RETURN OF MR. DAVIS TO THE SENATE--OPENING EVENTS OF MR. BUCHANAN'S
ADMINISTRATION--TRUE INTERPRETATION OF THE LEGISLATION OF 1854--
SENATOR DOUGLAS THE INSTRUMENT OF DISORGANIZATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC
PARTY--HIS ANTECEDENTS AND CHARACTER--AN ACCOMPLISHED DEMAGOGUE--DAVIS
AND DOUGLAS CONTRASTED--BOTH REPRESENTATIVES OF THEIR RESPECTIVE
SECTIONS--DOUGLAS AMBITION--HIS COUP D'ETAT, AND ITS RESULTS--THE
KANSAS QUESTION--DOUGLAS' TRIUMPHS OVER THE SOUTH AND THE UNITY OF THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY LOST--"SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY"--PROPERLY
CHARACTERIZED--DAVIS' COURSE IN THE KANSAS STRUGGLE--DEBATE WITH
SENATOR FESSENDEN--PEN-AND-INK SKETCH OF MR. DAVIS AT THIS PERIOD--
TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF POLITICAL EVENTS TO THE SOUTH--SHE RIGHTLY
INTERPRETS THEM--MR. DAVIS' COURSE SUBSEQUENT TO THE KANSAS
IMBROGLIO--HIS DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS--TWO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF
PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKING--DAVIS THE LEADER OF THE REGULAR DEMOCRACY IN
THE THIRTY-SIXTH CONGRESS--HIS RESOLUTIONS--HIS CONSISTENCY--COURSE AS
TO GENERAL LEGISLATION--VISITS THE NORTH--SPEAKS IN PORTLAND, BOSTON,
NEW YORK, AND OTHER PLACES--REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO ATTEND THE
WEBSTER BIRTH-DAY FESTIVAL--MR. SEWARD'S ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE
"IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT"--MR. DAVIS BEFORE MISSISSIPPI DEMOCRATIC
STATE CONVENTION--PROGRESS OF DISUNION--DISSOLUTION OF THE DEMOCRATIC
PARTY--SPEECHES OF MR. DAVIS AT PORTLAND AND IN SENATE.
Mr. Davis returned to the Senate at a period marked by agitation, no less
menacing to the Union than that which had so seriously threatened it in
1850. His health at this time was exceedingly infirm, and for several
months he was so much prostrated by his protracted sufferings, that a
proper regard for the suggestions of prudence would have justified his
entire abstinence from the labors and excitements of this stormy period.
Again and again, however, did his heroic devotion carry him from his sick
bed to the capitol, to engage in the death-struggle of the South, with her
leagued enemies, for safety in the Union, which she was still loath to
abandon, even under the pressure of intolerable wrong. Frequently, with
attenuated frame and bandaged eyes, he was to be seen in the Senate, at
moments critical in the fierce sectional conflict; and at the final
struggle upon the Kansas question, not even the earnest admonitions of his
physician, that to leave his chamber would probably be followed by the
most dangerous results, were availing to induce his absence from the
scene.
The opening events of the first session of the Thirty-fifth Congress, (the
first incidental to the administration of Mr. Buchanan,) were far from
being auspicious of the continued unity of the Democratic party, which,
for several years past, the intelligence of the country had correctly
appreciated as an essential condition to the preservation of the Union.
Mainly through the undivided support given him by the South, Mr. Buchanan
was elected upon the Cincinnati platform of 1856, which was a
re-affirmation of the cardinal tenets of the Democratic faith, involving
also emphatic approval of the Kansas-Nebraska legislation two years
previous. Not until months after his inauguration were there any
indications of hostility to his administration within the ranks of his own
party. Nor had there been any avowed difference of construction as to the
end and effect of the legislation of 1854. The rare unanimity with which
the South had been rallied to the support of the Democracy was based upon
the unreserved admission, by all parties, that the Kansas-Nebraska act
was designedly friendly in its _spirit_, at all events, to Southern
interests. No Southern statesman, for a moment, dreamed that it was
capable of an interpretation unfriendly to his section. That the plain
purpose of the bill was to remove the subject of slavery outside the
bounds of congressional discussion, and to place it in the disposition of
the States separately, and in the _Territories_, _when organizing for
admission as States_, was regarded by the South as the leading vital
principle which challenged her enthusiastic support. Such, indeed, was the
doctrine asserted by the entire Democratic party of the South, enunciated
by the administration, and tacitly approved by the Northern Democracy.
Very soon, however, after the meeting of Congress, the action of Senator
Douglas revealed him as the instrument of disorganization in his party. To
a proper understanding of his motives and conduct at this conjuncture, a
brief statement of his antecedents is essential.
Stephen A. Douglas was now in the meridian of life and the full maturity
of his unquestionably vigorous intellectual powers. For twenty-five years
he had been prominent in the arena of politics, and as a member of
Congress his course had been so eminently politic and judicious as to make
him a favorite with the Democracy, both North and South. To an unexampled
degree his public life illustrated the combination of those
characteristics of the demagogue, a fertile ingenuity, facile
accommodation to circumstances, and wonderful gifts of the _ad captandum_
species of oratory, so captivating to the populace, which in America
peculiarly constitute the attributes of the "rising man." Douglas was not
wanting in noble and attractive qualities of manhood. His courage was
undoubted, his generosity was princely in its munificence to his personal
friends, and he frequently manifested a lofty magnanimity. In his early
youth, deprived of the advantages of fortune and position, the discipline
of his career was not propitious to the development of the higher
qualities of statesmanship--with which, indeed, he was scantily endowed by
nature. It is as the accomplished politician, subtle, ready, fearless, and
indefatigable, that he must be remembered. In this latter character he was
unrivaled.
Not less than Davis was Douglas a representative man, yet no two men were
more essentially dissimilar, and no two lives ever actuated by aspirations
and instincts more unlike. Douglas was the representative of
expediency--Davis the exponent of principles. In his party associations
Douglas would tolerate the largest latitude of individual opinion, while
Davis was always for a policy clearly defined and unmistakable; and upon a
matter of vital principle, like Percy, would reluctantly surrender even
the "ninth part of a hair." To maintain the united action of the
Democratic party on election day, to defeat its opponents, to secure the
rewards of success, Douglas would allow a thousand different constructions
of the party creed by as many factions. Davis, on the other hand, would,
and eventually did, approve the dissolution of the party, when it refused
an open, manly enunciation of its faith. For mere party success Douglas
cared every thing, and Davis nothing, save as it ensured the triumph of
Constitutional principles. Both loved the Union and sought its perpetuity,
but by different methods; Douglas by never-ending compromises of a
quarrel, which he should have known that the North would never permit to
be amicably settled; by staving off and ignoring issues which were to be
solved only by being squarely met. Davis, too, was not unwilling to
compromise, but he wearied of perpetual concession by the South, in the
meanwhile the North continuing its hostility, both open and insidious,
and urged a settlement of all differences upon a basis of simple and exact
justice to both sections.
Douglas was preëminently the representative politician of his section, and
throughout his career was a favorite with that boastful, bloated, and
mongrel element, which is violently called the "American people," and
which is the ruling element in elections in the Northern cities. In
character and conduct he embodied many of its materialistic and
socialistic ideas, its false conception of liberty, its pernicious dogmas
of equality, and not a little of its rowdyism.
Davis was the champion of the South, her civilization, lights, honor, and
dignity. He was the fitting and adequate exponent of a civilization which
rested upon an intellectual and æsthetical development, upon lofty and
generous sentiments of manhood, a dignified conservatism, and the proud
associations of ancestral distinction in the history of the Union. Always
the Senator in the sense of the ideal of dignity and courtesy which is
suggested by that title, he was also the _gentleman_ upon all occasions;
never condescending to flatter or soothe the mob, or to court popular
favor, he lost none of that polished and distinguished manner, in the
presence of a "fierce Democracie," which made him the ornament of the
highest school of oratory and statesmanship of his country.
The ambition of Douglas was unbounded. The recognized leader, for several
years, of the Northern Democracy, his many fine personal qualities and
courageous resistance of the ultra Abolitionists secured for him a
considerable number of supporters in the Southern wing of that party. The
Presidency was the goal of his ambition, and for twenty years his course
had been sedulously adjusted to the attainment of that most coveted of
prizes to the American politician. On repeated occasions he had been
flattered by a highly complimentary vote in the nominating conventions of
the Democracy. Hitherto he had been compelled to yield his pretensions in
favor of older members of his party or upon considerations of temporary
availability. It was evident, however, that in order to be President, he
must secure the nomination in 1860. The continued ascendancy of the
Democracy was no longer, as heretofore, a foregone conclusion, and,
besides, there were others equally aspiring and available. His
Presidential aspirations appeared, indeed, to be without hope or resource,
save through the agency of some adroit _coup d'etat_, by which the
truculent and dominant free-soil sentiment of the North, which he had so
much affronted by his bid for Southern support in the introduction of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill, could be conciliated. In Illinois, his own State,
the Abolition strength was alarmingly on the increase, and to secure his
return to the Senate at the election to be held in 1858, an object of
prime importance in the promotion of his more ambitious pretensions, he
did not scruple to assume a position, falsifying his previous record,
wantonly insulting and defiant to his Southern associates, and in bold
antagonism to a Democratic administration. The sequel of this rash and
ill-judged course was the overthrow of his own political fortunes, the
disintegration of his party, and the attempted dissolution of the Union.
