CONCLUSION
Trumbull goes to Belleville to attend the funeral of Gustave
Koerner--Is taken with illness at hotel--On his return to his
home he is found to be suffering from an internal tumor--His
physicians decide that a surgical operation would be fatal--He
lingers till June 5, 1896--Dies in his eighty-third
year--Impressive funeral--His great qualities as a lawyer and
political debater--His conscientiousness and courage--His
generosity, and fondness for little children--His place in the
country's history--Eulogy by Joseph Medill, and other
contemporaries--Trumbull's estimate of Lincoln--His religious
views--His surviving family and descendants 418
INDEX 433
INTRODUCTION
Events in the year 1854 brought into the field of national politics two
members of the bar of southern Illinois who were destined to hold high
places in the public councils--Abraham Lincoln and Lyman Trumbull. They
were members of opposing parties, Lincoln a Whig, Trumbull a Democrat.
Both were supporters of the compromise measures of 1850. These measures
had been accepted by the great majority of the people, not as wholly
satisfactory, but as preferable to never-ending turmoil on the slavery
question. There had been a subsidence of anti-slavery propagandism in
the North, following the Free Soil campaign of 1848. Hale and Julian
received fewer votes in 1852 than Van Buren and Adams had received in
the previous election. Franklin Pierce (Democrat) had been elected
President of the United States by so large a majority that the Whig
party was practically killed. President Pierce in his first message to
Congress had alluded to the quieting of sectional agitation and had
said: "That this repose is to suffer no shock during my official term,
if I have the power to avert it, those who placed me here may be
assured." Doubtless the Civil War would have come, even if Pierce had
kept his promise instead of breaking it; for, as Lincoln said a little
later: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
It was not at variance with itself on the slavery question solely. In
fact, the North did not take up arms against slavery when the crisis
came. A few men foresaw that a war raging around that institution would
somehow and sometime give it its death-blow, but at the beginning the
Northern soldiers marched with no intention of that kind. They had an
eye single to the preservation of the Union. The uprising which followed
the firing upon Fort Sumter was a passionate protest against the insult
to the national flag. It betokened a fixed purpose to defend what the
flag symbolized, and it was only slowly and hesitatingly that the
abolition of slavery was admitted as a factor and potent issue in the
Northern mind.
It is true that the South seceded in order to preserve and extend
slavery, but it was penetrated with the belief that it had a perfect
right to secede--not merely the right of revolution which our ancestors
exercised in separating from Great Britain, but a right under the
Constitution.
The states under the Confederation, during the Revolutionary period and
later, were actually sovereign. The Articles of Confederation declared
them to be so. When the Constitution was formed, the habit of state
sovereignty was so strong that it was only with the greatest difficulty
that its ratification by the requisite number of states could be
obtained. John Quincy Adams said that it was "extorted from the grinding
necessity of a reluctant people." The instrument itself provided a
common tribunal (the Supreme Court) as arbiter for the decision of all
disputed questions arising under the Constitution and laws of the United
States. But it was not generally supposed that the jurisdiction of the
court included the power to extinguish state sovereignty.[1]
The first division of political parties under the new government was the
outgrowth of emotions stirred by the French Revolution. The Republicans
of the period, led by Jefferson, were ardent sympathizers with the
uprising in France. The Federalists, who counted Washington, Hamilton,
and John Adams as their representative men, were opposed to any
connection with European strife, or to any fresh embroilment with
England, growing out of it. The Alien and Sedition Laws were passed in
order to suppress agitation tending to produce such embroilment.
Jefferson met these laws with the "Resolutions of '98," which were
adopted by the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky. These resolutions
affirmed the right of the separate states to judge of any infraction of
the Constitution by the Federal Government and also of the mode and
measure of redress--a claim which necessarily included the right to
secede from the Union if milder measures failed. The Alien and Sedition
Laws expired by their own limitation before any actual test of their
validity took place.
The next assertion of the right of the states to nullify the acts of the
Federal Government came from a more northern latitude as a consequence
of the purchase of Louisiana. This act alarmed the New England States.
The Federalists feared lest the acquisition of this vast domain should
give the South a perpetual preponderance and control of the Government.
Since there was no clause in the Constitution providing for the
acquisition of new territory (as President Jefferson himself conceded),
they affirmed that the Union was a partnership and that a new partner
could not be taken in without the consent of all the old ones, and that
the taking in of a new one without such consent would release the old
ones.
Controversy on this theme was superseded a few years later by more acute
sources of irritation--the Embargo and War of 1812. These events fell
with great severity on the commerce of the Northern States, and led to
the passage by the Massachusetts legislature of anti-Embargo
resolutions, declaring that "when the national compact is violated and
the citizens are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized law, this
legislature is bound to interpose its power and wrest from the oppressor
his victim." In this doctrine Daniel Webster concurred. In a speech in
the House of Representatives, December 9, 1814, on the Conscription
Bill, he said:
The operation of measures thus unconstitutional and illegal
ought to be prevented by a resort to other measures which are
both constitutional and legal. It will be the solemn duty of
the State Governments to protect their own authority over their
own militia and to interpose between their own citizens and
arbitrary power.... With the same earnestness with which I now
exhort you to forbear from these measures I shall exhort them
to exercise their unquestionable right of providing for the
security of their own liberties.[2]
The anti-Embargo resolutions were followed by the refusal of both
Massachusetts and Connecticut to allow federal officers to take command
of their militia and by the call for the Hartford Convention. The latter
body recommended to the states represented in it the adoption of
measures to protect their citizens against forcible drafts,
conscriptions, or impressments not authorized by the Constitution--a
phrase which certainly meant that the states were to judge of the
constitutionality of the measures referred to. The conclusion of peace
with Great Britain put an end to this crisis before it came to blows.
On February 26, 1833, Mr. Calhoun, following the Resolutions of '98,
affirmed in the Senate the doctrine that the Government of the United
States was a compact, by which the separate states delegated to it
certain definite powers, reserving the rest; that whenever the general
Government should assume the exercise of powers not so delegated, its
acts would be void and of no effect; and that the said Government was
not the sole judge of the powers delegated to it, but that, as in all
other cases of compact among sovereign parties without any common judge,
each had an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the infraction
as of the mode and measures of redress. This was the stand which South
Carolina took in opposition to the Force Bill of President Jackson's
administration.[3]
A state convention of South Carolina was called which passed an
ordinance nullifying the tariff law of the United States and declaring
that, if any attempt were made to collect customs duties under it by
force, that state would consider herself absolved from all allegiance to
the Union and would proceed at once to organize a separate government.
President Jackson was determined to exercise force, and would have done
so had not Congress, under the lead of Henry Clay, passed a compromise
tariff bill which enabled South Carolina to repeal her ordinance and say
that she had gained the substantial part of her contention.
Despite the later speeches of Webster, the doctrine of nullification had
a new birth in Massachusetts in 1845, the note of discord having been
called forth by the proposed admission of Texas into the Union. In that
year the legislature passed and the governor approved resolutions
declaring that the powers of Congress did not embrace a case of the
admission of a foreign state or a foreign territory into the Union by an
act of legislation and "such an act would have no binding power whatever
on the people of Massachusetts." This was a fresh outcropping of the
bitterness which had prevailed in the New England States against the
acquisition of Louisiana.
Thus it appears that, although the Constitution did create courts to
decide all disputes arising under it, the particularism which previously
prevailed continued to exist. Nationalism was an aftergrowth proceeding
from the habit into which the people fell of finding their common centre
of gravity at Washington City, and of viewing it as the place where the
American name and fame were embodied and emblazoned to the world. During
the first half-century the North and the South were changing coats from
time to time on the subject of state sovereignty, but meanwhile the
Constitution itself was working silently and imperceptibly in the North
to undermine particularism and to strengthen nationalism. It had
accomplished its educational work in the early thirties when it found
its complete expression in Webster's reply to Hayne. But the South
believed just as firmly that Hayne was the victor in that contest, as
the North believed that Webster was. Hayne's speech was not generally
read in the North either then or later. It was not inferior, in the
essential qualities of dignity, courtesy, legal lore, and oratorical
force, to that of his great antagonist. Webster here met a foeman worthy
of his steel.
In the South the pecuniary interests bottomed on slavery offset and
neutralized the unifying process that was ripening in the North. The
slavery question entered into the debate between Webster and Calhoun in
1833 sufficiently to show that it lay underneath the other questions
discussed. Calhoun, in the speech referred to, reproached Forsyth, of
Georgia, for dullness in not seeing how state rights and slavery were
dovetailed together and how the latter depended on the former.
That African slavery was the most direful curse that ever afflicted any
civilized country may now be safely affirmed. It had its beginning in
our country in the year 1619 at Jamestown, Virginia, where a Dutch
warship short of provisions exchanged fourteen negroes for a supply
thereof. Slavery of both Indians and negroes already existed in the West
Indies and was regarded with favor by the colonists and their home
governments. It began in Massachusetts in 1637 as a consequence of
hostilities with the aborigines, the slaves being captives taken in war.
They were looked upon by the whites as heathen and were treated
according to precedents found in the Old Testament for dealing with the
enemies of Jehovah. In order that they might not escape from servitude
they were sent to the West Indies to be exchanged for negroes, and this
slave trade was not restricted to captives taken in war, but was applied
to any red men who could be safely seized and shipped away.
From these small beginnings slavery spread over all the colonies from
Massachusetts to Georgia and lasted in all of them for a century and a
half, i.e., until after the close of the Revolutionary War. Then it
began to lose ground in the Northern States. Public sentiment turned
against it in Massachusetts, but all attempts to abolish it there by act
of the legislature failed. Its death-blow was given by a judicial
decision in 1783 in a case where a master was prosecuted, convicted, and
fined forty shillings for beating a slave.[4]
Public opinion sustained this judgment, although there had been no
change in the law since the time when the Pequot Indians were sent by
shiploads to the Bermudas to be exchanged for negroes. If masters could
not punish their slaves in their discretion,--if slaves had any rights
which white men were bound to respect,--slavery was virtually dead. No
law could kill it more effectually.
In one way and another the emancipation movement extended southward to
and including Pennsylvania in the later years of the eighteenth century.
Nearly all the statesmen of the Revolution looked upon the institution
with disfavor and desired its extinction. Thomas Jefferson favored
gradual emancipation in Virginia, to be coupled with deportation of the
emancipated blacks, because he feared trouble if the two races were
placed upon an equality in the then slaveholding states. He labored to
prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories, and he very
nearly succeeded. In the year 1784 he reported an ordinance in the
Congress of the Confederation to organize all the unoccupied territory,
both north and south of the Ohio River, in ten subdivisions, in all of
which slavery should be forever prohibited, and this ordinance failed of
adoption by only one vote. Six states voted in the affirmative. Seven
were necessary. Only one representative of New Jersey happened to be
present, whereas two was the smallest number that could cast the vote of
any state. If one other member from New Jersey had been there, the
Jeffersonian ordinance of 1784 would have passed; slavery would have
been restricted to the seaboard states which it then occupied, and would
never have drawn the sword against the Union, and the Civil War would
not have taken place.[5]
After the emancipation movement came to a pause, at the southern border
of Pennsylvania, the fact became apparent that there was a dividing line
between free states and slave states, and a feeling grew up in both
sections that neither of them ought to acquire a preponderance of power
and mastery over the other. The slavery question was not concerned with
this dispute, but a habit grew up of admitting new states to the Union
in pairs, in order to maintain a balance of power in the national
Senate. Thus Kentucky and Vermont offset each other, then Tennessee and
Ohio, then Louisiana and Indiana, then Mississippi and Illinois.
In 1819, Alabama, a new slave state, was admitted to the Union and there
was no new free state to balance it. The Territory of Missouri, in which
slavery existed, was applying for admission also. While Congress was
considering the Missouri bill, Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, with a view
of preserving the balance of power, offered an amendment providing for
the gradual emancipation of slaves in the proposed state, and
prohibiting the introduction of additional slaves. This amendment was
adopted by the House by a sectional vote, nearly all the Northern
members voting for it and the Southern ones against it, but it was
rejected by the Senate.
In the following year the Missouri question came up afresh, and Senator
Thomas, of Illinois, proposed, as a compromise, that Missouri should be
admitted to the Union with slavery, but that in all the remaining
territory north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes north latitude, slavery
should be forever prohibited. This amendment was adopted in the Senate
by 24 to 20, and in the House by 90 to 87. Of the affirmative votes in
the House only fourteen were from the North, and nearly all of these
fourteen members became so unpopular at home that they lost their seats
in the next election. The Missouri Compromise was generally considered a
victory for the South, but one great Southerner considered it the
death-knell of the Union. Thomas Jefferson was still living, at the age
of seventy-seven. He saw what this sectional rift portended, and he
wrote to John Holmes, one of his correspondents, under date of April 22,
1820:
This momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night,
awakened me and filled me with terror. I considered it at once
as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the
moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A
geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral
and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions
of men, will never be obliterated, and every new irritation
will mark it deeper and deeper.
