by authority of law only.

  [Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 18.

Upon politics the main effect of the Harper's Ferry incident was to
aggravate the temper and increase the bitterness of all parties.
Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; Mason, of Virginia; and Fitch, of
Indiana, Democratic members of the Senate investigating committee,
sought diligently but unsuccessfully to find grounds to hold the
Republican party at large responsible for Brown's raid. They felt
obliged to report that they could not recommend any legislation to
meet similar cases in the future, since the "invasion" of Virginia was
not of the kind mentioned in the Constitution, but was "simply the act
of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political
authority." Collamer, of Vermont, and Doolittle, of Wisconsin,
Republican members of the committee, in their minority report,
considered the affair an outgrowth of the pro-slavery lawlessness in
Kansas. Senator Douglas, of Illinois, however, apparently with the
object of still further setting himself right with the South, and
atoning for his Freeport heresy, made a long speech in advocacy of a
law to punish conspiracies in one State or Territory against the
government, people, or property of another; once more quoting
Lincoln's Springfield speech, and Seward's Rochester speech as
containing revolutionary doctrines.

  [Sidenote] Dec, 2, 1859.

  [Sidenote] James Redpath, "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p. 41.

  [Sidenote] George Willis Cooke, "Life of Emerson," p. 140.

In the country at large, as in Congress, the John Brown raid excited
bitter discussion and radically diverse comment--some execrating him
as a deservedly punished felon, while others exalted him as a saint.
His Boston friends particularly, who had encouraged him with voice or
money, were extravagant in their demonstrations of approval and
admiration. On the day of his execution religious services were held,
and funeral bells were tolled. "The road to heaven," said Theodore
Parker, "is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also,
as easy." "Some eighteen hundred years ago," said Thoreau, "Christ
was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These
are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links." Emerson,
using a yet stronger figure, had already called him "a new saint,
waiting yet his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the
gallows glorious like the cross."

  [Sidenote] Lecture at Brooklyn, November 1, 1859.

  [Sidenote] "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p. 48.

  [Sidenote] Letter to Committee of Merchants, December 20, 1859.
  Ibid., p. 299.

Amid this conflict of argument, public opinion in the free-States
gravitated to neither extreme. It accepted neither the declaration of
the great orator Wendell Phillips, that "the lesson of the hour is
insurrection," nor the assertion of the great lawyer Charles O'Conor,
that slavery "is in its own nature, as an institution, beneficial to
both races."

This chapter would be incomplete if we neglected to quote Mr.
Lincoln's opinion of the Harper's Ferry attempt. His quiet and
common-sense criticism of the affair, pronounced a few months after
its occurrence, was substantially the conclusion to which the average
public judgment has come after the lapse of a quarter of a century:

  [Sidenote] Lincoln, Cooper Institute Speech, Feb. 27, 1860.

    Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before
    the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton
    insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three
    times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can
    scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that
    Southampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the present
    state of things in the United States, I do not think a general or
    even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The
    indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves
    have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen,
    black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere
    in parcels; but there neither are nor can be supplied the
    indispensable connecting trains.

    Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for
    their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true.
    A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated
    to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of
    a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule;
    and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but
    a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot
    of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in
    point. In that ease, only about twenty were admitted to the
    secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend,
    betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the
    calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or
    stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending
    to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of
    slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can
    happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears or much
    hopes for such an event will be alike disappointed....

    John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.
    It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in
    which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd
    that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it
    could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds
    with the many attempts related in history, at the assassination of
    kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a
    people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate
    them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his
    own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John
    Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy,
    precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in
    the one ease, and on New England in the other, does not disprove
    the sameness of the two things.

  [Sidenote] "Tribune Almanac," 1860.

The aggravation of partisan temper over the Harper's Ferry incident
found a manifestation in a contest over the Speakership in the House
of Representatives as prolonged and bitter as that which attended the
election of Banks. In the Congressional elections of 1858, following
the Lecompton controversy, the Democrats had once more lost control of
the House of Representatives; there having been chosen 113
Republicans, 93 Administration Democrats, 8 anti-Lecompton Democrats,
and 23 South Americans, as they were called; that is, members, mainly
from the slave-States, opposed to the Administration.

  [Sidenote] "Globe," December 5, 1859, p. 3.

This Thirty-sixth Congress began its session three days after the
execution of John Brown, and the election of a Speaker was the first
work of the new House of Representatives. The Republicans, not having
a majority, made no caucus nomination; but John Sherman, of Ohio, had
the largest following on the first ballot, and thereafter received
their united efforts to elect him. At this point a Missouri member
introduced a resolution declaring: "That the doctrines and sentiments
of a certain book called 'The Impending Crisis of the South--How to
Meet It,' purporting to have been written by one Hinton R. Helper [of
North Carolina], are insurrectionary and hostile to the domestic peace
and tranquillity of the country, and that no member of this House who
has indorsed and recommended it, or the compend from it, is fit to be
Speaker of this House."

This resolution was aimed at Sherman, who with some seventy
Republicans of the previous Congress had signed a circular indorsing
and recommending the book upon the general statement that it was an
anti-slavery work, written by a Southerner. The book addressed itself
to non-slaveholding Southern whites, and was mainly made up of
statistics, but contained occasional passages of intolerant and
vindictive sentiment against slaveholders. Whether it could be
considered "insurrectionary" depended altogether on the pro-slavery or
anti-slavery bias of the critic. Besides, the author had agreed that
the obnoxious passages should not be printed in the compendium which
the Republicans recommended in their circular. When interrogated, Mr.
Sherman replied that he had never seen the book, and that "I am
opposed to any interference whatever by the people of the free-States
with, the relations of master and slave in the slave-States." But the
disavowal did not relieve him from Southern enmity. The fire-eaters
seized the pretext to charge him with all manner of "abolition"
intentions, and by violent debate and the utterance of threats of
disunion made the House a parliamentary and almost a revolutionary
babel for nearly two months. Certain appropriations were exhausted,
and the treasury was in great need of funds. Efforts were made to
adopt the plurality rule, and to choose a Speaker for a limited
period; but every such movement was resisted for the purpose of
defeating Sherman, or rather, through his defeat to force the North
into unconditional submission to extreme pro-slavery sentiment. The
struggle, nominally over an incident, was in reality over a policy.

On January 30, 1860, Mr. Sherman withdrew his name, and the solid
Republican vote was given to William Pennington, of New Jersey,
another Republican, who, on February 1, was elected Speaker by 117
votes, 4 opposing members having come to his support. The South gained
nothing by the obstructionist policy of its members. During the long
contest, extending through forty-four ballots, their votes were
scattered among many candidates of different factions, while the
Republicans maintained an almost unbroken steadiness of party
discipline. On the whole, the principal results of the struggle were,
to sectionalize parties more completely, ripen Southern sentiment
towards secession, and combine wavering voters in the free-States in
support of Republican doctrines.

----------
[1] On the night of May 24-25, 1856, five pro-slavery men living on
Pottawatomie Creek, in Kansas, were mysteriously and brutally
assassinated. The relatives and friends of the deceased charged John
Brown and his band with these murders, which the relatives and friends
of Brown persistently denied. His latest biographer, however,
unreservedly admits his guilt: "For some reason he [John Brown] chose
not to strike a blow himself; and this is what Salmon Brown meant when
he declared that his father 'was not a participator in the deed.' It
was a very narrow interpretation of the word 'participator' which
would permit such a denial; but it was no doubt honestly made,
although for the purpose of disguising what John Brown's real agency
in the matter was. He was, in fact, the originator and performer of
these executions, although the hands that dealt the wounds were those
of others."--Frank B. Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," pp.
263-4.

[2] "He was exhibiting to a number of gentlemen, who happened to be
collected together in a druggist's store, some weapons which he
claimed to have taken from Captain Pate in Kansas. Among them was a
two-edged dirk, with a blade about eight inches long, and he remarked
that if he had a lot of those things to attach to poles about six feet
long, they would be a capital weapon of defense for the settlers of
Kansas.... When he came to make the contract, he wrote it to have
malleable ferrules, cast solid, and a guard to be of malleable iron.
That was all the difference.... After seeing the sample he made a
slight alteration. One was, to have a screw to put in, as the one here
has, so that they could be unshipped in case of necessity."--Blair,
Testimony before Investigating Committee, Senate Report No. 278, 1st
Sess. 36th Cong., pp. 121-2.

[3] "Meantime I had communicated his plans at his request to Theodore
Parker, Wentworth Higginson, and Dr. Howe, and had given Mr. Stearns
some general conception of them ... No other person in New England
except these four was informed by me of the affair, though there were
many who knew or suspected Brown's general purpose ... Brown's first
request, in 1858, was for a fund of $1000 only; with this in hand he
promised to take the field either in April or May. Mr. Stearns acted
as treasurer of this fund, and before the 1st of May nearly the whole
amount had been paid in or subscribed."--Frank B. Sanborn, "Atlantic,"
April, 1875, pp. 456-7.




CHAPTER XII

LINCOLN'S COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH


  [Sidenote] Lincoln to McNeill, April 6, 1860. Lamon, "Life of
  Lincoln," p. 441.

  [Sidenote] Jas. A. Briggs to Lincoln, November 1, 1859. MS. Jas. A.
  Briggs in New York "Evening Post," August 16, 1867.

Among the many invitations to deliver addresses which Lincoln received
in the fall of 1859, was one from a committee asking him to lecture in
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, in a course then in progress there,
designed for popular entertainment. "I wrote," said Lincoln, "that I
could do it in February, provided they would take a political speech,
if I could find time to get up no other." "Your letter was duly
received and handed over to the committee," was the response, "and
they accept your compromise. You may lecture at the time you mention,
and they will pay you $200. I think they will arrange for a lecture in
New York also, and pay you $200 for that."

  [Sidenote] C.C. Nott to Lincoln, February 9, 1860. MS.

Financial obstacles, or other reasons, brought about the transfer of
the engagement to a new committee, and the invitation was repeated in
a new form: "The Young Men's Central Republican Union of this city
[New York] very earnestly desire that you should deliver what I may
term a political lecture during the ensuing month. The peculiarities
of the case are these: A series of lectures has been determined upon.
The first was delivered by Mr. Blair, of St. Louis, a short time ago;
the second will be in a few days, by Mr. Cassius M. Clay, and the
third we would prefer to have from you rather than any other person.
Of the audience I should add that it is not that of an ordinary
political meeting. These lectures have been contrived to call out our
better, but busier citizens, who never attend political meetings. A
large part of the audience will consist of ladies."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to McNeill, April 6, 1860. Lamon, "Life of
  Lincoln." p. 441.

Lincoln, however, remained under the impression that the lecture was
to be given in Brooklyn, and only learned after he reached New York to
fulfill his engagement that he was to speak in the Cooper Institute.
When, on the evening of February 27, 1860, he stood before his
audience, he saw not only a well-filled house, but an assemblage of
listeners in which were many whom, by reason of his own modest
estimate of himself, he would have been rather inclined to ask advice
from than to offer instruction to. William Cullen Bryant presided over
the meeting; David Dudley Field escorted the speaker to the platform;
ex-Governor John A. King, Horace Greeley, James W. Nye, James A.
Briggs, Cephas Brainerd, Charles C. Nott, Hiram Barney, and others sat
among the invited guests. "Since the days of Clay and Webster," said
the "Tribune" next morning, "no man has spoken to a larger assemblage
of the intellect and mental culture of our city." Of course the
presence of such a gathering was no mere accident. Not only had
Lincoln's name for nearly two years found constant mention in the
newspapers, but both friendly and hostile comment had coupled it with
the two ranking political leaders in the free-States--Seward and
Douglas. The representative men of New York were naturally eager to
see and hear one who, by whatever force of eloquence or argument, had
attracted so large a share of the public attention. We may also fairly
infer that, on his part, Lincoln was no less curious to test the
effect of his words on an audience more learned and critical than
those collected in the open-air meetings of his Western campaigns.
This mutual interest was an evident advantage to both; it secured a
close attention from the house, and insured deliberation and emphasis
by the speaker, enabling him to develop his argument with perfect
precision and unity, reaching perhaps the happiest general effect ever
attained in any one of his long addresses.

He took as his text a phrase uttered by Senator Douglas in the late
Ohio campaign--"Our fathers, when they framed the government under
which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better
than we do now." Lincoln defined "this question," with a lawyer's
exactness, thus:

    Does the proper division of local from Federal authority, or
    anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to
    control as to slavery in our Federal Territories? Upon this
    Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and the Republicans the
    negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue, and this
    issue--this question--is precisely what the text declares our
    fathers understood "better than we."

From this "precise and agreed starting-point" Lincoln next traced with
minute historical analysis the action of "our fathers" in framing "the
government under which we live," by their votes and declarations in
the Congresses which preceded the Constitution and in the Congresses
following which proposed its twelve amendments and enacted various
Territorial prohibitions. His conclusions were irresistibly
convincing.