The earliest recommendations of Mr. Buchanan, respecting the Kansas
controversy, which, several months since, had developed in that Territory
into a species of predatory warfare, marked by deeds of violence and
atrocity, between the Abolition and Pro-slavery parties, were signalized
by a coalition of the followers of Douglas with the Abolitionists and
other opponents of the administration. The speedy pacification of the
disorders in Kansas, by the prompt admission of that Territory, was the
condition essential to the success of Mr. Buchanan's entire policy. He
accordingly recommended the admission of Kansas into the Union, with the
"Lecompton" constitution, which had been adopted in September, 1857, by
the decisive vote of six thousand two hundred and twenty-six in favor of
that constitution, with slavery, and five hundred and nine for it, without
slavery. A rival instrument, adopted by an election notoriously held
exclusively under the control of Abolitionists, prohibiting slavery, was
likewise presented.
For months the controversy was waged in Congress between the friends of
the administration and its enemies, and finally resulted in a practical
triumph of the Free-soil principle. The Anti-Lecompton coalition of
Douglas and the Abolitionists, aided by the defection of a few Southern
members, successfully embarrassed the policy of the administration by
defeating its recommendations, and eventually carried a measure acceptable
to Northern sentiments and interests.
Mr. Douglas thus triumphed over a Democratic administration, at the same
time giving a shock to the unity of the Democratic party, from which it
has never recovered, and effectually neutralized its power as a breakwater
of the Union against the waves of sectional dispute. The alienation
between himself and his former associates was destined never to be
adjusted, as indeed it never should have been, in consideration of his
inexcusable recreancy to the immemorial faith of his party. Mr. Douglas
simply abandoned the South, at the very first moment when his aid was
seriously demanded. Nay, more; he carried with him a quiver of Parthian
arrows, which he discharged into her bosom at a most critical moment in
her unequal contest.
It is not to be denied that Mr. Douglas' new interpretation of the
Kansas-Nebraska act was urged by himself and his advocates as having a
merit not to be overlooked by the North, in its suggestion of a method of
restricting slavery, presenting superior advantages. "Squatter
sovereignty," as advocated by Mr. Douglas, proposing the decision of the
slavery question by the people of the Territories, while yet unprepared to
ask admission as States, was far more effectual in its plans against
slavery, and only less prompt and open, than the designs of the
Abolitionists. It would enable the "Emigrant Aid Societies," and imported
janizaries of Abolition to exclude the institutions of the South from the
Territories, the joint possessions of the two sections, acquired by an
enormously disproportionate sacrifice on the part of the South, with a
certainty not to be realized, for years to come, perhaps, from the
Abolition policy of congressional prohibition.[12] According to Mr.
Douglas' theory, the existence of slavery in all the Territories was to
depend upon the verdict of a few hundred settlers or "squatters" upon the
public lands. It practically conceded to Northern interests and ideas
every State to be hereafter admitted, and under the operation of such a
policy it was not difficult to anticipate the fate of slavery, at last
even in the States.
From the inception of this controversy until its close Mr. Davis was fully
committed to the policy of Mr. Buchanan, and his position was in perfect
harmony with that of all the leading statesmen of the South. Less
prominent, perhaps, in debate, from his constant ill-health during the
first session, than at any other period of his public life, he was still
zealous and influential.
An interesting incident of the session was a discussion between Mr. Davis
and Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, a Senator second only to Mr. Seward among
Abolition leaders, in point of intellect, and behind none in his truculent
animosity to Southern institutions. Reviewing the message of Mr. Buchanan
with great severity, Fessenden took occasion to discuss elaborately the
slavery question, with all its incidental issues. Mr. Davis replied, not
at great length, but with much force and spirit. The discussion terminated
with the following colloquy, which is interesting chiefly in its personal
allusions:
"MR. FESSENDEN. ... Sir, I have avowed no disunion sentiments on this
floor--neither here nor elsewhere. Can the honorable gentleman from
Mississippi say as much?
"MR. DAVIS. Yes.
"MR. FESSENDEN. I am glad to hear it, then.
"MR. DAVIS. Yes. I have long sought for a respectable man who would
allege the contrary.
"MR. FESSENDEN. I make no allegation. I asked if he could say as much.
I am glad to hear him say so, because I must say to him that the
newspapers have represented him as making a speech in Mississippi, in
which he said he came into General Pierce's cabinet a disunion man. If
he never made it, very well.
"MR. DAVIS. I will thank you to produce that newspaper.
"MR. FESSENDEN. I can not produce it, but I can produce an extract
from it in another paper.
"MR. DAVIS. An extract! then that falsifies the text.
"MR. FESSENDEN. I am very glad to hear the Senator say so. I made no
accusation--I put the question to him. If he denies it, very well. I
only say that, with all the force and energy with which he denies it,
so do I. The accusation never has been made against me before. On what
ground does the Senator now put it?...
"MR. DAVIS. Does the Senator ask me for an answer?
"MR. FESSENDEN. Certainly, if the Senator feels disposed to give one.
"MR. DAVIS. If you ask me for an answer, it is easy. I said your
position was fruitful of such a result. I did not say you avowed the
object--nothing of the sort, but the reverse....
"MR. FESSENDEN. That is a matter of opinion, on which I have a right
to entertain my view as well as the Senator his....
"MR. DAVIS. Mr. President, I rise principally for the purpose of
saying that I do not know whence springs this habit of talking about
intimidation. I am not the first person toward whom a reply has been
made, that we are not to carry our ends by intimidation. I try to
intimidate nobody; I threaten nobody; and I do not believe--let me say
it once for all--that any body is afraid of me--and I do not want any
body to be afraid of me.
"MR. FESSENDEN. I am. [Laughter.]
"MR. DAVIS. I am sorry to hear it; and if the Senator is really so, I
shall never speak to him in decided terms again.
"MR. FESSENDEN. I speak of it only in an intellectual point of view.
[Laughter.]
"MR. DAVIS. Then, sir, the Senator was in a Pickwickian sense when he
began; there were no threats, no intimidations, and he is just where
he would have been if he had said nothing." [Laughter.]...
While the Kansas question was pending in Congress, a sketch of Mr. Davis,
in connection with two other prominent Southern Senators, which appeared
in the correspondence of a leading journal, was extensively copied in the
newspapers of the day. We extract that portion which relates specially to
Mr. Davis. The portrait is from the pen of one who had no sympathy with
his political views:
DAVIS, HUNTER, AND TOOMBS, THE SOUTHERN TRIUMVIRATE.
[Correspondence of the Missouri Democrat.]
"WASHINGTON CITY, January 21.
"Yesterday, when Hale was speaking, the right side of the chamber was
empty, (as it generally is during the delivery of an antislavery
speech,) with the exception of a group of three who sat near the
centre of the vacant space. This remarkable group, which wore the air
if not the ensigns of power, authority, and public care, was composed
of Senators Davis, Hunter, and Toombs. They were engaged in an earnest
colloquy, which, however, was foreign to the argument Hale was
elaborating; for though the connection of their words was broken
before it reached the gallery, their voices were distinctly audible,
and gave signs of their abstraction. They were thinking aloud. If they
had met together, under the supervision of some artist gifted with the
faculty of illustrating history and character by attitude and
expression, who designed to paint them, in fresco, on the walls of the
new Senate chamber, the combination could not have been more
appropriately arranged than chance arranged it on this occasion.
Toombs sits among the opposition on the left, Hunter and Davis on the
right; and the fact that the two first came to Davis' seat--the one
gravitating to it from a remote, the other from a near point--may be
held to indicate which of the three is the preponderating body in the
system, if preponderance there be; and whose figure should occupy the
foreground of the picture if any precedence is to be accorded. Davis
sat erect and composed; Hunter, listening, rested his head on his
hand; and Toombs, inclining forward, was speaking vehemently. Their
respective attitudes were no bad illustration of their individuality.
Davis impressed the spectator, who observed the easy but authoritative
bearing with which he put aside or assented to Toomb's suggestions,
with the notion of some slight superiority, some hardly-acknowledged
leadership; and Hunter's attentiveness and impassibility were
characteristic of his nature, for his profundity of intellect wears
the guise of stolidity, and his continuous industry that of inertia;
while Toomb's quick utterance and restless head bespoke his nervous
temperament and activity of mind. But, though each is different from
either of the others, the three have several attributes in common.