Nearly all of the emancipationists, during the decade following the
adoption of the Compromise, were in the slaveholding states, since the
evil had its seat there. The Colonization Society's headquarters were
in Washington City. Its president, Bushrod Washington, was a Virginian,
and James Madison, Henry Clay, and John Randolph, leading Southerners,
were its active supporters. The only newspaper devoted specially to the
cause (the _Genius of Universal Emancipation_), edited by Benjamin Lundy
and William Lloyd Garrison, was published in the city of Baltimore. This
paper was started in 1829, but it was short-lived. Mr. Garrison soon
perceived that colonization, depending upon voluntary emancipation
alone, would never bring slavery to an end, since emancipation was
doubtful and sporadic, while the natural increase of slaves was certain
and vastly greater than their possible deportation. For this reason he
began to advocate emancipation without regard to colonization. This
policy was so unpopular in Maryland and Virginia that his subscription
list fell nearly to zero, and this compelled the discontinuance of the
paper and his removal to another sphere of activity. He returned to his
native state, Massachusetts, and there started another newspaper,
entitled the _Liberator_, in 1831. The first anti-slavery crusade in the
North thus had its beginning. It did not take the form of a political
party. It was an agitation, an awakening of the public conscience. Its
tocsin was immediate emancipation, as opposed to emancipation
conditioned upon deportation.
The slaveholders were alarmed by this new movement at the North. They
thought that it aimed to incite slave insurrection. The governor of
South Carolina made it the subject of a special message. The legislature
of Georgia passed and the governor signed resolutions offering a reward
of $5000 to anybody who would bring Mr. Garrison to that state to be
tried for sedition. The mayor of Boston was urged by prominent men in
the South to suppress the _Liberator_, although the paper was then so
obscure at home that the mayor had never seen a copy of it, or even
heard of its existence. The fact that there was any organized expression
of anti-slavery thought anywhere was first made generally known at the
North by the extreme irritation of the South; and when the temper of the
latter became known, the vast majority of Northern people sided with
their Southern brethren. They were opposed to anything which seemed
likely to lead to slave insurrection or to a disruption of the Union.
The abolitionist agitation seemed to be a provocation to both. Hence
arose anger and mob violence against the abolitionists everywhere. This
feeling took the shape of a common understanding not to countenance any
discussion of the slavery question in any manner or anywhere. The
execution of this tacit agreement fell for the most part into the hands
of the disorderly element of society, but disapproval of the Garrisonian
crusade was expressed by men of the highest character in the New England
States, such as William Ellery Channing and Dr. Francis Wayland. The
latter declined to receive the _Liberator_, when it was sent to him
gratuitously.
* * * * *
What was going on in the South during the thirties and forties of the
last century? There were varying shades of opinion and mixed motives and
fluctuating political currents. In the first place cotton-growing had
been made profitable by the invention of the cotton-gin. This machine
for separating the seeds from the fibre of the cotton plant caused an
industrial revolution in the world, and its moral consequences were no
less sweeping. It changed the slaveholder's point of view of the whole
slavery question. The previously prevailing idea that slavery was
morally wrong, and an evil to both master and slave, gradually gave way
to the belief that it was beneficial to both, that it was an agency of
civilization and a means of bringing the blessings of Christianity to
the benighted African. This change of sentiment in the South, which
became very marked in the early thirties, has been ascribed to the bad
language of the abolitionists of the North. People said that the prime
cause of the trouble was that Garrison and his followers did not speak
easy. They were too vociferous. They used language calculated to make
Southerners angry and to stir up slave insurrection. But how could
anybody draw the line between different tones of voice and different
forms of expression? Thomas Jefferson was not a speak-easy. He said that
one hour of slavery was fraught with more misery than ages of that which
led us to take up arms against Great Britain. If Garrison ever said
anything more calculated to incite slaves to insurrection than that, I
cannot recall it. On the other hand, Elijah Lovejoy, at Alton, Illinois,
was a speak-easy. He did not use any violent language, but he was put to
death by a mob for making preparations to publish a newspaper in which
slavery should be discussed in a reasonable manner, if there was such a
manner.
Nevertheless, the Garrisonian movement was erroneously interpreted at
the South as an attempt to incite slave insurrection with the attendant
horrors of rapine and bloodshed. There were no John Browns then, and
Garrison himself was a non-resistant, but since insurrection was a
possible consequence of agitation, the Southern people demanded that the
agitation should be put down by force. As that could not be done in any
lawful way, and since unlawful means were ineffective, they considered
themselves under a constant threat of social upheaval and destruction.
The repeated declaration of Northern statesmen that there never would
be any outside interference with slavery in the states where it existed,
did not have any quieting effect upon them. The fight over the Missouri
Compromise had convinced them that the North would prevent, if possible,
the extension of slavery to the new territories, and that this meant
confining the institution to a given space, where it would be eventually
smothered. It might last a long time in its then boundaries, but it
would finally reach a limit where its existence would depend upon the
forbearance of its enemies. Then the question which perplexed Thomas
Jefferson would come up afresh: "What shall be done with the blacks?"
Mr. Garrott Brown, of Alabama, a present-day writer of ability and
candor, thinks that the underlying question in the minds of the Southern
people in the forties and fifties of the last century was not chiefly
slavery, but the presence of Africans in large numbers, whether bond or
free. This included the slavery question as a dollar-and-cent
proposition and something more. Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, who lived on a
Georgia plantation in the thirties, said that the chief obstacle to
emancipation was the fact that every able-bodied negro could be sold for
a thousand dollars in the Charleston market. Both fear and cupidity were
actively at work in the Southern mind.
In short, there was already an irrepressible conflict in our land,
although nobody had yet used those words. There was a fixed opinion in
the North that slavery was an evil which ought not to be extended and
enlarged; that the same reasons existed for curtailing it as for
stopping the African slave trade. There was a growing opinion in the
South that such extension was a vital necessity and that the South in
contending for it was contending for existence. The prevailing thought
in that quarter was that the Southern people were on the defensive,
that they were resisting aggression. In this feeling they were sincere
and they gave expression to it in very hot temper.
General W. T. Sherman, who was at the head of an institution of learning
for boys in Louisiana in 1859, felt that he was treading on underground
fires. In December of that year he wrote to Thomas Ewing, Jr.:
Negroes in the great numbers that exist here must of necessity
be slaves. Theoretical notions of humanity and religion cannot
shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value
and cannot be dispensed with. Still, of course, I wish it never
had existed, for it does make mischief. No power on earth can
restrain opinion elsewhere and these opinions expressed beget a
vindictive feeling. The mere dread of revolt, sedition, or
external interference makes men, ordinarily calm, almost mad.
I, of course, do not debate the question, and moderate as my
views are, I feel that I am suspected, and if I do not actually
join in the praises of slavery I may be denounced as an
abolitionist.[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. H. C. Lodge, in his _Life of Daniel Webster_, says, touching the
debate with Hayne in 1830:
"When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of states at
Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of states in popular
conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country,
from Washington and Hamilton, on the one side, to George Clinton and
George Mason, on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but
an experiment entered upon by the states, and from which each and every
state had the right to peaceably withdraw, a right which was very likely
to be exercised."
Mr. Gaillard Hunt, author of the _Life of James Madison_, and editor of
his writings, has published recently a confidential memorandum dated May
11, 1794, written by John Taylor of Caroline for Mr. Madison's
information, giving an account of a long and solemn interview between
himself and Rufus King and Oliver Ellsworth, in which the two latter
affirmed that, by reason of differences of opinion between the East and
the South, as to the scope and functions of government, the Union could
not last long. Therefore they considered it best to have a dissolution
at once, by mutual consent, rather than by a less desirable mode.
Taylor, on the other hand, thought that the Union should be supported if
possible, but if not possible he agreed that an amicable separation was
preferable. Madison wrote at the bottom of this paper the words: "The
language of K and E probably _in terrorem_," and laid it away so
carefully that it never saw the light until the year 1905.
[2] _Letters of Daniel Webster_, edited by C. W. Van Tyne, p. 67. Mr.
Van Tyne says that Webster "here advocated a doctrine hardly
distinguishable from nullification."
[3] Referring to this speech of Calhoun and to Webster's reply, Mr.
Lodge says:
"Whatever the people of the United States understood the Constitution to
mean in 1789, there can be no question that a majority in 1833 regarded
it as a fundamental law and not a compact,--an opinion which has now
become universal. But it was quite another thing to argue that what the
Constitution had come to mean was what it meant when it was adopted."
See also Pendleton's _Life of Alexander H. Stephens_, chap. XI.
[4] G. H. Moore's _History of Slavery in Massachusetts_, p. 215.
[5] Jefferson was cut to the heart by this failure. Commenting on an
article entitled "Etats Unis" in the _Encylopedie_, written by M. de
Meusnier, referring to his proposed anti-slavery ordinance, he said:
"The voice of a single individual of the State which was divided, or one
of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this
abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see
the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven
was silent in that awful moment."
[6] _General W. T. Sherman as College President_, p. 88.
THE LIFE OF LYMAN TRUMBULL
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE
The subject of this memoir was born in Colchester, Connecticut, October
12, 1813. The Trumbull family was the most illustrious in the state,
embracing three governors and other distinguished men. All were
descendants of John Trumbull (or rather "Trumble"[7]), a cooper by
trade, and his wife, Ellenor Chandler, of Newcastle, England, who
migrated to Massachusetts in 1639, and settled first in Roxbury and
removed to Rowley in the following year. Two sons were born to them in
Newcastle-on-Tyne: Beriah, 1637 (died in infancy), and John, 1639.
The latter at the age of thirty-one removed to Suffield, Connecticut. He
married and had four sons: John, Joseph, Ammi, and Benoni.
Captain Benoni Trumbull, married to Sarah Drake and settled in Lebanon,
Connecticut, had a son, Benjamin, born May 11, 1712.
This Benjamin, married to Mary Brown of Hebron, Connecticut, had a son,
Benjamin, born December 19, 1735.
This son was graduated at Yale College in 1759, and studied for the
ministry; he was ordained in 1760 at North Haven, Connecticut, where he
officiated nearly sixty years, his preaching being interrupted only by
the Revolutionary War, in which he served both as soldier and as
chaplain. He was the author of the standard colonial history of
Connecticut. He was married to Miss Martha Phelps in 1760. They had two
sons and five daughters.
The elder son, Benjamin, born in North Haven, September 24, 1769, became
a lawyer and married Elizabeth Mather, of Saybrook, Connecticut, March
15, 1800, and settled in Colchester, Connecticut. The wife was a
descendant of Rev. Richard Mather, who migrated from Liverpool, England,
to Massachusetts in 1635, and was the father of Increase Mather and
grandfather of Cotton Mather, both celebrated in the church history of
New England. Eleven children were born to these parents, of whom Lyman
was the seventh. This Benjamin Trumbull was a graduate of Yale College,
representative in the legislature, judge for the probate districts of
East Haddam and Colchester, and died in Henrietta, Jackson County,
Michigan, June 14, 1850, aged eighty-one. His wife died October 20,
1828, in her forty-seventh year. Lyman Trumbull was thus in the seventh
generation of the Trumbulls in America.[8]
Five brothers and two sisters of Lyman reached maturity. A family of
this size could not be supported by the fees earned by a country lawyer
in the early part of the nineteenth century. The only other resource
available was agriculture. Thus the Trumbull children began life on a
farm and drew their nourishment from the soil cultivated by their own
labor. It is recorded that, although the father and the grandfather of
Lyman were graduates of Yale College, chill penury prevented him from
having similar advantages of education. His schooling was obtained at
Bacon Academy, in Colchester, which was of high grade, and second only
to Yale among the educational institutions of the state. Here the boy
Lyman took the lessons in mathematics that were customary in the
academies of that period, and became conversant with Virgil and Cicero
in Latin and with Xenophon, Homer, and the New Testament in Greek.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LYMAN TRUMBULL, COLCHESTER, CONN.]
The opportunities to put an end to one's existence are so common to
American youth that it is cause for wonder that so many of them reach
mature years. Young Trumbull was not lacking in such facilities. The
following incident is well authenticated, being narrated in part in his
own handwriting:
When about thirteen years old he was playing ball one cold day
in the family yard. The well had a low curbing around it and
was covered by a round flat stone with a round hole in the top
of it. He ran towards the well for the ball, which he picked up
and threw quickly. As he did so his foot slipped on the ice and
he went head first down the well. His recollection of the
immediate details is vague, but he did not break his neck or
stun himself on the rocky sides, but appears to have gone down
like a diver, and somehow managed to turn in the narrow space
and come up head first. The well had an old-fashioned sweep
with a bucket on it, which his brothers promptly lowered and he
was hoisted out, drenched and cold, but apparently not
otherwise injured.
He attended school and worked on the farm until he was eighteen years of
age when he earned some money by teaching the district school one year
at Portland, Connecticut. At the age of nineteen he taught school one
winter in New Jersey, returning to Colchester the following summer. He
had established a character for rectitude, industry, modesty, sobriety,
and good manners, so that when, in his twentieth year (1833), he decided
to go to the state of Georgia to seek employment as a school-teacher,
nearly all the people in the village assembled to wish him godspeed on
that long journey, which was made by schooner, sailing from the
Connecticut River to Charleston, South Carolina. The voyage was
tempestuous but safe, and he arrived at Charleston with one hundred
dollars in his pocket which his father had given him as a start in life.