    The sum of the whole is [said he] that of our thirty-nine fathers
    who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one--a clear majority
    of the whole--certainly understood that no proper division of
    local from Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution,
    forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the
    Federal Territories; while all the rest probably had the same
    understanding. Such unquestionably was the understanding of our
    fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms
    that they understood the question "better than we".... It is
    surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original
    Constitution and the seventy-six members of the Congress which
    framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly
    include those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the
    Government under which we live." And so assuming, I defy any man
    to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared
    that in his understanding any proper division of local from
    Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the
    Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal
    Territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any
    living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of
    the present century (and I might almost say prior to the beginning
    of the last half of the present century), declare that in his
    understanding any proper division of local from Federal authority,
    or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to
    control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. To those who now
    so declare, I give, not only "our fathers who framed the
    government under which we live," but with them all other living
    men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to
    search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a
    single man agreeing with them.

    Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood.
    I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever
    our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of
    current experience--to reject all progress, all improvement. What
    I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of
    our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so
    conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great
    authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most
    surely not in a case, whereof we ourselves declare they understood
    the question better than we.

If any part of the audience came with the expectation of hearing the
rhetorical fire-works of a Western stump-speaker of the "half-horse,
half-alligator" variety, they met novelty of an unlooked for kind. In
Lincoln's entire address he neither introduced an anecdote nor essayed
a witticism; and the first half of it does not contain even an
illustrative figure or a poetical fancy. It was the quiet, searching
exposition of the historian, and the terse, compact reasoning of the
statesman, about an abstract principle of legislation, in language
well-nigh as restrained and colorless as he would have employed in
arguing a case before a court. Yet such was the apt choice of words,
the easy precision of sentences, the simple strength of propositions,
the fairness of every point he assumed, and the force of every
conclusion he drew, that his listeners followed him with the interest
and delight a child feels in its easy mastery of a plain sum in
arithmetic.

With the sympathy and confidence of his audience thus enlisted,
Lincoln next took up the more prominent topics in popular thought, and
by words of kindly admonition and protest addressed to the people of
the South, showed how impatiently, unreasonably, and unjustly they
were charging the Republican party with sectionalism, with radicalism,
with revolutionary purpose, with the John Brown raid, and kindred
political offenses, not only in the absence of any acts to justify
such charges, but even in the face of its emphatic and constant
denials and disavowals. The illustration with which he concluded this
branch of his theme could not well be surpassed in argumentative
force.

    But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In
    that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then
    you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us!
    That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters
    through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and
    then you will be a murderer!" To be sure what the robber demanded
    of me--my money--was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it;
    but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat
    of death to me to extort my money, and the threat of destruction
    to the Union to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in
    principle.

But the most impressive, as well as the most valuable, feature of
Lincoln's address was its concluding portion, where, in advice
directed especially to Republicans, he pointed out in dispassionate
but earnest language that the real, underlying conflict was in the
difference of moral conviction between the sections as to the inherent
right or wrong of slavery, and in view of which he defined the proper
duty of the free-States.

    A few words now [said he] to Republicans. It is exceedingly
    desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at
    peace and in harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do our
    part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing
    through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people
    will not so much, as listen to us, let us calmly consider their
    demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty,
    we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the
    subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine,
    if we can, what will satisfy them.

    Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally
    surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present
    complaints against us the Territories are scarcely mentioned.
    Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them
    if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and
    insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we
    never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet
    this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the
    denunciation.

    The question recurs. What will satisfy them? Simply this: We must
    not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that
    we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy
    task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very
    beginning; of our organization, but with no success. In all our
    platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to
    let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them.
    Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have never
    detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

    These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
    convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong,
    and join them in calling it right. And this must be done
    thoroughly--done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be
    tolerated; we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator
    Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced,
    suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made
    in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest
    and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must
    pull down our free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must
    be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery before they
    will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

    I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this
    way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do
    nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do
    let them alone--have never disturbed them; so that, after all, it
    is what we say which dissatisfies them. They will continue to
    accuse us of doing until we cease saying.

    I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the
    overthrow of our free-State constitutions. Yet those constitutions
    declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do
    all other sayings against it, and when all these other sayings
    shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions
    will be demanded and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is
    nothing to the contrary that they do not demand the whole of this
    just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they
    can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding,
    as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating,
    they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as
    a legal right and a social blessing.

    Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground, save our
    conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words,
    acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and
    should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot
    justly object to its nationality--its universality! if it is
    wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension--its
    enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought
    slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they
    thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it
    wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole
    controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame
    for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but thinking it
    wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with
    their view and against our own! In view of our moral, social, and
    political responsibilities, can we do this?

    Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone
    where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising
    from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our
    votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national
    Territories, and to overrun us here in the free-States? If our
    sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty,
    fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those
    sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied
    and belabored, contrivances such as groping for some middle ground
    between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who
    should be neither a living man nor a dead man, such as a policy of
    "don't care," on a question about which all true men do care, such
    as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to
    Disunionists; reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the
    sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to
    Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo
    what Washington did.

    Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations
    against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to
    the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith
    that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end,
    dare to do our duty as we understand it.

  [Sidenote] "New York Tribune," February 28, 1860.

The smiles, the laughter, the outburst of applause which greeted and
emphasized the speaker's telling points, showed Mr. Lincoln that his
arguments met ready acceptance. The next morning the four leading New
York dailies printed the speech in full, and bore warm testimony to
its merit and effect. "Mr. Lincoln is one of nature's orators," said
the "Tribune," "using his rare powers solely to elucidate and
convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify
as well. We present herewith a very full and accurate report of this
speech; yet the tones, the gestures, the kindling eye, and the
mirth-provoking look defy the reporter's skill. The vast assemblage
frequently rang with cheers and shouts of applause, which were
prolonged and intensified at the close. No man ever before made such
an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."

[Illustration: CALEB CUSHING.]

  [Sidenote] Pamphlet edition with notes and preface by Charles C. Nott
  and Cephas Brainerd, September, 1860.

A pamphlet reprint was at once announced by the same paper; and later,
in the Presidential campaign, a more careful edition was prepared and
circulated, to which were added copious notes by two members of the
committee under whose auspices the address was delivered. Their
comment, printed in the preface, is worth quoting as showing its
literary value under critical analysis. "No one who has not actually
attempted to verify its details can understand the patient research
and historical labor which it embodies. The history of our earlier
politics is scattered through numerous journals, statutes, pamphlets,
and letters; and these are defective in completeness and accuracy of
statement, and in indices and tables of contents. Neither can any one
who has not traveled over this precise ground appreciate the accuracy
of every trivial detail, or the self-denying impartiality with which
Mr. Lincoln has turned from the testimony of 'the fathers' on the
general question of slavery, to present the single question which he
discusses. From the first line to the last, from his premises to his
conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring directness which no
logician ever excelled, an argument complete and full, without the
affectation of learning, and without the stiffness which usually
accompanies dates and details. A single, easy, simple sentence of
plain Anglo-Saxon words, contains a chapter of history that, in some
instances, has taken days of labor to verify, and which must have cost
the author months of investigation to acquire."

From New York Lincoln went to fill other engagements to speak at
several places in New England, where he met the same enthusiastic
popular reception and left the same marked impression, especially upon
his more critical and learned hearers. They found no little surprise
in the fact that a Western politician, springing from the class of
unlettered frontiersmen, could not only mold plain strong words into
fresh and attractive phraseology, but maintain a clear, sustained,
convincing argument, equal in force and style to the best examples in
their college text-books.




CHAPTER XIII

THE CHARLESTON CONVENTION


The great political struggle between the North and the South, between
Freedom and Slavery, was approaching its culmination. The
"irrepressible conflict" had shifted uneasily from caucus to Congress;
from Congress to Kansas; incidentally to the Supreme Court and to the
Congressional elections in the various States; from Kansas it had come
back with renewed intensity to Congress. The next stage of development
through which it was destined to pass was the Presidential election of
1860, where, necessarily, the final result would depend largely upon
the attitude and relation of parties, platforms, and candidates as
selected and proclaimed by their National conventions.

The first of these National conventions was that of the Democratic
party, long appointed to meet at Charleston, South Carolina, on April
23, 1860. The fortunes of the party had greatly fluctuated. The repeal
of the Missouri Compromise had brought it shipwreck in 1854; it had
regained victory in the election of Buchanan, and a majority of the
House of Representatives in 1856; then the Lecompton imbroglio once
more caused its defeat in the Congressional elections of 1858. But
worse than the victory of its opponents was the irreconcilable schism
in its own ranks--the open war between President Buchanan and Senator
Douglas. In a general way the Southern Democracy followed Buchanan,
while the Northern Democracy followed Douglas. Yet there was just
enough local exception to baffle accurate calculation. Could the
Charleston Convention heal the feud of leaders, and bridge the chasm
in policy and principle? As the time approached, and delegation after
delegation was chosen by the States, all hope of accommodation
gradually disappeared. Each faction put forth its utmost efforts,
rallied its strongest men. Each caucus and convention only accentuated
and deepened existing differences. When the convention met, its
members brought not the ordinary tricks and expedients of politicians
with _carte blanche_ authority, but the precise formulated terms to
which their constituencies would consent. They were only messengers,
not arbitrators. The Charleston Convention was the very opposite of
its immediate predecessor, the Cincinnati Convention. At Cincinnati,
concealment and ambiguity had been the central thought and purpose.
Everybody was anxious to be hoodwinked. Delegates, constituencies, and
leaders had willingly joined in the game of "cheat and be cheated."
Availability, harmony, party success, were the paramount objects.

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Reply to Black, Pamphlet, Oct., 1859.

No similar ambiguity, concealment, or bargain was possible at
Charleston. There was indeed a whole brood of collateral issues to be
left in convenient obscurity, but the central questions must not be
shirked. The Lecompton quarrel, the Freeport doctrine, the property
theory, the "slave-State" dogma, the Congressional slave code
proposal, must be boldly met and squarely adjusted. Even if the
delegates had been disposed to trifle with their constituents, the
leaders themselves would tolerate no evasion on certain cardinal
points. Douglas, in his Dorr letter, had announced that he would
suffer no interpolation of new issues into the Democratic creed. In
his pamphlet reply to Judge Black he repeated his determination with
emphasis. "Suppose it were true that I am a Presidential aspirant;
does that fact justify a combination by a host of other Presidential
aspirants, each of whom may imagine that his success depends upon my
destruction, and the preaching a crusade against me for boldly avowing
now the same principles to which they and I were pledged at the last
Presidential election! Is this a sufficient excuse for devising a new
test of political orthodoxy?... I prefer the position of Senator or
even that of a private citizen, where I would be at liberty to defend
and maintain the well-defined principles of the Democratic party, to
accepting a Presidential nomination upon a platform incompatible with
the principle of self-government in the Territories, or the reserved
rights of the States, or the perpetuity of the Union under the
Constitution."

  [Sidenote] "Globe," p. 658.

  [Sidenote] Jefferson Davis, Senate Speech, "Globe," May 17, 1860,
  p. 2155.

  [Sidenote] "Globe", March 1, 1860, p. 935.

This declaration very clearly defined the issue on one side. On the
other side it was also formulated with equal distinctness. Jefferson
Davis, already recognized as the ablest leader of the Buchanan wing of
the Democratic Senators, wrote and submitted to the United States
Senate, on February 2, 1860, a series of resolutions designed to
constitute the Administration or Southern party doctrines, which were
afterwards revised and adopted by a caucus of Democratic Senators.
These resolutions expressed the usual party tenets; and on two of the
controverted points asserted dogmatically exactly that which Douglas
had stigmatized as an intolerable heresy. The fourth resolution
declared "That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, whether
by direct legislation or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly
character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right
of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into
the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the
Territorial condition remains." While the fifth resolution declared
"That if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary and
executive authority do not possess means to insure adequate protection
to constitutional rights in a Territory, and if the Territorial
government shall fail or refuse to provide the necessary remedies for
that purpose, it will be the duty of Congress to supply such
deficiency."

Party discipline was so strong among the Democrats that public
expectation looked confidently to at least a temporary agreement or
combination which would enable the factions, by a joint effort, to
make a hopeful Presidential campaign. But no progress whatever was
made in that direction. As the clans gathered at Charleston, the
notable difference developed itself, that while one wing was filled
with unbounded enthusiasm for a candidate, the other was animated by
an earnest and stubborn devotion to an idea.

  [Sidenote] Murat Halstead, "Conventions of 1860."

"Douglas was the pivot individual of the Charleston Convention," wrote
an observant journalist; "every delegate was for or against him; every
motion meant to nominate or not nominate him; every parliamentary war
was _pro_ or _con_ Douglas." This was the surface indication, and,
indeed, it may be said with truth, it was the actual feeling of the
Northern faction of the Democratic party. Douglas was a genuinely
popular leader. He had the power to inspire a pure personal
enthusiasm. He had aroused such hero-worship as may be possible in
modern times and in American polities. Beyond this, however, the
Lecompton controversy, and his open persecution by the Buchanan
Administration, made his leadership and his candidacy a necessity to
the Northern Democrats.

