THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856.
There was a good deal of significance in the inquiry. There was a hot
campaign ahead. The opposition party, made up of Know-nothings and
old-line Whigs, had nominated Benjamin H. Hill for Governor. Senator
Toombs knew that it would require a strong man to beat him. Besides the
Governor, a legislature was to be chosen which was to elect a successor
to Senator Toombs in the Senate. He was personally interested in seeing
that the Democratic party, with which he had been in full accord since
the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, had a strong leader in the
State. All the way home he was puzzling in his brain about "Joe Brown."
About the time that he returned, he was informed that Hill and Brown had
met at Glen Spring, near Athens. A large crowd had attended the opening
discussion. Howell Cobb wrote to Senator Toombs that he had better take
charge of the campaign himself, as he doubted the ability of Judge Brown
to handle "Hill of Troup."
Joseph E. Brown had come up from the people. He was a native of Pickens,
S. C., of old Scotch-Irish stock that had produced Calhoun and Andrew
Jackson. The late Henry W. Grady, in a bright fancy sketch, once
declared that the ancestors of Joseph E. Brown lived in Ireland, and
that "For seven generations, the ancestors of Joe Brown have been
restless, aggressive rebels--for a longer time the Toombses have been
dauntless and intolerant followers of the King. At the siege of
Londonderry, Margaret and James Brown were within the walls, starving
and fighting for William and Mary; and I have no doubt there were
hard-riding Toombses outside the walls, charging in the name of the
peevish and unhappy James. Certain it is that forty years before, the
direct ancestors of Robert Toombs, in their estate, were hiding the good
King Charles in the oak at Boscobel, where, I have no doubt, the father
and uncle of the Londonderry Brown, with cropped hair and severe mien,
were proguing about the place with their pikes, searching every bush in
the name of Cromwell and the psalm-singers. From these initial points
sprang the two strains of blood--the one affluent, impetuous, prodigal,
the other slow, resolute, forceful. From these ancestors came the two
men--the one superb, ruddy, fashioned with incomparable grace and
fullness--the other pale, thoughtful, angular, stripped down to brain
and sinew. From these opposing theories came the two types: the one
patrician, imperious, swift in action, and brooking no stay; the other
democratic, sagacious, jealous of rights, and submitting to no
opposition. The one for the king, the other for the people."
Young Joe Brown had taught school, studied law, finally completing his
course at Yale College. He was admitted to the bar in 1845. In 1849 he
was elected as a Democrat to the State Senate by Cherokee County. In
1851 he had been a Southern Rights' man, voting for McDonald against
Cobb, the Union candidate for Governor. In 1852 he was Democratic
elector for Pierce. In 1855 he was elected by the people judge of the
Blue Ridge Circuit. He was very strong in North Georgia. The convention
which selected him as the candidate for Governor met in Milledgeville,
June 24, 1857. The Democrats had no lack of eminent men. There were
candidates enough. James Gardner, the brilliant and incisive editor of
the Augusta _Constitutionalist_, led the ballot, but Brown was finally
brought in as a compromise man. His nomination was a surprise.
When Senator Toombs met the young nominee, by appointment, to talk over
the campaign, he found that he was full of good sense and sagacity. He
joined him in his canvass, lending his own name and prestige to the
Democratic meetings. But he found much shrewdness and homely wisdom
about Joseph E. Brown, and he became convinced that he was able to make
his way to the favor of the people without outside aid. The Democratic
nominee proved his ability to stand before the luminous oratory of Ben
Hill himself. Brown had courage, clearness, and tact, with growing
ability and confidence. He soon developed the full strength of the
Democratic party, which, in Georgia, was overwhelming. Joseph E. Brown
was elected Governor, and the last vestige of the American party went
down in 1857. The legislature was overwhelmingly Democratic.
