CHAPTER XXXIII.

WHAT NEXT?

THE PRESENT OUTLOOK--COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS, BRIGHT--WHAT THE PEOPLE OF

THE NORTHERN AND WESTERN STATES SEE--WHAT IS A "REPUBLICAN FORM OF

GOVERNMENT?"--WHAT DID THE FATHERS MEAN BY IT--THE REASON FOR THE

GUARANTEE IN THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION--PURPOSES OF "THE PEOPLE" IN

CREATING THIS REPUBLIC--THE "SOLID-SOUTHERN" OLIGARCHS DEFEAT THOSE

PURPOSES--THE REPUBLICAN PARTY NOT BLAMELESS FOR THE PRESENT CONDITION

OF THINGS--THE OLD REBEL-CHIEFTAINS AND COPPERHEADS, IN CONTROL--THEY

GRASP ALMOST EVERYTHING THAT WAS LOST BY THE REBELLION--THEIR GROWING

AGGRESSIVENESS--THE FUTURE--"WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?"

PORTRAITS.

MAPS.

SEAT OF WAR IN VIRGINIA.

FIRST BULL RUN BATTLE-FIELD.

FIRST BULL RUN BATTLE-FIELD, SHOWING POSITION OF ARMIES.

EDWARD D. BAKER,

BENJ. F. BUTLER,

J. C. BRECKINRIDGE,

JOHN C. CALHOUN,

HENRY CLAY,

J. J. CRITTENDEN,

HENRY WINTER DAVIS,

JEFFERSON DAVIS,

SIMON CAMERON,

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS,

JOHN C. FREMONT,

H. W. HALLECK,

ISAAC W. HAYNE,

PATRICK HENRY,

DAVID HUNTER,

THOMAS JEFFERSON,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

GEO. B. MCCLELLAN,

THAD. STEVENS,

WM. H. SEWARD,

LYMAN TRUMBULL,

BENJ. F. WADE,

DANIEL WEBSTER,

LOUIS T. WIGFALL.

CHAPTER I.

A PRELIMINARY RETROSPECT.

To properly understand the condition of things preceding the great war

of the Rebellion, and the causes underlying that condition and the war

itself, we must glance backward through the history of the Country to,

and even beyond, that memorable 30th of November, 1782, when the

Independence of the United States of America was at last conceded by

Great Britain. At that time the population of the United States was

about 2,500,000 free whites and some 500,000 black slaves. We had

gained our Independence of the Mother Country, but she had left fastened

upon us the curse of Slavery. Indeed African Slavery had already in

1620 been implanted on the soil of Virginia before Plymouth Rock was

pressed by the feet of the Pilgrim Fathers, and had spread, prior to the

Revolution, with greater or less rapidity, according to the surrounding

adaptations of soil, production and climate, to every one of the

thirteen Colonies.

But while it had thus spread more or less throughout all the original

Colonies, and was, as it were, recognized and acquiesced in by all, as

an existing and established institution, yet there were many, both in

the South and North, who looked upon it as an evil--an inherited evil

--and were anxious to prevent the increase of that evil. Hence it was

that even as far back as 1699, a controversy sprang up between the

Colonies and the Home Government, upon the African Slavery question

--a controversy continuing with more or less vehemence down to the

Declaration of Independence itself.

It was this conviction that it was not alone an evil but a dangerous

evil, that induced Jefferson to embody in his original draft of that

Declaration a clause strongly condemnatory of the African Slave Trade--a

clause afterward omitted from it solely, he tells us, "in complaisance

to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never* attempted to restrain the

importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to

continue it," as well as in deference to the sensitiveness of Northern

people, who, though having few slaves themselves, "had been pretty

considerable carriers of them to others" a clause of the great

indictment of King George III., which, since it was not omitted for any

other reason than that just given, shows pretty conclusively that where

the fathers in that Declaration affirmed that "all men are created

equal," they included in the term "men," black as well as white, bond as

well as free; for the clause ran thus: "Determined to keep open a market

where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for

suppressing every Legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this

execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no

fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise

in arms among us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived

them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying

of former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of our people with

crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

[Prior to 1752, when Georgia surrendered her charter and became a

Royal Colony, the holding of slaves within its limits was expressly

prohibited by law; and the Darien (Ga.) resolutions of 1775

declared not only a "disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural

practice of Slavery in America" as "a practice founded in injustice

and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our Liberties (as well as

lives) but a determination to use our utmost efforts for the

manumission of our slaves in this colony upon the most safe and

equitable footing for the masters and themselves."]

During the war of the Revolution following the Declaration of

Independence, the half a million of slaves, nearly all of them in the

Southern States, were found to be not only a source of weakness, but,

through the incitements of British emissaries, a standing menace of

peril to the Slaveholders. Thus it was that the South was overrun by

hostile British armies, while in the North-comparatively free of this

element of weakness--disaster after disaster met them. At last,

however, in 1782, came the recognition of our Independence, and peace,

followed by the evacuation of New York at the close of 1783.

The lessons of the war, touching Slavery, had not been lost upon our

statesmen. Early in 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States her claims

of jurisdiction and otherwise over the vast territory north-west of the

Ohio; and upon its acceptance, Jefferson, as chairman of a Select

Committee appointed at his instance to consider a plan of government

therefor, reported to the ninth Continental Congress an Ordinance to

govern the territory ceded already, or to be ceded, by individual States

to the United States, extending from the 31st to the 47th degree of

north latitude, which provided as "fundamental conditions between the

thirteen original States and those newly described" as embryo States

thereafter--to be carved out of such territory ceded or to be ceded to

the United States, not only that "they shall forever remain a part of

the United States of America," but also that "after the year 1800 of the

Christian era, there shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude

in any of the said States"--and that those fundamental conditions were

"unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress

assembled, and of the particular State within which such alteration

is proposed to be made."

But now a signal misfortune befell. Upon a motion to strike out the

clause prohibiting Slavery, six States: New Hampshire, Massachusetts,

Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, voted to retain

the prohibitive clause, while three States, Maryland, Virginia and South

Carolina, voted not to retain it. The vote of North Carolina was

equally divided; and while one of the Delegates from New Jersey voted to

retain it, yet as there was no other delegate present from that State,

and the Articles of Confederation required the presence of "two or more"

delegates to cast the vote of a State, the vote of New Jersey was lost;

and, as the same Articles required an affirmative vote of a majority of

all the States--and not simply of those present--the retention of the

clause prohibiting Slavery was also lost. Thus was lost the great

opportunity of restricting Slavery to the then existing Slave States,

and of settling the question peaceably for all time. Three years

afterward a similar Ordinance, since become famous as "the Ordinance of

'87," for the government of the North-west Territory (from which the

Free States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have

since been carved and admitted to the Union) was adopted in Congress by

the unanimous vote of all the eight States present. And the sixth

article of this Ordinance, or "Articles of Compact," which it was

stipulated should "forever remain unalterable, unless by common

consent," was in these words:

"Art. 6. There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in

the said Territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the

party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any person

escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in

any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed,

and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor, or service, as

aforesaid."

But this Ordinance of '87, adopted almost simultaneously with the

framing of our present Federal Constitution, was essentially different

from the Ordinance of three years previous, in this: that while the

latter included the territory south of the Ohio River as well as that

north-west of it, this did not; and as a direct consequence of this

failure to include in it the territory south of that river, the States

of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, which were taken out of it, were

subsequently admitted to the Union as Slave States, and thus greatly

augmented their political power. And at a later period it was this

increased political power that secured the admission of still other

Slave States--as Florida, Louisiana and Texas--which enabled the Slave

States to hold the balance of such power as against the original States

that had become Free, and the new Free States of the North-west.

Hence, while in a measure quieting the great question of Slavery for the

time being, the Ordinance of '87 in reality laid the ground-work for the

long series of irritations and agitations touching its restrictions and

extension, which eventually culminated in the clash of arms that shook

the Union from its centre to its circumference. Meanwhile, as we have

seen--while the Ordinance of 1787 was being enacted in the last Congress

of the old Confederation at New York--the Convention to frame the

present Constitution was sitting at Philadelphia under the Presidency of

George Washington himself. The old Confederation had proved itself to

be "a rope of sand." A new and stronger form of government had become a

necessity for National existence.

To create it out of the discordant elements whose harmony was essential

to success, was an herculean task, requiring the utmost forbearance,

unselfishness, and wisdom. And of all the great questions, dividing the

framers of that Constitution, perhaps none of them required a higher

degree of self abnegation and patriotism than those touching human

Slavery.

The situation was one of extreme delicacy. The necessity for a closer

and stronger Union of all the States was apparently absolute, yet this

very necessity seemed to place a whip in the hands of a few States, with

which to coerce the greater number of States to do their bidding. It

seemed that the majority must yield to a small minority on even vital

questions, or lose everything.

Thus it was, that instead of an immediate interdiction of the African

Slave Trade, Congress was empowered to prohibit it after the lapse of

twenty years; that instead of the basis of Congressional Representation

being the total population of each State, and that of direct taxation

the total property of each State, a middle ground was conceded, which

regarded the Slaves as both persons and property, and the basis both of

Representation and of Direct Taxation was fixed as being the total Free

population "plus three-fifths of all other persons" in each State; and

that there was inserted in the Constitution a similar clause to that

which we have seen was almost simultaneously incorporated in the

Ordinance of '87, touching the reclamation and return to their owners of

Fugitive Slaves from the Free States into which they may have escaped.