They are equally eminent as statesmen and debaters; they are devoted
to the same cause; they are equals in rank, and rivals in ambition;
and they are about the same age, and none of them--let young America
take notice--wears either beard or mustache. I come again to the
traits which distinguish them from each other. In face and form, Davis
represents the Norman type with singular fidelity, if my conception of
that type be correct. He is tall and sinewy, with fair hair, gray
eyes, which are clear rather than bright, high forehead, straight
nose, thin, compressed lips, and pointed chin. His cheek bones are
hollow, and the vicinity of his mouth is deeply furrowed with
intersecting lines. Leanness of face, length and sharpness of feature,
and length of limb, and intensity of expression, rendered acute by
angular, facial outline, are the general characteristics of his
appearance."
The controversy, excited by the question of the admission of Kansas, can
not be viewed as having terminated with the mere practical decision of her
status, as a State tolerating or prohibiting slavery. Southern men had
freely admitted the improbability of the permanent abiding of the
institution in that Territory, or elsewhere, north of the line of 36° 30',
and their defeat had a far more alarming significance than the exclusion
of slavery from soil where the laws of nature opposed its location.
Important conclusions were deducible from the lesson of Kansas, which the
South must have been smitten with voluntary blindness not to have
accepted. Of the purpose of the Republican party, never to consent to the
admission of additional slave States, there was added to constantly
accumulating proof from other sources, the bold declarations of Abolition
members of Congress. Recent experience clearly demonstrated that the South
could no longer rely upon the Northern Democracy in support of the
plainest guarantees of the Constitution, for the protection of her
property, when they were in conflict with the dominant fanaticism of that
section. Accordingly, the Southern Democracy, wisely and bravely resolved,
and the unfortunate issue should not prejudge their action, to require of
their Northern associates, as the condition of continued coöperation, a
pledge of better faith in the future.
It was in the progress of events, which may be justly called the sequel of
the Kansas controversy, that Mr. Davis was most conspicuous during his
second service in the Senate. His course was such as might have been
anticipated from his zealous and vigilant regard for constitutional
principles, and the rights and interests of his section. His feeble health
had prevented his frequent participation in the struggles incidental to
the Kansas question, but in those subsequent struggles, which marked the
dissolution of the Democratic party, he was the constant, bold, and able
adversary of Douglas. The ingenious sophistries of the latter were
subjected to no more searching and scathing refutations than those with
which Davis met his every attempt at their illustration.
At this period the position of Mr. Davis was no less prominent than in
1850, though his speeches were less frequent and voluminous. Upon both
occasions his elevation was an ample reward to honorable ambition, but
would have been perilous in the extreme had he been deficient in those
great and rare qualities which were necessary to its maintenance. Among
his numerous contests with the distinguished exponents of the sentiment in
opposition to the South, none are more memorable than his collisions with
Douglas.
Of these the most striking occurred on the 23d of February, 1859, and on
the 16th and 17th of May, 1860. To have matched Douglas with an ordinary
contestant, must always have resulted in disaster; it would have been to
renew the contest of Athelstane against Ivanhoe. Douglas was accustomed to
testify, cheerfully, to the power of Davis, as evinced in their senatorial
struggles; and it is very certain that at no other hands did he fare so
badly, unless an exception be made in favor of the remarkable speech of
Senator Benjamin, of Louisiana. The latter was an adept in the strategy of
debate, a parliamentary Suchet.
The 23d of February, 1859, was the occasion of a protracted battle between
Davis and Douglas, lasting from midday until nearly night. This speech of
Mr. Davis is, in many respects, inferior to his higher oratorical efforts,
realizing less of the forms of oratory which he usually illustrated so
happily, and is wanting somewhat in that symmetry, harmony, and comeliness
in all its features, with which his senatorial efforts are generally
wrought to the perfection of expression. The circumstances under which it
was delivered, however, fully meet this criticism, and show a most
remarkable readiness for the instantaneous and hurried grapple of debate,
and this latter quality was the strong point of Douglas' oratory. The
latter had replied at great length, and with evident preparation, to a
speech made by Mr. Davis' colleague (Mr. Brown), who was not present
during Douglas' rejoinder. Without hesitation Mr. Davis assumed the place
of his absent colleague, and the result was a running debate, lasting
several hours, and exhibiting on both sides all the vivacious readiness of
a gladiatorial combat.
In their ordinary and characteristic speeches there was an antithesis, no
less marked than in their characters as men. Douglas was peculiarly
_American_ in his style of speaking. He dealt largely in the _argumentum
ad hominem_; was very adroit in pointing out immaterial inconsistencies in
his antagonists; he rarely discussed general principles; always avoided
questions of abstract political science, and struggled to force the entire
question into juxtaposition with the practical considerations of the
immediate present.
In nearly all of Davis' speeches is recognized the pervasion of intellect,
which is preserved even in his most impassioned passages. He goes to the
very "foundations of jurisprudence," illustrates by historical example,
and throws upon his subject the full radiance of that noble light which is
shed by diligent inquiry into the abstract truths of political and moral
science. Strength, animation, energy without vehemence, classical
elegance, and a luminous simplicity, are features in Mr. Davis' oratory
which rendered him one of the most finished, logical, and effective of
contemporary parliamentary speakers.
During the Thirty-sixth Congress, which assembled in December, 1859, Mr.
Davis was the recognized leader of the Democratic majority of the Senate.
His efforts, during this session, were probably the ablest of his life,
and never did his great powers of analysis and generalization appear to
greater advantage. On the second of February, 1860, Mr. Davis presented a
series of seven resolves, which embodied the views of the administration,
of an overwhelming majority of the Democratic members of the Senate, and
of the Southern Democracy, and were opposed by Mr. Douglas (though absent
from the Senate by sickness), Mr. Pugh, and by the Abolition Senators.
They are important as the substantial expression of the doctrines upon
which the Southern Democracy were already prepared to insist at the
approaching National Convention.
The _first_ resolution affirms the sovereignty of the States and their
delegation of authority to the Federal Government, to secure each State
against _domestic_ no less than foreign dangers. This resolution was
designed with special reference to the recent outrages of John Brown and
his associate conspirators, several of whom had expiated their crimes upon
the gallows, at the hands of the authorities of Virginia.
Resolution _second_ affirms the recognition of slavery as property by the
Constitution, and that all efforts to injure it by citizens of
non-slaveholding States are violations of faith.
_Third_ insists upon the absolute equality of the States.
The _fourth_ resolution of the series, which embodied the material point
of difference between Mr. Douglas and the majority of Democratic Senators,
was modified, as stated by Mr. Davis, "after conference with friends," and
finally made to read thus:
"_Resolved_, That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature,
whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect and
unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the
constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his
slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy
the same while the territorial condition remains."
_Fifth_ declares it the duty of Congress to supply any needed protection
to constitutional rights in a Territory, provided the executive and
judicial authority has not the adequate means.
The _sixth_ resolution was an emphatic repudiation of what Mr. Douglas, by
an ingenious perversion of terms, and a bold array of sophisms, was
pleased to designate "popular sovereignty"--reading thus:
"_Resolved_, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the United States,
when they rightfully form a constitution to be admitted as a State
into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a
State when forming a new constitution, decide for themselves whether
slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited
within their jurisdiction; and 'they shall be admitted into the Union,
with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the
time of their admission.'"
The _seventh_ and last of the series affirmed the validity and sanctity of
the Fugitive Slave Law, and denounced all acts, whether of individuals or
of State Legislatures, to defeat its action.
The struggle upon these resolutions lasted more than three months, the
Senate not reaching a vote upon the first of the series until May 24,
1860. They constituted substantially the platform presented by the South
at the Charleston Democratic Convention, in April, and upon which, after
the withdrawal of the Southern delegations, the Presidential ticket of
Breckinridge and Lane was nominated, and supported in the ensuing canvass,
receiving the electoral votes of eleven States of the South.
It was alleged against these resolutions, and the general principle of
protection to Southern property in the Territories, which their advocates
demanded should be asserted in the Democratic creed, that they involved a
new issue, raised for factious purposes, and were not sanctioned by any
previous action of the party. This, even if it had been true, which
assuredly it was not, constituted no sufficient reason for denying a plain
constitutional right.
But, however sustained might have been this charge of inconsistency
against other Southern leaders, it had no application to Davis. Indeed,
Douglas unequivocally admitted that the position assumed by Davis in 1860
was precisely that to which he had held for twenty years previous. While
the Oregon Bill was pending in the Senate, on the 23d of June, 1848, Mr.
Davis offered this amendment:
"_Provided_, That nothing contained in this act shall be so construed
as to authorize the prohibition of domestic slavery in said Territory
whilst it remains in the condition of a Territory of the United
States."
Eleven years afterwards, in his address before the Mississippi Democratic
Convention, July 5, 1859, he said:
"But if the rules of proceeding remain unchanged, then all the
remedies of the civil law would be available for the protection of
property in slaves; or if the language of the organic act, by
specifying chancery and common-law jurisdiction, denies to us the more
ample remedies of the civil law, then those known to the common law
are certainly in force; and these, I have been assured by the highest
authority, will be found sufficient. If this be so, then we are
content; if it should prove otherwise, then we but ask what justice
can not deny--the legislation needful to enable the General Government
to perform its legitimate functions; and, in the meantime, we deny the
power of Congress to abridge or to destroy our constitutional rights,
or of the Territorial Legislature to obstruct the remedies known to
the common law of the United States."