On the 6th of November, 1857, Mr. Toombs wrote from Milledgeville to his
wife, pending the election of United States Senator:
I got here Wednesday and found the usual turmoil and
excitement. Governor McDonald is here and has been trying
hard to beat me, but I find very unexpected and gratifying
unanimity in my favor. The party met this evening and
nominated me by acclamation, with but two or three
dissenting votes, and they speak of bringing on the
election to-morrow. I am very anxious to see you, and am
tired of wandering about in excited crowds; but I suppose
after to-morrow I will have peace, so far as I am
concerned, for the next six years. I think I shall be
entitled to exemption from the actual duties of future
campaigns to stay at home with you.
He was reelected to the United States Senate for the term beginning
March 4, 1857.
When President Buchanan was inaugurated, he announced that a case was
pending in the Supreme Court upon the occupation of the Territories. By
this decision he would abide. The day after the inauguration the
decision was announced. It was the celebrated Dred Scott case. It fell
like a bomb into the antislavery camp. The great question involved was
whether it was competent for Congress, directly or indirectly, to
exclude slavery from the Territories of the United States. The Supreme
Court decided that it was not. Six judges out of eight made this
decision. The opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.
This decision added to the fury of the storm. It was announced that the
Chief Justice had announced the doctrine that "negroes had no rights
that a white man was bound to respect"; a sentiment so atrocious that
this official repelled it with indignation. Efforts were made to bury
the Chief Justice in obloquy.
The struggle over the admission of Kansas into the Union was prolonged
in Congress. But the situation in Kansas became warmer every year. The
Eastern immigrant societies were met by inroads of Missouri and Southern
settlers. A state of civil war virtually obtained in 1856-57, and
throughout Buchanan's administration there was a sharp skirmish of new
settlers and a sharp maneuver of parties for position. The Georgia
State Democratic Convention of 1857 demanded the removal of Robert J.
Walker, who had been appointed Governor of Kansas. He was a Southern
man, but was regarded as favoring the antislavery party in its efforts
to organize the Territory. The truth was, as Senator Toombs had clearly
foreseen and expressed in his speech in the Senate in 1856, Kansas was
destined to be a free State, and amid the violence of the agitation,
confined to no one side, was marching steadily toward this destiny. The
administration favored the admission of Kansas with the Lecompton
Constitution, which was decidedly favorable to the proslavery men.
Senator Douglas opposed this plan. He had become committed to the policy
of squatter sovereignty during the debate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill in
1854. He contended that the settlers of a Territory could determine the
character of their institutions, a position which the Buchanan party
denounced as inconsistent with Democratic principles. Mr. Douglas
indorsed the Dred Scott decision, but maintained his position on popular
sovereignty. He became at once unpopular with the rank and file of the
Southern Democracy, with whom he had long been a favorite. He was also
estranged from the administration, and it was evident that he would have
no easy matter to be reelected United States Senator. This election came
off in the fall of 1858. It was clear to him that, to maintain his
prominence in politics, he must carry Illinois. Unless he could save his
own State his chance for President was gone. So he went into this
memorable canvass with his own party divided and a determined opponent
in the person of Abraham Lincoln. The young Republican party in Illinois
had been gathering strength with each new phase of the slavery question.
The joint debate between Douglas and Lincoln was memorable. As a
dexterous debater, Douglas had no equal in the Union. He was strong on
the stump and incomparable in a popular assembly. Without grace or
imagination, he was yet a plausible, versatile man, quick and ingenious,
resolute and ready, with a rare faculty for convincing men. He was small
and sinewy, with smooth face, bright eye, and broad brow, and his
neighbors called him the "Little Giant." He could be specious, even
fallacious; he employed an _ad captandum_ kind of oratory, which was
taking with a crowd and confusing to an adversary. The man who met him
in these debates was a tall, impressive personage, rough, original, but
direct and thoroughly sincere. In many points he was the opposite of
Douglas.