The fact of the matter is, that the Convention that framed our

Constitution lacked the courage of its convictions, and was "bulldozed"

by the few extreme Southern Slave-holding States--South Carolina and

Georgia especially. It actually paltered with those convictions and

with the truth itself. Its convictions--those at least of a great

majority of its delegates--were against not only the spread, but the

very existence of Slavery; yet we have seen what they unwillingly agreed

to in spite of those convictions; and they were guilty moreover of the

subterfuge of using the terms "persons" and "service or labor" when they

really meant "Slaves" and "Slavery." "They did this latter," Mr.

Madison says, "because they did not choose to admit the right of

property in man," and yet in fixing the basis of Direct Taxation as well

as Congressional Representation at the total Free population of each

State with "three-fifths of all other persons," they did admit the right

of property in man! As was stated by Mr. Iredell to the North Carolina

Ratification Convention, when explaining the Fugitive Slave clause:

"Though the word 'Slave' is not mentioned, this is the meaning of it."

And he added: "The Northern delegates, owing to their peculiar scruples

on the subject of Slavery, did not choose the word 'Slave' to be

mentioned."

In March, 1789, the first Federal Congress met at New York. It at once

enacted a law in accordance with the terms of the Ordinance of '87

--adapting it to the changed order of things under the new Federal

Constitution--prohibiting Slavery in the Territories of the North-west;

and the succeeding Congress enacted a Fugitive-Slave law.

In the same year (1789) North Carolina ceded her western territory (now

Tennessee) south of the Ohio, to the United States, providing as one of

the conditions of that cession, "that no regulation made, or to be made,

by Congress, shall tend to emancipate Slaves." Georgia, also, in 1802,

ceded her superfluous territorial domain (south of the Ohio, and now

known as Alabama and Mississippi), making as a condition of its

acceptance that the Ordinance of '87 "shall, in all its parts, extend to

the territory contained in the present act of cession, the article only

excepted which forbids Slavery."

Thus while the road was open and had been taken advantage of, at the

earliest moment, by the Federal Congress to prohibit Slavery in all the

territory north-west of the Ohio River by Congressional enactment,

Congress considered itself barred by the very conditions of cession from

inhibiting Slavery in the territory lying south of that river. Hence it

was that while the spread of Slavery was prevented in the one Section of

our outlying territories by Congressional legislation, it was stimulated

in the other Section by the enforced absence of such legislation. As a

necessary sequence, out of the Territories of the one Section grew more

Free States and out of the other more Slave States, and this condition

of things had a tendency to array the Free and the Slave States in

opposition to each other and to Sectionalize the flames of that Slavery

agitation which were thus continually fed.

Upon the admission of Ohio to Statehood in 1803, the remainder of the

North-west territory became the Territory of Indiana. The inhabitants

of this Territory (now known as the States of Indiana, Illinois,

Michigan and Wisconsin), consisting largely of settlers from the Slave

States, but chiefly from Virginia and Kentucky, very persistently (in

1803, 1806 and 1807) petitioned Congress for permission to employ Slave

Labor, but--although their petitions were favorably reported in most

cases by the Committees to which they were referred--without avail,

Congress evidently being of opinion that a temporary suspension in this

respect of the sixth article of the Ordinance of '87 was "not

expedient." These frequent rebuffs by Congress, together with the

constantly increasing emigration from the Free States, prevented the

taking of any further steps to implant Slavery on the soil of that

Territory.

Meanwhile the vast territory included within the Valley of the

Mississippi and known at that day as the "Colony of Louisiana," was, in

1803, acquired to the United States by purchase from the French--to whom

it had but lately been retroceded by Spain. Both under Spanish and

French rule, Slavery had existed throughout this vast yet sparsely

populated region. When we acquired it by purchase, it was already

there, as an established "institution;" and the Treaty of acquisition

not only provided that it should be "incorporated into the Union of the

United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the

principles of the Federal Constitution," but that its inhabitants in the

meantime "should be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of

their liberty, property, and the religion which they professed"--and,

as "the right of property in man" had really been admitted in practice,

if not in theory, by the framers of that Constitution itself--that

institution was allowed to remain there. Indeed the sparseness of its

population at the time of purchase and the amazing fertility of its soil

and adaptability of its climate to Slave Labor, together with the then

recent invention by Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, of that wonderful

improvement in the separation of cotton-fibre from its seed, known as

the "cotton-gin"--which with the almost simultaneous inventions of

Hargreaves, and Arkwright's cotton-spinning machines, and Watt's

application of his steam engine, etc., to them, marvelously increased

both the cotton supply and demand and completely revolutionized the

cotton industry--contributed to rapidly and thickly populate the whole

region with white Slave-holders and black Slaves, and to greatly enrich

and increase the power of the former.

When Jefferson succeeded in negotiating the cession of that vast and

rich domain to the United States, it is not to be supposed that either

the allurements of territorial aggrandizement on the one hand, or the

impending danger to the continued ascendency of the political party

which had elevated him to the Presidency, threatening it from all the

irritations with republican France likely to grow out of such near

proximity to her Colony, on the other, could have blinded his eyes to

the fact that its acquisition must inevitably tend to the spread of that

very evil, the contemplation of which, at a later day, wrung from his

lips the prophetic words, "I tremble for my Country when I reflect that

God is just." It is more reasonable to suppose that, as he believed the

ascendency of the Republican party of that day essential to the

perpetuity of the Republic itself, and revolted against being driven

into an armed alliance with Monarchical England against what he termed

"our natural friend," Republican France, he reached the conclusion that

the preservation of his Republican principles was of more immediate

moment than the question of the perpetuation and increase of human

Slavery. Be that as it may, it none the less remains a curious fact

that it was to Jefferson, the far-seeing statesman and hater of African

Slavery and the author of the Ordinance of 1784--which sought to exclude

Slavery from all the Territories of the United States south of, as well

as north-west of the Ohio River--that we also owe the acquisition of the

vast territory of the Mississippi Valley burdened with Slavery in such

shape that only a War, which nearly wrecked our Republic, could get rid

of!

Out of that vast and fertile, but Slave-ridden old French Colony of

"Louisiana" were developed in due time the rich and flourishing Slave

States of Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas.

It will have been observed that this acquisition of the Colony of

Louisiana and the contemporaneous inventions of the cotton-gin, improved

cotton-spinning machinery, and the application to it of steam power, had

already completely neutralized the wisdom of the Fathers in securing, as

they thought, the gradual but certain extinction of Slavery in the

United States, by that provision in the Constitution which enabled

Congress, after an interval of twenty years, to prohibit the African

Slave Trade; and which led the Congress, on March 22, 1794, to pass an

Act prohibiting it; to supplement it in 1800 with another Act in the

same direction; and on March 2, 1807, to pass another supplemental Act

--to take effect January 1, 1808--still more stringent, and covering any

such illicit traffic, whether to the United States or with other

countries. Never was the adage that, "The best laid schemes o' mice an'

men gang aft agley," more painfully apparent. Slaves increased and

multiplied within the land, and enriched their white owners to such a

degree that, as the years rolled by, instead of compunctions of

conscience on the subject of African Slavery in America, the Southern

leaders ultimately persuaded themselves to the belief that it was not

only moral, and sanctioned by Divine Law, but that to perpetuate it was

a philanthropic duty, beneficial to both races! In fact one of them

declared it to be "the highest type of civilization."

In 1812, the State of Louisiana, organized from the purchased Colony of

the same name, was admitted to the Union, and the balance of the

Louisiana purchase was thereafter known as the Territory of Missouri.

In 1818 commenced the heated and protracted struggle in Congress over

the admission of the State of Missouri--created from the Territory of

that name--as a Slave State, which finally culminated in 1820 in the

settlement known thereafter as the "Missouri Compromise."

Briefly stated, that struggle may be said to have consisted in the

efforts of the House on the one side, to restrict Slavery in the State

of Missouri, and the efforts of the Senate on the other, to give it free

rein. The House insisted on a clause in the Act of admission providing,

"That the introduction of Slavery or involuntary servitude be

prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes whereof the party has

been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State,

after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be declared Free at

the age of twenty-five years." The Senate resisted it--and the Bill

fell. In the meantime, however, a Bill passed both Houses forming the

Territory of Arkansas out of that portion of the Territory of Missouri

not included in the proposed State of Missouri, without any such

restriction upon Slavery. Subsequently, the House having passed a Bill

to admit the State of Maine to the Union, the Senate amended it by

tacking on a provision authorizing the people of Missouri to organize a

State Government, without restriction as to Slavery. The House

decidedly refused to accede to the Senate proposition, and the result of

the disagreement was a Committee of Conference between the two Houses,

and the celebrated "Missouri Compromise," which, in the language of

another--[Hon. John Holmes of Massachusetts, of said Committee on

Conference, March 2, 1820.]--, was: "that the Senate should give up its

combination of Missouri with Maine; that the House should abandon its

attempt to restrict Slavery in Missouri; and that both Houses should

concur in passing the Bill to admit Missouri as a State, with" a

"restriction or proviso, excluding Slavery from all territory north and

west of the new State"--that "restriction or proviso" being in these

words: "That in all that territory ceded by France to the United States

under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees,

thirty minutes north latitude, excepting only such part thereof as is

included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act,

Slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of

crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall be and is

hereby forever prohibited; Provided always, that any person escaping

into the same, from whom labor and service is lawfully claimed in any

State or Territory of the United States, such Fugitive may be lawfully

reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or

service, as aforesaid." At a subsequent session of Congress, at which

Missouri asked admission as a State with a Constitution prohibiting her

Legislature from passing emancipation laws, or such as would prevent the

immigration of Slaves, while requiring it to enact such as would

absolutely prevent the immigration of Free Negroes or Mulattoes, a

further Compromise was agreed to by Congress under the inspiration of

Mr. Clay, by which it was laid down as a condition precedent to her

admission as a State--a condition subsequently complied with--that

Missouri must pledge herself that her Legislature should pass no act "by

which any of the citizens of either of the States should be excluded

from the enjoyment of the privileges and immunities to which they are

entitled under the Constitution of the United States."