With Southern Democrats the feeling went somewhat deeper. Forgetting
how much they owed him in the past, and how much they might still gain
through him in the future, they saw only that he was now their
stumbling-block, the present obstacle to their full and final success.
It was the Douglas doctrine, squatter sovereignty, and "unfriendly
legislation," rather than the _man_, which they had come to oppose,
and were determined to put down. Any other individual holding these
heresies would have been equally obnoxious. They had no candidate of
their own; they worshiped no single leader; but they followed a
principle with unfaltering devotion. They clung unswervingly not only
to the property theory, but advanced boldly to its logical
sequence--Congressional protection to slavery in the Territories.

Of the convention's preliminary work little is worth recording--there
were the clamor and protest of contesting delegations and small fire
of parliamentary skirmishes, by which factions feel and measure each
other's strength. Caleb Cushing was made permanent chairman, for the
triple reason that he was from Massachusetts, that he was the ablest
presiding officer in the body, and was for the moment filled with
blind devotion to Southern views. The actual temper of the convention
was made manifest by the ready agreement of both extremes to join
battle in making the platform before proceeding to the nomination of
candidates. The usual committee of one member from each State was
appointed, and to it was referred the deluge of resolutions which had
been showered upon the convention.

Had an amicable solution of the slavery issue been possible, this
platform committee would have found it, for it labored faithfully to
accomplish the miracle. But after three days and nights of fruitless
suggestion and persuasion, the committee reappeared in convention.
Upon four points they had come to either entire or substantial
agreement. In addition to re-affirming formally the Cincinnati
platform of 1856, they advised the convention to favor, 1. The
faithful execution of the fugitive-slave law. 2. The protection of
naturalized citizens. 3. The construction of a Pacific railroad. 4.
The acquisition of the Island of Cuba. But upon the principal topic,
the question of slavery in the Territories, they felt compelled to
report that even an approximate unanimity was impossible. In
undisguised sorrow they proceeded to present two radically different
reports. The convention, not yet in the least realizing that the great
Democratic party had suffered fatal shipwreck in the secret
committee-room, listened eagerly to the reports and explanatory
speeches of the majority and minority of the committee.

The majority report[1] planted itself squarely upon the property
theory and Congressional protection. Mr. Avery, of North Carolina,
said it was presented in the name of 17 States with 127 electoral
votes, every one of which would be cast for the nominee. He argued
that in occupying new Territories Southern men could not compete with
emigrant-aid societies at the North. These could send a voter to the
Territories for the sum of $200, while it would cost a Southern man
$1500. Secure political power by emigration, and permit the
Territorial Legislatures to decide the slavery question, and the South
would be excluded as effectually as by the Wilmot proviso. Cuba must
be acquired, and the flag of this great country must float over Mexico
and the Central American States. But if you apply this doctrine of
popular sovereignty, and establish a cordon of free-States from the
Pacific to the Atlantic, where in the future are the South to
emigrate? They asked the equal right to emigrate with their property,
and protection from Congress during the Territorial condition. They
would leave it to the people in convention assembled, when framing a
State constitution, to determine the question of slavery for
themselves. They had no purpose but to have a vexed question settled,
and to put the Democratic party on a clear unclouded platform, not a
doubled-faced one--one face to the North and one face to the South.

Henry B. Payne, of Ohio, presented and defended the report of the
minority.[2] It asserted that all questions in regard to property in
States or Territories were judicial in their character, and that the
Democratic party would abide by past and future decisions of the
Supreme Court concerning them. Mr. Payne explained that while the
majority report was supported by 15 slave and two free-States,[3]
representing 127 electoral votes, the minority report was indorsed by
15 free-States,[4] representing 176 electoral votes. He argued that,
by the universal consent of the Democratic party, the Cincinnati
platform referred this question of slavery to the people of the
Territories, declaring that Congress should in no event intervene one
way or the other, and that all controversies should be settled by the
courts. Now the proposition of the majority report was to make a
complete retraction of those two cardinal doctrines of the Cincinnati
platform. The Northern mind had become thoroughly imbued with this
great doctrine of popular sovereignty. You could not tear it out of
their hearts unless you tore out their heart-strings themselves. "I
repeat, that upon this question of Congressional non-intervention we
are committed by the acts of Congress, we are committed by the acts of
National Democratic Conventions; we cannot recede without personal
dishonor, and, so help us God, we never will recede!"

Between these extremes of recommendation another member of the
platform committee--Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts--proposed a
middle course. He advocated the simple reaffirmance of the Cincinnati
platform. If it had suffered a double interpretation, so had the Bible
and the Constitution of the United States. But beyond serving to
consume time and amuse the convention, Mr. Butler's speech made no
impression. The real tournament of debate followed, between William L.
Yancey, of Alabama, and Senator George E. Pugh, of Ohio.

  [Sidenote] Halstead, "Conventions of 1860," pp. 5, 48.

It turned out in the end that Mr. Yancey was the master-spirit of the
Charleston Convention, though that body was far from entertaining any
such suspicion at the beginning. In exterior appearance he did not
fill the portrait of the traditional fire-eater. He is described as "a
compact middle-sized man, straight-limbed, with a square-built head
and face, and an eye full of expression"; "a very mild and gentlemanly
man, always wearing a genuinely good-humored smile, and looking as if
nothing in the world could disturb the equanimity of his spirits." He
had, besides, a marvelous gift of persuasive oratory. He was the
Wendell Phillips of the South, for, like his Northern rival, he was a
born agitator. Above all his colleagues, he was the brain and soul and
irrepressible champion of the pro-slavery reaction throughout the
Cotton States. He was tireless and ubiquitous; traveling, talking,
writing, lecturing, animating every intrigue, directing every caucus,
making speeches and drafting platforms at every convention. To defend,
propagate, and perpetuate African slavery was his mission. He was the
ultra of the ultras, accepting the institution as morally right and
divinely sanctioned, desiring its extension and inclined to favor,
though not then himself advocating, the re-opening of the African
slave-trade. He held that all Federal laws prohibiting such trade
ought to be repealed so that each State might decide the question for
itself. Still more, Mr. Yancey was not only an agitator and
fire-eater, but for years an insidious, persevering conspirator to
promote secession. Occupying such a position, he was naturally the
champion of the Cotton States at Charleston. The defense of the ultra
demands of the South was by common consent devolved upon him,[5] and
it was understood long beforehand that he was prepared with the
principal speech from that side.

In full consciousness of the fact that he and his colleagues were then
at Charleston with a predetermination to force a programme of
disruption expressly designed as a prelude to intended disunion, Mr.
Yancey stood up and with smiling face and silvery tones assured his
hearers that he and his colleagues from Alabama were not disunionists
_per se_. Then he proceeded with his speech. Only its key-note was
new, but the novelty was of startling import to Northern delegates.
The Northern Democrats, he stated, were losing ground and falling
before their victorious adversaries. Why? Because they had tampered
with, and pandered to, the anti-slavery sentiment. They had admitted
that slavery was wrong. This was surrendering the very citadel of
their argument. They must re-form their lines and change their
tactics. They must come up to the high requirements of the occasion
and take a new departure. The remainder of his speech was an
insinuating plea for the property doctrine and Congressional
intervention, for which the galleries and convention rewarded him with
long and earnest applause. Even if the great Southern agitator's
speech had been wanting in point and eloquence, success was supplied
by the unmistakable atmosphere and temper of this great Charleston
audience.

The more astute of the Douglas delegates were struck with the dismay
of a new revelation. Their cause was lost--their party was gone.
Senator Pugh, of Ohio, resented the dictation of the advocates of
slavery in a warmth of just indignation. He thanked God that at last a
bold and honest man had told the whole truth of the demands of the
South. It was now before the country that the South did demand an
advanced step from the Democratic party. He accurately traced the
downfall of the Northern Democracy to her changing and growing
exactions. Taunted with their weakness, they were now told they must
put their hands on their mouths and their mouths in the dust.
"Gentlemen of the South," said Mr. Pugh, "you mistake us--we will not
do it."

Such language had never been heard in a Democratic National
Convention, and the hall was as still as a funeral. This was Friday
night, the fifth day of the convention. "A crisis" had long been
whispered of as the skeleton in the party closet. It seemed to be at
hand, and in a parliamentary uproar the "question" was vehemently
demanded, but the chairman skillfully managed at length to secure an
adjournment.

The "crisis" had in reality come on Thursday night, in the
committee-room, in the hopeless first double report of its platform
committee. The dissolution of the convention did not take place till
the Monday following. A great party, after a vigorous and successful
life of thirty years, could not die easily. The speeches of Avery and
Payne, of Yancey and Pugh, on Friday, were recognized as cries of
defiance, but not yet accepted as moans of despair. On Saturday
morning. President Buchanan's lieutenant, William Bigler, of
Pennsylvania, essayed to ride the storm and steer to a Southern
victory. But he only succeeded in securing a recommittal of both
platforms to the committee. Nothing, however, was gained by the
manoeuvre. Saturday afternoon the committee once more reported the
same disagreement in slightly changed phraseology;[6] two antagonistic
platforms, presenting the same sharp difference of principle--one
demanding Congressional intervention, the other declaring against it.
Then the parliamentary storm was unloosed for the remainder of that
day with such fury that the chairman declared his physical inability
to continue a contest with six hundred gentlemen as to who should cry
the loudest, and threatened to leave the chair. On Monday, April 30,
the seventh day of the convention, a final decision was reached. The
proposal of Butler's report simply to reaffirm the Cincinnati platform
was supported by only 105 ayes to 198 noes. Then, by 165 to 138, the
convention voted to substitute the minority report for that of the
majority; in other words, to adopt the Douglas non-intervention
platform.

[Illustration: W.L. YANCEY.]

The explosion was near, but still delayed, and the delegates of the
Cotton States sat sullenly through a tangle of routine voting.
Finally, the question was renewed on Butler's proposition to adopt the
Cincinnati platform pure and simple. This was the red flag to the mad
bull. Mississippi declared that the Cincinnati platform was a great
political swindle on one half the States of the Union; and from that
time on the Cotton States ceased to act as a part of the convention.
As soon as a lull in the proceedings permitted, Mr. Yancey put in
execution his programme of demand, disruption, disunion, and
rebellion, labored for through long years, and announced by himself,
with minute distinctness, nine months before.[7] Led by the Alabama
delegation, the Cotton States,--Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South
Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas,--with protests and speeches,
with all the formality and "solemnity" which the occasion allowed,
seceded from the Charleston Convention, and withdrew from the
deliberations in Institute Hall.

That same Monday night the city of Charleston expressed its satisfaction
by a grand jubilee. Music, bonfires, and extravagant declamation held
an excited crowd in Court-house Square till a late hour; and in a
high-wrought peroration Yancey prophesied, with all the confidence and
exultation of a triumphant conspirator, that "perhaps even now the pen
of the historian is nibbed to write the story of a new revolution."

----------
[1] MAJORITY REPORT.

"Resolved, That the platform adopted at Cincinnati be affirmed, with
the following resolutions:

"Resolved, That the Democracy of the United States hold these cardinal
principles on the subject of slavery in the Territories: First. That
Congress has no power to abolish slavery in the Territories. Second.
That the Territorial Legislature has no power to abolish slavery in
any Territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of slaves therein, nor
any power to exclude slavery therefrom, nor any power to destroy or
impair the right of property in slaves "by any legislation
whatever....

"Resolved, That it is the duty of the Federal Government to protect,
when necessary, the rights of persons and property on the high seas,
in the Territories, or wherever else its constitutional authority
extends."

[2] MINORITY REPORT.

"Resolved, That we, the Democracy of the Union, in convention
assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolutions
unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles by the
Democratic Convention at Cincinnati in the year 1856, believing that
Democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature when applied to
the same subject-matters; and we recommend, as the only further
resolutions, the following:

"Resolved, That all questions in regard to the rights of property in
States or Territories arising under the Constitution of the United
States are judicial in their character, and the Democratic party is
pledged to abide by and faithfully carry out such determination of
these questions as has been, or may be made by the Supreme Court of
the United States."

[3] Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas,
Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, California, Oregon.


[4] Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. As Mr. Butler, who
represented Massachusetts on the platform committee, had submitted a
separate report, Mr. Payne seems not to have included her in his total
of free-States, though he does appear to have included her electoral
vote in his estimate.

[5] "The leadership at Charleston, in this attempt to divide and
destroy the Democratic party, was intrusted to appropriate hands. No
man possessed the ability, or the courage, or the sincerity in his
object for such a mission in a higher degree than the gifted
Yancey."--Stephen A. Douglas, Senate Speech, May 16, 1860; Appendix to
"Congressional Globe," p. 313.

[6] SECOND MAJORITY REPORT.

"_Resolved_, That the platform adopted by the Democratic party at
Cincinnati be affirmed with the following explanatory resolutions:

"_First_. That the government of a Territory organized by an act of
Congress is provisional and temporary, and, during its existence, all
citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle with their
property in the Territory without their rights, either of person or
property, being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial
legislation.

"_Second_. That it is the duty of the Federal Government in all its
departments, to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and
property in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional
authority extends.

"_Third_. That when the settlers in a Territory having an adequate
population form a State constitution, the right of sovereignty
commences, and, being consummated by admission into the Union, they
stand on an equal footing with the people of other States, and the
State thus organized ought to be admitted into the Federal Union,
whether its constitution prohibits or recognizes the institution of
slavery."