In 1848 he advocated General Cass' election _in spite_ of the Nicholson
letter, and not because he either approved or failed to detect the
dangerous heresies which it contained. As a choice of evils, he preferred
Cass, even upon the Nicholson letter, to General Taylor, his
father-in-law, both because Cass was the choice of his own party, and he
distrusted the influences which he foresaw would govern the administration
of Taylor.
The attention of Mr. Davis was far from being confined to the slavery
question and the issues which grew out of it during the important period
which we have sketched. His extensive acquaintance with the practical
labors of legislation, and his uniformly thorough information upon all
questions of domestic economy, foreign affairs, the finances, and the
army, were amply exemplified, to the great benefit of the country.
During the debate in the Thirty-fifth Congress, on the bill proposing the
issue of $20,000,000 of Treasury notes, which he opposed, he avowed
himself in favor of the abolition of custom-houses, and the disbanding of
the army of retainers employed to collect the import duties. Free trade
was always an important article of his political creed. He valued its
fraternizing effects upon mankind, its advantages to the laboring classes;
and held that, under a system of free trade, the Government would not be
defrauded. He traced the financial distress of the country, in the
"crisis" of 1857, to its commercial dependence on New York, whose
embarrassments must, so long as that dependence continued, always afflict
the country at large. The army, as on previous occasions, received a
large share of his attention, and he advocated its increase on a plan
similar to that of Mr. Calhoun, when Secretary of War under President
Monroe, providing a skeleton organization in peace, capable of expansion
in the event of war. The fishing bounties he opposed, as being obnoxious
to the objections urged against class legislation.
In the summer of 1858, during the recess of Congress, Mr. Davis visited
the North, with a view to the recuperation of his health. Sailing from
Baltimore to Boston, he traversed a considerable portion of New England,
and sojourned for some time in Portland, Maine. His health was materially
benefited by the bracing salubrity of that delightful locality, and, both
here and at other points, he was received with demonstrations of profound
respect. Upon several occasions he was persuaded to deliver public
addresses, which were largely read and criticized. They were every-where
commended for their admirable catholicity of sentiment, and not less for
their bold assertions of principles than for their emphatic avowals of
attachment to the union of the States. His speech at Portland, Maine,[13]
was especially admired for its statesman-like dignity, and was singularly
free from partisan or sectional temper. In his journey through the States
of Massachusetts and New York, he was tendered distinguished honors, and
addressed the people of the leading cities. On the 10th of October, he
spoke in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and, on the 19th, he addressed an immense
Democratic ratification meeting in New York.
The following is an extract from his address upon the latter occasion:
"To each community belongs the right to decide for itself what
institutions it will have--to each people sovereign in their own
sphere. It belongs only to them to decide what shall be property. You
have decided it for yourselves, Mississippi has done so. Who has the
right to gainsay it? [Applause.] It was the assertion of the right of
independence--of that very right which led your fathers into the war
of the Revolution. [Applause.] It is that which constitutes the
doctrine of State Rights, on which it is my pleasure to stand.
Congress has no power to determine what shall be property anywhere.
Congress has only such grants as are contained in the Constitution;
and it conferred no power to rule with despotic hands over the
independence of the Territories."
The second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress was comparatively
uneventful. Mr. Davis was an influential advocate of the Pacific Railroad
by the Southern route. His most elaborate effort during this session was
his argument against the French Spoliation Bill--denying that the failure
of the Government, in its earlier history, to prosecute the just claims of
American citizens on the Government of France, made it incumbent upon the
present generation to satisfy the obligations of justice incurred in the
past.
In reply to an invitation to attend the Webster Birthday Festival, held in
Boston, in January, 1859, Mr. Davis wrote as follows:
"At a time when partisans avow the purpose to obliterate the landmarks
of our fathers, and fanaticism assails the barriers they erected for
the protection of rights coeval with and essential to the existence of
the Union--when Federal offices have been sought by inciting
constituencies to hostile aggressions, and exercised, not as a trust
for the common welfare, but as the means of disturbing domestic
tranquillity--when oaths to support the Constitution have been taken
with a mental reservation to disregard its spirit, and subvert the
purposes for which it was established--surely it becomes all who are
faithful to the compact of our Union, and who are resolved to maintain
and preserve it, to compare differences on questions of mere
expediency, and, forming deep around the institutions we inherited,
stand united to uphold, with unfaltering intent, a banner on which is
inscribed the Constitutional Union of free, equal, and independent
States.
"May the vows of 'love and allegiance,' which you propose to renew as
a fitting tribute to the memory of the illustrious statesman whose
birth you commemorate, find an echo in the heart of every patriot in
our land, and tend to the revival of that fraternity which bore our
fathers through the Revolution to the consummation of the independence
they transmitted to us, and the establishment of the more perfect
Union which their wisdom devised to bless their posterity for ever!
"Though deprived of the pleasure of mingling my affectionate memories
and aspirations with yours, I send you my cordial greeting to the
friends of the Constitution, and ask to be enrolled among those whose
mission is, by fraternity and good faith to every constitutional
obligation, to insure that, from the Aroostook to San Diego, from Key
West to Puget's Sound, the grand arch of our political temple shall
stand unshaken."
In the meantime a variety of events measurably added to the vehemence of
the sectional dispute, which never, for a moment, had exhibited any
abatement since the opening of the Kansas _imbroglio_. The antagonism
between the two sections, becoming more and more pronounced each day,
rapidly developed the true character of the struggle, as one for existence
on the part of the South, against the revolutionary designs of the North.
Mr. Seward, the Ajax of Black Republicanism, the founder and leader of
the party organized for the destruction of Southern institutions, in the
fall of 1858, at the city of Rochester, for the first time proclaimed his
revolutionary doctrine of an "irrepressible conflict" between the
civilizations of the two sections. This announcement, from such a source,
could only be accepted by the South as a menace to her peace and security.
Such was her construction of it.
In his address before the Mississippi Democratic Convention, in July,
1859, from which we have already quoted, Mr. Davis said:
"We have witnessed the organization of a party seeking the possession
of the Government, not for the common good, not for their own
particular benefit, but as the means of executing a hostile purpose
against a portion of the States."
Approaching more directly the doctrine of Mr. Seward, he said:
"The success of such a party would indeed produce an 'irrepressible
conflict.' To you would be presented the question, Will you allow the
Constitutional Union to be changed into the despotism of a majority?
Will you become the subjects of a hostile Government? or will you,
outside of the Union, assert the equality, the liberty and sovereignty
to which you were born? For myself I say, as I said on a former
occasion, in the contingency of the election of a President on the
platform of Mr. Seward's Rochester speech, let the Union be dissolved.
Let the 'great, but not the greatest, evil' come; for, as did the
great and good Calhoun, from whom is drawn that expression of value, I
love and venerate the Union of these States, but I love liberty and
Mississippi more."
When Congress assembled, in December, 1859, the lawless expedition of
John Brown had greatly accelerated the inevitable climax of disunion.
Thenceforward the incipient revolution was, to a great extent, transferred
from the hands of Congress, whose action was but lightly regarded in
comparison with the animated scenes which marked the State conventions and
popular assemblages, held with reference to the approaching presidential
nominations.
Mr. Davis approved the test made at the Charleston Convention, by the
Southern Democracy, as to the construction of the Cincinnati platform, and
the demand for a more explicit announcement of the position of the party
concerning slavery in the Territories. His speech, in reply to Judge
Douglas, on the 16th and 17th of May, 1860, is a vindication of Southern
action at Charleston, and an exhaustive discussion of all the phases of
the issue upon which the Democracy had divided.
Events soon demonstrated the irreconcilable nature of the antagonism which
had severed this giant organization. It had simply realized the destiny of
political parties. In one generation they rise, as a virtue and a
necessity, to remedy disorders and reform abuses; in another generation,
they are themselves the apologists of corruption and the perpetrators of
wrong. The Democratic party became insensible to the appeals of principle,
and its fifty years' lease of power terminated, not speedily to be
recovered.
HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS AT PORTLAND, MAINE.
[From the Eastern Argus.]