This money he speedily returned out of his earnings because he thought
his father needed it more than himself.
A memorandum made by himself records that "on the evening of the day
when he arrived at Charleston a nullification meeting was held in a
large warehouse. The building was crowded, so he climbed up on a beam
overhead and from that elevated position overlooked a Southern audience
and heard two of the most noted orators in the South, Governor Hayne,
and John C. Calhoun, then a United States Senator. He remembers little
of the impression they made upon a youth of twenty, except that he
thought Hayne an eloquent speaker."
From Charleston he went by railroad (the first one he had ever seen and
one of the earliest put in operation in the United States) to a point on
the Savannah River opposite Augusta, Georgia, and thence by stage to
Milledgeville, which was then the capital of Georgia. From Milledgeville
he walked seventy-five miles to Pike County, where he had some hope of
finding employment. Being disappointed there he continued his journey
on foot to Greenville, Meriwether County, where he had more success even
than he had expected, for he obtained a position as principal of the
Greenville Academy at a salary of two hundred dollars per year in
addition to the fees paid by the pupils. This position he occupied for
three years.
While at Greenville he employed his leisure hours reading law in the
office of Hiram Warner, judge of the superior court of Georgia,
afterwards judge of the supreme court of the state and member of
Congress. In this way he acquired the rudiments of the profession. As
soon as he had gained sufficient capital to make a start in life
elsewhere, he bought a horse, and, in March, 1837, took the trail
through the "Cherokee Tract" toward the Northwest. This trail was a
pathway formed by driving cattle and swine through the forest from
Kentucky and Tennessee to Georgia. Dr. Parks, of Greenville, accompanied
Trumbull during a portion of the journey. They traveled unarmed but
safely, although Trumbull carried a thousand dollars on his person, the
surplus earnings of his three years in Georgia. For a young man of
twenty-four years without a family this was affluence in those days.
Through Kentucky, Trumbull continued his journey without any companion
and made his entrance into Illinois at Shawneetown, on the Ohio River,
where he presented letters of introduction from his friends in Georgia
and was cordially welcomed. After a brief stay at that place he
continued his journey to Belleville, St. Clair County, bearing letters
of introduction from his Shawneetown friends to Adam W. Snyder and
Alfred Cowles, prominent members of the bar at Belleville. Both received
him with kindness and encouraged him to make his home there. This he
decided to do, but he first made a visit to his parental home in
Colchester, going on horseback by way of Jackson, Michigan, near which
town three of his older brothers, David, Erastus, and John, had settled
as farmers.
Returning to Belleville in August, 1837, he entered the law office of
Hon. John Reynolds, ex-governor of the state, who was then a
Representative in Congress and was familiarly known as the "Old Ranger."
Reynolds held, at one time and another, almost every office that the
people of Illinois could bestow, but his fame rests on historical
writings composed after he had withdrawn from public life.[9]
For how long a time Trumbull's connection with Governor Reynolds
continued, our records do not say, but we know that he had an office of
his own in Belleville three years later, and that his younger brother
George had joined him as a student and subsequently became his partner.
The practice of the legal profession in those days was accomplished by
"riding on the circuit," usually on horseback, from one county seat to
another, following the circuit judge, and trying such cases as could be
picked up by practitioners en route, or might be assigned to them by the
judge. Court week always brought together a crowd of litigants and
spectators, who came in from the surrounding country with their teams
and provisions, and often with their wives and children, and who lived
in their own covered wagons. The trial of causes was the principal
excitement of the year, and the opposing lawyers were "sized up" by
juries and audience with a pretty close approach to accuracy. After
adjournment for the day, the lawyers, judges, plaintiffs, defendants,
and leading citizens mingled together in the country tavern, talked
politics, made speeches or listened to them, cracked jokes and told
stories till bedtime, and took up the unfinished lawsuit, or a new one,
the next day. In short, court week was circus, theatre, concert, and
lyceum to the farming population, but still more was it a school of
politics, where they formed opinions on public affairs and on the mental
calibre of the principal actors therein.
Two letters written by Trumbull in 1837 to his father in Colchester have
escaped the ravages of time. Neither envelopes nor stamps existed then.
Each letter consisted of four pages folded in such a manner that the
central part of the fourth page, which was left blank, received the
address on one side and a wafer or a daub of sealing wax on the other.
The rate of postage was twenty-five cents per letter, and the writers
generally sought to get their money's worth by taking a large sheet of
paper and filling all the available space. Prepayment of postage was
optional, but the privilege of paying in advance was seldom availed of,
the writers not incurring the risk of losing both letters and money.
Irregularity in the mails is noted by Trumbull, who mentions that a
letter from Colchester was fifteen days en route, while a newspaper made
the same distance in ten.
In a letter dated October 9, 1837, he tells his father that he is
already engaged in a law case involving the ownership of a house. If he
finds that he can earn his living in the practice of law, he shall like
Belleville very much. In the same missive he tells his sister Julia that
balls and cotillions are frequent in Belleville, and that he had
attended one, but did not dance. It was the first time he had attended a
social gathering since he left home in 1833. He adds, "There are more
girls here than I was aware of. At the private party I attended, there
were about fifteen, all residing in town." The writer was then at the
susceptible age of twenty-four.
The other letter gives an account of the Alton riot and the killing of
Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy. This is one of the few contemporary accounts we
have of that shocking event. Although he was not an eye-witness of the
riot, the facts as stated are substantially correct, and the comments
give us a view of the opinions of the writer at the age of twenty-four,
touching a subject in which he was destined to play an important part.
The letter is subjoined:
BELLEVILLE, SUNDAY, Nov. 12, 1837.
DEAR FATHER: Since my last to you there has been a mob to put
down Abolitionism, in Alton, thirty-five miles northwest of
this place, in which two persons were killed and six or seven
badly wounded. The immediate cause of the riot was the attempt
by a Mr. Lovejoy to establish at Alton a religious newspaper in
which the principles of slavery were sometimes discussed. Mr.
Lovejoy was a Presbyterian minister and formerly edited a
newspaper in St. Louis, but having published articles in his
paper in relation to slavery which were offensive to the people
of St. Louis, a mob collected, broke open his office, destroyed
his press and type and scattered it through the streets.
Immediately after this transaction, which was about a year
since, Mr. Lovejoy left St. Louis, and removed to Alton, where
he attempted to re-establish his press, but he had not been
there long before a mob assembled there also, broke into his
office and destroyed his press. In a short time Mr. Lovejoy
ordered another press which, soon after its arrival in Alton,
was taken from the warehouse (where it was deposited), by a
mob, and in like manner destroyed. Again he ordered still
another press, which arrived in Alton on the night of the 7th
inst., and was safely deposited in a large stone warehouse four
or five storeys high.
Previous to the arrival of this press, the citizens of Alton
held several public meetings and requested Mr. L. to desist
from attempting to establish his press there, but he refused to
do so. Heretofore no resistance had ever been offered to the
mob, but on the night of the 8th inst., as it was supposed that
another attempt might possibly be made to destroy the press,
Mr. L. and some 18 or 20 of his friends armed themselves and
remained in the warehouse, where Mr. Gilman, one of the owners
of the house, addressed the mob from a window, and urged them
to desist, told them that there were several armed men in the
house and that they were determined to defend their property.
The mob demanded the press, which not being given them, they
commenced throwing stones at the house and attempted to get
into it. Those from within then fired and killed a man of the
name of Bishop. The mob then procured arms, but were unable to
get into the house. At last they determined on firing it, to
which end, as it was stone, they had to get on the roof, which
they did by means of a ladder. The firing during all this time,
said to be about an hour, was continued on both sides. Mr.
Lovejoy having made his appearance near one of the doors was
instantly shot down, receiving four balls at the same moment.
Those within agreed to surrender if their lives would be
protected, and soon threw open the doors and fled. Several
shots were afterward fired, but no one was seriously injured.
The fire was then extinguished and the press taken and
destroyed.
So ended this awful catastrophe which, as you may well suppose,
has created great excitement through this section of the
country. Mr. Lovejoy is said to have been a very worthy man,
and both friends and foes bear testimony to the excellence of
his private character. Here, the course of the mob is almost
universally reprobated, for whatever may have been the
sentiments of Mr. Lovejoy, they certainly did not justify the
mob taking his life. It is understood here that Mr. L. was
never in the habit of publishing articles of an insurrectionary
character, but he reasoned against slavery as being sinful, as
a moral and political evil.
His death and the manner in which he was slain will make
thousands of Abolitionists, and far more than his writings
would have made had he published his paper an hundred years.
This transaction is looked on here, as not only a disgrace to
Alton, but to the whole State. As much as I am opposed to the
immediate emancipation of the slaves and to the doctrine of
Abolitionism, yet I am more opposed to mob violence and
outrage, and had I been in Alton, I would have cheerfully
marched to the rescue of Mr. Lovejoy and his property.
Yours very affectionately,
LYMAN TRUMBULL.
After three years of riding on the circuit, Trumbull was elected, in
1840, a member of the lower house of the state legislature from St.
Clair County. In politics he was a Democrat as was his father before
him. This was the twelfth general assembly of the state. Among his
fellow members were Abraham Lincoln, E. D. Baker, William A. Richardson,
John J. Hardin, John. A. McClernand, William H. Bissell, Thomas
Drummond, and Joseph Gillespie, all of whom were destined to higher
positions.
Trumbull was now twenty-seven years of age. He soon attracted notice as
a debater. His style of speaking was devoid of ornament, but logical,
clear-cut, and dignified, and it bore the stamp of sincerity. He had a
well-furnished mind, and was never at loss for words. Nor was he ever
intimidated by the number or the prestige of his opponents. He possessed
calm intellectual courage, and he never declined a challenge to debate;
but his manner toward his opponents was always that of a high-bred
gentleman.
On the 27th of February, 1841, Stephen A. Douglas, who was Trumbull's
senior by six months, resigned the office of secretary of state of
Illinois to take a seat on the supreme bench, and Trumbull was
appointed to the vacancy. There had been a great commotion in state
politics over this office before Trumbull was appointed to it. Under the
constitution of the state, the governor had the right to appoint the
secretary, but nothing was said in that instrument about the power of
removal. Alexander P. Field had been appointed secretary by Governor
Edwards in 1828, and had remained in office under Governors Reynolds and
Duncan. Originally a strong Jackson man, he was now a Whig. When
Governor Carlin (Democrat) was elected in 1838 he decided to make a new
appointment, but Field refused to resign and denied the governor's right
to remove him. The State Senate sided with Field by refusing to confirm
the new appointee, John A. McClernand. After the adjournment of the
legislature, the governor reappointed McClernand, who sued out a writ of
_quo warranto_ to oust Field. The supreme court, consisting of four
members, three of whom were Whigs, decided in favor of Field. The
Democrats then determined to reform the judiciary. They passed a bill in
the legislature adding five new judges to the supreme bench. "It was,"
says historian Ford, "confessedly a violent and somewhat revolutionary
measure and could never have succeeded except in times of great party
excitement." In the mean time Field had retired and the governor had
appointed Douglas secretary of state, and Douglas was himself appointed
one of the five new members of the supreme court. Accordingly he
resigned, after holding the office only two months, and Trumbull was
appointed to the vacancy without his own solicitation or desire.
Two letters written by Trumbull in 1842 acquaint us with the fact that
his brother Benjamin had removed with his family from Colchester to
Springfield and was performing routine duties in the office of the
secretary of state, while Trumbull occupied his own time for the most
part in the practice of law before the supreme court. He adds: "I make
use of one of the committee rooms in the State House as a sleeping-room,
so you see I almost live in the State House, and am the only person who
sleeps in it. The court meets here and all the business I do is within
the building." Not quite all, for in another letter (November 27, 1842)
he confides to his sister Julia that a certain young lady in Springfield
was as charming as ever, but that he had not offered her his hand in
marriage, and that even if he should do so, it was not certain that she
would accept it.
Trumbull had held the office of secretary of state two years when his
resignation was requested by Governor Carlin's successor in office,
Thomas Ford, author of a _History of Illinois from 1814 to 1847_. In his
book Ford tells his reasons for asking Trumbull's resignation. They had
formed different opinions respecting an important question of public
policy, and Trumbull, although holding a subordinate office, had made a
public speech in opposition to the governor's views.[10] Of course he
did this on his own responsibility as a citizen and a member of the same
party as the governor. He acknowledged the governor's right to remove
him, and he made no complaint against the exercise of it.
The question of public policy at issue between Ford and Trumbull related
to the State Bank, which had failed in February, 1842, and whose
circulating notes, amounting to nearly $3,000,000, had fallen to a
discount of fifty cents on the dollar. Acts legalizing the bank's
suspension had been passed from time to time and things had gone from
bad to worse. At this juncture a new bill legalizing the suspension for
six months longer was prepared by the governor and at his instance was
reported favorably by the finance committee of the House. Trumbull
opposed this measure, and made a public speech against it. He maintained
that it was disgraceful and futile to prolong the life of this bankrupt
concern. He demanded that the bank be put in liquidation without further
delay.