SECOND MINORITY REPORT.

"1. _Resolved_, That we, the Democracy of the Union, in convention
assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolutions
unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles by the
Democratic Convention at Cincinnati, in the year 1856, believing that
democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature when applied to
the same subject-matters; and we recommend as the only further
resolutions the following:

"Inasmuch as differences of opinion exist in the Democratic party as
to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature
and as to the powers and duties of Congress under the Constitution of
the United States over the institution of slavery within the
Territories:

"2. _Resolved_, That the Democratic party will abide by the decisions
of the Supreme Court of the United States on the questions of
constitutional law."

[7] "To obtain the aid of the Democracy in this contest, it is
necessary to make a contest in its Charleston Convention. In that body
Douglas's adherents will press his doctrines to a decision. If the
States-Rights men keep out of that convention, that decision must
inevitably be against the South, and that either in direct favor of
the Douglas doctrine, or by the indorsement of the Cincinnati
platform, under which Douglas claims shelter for his principles." "The
States-Rights men should present in that convention their demands for
a decision, and they will obtain an indorsement of their demands, or a
denial of these demands. If indorsed, we shall have greater hope of
triumph within the Union. If denied, in my opinion, the States-Rights
wing should secede from the convention, and appeal to the whole people
of the South; without distinction of parties, and organize another
convention upon the basis of their principles, and go into the
election with a candidate nominated by it, as a grand constitutional
party. But in the Presidential contest a black Republican may be
elected. If this dire event should happen, in my opinion the only hope
of safety for the South is in a withdrawal from the Union before he
shall be inaugurated; before the sword and treasury of the Federal
Government shall be placed in the keeping of that party. I would
suggest that the several State legislatures should by law require the
Governor, when it shall be made manifest that the black Republican
candidate for the Presidency shall receive a majority of the electoral
votes, to call a convention of the people of the State, to assemble in
ample time to provide for their safety before the 4th of March, 1861.
If, however, a black Republican should not be elected, then, in
pursuance of the policy of making this contest within the Union, we
should initiate measures in Congress which should lead to a repeal of
all the unconstitutional acts against slavery. If we should fail to
obtain so just a system of legislation, then the South should seek her
independence out of the Union."--Speech of W.L. Yancey, delivered at
Columbia, S.C., July 8, 1859. Copied in The New York "Tribune," July
20, 1859.

The corroboration and fulfillment of the plot here indicated are found
in the official proceedings of the Alabama Convention and the Alabama
Legislature. The convention on January 13, 1860, expressly instructed
its delegation at Charleston to secede in case the ultra-Southern
doctrines were not incorporated in the National Democratic platform,
and sent Mr. Yancey as a delegate to execute their instructions, which
he did as the text states.

The Alabama Legislature, on its part, passed a joint resolution, which
the Governor approved, February 24, 1860, providing "that upon the
election of a President advocating the principles and action of the
party in the Northern States calling itself the Republican party," the
Governor should forthwith call a convention of the State. This
convention was duly called after the election of Mr. Lincoln, and
passed the secession ordinance of Alabama.




CHAPTER XIV

THE BALTIMORE NOMINATIONS


Though the compact voting body of the South had retired from the
Charleston Convention, her animating spirit yet remained in the
numbers and determination of the anti-Douglas delegates. When on
Tuesday morning, May 1, the eighth day, the convention once more met,
the Douglas men, with a view to making the most of the dilemma,
resolved to force the nomination of their favorite. But there was a
lion in the path. Usage and tradition had consecrated the two-thirds
rule. Charles E. Stuart, of Michigan, tried vainly to obtain the
liberal interpretation, that this meant "two-thirds of the votes
given," but Chairman Cushing ruled remorselessly against him, and at
the instance of John B. Howard, of Tennessee, the convention voted
(141 to 112) that no person should be declared nominated who did not
receive two-thirds of all the votes the full convention was entitled
to cast.

This sealed the fate of Douglas. The Electoral College numbered 303;
202 votes therefore were necessary to a choice. Voting for candidates
was begun, and continued throughout all the next day (Wednesday, May
2). Fifty-seven ballots were taken in all; Douglas received 145-1/2 on
the first, and on several subsequent ballots his strength rose to
152-1/2. The other votes were scattered among eight different
candidates with no near approach to agreement.[1]

The dead-lock having become unmistakable and irremediable, and the
nomination of Douglas under existing conditions impossible, all
parties finally consented to an adjournment, especially as it was
evident that unless this were done the sessions would come to an end
by mere disintegration. Therefore, on the tenth day (May 3), the
Charleston Convention formally adjourned, having previously resolved
to reassemble on the 18th of June, in the city of Baltimore, with a
recommendation that the several States make provision to fill the
vacancies in their delegations.

Mr. Yancey and his seceders had meanwhile organized another convention
in St. Andrew's Hall. Their business was of course to report
substantially the platform rejected by the Douglas men, and for the
rejection of which they had retired. Mr. Yancey then explained to them
that the adoption of this platform was all the action they proposed to
take until the "rump democracy" should make their nomination, when, he
said, "it may be our privilege to indorse the nominee, or our duty to
proceed to make a nomination." Other seceders were more impatient, and
desired that something be done forthwith; but as the sessions were
continued to the second and third day, their overflowing zeal found a
safety-valve in their speeches. Mr. Yancey's programme prevailed, and
they also adjourned to meet again in Richmond on the 11th of June.

At the time of the disruption, rumors were current in Charleston that
the movement, if not prompted, was at least encouraged and sustained
by telegrams from leading Senators and Representatives then at their
Congressional duties in Washington. As the day for reassembling in
Baltimore drew near, the main fact was abundantly proved by the
publication of an address, signed by Jefferson Davis, Toombs, Iverson,
Slidell, Benjamin, Mason, and some fourteen others, in which they
undertook to point out a path to union and harmony in the Democratic
party. They recited the withdrawal of eight States at Charleston, and
indorsed the step without qualification. "We cannot refrain," said the
address, "from expressing our admiration and approval of this lofty
manifestation of adherence to principle, rising superior to all
considerations of expediency, to all trammels of party, and looking
with an eye single to the defense of the constitutional rights of the
States." They then alleged that the other Democratic States remained
in the convention only to make a further effort to secure "some
satisfactory recognition of sound principles," declaring, however,
their determination also to withdraw if their just expectation should
be disappointed. The address then urged that the seceders should defer
their meeting at Richmond, but that they should come to Baltimore and
endeavor to effect "a reconciliation of differences on a basis of
principle." If the Baltimore Convention should adopt "a satisfactory
platform of principles,"--and their votes might help secure it,--then
cause of dissension would have ceased. "On the other hand," continued
the address, "if the convention, on reassembling at Baltimore, shall
disappoint the just expectations of the remaining Democratic States,
their delegations cannot fail to withdraw and unite with the eight
States which have adjourned to Richmond." The address, in another
paragraph, explained that the seventeen Democratic States which had
voted at Charleston for the seceders' platform, "united with
Pennsylvania alone, comprise a majority of the entire electoral vote
of the United States, able to elect the Democratic nominees against
the combined opposition of all the remaining States."

This was a shrewd and crafty appeal. Under an apparent plea for
harmony lurked an insidious invitation to Delaware, Virginia, North
Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, California, Oregon, and
Pennsylvania to join the seceders, reconstruct the Democratic party,
cut off all the "popular sovereignty" recusants, and secure perpetual
ascendency in national politics through the consolidated South. The
signers of this address, forgetting their own constant accusation of
"sectionalism" against the Republicans, pretended to see no
impropriety in proposing this purely selfish and sectional alliance.
If it succeeded, their triumph in the Union was irresistible and
permanent; if it failed, it served to unite the South for secession
and a slave confederacy.

If any Democrat harbored a doubt that the proposed reconciliation
meant simply a reunion on the Davis-Yancey platform, the doubt was
soon removed. In the Senate of the United States, Jefferson Davis was
pressing to a vote his caucus resolutions, submitted in February, to
serve as a model for the Charleston platform; and this brought on a
final discussion between himself and Douglas.

  [Sidenote] "Globe," May 7, 1860, p. 1940.

  [Sidenote] Appendix. "Globe," May 15 and 16, 1860, pp. 312, 313,
  and 316.

  [Sidenote] "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2151.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., p. 2153.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., p. 2155.

Davis had begun the debate on the 7th of May by a savage onslaught on
"Squatter Sovereignty"--a fallacy, he said, fraught with mischief
more deadly than the fatal upas, because it spread its poison over the
whole Union. Douglas took up the gauntlet, and, replying on May 15 and
16, said he could not recognize the right of a caucus of the Senate or
the House to prescribe new tests for the Democratic party. Senators
were not chosen for the purpose of making platforms. That was the duty
of the Charleston Convention, and it had decided in his favor,
platform, organization, and least of all the individual, by giving him
a majority of fifty votes over all the other candidates combined. He
reprobated the Yancey movement as leading to dissolution and a
Southern confederacy. The party rejected this caucus platform. Should
the majority, he asked, surrender to the minority? Davis, replying on
the 17th, contended that Douglas had, on the Kansas policy of the
Administration, put himself outside the Democratic organization. He
desired no divided flag for the party. He preferred that the Senator's
banner should lie in its silken folds to feed the moth; "but if it
impatiently rustles to be unfurled in opposition to ours, we will
plant our own on every hill." Douglas retorted, and again attacked the
caucus dictation. "Why," he asked, "are all the great measures for the
public good made to give place to the emergency of passing some
abstract resolutions on the subject of politics to reverse the
Democratic platform, under the supposition that the representatives of
the people are men of weak nerve who are going to be frightened by the
thunders of the Senate Chamber?" Davis rejoined, that they wanted a
new article in the creed because they could not get an honest
construction of the platform as it stood. "If you have been beaten on
a rickety, double-construed platform, kick it to pieces, and lay one
broad and strong, on which men can stand." "We want nothing more than
a simple declaration that negro slaves are property, and we want the
recognition of the obligation of the Federal Government to protect
that property like all other." A somewhat restrained undertone of
personal temper had been running through the debate, and Jefferson
Davis could not resist an expression of contempt for his opponent.
"The fact is," said he, "I have a declining respect for platforms. I
would sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform that
you could construct, than to have a man I did not trust on the best
platform which could be made."

Douglas promptly called attention to the inconsistency of Davis's
method of forcing his resolutions with one breath and avowing his
indifference to a platform with another, especially as Yancey and his
own followers had seceded on the platform and not on the man; but he
did not press his adversary to the wall, as he might have done, on the
insincerity which Davis's sneer exposed. He was hampered by his own
attitude as a candidate. Douglas, who had received 150 votes at
Charleston, and who expected the whole at Baltimore, could not let his
tongue wag as freely as Davis, who had received only one vote and a
half at Charleston, and could count on none at Baltimore; else he
might have denounced him on the score of patriotism. For Jefferson
Davis, like Yancey, only not so constantly, and like so many others of
that secession coterie, blew hot and cold about disunion as occasion
demanded. This same debate of May 17 furnished an instructive example.

  [Sidenote] "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2151.

In the beginning of the day's discussion Davis indulged in a
repetition of the old alarm-cry: "And so, sir, when we declare our
tenacious adherence to the Union, it is the Union of the Constitution.
If the compact between the States is to be trampled into the dust; if
anarchy is to be substituted for the usurpation which threatened the
Government at an earlier period; if the Union is to become powerless
for the purposes for which it was established, and we are vainly to
appeal to it for protection--then, sir, conscious of the rectitude of
our course, and self-reliant within ourselves, we look beyond the
confines of the Union for the maintenance of our rights."

  [Sidenote] "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2156.

But after Douglas had made a damaging exposure of Yancey's disunion
intrigues, which had come to light, and had charged their animus on
the Charleston seceders, Davis changed his tone. He said there were
not more than seventy-five men in the lodges of the Southern Leagues.
He did not think the Union was in danger from them. "I have great
confidence," said he, "in the strength of the Union. Every now and
then I hear that it is about to tumble to pieces; that somebody is
going to introduce a new plank into the platform, and if he does, the
Union must tumble down; until at last I begin to think it is such a
rickety old platform that it is impossible to prop it up. But then I
bring my own judgment to bear, instead of relying on witnesses, and I
come to the conclusion that the Union is strong and safe--strong in
its power as well as in the affections of the people."

The debate made it very plain that it was not reconciliation but
domination which the South wanted. So in due time (May 25) the
Jefferson Davis resolutions, affirming the "property" theory and the
"protection" doctrine, were passed by a large majority of the
Democratic Senators.

  [Sidenote] June 18, 1860.

When the Charleston Convention proper reassembled at Baltimore, it was
seen that the programme laid out by Jefferson Davis and others in their
published address had been adopted. The seceders had met at Richmond,
taken a recess, and now appeared at Baltimore making application for
readmission. But some of the States that withdrew at Charleston had
sent contesting delegations, and it resolved itself into tangled
rivalry and quarrel of platforms, candidates, and delegations all
combined. For four days a furious debate raged in the convention during
the day, while rival mass-meetings in the streets at night called each
other "disorganizes," "bolters," "traitors," "disunionists," and
"abolitionists." When Douglas, before a test-vote was reached, sent a
dispatch suggesting that the party and the country might be saved by
dropping his name and uniting upon some other candidate, his followers
suppressed the dispatch.