He was rather an ill-ordered growth of the early West, a man who had
toiled and suffered from his youth up. He was full of sharp corners and
rough edges, and his nature was a strange mixture of patience and
melancholy. As Mr. Stephens said, he regarded slavery "in the light of a
religious mysticism," and believed that his mission to beat it down was
God-ordained. And yet he was a statesman, a public man of breadth and
prominence, a speaker of force and persuasion. He had the robust courage
of a pioneer and the high purpose of a reformer. It was in this debate
that Mr. Lincoln, at Freeport, Ill., asked Mr. Douglas that memorable
question, on the stump: "Can the people of a Territory, in any lawful
way, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the formation of a
State constitution?" Mr. Douglas promptly answered, "Yes." This was his
doctrine of popular sovereignty. But the answer cost him the Democratic
nomination to the Presidency. The theory that a mass of settlers,
squatting in a Territory, could fix and determine the character of the
Territory's domestic institutions, was repugnant to a large portion of
the Southern people. They claimed that under the Dred Scott decision,
slavery already existed in the Territories, and must be protected by the
Constitution; and that it was not competent for the people to determine
for themselves the question of slavery or no slavery, until they formed
a constitution for admission into the Union as a State.
The election in Illinois, in the fall of 1858, gave Stephen A. Douglas a
majority of eight in the General Assembly over Abraham Lincoln, and
Douglas was reelected for the new term. In this contest he had been
opposed by the Buchanan Democrats, who cast over 8000 votes in Illinois.
In the Senate, the debate on popular sovereignty was renewed. This time
Jefferson Davis, a senator from Mississippi, attacked this position as
incompatible with the Constitution and the laws. Mr. Davis was a
skillful debater. His mind was singularly graceful and refined. He was
eloquent, logical, and courageous. His career as soldier and statesman,
as War Minister under Pierce, and as senator for Mississippi, made him a
prominent figure. He was cultured, classical, and well rounded, equipped
by leisure and long study for the career before him. He had vanquished
Sergeant S. Prentiss in public discussion over the national bank, and
contested, inch by inch, the domination of Henry S. Foote in
Mississippi. His career in the Mexican war had been a notable one.
Allied to Zachary Taylor by marriage, a West Pointer by training, a
Southern planter by occupation, he was a typical defender of slavery as
it existed. Davis was as slender and frail as Douglas was compact and
sinewy. Like Lincoln, his mind grasped great principles, while Douglas
was fighting for points and expedients.
Douglas declared that the territorial settler could determine whether
slavery should exist, by his influence in providing or withholding
police power; although he denied the constitutional right to legislate
slavery out of the Territories, yet he believed the "popular sovereign"
could, by means of "unfriendly legislation," bar out the Southern
settler with his slaves. It was not difficult for Mr. Davis to impale
him upon this plea.
Senator Douglas had saved his seat in the Senate, but his position in
the Democratic party was weakened. The Lecompton Constitution passed the
Senate in spite of Douglas's steady opposition.
Senator Toombs took no part in the subtleties of the Douglas-Davis
debate. He listened to the refinements of that discussion with decided
convictions of his own, but with clear appreciation of the fact that
every point scored against Douglas was cleaving the Democratic party in
twain. Mr. Toombs favored the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution,
but when it was rejected by the House, he promptly accepted the English
compromise, to refer the matter back to the people. Mr. Toombs had
always been partial to Douglas. In the campaign of 1856 he declared, in
Georgia, that "the man who condemned Senator Douglas needed watching
himself." He viewed with some pain the Douglas departure over popular
sovereignty; indeed he once declared that had he not been called away
from the Senate for quite a time in 1856, Mr. Douglas would never have
gone off on this tangent. When asked if Douglas were really a great
man, Senator Toombs, in 1860, answered with characteristic heartiness
and exaggeration, "There has been but one greater, and he, the Apostle
Paul."