When Trumbull's resignation as secretary became known, the Democratic
party at the state capital was rent in twain. Thirty-two of its most
prominent members, including Virgil Hickox, Samuel H. Treat, Ebenezer
Peck, Mason Brayman, and Robert Allen, took this occasion to tender him
a public dinner in a letter expressing their deep regret at his removal
and their desire to show the respect in which they held him for his
conduct of the office, and for his social and gentlemanly qualities. A
copy of this invitation was sent to the _State Register_, the party
organ, for publication. The publishers refused to insert it, on the
ground that it "would lead to a controversy out of which no good could
possibly arise, and probably much evil to _the cause_." Thereupon the
signers of the invitation started a new paper under the watchword "Fiat
Justitia, Ruat Coelum," entitled the _Independent Democrat_, of which
Number 1, Volume 1, was a broadside containing the correspondence
between Trumbull and the intending diners, together with sarcastic
reflections on the time-serving publishers of the _State Register_.
Trumbull's reply to the invitation, however, expressed his sincere
regret that he had made arrangements, which could not be changed, to
depart from Springfield before the time fixed for the dinner. He
returned to Belleville and resumed the practice of his profession.
Charles Dickens was then making his first visit to the United States,
and he happened to pass through Belleville while making an excursion
from St. Louis to Looking Glass Prairie. His party had arranged
beforehand for a noonday meal at Belleville, of which place, as it
presented itself to the eye of a stranger in 1842, he gives the
following glimpse:
Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses huddled
together in the very heart of the bush and swamp. Many of them
had singularly bright doors of red and yellow, for the place
had lately been visited by a traveling painter "who got along,"
as I was told, "by eating his way." The criminal court was
sitting and was at that moment trying some criminals for
horse-stealing, with whom it would most likely go hard; for
live stock of all kinds, being necessarily much exposed in the
woods, is held by the community in rather higher value than
human life; and for this reason juries generally make a point
of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty,
whether or no. The horses belonging to the bar, the judge and
witnesses, were tied to temporary racks set roughly in the
road, by which is to be understood a forest path nearly
knee-deep in mud and slime.
There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels in
America, had its large dining-room for a public table. It was
an odd, shambling, low-roofed outhouse, half cow-shed and half
kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas tablecloth, and tin
sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at
supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and
some eatables prepared and they were by this time nearly ready.
He had ordered "wheat bread and chicken fixings" in preference
to "corn bread and common doings." The latter kind of refection
includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends broiled
ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of
that nature as may be supposed by a tolerably wide poetical
construction "to fix" a chicken comfortably in the digestive
organs of any lady or gentleman.[11]
A few months later, Trumbull made another journey to Springfield to be
joined in marriage to Miss Julia M. Jayne, a daughter of Dr. Gershom
Jayne, a physician of that city--a young lady who had received her
education at Monticello Seminary, with whom he passed twenty-five years
of unalloyed happiness. The marriage took place on the 21st of June,
1843, and Norman B. Judd served as groomsman. Miss Jayne had served in
the capacity of bridesmaid to Mary Todd at her marriage to Abraham
Lincoln on the 4th of November preceding. There was a wedding journey to
Trumbull's old home in Connecticut, by steamboat from St. Louis to
Wheeling, Virginia, by stage over the mountains to Cumberland, Maryland,
and thence by rail via Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. After
visiting his own family, a journey was made to Mrs. Trumbull's relatives
at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, including her great-grandfather, a marvel
of industry and longevity, ninety-two years of age, a cooper by trade,
who was still making barrels with his own hands. This fact is mentioned
in a letter from Trumbull to his father, dated Barry, Michigan, August
20, 1843, at which place he had stopped on his homeward journey to visit
his brothers. One page of this letter is given up to glowing accounts
of the infant children of these brothers. And here it is fitting to say
that all these faded and time-stained epistles to his father and his
brothers and sisters, from first to last, are marked by tender
consideration and unvarying love and generosity. Not a shadow passed
between them.
The return journey from Michigan to Belleville was made by stage-coach.
October 12, 1843, Mrs. Trumbull writes to her husband's sisters in
Colchester that she has arrived in her new home. "We are boarding in a
private family," she says, "have two rooms which Mrs. Blackwell, the
landlady, has furnished neatly, and for my part, I am anticipating a
very delightful winter. Lyman is now at court, which keeps him very much
engaged, and I am left to enjoy myself as best I may until G. comes
around this afternoon to play chess with me."
May 4, 1844, the first child was born to Lyman and Julia Trumbull, a
son, who took the name of his father, but died in infancy. July 2, 1844,
Trumbull writes to his father that the most disastrous flood ever known,
since the settlement of the country by the whites, has devastated the
bottom lands of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers. He also
gives an account of the killing of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, who
was murdered by a mob in the jail at Carthage, Hancock County, after he
had surrendered himself to the civil authorities on promise of a fair
trial and protection against violence; and says that he has rented a
house which he shall occupy soon, and invites his sister Julia to come
to Belleville and make her home in his family.
In 1845, Benjamin Trumbull, Sr., sold his place in Colchester and
removed with his two daughters to Henrietta, Michigan, where three of
his sons were already settled as farmers. It appears from letters that
passed between the families that none of the brothers in Michigan kept
horses, the farm work being done by oxen exclusively. The nearest church
was in the town of Jackson, but the sisters were not able to attend the
services for want of a conveyance. They were prevented by the same
difficulty from forming acquaintances in their new habitat. In a letter
to his father, dated October 26, Trumbull delicately alludes to the
defect in the housekeeping arrangements in Michigan, and says that
anything needed to make his father and sisters comfortable and
contented, that he can supply, will never be withheld. His brother
George writes a few days later offering a contribution of fifty dollars
to buy a horse, saying that good ones can be bought in Illinois at that
price. George adds: "Our papers say considerable about running Lyman for
governor. No time is fixed for the convention yet, and I don't think he
has made up his mind whether to be a candidate or not."
The greatest drawback of the Trumbull family at this time, and, indeed,
of all the inhabitants roundabout, was sickness. Almost every letter
opened tells either of a recovery from a fever, or of sufferings during
a recent one, or apprehensions of a new one and from these harassing
visitations no one was exempt. In a letter of October 26 we read:
We have all been sick this fall and this whole region of
country has been more sickly than ever before known. George and
myself both had attacks of bilious fever early in September
which lasted about ten days. Since then Julia has had two
attacks, the last of which was quite severe and confined her to
the room nearly two weeks. I also have had a severe attack
about three weeks since, but it was slight. When I was sick we
sent over to St. Louis for Dr. Tiffany, and by some means the
news of our sending there, accompanied by a report that I was
much worse than was really the case, reached Springfield, and
Dr. and Mrs. Jayne came down post haste in about a day and a
half. When they got here, I was downstairs. They only staid
overnight and started back the next morning. They had heard
that I was not expected to live.
In February, 1846, when Trumbull was in his thirty-third year, his
friends presented his name to the Democratic State Convention for the
office of governor of the state. A letter to his father gives the
details of the balloting in the convention. Six candidates were voted
for. On the first ballot he received 56 votes; the next highest
candidate, Augustus C. French, had 47; and the third, John Calhoun, had
44. The historian, John Moses, says that "the choice, in accordance with
a line of precedents which seemed almost to indicate a settled policy,
fell upon him who had achieved least prominence as a party leader, and
whose record had been least conspicuous--Augustus C. French."
A letter from Trumbull to his father says that his defeat was due to the
influence of Governor Ford, whose first choice was Calhoun, but who
turned his following over to French in order to defeat Trumbull. French
was elected, and made a respectable governor. Calhoun subsequently went,
in an official capacity, to Kansas, where he became noted as the chief
ballot-box stuffer of the pro-slavery party in the exciting events of
1856-58.
A letter from Mrs. Trumbull to her father-in-law, May 4, 1846, mentions
the birth of a second son (Walter), then two and a half months old. It
informs him also that her husband has been nominated for Congress by the
Democrats of the First District, the vote in the convention being, Lyman
Trumbull, 24; John Dougherty, 5; Robert Smith, 8. The political issues
in this campaign are obscure, but the result of the election was again
adverse. The supporters of Robert Smith nominated him as a bolting
candidate; the Whigs made no nomination, but supported Smith, who was
elected.
A letter written by Mrs. Trumbull at Springfield, December 16, 1846,
mentions the first election of Stephen A. Douglas as United States
Senator. "A party is to be given in his name," she says, "at the State
House on Friday evening under the direction of Messrs. Webster and
Hickox. The tickets come in beautiful envelopes, and I understand that
Douglas has authorized the gentlemen to expend $50 in music, and
directed the most splendid entertainment that was ever prepared in
Springfield."
A letter to Benjamin Trumbull, Sr., from his son of the same name, who
was cultivating a small farm near Springfield, gives another glimpse of
the family health record, saying that "both Lyman and George have had
chills and fever two or three days this spring"; also, that "Lyman's
child was feeble in consequence of the same malady; and that he
[Benjamin] has been sick so much of the time that he could not do his
Spring planting without hired help, for which Lyman had generously
contributed $20, and offered more."
May 13, 1847, Trumbull writes to his father that he intends to go with
his family and make the latter a visit for the purpose of seeing the
members of the family in Michigan; also in the hope of escaping the
periodical sickness which has afflicted himself and wife and little boy,
and almost every one in Belleville, during several seasons past. As this
periodical sickness was chills and fever, we may assume that it was due
to the prevalence of mosquitoes, of the variety _anopheles_. Half a
century was still to pass ere medical science made this discovery, and
delivered civilized society from the scourge called "malaria."
The journey to Michigan was made. An account (dated Springfield, August
1, 1847) of the return journey is interesting by way of contrast with
the facilities for traveling existing at the present time.
We left Cassopolis Monday about ten o'clock and came the first
48 miles, which brought us to within five miles of La Porte.
The second night we passed at Battstown 45 miles on the road
from La Porte towards Joliet. The third night we passed at
Joliet, distance 40 miles. The fourth night we passed at
Pontiac, having traveled 60 miles to get to a stopping place,
and finding but a poor one at that. The fifth night we were at
Bloomington, distance 40 miles. The sixth day we traveled 43
miles and to within 18 miles of this place; the route we came
from Cassopolis to Springfield is 294 miles, and from Brother
David's about 386 miles. Our expenses for tavern bills from
David's to this place were $17.75. Pretty cheap, I think.
Among other items of interest it may be noted that the rate of postage
had been reduced to ten cents per letter, but stamps had not yet come
into use. The earnings of the Trumbull law firm (Lyman and George) for
the year 1847 were $2300.
In 1847, a new constitution was adopted by the state of Illinois which
reduced the number of judges of the supreme court from nine to three.
The state was divided into three grand divisions, or districts, each to
select one member of the court. After the first election one of the
judges was to serve three years, one six years, and one nine years, at a
compensation of $1200 per year each. These terms were to be decided by
lot, and thereafter the term of each judge should be nine years.
Trumbull was elected judge for the first or southern division in 1848.
His colleagues, chosen at the same time, were Samuel H. Treat and John
D. Caton. He drew the three years' term.
In the year 1849, Trumbull bought a brick house and three acres of
ground, with an orchard of fruit-bearing trees, in the town of Alton,
Madison County, and removed thither with his family. In announcing this
fact to his father the only reason he assigns for his change of
residence is that the inhabitants of Alton are mostly from the Eastern
States. Its population at that time was about 3000; that of Upper Alton,
three miles distant, was 1000. The cost of house and ground, with some
additions and improvements, was $2500, all of which was paid in cash out
of his savings. Incidentally he remarks that he has never borrowed
money, never been in debt, never signed a promissory note, and that he
hopes to pass through life without incurring pecuniary liabilities.[12]
From the tone of the letter in which his change of residence is
announced, the inference is drawn that Trumbull had abandoned his law
practice at Belleville with the expectation of remaining on the bench
for an indefinite period. He accepted a reelection as judge in 1852 for
a term of nine years, yet he resigned a year and a half later because
the salary was insufficient to support his family. Walter B. Scates was
chosen as his successor on the supreme bench. Nearly forty-five years
later, Chief Justice Magruder, of the Illinois supreme court, answering
John M. Palmer's address presenting the memorial of the Chicago Bar
Association on the life and services of Trumbull, recently deceased,
said that no lawyer could read the opinions handed down by the dead
statesman when on the bench, "without being satisfied that the writer
of them was an able, industrious, and fair-minded judge. All his
judicial utterances ... are characterized by clearness of expression,
accuracy of statement, and strength of reasoning. They breathe a spirit
of reverence for the standard authorities and abound in copious
reference to those authorities.... The decisions of the court, when he
spoke as its organ, are to-day regarded as among the most reliable of
its established precedents."
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Stuart's _Life of Jonathan Trumbull_ says that the family name was
spelled "Trumble" until 1766, when the second syllable was changed to
"bull."
[8] Joseph, the second son of the John above mentioned, who had settled
in Suffield, Connecticut, in 1670, removed to Lebanon. He was the father
of Jonathan Trumbull (1710-1785), who was governor of Connecticut during
the Revolutionary War, and who was the original "Brother Jonathan," to
whom General Washington gave that endearing title, which afterwards came
to personify the United States as "John Bull" personifies England.
