In order to understand Douglas one must understand the Democratic party
of 1854 in which Douglas was a conspicuous leader. The Democrats boasted
that they were the only really national party and contended that their
rivals, the Whigs and the Know-Nothings, were merely the representatives
of localities or classes. Sectionalism was the favorite charge which the
Democrats brought against their enemies; and yet it was upon these very
Democrats that the slaveholders had hitherto relied, and it was upon
certain members of this party that the label, "Northern men with
Southern principles," had been bestowed.
The label was not, however, altogether fair, for the motives of the
Democrats were deeply rooted in their own peculiar temperament. In the
last analysis, what had held their organization together, and what had
enabled them to dominate politics for nearly the span of a generation,
was their faith in a principle that then appealed powerfully, and that
still appeals, to much in the American character. This was the principle
of negative action on the part of the government--the old idea that the
government should do as little as possible and should confine itself
practically to the duties of the policeman. This principle has seemed
always to express to the average mind that traditional individualism
which is an inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon race. In America, in the
middle of the nineteenth century, it reenforced that tradition of local
independence which was strong throughout the West and doubly strong in
the South. Then, too, the Democratic party still spoke the language of
the theoretical Democracy inherited from Jefferson. And Americans have
always been the slaves of phrases!
Furthermore, the close alliance of the Northern party machine with
the South made it, generally, an object of care for all those Northern
interests that depended on the Southern market. As to the Southerners,
their relation with this party has two distinct chapters. The first
embraced the twenty years preceding the Compromise of 1850, and may
be thought of as merging into the second during three or four years
following the great equivocation. In that period, while the antislavery
crusade was taking form, the aim of Southern politicians was mainly
negative. "Let us alone," was their chief demand. Though aggressive
in their policy, they were too far-sighted to demand of the North any
positive course in favor of slavery. The rise of a new type of Southern
politician, however, created a different situation and began a second
chapter in the relation between the South and the Democratic party
machine in the North. But of that hereafter.
Until 1854, it was the obvious part of wisdom for Southerners to
cooperate as far as possible with that party whose cardinal idea was
that the government should come as near as conceivable to a system
of non-interference; that it should not interfere with business, and
therefore oppose a tariff; that it should not interfere with local
government, and therefore applaud states rights; that it should not
interfere with slavery, and therefore frown upon militant abolition.
Its policy was, to adopt a familiar phrase, one of masterly inactivity.
Indeed it may well be called the party of political evasion. It was a
huge, loose confederacy of differing political groups, embracing paupers
and millionaires, moderate anti-slavery men and slave barons, all of
whom were held together by the unreliable bond of an agreement not to
tread on each other's toes.
Of this party Douglas was the typical representative, both in strength
and weakness. He had all its pliability, its good humor, its broad and
easy way with things, its passion for playing politics. Nevertheless, in
calling upon the believers in political evasion to consent for this
once to reverse their principle and to endorse a positive action, he had
taken a great risk. Would their sporting sense of politics as a gigantic
game carry him through successfully? He knew that there was a hard fight
before him, but with the courage of a great political strategist,
and proudly confident in his hold upon the main body of his party, he
prepared for both the attacks and the defections that were inevitable.
Defections, indeed, began at once. Even before the bill had been passed,
the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" was printed in a New York
paper, with the signatures of members of Congress representing both the
extreme anti-slavery wing of the Democrats and the organized Free-Soil
party. The most famous of these names were those of Chase and Sumner,
both of whom had been sent to the Senate by a coalition of Free-Soilers
and Democrats. With them was the veteran abolitionist, Giddings of
Ohio. The "Appeal" denounced Douglas as an "unscrupulous politician"
and sounded both the warcries of the Northern masses by accusing him of
being engaged in "an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied
region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own
States."
The events of the spring and summer of 1854 may all be grouped under
two heads--the formation of an anti-Nebraska party, and the quick rush
of sectional patriotism to seize the territory laid open by the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. The instantaneous refusal of the Northerners to
confine their settlement to Nebraska, and their prompt invasion of
Kansas; the similar invasion from the South; the support of both
movements by societies organized for that purpose; the war in Kansas
all the details of this thrilling story have been told elsewhere.* The
political story alone concerns us here.
*See Jesse Macy, "The Anti-Slavery Crusade". (In "The
Chronicles of America".)
When the fight began there were four parties in the field: the
Democrats, the Whigs, the Free-Soilers, and the Know-Nothings.
The Free-Soil party, hitherto a small organization, had sought to make
slavery the main issue in politics. Its watchword was "Free soil, free
speech, free labor, and free men." It is needless to add that it was
instantaneous in its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The Whigs at the moment enjoyed the greatest prestige, owing to the
association with them of such distinguished leaders as Webster and Clay.