This, in a nut-shell, was the memorable Missouri Struggle, and the

"Compromise" or Compromises which settled and ended it. But during that

struggle--as during the formation of the Federal Constitution and at

various times in the interval when exciting questions had arisen--the

bands of National Union were more than once rudely strained, and this

time to such a degree as even to shake the faith of some of the firmest

believers in the perpetuity of that Union. It was during this bitter

struggle that John Adams wrote to Jefferson: "I am sometimes Cassandra

enough to dream that another Hamilton, another Burr, may rend this

mighty fabric in twain, or perhaps into a leash, and a few more choice

spirits of the same stamp might produce as many Nations in North America

as there are in Europe."

It is true that we had "sown the wind," but we had not yet "reaped the

whirlwind."

CHAPTER II.

PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.

We have seen that the first Federal Congress met at New York in March,

1789. It organized April 6th. None knew better than its members that

the war of the Americana Revolution chiefly grew out of the efforts of

Great Britain to cripple and destroy our Colonial industries to the

benefit of the British trader, and that the Independence conquered, was

an Industrial as well as Political Independence; and none knew better

than they, that the failure of the subsequent political Confederation of

States was due mainly to its failure to encourage and protect the

budding domestic manufactures of those States. Hence they hastened,

under the leadership of James Madison, to pass "An Act laying a duty on

goods, wares and merchandize imported into the United States," with a

preamble, declaring it to be "necessary" for the "discharge of the debt

of the United States and the encouragement and protection of

manufactures." It was approved by President Washington July 4, 1789--a

date not without its significance--and levied imports both specific and

ad valorem. It was not only our first Tariff Act, but, next to that

prescribing the oath used in organizing the Government, the first Act of

the first Federal Congress; and was passed in pursuance of the

declaration of President Washington in his first Message, that "The

safety and interest of the People" required it. Under the inspiration

of Alexander Hamilton the Tariff of 1790 was enacted at the second

session of the same Congress, confirming the previous Act and increasing

some of the protective duties thereby imposed.

An analysis of the vote in the House of Representatives on this Tariff

Bill discloses the fact that of the 39 votes for it, 21 were from

Southern States, 13 from the Middle States, and 5 from New England

States; while of the 13 votes against it, 9 were from New England

States, 3 from Southern States, and 1 from Middle States. In other

words, while the Southern States were for the Bill in the proportion of

21 to 3, and the Middle States by 13 to 1, New England was against it by

9 to 5; or again, while 10 of the 13 votes against it were from the New

England and Middle States, 21 (or more than half) of the 39 votes for it

were from Southern States.

It will thus be seen-singularly enough in view of subsequent events

--that we not only mainly owe our first steps in Protective Tariff

legislation to the almost solid Southern vote, but that it was thus

secured for us despite the opposition of New England. Nor did our

indebtedness to Southern statesmen and Southern votes for the

institution of the now fully established American System of Protection

cease here, as we shall presently see.

That Jefferson, as well as Washington and Madison, agreed with the views

of Alexander Hamilton on Protection to our domestic manufactures as

against those of foreign Nations, is evident in his Annual Message of

December 14, 1806, wherein-discussing an anticipated surplus of Federal

revenue above the expenditures, and enumerating the purposes of

education and internal improvement to which he thinks the "whole surplus

of impost" should during times of peace be applied; by which application

of such surplus he prognosticates that "new channels of communication

will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will

disappear; their interests will be identified, and their Union cemented

by new and indissoluble ties"--he says: "Shall we suppress the impost

and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures. On a few

articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression in due

season, will doubtless be right; but the great mass of the articles on

which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who

are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them." But his embargo

and other retaliatory measures, put in force in 1807 and 1808, and the

War of 1812-15 with Great Britain, which closely followed, furnished

Protection in another manner, by shutting the door to foreign imports

and throwing our people upon their own resources, and contributed

greatly to the encouragement and increase of our home manufactures

--especially those of wool, cotton, and hemp.

At the close of that War the traders of Great Britain determined, even

at a temporary loss to themselves, to glut our market with their goods

and thus break down forever, as they hoped, our infant manufactures.

Their purpose and object were boldly announced in the House of Commons

by Mr. Brougham, when he said: "Is it worth while to incur a loss upon

the first importation, in order by the glut to stifle in the cradle

those rising manufactures in the United States which the War had forced

into existence contrary to the natural course of things." Against this

threatened ruin, our manufacturers all over the United States--the sugar

planters of Louisiana among them--clamored for Protection, and Congress

at once responded with the Tariff Act of 1816.

This law greatly extended and increased specific duties on, and

diminished the application of the ad valorem principle to, foreign

imports; and it has been well described as "the practical foundation of

the American policy of encouragement of home manufactures--the practical

establishment of the great industrial system upon which rests our

present National wealth, and the power and the prosperity and happiness

of our whole people." While Henry Clay of Kentucky, William Loundes of

South Carolina, and Henry St. George Tucker of Virginia supported the

Bill most effectively, no man labored harder and did more effective

service in securing its passage than John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

The contention on their part was not for a mere "incidental protection"

--much less a "Tariff for revenue only"--but for "Protection" in its

broadest sense, and especially the protection of their cotton

manufactures. Indeed Calhoun's defense of Protection, from the assaults

of those from New England and elsewhere who assailed it on the narrow

ground that it was inimical to commerce and navigation, was a notable

one. He declared that:

"It (the encouragement of manufactures) produced a system strictly

American, as much so as agriculture, in which it had the decided

advantage of commerce and navigation. The country will from this derive

much advantage. Again it is calculated to bind together more closely

our wide-spread Republic. It will greatly increase our mutual

dependence and intercourse, and will, as a necessary consequence, excite

an increased attention to internal improvements--a subject every way so

intimately connected with the ultimate attainment of national strength

and the perfection of our political institutions."

He regarded the fact that it would make the parts adhere more closely;

that it would form a new and most powerful cement far outweighing any

political objections that might be urged against the system. In his

opinion "the liberty and the union of the country were inseparably

united; that as the destruction of the latter would most certainly

involve the former, so its maintenance will with equal certainty

preserve it;" and he closed with an impressive warning to the Nation of

a "new and terrible danger" which threatened it, to wit: "disunion."

Nobly as he stood up then--during the last term of his service in the

House of Representatives--for the great principles of, the American

System of Protection to manufactures, for the perpetuity of the Union,

and for the increase of "National strength," it seems like the very

irony of fate that a few years later should find him battling against

Protection as "unconstitutional," upholding Nullification as a "reserved

right" of his State, and championing at the risk of his neck that very

"danger" to the "liberties" and life of his Country against which his

prophetic words had already given solemn warning.

Strange was it also, in view of the subsequent attitudes of the South

and New England, that this essentially Protective Tariff Act of 1816

should have been vigorously protested and voted against by New England,

while it was ably advocated and voted for by the South--the 25 votes of

the latter which secured its passage being more than sufficient to have

secured its defeat had they been so inclined.

The Tariff Acts of 1824 and 1828 followed the great American principle

of Protection laid down and supported by the South in the Act of 1816,

while widening, increasing, and strengthening it. Under their

operation-especially under that of 1828, with its high duties on wool,

hemp, iron, lead, and other staples--great prosperity smiled upon the

land, and particularly upon the Free States.

In the cotton-growing belt of the South, however, where the prosperity

was relatively less, owing to the blight of Slavery, the very contrast

bred discontent; and, instead of attributing it to the real cause, the

advocates of Free Trade within that region insisted that the Protective

Tariff was responsible for the condition of things existing there.

A few restless and discontented spirits in the South had indeed agitated

the subject of Free Trade as against Protected manufactures as early as

1797, and, hand in hand with it, the doctrine of States Rights. And

Jefferson himself, although, as we have already seen, attached to the

American System of Protection and believing in its Constitutionality,

unwittingly played into the hands of these Free Traders by drawing up

the famous Kentucky Resolutions of '98 touching States Rights, which

were closely followed by the Virginia Resolutions of 1799 in the same

vein by Madison, also an out-and-out Protectionist. It was mainly in

condemnation of the Alien and Sedition Laws, then so unpopular

everywhere, that these resolutions were professedly fulminated, but they

gave to the agitating Free Traders a States-Rights-Secession-weapon of

which they quickly availed themselves.

Their drift may be gathered from the first of the Kentucky Resolutions

of '98, which was in these words: "Resolved, That the several States

composing the United States of America are not united on the principle

of unlimited submission to their General Government, but that, by a

compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United

States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government

for special purposes--delegated to that Government certain definite

powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to

their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government

assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of

no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and as an

integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party;

that the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive

or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since

that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the

measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among

powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge

for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of

redress."