(Stuart's _Jonathan Trumbull_, p. 697.) His son Jonathan (1740-1809) was
a Representative in Congress, Speaker of the House, Senator of the
United States, and Governor of Connecticut. John Trumbull (1756-1843),
another son of "Brother Jonathan," was a distinguished painter of
historical scenes and of portraits.
[9] Reynolds wrote a _Pioneer History of Illinois from 1637 to 1818_,
and also a larger volume entitled _My Own Times_. The latter is the more
important of the two. Although crabbed in style, it is an admirable
compendium of the social, political, and personal affairs of Illinois
from 1800 to 1850. Taking events at random, in short chapters, without
connection, circumlocution, or ornament, he says the first thing that
comes into his mind in the fewest possible words, makes mistakes of
syntax, but never goes back to correct anything, puts down small things
and great, tells about murders and lynchings, about footraces in which
he took part, and a hundred other things that are usually omitted in
histories, but which throw light on man in the social state, all
interspersed with sound and shrewd judgments on public men and events.
[10] The following correspondence passed between them:
SPRINGFIELD, March 4, 1843.
LYMAN TRUMBULL, ESQ.,
DEAR SIR: It is my desire, in pursuance of the expressed wish of
the Democracy, to make a nomination of Secretary of State, and I
hope you will enable me to do so without embarrassing myself. I
am most respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
THOMAS FORD.
SPRINGFIELD, March 4, 1843.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY, THOMAS FORD:
SIR,--In reply to your note of this date this moment handed me,
I have only to state that I recognize fully your right, at any
time, to make a nomination of Secretary of State.
Yours respectfully,
LYMAN TRUMBULL.
[11] _American Notes_, chap. XIII. The reason why horses were more
precious than human life was that when the frontier farmer lost his
work-team, he faced starvation. Both murder and horse-stealing were then
capital offenses, the latter by the court of Judge Lynch.
[12] Mr. Morris St. P. Thomas, a close friend of Trumbull in his latter
years, a member of his law office, and administrator of his estate, made
the following statement in an interview given at 107 Dearborn Street,
Chicago, June 13, 1910: "Judge Trumbull once told me that he had never
in his life given a promissory note. 'But you do not mean,' said I,
'that in every purchase of real estate you ever made you paid cash
down!' 'I do mean just that,' the Judge replied. 'I never in my life
gave a promissory note.'"
CHAPTER II
SLAVERY IN ILLINOIS
When the territory comprising the state of Illinois passed under control
of the United States, negro slavery existed in the French villages
situated on the so-called American Bottom, a strip of fertile land
extending along the east bank of the Mississippi River from Cahokia on
the north to Kaskaskia on the south, embracing the present counties of
St. Clair, Monroe, and Randolph. The first European settlements had been
made here about 1718, by colonists coming up the great river from
Louisiana, under the auspices of John Law's Company of the Indies.
The earlier occupation of the country by French explorers and Jesuit
priests from Canada had been in the nature of fur-trading and religious
propagandism, rather than permanent colonies, although marriages had
been solemnized in due form between French men and Indian women, and a
considerable number of half-breed children had been born. Five hundred
negro slaves from Santo Domingo were sent up the river in 1718, to work
any gold and silver mines that might be found in the Illinois country.
In fact, slavery of red men existed there to some extent, before the
Africans arrived, the slaves being captives taken in war.
In 1784-85, Thomas Jefferson induced Rev. James Lemen, of Harper's
Ferry, Virginia, to migrate to Illinois in order to organize opposition
to slavery in the Northwest Territory and supplied him with money for
that purpose. Mr. Lemen came to Illinois in 1786 and settled in what is
now Monroe County. He was the founder of the first eight Baptist
churches in Illinois, all of which were pledged to oppose the doctrine
and practice of slavery. Governor William H. Harrison having forwarded
petitions to Congress to allow slavery in the Northwest Territory,
Jefferson wrote to Lemen to go, or send an agent, to Indiana, to get
petitions signed in opposition to Harrison. Lemen did so. A letter of
Lemen, dated Harper's Ferry, December 11, 1782, says that Jefferson then
had the purpose to dedicate the Northwest Territory to freedom.[13]
In 1787, Congress passed an ordinance for the government of the
territory northwest of the river Ohio which had been ceded to the United
States by Virginia. The sixth article of this ordinance prohibited
slavery in said territory. Inasmuch as the rights of persons and
property had been guaranteed by treaties when this region had passed
from France to Great Britain and later to the United States, this
article was generally construed as meaning that no more slaves should be
introduced, and that all children born after the passage of the
ordinance should be free, but that slaves held there prior to 1787
should continue in bondage.
Immigration was mainly from the Southern States. Some of the immigrants
brought slaves with them, and the territorial legislature passed an act
in 1812 authorizing the relation of master and slave under other names.
It declared that it should be lawful for owners of negroes above fifteen
years of age to take them before the clerk of the court of common pleas,
and if a negro should agree to serve for a specified term of years, the
clerk should record him or her as an "indentured servant." If the negro
was under the age of fifteen, the owner might hold him without an
agreement till the age of thirty-five if male, or thirty-two if female.
Children born of negroes owing service by indenture should serve till
the age of thirty if male, and till twenty-eight if female. This was a
plain violation of the Ordinance of 1787 and was a glaring fraud in
other respects. The negroes generally did not understand what they were
agreeing to, and in cases where they did not agree the probable
alternative was a sale to somebody in an adjoining slave state, so that
they really had no choice. The state constitution, adopted in 1818,
prohibited slavery, but recognized the indenture system by providing
that male children born of indentured servants should be free at the age
of twenty-one and females at the age of eighteen. The upshot of the
matter was that there was just enough of the virus of slavery left to
keep the caldron bubbling there for two generations after 1787, although
the Congress of the Confederation supposed that they had then made an
end of it.
This arrangement did not satisfy either the incoming slave-owners or
those already domiciled there. Persistent attempts were made while the
country was still under territorial government, to procure from Congress
a repeal of the sixth article of the Ordinance, but they were defeated
chiefly by the opposition of John Randolph, of Roanoke, Virginia. After
the state was admitted to the Union, the pro-slavery faction renewed
their efforts. They insisted that Illinois had all the rights of the
other states, and could lawfully introduce slavery by changing the
constitution. They proposed, therefore, to call a new convention for
this purpose. To do so would require a two-thirds vote of both branches
of the legislature, and a majority vote of the people at the next
regular election. A bill for this purpose was passed in the Senate by
the requisite majority, but it lacked one vote in the House. To obtain
this vote a member who had been elected and confirmed in his seat after
a contest, and had occupied it for ten weeks, was unseated, and the
contestant previously rejected was put in his place and gave the
necessary vote. Reynolds, who was himself a convention man, says that
"this outrage was a death-blow to the convention." He continues:
The convention question gave rise to two years of the most
furious and boisterous excitement that ever was visited on
Illinois. Men, women, and children entered the arena of party
warfare and strife, and families and neighborhoods were so
divided and furious and bitter against one another that it
seemed a regular civil war might be the result. Many personal
combats were indulged in on the question, and the whole country
seemed to be, at times, ready and willing to resort to physical
force to decide the contest. All the means known to man to
convey ideas to one another were resorted to and practiced with
energy. The press teemed with publications on the subject. The
stump orators were invoked, and the pulpit thundered with
anathemas against the introduction of slavery. The religious
community coupled freedom and Christianity together, which was
one of the most powerful levers used in the contest.
At this time all the frontier communities were anxious to gain additions
to their population. Immigration was eagerly sought. The arrivals were
mostly from the Southern States, the main channels of communication
being the converging rivers Ohio, Mississippi, Cumberland, and
Tennessee. Many of these brought slaves, and since there was no security
for such property in Illinois, they went onward to Missouri. One of the
strongest arguments used by the convention party was, that if slavery
were permitted, this tide of immigration would pour a stream of wealth
into Illinois.
Most of the political leaders and office-holders were convention men,
but there were some notable exceptions, among whom were Edward Coles,
governor of the state, and Daniel P. Cook, Representative in Congress,
the former a native of Virginia, and the latter of Kentucky. Governor
Coles was one of the Virginia abolitionists of early days, who had
emancipated his own slaves and given them lands on which to earn their
living. The governor gave the entire salary of his term of office
($4000) for the expenses of the anti-convention contest, and his
unceasing personal efforts as a speaker and organizer. Mr. Cook was a
brilliant lawyer and orator, and the sole Representative of Illinois in
Congress, where he was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and
where he cast the vote of Illinois for J. Q. Adams for President in
1824. Cook County, which contains the city of Chicago, takes its name
from him. He was indefatigable on the side of freedom in this campaign.
Another powerful reinforcement was found in the person of Rev. John M.
Peck, a Baptist preacher who went through the state like John the
Baptist crying in the wilderness. He made impassioned speeches, formed
anti-slavery societies, distributed tracts, raised money, held
prayer-meetings, addressed Sunday Schools, and organized the religious
sentiment of the state for freedom. He was ably seconded by Hooper
Warren, editor of the Edwardsville _Spectator_. The election took place
August 2, 1824, and the vote was 4972 for the convention, and 6640
against it. In the counties of St. Clair and Randolph, which embraced
the bulk of the French population, the vote was almost equally
divided--765 for; 790 against.
In 1850, both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster contended that Nature had
interposed a law stronger than any law of Congress against the
introduction of slavery into the territory north of Texas which we had
lately acquired from Mexico. From the foregoing facts, however, it is
clear that no law of Nature prevented Illinois from becoming a
slaveholding state, but only the fiercest kind of political fighting and
internal resistance. John Reynolds (and there was no better judge) said
in 1854: "I never had any doubt that slavery would now exist in Illinois
if it had not been prevented by the famous Ordinance" of 1787. The law
of human greed would have overcome every other law, including that of
Congress, but for the magnificent work of Edward Coles, Daniel P. Cook,
John Mason Peck, Hooper Warren, and their coadjutors in 1824.
The snake was scotched, not killed, by this election. There were no more
attempts to legalize slavery by political agency, but persevering
efforts were made to perpetuate it by judicial decisions resting upon
old French law and the Territorial Indenture Act of 1812. Frequent law
suits were brought by negroes, who claimed the right of freedom on the
ground that their period of indenture had expired, or that they had
never signed an indenture, or that they had been born free, or that
their masters had brought them into Illinois after the state
constitution, which prohibited slavery, had been adopted. In this
litigation Trumbull was frequently engaged on the side of the colored
people.
In 1842, a colored woman named Sarah Borders, with three children, who
was held under the indenture law by one Andrew Borders in Randolph
County, escaped and made her way north as far as Peoria County. She and
her children were there arrested and confined in a jail as fugitive
slaves. They were brought before a justice of the peace, who decided
that they were illegally detained and were entitled to their freedom. An
appeal was taken by Borders to the county court, which reversed the
action of the justice. The case eventually went to the supreme court,
where Lyman Trumbull and Gustave Koerner appeared for the negro woman in
December, 1843, and argued that slavery was unlawful in Illinois and had
been so ever since the enactment of the Ordinance of 1787. The court
decided against them.[14]
Trumbull was not discouraged by the decision in this case. Shortly
afterward he appeared before the supreme court again in the case of
Jarrot _vs._ Jarrot, in which he won a victory which practically put an
end to slavery in the state. Joseph Jarrot, a negro, sued his mistress,
Julia Jarrot, for wages, alleging that he had been held in servitude
contrary to law. The plaintiff's grandmother had been the slave of a
Frenchman in the Illinois country before it passed under the
jurisdiction of the United States. His mother and himself had passed by
descent to Julia Jarrot, nobody objecting. Fifty-seven years had elapsed
since the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 and twenty-six since the
adoption of the state constitution, both of which had prohibited slavery
in Illinois. The previous decisions in the court of last resort had
generally sustained the claims of the owners of slaves held under the
French regime and their descendants, and also those held under the
so-called indenture system. Now, however, the court swept away the whole
basis of slavery in the state, of whatever kind or description,
declaring, as Trumbull had previously contended, that the Congress of
the Confederation had full power to pass the Ordinance of 1787, that no
person born since that date could be held as a slave in Illinois, and
that any slave brought into the state by his master, or with the
master's consent, since that date became at once free. It followed that
such persons could sue and recover wages for labor performed under
compulsion, as Joseph Jarrot did.
This decision, which abolished slavery in Illinois _de facto_, was
received with great satisfaction by the substantial and sober-minded
citizens. Although the number of aggressive anti-slavery men in the
state was small and of out-and-out abolitionists still smaller, there
was a widespread belief that the lingering snaky presence of the
institution was a menace to the public peace and a blot upon the fair
fame of the state, and that it ought to be expunged once for all. The
growth of public opinion was undoubtedly potent in the minds of the
judges, but the untiring activity of the leading advocates in the cases
of Borders, Jarrot, etc., should not be overlooked. On this subject Mr.
Dwight Harris, in the book already cited, says:
The period of greatest struggle and of greatest triumph for the
anti-slavery advocates was that from 1840 to 1845. The contest
during these five years was serious and stubbornly carried on.
It involved talent, ingenuity, determination, and perseverance
on both sides. The abolitionists are to be accredited with
stirring up considerable interest over the state in some of the
cases. Southern sympathizers and the holders of indentured
servants in the southern portion of the state were naturally
considerably concerned in the decisions of the supreme court.