In 1854, however, as a party they were dying, and the very condition
that had made success possible for the Democrats made it impossible for
the Whigs, because the latter stood for positive ideas, and aimed to be
national in reality and not in the evasive Democratic sense of the term.
For, as a matter of fact, on analysis all the greater issues of the day
proved to be sectional. The Whigs would not, like the Democrats, adopt a
negative attitude toward these issues, nor would they consent to become
merely sectional. Yet at the moment negation and sectionalism were the
only alternatives, and between these millstones the Whig organization
was destined to be ground to bits and to disappear after the next
Presidential election.
Even previous to 1854, numbers of Whigs had sought a desperate outlet
for their desire to be positive in politics and had created a new party
which during a few years was to seem a reality and then vanish together
with its parent. The one chance for a party which had positive ideas
and which wished not to be sectional was the definite abandonment of
existing issues and the discovery of some new issue not connected with
sectional feeling. Now, it happened that a variety of causes, social and
religious, had brought about bad blood between native and foreigner, in
some of the great cities, and upon the issue involved in this condition
the failing spirit of the Whigs fastened. A secret society which had
been formed to oppose the naturalization of foreigners quickly became a
recognized political party. As the members of the Society answered all
questions with "I do not know," they came to be called "Know-Nothings,"
though they called themselves "Americans." In those states where
the Whigs had been strongest--Massachusetts, New York, and
Pennsylvania--this last attempt to apply their former temper, though not
their principles, had for a moment some success; but it could not escape
the fierce division which was forced on the country by Douglas. As a
result, it rapidly split into factions, one of which merged with the
enemies of Douglas, while the other was lost among his supporters.
What would the great dying Whig party leave behind it? This was the
really momentous question in 1854. Briefly, this party bequeathed
the temper of political positivism and at the same time the dread of
sectionalism. The inner clue to American politics during the next few
years is, to many minds, to be found largely in the union of this old
Whig temper with a new-born sectional patriotism, and, to other minds,
in the gradual and reluctant passing of the Whig opposition to a
sectional party. But though this transformation of the wrecks of
Whiggism began immediately, and while the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was
still being hotly debated in Congress, it was not until 1860 that it was
completed.
In the meantime various incidents had shown that the sectional
patriotism of the North, the fury of the abolitionists, and the positive
temper in politics, were all drawing closer together. Each of these
tendencies can be briefly illustrated. For example, the rush to Kansas
had begun, and the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society was preparing to
assist settlers who were going west. In May, there occurred at Boston
one of the most conspicuous attempts to rescue a fugitive slave, in
which a mob led by Thomas Wentworth Higginson attacked the guards of
Anthony Burns, a captured fugitive, killed one of them, but failed to
get the slave, who was carried to a revenue cutter between lines of
soldiers and returned to slavery. Among numerous details of the hour the
burning of Douglas in effigy is perhaps worth passing notice. In duly
the anti-Nebraska men of Michigan held a convention, at which they
organized as a political party and nominated a state ticket. Of their
nominees, two had hitherto ranked themselves as Free-Soilers, three as
anti-slavery Democrats, and five as Whigs. For the name of their party
they chose "Republican," and as the foundation of their platform the
resolution "That, postponing and suspending all differences with
regard to political economy or administrative policy," they would "act
cordially and faithfully in unison," opposing the extension of slavery,
and would "cooperate and be known as 'Republicans' until the contest be
terminated."
The history of the next two years is, in its main outlines, the story
of the war in Kansas and of the spread of this new party throughout the
North. It was only by degrees, however, that the Republicans absorbed
the various groups of anti-Nebraska men. What happened at this time in
Illinois may be taken as typical, and it is particularly noteworthy
as revealing the first real appearance of Abraham Lincoln in American
history.
Though in 1854 he was not yet a national figure, Lincoln was locally
accredited with keen political insight, and was, regarded in Illinois as
a strong lawyer. The story is told of him that, while he was attending
court on the circuit, he heard the news of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in
a tavern and sat up most of the night talking about it. Next morning
he used a phrase destined to become famous. "I tell you," said he to a
fellow lawyer, "this nation cannot exist half slave and half free."
Lincoln, however, was not one of the first to join the Republicans.
In Illinois, in 1854, Lincoln resigned his seat in the legislature to
become the Whig candidate for United States senator, to succeed the
Democratic colleague of Douglas. But there was little chance of
his election, for the real contest was between the two wings of the
Democrats, the Nebraska men and the anti-Nebraska men, and Lincoln
withdrew in favor of the candidate of the latter, who was elected.
During the following year, from the midst of his busy law practice,
Lincoln watched the Whig party go to pieces. He saw a great part of its
vote lodge temporarily among the Know-Nothings, but before the end of
the year even they began to lose their prominence. In the autumn, from
the obscurity of his provincial life, he saw, far off, Seward, the most
astute politician of the day, join the new movement. In New York, the
Republican state convention and the Whig state convention merged into
one, and Seward pronounced a baptismal oration upon the Republican party
of New York.