We are gratified in being able to offer our readers a faithful and quite
full report of the speech of Hon. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, on the
occasion of the serenade given him by the citizens of Portland, without
distinction of party, on Friday evening last. It will be read with
interest and pleasure, and we can not doubt that every sentiment, uttered
by the distinguished Mississippian, will find a hearty response and
approval from the citizens of Maine. The occasion was indeed a pleasing, a
hopeful one. It was in every respect the expression of generous
sentiments, of kindness, hospitality, friendly regard, and the brotherhood
of American citizenship. Prominent men of all parties were present, and
the expression, without exception, so far as we have heard, has been that
of unmingled gratification; and the scene was equally pleasant to look
upon. The beautiful mansion of Rensallaer Cram, Esq., directly opposite to
Madame Blanchard's, was illuminated, and the light thrown from the windows
of the two houses revealed to view the large and perfectly orderly
assemblage with which Park and Danforth Streets were crowded. We regret
that our readers can get no idea of the musical voice and inspiring
eloquence of the speaker from a report of his remarks; but it is the best
we can do for them. After the music had ceased, Mr. Davis appeared upon
the steps, and as soon as the prolonged applause with which he was greeted
had subsided, he spoke in substance as follows:
FELLOW-CITIZENS: Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation of your
kindness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive your purpose as to
appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is not the less gratifying
to me to be made the medium through which Maine tenders an expression of
regard to her sister, Mississippi. It is, moreover, with feelings of
profound gratification that I witness this indication of that national
sentiment and fraternity which made us, and which alone can keep us, one
people. At a period but as yesterday, when compared with the life of
nations, these States were separate, and, in some respects, opposing
colonies, their only relation to each other was that of a common
allegiance to the Government of Great Britain. So separate, indeed almost
hostile, was their attitude, that when General Stark, of Bennington
memory, was captured by savages on the headwaters of the Kennebec, he was
subsequently taken by them to Albany, where they went to sell furs, and
again led away a captive, without interference on the part of the
inhabitants of that neighboring colony to demand or obtain his release.
United as we now are, were a citizen of the United States, as an act of
hostility to our country, imprisoned or slain in any quarter of the world,
whether on land or sea, the people of each and every State of the Union,
with one heart and with one voice, would demand redress, and woe be to him
against whom a brother's blood cried to us from the ground. Such is the
fruit of the wisdom and the justice with which our fathers bound
contending colonies into confederation, and blended different habits and
rival interests into a harmonious whole, so that, shoulder to shoulder,
they entered on the trial of the Revolution, and step with step trod its
thorny paths until they reached the height of national independence, and
founded the constitutional representative liberty which is our birthright.
When the mother country entered upon her career of oppression, in
disregard of chartered and constitutional rights, our forefathers did not
stop to measure the exact weight of the burden, or to ask whether the
pressure bore most upon this colony or upon that, but saw in it the
infraction of a great principle, the denial of a common right, in defense
of which they made common cause--Massachusetts, Virginia, and South
Carolina vieing with each other as to who should be foremost in the
struggle, where the penalty of failure would be a dishonorable grave.
Tempered by the trials and sacrifices of the Revolution, dignified by its
noble purposes, elevated by its brilliant triumphs, endeared to each other
by its glorious memories, they abandoned the Confederacy, not to fly apart
when the outward pressure of hostile fleets and armies were removed, but
to draw closer their embrace in the formation of a more perfect Union.
By such men, thus trained and ennobled, our Constitution was framed. It
stands a monument of principle, of forecast, and, above all, of that
liberality which made each willing to sacrifice local interest, individual
prejudice, or temporary good to the general welfare and the perpetuity of
the republican institutions which they had passed through fire and blood
to secure. The grants were as broad as were necessary for the functions of
the general agent, and the mutual concessions were twice blessed, blessing
him who gave and him who received. Whatever was necessary for domestic
government--requisite in the social organization of each community--was
retained by the States and the people thereof; and these it was made the
duty of all to defend and maintain. Such, in very general terms, is the
rich political legacy our fathers bequeathed to us. Shall we preserve and
transmit it to posterity? Yes, yes, the heart responds; and the judgment
answers, the task is easily performed. It but requires that each should
attend to that which most concerns him, and on which alone he has rightful
power to decide and to act; that each should adhere to the terms of a
written compact, and that all should coöperate for that which interest,
duty, and honor demand.
For the general affairs of our country, both foreign and domestic, we have
a national Executive and a national Legislature. Representatives and
Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts affect the
whole country, and their obligations are to the whole people. He who,
holding either seat, would confine his investigations to the mere
interests of his immediate constituents, would be derelict to his plain
duty; and he who would legislate in hostility to any section, would be
morally unfit for the station, and surely an unsafe depository, if not a
treacherous guardian, of the inheritance with which we are blessed. No one
more than myself recognizes the binding force of the allegiance which the
citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but that State being a party
to our compact, a member of the Union, fealty to the Federal Constitution
is not in opposition to, but flows from the allegiance due to one of the
United States. Washington was not less a Virginian when he commanded at
Boston, nor did Gates or Greene weaken the bonds which bound them to their
several States by their campaigns in the South. In proportion as a citizen
loves his own State, will he strive to honor by preserving her name and
her fame free from the tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations
and to fulfill her duties to her sister States. Each page of our history
is illustrated by the names and deeds of those who have well understood
and discharged the obligation. Have we so degenerated that we can no
longer emulate their virtues? Have the purposes for which our Union was
formed lost their value? Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is
narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a crime? Shall the North not
rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South has given to her
great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the world, and
put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the United
States? Shall the South not exult in the fact that the industry and
persevering intelligence of the North has placed her mechanical skill in
the front ranks of the civilized world--that our mother country, whose
haughty Minister, some eighty odd years ago, declared that not a hob-nail
should be made in the colonies, which are now the United States, was
brought, some four years ago, to recognize our preëminence by sending a
commission to examine our workshops and our machinery, to perfect their
own manufacture of the arms requisite for their defense? Do not our whole
people, interior and seaboard, North, South, East and West, alike feel
proud of the hardihood, the enterprise, the skill, and the courage of the
Yankee sailor, who has borne our flag far as the ocean bears its foam, and
caused the name and character of the United States to be known and
respected wherever there is wealth enough to woo commerce and intelligence
to honor merit? So long as we preserve and appreciate the achievements of
Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin and Madison, of Hamilton, of Hancock, and
of Rutledge, men who labored for the whole country, and lived for mankind,
we can not sink to the petty strife which would sap the foundations and
destroy the political fabric our fathers erected and bequeathed as an
inheritance to our posterity forever.
Since the formation of the Constitution a vast extension of territory, and
the varied relations arising therefrom, have presented problems which
could not have been foreseen. It is just cause for admiration, even
wonder, that the provisions of the fundamental law should have been so
fully adequate to all the wants of government, new in its organization,
and new in many of the principles on which it was founded. Whatever fears
may have once existed as to the consequences of territorial expansion must
give way before the evidence which the past affords. The General
Government, strictly confined to its delegated functions, and the State
left in the undisturbed exercise of all else, we have a theory and
practice which fits our Government for immeasurable domain, and might,
under a millennium of nations, embrace mankind.
From the slope of the Atlantic our population, with ceaseless tide, has
poured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, with eddying
whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific; from the West and the East
the tides are rushing toward each other, and the mind is carried to the
day when all the cultivable land will be inhabited, and the American
people will sigh for more wildernesses to conquer. But there is here a
physico-political problem presented for our solution. Were it purely
physical your past triumphs would leave but little doubt of your capacity
to solve it. A community which, when less than twenty thousand, conceived
the grand project of crossing the White Mountains, and unaided, save by
the stimulus which jeers and prophecies of failure gave, successfully
executed the Herculean work, might well be impatient if it were suggested
that a physical problem was before us too difficult for mastery. The
history of man teaches that high mountains and wide deserts have resisted
the permanent extension of empire, and have formed the immutable
boundaries of States. From time to time, under some able leader, have the
hordes of the upper plains of Asia swept over the adjacent country, and
rolled their conquering columns over Southern Europe. Yet, after the lapse
of a few generations, the physical law, to which I have referred, has
asserted its supremacy, and the boundaries of those States differ little
now from those which were obtained three thousand years ago.
Rome flew her conquering eagles over the then known world, and has now
subsided into the little territory on which the great city was originally
built. The Alps and the Pyranees have been unable to restrain imperial
France; but her expansion was a feverish action, her advance and her
retreat were tracked with blood, and those mountain ridges are the
reëstablished limits of her empire. Shall the Rocky Mountains prove a
dividing barrier to us? Were ours a central consolidated Government,
instead of a Union of sovereign States, our fate might be learned from the
history of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and independent spirit of
our forefathers, this is not the case. Each State having sole charge of
its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem, which to others has
been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe, and easy communication
between the Atlantic and the Pacific will give co-intelligence, unity of
interest, and coöperation among all parts of our continent-wide Republic.
The net-work of railroads which bind the North and the South, the slope of
the Atlantic and the valley of the Mississippi, together testify that our
people have the power to perform, in that regard, whatever it is their
will to do.
We require a railroad to the States of the Pacific for present uses; the
time no doubt will come when we shall have need of two or three, it may
be, more. Because of the desert character of the interior country the work
will be difficult and expensive. It will require the efforts of a united
people. The bickerings of little politicians, the jealousies of sections
must give way to dignity of purpose and zeal for the common good. If the
object be obstructed by contention and division as to whether the route
shall be Northern, Southern, or Central, the handwriting is on the wall,
and it requires little skill to see that failure is the interpretation of
the inscription. You are practical people, and may ask, How is that
contest to be avoided? By taking the question out of the hands of
politicians altogether. Let the Government give such aid as it is proper
for it to render to the company which shall propose the most feasible
plan; then leave to capitalists with judgment, sharpened by interest, the
selection of the route, and the difficulties will diminish, as did those
which you overcame when you connected your harbor with the Canadian
provinces.