Still there seems to have been no widespread interest or
universal agitation in the state over this contest in the
courts. It was carried on chiefly through the benevolence of a
comparatively small number of citizens who were actuated by a
firm belief in the evils of slavery; while the brunt of the
fray fell to a few able and devoted lawyers.
Among these were G. T. M. Davis, of Alton, Nathaniel Niles, of
Belleville, Gustave Koerner, of Belleville, and Lyman Trumbull.
James H. Collins, a noted abolition lawyer of Chicago, should
also be highly praised for his work in the Lovejoy and Willard
cases, but to the other men the real victory is to be ascribed.
They were the most powerful friends of the negro, and lived
where their assistance could be readily secured. They told the
negroes repeatedly that they were free, urged them to leave
their masters, and fought their cases in the lower courts time
and time again, often without fees or remuneration. Chief among
them was Lyman Trumbull, whose name should be written large in
anti-slavery annals.
He was a lawyer of rare intellectual endowments, and of great
ability. He had few equals before the bar in his day. In
politics he was an old-time Democrat, with no leanings toward
abolitionism, but possessing an honest desire to see justice
done the negro in Illinois. It was a thankless task, in those
days of prejudice and bitter partisan feelings, to assume the
role of defender of the indentured slaves. It was not often
unattended with great risk to one's person, as well as to one's
reputation and business. But Trumbull did not hesitate to
undertake the task, thankless, discouraging, unremunerative as
it was, and to his zeal, courage, and perseverance, as well as
to his ability, is to be ascribed the ultimate success of the
appeal to the supreme court.
This disinterested and able effort, made in all sincerity of
purpose, and void of all appearance of self-elevation, rendered
him justly popular throughout the State, as well as in the
region of his home. The people of his district showed their
approval of his work and their confidence in his integrity by
electing him judge of the supreme court in 1848, and
Congressman from the Eighth District of Illinois by a handsome
majority in 1854, when it was well known that he was opposed to
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] These facts are detailed in a paper contributed to the Illinois
State Historical Society in 1908 by Joseph B. Lemen, of O'Fallon,
Illinois.
[14] _Negro Servitude in Illinois_, by N. Dwight Harris, p. 108.
CHAPTER III
FIRST ELECTION AS SENATOR
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was the cause of Trumbull's return
to an active participation in politics. The prime mover in that
disastrous adventure was Stephen A. Douglas, who had been Trumbull's
predecessor in the office of secretary of state and also one of his
predecessors on the supreme bench. He was now a Senator of the United
States, and a man of world-wide celebrity. Born at Brandon, Vermont, in
1813, he had lost his father before he was a year old. His mother
removed with him to Canandaigua, New York, where he attended an academy
and read law to some extent in the office of a local practitioner. At
the age of twenty, he set out for the West to seek his fortune, and he
found the beginnings of it at Winchester, Illinois, where he taught
school for a living and continued to study law, as Trumbull was doing at
the same time at Greenville, Georgia. He was admitted to the bar in
1834. In 1835, he was elected state's attorney. Two years later he was
elected a member of the legislature by the Democrats of Morgan County,
and resigned the office he then held in order to take the new one. In
1837, he was appointed by President Van Buren register of the land
office at Springfield. In the same year he was nominated for Congress in
the Springfield district before he had reached the legal age, but was
defeated by the Whig candidate, John T. Stuart, by 35 votes in a total
poll of 36,742.[15] In 1840, he was appointed secretary of state, and
in 1841, elected a judge of the supreme court under the circumstances
already mentioned. In 1843, he was elected to the lower house of
Congress and was reelected twice, but before taking his seat the third
time he was chosen by the legislature, in 1846, Senator of the United
States for the term beginning March 4, 1847, and was reelected in 1852.
In Congress he had taken an active part in the annexation of Texas, in
the war with Mexico, in the Oregon Boundary dispute, and in the Land
Grant for the Illinois Central Railway. In the Senate he held the
position of Chairman of the Committee on Territories.
In the Democratic party he had forged to the front by virtue of boldness
in leadership, untiring industry, boundless ambition, and
self-confidence, and horse-power. He had a large head surmounted by an
abundant mane, which gave him the appearance of a lion prepared to roar
or to crush his prey, and not seldom the resemblance was confirmed when
he opened his mouth on the hustings or in the Senate Chamber. As stump
orator, senatorial debater, and party manager he never had a superior in
this country. Added to these gifts, he had a very attractive personality
and a wonderful gift for divining and anticipating the drift of public
opinion. The one thing lacking to make him a man "not for an age but for
all time," was a moral substratum. He was essentially an opportunist.
Although his private life was unstained, he had no conception of morals
in politics, and this defect was his undoing as a statesman.
On the 4th of January, 1854, Douglas reported from the Senate Committee
on Territories a bill to organize the territory of Nebraska. It
provided that said territory, or any portion of it, when admitted as a
state or states, should be received into the Union with or without
slavery, as their constitution might prescribe at the time of their
admission. The Missouri Compromise Act of 1820, which applied to this
territory, was not repealed by this provision, and it must have been
plain to everybody that if slavery were excluded from the _territory_ it
would not be there when the people should come together to form a
_state_.
Douglas did not at first propose to repeal the Missouri Compromise. He
intended to leave the question of slavery untouched. He did not want to
reopen the agitation, which had been mostly quieted by the Compromise of
1850; but it soon became evident that if he were willing to leave the
question in doubt, others were not. Dixon, of Kentucky, successor of
Henry Clay in the Senate and a Whig in politics, offered an amendment to
the bill proposing to repeal the Missouri Compromise outright. Douglas
was rather startled when this motion was made. He went to Dixon's seat
and begged him to withdraw his amendment, urging that it would reopen
the controversies settled by the Compromise of 1850 and delay, if not
prevent, the passage of any bill to organize the new territory. Dixon
was stubborn. He contended that the Southern people had a right to go
into the new territory equally with those of the North, and to take with
them anything that was recognized and protected as property in the
Southern States. Dixon's motion received immediate and warm support in
the South.
Two or three days later, Douglas decided to embody Dixon's amendment in
his bill and take the consequences. His amended bill divided the
territory in two parts, Kansas and Nebraska. The apparent object of
this change was to give the Missourians a chance to make the
southernmost one a slave state; but this intention has been controverted
by Douglas's friends in recent years, who have brought forward a mass of
evidence to show that he had other sufficient reasons for thus dividing
the territory and hence that it must not be assumed that he intended
that one of them should be a slave state. The evidence consists of a
record of efforts put forth by citizens of western Iowa in 1853-54 to
secure a future state on the opposite side of the Missouri River
homogeneous with themselves, and to promote the building of a Pacific
railway from some point near Council Bluffs along the line of the Platte
River. These efforts were heartily seconded by Senators Dodge and Jones
and Representative Henn, of Iowa. They labored with Douglas and secured
his cooeperation. So Douglas himself said when he announced the change in
the bill dividing the territory into two parts.
Most people at the present day, including myself, would be glad to
concur with this view, but we must interpret Douglas's acts not merely
by what he said in 1854, but also by what he said and did afterwards. In
1856 he made an unjustifiable assault upon the New England Emigrant Aid
Company, for sending settlers to Kansas, as they had a perfect right to
do under the terms of the bill; and he apologized for, if he did not
actually defend, the Missourian invaders who marched over the border in
military array, took possession of the ballot boxes, elected a
pro-slavery legislature, and then marched back boasting of their
victory. Troubles multiplied in Douglas's pathway rapidly after he
introduced his Nebraska Bill, and it is very likely that an equal
division of the territory between the North and South seemed to him the
safest way out of his difficulties. That was the customary way of
settling disputes of this kind. We need not assume, however, that he
intended to do more than give the Missourians a chance to make Kansas a
slave state if they could, for Douglas was not a pro-slavery man at
heart.
Senator Thompson, of Kentucky, once alluded to the division of the
territory embraced in the original Nebraska Bill into two territories,
Kansas and Nebraska, showing that his understanding was that one should
be a free state and the other a slave state, if the South could make it
such. He said:
When the bill was first introduced in 1854 it provided for the
organization of but one territory. Whence it came or how it
came scarcely anybody knows, but the senator from Illinois (Mr.
Douglas) has always had the credit of its paternity. I believe
he acted patriotically for what he thought best and right. In a
short time, however, we found a provision for a division--for
two territories--Nebraska, the larger one, to be a free state,
and as to Kansas, the smaller one, repealing the Missouri
Compromise, we of the South taking our chance for it. That was
certainly a beneficial arrangement to the North and the bill
was passed in that way.[16]
What were Douglas's reasons for repealing the Missouri Compromise? It
was generally assumed that he did it in order to gain the support of the
South in the next national convention of the Democratic party. In the
absence of any other sufficient motive, this will probably be the
verdict of posterity, although he always repelled that charge with heat
and indignation. A more important question is whether there would have
been any attempt to repeal it if Douglas had not led the way. This may
be safely answered in the negative. The Southern Senators did not show
any haste to follow Douglas at first. They generally spoke of the
measure as a free-will offering of the North, both Douglas and Pierce
being Northern men, and both being indispensable to secure its passage.
Francis P. Blair, of Missouri, a competent witness, expressed the
opinion that a majority of the Southern senators were opposed to the
measure at first and were coerced into it by the fear that they would
not be sustained at home if they refused an advantage offered to them by
the North.[17]
The Nebraska Bill passed the Senate by a majority of 22, and the House
by a majority of 13. The Democratic party of the North was cleft in
twain, as was shown by the division of their votes in the House: 44 to
43. The bill would have been defeated had not the administration plied
the party lash unmercifully, using the official patronage to coerce
unwilling members. In this way did President Pierce redeem his pledge to
prevent any revival of the slavery agitation during his term of office.
When the bill actually passed there was an explosion in every Northern
State. The old parties were rent asunder and a new one began to
crystallize around the nucleus which had supported Birney, Van Buren,
and Hale in the elections of 1844, 1848, and 1852. Both Abraham Lincoln
and Lyman Trumbull were stirred to new activities. Both took the stump
in opposition to the Nebraska Bill.
Trumbull was now forty-one years of age. He had gained the confidence of
the people among whom he lived to such a degree that his reelection to
the supreme bench in 1852 had been unanimous. He now joined with Gustave
Koerner and other Democrats in organizing the Eighth Congressional
District in opposition to Douglas and his Nebraska Bill. Although this
district had been originally a slaveholding region, it contained a large
infusion of German immigration, which had poured into it in the years
following the European uprising of 1848. Of the thirty thousand Germans
in Illinois in 1850, Reynolds estimated that fully eighteen thousand had
settled in St. Clair County. These immigrants had at first attached
themselves to the Democratic party, because its name signified
government by the people. When, however, it became apparent to them that
the Democratic party was the ally of slavery, they went over to the
opposition in shoals, under the lead of Koerner and Hecker. Koerner was
at that time lieutenant-governor of the state, and his separation from
the party which had elected him made a profound impression on his fellow
countrymen. Hecker was a fervid orator and political leader, and later a
valiant soldier in the Union army.
The Eighth Congressional District then embraced the counties of Bond,
Clinton, Jefferson, Madison, Marion, Monroe, Randolph, St. Clair, and
Washington. It was the strongest Democratic district in the state, but
political parties had been thrown into such disorder by the Nebraska
Bill that no regular nominations for Congress were made by either Whigs
or Democrats. Trumbull announced himself as an anti-Nebraska Democratic
candidate. He had just recovered from the most severe and protracted
illness of his life and was in an enfeebled condition in consequence,
but he made a speaking campaign throughout the district, and was elected
by 7917 votes against 5306 cast for Philip B. Fouke, who ran
independently as a Douglas Democrat. This victory defeated so many of
the followers of Douglas who were candidates for the legislature that it
became possible to elect a Senator of the United States in opposition to
the regular Democracy.