The Resolutions, after enumerating the Alien and Sedition and certain

other laws as in point, conclude by calling upon the other States to

join Kentucky in her opposition to such Federal usurpations of power as

thus embodied, and express confidence: "That they will concur with this

Commonwealth in considering the said Acts as so palpably against the

Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that

compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General

Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States,

of all powers whatsoever; that they will view this as seizing the rights

of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General

Government, with the power assumed to bind the States (not merely as to

the cases made federal (casus foederis) but) in all cases whatsoever, by

laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent;

that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen,

and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from

our authority; and that the co-States, returning to their natural rights

in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these Acts void and

of no force, and will each take measures of its own in providing that

neither these Acts, nor any others of the General Government, not

plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be

exercised within their respective territories."

The doctrine of States Rights as formulated in these Resolutions,

including the assumed right of a State to nullify laws of the General

Government, naturally led up, as we shall see, not only to threats of

disunion, but ultimately to a dreadful sectional War waged in the effort

to secure it. That Jefferson, when he penned them, foresaw the terrible

results to flow from these specious and pernicious doctrines, is not to

be supposed for an instant; but that his conscience troubled him may be

fairly inferred from the fact that he withheld from the World for twenty

years afterward the knowledge that he was their author. It is probable

that in this case, as in others, he was a victim of that casuistry which

teaches that "the end justifies the means;" that he hoped and believed

that the assertion of these baleful doctrines would act solely as a

check upon any tendency to further centralization of power in the

General Government and insure that strict construction of the

Constitution.

Though afterward violated by himself at the same time that he for the

moment threw aside his scruples touching African slavery, when he added

to our domain the great French Slave Colony of Louisiana--was none the

less the great aim of his commanding intellect; and that he fortuitously

believed in the "saving common sense" of his race and country as capable

of correcting an existing evil when it shall have developed into ill

effects.

[Mr. Jefferson takes this very ground, in almost the same words, in

his letter, 1803, to Wilson C. Nichols in the Louisiana Colony

purchase case, when, after proving by his own strict construction

of the Constitution that there was no power in that instrument to

make such purchase, and confessing the importance in that very case

of setting "an example against broad construction," he concludes:

"If, however, our friends shall think differently, certainly I

shall acquiesce with satisfaction; confiding that the good sense of

the country will correct the evil of construction when it shall

produce ill ejects."]

Be that as it may, however, the fact remains that the seeds thus sown by

the hands of Jefferson on the "sacred soil" of Virginia and Kentucky,

were dragon's teeth, destined in after years to spring up as legions of

armed men battling for the subversion of that Constitution and the

destruction of that Union which he so reverenced, and which he was so

largely instrumental in founding--and which even came back in his own

life to plague him and Madison during his embargo, and Madison's war of

1812-15, in the utterances and attitude of some of the New England

Federalists.

The few Free Traders of the South--the Giles's and John Taylor's and men

of that ilk--made up for their paucity in numbers by their unscrupulous

ingenuity and active zeal. They put forth the idea that the American

Protective Policy was a policy of fostering combinations by Federal

laws, the effect of which was to transfer a considerable portion of the

profits of slave labor from the Slave States to other parts of the Union

where it was massed in the hands of a few individuals, and thus created

a moneyed interest which avariciously influenced the General Government

to the detriment of the entire community of people, who, made restive by

the exactions of this power working through the Federal Government, were

as a consequence driven to consider a possible dissolution of the Union,

and make "estimates of resources and means of defense." As a means also

of inflaming both the poor whites and Southern slave-holders by arousing

the apprehensions of the latter concerning the "peculiar institution" of

Slavery, they craftily declared that "If the maxim advanced by the

advocates of the protecting duty system will justify Congress in

assuming, or rather in empowering a few capitalists to assume, the

direction of manufacturing labor, it also invests that body with a power

of legislating for the direction of every other species of labor and

assigning all occupations whatsoever to the care of the intelligence of

mercenary combinations"--and hence untold misery to labor.

They charged as a further means of firing the Southern heart, that this

moneyed power, born of Protection, "works upon the passion of the States

it has been able to delude by computations of their physical strength

and their naval superiority; and by boasting of an ability to use the

weakening circumstance of negro slavery to coerce the defrauded and

discontented States into submission." And they declared as fundamental

truths upon which they rested that "The Federal is not a National

Government; it is a league between nations. By this league, a limited

power only over persons and property was given to the representatives of

the united nations. This power cannot be further extended, under the

pretext of national good, because the league does not create a national

government."

It was the passage of the Tariff of 1824 that gave these crafty Free

Traders their first great success in spreading their doctrine of Free

Trade by coupling it with questions of slave labor, States Rights, and

nullification, as laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions.

These arguments created great excitement throughout the South

--especially in South Carolina and Georgia--which was still further

increased by the passage of the Tariff of 1828, since declared by

eminent authority to have been "the highest and most protective ever

adopted in this country."

[Mr. Greeley, in his "History of the American Conflict," 1864.]

Prior to the passage of this Tariff Act, excited assemblages met in some

of the Southern States, and protested against it as an outrage upon

their rights--arraying the South in seditious and treasonable attitude

against not only the North but the Union, with threats of Secession. At

one of these meetings in South Carolina, in 1827, one of their leaders

--[Dr. Thomas Cooper, President of South Carolina College.]--declared that

"a drilled and managed majority" in the House of Representatives had

determined "at all hazards to support the claims of the Northern

manufacturers, and to offer up the planting interest on the altar of

monopoly." He denounced the American system of Protection exemplified

in that Tariff measure as "a system by which the earnings of the South

are to be transferred to the North--by which the many are to be

sacrificed to the few--under which powers are usurped that were never

conceded--by which inequality of rights, inequality of burthens,

inequality of protection, unequal laws, and unequal taxes are to be

enacted and rendered permanent--that the planter and the farmer under

this system are to be considered as inferior beings to the spinner, the

bleacher, and the dyer--that we of the South hold our plantations under

this system, as the serfs and operatives of the North, subject to the

orders and laboring for the benefit of the master-minds of

Massachusetts, the lords of the spinning jenny and peers of the

power-loom, who have a right to tax our earnings for their emolument,

and to burthen our poverty and to swell their riches;" and after

characterizing Protection as "a system of fraud, robbery and

usurpation," he continued "I have said that we shall ere long be

compelled to calculate the value of our Union; and to enquire of what

use to us is this most unequal alliance, by which the South has always

been the loser and the North always the gainer. Is it worth our while

to continue this union of States, where the North demands to be our

masters and we are required to be their tributaries? who with the most

insulting mockery call the yoke they put upon our necks the 'American

system!' The question, however, is fast approaching the alternative of

submission or separation."

Only a few days after this inflammatory speech at Columbus, S. C.,

inciting South Carolinians to resist the pending Protective Tariff even

to the lengths of Secession, during a grand banquet at Richmond, Va.,

William B. Giles--another Free Trade leader--proposed, and those present

drank a toast to the "Tariff Schemer" in which was embodied a

declaration that "The Southerners will not long pay tribute." Despite

these turbulent and treasonable mutterings, however, the "Jacksonian

Congress" passed the Act--a majority of members from the Cotton and New

England States voting against, while the vote of the Middle and Western

Free States was almost solidly for, it.

At a meeting held soon after the enactment of the Tariff of 1828, at

Walterborough Court House, S. C., an address was adopted and issued

which, after reciting the steps that had been taken by South Carolina

during the previous year to oppose it, by memorials and otherwise, and

stating that, despite their "remonstrances and implorations," a Tariff

Bill had passed, not indeed, such as they apprehended, but "ten-fold

worse in all its oppressive features," proceeded thus:

"From the rapid step of usurpation, whether we now act or not, the day

of open opposition to the pretended powers of the Constitution cannot be

far off, and it is that it may not go down in blood that we now call

upon you to resist. We feel ourselves standing underneath its mighty

protection, and declaring forth its free and recorded spirit, when we

say we must resist. By all the great principles of liberty--by the

glorious achievements of our fathers in defending them--by their noble

blood poured forth like water in maintaining them--by their lives in

suffering, and their death in honor and in glory;--our countrymen! we

must resist. Not secretly, as timid thieves or skulking smugglers--not

in companies and associations, like money chafferers or stock jobbers

--not separately and individually, as if this was ours and not our

country's cause--but openly, fairly, fearlessly, and unitedly, as

becomes a free, sovereign and independent people. Does timidity ask

WHEN? We answer NOW!"

These inflammatory utterances, in South Carolina especially, stirred the

Southern heart more or less throughout the whole cotton belt; and the

pernicious principles which they embodied found ardent advocates even in

the Halls of Congress. In the Senate, Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, was

their chief and most vehement spokesman, and in 1830 occurred that

memorable debate between him and Daniel Webster, which forever put an

end to all reasonable justification of the doctrine of Nullification,

and which furnished the ground upon which President Jackson afterward

stood in denouncing and crushing it out with the strong arm of the

Government.