In the House of Representatives which met in December, 1855, the
anti-Nebraska men were divided among themselves, and the Know-Nothings
held the balance of power. No candidate for the speakership, however,
was able to command a majority, and finally, after it had been agreed
that a plurality would be sufficient, the contest closed, on the one
hundred and thirty-third ballot, with the election of a Republican, N.
P. Banks. Meanwhile in the South, the Whigs were rapidly leaving the
party, pausing a moment with the Know-Nothings, only to find that their
inevitable resting-place, under stress of sectional feeling, was with
the Democrats.
On Washington's birthday, 1856, the Know-Nothing national convention met
at Philadelphia. It promptly split upon the subject of slavery, and
a portion of its membership sent word offering support to another
convention which was sitting at Pittsburgh, and which had been called to
form a national organization for the Republican party. A third assembly
held on this same day was composed of the newspaper editors of Illinois,
and may be looked upon as the organization of the Republican party in
that state. At the dinner following this informal convention, Lincoln,
who was one of the speakers, was toasted as "the next United States
Senator."
Some four months afterward, in Philadelphia, the Republicans held their
first national convention. Only a few years previous its members
had called themselves by various names--Democrats, Free-Soilers,
Know-Nothings, Whigs. The old hostilities of these different groups had
not yet died out. Consequently, though Seward was far and away the most
eminent member of the new party, he was not nominated for President.
That dangerous honor was bestowed upon a dashing soldier and explorer of
the Rocky Mountains and the Far West, John C. Fremont.*
*For an account of Fremont, see Stewart Edward White, "The
Forty-Niners" (in "The Chronicles of America"), Chapter II.
The key to the political situation in the North, during that momentous
year, was to be found in the great number of able Whigs who, seeing
that their own party was lost but refusing to be sidetracked by the
make-believe issue of the Know-Nothings, were now hesitating what to do.
Though the ordinary politicians among the Republicans doubtless wished
to conciliate these unattached Whigs, the astuteness of the leaders was
too great to allow them to succumb to that temptation. They seem to have
feared the possible effect of immediately incorporating in their ranks,
while their new organization was still so plastic, the bulk of those
conservative classes which were, after all, the backbone of this
irreducible Whig minimum.
The Republican campaign was conducted with a degree of passion that had
scarcely been equaled in America before that day. To the well-ordered
spirit of the conservative classes the tone which the Republicans
assumed appeared shocking. Boldly sectional in their language, sweeping
in their denunciation of slavery, the leaders of the campaign made
bitter and effective use of a number of recent events. "Uncle Tom's
Cabin", published in 1852, and already immensely popular, was used as a
political tract to arouse, by its gruesome picture of slavery, a hatred
of slaveholders. Returned settlers from Kansas went about the North
telling horrible stories of guerrilla warfare, so colored as to throw
the odium all on one side. The scandal of the moment was the attack made
by Preston Brooks on Sumner, after the latter's furious diatribe in the
Senate, which was published as "The Crime Against Kansas". With double
skill the Republicans made equal capital out of the intellectual
violence of the speech and the physical violence of the retort. In
addition to this, there was ready to their hands the evidence of
Southern and Democratic sympathy with a filibustering attempt to conquer
the republic of Nicaragua, where William Walker, an American adventurer,
had recently made himself dictator. Walker had succeeded in having his
minister acknowledged by the Democratic Administration, and in obtaining
the endorsement of a great Democratic meeting which was held in New
York. It looked, therefore, as if the party of political evasion had an
anchor to windward, and that, in the event of their losing in Kansas,
they intended to placate their Southern wing by the annexation of
Nicaragua.
Here, indeed, was a stronger political tempest than Douglas, weatherwise
though he was, had foreseen. How was political evasion to brave it? With
a courage quite equal to the boldness of the Republicans, the Democrats
took another tack and steered for less troubled waters. Their convention
at Cincinnati was temperate and discreet in all its expressions, and for
President it nominated a Northerner, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a
man who was wholly dissociated in the public mind from the struggle over
Kansas.
The Democratic party leaders knew that they already had two strong
groups of supporters. Whatever they did, the South would have to go
along with them, in its reaction against the furious sectionalism of the
Republicans. Besides the Southern support, the Democrats counted upon
the aid of the professional politicians--those men who considered
politics rather as a fascinating game than as serious and difficult work
based upon principle. Upon these the Democrats could confidently rely,
for they already had, in Douglas in the North and Toombs in the South,
two master politicians who knew this type and its impulses intimately,
because they themselves belonged to it. But the Democrats needed the
support of a third group. If they could only win over the Northern
remnant of the Whigs that was still unattached, their position would be
secure. In their efforts to obtain this additional and very necessary
reinforcement, they decided to appear as temperate and restrained as
possible--a well bred party which all mild and conservative men could
trust.