It would be to trespass on your kindness and to violate the proprieties of
the occasion were I to detain the vast concourse which stands before me by
entering on the discussion of controverted topics, or by further indulging
in the expression of such reflections as circumstances suggest. I came to
your city in quest of health and repose. From the moment I entered it you
have showered upon me kindness and hospitality. Though my experience has
taught me to anticipate good rather than evil from my fellow-man, it had
not prepared me to expect such unremitting attention as has here been
bestowed. I have been jocularly asked in relation to my coming here,
whether I had secured a guarantee for my safety, and lo! I have found it.
I stand in the midst of thousands of my fellow-citizens. But, my friends,
I came neither distrusting nor apprehensive, of which you have proof in
the fact that I brought with me the objects of tenderest affection and
solicitude, my wife and my children; they have shared with me your
hospitality, and will alike remain your debtors. If, at some future time,
when I am mingled with the dust, and the arm of my infant son has been
nerved for deeds of manhood, the storm of war should burst upon your city,
I feel that, relying upon his inheriting the instincts of his ancestors
and mine, I may pledge him in that perilous hour to stand by your side in
the defense of your hearth-stones, and in maintaining the honor of a flag
whose constellation, though torn and smoked in many a battle by sea and
land, has never been stained with dishonor, and will, I trust, forever fly
as free as the breeze which unfolds it.
A stranger to you, the salubrity of your location, and the beauty of its
scenery were not wholly unknown to me, nor were there wanting associations
which busy memory connected with your people. You will pardon me for
alluding to one whose genius shed a lustre upon all it touched, and whose
qualities gathered about him hosts of friends wherever he was known.
Prentiss, a native of Portland, lived from youth to middle age in the
county of my residence; and the inquiries which have been made show me
that the youth excited the interest which the greatness of the man
justified, and that his memory thus remains a link to connect your home
with mine. A cursory view, when passing through your town on former
occasions, had impressed me with the great advantages of your harbor, its
easy entrance, its depth, and its extensive accommodations for shipping.
But its advantages and its facilities, as they have been developed by
closer inspection, have grown upon me, until I realize that it is no
boast, but the language of sober truth, which, in the present state of
commerce, pronounces them unequaled in any harbor of our country.
And surely no place could be more inviting to an invalid who sought refuge
from the heat of Southern summer. Here waving elms offer him shaded walks,
and magnificent residences, surrounded by flowers, fill the mind with
ideas of comfort and rest. If, weary of constant contact with his
fellow-men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, in the background of this
grand amphitheater, lie the eternal mountains, frowning with brow of rock
and cap of snow upon smiling fields beneath, and there in its recesses may
be found as much wildness and as much of solitude as the pilgrim, weary of
the cares of life, can desire. If he turn to the front, your capacious
harbor, studded with green islands of ever-varying light and shade, and
enlightened by all the stirring evidences of commercial activity, offer
him the mingled charms of busy life and nature's calm repose. A few miles
further, and he may sit upon the quiet shore to listen to the murmuring
wave until the troubled spirit sinks to rest; and in the little sail that
vanishes on the illimitable sea we find the type of the voyage which he is
soon to take, when, his ephemeral existence closed, he embarks for that
better state which lies beyond the grave.
Richly endowed as you are by nature in all which contributes to pleasure
and to usefulness, the stranger can not pass without paying a tribute to
the much which your energy has achieved for yourselves. Where else will
one find a more happy union of magnificence and comfort? Where better
arrangements to facilitate commerce? Where so much of industry with so
little noise and bustle? Where, in a phrase, so much effected in
proportion to the means employed? We hear the puff of the engine, the roll
of the wheel, the ring of the ax and the saw, but the stormy, passionate
exclamation so often mingled with the sounds are nowhere heard. Yet
neither these nor other things which I have mentioned, attractive though
they be, have been to me the chief charm which I have found among you. Far
above all these, I place the gentle kindness, the cordial welcome, the
hearty grasp which made me feel truly and at once, though wandering afar,
that I was still at home. My friends, I thank you for this additional
manifestation of your good-will.
REPLY OF HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS, OF MISSISSIPPI, TO THE SPEECH OF SENATOR
DOUGLAS, IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, MAY 16 AND 17, 1860.
[The Senate resumed the consideration of the resolutions submitted by Mr.
Davis on the first of March, relative to State rights, the institution of
slavery in the States, and the rights of citizens of the several States in
the Territories.]
MR. DOUGLAS having concluded his speech--
MR. DAVIS arose and said:
_Mr. President_: When the Senator from Illinois commenced his speech, he
announced his object to be to answer to an arraignment, or, as he also
termed it, an indictment, which he said I had made against him. He
therefore caused extracts to be read from my remarks to the Senate. Those
extracts announce that I have been the uniform opponent of what is called
squatter sovereignty, and that, having opposed it heretofore, I was now,
least of all, disposed to give it quarter. At a subsequent period, the
fact was stated that the Senator from Illinois and myself had been opposed
to each other, on those questions which I considered as most distinctly
involving Southern interests in 1850. He has not answered to the
allegation. He has not attempted to show that he did not stand in that
position. It is true he has associated himself with Mr. Clay, and, before
closing, I will show that the association does not belong to him; that
upon those test questions they did not vote together. He then, somewhat
vauntingly, reminded me that he was with the victorious party, asserted
that the Democracy of the country then sustained his doctrine, and that I
was thus outside of that organization. With Mr. Clay! If he had been with
him, he would have been in good company; but the old Jackson Democracy
will be a little surprised to learn that Clay was the leader of our party,
and that a man proves his allegiance to it by showing how closely he
followed in the footsteps of Henry Clay.
When the Senator opened his argument, by declaring his purpose to be fair
and courteous, I little supposed that an explanation made by me in favor
of the Secretary of State, and which could not at all disturb the line of
his argument, would have been followed by the rude announcement that he
could not permit interruption thereafter. A Senator has the right to claim
exemption from interruption if he will follow the thread of his argument,
direct his discourse to the question at issue, and confine himself to it;
but if he makes up a medley of arraignments of the men who have been in
public life for ten years past, and addressing individuals in his
presence, he should permit an interruption to be made for correction as
often as he misrepresents their position. It would have devolved on me
more than once, if I had been responsible for his frequent references to
me, to correct him and show that he misstated facts; but as he would not
permit himself to be interrupted, I am not responsible for any thing he
has imputed to me.
The Senator commenced with a disclaimer of any purpose to follow what he
considered a bad practice of arraigning Senators here on matters for which
they stood responsible to their constituents; but straightway proceeded to
make a general arraignment of the present and the absent. I believe I
constitute the only exception to whom he granted consistency, and that at
the expense of party association, and, he would have it, at the expense of
sound judgment. He not only arraigned individuals, but even
States--Florida, Alabama, and Georgia--were brought to answer at the bar
of the Senate for the resolutions they had passed; Virginia was held
responsible for her policy; Mississippi received his critical notice.
Pray, sir, what had all this to do with the question? Especially, what had
all this to do with what he styled an indictment against him? It is a mere
resort to a species of declamation which has not been heard to-day for the
first time; a pretext to put himself in the attitude of a persecuted man,
and, like the satyr's guest, blowing hot and cold in the same breath, in
the midst of his complaint of persecution, vaunts his supreme power. If
his opponents be the very small minority which he describes, what fear has
he of persecution or proscription?
Can he not draw a distinction between one who says: "I give no quarter to
an idea," and one who proclaims the policy of putting the advocates of
that idea to the sword? Such was his figurative language. That figure of
the sword, however, it seemed, as he progressed in his development,
referred to the one thought always floating through his brain--exclusion
from the spoils of office, for, at last, it seemed to narrow down to the
supposition that no man who agreed with him was, with our consent, to be
either a Cabinet officer or a collector. Who has advanced any such
doctrine? Have I, at this or any other period of my acquaintance with him,
done any thing to justify him in attributing that opinion to me? I pause
for his answer.
MR. DOUGLAS. I do not exactly understand the Senator. I have no complaint
to make of the Senator from Mississippi of ever having been unkind or
ungenerous towards me, if that is what he means to say.
MR. DAVIS. Have I ever promulgated a doctrine which indicated that if my
friends were in power, I would sacrifice every other wing of the
Democratic party?
MR. DOUGLAS. I understood the making of a test on this issue against me
would reach every other man that held my opinions; and, therefore, if I
was not sound enough to hold office, no man agreeing with me would be; and
hence, every man of my opinions would be excluded.
MR. DAVIS. Ah, Mr. President; I believe I now have caught the clue to the
argument; it was not before apprehended. I was among those who thought the
Senator, with his opinions, ought not to be chairman of the Committee on
Territories. This, I suppose, then, is the whole imposition. But have I
not said to the Senator, at least once, that I had no disposition to
question his Democracy; that I did not wish to withhold from him any
tribute which was due to his talent and his worth? Did I not offer to
resign the only chairmanship of a committee I had if the Senate would
confer it upon him? Then, where is this spirit of proscription, the
complaint of which has constituted some hours of his speech? If others
have manifested it, I do not know it; and as the single expression of "no
quarter to the doctrine of squatter sovereignty" was the basis of his
whole allegation, I took it for granted his reference to a purpose to do
him and his friends such wrong must have been intended for me.