In that great debate Mr. Hayne's propositions were that the Constitution

is a "compact between the States," that "in case of a plain, palpable

violation of the Constitution by the General Government, a State may

interpose; and that this interposition is constitutional"--a proposition

with which Mr. Webster took direct issue, in these words: "I say, the

right of a State to annul a law of Congress cannot be maintained, but on

the ground of the inalienable right of man to resist oppression; that is

to say, upon the ground of revolution. I admit that there is an

ultimate violent remedy, above the Constitution and in defiance of the

Constitution, which may be resorted to when a revolution is to be

justified. But I do not admit that, under the Constitution, and in

conformity with it, there is any mode in which a State Government, as a

member of the Union, can interfere and stop the progress of the general

movement by force of her own laws under any circumstances whatever."

Mr. Webster insisted that "one of two things is true: either the laws of

the Union are beyond the discretion and beyond the control of the

States, or else we have no Constitution of General Government, and are

thrust back again to the days of the Confederation;" and, in concluding

his powerful argument, he declared that "even supposing the Constitution

to be a compact between the States," Mr. Hayne's doctrine was "not

maintainable, because, first, the General Government is not a party to

the compact, but a Government established by it, and vested by it with

the powers of trying and deciding doubtful questions; and secondly,

because, if the Constitution be regarded as a compact, not one State

only, but all the States are parties to that compact, and one can have

no right to fix upon it her own peculiar construction."

While the comparatively miserable condition of the cotton-growing States

of the South was attributed by most of the Southern Free Traders solely

to the Protective Tariff of 1828, yet there were some Southerners

willing to concede--as did Mr. Hayne, in the Senate (1832)--that there

were "other causes besides the Tariff" underlying that condition, and to

admit that "Slaves are too improvident, too incapable of that minute,

constant, delicate attention, and that persevering industry which are

essential to manufacturing establishments," the existence of which would

have made those States prosperous. But such admissions were unwilling

ones, and the Cotton-lords held only with the more tenacity to the view

that the Tariff was the chief cause of their condition.

The Tariff Act of 1832, essentially modifying that of 1828, was passed

with a view, in part, to quiet Southern clamor. But the Southern Cotton

States refused to be mollified. On the contrary, the Free Traders of

South Carolina proceeded to extreme measures, putting in action that

which they had before but threatened. On November 19, 1832, the leading

men of South Carolina met in Convention, and a few days thereafter

--[November 24,1882]--unanimously passed an Ordinance of Nullification

which declared the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 1832 "Unauthorized by the

Constitution," and "null, void, and no law, nor binding on this State,

its officers, or citizens." The people of the State were forbidden by

it to pay, after the ensuing February 1st, the import-duties therein

imposed. Under the provisions of the Ordinance, the State Legislature

was to pass an act nullifying these Tariff laws, and any appeal to the

United States Supreme Court against the validity of such nullifying act

was prohibited. Furthermore, in the event of the Federal Government

attempting to enforce these Tariff laws, the people of South Carolina

would thenceforth consider themselves out of the Union, and will

"forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and do all other

acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do."

At the subsequent meeting of the Legislature, Mr. Hayne, who had been a

member of the Convention, having resigned his seat in the United States

Senate, was elected Governor of the State. He declared in his message

that he recognized "No allegiance as paramount to that which the

citizens of South Carolina owe to the State of their birth or their

adoption"--that doctrine of "paramount allegiance to the State" which in

after-years gave so much trouble to the Union and to Union-loving

Southerners--and declared that he held himself "bound by the highest of

all obligations to carry into effect, not only the Ordinance of the

Convention, but every act of the Legislature, and every judgment of our

own Courts, the enforcement of which may devolve upon the Executive,"

and "if," continued he, "the sacred soil of Carolina should be polluted

by the footsteps of an invader, or be stained with the blood of her

citizens, shed in her defense, I trust in Almighty God * * * even should

she stand alone in this great struggle for constitutional liberty,

encompassed by her enemies, that there will not be found, in the wide

limits of the State, one recreant son who will not fly to the rescue,

and be ready to lay down his life in her defense." In support of the

contemplated treason, he even went to the length of calling for an

enrolling of volunteer forces and of holding them ready for service.

But while South Carolina stood in this treasonable and defiant attitude,

arming for war against the Union, there happened to be in the

Presidential chair one of her own sons--General Jackson. Foreseeing

what was coming, he had, prior to the meeting of the Convention that

framed the Nullification Ordinance, ordered General Scott to Charleston

to look after "the safety of the ports of the United States"

thereabouts, and had sent to the Collector of that port precise

instructions as to his duty to resist in all ways any and all attempts

made under such Ordinance to defeat the operation of the Tariff laws

aforesaid. Having thus quietly prepared the arm of the General

Government for the exercise of its power, he issued in December a

Proclamation declaring his unalterable resolution to treat Nullification

as Treason--and to crush it.

In that famous document President Jackson said of Nullification: "If

this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would

have been dissolved in its infancy. The Excise law in Pennsylvania, the

Embargo and Non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the Carriage-tax

in Virginia, were all deemed unconstitutional, and were more unequal in

their operation than any of the laws now complained of; but fortunately,

none of those States discovered that they had the right now claimed by

South Carolina. * * * The discovery of this important feature in our

Constitution was reserved for the present day. To the statesmen of

South Carolina belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that

State will unfortunately fall the evils of reducing it to practice. * *

* I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States,

assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union,

contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized

by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded

and destructive of the great object for which it was formed. * * * To

say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that

the United States are not a Nation, because it would be a solecism to

contend that any part of a Nation might dissolve its connection with the

other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any, offense."

Farther on, in his moving appeal to the South Carolinians, he bids them

beware of their leaders: "Their object is disunion; be not deceived by

names. Disunion, by armed force, is Treason." And then, reminding them

of the deeds of their fathers in the Revolution, he proceeds: "I adjure

you, as you honor their memory, as you love the cause of freedom to

which they dedicated their lives, as you prize the peace of your

country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to

retrace your steps. Snatch from the archives of your State the

disorganizing edict of its Convention--bid its members to reassemble and

promulgate the decided expression of your will to remain in the path

which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor--tell them

that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that

brings with it an accumulation of all--declare that you will never take

the field unless the Star-spangled banner of your country shall float

over you--that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and

scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the

Constitution of your country! Its destroyers you cannot be."

After asserting his firm "determination to execute the laws-to preserve

the Union by all constitutional means"--he concludes with the prayer,

"May the great Ruler of Nations grant, that the signal blessings with

which He has favored, ours may not, by the madness of party, or personal

ambition be disregarded and lost; and may His wise providence bring

those who have produced this crisis to see the folly before they feel

the misery, of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that

Union, which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as

the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may

reasonably aspire."

The firm attitude of General Jackson, together with the wise

precautionary measures he had already taken, and the practical unanimity

with which his declaration to crush out the Treason was hailed in most

of the Southern as well as the Northern States, almost at once broke the

back of Nullification.

[In this connection the following letter, written at that time by

the great Chief Justice Marshall, to a cousin of his, on the

subject of State Sovereignty, is of interest, as showing how

clearly his penetrating intellect perceived the dangers to the

Union hidden in the plausible doctrine of State Rights:

RICHMOND, May 7, 1833.

"MY DEAR SIR:

"I am much indebted to you for your pamphlet on Federal Relations,

which I have read with much satisfaction. No subject, as it seems

to me, is more misunderstood or more perverted. You have brought

into view numerous important historical facts which, in my

judgment, remove the foundation on which the Nullifiers and

Seceders have erected that superstructure which overshadows our

Union. You have, I think, shown satisfactorily that we never have

been perfectly distinct, independent societies, sovereign in the

sense in which the Nullifiers use the term. When colonies we

certainly were not. We were parts of the British empire, and

although not directly connected with each other so far as respected

government, we were connected in many respects, and were united to

the same stock. The steps we took to effect separation were, as

you have fully shown, not only revolutionary in their nature, but

they were taken conjointly. Then, as now, we acted in many

respects as one people. The representatives of each colony acted

for all. Their resolutions proceeded from a common source, and

operated on the whole mass. The army was a continental army

commanded by a continental general, and supported from a

continental treasury. The Declaration of Independence was made by

a common government, and was made for all the States.

"Everything has been mixed. Treaties made by Congress have been

considered as binding all the States. Some powers have been

exercised by Congress, some by the States separately. The lines

were not strictly drawn. The inability of Congress to carry its

legitimate powers into execution has gradually annulled those

powers practically, but they always existed in theory.

Independence was declared `in the name and by the authority of the

good people of these colonies.' In fact we have always been united

in some respects, separate in others. We have acted as one people

for some purposes, as distinct societies for others. I think you

have shown this clearly, and in so doing have demonstrated the

fallacy of the principle on which either nullification or the right

of peaceful, constitutional secession is asserted.

"The time is arrived when these truths must be more generally

spoken, or our Union is at an end. The idea of complete

sovereignty of the State converts our government into a league,

and, if carried into practice, dissolves the Union.

"I am, dear sir,

"Yours affectionately,

"J. MARSHALL.

"HUMPHREY MARSHALL, ESQ.,

"FRANKFORT, KY."]

The Nullifiers hailed with pretended satisfaction the report from the

House Committee on Ways and Means of a Bill making great reductions and

equalizations of Tariff duties, as a measure complying with their

demands, and postponed the execution of the Ordinance of Nullification

until the adjournment of Congress; and almost immediately afterward Mr.