If political honors were awarded according to the rules of _quantum
meruit_, Abraham Lincoln would have been chosen Senator as the successor
of James Shields at this juncture, since he had contributed more than
any other person to the anti-Nebraska victory in the state. He had been
out of public life since his retirement from the lower house of Congress
in 1848. Since then he had been a country lawyer with a not very
lucrative practice, but a very popular story-teller. He belonged to the
Whig party, and had followed Clay and Webster in supporting the
Compromise measures of 1850, including the new Fugitive Slave Law, for,
although a hater of slavery himself, he believed that the Constitution
required the rendition of slaves escaping into the free states. He was
startled by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Without that
awakening, he would doubtless have remained in comparative obscurity. He
would have continued riding the circuit in central Illinois, making a
scanty living as a lawyer, entertaining tavern loungers with funny
stories, and would have passed away unhonored and unsung. He was now
aroused to new activity, and when Douglas came to Springfield at the
beginning of October to defend his Nebraska Bill on the hustings,
Lincoln replied to him in a great speech, one of the world's
masterpieces of argumentative power and moral grandeur, which left
Douglas's edifice of "Popular Sovereignty" a heap of ruins. This was the
first speech made by him that gave a true measure of his qualities. It
was the first public occasion that laid a strong hold upon his
conscience and stirred the depths of his nature. It was also the first
speech of his that the writer of this book, then twenty years of age,
ever listened to. The impression made by it has lost nothing by the
lapse of time. In Lincoln's complete writings it is styled the Peoria
speech of October 16, 1854, as it was delivered at Peoria, after the
Springfield debate, and subsequently written out by Lincoln himself for
publication in the _Sangamon Journal_. The Peoria speech contained a few
passages of rejoinder to Douglas's reply to his Springfield speech. In
other respects they were the same.[18]
It was this speech that drew upon Lincoln the eyes of the scattered
elements of opposition to Douglas. These elements were heterogeneous and
in part discordant. The dividing line between Whigs and Democrats still
ran through every county in the state, but there was a third element,
unorganized as yet, known as "Free-Soilers," who traced their lineage
back to James G. Birney and the campaign of 1844. These were numerous
and active in the northern counties, but south of the latitude of
Springfield they dwindled away rapidly. The Free-Soilers served as a
nucleus for the crystallization of the Republican party two years later,
but in 1854 the older organizations, although much demoralized, were
still unbroken. Probably three fourths of the Whigs were opposed to the
Nebraska Bill in principle, and half of the remainder were glad to avail
themselves of any rift in the Democratic party to get possession of the
offices. There was still a substantial fraction of the party, however,
which feared any taint of abolitionism and was likely to side with
Douglas in the new alignment.
The legislature consisted of one hundred members--twenty-five senators
and seventy-five representatives. Twelve of the senators had been
elected in 1852 for a four years' term, and thirteen were elected in
1854. Among the former were N. B. Judd, of Chicago, John M. Palmer, of
Carlinville, and Burton C. Cook, of Ottawa, three Democrats who had
early declared their opposition to the Nebraska Bill. The full Senate
was composed of nine Whigs, thirteen regular Democrats, and three
anti-Nebraska Democrats. A fourth holding-over senator (Osgood,
Democrat) represented a district which had given an anti-Nebraska
majority in this election. One of the Whig members (J. L. D. Morrison)
of St. Clair County was elected simultaneously with Trumbull, but he was
a man of Southern affiliations and his vote on the senatorial question
was doubtful.
At this time there was no law compelling the two branches of a state
legislature to unite in an election to fill a vacancy in the Senate of
the United States. Accordingly, when one party controlled one branch of
the legislature and the opposite party controlled the other, it was not
uncommon for the minority to refuse to go into joint convention. This
was the case now. In order to secure a joint meeting, it was necessary
for at least one Democrat to vote with the anti-Nebraska members. Mr.
Osgood did so.
In the House were forty-six anti-Nebraska men of all descriptions and
twenty-eight Democrats. One member, Randolph Heath, of the Lawrence and
Crawford District, did not vote in the election for Senator at any time.
Two members from Madison County, Henry L. Baker and G. T. Allen, had
been elected on the anti-Nebraska ticket with Trumbull.
In the chaotic condition of parties it was not to be expected that all
the opponents of Douglas would coalesce at once. The Whig party was held
together by the hope of reaping large gains from the division of the
Democrats on the Nebraska Bill. This was a vain hope, because the Whigs
were divided also; but while it existed it fanned the flame of old
enmities. Moreover, the anti-Nebraska Democrats in the campaign had
claimed that they were the true Democracy and that they were purifying
the party in order to preserve and strengthen it. They could not
instantly abandon that claim by voting for a Whig for the highest office
to be filled.
The two houses met in the Hall of Representatives on February 8, 1855,
to choose a Senator. Every inch of space on the floor and lobby was
occupied by members and their political friends, and the gallery was
adorned by well-dressed women, including Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Matteson,
the governor's wife, and her fair daughters. The senatorial election had
been the topic of chief concern throughout the state for many months,
and now the interest was centred in a single room not more than one
hundred feet square. The excitement was intense, for everybody knew the
event was fraught with consequences of great pith and moment, far
transcending the fate of any individual.
Mr. Lincoln had been designated as the choice of a caucus of about
forty-five members, including all the Whigs and most of the
Free-Soilers, with their leader, Rev. Owen Lovejoy, brother of the Alton
martyr.
When the joint convention had been called to order, General James
Shields was nominated by Senator Benjamin Graham, Abraham Lincoln by
Representative Stephen T. Logan, and Lyman Trumbull by Senator John M.
Palmer. The first vote resulted as follows:
Lincoln 45
Shields 41
Trumbull 5
Scattering 8
--
Total 99
Several members of the House who had been elected as anti-Nebraska
Democrats voted for Lincoln and a few for Shields. The vote for Trumbull
consisted of Senators Palmer, Judd, and Cook and Representatives Baker
and Allen.
On the second vote, Lincoln had 43 and Trumbull 6, and there were no
other changes. A third roll-call resulted like the second. Thereupon
Judge Logan moved an adjournment, but this was voted down by 42 to 56.
On the fourth call, Lincoln's vote fell to 38 and Trumbull's rose to 11.
On the sixth, Lincoln lost two more, and Trumbull dropped to 8.
It now became apparent by the commotion on the Democratic side of the
chamber that a flank movement was taking place. There had been a rumor
on the streets that if the reelection of Shields was found to be
impossible, the Democrats would change to Governor Matteson, under the
belief that since he had never committed himself to the Nebraska Bill he
would be able, by reason of personal and social attachments, to win the
votes of several anti-Nebraska Democrats who had not voted for Shields.
This scheme was developed on the seventh call, which resulted as
follows:
Matteson 44
Lincoln 38
Trumbull 9
Scattering 7
--
Total 98
On the eighth call, Matteson gained two votes, Lincoln fell to 27, and
Trumbull received 18. On the ninth and tenth, Matteson had 47, Lincoln
dropped to 15, and Trumbull rose to 35.
The excitement deepened, for it was believed that the next vote would be
decisive. Matteson wanted only three of a majority, and the only way to
prevent it was to turn Lincoln's fifteen to Trumbull, or Trumbull's
thirty-five to Lincoln. Obviously the former was the only safe move, for
none of Lincoln's men would go to Matteson in any kind of shuffle,
whereas three of Trumbull's men might easily be lost if an attempt were
made to transfer them to the Whig leader. Lincoln was the first to see
the imminent danger and the first to apply the remedy. In fact he was
the only one who could have done so, since the fifteen supporters who
still clung to him would never have left him except at his own request.
He now besought his friends to vote for Trumbull. Some natural tears
were shed by Judge Logan when he yielded to the appeal. He said that the
demands of principle were superior to those of personal attachment, and
he transferred his vote to Trumbull. All of the remaining fourteen
followed his example, and there was a gain of one vote that had been
previously cast for Archibald Williams. So the tenth and final
roll-call gave Trumbull fifty-one votes, and Matteson forty-seven. One
member still voted for Williams and one did not vote at all. Thus the
one hundred members of the joint convention were accounted for, and
Trumbull became Senator by a majority of one.
This result astounded the Democrats. They were more disappointed by it
than they would have been by the election of Lincoln. They regarded
Trumbull as an arch traitor. That he and his fellow traitors Palmer,
Judd, and Cook should have carried off the great prize was an unexpected
dose; but they did not know how bitter it was until Trumbull took his
seat in the Senate and opened fire on the Nebraska Bill.
Lincoln took his defeat in good part. Later in the evening there was a
reception given at the house of Mr. Ninian Edwards, whose wife was a
sister of Mrs. Lincoln. He had been much interested in Lincoln's success
and was greatly surprised to hear, just before the guests began to
arrive, that Trumbull had been elected. He and his family were easily
reconciled to the result, however, since Mrs. Trumbull had been from
girlhood a favorite among them. When she and Trumbull arrived, they were
naturally the centre of attraction. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln came in a
little later. The hostess and her daughters greeted them most cordially,
saying that they had wished for his success, and that while he must be
disappointed, yet he should bear in mind that his principles had won.
Mr. Lincoln smiled, moved toward the newly elected Senator, and saying,
"Not _too_ disappointed to congratulate my friend Trumbull," warmly
shook his hand.
Lincoln's account of this election, in a letter to Hon. E. B. Washburne,
concludes by saying:
I regret my defeat moderately, but I am not nervous about it.
I could have headed off every combination and been elected had
it not been for Matteson's double game--and his defeat now
gives me more pleasure than my own gives me pain. On the whole,
it was perhaps as well for our general cause that Trumbull is
elected. The Nebraska men confess that they hate it worse than
anything that could have happened. It is a great consolation to
see them worse whipped than I am. I tell them it is their own
fault--that they had abundant opportunity to choose between him
and me, which they declined, and instead forced it on me to
decide between him and Matteson.
There is no evidence that Trumbull took any steps whatever to secure his
own election in this contest.[19]
If Lincoln had been chosen at this time, his campaign against Douglas
for the Senate in 1858 would not have taken place. Consequently he would
not have been the cynosure of all eyes in that spectacular contest. It
was Douglas's prestige and prowess that drew him into the limelight at
that important juncture, and made his nomination as President possible
in 1860.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] The Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society for October,
1912, contains an autobiography of Stephen A. Douglas, of fifteen pages,
dated September, 1838, which was recently found in his own handwriting
by his son, Hon. Robert M. Douglas, of North Carolina. It terminates
just before his first campaign for Congress.
[16] _Cong. Globe_, July, 1856, Appendix, p. 712.
[17] Letter to the _Missouri Democrat_, dated March 1, 1856, quoted in
P. Ormon Ray's _Repeal of the Missouri Compromise_, p. 232.
[18] Some testimony as to the effect produced upon Douglas himself by
this speech was supplied to me long afterwards from a trustworthy
quarter in the following letter:--
NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 1908.
MY DEAR MR. WHITE:
In 1891, at his office in Chicago, Mr. W. C. Gowdy told me that
Judge Douglas spent the night with him at his house preceding
his debate with Mr. Lincoln; that after the evening meal Judge
Douglas exhibited considerable restlessness, pacing back and
forth upon the floor of the room, evidently with mental
preoccupation. The attitude of Judge Douglas was so unusual that
Mr. Gowdy felt impelled to address him, and said: "Judge
Douglas, you appear to be ill at ease and under some mental
agitation; it cannot be that you have any anxiety with reference
to the outcome of the debate you are to have with Mr. Lincoln;
you cannot have any doubt of your ability to dispose of him."
Whereupon Judge Douglas, stopping abruptly, turned to Mr. Gowdy
and said, with great emphasis: "Yes, Gowdy, I am troubled over
the progress and outcome of this debate. I have known Lincoln
for many years, and I have continually met him in debate. I
regard him as the most difficult and dangerous opponent that I
have ever met and I have serious misgivings as to what may be
the result of this joint debate."
These in substance, and almost in exact phraseology, are the
words repeated to me by Mr. Gowdy. Faithfully yours,
FRANCIS LYNDE STETSON.
Mr. Gowdy was a state senator in 1854 and his home was at or near
Peoria. There was no joint debate between Lincoln and Douglas at or near
Gowdy's residence, except that of 1854.
[19] The following manuscript, written by one of Lincoln's supporters
who was himself a member of the legislature, was found among the papers
of William H. Herndon:
"In the contest for the United States Senate in the winter of
1854-55 in the Illinois Legislature, nearly all the Whigs and
some of the '_anti-Nebraska Democrats_' preferred Mr. Lincoln to
any other man. Some of them (and myself among the number) had
been candidates and had been elected by the people for the
express purpose of doing all in their power for his election,
and a great deal of their time during the session was taken up,
both in caucus and out of it, in laboring to unite the
anti-Nebraska party on their favorite, but there was from the
first, as the result proved, an insuperable obstacle to their
success. Four of the anti-Nebraska Democrats had been elected in
part by Democrats, and they not only personally preferred Mr.
Trumbull, but considered his election necessary to consolidate
the union between all those who were opposed to repeal of the
Missouri Compromise and to the new policy upon the subject of
slavery which Mr. Douglas and his friends were laboring so hard
to inaugurate. They insisted that the election of Mr. Trumbull
to the Senate would secure thousands of Democratic votes to the
anti-Nebraska party who would be driven off by the election of
Mr. Lincoln--that the Whig party were nearly a unit in
opposition to Mr. Douglas, so that the election of the favorite
candidate of the majority would give no particular strength in
that quarter, and they manifested a fixed purpose to vote
steadily for Mr. Trumbull and not at all for Mr. Lincoln, and
thus compel the friends of Mr. Lincoln to vote for their man to
prevent the election of Governor Matteson, who, as was
ascertained, could, after the first few ballots, carry enough
anti-Nebraska men to elect him. These four men were Judd, of
Cook, Palmer, of Macoupin, Cook, of LaSalle, and Baker, of
Madison. Allen, of Madison, went with them, but was not
inflexible, and would have voted for Lincoln cheerfully, but did
not want to separate from his Democratic friends. These men kept
aloof from the caucus of both parties during the winter. They
would not act with the Democrats from principle, and would not
act with the Whigs from policy.
"When the election came off, it was evident, after the first two
or three ballots, that Mr. Lincoln could not be elected, and it
was feared that if the balloting continued long, Governor
Matteson would be elected. Mr. Lincoln then advised his friends
to vote for Mr. Trumbull; they did so, and elected him.