The fact that the Senator criticised the idea of the States prescribing
the terms on which they will act in a party convention recognized to be
representative, is suggestive of an extreme misconception of relative
position; and the presumption with which the Senator censured what he was
pleased to term "the seceders," suggested to me a representation of the
air of the great monarch of France when, feeling royalty and power all
concentrated in his own person, he used the familiar yet remarkable
expression, "the State, that's me." Does the Senator consider it a modest
thing in him to announce to the Democratic Convention on what terms he
will accept the nomination; but presumptuous in a State to declare the
principle on which she will give him her vote? It is an advance on Louis
Quatorze.
Nothing but the most egregious vanity, something far surpassing even the
bursting condition of swollen pride, could have induced the Senator to
believe that I could not speak of squatter sovereignty without meaning
him.
Towards the Senator, personally, I have never manifested
hostility--indeed, could not, because I have ever felt kindly. Many years
of association, very frequent coöperation, manly support from him in times
of trial, are all remembered by me gratefully. The Senator, therefore, had
no right to assume that I was making war upon him. I addressed myself to
a doctrine of which he was not the founder, though he was one of the early
disciples; but he proved an unprofitable follower, for he became
rebellious, and ruined the logic of the doctrine. It was logical in Mr.
Cass's mind; he claimed the power to be inherent in the people who settled
a new Territory, and by this inherent power he held that they might
proceed to form government and to exercise its functions. There was logic
in that--logic up to the point of sovereignty. Not so with the Senator. He
says the inhabitants of the Territories derive their power to form a
government from the consent of Congress; that when we decide that there
are enough of them to constitute a government, and enact an organic law,
then they have power to legislate according to their will. This power
being derived from an act of Congress--a limited agency tied down to the
narrow sphere of the constitutional grant--is made, by that supposition,
the bestower of sovereignty on its creature.
I had occasion the other day to refer to the higher law as it made its
first appearance on earth--the occasion when the tempter entered the
garden of Eden. There is another phase of it. Whoever attempts to
interpose between the supreme law of the Creator and the creature, whether
it be in the regions of morals or politics, proclaims a theory that wars
upon every principle of government. When Congress, the agent for the
States, within the limits of its authority, forms, as it were, a
territorial constitution by its organic act, he who steps in and proclaims
to the settlers in that Territory that they have the right to overturn the
Government, to usurp to themselves powers not delegated, is preaching the
higher law in the domain of politics, which is only less mischievous than
its other form, because the other involves both politics and morals in one
ruinous confusion.
The Senator spoke of the denial of Democratic fellowship to him. After
what has been said and acknowledged by the Senator, it is not to be
supposed that it could have any application to me. It may be proper to
add, I know of no such denial on the part of other Democratic Senators.
Far be it from me to vaunt the fact of being in a majority, and to hold
him to the hard rule he prescribes to us, of surrendering an opinion where
we may happen to have been in a minority. Were I to return now to him the
measure with which he metes to us, when he assumes that a majority in the
Charleston Convention has a right to prescribe what shall be our tenets, I
might, in reply to him, say, as a sincere adherent of the Democratic
party, how can you oppose the resolutions pending before the Senate? If
twenty-seven majority in a body of three hundred and three constituent
members had, as he assumes, the power to lay down a binding law, what is
to be said of him who, with a single adherent, stands up against the whole
of his Democratic associates? He must be outside of the party, according
to his enunciation; he must be wandering in the dark regions to which he
consigns the followers of Mr. Yancey.
The Senator said he had no taste for references to things which were
personal, and then proceeded to discuss that of which he showed himself
profoundly ignorant--the condition of things in Mississippi. It is
disagreeable for me to bring before the Senate matters which belong to my
constituents and myself, and I should not do so but for the fact of their
introduction into the Senator's elaborate speech, which is no doubt to be
spread over all parts of the country. The Senator, by some means or other,
has the name of very many citizens of Mississippi, and as there is nothing
in our condition to attract his special attention, his speech is probably
to be sent over a wide field of correspondence; and it is, therefore, the
more incumbent on me to notice his attempt to give a history of affairs
that were transacted in Mississippi. He first announces that Mississippi
rebuked the idea of intervention asserted in 1850; then that Mississippi
rejected my appeal; that Mississippi voted on the issue made up by the
compromise measure of 1850, and vaunts it as an approval of that
legislation of which he was the advocate and I the opponent. Now,
Mississippi did none of these things. Mississippi instructed her Senators,
and I obeyed her instructions. I introduced into this body the resolutions
which directed my course. On that occasion I vindicated Mississippi, and
especially the Southern rights men, from the falsehood of that day, and
reiterated now, of a purpose to dissolve the Union. I vindicated her by
extracts from the proceedings as well of her convention as of her primary
assemblies; and my remarks on that occasion, as fully as the events to
which he referred in terms of undeserved compliment, justified the Senator
in saying to-day that he knew I had always been faithful to the Government
of which I was a part.
Acting under the instructions from Mississippi--not merely voting and
yielding reluctant compliance; but, according to my ideas of the
obligation of a Senator, laboring industriously and zealously to carry out
the instructions which my State gave me, I took and maintained the
position I held in relation to the measures of 1850. As it was with me a
cordial service, I went home to vindicate the position which was hers, as
well as my own. Shortly after that a canvass was opened, in which a
distinguished gentlemen of our party, who had not been a member of
Congress, was nominated for Governor. Questions other than the compromise
measures of 1850 arose in that canvass; they were discussed in a great
degree to the exclusion of a consideration of the merits of the action of
Congress in 1850; and, at the election in September, for delegates to a
convention, we had fallen from a party majority of some eight thousand to
a minority of nearly the same number. It was after the decision of the
question involved in calling a convention--after our party was
defeated--after the candidate for Governor had retired, that the Democracy
of Mississippi called upon me to bear their standard. It was esteemed a
forlorn hope, therefore an obligation of honor not to decline the
invitation. But so far as the action in the Senate in 1850 was concerned,
if it had any effect, it must have been the reverse of that assumed, as,
in the subsequent election for State officers on the first Monday in
November, this majority of nearly eight thousand against us was reduced to
about one thousand.
But when this convention assembled, though a large majority of the members
belonged to the party which the Senator has been pleased to term the
"Submissionists"--a name which they always rejected--this convention of
the party most adverse to me, when they came to act on the subject said,
after citing the "compromise" measures of the Congress of 1850:
"And connected with them, the rejection of the proposition to exclude
slavery from the Territories of the United States, and to abolish it
in the District of Columbia; and, _while they do not entirely
approve_, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional
controversy, so long as the same, in all its features, shall be
faithfully adhered to and enforced."
Then they go on to recite six different causes, for which they will resort
to the most extreme remedies which we had supposed ever could be
necessary. The case only requires that I should say that the party to
which I belonged did not then, nor at any previous time, propose to go out
of the Union, but to have a Southern convention for consultation as to
future contingencies, threatened and anticipated. It was at last narrowed
down to the question, whether we should meet South Carolina and consult
with her. Honoring that gallant State for the magnanimity she had
manifested in the first efforts for the creation of the Government, in the
preliminaries to the struggle for independence, when she, a favored
colony, feeling no oppression, nursed by the mother country, cherished in
every method, yet agreed with Massachusetts, then oppressed, to assert the
great principle of community independence, and to carry it to the extent
of war--honoring her for her unvarying defense of the Constitution
throughout her whole course--believing that she was true to her faith, and
would redeem all her pledges--feeling that a friendly hand might
restrain, while, if left to herself, her pride might precipitate her on
the trial of separation, I did desire to meet South Carolina in
convention, though nobody but ourselves should be there to join her.
But, to close the matter, this convention, in its seventh resolution,
after stating all those questions on which it would resist, declared:
"That, as the people of Mississippi, in the opinion of this
convention, desire all further agitation of the slavery question to
cease, and have acted upon and decided the foregoing questions,
thereby making it the duty of this convention to pass no act in the
perview and spirit of the law under which it is called, this
convention deems it unnecessary to refer to the people, for approval
or disapproval, at the ballot-box, its action in the premises."
So that when the Senator appealed to this as evidence of what the people
of Mississippi had done, he was ignorant of the fact that the delegates of
the people of Mississippi did not agree with him; that their resolutions
did not sustain the view which he took, and that the people of Mississippi
never acted on them. If, then, there had been good taste in the
intervention of this local question, there was certainly very bad judgment
in hazarding his statements on a subject of which he was so little
informed.