Clay's Compromise Tariff Act of 1833 "whereby one tenth of the excess

over twenty per cent. of each and every existing impost was to be taken

off at the close of that year; another tenth two years thereafter; so

proceeding until the 30th of June, 1842, when all duties should be

reduced to a maximum of twenty per cent."--[Says Mr. Greeley, in his

History aforesaid.]--agreed to by Calhoun and other Nullifiers, was

passed, became a law without the signature of President Jackson, and

South Carolina once more became to all appearances a contented,

law-abiding State of the Union.

But after-events proved conclusively that the enactment of this

Compromise Tariff was a terrible blunder, if not a crime. Jackson had

fully intended to hang Calhoun and his nullifying coadjutors if they

persisted in their Treason. He knew that they had only seized upon the

Tariff laws as a pretext with which to justify Disunion, and prophesied

that "the next will be the Slavery or Negro question." Jackson's

forecast was correct. Free Trade, Slavery and Secession were from that

time forward sworn allies; and the ruin wrought to our industries by the

disasters of 1840, plainly traceable to that Compromise Tariff measure

of 1833, was only to be supplemented by much greater ruin and disasters

caused by the Free Trade Tariff of 1846--and to be followed by the armed

Rebellion of the Free Trade and Pro-Slavery States of the South in 1861,

in a mad attempt to destroy the Union.

CHAPTER III.

GROWTH OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION.

It will be remembered that during the period of the Missouri Struggle,

1818-1820, the Territory of Arkansas was formed by an Act of Congress

out of that part of the Missouri Territory not included in the proposed

State of Missouri, and that the Act so creating the Territory of

Arkansas contained no provision restricting Slavery. Early in 1836, the

people of Arkansas Territory met in Convention and formed a Constitution

under which, "and by virtue of the treaty of cession by France to the

United States, of the Province of Louisiana," they asked admission to

the Union as a State. Among other provisions of that Constitution was a

section rendering the State Legislature powerless to pass laws for the

emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners, or to prevent

emigrants to that State from bringing with them slaves. On June 15th of

the same year, Arkansas was, under that Constitution, admitted to the

Union as a Slave State, with the sole reservation, that nothing in the

Act of admission should be" construed as an assent by Congress to all or

any of the propositions contained" in the said Constitution.

Long ere this, all the Northern and Middle States had made provision for

the emancipation of such slaves as remained within their borders, and

only a few years previous (in 1829 and 1831-32) Virginia had made strong

but insufficient efforts toward the same end. The failure to free

Virginia of Slavery--the effort to accomplish which had been made by

some of the greatest of her statesmen--only served to rivet the chains

of human bondage more securely throughout all the Slave States, and from

that time on, no serious agitation occurred in any one of them, looking

toward even the most gradual emancipation. On the other hand, the

advocates of the extension of the Slave-Power by the expansion of

Slave-territory, were ever on the alert, they considered it of the last

importance to maintain the balance of power between the Slave States and

the Free States. Hence, while they had secured in 1819 the cession from

Spain to the United States of the Slave-holding Floridas, and the

organization of the Slave Territory of Florida in 1822--which

subsequently came in as a Slave State under the same Act (1845) that

admitted the Free State of Iowa--their greedy eyes were now cast upon

the adjoining rich territories of Mexico.

Efforts had (in 1827-1829) been made to purchase from Mexico the domain

which was known as Texas. They had failed. But already a part of Texas

had been settled by adventurous Americans under Mexican grants and

otherwise; and General Sam Houston, an adherent of the Slave Power,

having become a leading spirit among them, fomented a revolution. In

March, 1836, Texas, under his guidance, proclaimed herself a Republic

independent of Mexico.

The War that ensued between Texas and Mexico ended in the flight of the

Mexican Army and the capture of Santa Anna at San Jacinto, and a treaty

recognizing Texan independence. In October, 1836, General Houston was

inaugurated President of the Republic of Texas. Close upon this

followed (in August, 1837) a proposition to our Government from the

Texan envoy for the annexation of Texas to the United States. President

Van Buren declined the offer. The Northern friends of Freedom were as

much opposed to this annexation project as the advocates of Slavery were

anxious for it. Even such conservative Northern Statesmen as Daniel

Webster strongly opposed the project. In a speech delivered in New York

[1837], after showing that the chief aim of our Government in the

acquisition of the Territory of Louisiana was to gain command of the

mouths of the great rivers to the sea, and that in the acquisition of

the Floridas our policy was based on similar considerations, Mr. Webster

declared that "no such necessity, no such policy, requires the

annexation of Texas," and that we ought "for numerous and powerful

reasons to be content with our present boundaries. He recognized that

Slavery already existed under the guarantees of the Constitution and

those guarantees must be fulfilled; that "Slavery, as it exists in the

States, is beyond the power of Congress. It is a concern of the States

themselves," but "when we come to speak of admitting new States, the

subject assumes an entirely different aspect. Our rights and our duties

are then both different. The Free States, and all the States, are then

at liberty to accept or to reject;" and he added, "In my opinion the

people of the United States will not consent to bring into the Union a

new, vastly extensive and Slaveholding country, large enough for a half

a dozen or a dozen States. In my opinion, they ought not to consent to

it."

Farther on, in the same speech--after alluding to the strong feeling in

the Northern States against the extension of Slavery, not only as a

question of politics, but of conscience and religious conviction as

well-he deems him a rash man indeed "who supposes that a feeling of this

kind is to be trifled with or despised." Said he: "It will assuredly

cause itself to be respected. It may be reasoned with; it may be made

willing--I believe it is entirely willing--to fulfill all existing

engagements and all existing duties--to uphold and defend the

Constitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some

provisions which it does actually contain. But to coerce it into

silence, to endeavor to restrain its free expression, to seek to

compress and confine it, warm as it is, and more heated as such

endeavors would inevitably render it,--should this be attempted, I know

nothing, even in the Constitution or in the Union itself, which would

not be endangered by the explosion which might follow."

In 1840, General Harrison, the Whig candidate, was elected to the

Presidency, but died within a few weeks after his inauguration in 1841,

and was succeeded by John Tyler. The latter favored the Slave Power;

and on April 12th, 1844, John C. Calhoun, his Secretary of State,

concluded with Texas a treaty of annexation--which was, however,

rejected by the Senate. Meanwhile the public mind was greatly agitated

over the annexation and other, questions.

[In the London Index, a journal established there by Jefferson

Davis's agents to support the cause of the rebellious States, a

communication appeared during the early part of the war, Dec. 4,

1861, supposed to have been written by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in

which he said: "To tell the Norths, the Butes, the Wedderburns of

the present day, that previous to the year 1839 the sovereign

States of the South had unalterably resolved on the specific ground

of the violation of the Federal Constitution by the tariff of

spoliation which the New England States had imposed upon them--to

secede from the Union; to tell them that in that year the leader of

the South, Calhoun, urged an English gentleman, to whom he had

fully explained the position of the South, and the intolerable

tyranny which the North inflicted upon it, to be the bearer of

credentials from the chief persons of the South, in order to invite

the attention of the British Government to the coming event; that

on his death-bed (Washington, March 31, 1850), he called around him

his political friends--one of whom is now in England--warned them

that in no event could the Union survive the Presidential election

of 1860, though it might possibly break up before that urged them

to be prepared; leaving with his dying words the sacred cause of

Southern secession a solemn legacy in their hands--to have told

this to the Norths and Dartmouths of the present day, with more and

even stronger evidence of the coming events of November, 1860,

would have been like speaking to the stones of the street. In

November, 1860, they were thoroughly ignorant of all the momentous

antecedents of secession--of their nature, their character, their

bearing, import, and consequences."

In the same correspondence the distinguished Rebel emissary

substantially let out the fact that Calhoun was indirectly, through

himself (Mason), in secret communication with the British

Government as far back as 1841, with a view to securing its

powerful aid in his aforesaid unalterable resolve to Secede from

the Union; and then Mr. Mason pleads--but pleads in vain--for the

armed intervention of England at this later day. Said he:

"In the year 1841 the late Sir William Napier sent in two plans for

subduing the Union, to the War Office, in the first of which the

South was to be treated as an enemy, in the second as a friend and

ally. I was much consulted by him as to the second plan and was

referred to by name in it, as he showed by the acknowledgment of

this in Lord Fitzroy Somerset's letter of reply. This plan fully

provided for the contingency of an invasion of Canada, and its

application would, in eighteen or twenty months, have reduced the

North to a much more impotent condition than it exhibits at

present. At this very moment the most difficult portion of that

plan has been perfectly accomplished by the South itself; and the

North, in accordance with Sir William Napier's expectations, now

lies helpless before England, and at our absolute mercy. Nor is

there any doubt of this, and if Lord Palmerston is not aware of it

Mr. Seward certainly is. We have nothing remaining to do but to

stretch out our arm in the way Sir William Napier proposed, and the

Northern power--power as we ignorantly call it--must come to an

end. Sir William knew and well estimated the elements of which

that quasi power consisted; and he knew how to apply the

substantive power of England to dissolve it. In the best interest

of humanity, I venture to say that it is the duty of England to

apply this power without further delay--its duty to itself, to its

starving operatives, to France, to Europe, and to humanity. And in

the discharge of this great duty to the world at large there will

not even be the dignity of sacrifice or danger."]

Threats and counter-threats of Disunion were made on either hand by the

opponents and advocates of Slavery-extension through annexation; nor was

it less agitated on the subject of a Protective Tariff.