On the fifth day at Baltimore the Democratic National Convention
underwent its second "crisis," and suffered its second disruption.
This time the secession was somewhat broadened; Chairman Cushing
resigned his seat, and Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Delaware,
Maryland, Kentucky, and California withdrew wholly or in part to join
the States which had gone out at Charleston.

For the time the disunion extremists were keeping their scheme too
well masked for us to establish clearly its historical record. But
the signs and footprints of their underplot are evident. Here at
Baltimore, as at Charleston, and as on every critical occasion, Mr.
Yancey was conspicuously present. Here, as elsewhere, he was no doubt
persistently intriguing for disunion in secret while ostentatiously
denying disunion purposes in public.

  [Sidenote] Halstead, "Conventions of 1860."

But little remained to do after the disruption at Baltimore, and that
little was quickly done. The fragments of the original convention
continued their session in the Front-street Theater, where they had
met, and on the first ballot nominated Stephen A. Douglas for
President by an almost unanimous vote. The seceders organized, under
the chairmanship of Caleb Cushing, in Maryland Institute Hall, and
also by a nearly unanimous ballot nominated as their candidate for
President, John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. Then Mr. Yancey, who in
a street mass-meeting had declared that he was neither for the Union
_per se_ nor for disunion _per se_, but for the Constitution, announced
that the Democracy, the Constitution, and, through them, the were yet
safe.

A month prior to the reassembling of the Charleston "Rumps" above
described, Baltimore had already witnessed another Presidential
convention and nomination, calling itself peculiarly "National," in
contradistinction to the "sectional" character which it charged upon
the Democratic and Republican parties alike. This was a third party,
made up mainly of former Whigs whose long-cherished party antagonisms
kept them aloof from the Democrats in the South and the Republicans in
the North. In the South, they had been men whose moderate anti-slavery
feelings were outraged by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and
the Lecompton trick. In the North, they were those whose traditions and
affiliations revolted at the extreme utterances of avowed abolitionists.
In both regions many of them had embraced Know-Nothingism, more as an
alternative than from original choice. The Whig party was dissolved;
Know-Nothingism had utterly failed--their only resource was to form a
new party.

In the various States they had, since the defeat of Fillmore in 1856,
held together a minority organization under names differing in
separate localities. All these various factions and fragments sent
delegations to Baltimore, where they united themselves under the
designation of the Constitutional Union Party. They proposed to take a
middle course between Democrats and Republicans, and to allay
sectional strife by ignoring the slavery question.

  [Sidenote] 1860.

Delegates of this party, regular and irregular, from some twenty-two
States, convened at Baltimore on the 9th of May. John J. Crittenden,
of Kentucky, called the meeting to order, and Washington Hunt, of New
York, was made temporary and permanent chairman. On Thursday, May 10,
they adopted as their platform a resolution declaring in substance
that they would "recognize no other political principle than the
Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the
enforcement of the laws." They had no reasonable hope of direct
success at the polls in November; but they had a clear possibility of
defeating a popular choice, and throwing the election into the House
of Representatives; and in that case their nominee might stand on high
vantage-ground as a compromise candidate. This possibility gave some
zest to the rivalry among their several aspirants. On their second
ballot, a slight preponderance of votes indicated John Bell, of
Tennessee, as the favorite, and the convention made his nomination
unanimous. Mr. Bell had many qualities desirable in a candidate for
President. He was a statesman of ripe experience, and of fair, if not
brilliant, fame. Though from the South, his course on the slavery
question had been so moderate as to make him reasonably acceptable to
the North on his mere personal record. He had opposed the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise and the Lecompton outrage. But upon this
platform of ignoring the political strife of six consecutive years, in
which he had himself taken such vigorous part, he and his followers
were of course but as grain between the upper and nether millstones.
Edward Everett, one of the most eminent statesmen and scholars of New
England, was nominated for Vice-President.

This party becomes historic, not through what it accomplished, but by
reason of what a portion of it failed to perform. Within one year from
these pledges to the Constitution, the Union, and the enforcement of
the laws, Mr. Bell and most of his Southern adherents in the seceding
States were banded with others in open rebellion. On the other hand,
Mr. Everett and most of the Northern members, together with many noble
exceptions in the border slave-States, like Mr. Crittenden, of
Kentucky, kept the faith announced in their platform, and with
patriotic devotion supported the Government in the war to maintain the
Union.

----------
[1] The first ballot stood: Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, 145-1/2;
James Guthrie, of Kentucky, 35-1/2; Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York,
7; R.M.T. Hunter, of Virginia, 42; Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, 12;
Joseph Lane, of Oregon, 6; Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, 1-1/2;
Isaac Toncey, of Connecticut; 2-1/2; Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire,
1.




CHAPTER XV

THE CHICAGO CONVENTION


  [Sidenote] 1860.

In recognition of the growing power and importance of the great West,
the Republican National Convention was called to meet in Chicago on
the 16th of May. The former Presidential canvass, though resulting in
the defeat of Fremont, had nevertheless shown the remarkable popular
strength of the Republican party in the country at large; since then,
its double victory in Congress against Lecompton, and at the
Congressional elections over the Representatives who supported
Lecompton, gave it confidence and aggressive activity. But now it
received a new inspiration and impetus from the Charleston disruption.
Former possibility was suddenly changed to strong probability of
success in the coming Presidential election. Delegates were not only
quickened with a new zeal for their principles; the growing chances
spurred them to fresh efforts in behalf of their favorite candidates.
Those who had been prominently named were diverse in antecedents and
varied in locality, each however presenting some strong point of
popular interest. Seward, of New York, a Whig of preeminent fame;
Chase, of Ohio, a talented and zealous anti-slavery Democrat, an
original founder of the new party; Dayton, of New Jersey, an old Whig
high in personal worth and political service; Cameron, of Pennsylvania,
a former Democrat, now the undisputed leader of an influential tariff
State; Bates, of Missouri, an able and popular anti-slavery Whig from
a slave-State; and last, but by no means least in popular estimation,
Lincoln, of Illinois.

  [Sidenote] Pickett to Lincoln, April 13, 1859. MS.

The idea of making Lincoln a Presidential candidate had occurred to
the minds of many during his growing fame. The principle of natural
selection plays no unimportant part in the politics of the United
States. There are always hundreds of newspapers ready to "nail to
the mast-head" the name of any individual which begins to appear
frequently in dispatches and editorials. A few months after the close
of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and long before the Ohio speeches and
the Cooper Institute address, a warm personal friend, the editor of
an Illinois newspaper, wrote him an invitation to lecture, and added
in his letter: "I would like to have a talk with you on political
matters, as to the policy of announcing your name for the Presidency,
while you are in our city. My partner and myself are about addressing
the Republican editors of the State on the subject of a simultaneous
announcement of your name for the Presidency."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Pickett, April 16, 1859. MS.

To this Lincoln replied: "As to the other matter you kindly mention, I
must in candor say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. I
certainly am flattered and gratified that some partial friends think
of me in that connection; but I really think it best for our cause
that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made."

[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE.]

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Judd, Dec. 9, 1859. MS.

A much more hopeful ambition filled his mind. Notwithstanding his
recent defeat, he did not think that his personal contest with Douglas
was yet finished. He had the faith and the patience to wait six years
for a chance to repeat his political tournament with the "Little
Giant." From his letter quoted in a previous chapter we know he had
resolved to "fight in the ranks" in 1860. From another, we know how
generously he kept faith with other Republican aspirants. "If Trumbull
and I were candidates for the same office you would have a right to
prefer him, and I should not blame you for it; but all my acquaintance
with you induces me to believe you would not pretend to be for me
while really for him. But I do not understand Trumbull and myself to
be rivals. You know I am pledged not to enter a struggle with him for
the seat in the Senate now occupied by him; and yet I would rather
have a full term in the Senate than in the Presidency."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Frazer, Nov. 1, 1859. MS.

This spirit of fairness in politics is also shown by the following
letter, written apparently in response to a suggestion that Cameron
and Lincoln might form a popular Presidential tickets "Yours of the
24th ult. was forwarded to me from Chicago. It certainly is important
to secure Pennsylvania for the Republicans in the next Presidential
contest; and not unimportant to also secure Illinois. As to the ticket
you name, I shall be heartily for it after it shall have been fairly
nominated by a Republican National Convention; and I cannot be
committed to it before. For my single self, I have enlisted for the
permanent success of the Republican cause; and for this object I shall
labor faithfully in the ranks, unless, as I think not probable, the
judgment of the party shall assign me a different position. If the
Republicans of the great State of Pennsylvania shall present Mr.
Cameron as their candidate for the Presidency, such an indorsement of
his fitness for the place could scarcely be deemed insufficient.
Still, as I would not like the public to know, so I would not like
myself to know, I had entered a combination with any man to the
prejudice of all others whose friends respectively may consider them
preferable."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Judd, Feb. 9, 1860. MS. Also printed in a
  pamphlet.

Not long after these letters, at some date near the middle of the
winter 1859-60, the leaders of the Republican party of Illinois met at
Springfield, the capital of the State, and in a more pressing and
formal manner requested him to permit them to use his name as a
Presidential candidate, more with the idea of securing his nomination
for Vice-President than with any further expectation. To this he now
consented. His own characteristic language, however, plainly reveals
that he believed this would be useful to him in his future Senatorial
aspirations solely, and that he built no hopes whatever on national
preferment. A quarrel was going on among rival aspirants to the
Illinois governorship, and Lincoln had written a letter to relieve a
friend from the imputation of treachery to him in the recent
Senatorial contest. This act of justice was now used to his
disadvantage in the scramble for the Illinois Presidential delegates,
and he wrote as follows: "I am not in a position where it would hurt
much for me not to be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where
it would hurt some for me not to get the Illinois delegates. What I
expected when I wrote the letter to Messrs. Dole and others is now
happening. Your discomfited assailants are most bitter against me; and
they will for revenge upon me, lay to the Bates egg in the South, and
to the Seward egg in the North, and go far towards squeezing me out in
the middle with nothing. Can you not help me a little in this matter
in your end of the vineyard?"

The extra vigilance of his friends thus invoked, it turned out that
the Illinois Republicans sent a delegation to the Chicago Convention
full of personal devotion to Lincoln and composed of men of the
highest standing, and of consummate political ability, and their
enthusiastic efforts in his behalf among the delegations from other
States contributed largely to the final result.

  [Sidenote] 1860.

The political campaign had now so far taken shape that its elements
and chances could be calculated with more than usual accuracy. The
Charleston Convention had been disrupted on the 30th of April, and
adjourned on May 3; the nomination of John Bell by the Constitutional
Union party occurred on May 10. The Chicago Convention met on May 16;
and while there was at that date great uncertainty as to whom the
dissevered fragments of the Democratic party would finally nominate,
little doubt existed that both the Douglas and Buchanan wings would
have candidates in the field. With their opponents thus divided, the
plain policy of the Republicans was to find a candidate on whom a
thorough and hearty union of all the elements of the opposition could
be secured. The party was constituted of somewhat heterogeneous
material; a lingering antagonism remained between former Whigs and
Democrats, protectionists and free-traders, foreign-born citizens and
Know-Nothings. Only on a single point were all thus far
agreed--opposition to the extension of slavery.

But little calculation was needed to show that at the November polls
four doubtful States would decide the Presidential contest. Buchanan
had been elected in 1856 by the vote of all the slave States (save
Maryland), with the help of the free States of New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California, Change the first four
or even the first three of these free-States to the Republican side,
and they, with the Fremont States of 1856, would elect the President
against all the others combined. The Congressional elections of 1858
demonstrated that such a change was possible. But besides this,
Pennsylvania and Indiana were, like Ohio, known as "October States,"
because they held elections for State officers in that month; and they
would at that early date give such an indication of sentiment as would
forecast their November vote for President, and exert a powerful,
perhaps a decisive, influence on the whole canvass. What candidate
could most easily carry New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and
Illinois, became therefore the vital question among the Chicago
delegates, and especially among the delegates from the four pivotal
States themselves.

William H. Seward, of New York, was naturally the leading candidate.
He had been longest in public life, and was highest in official rank.
He had been Governor of the greatest State of the Union, and had
nearly completed a second term of service in the United States Senate.
Once a prominent Whig, his antecedents coincided with those of the
bulk of the Republican party. His experience ran through two great
agitations of the slavery question. He had taken important part in the
Senate discussions which ended in the compromise measures of 1850, and
in the new contest growing out of the Nebraska bill his voice had been
heard in every debate. He was not only firm in his anti-slavery
convictions, but decided in his utterances. Discussing the admission
of California, he proclaimed the "higher law" doctrine in 1850;[1]
reviewing Dred Scott and Lecompton, he announced the "irrepressible
conflict" in 1858.[2] He had tact as well as talent; he was a
consummate politician, as well as a profound statesman. Such a leader
could not fail of a strong following, and his supporters came to
Chicago in such numbers, and of such prominence and character, as
seemed to make his nomination a foregone conclusion. The delegation
from New York, headed by William M. Evarts, worked and voted
throughout as a unit for him, not merely to carry out their
constituents' wishes, but with, a personal zeal that omitted no
exertion or sacrifice. They showed a want of tact, however, in
carrying their street demonstrations for their favorite to excess;
they crowded together at the Richmond House, making that hotel the
Seward headquarters; with too much ostentation they marched every day
to the convention with music and banners; and when mention was made of
doubtful States, their more headlong members talked altogether too
much of the campaign funds they intended to raise. All this occasioned
a reaction--a certain mental protest among both Eastern and Western
delegates against what have come to be characterized as "machine"
methods.