The Senator here, as in relation to our friends at Charleston, takes kind
care of us--supposes we do not know what we are about, but that he, with
his superior discrimination, sees what must necessarily result from what
we are doing; he says that, at Charleston, they--innocent people--did not
intend to destroy the Government; but he warns them that, if they do what
they propose, they will destroy it; and so he says we of Mississippi, not
desiring to break up the Union, nevertheless pursued a course which would
have had that result if it had not been checked. Where does he get all
this information? I have been in every State of the Union except
two--three now, since Oregon has been admitted--but I have never seen a
man who had as much personal knowledge. It is equally surprising that his
facts should be so contrary to the record.
We believed then, as I believe now, that this Union, as a compact entered
into between the States, was to be preserved by good faith, and by a close
observance of the terms on which we were united. We believed then, as I
believe now, that the party which rested upon the basis of truth;
promulgated its opinions, and had them tested in the alembic of public
opinion, adopted the only path of safety. I can not respect such a
doctrine as that which says, "You may construe the Constitution your way,
and I will construe it mine; we will waive the merit of these two
constructions, and harmonize together until the courts decide the question
between us." A man is bound to have an opinion upon any political subject
upon which he is called to act; it is skulking his responsibility for a
citizen to say, "Let us express no opinion; I will agree that you may have
yours, and I will have mine; we will coöperate politically together; we
will beat the opposition, divide the spoils, and leave it to the court to
decide the question between us."
I do not believe that this is the path of safety; I am sure it is not the
way of honor. I believe it devolves on us, who are principally sufferers
from the danger to which this policy has exposed us, to affirm the truth
boldly, and let the people decide after the promulgation of our opinions.
Our Government, resting as it does upon public opinion and popular
consent, was not formed to deceive the people, nor does it regard the men
in office as a governing class. We, the functionaries, should derive our
opinions from the people. To know what their opinion is, it is necessary
that we should pronounce, in unmistakable language, what we ourselves
mean.
My position is, that there is no portion of our country where the people
are not sufficiently intelligent to discriminate between right and wrong,
and no portion where the sense of justice does not predominate. I,
therefore, have been always willing to unfurl our flag to its innermost
fold--to nail it to the mast, with all our principles plainly inscribed
upon it. Believing that we ask nothing but what the Constitution was
intended to confer--nothing but that which, as equals, we are entitled to
receive--I am willing that our case should be plainly stated to those who
have to decide it, and await, for good or for evil, their verdict.
For two days, the Senator spoke nominally upon the resolutions, and upon
the territorial question; but, like the witness in the French comedy, who,
when called upon to testify, commenced before the creation, and was
stopped by the judge, who told him to come down, for a beginning, to the
deluge, he commenced so far back, and narrated so minutely, that he never
got chronologically down to the point before us.
What is the question on which the Democracy are divided? Are we called
upon to settle what every body said from 1847 down to this date? Have the
Democracy divided on that? Have they divided on the resolutions of the
States in 1840, or 1844, or 1848? Have the Democracy undertaken to review
the position taken in 1854, that there should be a latitude of
construction upon a particular point of constitutional law while they did
await the decision of the Supreme Court? No, sir; the question is changed
from before to after the event; the call is on every man to come forward
now, after the Supreme Court has given all it could render upon a
political subject, and state that his creed is adherence to the rule thus
expounded in accordance with previous agreement.
The Senator tells us that he will abide by the decision of the Supreme
Court; but it was fairly to be inferred, from what he said, that, in the
Dred Scott case, he held that they had only decided that a negro could not
sue in a Federal Court. Was this the entertainment to which we were
invited? Was the proclaimed boon of allowing the question to go to
judicial decision, no more than that, one after another, each law might be
tested, and that, one after another, each case, under every law, might be
tried, and that after centuries should roll away, we might hope for the
period when, every case exhausted, the decision of our constitutional
right and of the federal duty would be complete? Or was it that we were to
get rid of the controversy which had divided the country for thirty years;
that we were to reach a conclusion beyond which we could see the region of
peace; that tranquillity was to be obtained by getting a decision on a
constitutional question which had been discussed until it was seen that,
legislatively, it could not or would not be decided? If, then, the Supreme
Court has judicially announced that Congress can not prohibit the
introduction of slave property into a Territory, and that no one deriving
authority from Congress can do so, and the Senator from Illinois holds
that the inhabitants derive their power from the organic act of Congress,
what restrains his acknowledgment of our right to go into the Territories,
and his recognition of the case being closed by the opinion of the court?
I can understand how one who has followed to its logical consequences the
original doctrine of squatter sovereignty might still stand out, and say
this inherent right can not be taken away by judicial decision; but is not
one who claims to derive the power of the territorial legislation from a
law of Congress, and who finds the opinion of the court conclusive as to
Congress, and to all deriving their authority from it, estopped from any
further argument?
Much of what the Senator said about the condition of public affairs can
only be regarded as the presentation of his own case, and requires no
notice from me. His witticism upon the honorable Senator, the Chairman of
the Committee on the Judiciary [Mr. Bayard], who is now absent, because of
the size of the State which he represents, reminds one that it was
mentioned as an evidence of the stupidity of a German, that he questioned
the greatness of Napoleon because he was born in the little island of
Corsica. I know not what views the Senator entertained when he measured
the capacity of the Senator from Delaware by the size of that State, or
the dignity of his action at Charleston by the number of his constituents.
If there be any political feature which stands more prominently out than
another in the Union, it is the equality of the States. Our stars have no
variant size; they shine with no unequal brilliancy. A Senator from
Delaware holds a position entitled to the same respect, as such, as the
Senator from any other State of the Union. More than that, the character,
the conduct, the information, the capacity of that Senator might claim
respect, if he was not entitled to it from his position.
Twice on this occasion, and more than the same number of times heretofore,
has the Senator referred to the great benefit derived from that provision
which grants a trial in the local court, an appeal to the Supreme Court of
the Territory, and an appeal from thence to the Supreme Court of the
United States, on every question involving title to slaves. I wish to say
that whatever merit attaches to that belongs to a Senator to whom the
advocates of negro slavery have not often been in the habit of
acknowledging their obligations--the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr.
Hale], who introduced it in 1850 as an amendment to the New Mexico Bill.
We adopted it as a fair proposition, equally acceptable upon one side and
the other. On its adoption, no one voted against it. That proposition was
incorporated in the Kansas Bill, but unless we acknowledge obligations to
the Senator from New Hampshire, how shall they be accorded for that to the
Senator from Illinois?
I am asked whether the resolutions of the Senate can have the force of
law. Of course not. The Senate, however, is an independent member of the
Government, and from its organization should be peculiarly watchful of
State rights. Before the meeting of the Charleston Convention, it was
untruly stated that these resolutions were concocted to affect the action
of the Charleston Convention. Now we are asked if they are to affect the
Baltimore Convention. They were not designed for the one; they are not
pressed in view of the other. They were introduced to obtain an
expression of the opinion of the Senate, a proceeding quite frequent in
the history of this body. It was believed that they would have a
beneficial effect, and that they were stated in terms which would show the
public the error of supposing that there was a purpose on the part of the
Democracy, or of the South, to enact what was called a slave code for the
Territories of the United States. It was believed that the assertion of
sound principles at this time would direct public opinion, and might be
fruitful of such reuniting, harmonizing results as we all desire, and
which the public need. Whether it is to have this effect or not; whether
at last we are to be shorn of our national strength by personal or
sectional strife, depends upon the conduct of those who have it in their
power to control the result. The Democratic party, in its history,
presents a high example of nationality; its power and its usefulness has
been its co-extension with the Union. The Democrats of the Northern States
who vote for these resolutions, but affirm that which we have so often
announced with pride, that there was a political opinion which pervaded
the whole country; there was a party capable to save the Union, because it
belonged to all the States. If the two Democratic Senators who alone have
declared their opposition should so vote, to that extent the effect would
be impaired, and they will stand in that isolation to which the Senator
points as a consequence so dreadful to the Southern men at Charleston.
[Here Mr. Davis gave way for a motion to adjourn, and on the 17th
resumed.]
MR. DAVIS. At the close of the session of yesterday, I was speaking of the
hope entertained that the Democratic party would yet be united; that the
party which had so long wielded the destinies of the country, for its
honor, for its glory, and its progress, was not about to be checked midway
in its career--to be buried in a premature grave; but that it was to go
on, with concentrated energy, toward the great ends for which it has
striven since 1800, by a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull
altogether, to bring the ship of State into that quiet harbor where
"Vessels safe, without their hawsers, ride."
This was a hope, however, not founded on any supposition that we were to
escape from the issues which are presented--a hope not based on the
proposition that every man should have his own construction of our creed,
and that we should unite together merely for success; but that the party,
as heretofore, in each succeeding quadrennial convention, would add to the
resolutions of the preceding one such declarations as passing events
indicated, and the exigencies of the country demanded.
In the last four years a division has arisen in the Democratic party, upon
the construction of one of the articles of its creed. It behooves us, in
that state of the case, to decide what the true construction is; for, if
the party be not a union of men upon principle, the sooner it is dissolved
the better; and if it be such a union, why shall not those principles be
defined, so as to remove doubt or cavil, and be applied in every emergency
to meet the demands of each succeeding case? Thus only can we avoid
division in council and confusion in action.