The Compromise Tariff of 1833, together with President Jackson's

upheaval of our financial system, produced, as has already been hinted,

terrible commercial disasters. "In 1840," says competent authority, "all

prices had ruinously fallen; production had greatly diminished, and in

many departments of industry had practically ceased; thousands of

working men were idle, with no hope of employment, and their families

suffering from want. Our farmers were without markets, their products

rotted in their barns, and their lands, teeming with rich harvests, were

sold by the sheriff for debts and taxes. The Tariff, which robbed our

industries of Protection failed to supply Government with its necessary

revenues. The National Treasury in consequence was bankrupt, and the

credit of the Nation had sunk very low."

Mr. Clay himself stated "the average depression in the value of property

under that state of things which existed before the Tariff of 1842 came

to the rescue of the country, at fifty per cent." And hence it was that

Protection was made the chief issue of the Presidential campaign of

1840, which eventuated in the election of Harrison and Tyler, and in the

Tariff Act of August 30, 1842, which revived our trade and industries,

and brought back to the land a full measure of prosperity. With those

disasters fresh in the minds of the people, Protection continued to be a

leading issue in the succeeding Presidential campaign of 1844--but

coupled with the Texas-annexation issue. In that campaign Henry Clay

was the candidate of the Whig party and James K. Polk of the Democratic

party. Polk was an ardent believer in the annexation policy and stood

upon a platform declaring for the "re-occupation of Oregon and the

re-annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable moment"--as if the

prefix "re" legitimatized the claim in either case; Clay, on the other

hand, held that we had "fairly alienated our title to Texas by solemn

National compacts, to the fulfilment of which we stand bound by good

faith and National honor;" that "Annexation and War with Mexico are

identical," and that he was "not willing to involve this country in a

foreign War for the object of acquiring Texas."

[In his letter of April 17, 1844, published in the National

Intelligencer.]

As to the Tariff issue also, Clay was the acknowledged champion of the

American system of Protection, while Polk was opposed to it, and was

supported by the entire Free-trade sentiment, whether North or South.

As the campaign progressed, it became evident that Clay would be

elected. Then occurred some of those fatalities which have more than

once, in the history of Presidential campaigns, overturned the most

reasonable expectations and defeated the popular will. Mr. Clay

committed a blunder and Mr. Polk an equivocation--to use the mildest

possible term. Mr. Clay was induced by Southern friends to write a

letter--[Published in the North Alabamian, Aug. 16, 1844.]--in which,

after stating that "far from having any personal objection to the

annexation of Texas, I should be glad to see it--without dishonor,

without War, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and

fair terms," he added: "I do not think that the subject of Slavery ought

to affect the question, one way or the other." Mr. Polk, on the other

hand, wrote a letter in which he declared it to be "the duty of the

Government to extend, as far as it may be practicable to do so, by its

revenue laws and all other means within its power, fair and just

Protection to all the great interests of the whole Union, embracing

Agriculture, Manufactures, the Mechanic Arts, Commerce and Navigation."

This was supplemented by a letter (August 8, 1844) from Judge Wilson

McCandless of Pennsylvania, strongly upholding the Protective principle,

claiming that Clay in his Compromise Tariff Bill had abandoned it, and

that Polk and Dallas had "at heart the true interests of Pennsylvania."

Clay, thus betrayed by the treachery of Southern friends, was greatly

weakened, while Polk, by his beguiling letter, backed by the false

interpretation put upon it by powerful friends in the North, made the

North believe him a better Protectionist than Clay.

Polk was elected, and rewarded the misplaced confidence by making Robert

J. Walker his Secretary of the Treasury, and, largely through that

great Free Trader's exertions, secured a repeal by Congress of the

Protective Tariff of 1842 and the enactment of the ruinous Free Trade

Tariff of 1846. Had Clay carried New York, his election was secure. As

it happened, Polk had a plurality in New York of but 5,106 in an immense

vote, and that slim plurality was given to him by the Abolitionists

throwing away some 15,000 on Birney. And thus also it curiously

happened that it was the Abolition vote which secured the election of

the candidate who favored immediate annexation and the extension of the

Slave Power!

Emboldened and apparently sustained by the result of the election, the

Slave Power could not await the inauguration of Mr. Polk, but proceeded

at once, under whip and spur, to drive the Texas annexation scheme

through Congress; and two days before the 4th of March, 1845, an Act

consenting to the admission of the Republic of Texas as a State of the

Union was approved by President Tyler.

In that Act it was provided that "New States of convenient size, not

exceeding four in number, in addition to the said State of Texas, and

having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said

State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled

to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution; and such

States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying

south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly

known as the Missouri Compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union

with or without Slavery, as the people of each State asking admission

may desire. And in such State or States as shall be formed out of said

territory north of said Missouri Compromise line, Slavery or involuntary

servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited." As has been lucidly

stated by another,--[Greeley's History]--"while seeming to curtail and

circumscribe Slavery north of the above parallel (that of 36 30' north

latitude), this measure really extended it northward to that parallel,

which it had not yet approached, under the flag of Texas, within

hundreds of miles. But the chief end of this sham Compromise was the

involving of Congress in an indirect indorsement of the claim of Texas

to the entire left bank of the Rio Grande, from its mouth to its source;

and this was effected."

Texas quickly consented to the Act of annexation, and in December, 1845,

a Joint Resolution formally admitting her as a State of the Union,

reported by Stephen A. Douglas, was duly passed.

In May, 1846, the American forces under General Taylor, which had been

dispatched to protect Texas from threatened assault, were attacked by

the Mexican army, which at Palo Alto was badly defeated and at Resaca de

la Palma driven back across the Rio Grande.

Congress immediately declared that by this invasion a state of War

existed between Mexico and the United States. Thus commenced the War

with Mexico--destined to end in the triumph of the American Army, and

the acquisition of large areas of territory to the United States. In

anticipation of such triumph, President Polk lost little time in asking

an appropriation of over two million dollars by Congress to facilitate

negotiations for peace with, and territorial cession from, Mexico. And

a Bill making such appropriation was quickly passed by the House of

Representatives--but with the following significant proviso attached,

which had been offered by Mr. Wilmot: "Provided. That as an express and

fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the

Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that

may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the

moneys herein appropriated, neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude

shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime,

whereof the party shall first be duly convicted."

The debate in the Senate upon the Wilmot proviso, which immediately

ensued, was cut short by the expiration of the Session of Congress--and

the Bill accordingly failed of passage.

In February, 1848, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was made between

Mexico and the United States, and Peace reigned once more. About the

same time a Bill was passed by the Senate providing Territorial

Governments for Oregon, California and New Mexico, which provided for

the reference of all questions touching Slavery in such Territories to

the United States Supreme Court, for arbitration. The Bill, however,

failed in the House. The ensuing Presidential campaign resulted in the

election of General Taylor, the Whig candidate, who was succeeded upon

his death, July 10, 1850, by Fillmore. Meanwhile, on the Oregon

Territory Bill, in 1848, a strong effort had been made by Mr. Douglas

and others to incorporate a provision extending to the Pacific Ocean the

Missouri Compromise line of 36 30' of north latitude and extending to

all future organizations of Territories of the United States the

principles of said Compromise. This provision was adopted by the

Senate, but the House struck it from the Bill; the Senate receded, and

Oregon was admitted as a Free Territory. But the conflict in Congress

between those who would extend and those who would restrict Slavery

still continued, and indeed gathered vehemence with time. In 1850,

California was clamoring for admission as a Free State to the Union, and

New Mexico and Utah sought to be organized under Territorial

Governments.

In the heated discussions upon questions growing out of bills for these

purposes, and to rectify the boundaries of Texas, it was no easy matter

to reach an agreement of any sort. Finally, however, the Compromise of

1850, offered by Mr. Clay, was practically agreed to and carried out,

and under it: California was admitted as a Free State; New Mexico and

Utah were admitted to Territorial organization without a word pro or con

on the subject of Slavery; the State of Texas was awarded a pecuniary

compensation for the rectification of her boundaries; the Slave Trade in

the District of Columbia was abolished; and a more effectual Fugitive

Slave Act passed.

By both North and South, this Compromise of 1850, and the measures

growing out of it, were very generally acquiesced in, and for a while it

seemed as though a permanent settlement of the Slavery question had been

reached. But in the Fugitive Slave law, thus hastily enacted, lay

embedded the seed for further differences and excitements, speedily to

germinate. In its operation it proved not only unnecessarily cruel and

harsh, in the manner of the return to bondage of escaped slaves, but

also afforded a shield and support to the kidnapping of Free Negroes

from Northern States. The frequency of arrests in the Northern States,

and the accompanying circumstances of cruelty and brutality in the

execution of the law, soon made it especially odious throughout the

North, and created an active feeling of commiseration for the unhappy

victims of the Slave Power, which greatly intensified and increased the

growing Anti-Slavery sentiment in the Free States.

In 1852-53, an attempt was made in Congress to organize into the

Territory of Nebraska, the region of country lying west of Iowa and

Missouri. Owing to the opposition of the South the Bill was defeated.

In 1853-4 a similar Bill was reported to the Senate by Mr. Douglas, but

afterward at his own instance recommitted to the Committee on

Territories, and reported back by him again in such shape as to create,

instead of one, two Territories, that portion directly west of Missouri

to be called Kansas, and the balance to be known as Nebraska--one of the

sections of the Bill enacting:

"That in order to avoid all misconstruction it is hereby declared to be

the true intent and meaning of this Act, so far as the question of

Slavery is concerned, to carry into practical operation the following

propositions and principles, established by the Compromise measures of

1850, to wit:

"First, That all questions pertaining to Slavery in the Territories, and

the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of

the people residing therein through their appropriate representatives.