"Mr. Lincoln was very much disappointed, for I think that at
that time it was the height of his ambition to get into the
United States Senate. He manifested, however, no bitterness
towards Mr. Judd or the other anti-Nebraska Democrats, by whom
practically he was beaten, but evidently thought that their
motives were right. _He told me several times afterwards that
the election of Trumbull was the best thing that could have
happened._
"There was a great deal of dissatisfaction throughout the state
at the result of the election. The Whigs constituted a vast
majority of the anti-Nebraska party. They thought they were
entitled to the Senator and that Mr. Lincoln by his contest with
Mr. Douglas had caused the victory. Mr. Lincoln, however,
generously exonerated Mr. Trumbull and his friends from all
blame in the matter. Trumbull's first encounter with Douglas in
the Senate filled the people of Illinois with admiration for his
abilities, and the ill-feeling caused by his election gradually
faded away.
"SAM C. PARKS."
CHAPTER IV
THE KANSAS WAR
Trumbull took his seat in the Senate at the first session of the
Thirty-fourth Congress, December 3, 1855. His credentials were presented
by Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky. Senator Cass, of Michigan, presented
a protest from certain members of the legislature of Illinois reciting
that the constitution of that state made the judges of the supreme and
circuit courts ineligible to any other office in the state, or in the
United States, during the terms for which they were elected and one year
thereafter; affirming that Trumbull was elected judge of the supreme
court June 7, 1852, for the term of nine years and entered upon the
duties of that office June 24, 1852; that the said term of office would
not expire until 1861; and that, therefore, he was not legally elected a
Senator of the United States. The papers were eventually referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary, but in the mean time Trumbull was sworn in.
Before the question of reference was disposed of, however, Senator
Seward contended that no state could fix or define the qualifications of
a Senator of the United States. He instanced the case of N. P.
Tallmadge, who had been elected a Senator from New York while serving as
a member of the legislature of that state, although the constitution of
New York disqualified him and all other members from such election.
Tallmadge was nevertheless admitted to the Senate and served his full
term. Trumbull's right to his seat was decided in accordance with that
precedent by a vote of 35 to 8, on the 5th of March, 1856. Senator
Douglas did not vote on this question, nor did he take part in the
argument on it.
The subject of burning interest in Congress was the condition of affairs
in Kansas Territory. When the bill repealing the Missouri Compromise was
pending, the opinion had been generally expressed by its supporters that
slavery never would or could go into that region. Several Southern
Senators and most of the Northern Democrats had held this view. Hunter,
of Virginia, considered it utterly hopeless to expect that either Kansas
or Nebraska would ever be a slaveholding state. Badger, of North
Carolina, said that he had no more idea of seeing a slave population in
either of them than he had of seeing it in Massachusetts. Dixon, of
Kentucky, held a similar view. Nor is there any reason to doubt the
sincerity of these men. Apparently the only Southern Senator who then
cherished a different belief was Atchison, of Missouri, whose home was
on the border of Kansas and whose opinions were based upon personal
knowledge and backed by self-interest.
President Pierce appointed Andrew H. Reeder, of Pennsylvania, governor
of Kansas Territory. Reeder was not unwilling to cooeperate with the
South in establishing slavery in an orderly way, but was quite
unprepared for the tactics which had been planned by others to expedite
his movements. He called an election for a delegate in Congress to be
held on the 29th of November, 1854. An organized army of Missourians
marched over the Kansas border, seized the polling-places, and cast 1749
fraudulent votes for a pro-slavery man named Whitfield. This was a
gratuitous and unnecessary act of violence, since the bona-fide settlers
from Missouri outnumbered the Free State men and the latter were, as
yet, unorganized and unprepared. Governor Reeder confirmed the election
and thus gave encouragement to the invaders for their next attempt.
A few immigrants had already gone into the territory from the New
England States, moved by the desire of bettering their condition in
life. Some of them had been assisted by the Emigrant Aid Company of
Worcester, Massachusetts, a society started by Eli Thayer for the
purpose of furnishing capital, by loans, to such persons for traveling
expenses and for the building of hotels, sawmills, private dwellings,
etc. These settlers from the East were as little prepared as Reeder
himself for the sudden swoop of Missourians, and although they wrote
letters to Northern Congressmen and newspapers protesting against the
election of Whitfield as an act of invasion and a barefaced fraud,
nothing was done to prevent him from taking his seat.
The next election (for members of the territorial legislature) was fixed
for the 30th of March, 1855. What kind of preparations for it had been
made in the mean time in Missouri was plainly indicated by the following
letter, dated Brunswick, Missouri, April 20, 1855, published in the New
York _Herald_:
From five to seven thousand men started from Missouri to attend
the election, some to remove, but most to return to their
families with an intention, if they liked the territory, to
make it their permanent home at the earliest moment
practicable. But they intended to vote. The Missourians were
many of them Douglas men. There were one hundred and fifty
voters from this county, one hundred and seventy-five from
Howard, one hundred from Cooper. Indeed, every county furnished
its quota, and when they set out it looked like an army. They
were armed. And as there were no houses in the territory they
carried tents. Their mission was a peaceable one--to vote, and
to drive down stakes for their future homes.
After the election some 1500 of the voters sent a committee to
Mr. Reeder to ascertain if it was his purpose to ratify the
election. He answered that it was, and said that the majority
at an election must carry the day. But it is not to be denied
that the 1500, apprehending that the governor might attempt to
play the tyrant, since his conduct had already been insidious
and unjust, wore on their hats bunches of hemp. They were
resolved, if a tyrant attempted to trample on the rights of the
sovereign people, to hang him.
It was not conscious brigandage that prompted this movement, but the
simplicity of minds tutored on the frontier and fashioned in the
environment of slavery. The fifteen hundred Missourians, who gave
Governor Reeder to understand that they would hang him on the nearest
tree if he did not ratify their invasion of Kansas, had homes, farms,
and families. They supported churches and schools of a certain kind and
considered themselves qualified to civilize Africans. They were types of
the best society that they had any conception of. Far from concealing
anything that they had done, they boasted of it openly in their
newspaper organ, the _Squatter Sovereign_, which published the following
under the date of April 1:
INDEPENDENCE, MO., March 31, 1855.--Several hundred emigrants
from Kansas have just entered our city. They were preceded by
the Westport and Independence brass bands. They came in at the
west side of the public square and proceeded entirely around
it, the bands cheering us with fine music, and the emigrants
with good news. Immediately following the bands were about two
hundred horsemen in regular order. Following these were one
hundred and fifty wagons, carriages, etc. They gave repeated
cheers for Kansas and Missouri. They report that not an
anti-slavery man will be in the Legislature of Kansas. We have
made a clean sweep.[20]
This invasion was as needless as the former one, since the Free State
men were still in the minority, counting actual settlers only; but the
pro-slavery party were determined to leave nothing to chance. Senator
Atchison, in a speech at Weston, Missouri, on the 9th of November, 1854,
had told his constituents how to secure the prize:
When you reside in one day's journey of the territory, and when
your peace, your quiet, and your property depend upon your
action, you can, without an exertion, send five hundred of your
young men who will vote in favor of your institution. Should
each county in the state of Missouri only do its duty, the
question will be decided quietly and peaceably at the
ballot-box. If you are defeated, then Missouri and the other
Southern States will have shown themselves to be recreant to
their interests, and will deserve their fate.[21]
A little later we find him writing letters like the following to a
friend in Atlanta, Georgia:
Let your young men come forth to Missouri and Kansas. Let them
come well armed, with money enough to support them for twelve
months and determined to see this thing out! I do not see how
we are to avoid a civil war;--come it will. Twelve months will
not elapse before war--civil war of the fiercest kind--will be
upon us. We are arming and preparing for it.
Atchison was constantly spurring others to deeds of lawlessness and
violence, but he always stopped short of committing any himself. He was
probably restrained by the fear of losing influence at Washington. It
was by no means certain that President Pierce would tolerate everything.
The sad fate of one of the companies recruited in the South for
immigration to Kansas is narrated in the following letter, addressed to
Senator Trumbull by John C. Underwood, of Culpeper Court House,
Virginia:
Soon after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, in
the neighborhood of Winchester and Harper's Ferry the project
of sending a company of young men to Kansas to make it a slave
state was much agitated. Subscriptions for that purpose were
asked, and the duty of strengthening our sectional interest of
slavery by adding two friendly Senators to your honorable body,
was urged with great zeal upon my neighbors. This was long
before I had heard of any movement of the New England Aid Co.,
or of anybody on the part of freedom. It was my understanding
at the time that Senator Mason was the main adviser in the
project. This may not have been the case. The history of this
company will not be soon forgotten. Its taking the train on the
Baltimore and Ohio R. R. at Harper's Ferry, its exploits in
Kansas up to the fall of its leader (Sharrard) at the hands of
Jones, the friend of the Democratic Gov. Geary, are all still
well remembered. The return of the company with the dead body
of their leader, and the blasted hopes of its sanguine
originators, was a gloomy day in our beautiful valley, and
created a sensation throughout the country.
Another letter among the Trumbull papers deserves a place here, the
author of which was Isaac T. Dement, who (writing from Hudson, Illinois,
January 10, 1857) says that he was living in Kansas the previous year
and had filed his intention on one hundred and sixty acres of land where
he had a small store and a dwelling-house:
On the 3d of September last [he continues] a band of armed men
from Missouri came to my place, and after taking what they
wanted from the store, burned it and the house, and said that
if they could find me they would hang me. They said that they
had broken open a post-office and found a letter that I wrote
to Lane and Brown asking them to come and help us with a
company of Sharpe's rifles (this is a lie); and also that I had
furnished Lane and Brown's men with provisions (a lie), and
that I was a Free State man (that is so).
Mr. Dement hoped that Congress would do something to compensate him for
his losses.
Governor Reeder ought to have been prepared for the second invasion. He
had had sufficient warning. Unless he was ready to go all lengths with
Atchison and Stringfellow, he ought to have declared the entire election
invalid and reported the facts to President Pierce. But he did nothing
of the kind. He merely rejected the votes of seven election districts
where the most notorious frauds had been committed, and declared "duly
elected" the persons voted for in others. Eventually the members holding
certificates organized as a legislature and admitted the seven who had
been rejected by Reeder. The latter took an early opportunity to go to
Washington City to make a report to the President in person. He stopped
en route at his home in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he made a public
speech exposing the frauds in the election and confirming the reports of
the Free State settlers. Stringfellow warned him not to come back. In
the _Squatter Sovereign_ of May 29, 1855, he said:
From reports received of Reeder he never intends returning to
our borders. Should he do so we, without hesitation, say that
our people ought to hang him by the neck like a traitorous dog,
as he is, so soon as he puts his unhallowed feet upon our
shores. Vindicate your characters and the territory; and should
the ungrateful dog dare to come among us again, hang him to the
first rotten tree. A military force to protect the ballot-box!
Let President Pierce or Governor Reeder, or any other power,
attempt such a course in this, or any portion of the Union, and
that day will never be forgotten.
The "Border Ruffian" legislature proceeded to enact the entire slave
code of Missouri as laws of Kansas. It was made a criminal offense for
anybody to deny that slavery existed in Kansas, or to print anything, or
to introduce any printed matter, making such denial. Nobody could hold
any office, even that of notary public, who should make such denial. The
crime of enticing any slave to leave his master was made punishable with
death, or imprisonment for ten years. That of advising slaves, by
speaking, writing, or printing, to rebel, was punishable with death.
Reeder was removed from office by President Pierce on the 15th of
August, and Wilson Shannon, a former governor of Ohio, was appointed as
his successor.
The Free State men held a convention at Topeka in October, 1855, and
framed a state constitution, to be submitted to a popular vote, looking
to admission to the Union. This was equivalent merely to a petition to
Congress, but it was stigmatized as an act of rebellion by the
pro-slavery party.
On the 24th of January, 1856, President Pierce sent a special message to
Congress on the subject of the disturbance in Kansas. He alluded to the
"angry accusations that illegal votes had been polled," and to the
"imputations of fraud and violence"; but he relied upon the fact that
the governor had admitted some members and rejected others and that each
legislative assembly had undoubted authority to determine, in the last
resort, the election and qualification of its own members. Thus a
principle intended to apply to a few exceptional cases of dispute was
stretched to cover a case where all the seats had been obtained by fraud
and usurpation. "For all present purposes," he added feebly, the
"legislative body thus constituted and elected was the legitimate
assembly of the Territory."
This message was referred to the Senate Committee on Territories. On the
12th of March, Senator Douglas submitted a report from the committee,
and Senator Collamer, of Vermont, submitted a minority report. This was
the occasion of the first passage-at-arms between Douglas and his new
colleague. The report was not merely a general endorsement of President
Pierce's contention that it was impossible to go behind the returns of
the Kansas election, as certified by Governor Reeder, but it went much
further in the same direction, putting all the blame for the disorders
on the New England Emigrant Aid Company, and practically justifying the
Missourians as a people "protecting their own firesides from the
apprehended horrors of servile insurrection and intestine war."
Logically, from Douglas's new standpoint, the New Englanders had no
right to settle in Kansas at all, if they had the purpose to make it a
free state. To this complexion had the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"
come in the short space of two years.