The positive elements in Seward's character and career had developed,
as always happens, strong antagonisms. One of the earliest symptoms
among the delegates at Chicago was the existence of a strong
undercurrent of opposition to his nomination. This opposition was as
yet latent, and scattered here and there among many State delegations,
but very intense, silently watching its opportunity, and ready to
combine upon any of the other candidates. The opposition soon made a
discovery: that of all the names mentioned, Lincoln's was the only one
offering any chance for such a combination. It needed only the
slightest comparison of notes to show that Dayton had no strength save
the New Jersey vote; Chase little outside of the Ohio delegation;
Cameron none but that of Pennsylvania, and that Bates had only his
Missouri friends and a few in border slave-States, which could cast no
electoral vote for the Republicans. The policy of the anti-Seward
delegates was therefore quickly developed--to use Lincoln's popularity
as a means to defeat Seward.

The credit of the nomination is claimed by many men, and by several
delegations, but every such claim is wholly fictitious. Lincoln was
chosen not by personal intrigue, but through political necessity. The
Republican party was a purely defensive organization; the South had
created the crisis which the new party was compelled to overcome. The
ascendency of the free-States, not the personal fortunes of Seward,
hung in the balance. Political victory at the ballot-box or a
transformation of the institutions of government was the immediate
alternative before the free-States.

Victory could be secured only by help of the electoral votes of New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois. It was therefore a simple
problem: What candidate could carry these States? None could answer
this question so well as their own delegates, and these, when
interrogated, still further reduced the problem by the reply that
Seward certainly could not. These four States lay on the border land
next to the South and to slavery. Institutions inevitably mold public
sentiment; and a certain tenderness towards the "property" of
neighbors and friends infected their people. They shrunk from the
reproach of being "abolitionized." They would vote for a conservative
Republican; but Seward and radicalism and "higher law" would bring
them inevitable defeat.

  [Sidenote] N.Y. "Tribune," May 18, 1860.

Who, then, could carry these doubtful and pivotal States? This second
branch of the question also found its ready answer. The contest in
these States would be not against a Territorial slave code, but against
"popular sovereignty "; not with Buchanan's candidate, but with
Douglas; and for Douglas there was only a single antagonist, tried and
true--Abraham Lincoln. Such, we may reasonably infer, was the substance
of the discussion and argument which ran through the caucus-rooms of
the delegates, day and night, during the 16th and 17th of May.
Meanwhile the Seward men were not idle; having the large New York
delegation to begin with, and counting the many positive committals
from other States, their strength and organization seemed impregnable.
The opposing delegations, each still nursing the chances of its own
candidate, hesitated to give any positive promises to each other. At
midnight of May 17, Horace Greeley,[3] one of Seward's strongest
opponents, and perhaps better informed than any other single delegate,
telegraphed his conclusion "that the opposition to Governor Seward
cannot concentrate on any candidate, and that he will be nominated."

Chicago was already a city of a hundred thousand souls. Thirty to forty
thousand visitors, full of life, hope, ambition, most of them from the
progressive group of encircling North-western States, and strung to the
highest tension of political excitement had come to attend the
convention. Charleston had shown a great party in the ebbtide of
disintegration, tainted by the spirit of disunion. Chicago exhibited a
great party springing to life and power, every motive and force
compelling cooeperation and growth. The rush and spirit of the great
city, and the enthusiasm and hope of its visitors, blended and reacted
upon each other as if by laws of chemical affinity. Something of the
freshness and sweep of the prairie winds exhilarated the delegates and
animated the convention.

No building in the city of Chicago at that time contained a hall with
sufficient room for the sittings of the great assemblage. A temporary
frame structure, which the committee of arrangements christened "The
Wigwam," was therefore designed and erected for this special use. It
was said to be large enough to hold ten thousand persons, and whether
or not that estimate was entirely accurate, a prodigious concourse
certainly gathered each day within its walls.

The first day's session (May 16) demonstrated the successful adaptation
of the structure to its uses. Participants and spectators alike were
delighted with the ease of ingress and egress, the comfortable division
of space, the perfection of its acoustic qualities. Every celebrity
could be seen, every speech could be heard. The routine of
organization, the choice of officers and committees, and the
presentation of credentials were full of variety and zest. Governor
Edwin D. Morgan, of New York, as Chairman of the National Republican
Committee, called the convention to order; and when he presented the
historic name of David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, for temporary chairman,
the faith of the audience in the judgment of the managers was already
won. The report of the committee on organization in the afternoon made
George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, a most skillful parliamentarian ready
in decision and felicitous in his phrases, the permanent presiding
officer. One thing was immediately and specially manifest: an
overflowing heartiness and deep feeling pervaded the whole house. No
need of a _claque_, no room for sham demonstration here! The galleries
were as watchful and earnest as the platform. There was something
genuine, elemental, uncontrollable in the moods and manifestations of
the vast audience. Seats and standing-room were always packed in
advance, and, as the delegates entered by their own separate doors, the
crowd easily distinguished the chief actors. Blair, Giddings, Greeley,
Evarts, Kelley, Wilmot, Schurz, and others were greeted with
spontaneous applause, which, rising at some one point, grew and rolled
from side to side and corner to corner of the immense building,
brightening the eyes and quickening the breath of every inmate.[4]

With the second day's proceedings the interest of delegates and
spectators was visibly increased, first by some sharp-shooting speeches
about credentials, and secondly by the main event of the day--the
report from the platform committee. Much difficulty was expected on
this score, but a little time had smoothed the way with almost magical
effect. The great outpouring of delegates and people, the self-evident
success of the gathering, the harmonious, almost joyous, beginning of
the deliberations in the first day's session, were more convincing than
logic in solidifying the party. These were the premonitions of success;
before such signs of victory all spirit of faction was fused into a
generous glow of emulation.

The eager convention would have accepted a weak or defective platform;
the committee, on the contrary, reported one framed with remarkable
skill. It is only needful to recapitulate its chief points. It
denounced disunion, Lecomptonism, the property theory, the dogma that
the Constitution carries slavery to Territories, the reopening of the
slave-trade, the popular sovereignty and non-intervention fallacies,
and denied "the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or
of any individuals to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory
of the United States." It opposed any change in the naturalization
laws. It recommended an adjustment of import duties to encourage the
industrial interests of the whole country. It advocated the immediate
admission of Kansas, free homesteads to actual settlers, river and
harbor improvements of a national character, and a railroad to the
Pacific Ocean. Bold on points of common agreement, it was unusually
successful in avoiding points of controversy among its followers, or
offering points for criticism to its enemies.

It is not surprising that Charleston and Chicago should furnish many
striking contrasts. At the Charleston Convention, the principal
personal incident was a long and frank speech from one Gaulden, a
Savannah slave-trader, in advocacy of the reopening of the African
slave-trade.[5] In the Chicago Convention, the exact and extreme
opposite of such a theme created one of the most interesting of the
debates. The platform had been read and received with tremendous
cheers, when Mr. Giddings, of Ohio, who was everywhere eager to insist
upon what he designated as the "primal truths" of the Declaration of
Independence, moved to amend the first resolution by incorporating in
it the phrase which announces the right of all men to "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness." The convention was impatient to adopt
the platform without change; several delegates urged objections, one of
them pertinently observing that there were also many other truths
enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. "Mr. President," said
he, "I believe in the ten commandments, but I do not want them in a
political platform." Mr. Giddings's amendment was voted down, and the
anti-slavery veteran, feeling himself wounded in his most cherished
philosophy, rose and walked out of the convention.

  [Sidenote] Murat Halstead, "Conventions of 1860," p. 138.

Personal friends, grieved that he should feel offended, and doubly
sorry that the general harmony should be marred by even a single
dissent, followed Mr. Giddings, and sought to change his purpose. While
thus persuading him, the discussion had passed to the second
resolution, when George William Curtis, of New York, seized the chance
to renew substantially Mr. Giddings's amendment. There were new
objections, but Mr. Curtis swept them away with a captivating burst of
oratory. "I have to ask this convention," said he, "whether they are
prepared to go upon the record before the country as voting down the
words of the Declaration of Independence?... I rise simply to ask
gentlemen to think well before, upon the free prairies of the West, in
the summer of 1860, they dare to wince and quail before the assertions
of the men in Philadelphia, in 1776--before they dare to shrink from
repeating the words that these great men enunciated." "This was a
strong appeal, and took the convention by storm," wrote a recording
journalist. A new vote formally embodied this portion of the
Declaration of Independence in the Republican platform; and Mr.
Giddings, overjoyed at his triumph, had already returned to his seat
when the platform as a whole was adopted with repeated and renewed
shouts of applause that seemed to shake the wigwam.

The third day of the convention (Friday, May 18) found the doors
besieged by an excited multitude. The preliminary business was disposed
of,--the platform was made,--and every one knew the balloting would
begin. The New York delegation felt assured of Seward's triumph, and
made an effort to have its march to the convention, with banners and
music, unusually full and imposing. It proved a costly display; for
while the New York "irregulars" were parading the streets, the
Illinoisans were filling the wigwam: when the Seward procession
arrived, there was little room left except the reserved seats for the
delegates. New York deceived itself in another respect: it counted on
the full New England strength, whereas more than half of it had already
resolved to cast its vote elsewhere. This defection in advance
virtually insured Seward's defeat. New York and the extreme North-west
were not sufficiently strong to nominate him, and in the nature of
things he could not hope for much help from the conservative middle and
border States. But this calculation could not as yet be so accurately
made. Caucusing was active up to the very hour when the convention met,
and many delegations went to the wigwam with no definite programme
beyond the first ballot.

What pen shall adequately describe this vast audience of ten thousand
souls? the low, wavelike roar of its ordinary conversation; the rolling
cheers that greeted the entrance of popular favorites; the solemn hush
which fell upon it during the opening prayer? There was just enough of
some unexpected preliminary wrangle and delay to arouse the full
impatience of both convention and spectators; but at length the names
of candidates were announced. This ceremony was still in its
simplicity. The more recent custom of short dramatic speeches from
conspicuous and popular orators to serve as electrifying preludes had
not yet been invented. "I take the liberty," said Mr. Evarts, of New
York, "to name as a candidate to be nominated by this convention for
the office of President of the United States, "William H. Seward." "I
desire," followed Mr. Judd, "on behalf of the delegation from Illinois,
to put in nomination as a candidate for President of the United States,
Abraham Lincoln of Illinois." Then came the usual succession of
possible and alternative aspirants who were to be complimented by the
first votes of their States--"William L. Dayton, Simon Cameron, Salmon
P. Chase, Edward Bates, Jacob Collamer, John McLean. The fifteen
minutes required by this formality had already indisputably marked out
and set apart the real contestants. The "complimentary" statesmen were
lustily cheered by their respective State delegations; but at the names
of Seward and Lincoln the whole wigwam seemed to respond together.

  [Sidenote] Halstead, "Conventions of 1860," p. 145.

There is something irresistibly exciting in the united voice of a great
crowd. For a moment the struggle appeared to resolve itself into a
contest of throats and lungs. Indiana seconded the nomination of
Lincoln, and the applause was deafening. Michigan seconded the
nomination of Seward; the New York delegation rose _en masse_, waved
their hats, and joined the galleries in a shout which doubled the
volume of any yet given. Then a portion of the Ohio delegates once more
seconded Lincoln, and his adherents, feeling themselves put upon their
mettle, made an effort. "I thought the Seward yell could not be
surpassed," wrote a spectator; "but the Lincoln boys were clearly
ahead, and, feeling their victory, as there was a lull in the storm,
took deep breaths all round, and gave a concentrated shriek that was
positively awful, and accompanied it with stamping that made every
plank and pillar in the building quiver."