This attitude they formulated in connection with Kansas, which at that
time had two governments: one, a territorial government, set up by
emigrants from the South; the other, a state government, under the
constitution drawn up at Topeka by emigrants from the North. One
authorized slavery; the other prohibited slavery; and both had appealed
to Washington for recognition. It was with this quite definite issue
that Congress was chiefly concerned in the spring of 1856. During the
summer Toombs introduced a bill securing to the settlers of Kansas
complete freedom of action and providing for an election of delegates
to a convention to draw up a state constitution which would determine
whether slavery or freedom was to prevail--in other words, whether
Kansas was to be annexed to the South or to the North. This bill was
merely the full expression of what Douglas had aimed at in 1854 and of
what was nicknamed "popular sovereignty"--the right of the locality to
choose for itself between slave and free labor.
Two years before, such a measure would have seemed radical. But in
politics time is wonderfully elastic. Those two years had been packed
with turmoil. Kansas had been the scene of a bloody conflict. Regardless
of which side had a majority on the ground, extremists on each side had
demanded recognition for the government set up by their own party. By
contrast, Toombs's offer to let the majority rule appeared temperate.
The Republicans saw instantly that they must discredit the proposal
or the ground would be cut from under them. Though the bill passed the
Senate, they were able to set it aside in the House in favor of a bill
admitting Kansas as a free state with the Topeka constitution. The
Democrats thereupon accused the Republicans of not wanting peace and of
wishing to keep up the war-cry "Bleeding Kansas" until election time.
That, throughout the country, the two parties continued on the lines
of policy they had chosen may be seen from an illustration. A House
committee which had gone to Kansas to investigate submitted two reports,
one of which, submitted by a Democratic member, told the true story of
the murders committed by John Brown at Pottawatomie. And yet, while
the Republicans spread everywhere their shocking tales of murders of
free-state settlers, the Democrats made practically no use of this
equally shocking tale of the murder of slaveholders. Apparently they
were resolved to appear temperate and conservative to the bitter end.
And they had their reward. Or, perhaps the fury of the Republicans had
its just deserts. From either point of view, the result was a choice of
evils on the part of the reluctant Whigs, and that choice was expressed
in the following words by as typical a New Englander as Rufus Choate:
"The first duty of Whigs," wrote Choate to the Maine State central
committee, "is to unite with some organization of our countrymen
to defeat and dissolve the new geographical party calling itself
Republican.... The question for each and every one of us is...by what
vote can I do most to prevent the madness of the times from working its
maddest act the very ecstasy of its madness--the permanent formation and
the actual triumph of a party which knows one half of America only
to hate and dread it. If the Republican party," Choate continued,
"accomplishes its object and gives the government to the North, I turn
my eyes from the consequences. To the fifteen states of the South that
government will appear an alien government. It will appear worse. It
will appear a hostile government. It will represent to their eye a
vast region of states organized upon anti-slavery, flushed by triumph,
cheered onward by the voice of the pulpit, tribune, and press;
its mission, to inaugurate freedom and put down the oligarchy; its
constitution, the glittering and sounding generalities of natural
right which make up the Declaration of Independence.... Practically the
contest, in my judgment, is between Mr. Buchanan and Colonel Fremont. In
these circumstances, I vote for Mr. Buchanan."
The party of political evasion thus became the refuge of the old
original Whigs who were forced to take advantage of any port in a storm.
Buchanan was elected by an overwhelming majority. To the careless
eye, Douglas had been justified by results; his party had triumphed as
perhaps never before; and yet, no great political success was ever
based upon less stable foundations. To maintain this position, those
Northerners who reasoned as Choate did were a necessity; but to keep
them in the party of political evasion would depend upon the ability of
this party to play the game of politics without acknowledging sectional
bias. Whether this difficult task could be accomplished would depend
upon the South. Toombs, on his part, was anxious to continue making the
party of evasion play the great American game of politics, and in
his eagerness he perhaps overestimated his hold upon the South. This,
however, remains to be seen.
Already another faction had formed around William L. Yancey of
Alabama--a faction as intolerant of political evasion as the Republicans
themselves, and one that was eager to match the sectional Northern party
by a sectional Southern party. It had for the moment fallen into line
with the Toombs faction because, like the Whigs, it had not the courage
to do otherwise. The question now was whether it would continue fearful,
and whether political evasion would continue to reign.
The key to the history of the next four years is in the growth of this
positive Southern party, which had the inevitable result of forcing the
Whig remainder to choose, not as in 1856 between a positive sectional
policy and an evasive nonsectional policy, but in 1860 between two
policies both of which were at once positive and sectional.