It was very evident that the people of the South would demand new
guarantees for the protection of slavery against the dogma of popular
sovereignty. The platform of the Cincinnati convention, upon which
Buchanan had been elected, must be recast. The platform had declared
that immigrants to any part of the public domain were to settle the
question of slavery for themselves. The new plank, which President
Buchanan framed, was that the government of a Territory was provisional
and temporary, and during its existence, all citizens of the United
States had 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. The
two last words contained the gist of the resolution, which was aimed at
Senator Douglas. However right as an abstract principle, Mr. Stephens
declared that this was a departure from the doctrine of
non-intervention.
It was at this time that Senator Toombs made one of the most important
speeches of his life. This was delivered in Augusta, Ga., September 8,
1859, during an exciting campaign. Governor Brown was a candidate for
reelection, and a strong opposition party had developed in Georgia,
representing the extreme Southern sentiment.
Senator Toombs said that the opposition to the Kansas bill had continued
because it was said to recognize the right of the people of a Territory,
through the Territorial legislature, to establish or prohibit slavery.
"When we condemned and abrogated Congressional intervention against us,"
said he, "that was a great point gained. Congress had actually excluded
us from the Territories for thirty years. The people of a Territory had
in no instance attempted such an iniquity. I considered it wise,
prudent, and politic to settle the question against our common enemy,
Congress, even if I left it unsettled as to our known friends, the
people of the Territories. We could not settle the question of the power
of the people over slavery while in a territorial condition, because
Democrats differed on that point. We, therefore, declared in the Kansas
bill that we left the people of the Territories perfectly free to form
and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only
to the Constitution of the United States. We decided to refer the
question to the Supreme Court. It has gone there and been decided in our
favor. The Southern friends of the measure repudiate the principle of
squatter sovereignty. I stand its steady and uncompromising adversary.
The doctrine of Douglas has not a leg to stand upon. Yet I do not
belong to those who denounce him. The organization of the Democratic
party leaves this an open question, and Mr. Douglas is at full liberty
to take either side he may choose, and if he maintains his ground of
neither making nor accepting new tests of political soundness, I shall
consider him a political friend, and will accept him as the
representative of the party, whatever it may tender him. I do not
hesitate to tell you that, with his errors, I prefer him and would
support him to-morrow against any opposition leader in America.
"We are told," said Mr. Toombs, "that we must put a new plank in the
platform of the Democratic party, and demand the affirmance of the duty
of Congress to prohibit slavery in a Territory, where such Territory may
fail to discharge this duty. I reply, I do not think it is wise to do
the thing proposed, and the inducement would not help the proposition.
While I have already asserted full and complete power of Congress to do
this, I think, with Mr. Madison, that it should be prudently and
carefully exercised, and it ought not to be exercised until the occasion
is imperative. There has been no occasion, from 1789 to this hour,
calling for it, and I am more than willing that the Territorial settlers
shall continue to govern themselves in their own way, so long as they
respect the rights of all the people. I will not insult them by
supposing them capable of disregarding the Constitution of the United
States, or by assuming that they are incapable of honest
self-government.
"No; I shall prescribe no new test of party fealty to Northern
Democrats, those men who have hitherto stood with honor and fidelity
upon their engagements. They have maintained the truth to their own
hurt. They have displayed a patriotism, a magnanimity rarely equaled in
the world's history, and I shall endeavor, in sunshine and in storm,
with your approbation if I can get it, without it if I must, to stand by
them with fidelity equal to their great deserts. If you will stand with
me, we shall conquer faction in the North and South, and shall save the
country from the curse of being ruled by the combination now calling
itself the opposition. We shall leave this country to our children as we
found it--united, strong, prosperous and happy."
This was a memorable speech, strong, sincere, and conservative, and had
a marked effect. It was intended, not only to influence the canvass then
pending, but to have an effect in controlling the National convention to
be held six months later. It was copied far and wide, and the success of
the State candidates whom Mr. Toombs supported showed that its
statesmanlike utterances were adopted overwhelmingly in Georgia.