The tumult gradually died away, and balloting began. Here we may note
another contrast. The Charleston Convention was reactionary and
exclusive; it followed the two-thirds rule. The Chicago Convention was
progressive and liberal; it adopted majority rule. Liberal even beyond
this, it admitted the Territories and border slave-States, containing
only a minority or fraction of Republican sentiment, to seats and to
votes. It was throwing a drag-net for success. Under different
circumstances, these sentimental delegations might have become powerful
in intrigue; but dominated as they were by deeper political forces,
they afforded no distinct advantage to either candidate.[6]

Though it was not expected to be decisive, the first ballot
foreshadowed accurately the final result. The "complimentary"
candidates received the tribute of admiration from their respective
States. Vermont voted for Collamer, and New Jersey for Dayton, each
solid[7]. Pennsylvania's compliment to Cameron was shorn of six votes,
four of which went at once for Lincoln. Ohio divided her compliment, 34
for Chase, 4 for McLean, and at once gave Lincoln her 8 remaining
votes. Missouri voted solid for her candidate, Bates, who also received
a scattering tribute from other delegations. But all these compliments
were of little avail to their recipients, for far above each towered
the aggregates of the leading candidates: Seward, 173-1/2; Lincoln,
102.[8]

In the groundswell of suppressed excitement which pervaded the
convention there was no time to analyze this vote; nevertheless,
delegates and spectators felt the full force of its premonition; to all
who desired the defeat of Seward it pointed out the winning man with,
unerring certainty. Another little wrangle over some disputed and
protesting delegate made the audience almost furious at the delay, and
"Call the roll!" sounded from a thousand throats.

A second ballot was begun at last, and, obeying a force as sure as the
law of gravitation, the former complimentary votes came rushing to
Lincoln. The whole 10 votes of Collamer, 44 from Cameron, 6 from Chase
and McLean, were now cast for him, followed by a scatter of additions
along the roll-call. In this ballot Lincoln gained 79 votes, Seward
only 11. The faces of the New York delegation whitened as the balloting
progressed and the torrent of Lincoln's popularity became a river. The
result of the second ballot was: Seward, 184-1/2; Lincoln, 181;
scattering, 99-1/2[9]. When the vote of Lincoln was announced, there
was a tremendous burst of applause, which the chairman prudently but
with difficulty controlled and silenced.

The third ballot was begun amid a breathless suspense; hundreds of
pencils kept pace with the roll-call, and nervously marked the changes
on their tally-sheets. The Lincoln figures steadily grew. Votes came to
him from all the other candidates--4-1/2 from Seward, 2 from Cameron,
13 from Bates, 18 from Chase, 9 from Dayton, 3 from McLean, 1 from
Clay. Lincoln had gained 50-1/2, Seward had lost 4-1/2. Long before the
official tellers footed up their columns, spectators and delegates
rapidly made the reckoning and knew the result: Lincoln, 231-1/2;
Seward, 180.[10] Counting the scattering votes, 465 ballots had been
cast, and 233 were necessary to a choice; only 1-1/2 votes more were
needed to make a nomination.

A profound stillness suddenly fell upon the wigwam; the men ceased to
talk and the ladies to flutter their fans; one could distinctly hear
the scratching of pencils and the ticking of telegraph instruments on
the reporters' tables. No announcement had been made by the chair;
changes were in order, and it was only a question of seconds who should
speak first. While every one was leaning forward in intense expectancy,
David K. Cartter sprang upon his chair and reported a change of four
Ohio votes from Chase to Lincoln. There was a moment's pause,--a teller
waved his tally-sheet towards the skylight and shouted a name,--and
then the boom of a cannon on the roof of the wigwam announced the
nomination to the crowds in the streets, where shouts and salutes took
up and spread the news. In the convention the Lincoln river now became
an inundation. Amid the wildest hurrahs, delegation after delegation
changed its vote to the victor.

[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF LINCOLN'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.]

A graceful custom prevails in orderly American conventions, that the
chairman of the vanquished delegation is first to greet the nominee
with a short address of party fealty and promise of party support. Mr.
Evarts, the spokesman for New York, essayed promptly to perform this
courteous office, but was delayed a while by the enthusiasm and
confusion. The din at length subsided, and the presiding officer
announced that on the third ballot Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois,
received 364 votes, and "is selected as your candidate for President of
the United States." Then Mr. Evarts, in a voice of unconcealed emotion,
but with admirable dignity and touching eloquence, speaking for Seward
and for New York, moved to make the nomination unanimous.

The interest in a National Convention usually ceases with the
announcement of the principal nomination. It was only afterwards that
the delegates realized how fortunate a selection they made by adding
Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, to the ticket as candidate for
Vice-President. Mr. Hamlin was already distinguished in public service.
He was born in 1809, and became a lawyer by profession. He served many
years in the Maine Legislature and four years as a Representative in
Congress. In 1848 he was chosen to fill a vacancy in the United States
Senate, and in 1851 was reelected for a full term. When in 1856 the
Cincinnati Convention indorsed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
which he had opposed, Mr. Hamlin formally withdrew from the Democratic
party. In November of that year the Republicans elected him Governor of
Maine, and in January, 1857, reelected him United States Senator.

  [Sidenote] Halstead, "Conventions of 1860," p. 154.

For the moment the chief self-congratulation of the convention was that
by the nomination of Lincoln it had secured the doubtful vote of the
conservative States. Or rather, perhaps, might it be said that it was
hardly the work of the delegates--it was the concurrent product of
popular wisdom. Political evolution had with scientific precision
wrought "the survival of the fittest." The delegates leaving Chicago on
the various homeward-bound railroad trains that night, saw that already
the enthusiasm of the convention was transferred from the wigwam to the
country. "At every station where there was a village, until after 2
o'clock, there were tar-barrels burning, drums beating, boys carrying
rails, and guns great and small banging away. The weary passengers were
allowed no rest, but plagued by the thundering of the cannon, the
clamor of drums, the glare of bonfires, and the whooping of boys, who
were delighted with the idea of a candidate for the Presidency who
thirty years before split rails on the Sangamon River--classic stream
now and for evermore--and whose neighbors named him 'honest.'"

----------
[1] "It is true indeed that the national domain is ours. It is true
it was acquired by the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation.
But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no
arbitrary authority over anything, whether acquired lawfully or
seized by usurpation. The Constitution regulates our stewardship;
the Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense,
to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the
Constitution which regulates our authority over the domain, and
devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no
inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon
them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so
discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree
their happiness."--William H. Seward, Senate Speech, March 11, 1850.
App. "Globe," p. 265.

[2] "Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that
it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical
agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is
an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it
means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become
either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free-labor
nation."--Seward, Rochester Speech, October 25, 1858.

[3] Mr. Greeley sat in the convention as a delegate for Oregon.

[4] One of the authors of this history was a spectator at all the
sessions of the convention, and witnessed the scenes in the Wigwam
which he has endeavored to describe.

[5] "I tell you, fellow-Democrats, that the African slave-trader is the
true Union man [cheers and laughter], I tell you that the slave-trading
of Virginia is more immoral, more unchristian in every possible point
of view, than that African slave-trade which goes to Africa and brings
a heathen and worthless man here, christianizes him, and sends him and
his posterity down the stream of time to enjoy the blessings of
civilization.... It has been my fortune to go into that noble old State
to buy a few darkies, and I have had to pay from $1000 to $2000 a head,
when I could go to Africa and buy better negroes for $50 apiece.... I
advocate the repeal of the laws prohibiting the African slave-trade,
because I believe it to be the true Union movement. I do not believe
that sections whose interests are so different as the Southern and
Northern States can ever stand the shocks of fanaticism unless they be
equally balanced. I believe that by reopening this trade, and giving
us negroes to populate the Territories, the equilibrium of the two
sections will be maintained."--Speech of W.B. Gaulden, of Georgia, in
the Charleston Democratic National Convention, May 1, 1860.

[6] These sentimental delegations were: Maryland, 11; Delaware, 6;
Virginia, 23; Kentucky, 23; Texas, 6; Kansas, 6; Nebraska, 6; District
of Columbia, 2. Total, 83 votes. Of these the leading candidates
received as follows:

1st ballot    Seward, 30    Lincoln, 21
2d ballot     Seward, 35    Lincoln, 30
3d ballot     Seward, 33    Lincoln, 43.

Missouri might be counted in the same category; but, as she voted
steadily for Bates through all the ballots, she did not in any wise
influence the result.

[7] Each State was entitled to cast a vote equal to double the number
of its Electoral College.

[8] FIRST BALLOT IN DETAIL.

_For Seward_.--Maine 10, New Hampshire 1, Massachusetts 21, New York
70, Pennsylvania 1-1/2, Maryland 3, Virginia 8, Kentucky 5, Michigan
12, Texas 4, Wisconsin 10, Iowa 2, California 8, Minnesota 8, Kansas
6, Nebraska 2, District of Columbia 2.--Total for Seward, 173-1/2.

_For Lincoln_.--Maine 6, New Hampshire 7, Massachusetts 4, Connecticut
2, Pennsylvania 4, Virginia 14, Kentucky 6, Ohio 8, Indiana 26,
Illinois 22, Iowa 2, Nebraska 1.--Total for Lincoln, 102.

_Scattering_.--New Hampshire, Chase 1, Fremont 1; Vermont, Collamer
10; Rhode Island, Bates 1, McLean 5, Reed 1, Chase 1; Connecticut,
Wade 1, Bates 7, Chase 2; New Jersey, Dayton 14; Pennsylvania, Cameron
47-1/2, McLean 1; Maryland, Bates 8; Delaware, Bates 6; Virginia,
Cameron 1; Kentucky, Wade 2, McLean 1, Chase 8, Sumner 1; Ohio, McLean
4, Chase 34; Missouri, Bates 18; Texas, Bates 2; Iowa, Cameron 1,
Bates 1, McLean 1, Chase 1; Oregon, Bates 5; Nebraska, Cameron 1,
Chase 2.--Totals, for Bates, 48; for Cameron, 50-1/2; for McLean, 12;
for Chase, 49; for Wade, 3; for Dayton, 14; for Reed, 1; for Collamer,
10; for Sumner, 1; for Fremont, 1.

[9] SECOND BALLOT IN DETAIL.

_For Seward_.--Maine 10, New Hampshire 1, Massachusetts 22, New York
70, New Jersey 4, Pennsylvania 2-1/2, Maryland 3, Virginia 8, Kentucky
7, Michigan 12, Texas 6, Wisconsin 10, Iowa 2, California 8, Minnesota
8, Kansas 6, Nebraska 3, District of Columbia 2.--Total for Seward,
184-1/2.

_For Lincoln_.--Maine 6, New Hampshire 9, Vermont 10, Massachusetts 4,
Rhode Island 3, Connecticut 4, Pennsylvania 48, Delaware 6, Virginia
14, Kentucky 9, Ohio 14, Indiana 26, Illinois 22, Iowa 5, Nebraska
1.--Total for Lincoln, 181.

_Scattering_.--Rhode Island, McLean 2, Chase 3; Connecticut, Bates 4,
Chase 2, Clay 2; New Jersey, Dayton 10; Pennsylvania, Cameron 1,
McLean 2-1/2; Maryland, Bates 8; Virginia, Cameron 1; Kentucky, Chase
6; Ohio, McLean 3, Chase 29; Missouri, Bates 18; Iowa, McLean 1/2,
Chase 1/2; Oregon, Bates 5; Nebraska, Chase 2.--Totals, for Bates, 35;
for Cameron, 2; for McLean, 8; for Chase, 42-1/2; for Dayton, 10; for
Clay, 2.

[10] THIRD BALLOT IN DETAIL.

_For Seward_.--Maine 10, New Hampshire 1, Massachusetts 18, Rhode
Island 1, Connecticut 1, New York 70, New Jersey 5, Maryland 2,
Virginia 8, Kentucky 6, Michigan 12, Texas 6, Wisconsin 10, Iowa 2,
California 8, Minnesota 8, Oregon 1, Kansas 6, Nebraska 3, District of
Columbia 2.--Total for Seward, 180.

_For Lincoln_.--Maine 6, New Hampshire 9, Vermont 10, Massachusetts 8,
Rhode Island 5, Connecticut 4, New Jersey 8, Pennsylvania 52, Maryland
9, Delaware 6, Virginia 14, Kentucky 13, Ohio 29, Indiana 26, Illinois
22, Iowa 5-1/2, Oregon 4, Nebraska 1.--Total for Lincoln, 231-1/2.

_Scattering_.--Rhode Island, Chase 1, McLean 1; Connecticut, Bates 4,
Chase 2, Clay 1; New Jersey, Dayton 1; Pennsylvania, McLean 2;
Kentucky, Chase 4; Ohio, Chase 15, McLean 2; Missouri, Bates 18; Iowa,
Chase 1/2; Nebraska, Chase 2.--Total, for Bates, 22; for Chase,
24-1/2; for McLean, 5; for Dayton, 1; for Clay, 1.




CHAPTER XVI

LINCOLN ELECTED


Thus the Presidential canvass in the United States for the year 1860
began with the very unusual condition of four considerable parties,
and four different tickets for President and Vice-President. In the
order of popular strength, as afterwards shown, they were:

_First_. The Republican party, which at the Chicago Convention had
nominated as its candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, of
Illinois, and for Vice-President, Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine. Its
animating spirit was a belief and declaration that the institution of
slavery was wrong in morals and detrimental to society; its avowed
policy was to restrict slavery to its present limits in the States
where it existed by virtue of local constitutions and laws.

_Second_. The Douglas wing of the Democratic party, which at Baltimore
nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, for President, and whose
candidate for Vice-President was Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia.[1]
It declared indifference as to the moral right or wrong of slavery,
and indifference to its restriction or extension. Its avowed policy
was to permit the people of a Territory to decide whether they would
prevent or establish slavery, and it further proposed to abide by the
decisions of the Supreme Court on all questions of constitutional law
growing out of it.

_Third_. The Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, which at Baltimore
nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for President, and Joseph
Lane, of Oregon, for Vice-President. Its animating spirit was a belief
and declaration that slavery was morally right and politically
beneficial; its avowed policy was the extension of slavery into the
Territories, and the creation of new slave States, whereby it might
protect and perpetuate itself by a preponderance, or at least a
constant equality, of political power, especially in the Senate of the
United States. As one means to this end, it proposed the immediate
acquisition of the island of Cuba.

_Fourth_. The Constitutional Union party, which in its convention at
Baltimore nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, for President, and Edward
Everett, of Massachusetts, for Vice-President. It professed to ignore
the question of slavery, and declared that it would recognize no
political principle other than "the Constitution of the Country, the
Union of the States, and the enforcement of the Laws."

  [Sidenote] Curtis, "Life of Buchanan," Vol. II., p. 294.

The first, most striking feature of the four-sided Presidential
canvass which now began, was the personal pledge by every one of the
candidates of devotion to the Union. Each of the factions was in some
form charging disunion motives or tendencies upon part or all of the
others; but each indignantly denied the allegation as to itself. To
leave no possible doubt, the written letters of acceptance of each of
the candidates emphasized the point. Lincoln invoked "the
inviolability of the Constitution, and the perpetual union, harmony,
and prosperity of all." Douglas made his pledge broad and full. "The
Federal Union," wrote he, "must be preserved. The Constitution must be
maintained inviolate in all its parts. Every right guaranteed by the
Constitution must be protected by law in all cases where legislation
is necessary to its enjoyment. The judicial authority, as provided in
the Constitution, must be sustained, and its decisions implicitly
obeyed and faithfully executed. The laws must be administered, and the
constituted authorities upheld, and all unlawful resistance to these
things must be put down with firmness, impartiality, and fidelity."
"The Constitution and the equality of the States," wrote Breckinridge,
"these are symbols of everlasting union. Let these be the rallying
cries of the people." Bell declared that, if elected, all his ability,
strength of will, and official influence should be employed "for the
maintenance of the Constitution and the Union against all opposing
influences and tendencies." Even President Buchanan, in a little
campaign speech from the portico of the Executive mansion, hastened to
purge himself of the imputation of suspicion or fear on this point. He
declared that neither of the Democratic conventions was "regular," and
that therefore every Democrat was at liberty to vote as he thought
proper. For himself, he preferred Breckinridge. The Democratic party,
when divided for the moment, "has always closed up its ranks, and
become more powerful even from defeat. It will never die whilst the
Constitution and the Union survive. It will live to protect and defend
both."

No progress was made, however, towards a reunion of the Democratic
party. The Buchanan faction everywhere waged unrelenting war on
Douglas, both in public discussion and in the use of official
patronage. The contest was made with equal obstinacy and bitterness in
the Northern and the Southern States. Douglas, on his part, was not
slow to retaliate. He immediately entered on an extensive campaign
tour, and made speeches at many of the principal cities of the
Northern States, and a few in the slave-States. Everywhere he
stigmatized the Breckinridge wing of the Democracy as an extremist and
disunion faction,[2] charging that it was as obnoxious and dangerous
as the Republicans. Whatever be his errors, it must be recorded to his
lasting renown that he boldly declared for maintaining the Union by
force. At Norfolk, Virginia, the question was put to him in writing.
"I answer emphatically," replied Douglas, "that it is the duty of the
President of the United States, and all others in authority under him,
to enforce the laws of the United States passed by Congress, and as
the courts expound them, and I, as in duty bound by my oath of
fidelity to the Constitution, would do all in my power to aid the
Government of the United States in maintaining the supremacy of the
laws against all resistance to them, come from what quarter it might.
In other words, I think the President, whoever he may be, should treat
all attempts Douglas, to break up the Union by resistance to the laws,
as Old Hickory treated the nullifiers in 1832."

  [Sidenote] Douglas, Norfolk Speech, August 25, 1860.

All parties entered upon the political canvass with considerable
spirit; but the chances of the Republicans were so manifestly superior
that their enthusiasm easily outran that of all their competitors. The
character and antecedents of Mr. Lincoln appealed directly to the
sympathy and favor of the popular masses of the Northern States. As
pioneer, farm-laborer, flat-boatman, and frontier politician, they saw
in him a true representative of their early if not their present
condition. As the successful lawyer, legislator, and public debater in
questions of high statesmanship, he was the admired ideal of their own
aspirations.

While the Illinois State Republican Convention was in session at
Decatur (May 10), about a week before the Chicago Convention, the
balloting for State officers was interrupted by the announcement, made
with much mystery, that "an old citizen of Macon County" had something
to present to the convention. When curiosity had been sufficiently
aroused, John Hanks, Lincoln's fellow-pioneer, and a neighbor of
Hanks, were suddenly marched into the convention, each bearing upright
an old fence-rail, and displaying a banner with an inscription to the
effect that these were two rails from the identical lot of three
thousand which, when a pioneer boy, Lincoln had helped to cut and
split to inclose his father's first farm in Illinois, in 1830. These
emblems of his handiwork were received by the convention with
deafening shouts, as a prelude to a unanimous resolution recommending
him for President. Later, these rails were sent to Chicago; there,
during the sittings of the National Republican Convention, they stood
in the hotel parlor at the Illinois headquarters, lighted up by
tapers, and trimmed with flowers by enthusiastic ladies. Their history
and campaign incidents were duly paraded in the newspapers; and
throughout the Union Lincoln's ancient and local _sobriquet_ of
"Honest Old Abe" was supplemented by the national epithet of "The
Illinois Bail-splitter." Of the many peculiarities of the campaign,
one feature deserves special mention. Political clubs, for parades and
personal campaign work, were no novelty; now, however, the expedients
of a cheap yet striking uniform and a half-military organization were
tried with marked success. When Lincoln made his New England trip,
immediately after the Cooper Institute speech, a score or two of
active Republicans in the city of Hartford appeared in close and
orderly ranks, wearing each a cap and large cape of oil-cloth, and
bearing over their shoulders a long staff, on the end of which blazed
a brilliant torch-light. This first "Wide Awake" [3] Club, as it
called itself, marching with soldierly step, and military music,
escorted Mr. Lincoln, on the evening of March 5, from the hall where he
addressed the people, to his hotel. The device was so simple and yet
so strikingly effective that it immediately became the pattern for
other cities. After the campaign opened, there was scarcely a county
or village in the North without its organized and drilled association
of "Wide Awakes," immensely captivating to the popular eye, and
forming everywhere a vigilant corps to spread the fame of, and solicit
votes for, the Republican Presidential candidate. On several occasions
twenty to thirty thousand "Wide Awakes" met in the larger cities and
marched in monster torch-light processions through the principal
streets.

His nomination also made necessary some slight changes in Mr. Lincoln's
daily life. His law practice was transferred entirely to his partner,
and instead of the small dingy office so long occupied by him, he was
now given the use of the Governor's room in the State-house, which was
not needed for official business during the absence of the Legislature.
This also was a room of modest proportions, with scanty and plain
furniture. Here Mr. Lincoln, attended only by his private secretary,
Mr. Nicolay, passed the long summer days of the campaign, receiving the
constant stream of visitors anxious to look upon a real Presidential
candidate. There was free access to him; not even an usher stood at the
door; any one might knock and enter. His immediate personal friends
from Sangamon County and central Illinois availed themselves largely
of this opportunity. With men who had known him in field and forest
he talked over the incidents of their common pioneer experience with
unaffected sympathy and interest, as though he were yet the flat-boatman,
surveyor, or village lawyer of the early days. The letters which came
to him by hundreds, the newspapers, and the conversation of friends,
kept him sufficiently informed of the progress of the campaign, in
which personally he took a very slight part. He made no addresses,
wrote no public letters, held no conferences. Political leaders several
times came to make campaign speeches at the Republican wigwam in
Springfield. But beyond a few casual interviews on such occasions, the
great Presidential canvass went on with scarcely a private suggestion
or touch of actual direction from the Republican candidate.

It is perhaps worth while to record Lincoln's expression on one point,
which adds testimony to his general consistency in political action.
The rise of the Know-Nothing or the American party, in 1854-5 (which
was only a renewal of the Native-American party of 1844), has been
elsewhere mentioned. As a national organization, the new faction
ceased with the defeat of Fillmore and Donelson in 1856; its fragments
nevertheless held together in many places in the form of local
minorities, which sometimes made themselves felt in contests for
members of the Legislature and county officers; and citizens of
foreign birth continued to be justly apprehensive of its avowed
jealousy and secret machinery. It was easy to allege that any
prominent candidate belonged to the Know-Nothing party, and attended
the secret Know-Nothing lodges; and Lincoln, in the late Senatorial,
and now again in the Presidential, campaign, suffered his full share
of these newspaper accusations.

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Edward Lusk, October 30, 1858. MS.

We have already mentioned that in the campaign of 1844 he put on
record, by public resolutions in Springfield, his disapprobation of,
and opposition to, Native-Americanism. In the later campaigns, while
he did not allow his attention to be diverted from the slavery
discussion, his disapproval of Know-Nothingism was quite as decided
and as public. Thus he wrote in a private letter, dated October 30,
1858: "I understand the story is still being told and insisted upon
that I have been a Know-Nothing. I repeat what I stated in a public
speech at Meredosia, that I am not, nor ever have been, connected with
the party called the Know-Nothing party, or party calling themselves
the American party. Certainly no man of truth, and I believe no man of
good character for truth, can be found to say on his own knowledge
that I ever was connected with that party."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Hon. A. Jonas, July 21, 1860. MS.

So also in the summer of 1860, when his candidacy for President did
not permit his writing public letters, he wrote in a confidential note
to a friend: "Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as good or even
better men than I may have been in American or Know-Nothing lodges;
but, in point of fact, I never was in one, at Quincy or elsewhere....
And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can gain a point
if they could force me to openly deny the charge, by which some degree
of offense would be given to the Americans. For this reason it must
not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge."

  [Sidenote] Lincoln to Dr. Theodore Canisius, May 17, 1859.

His position on the main question involved was already sufficiently
understood; for in his elsewhere quoted letter of May 17, 1859, he had
declared himself against the adoption by Illinois, or any other place
where he had a right to oppose it, of the recent Massachusetts
constitutional provision restricting foreign-born citizens in the
right of suffrage. It is well to repeat the broad philosophical
principle which guided him to this conclusion: "Understanding the
spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am
opposed to whatever tends to degrade them."

[Illustration: JOHN BELL.]

As the campaign progressed the chances of the result underwent an
important fluctuation, involving some degree of uncertainty. The
Democratic disruption, and the presence of four tickets in the field,
rendered it possible that some very narrow plurality in one or more of
the States might turn the scale of victory. Calculating politicians,
especially those belonging to the party hitherto in power, and who had
enjoyed the benefits of its extensive Federal patronage, seized
eagerly upon this possibility as a means of prolonging their official
tenure, and showed themselves not unwilling to sacrifice the
principles of the general contest to the mere material and local
advantage which success would bring them.

  [Sidenote] Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 324.

Accordingly, in several States, and more notably in the great State of
New York, there was begun a quiet but unremitting effort to bring
about a coalition or "fusion," as it was termed, of the warring
Democratic factions, on the basis of a division of the spoils which
such a combination might hope to secure. Nor did the efforts stop
there. If the union of the two factions created the probability, the
union of three seemed to insure certainty, and the negotiations for a
coalition, therefore, extended to the adherents of Bell and Everett.
Amid the sharp contest of ideas and principles which divided the
country, such an arrangement was by no means easy; yet in a large
voting population there is always a percentage of party followers on
whom the obligations of party creeds sit lightly. Gradually, from talk
of individuals and speculations of newspapers, the intrigue proceeded
to a coquetting between rival conventions. Here the formal proceedings
encountered too much protest and indignation, and the scheme was
handed over to standing committees, who could deliberate and bargain
in secret. It must be stated to the credit of Douglas, that he
publicly rejected any alliance not based on his principle of
"non-intervention";[4] but the committees and managers cared little
for the disavowal. In due time they perfected their agreement that the
New York electoral ticket (numbering thirty-five) should be made up of
adherents of the three different factions in the following proportion:
Douglas, eighteen; Bell, ten; Breckinridge, seven. This agreement was
carried out, and the fusion ticket thus constituted was voted for at
the Presidential election by the combined opponents of Lincoln.

In Pennsylvania, notwithstanding that Douglas disapproved the scheme,
an agreement or movement of fusion also took place; but in this case
it did not become complete, and was not altogether carried out by the
parties to it, as in New York. The electoral ticket had been nominated
by the usual Democratic State Convention (March 1) prior to the
Charleston disruption, and, as it turned out, about one-third of these
nominees were favorable to Douglas. After the disruption, the Douglas
men also formed a straight, or Douglas, electoral ticket. In order to
unite the two wings at the October State election, the Executive
Committee of the original convention recommended (July 2) that the
electo