"Second, That 'all cases involving title to slaves,' and 'questions of

personal freedom,' are referred to the adjudication of the local

tribunals with the right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United

States.

"Third, That the provisions of the Constitution and laws of the United

States, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into

faithful execution in all the `organized Territories,' the same as in

the States."

The sections authorizing Kansas and Nebraska to elect and send delegates

to Congress also prescribed:

"That the Constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not

locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the

said Territory, as elsewhere in the United States, except the section of

the Act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union,

approved March 6th, 1820, which was superseded by the principles of the

Legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, and is

declared inoperative."

And when "explaining this Kansas-Nebraska Bill" Mr. Douglas announced

that, in reporting it, "The object of the Committee was neither to

legislate Slavery in or out of the Territories; neither to introduce nor

exclude it; but to remove whatever obstacle Congress had put there, and

apply the doctrine of Congressional Non-intervention in accordance with

the principles of the Compromise Measures of 1850, and allow the people

to do as they pleased upon this as well as all other matters affecting

their interests."

A vigorous and able debate ensued. A motion by Mr. Chase to strike out

the words "which was superseded by the principles of the legislation of

1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures," was defeated decisively.

Subsequently Mr. Douglas moved to strike out the same words and insert

in place of them, these: "which being inconsistent with the principles

of Non-intervention by Congress with Slavery in the States and

Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850 (commonly called

the Compromise Measures), is hereby declared inoperative and void; it

being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate Slavery

into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave

the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic

institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the

United States"--and the motion was agreed to by a vote of 35 yeas to 10

nays. Mr. Chase immediately moved to add to the amendment just adopted

these words: "Under which, the people of the Territory, through their

appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the

existence of Slavery therein;" but this motion was voted down by 36 nays

to 10 yeas. This developed the rat in the meal-tub. The people were to

be "perfectly free" to act either way on the subject of Slavery, so long

as they did not prohibit Slavery! In this shape the Bill passed the

Senate.

Public sentiment in the North was greatly stirred by this direct attempt

to repeal the Missouri Compromise. But by the superior parliamentary

tactics of Southern Representatives in the House, whereby the radical

friends of Freedom were shut out from the opportunity of amendment, a

House Bill essentially the same as the Senate Bill was subsequently

passed by the House, under the previous question, and afterward rapidly

passed the Senate, and was approved by the President. At once commenced

that long and terrible struggle between the friends of Free-Soil and the

friends of Slavery, for the possession of Kansas, which convulsed the

whole Country for years, and moistened the soil of that Territory with

streams of blood, shed in numerous "border-ruffian" conflicts.

The Territorial Government of Kansas was organized late in 1854, and an

"election" for Delegate held, at which the Pro-Slavery candidate

(Whitfield) was fraudulently elected. On March 30, 1855, a Territorial

Legislature was similarly chosen by Pro-Slavery voters "colonized" from

Missouri. That Legislature, upon its meeting, proceeded at once to

enact most outrageous Pro-Slavery laws, which being vetoed by the

Free-Soil Governor (Reeder), were passed over the veto, and the Free-Soil

Governor had to give place to one who favored Slavery in Kansas. But

the Free-Soil settlers of Kansas, in Mass Convention at Big Springs,

utterly repudiated the bogus Legislature and all its acts, to which they

refused submission.

In consequence of these radical differences, two separate elections for

Delegate in Congress were held by the opposing factions, at one of which

was elected the Pro-Slavery Whitfield, and at the other the Free-Soiler

Reeder. Furthermore, under a call issued by the Big Springs Convention,

a Free-State Constitutional Convention was held in October, 1855, at

Topeka, which framed a Free-State Constitution, and asked admission

under it to the Union.

In 1856, the House of Representatives--which, after a protracted

struggle, had elected N. P. Banks Speaker--passed a Bill, by a bare

majority, admitting Kansas under her Topeka Constitution; but the Senate

defeated it. July 4, 1856, by order of President Pierce, the Free-State

Legislature, chosen under the Topeka Constitution to meet at Topeka, was

dispersed by United States Troops. Yet, despite all oppositions,

discouragements, and outrages, the Free-State population of

Kansas continued to increase from immigration.

In 1857, the Pro-Slavery Legislature elected by the Pro-Slavery voters

at their own special election--the Free-State voters declining to

participate--called a Constitutional Convention at Lecompton, which

formed a Pro-Slavery Constitution. This was submitted to the people in

such dexterous manner that they could only vote "For the Constitution

with Slavery" or "For the Constitution without Slavery"--and, as the

Constitution prescribed that "the rights of property in Slaves now in

the Territory, shall in no manner be interfered with," to vote "for the

Constitution Without Slavery" was an absurdity only paralleled by the

course of the United States Senate in refusing to permit the people of

Kansas "to prohibit Slavery" while at the same time declaring them

"perfectly free to act" as they chose in the matter.

The Constitution, with Slavery, was thus adopted by a vote of over

6,000. But in the meanwhile, at another general election held for the

purpose, and despite all the frauds perpetrated by the Pro-Slavery men,

a Free-State Legislature, and Free-State Delegate to Congress had been

elected; and this Legislature submitted the Lecompton Pro-Slavery

Constitution to the people, January 4, 1858, so that they could vote:

"For the Lecompton Constitution with Slavery," "For the Lecompton

Constitution without Slavery," or "Against the Lecompton Constitution."

The consequence was that the Lecompton Constitution was defeated by a

majority of over 10,000 votes--the Missouri Pro-Slavery colonists

declining to recognize the validity of any further election on the

subject.

Meanwhile, in part upon the issues growing out of this Kansas conflict,

the political parties of the Nation had passed through another

Presidential campaign (1856), in which the Democratic candidate Buchanan

had been elected over Fremont the "Republican," and Fillmore the

"American," candidates. Both Houses of Congress being now Democratic,

Mr. Buchanan recommended them to accept and ratify the Lecompton

Pro-Slavery Constitution.

In March, 1858, the Senate passed a Bill--against the efforts of Stephen

A. Douglas--accepting it. In the House, however, a substitute offered

by Mr. Montgomery (Douglas Democrat) known as the Crittenden-Montgomery

Compromise, was adopted. The Senate refused to concur, and the report

of a Committee of Conference--providing for submitting to the Kansas

people a proposition placing limitations upon certain public land

advantages stipulated for in the Lecompton Constitution, and in case

they rejected the proposition that another Constitutional Convention

should be held--was adopted by both Houses; and the proposition being

rejected by the people of Kansas, the Pro-Slavery Lecompton Constitution

fell with it.

In 1859 a Convention, called by the Territorial Legislature for the

purpose, met at Wyandot, and framed a Free State Constitution which was

adopted by the people in October of that year, and at the ensuing State

election in December the State went Republican. In April, 1860, the

House of Representatives passed a Bill admitting Kansas as a State under

that Constitution, but the Democratic Senate adjourned without action on

the Bill; and it was not until early in 1861 that Kansas was at last

admitted.

In the meantime, the Free Trade Tariff of 1846 had produced the train of

business and financial disasters that its opponents predicted. Instead

of prosperity everywhere in the land, there was misery and ruin. Even

the discovery and working of the rich placer mines of California and the

consequent flow, in enormous volume, of her golden treasure into the

Eastern States, could not stay-the wide-spread flood of disaster.

President Fillmore, who had succeeded General Taylor on the latter's

death, frequently called the attention of Congress to the evils produced

by this Free Trade, and to the necessity of protecting our manufactures

"from ruinous competition from abroad." So also with his successor,

President Buchanan, who, in his Message of 1857, declared that "In the

midst of unsurpassed plenty in all the productions and in all the

elements of national wealth, we find our manufactures suspended, our

public works retarded, our private enterprises of different kinds

abandoned, and thousands of useful laborers thrown out of employment and

reduced to want." Further than this, the financial credit of the Nation

was at zero. It was financially bankrupt before the close of Buchanan's

Presidential term.

CHAPTER IV.

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.

But now occurred the great Presidential struggle of 1860 --which

involved not alone the principles of Protection, but those of human

Freedom, and the preservation of the Union itself-between Abraham

Lincoln of Illinois, the candidate of the Republican party, as against

Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the National or Douglas-Democratic

candidate, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the Administration or

Breckinridge-Democratic candidate, and John Bell of Tennessee, the

candidate of the Bell-Union party. The great preliminary struggle which

largely influenced the determination of the Presidential political

conflict of 1860, had, however, taken place in the State of Illinois,

two years previously. To that preliminary political contest of 1858,

therefore, we will now turn our eyes--and, in order to fully understand

it, it may be well to glance back over a few years. In 1851 the

Legislature of Illinois had adopted--[The vote in the House being 65

yeas to 4 nays.]--the following resolution: "Resolved, That our Liberty

and Independence are based upon the right of the people to form for

themselves such a government as they may choose; that this great

principle, the birthright of freemen, the gift of Heaven, secured to us

by the blood of our ancestors, ought to be secured to future

generations, and no limitation ought to be applied to this power in the

organization of any Territory of the United States, of either

Territorial Government or State Constitution, provided the government so

established shall be Republican and in conformity with the Constitution

of the United States." This resolution was a practical endorsement of

the course of Stephen A. Douglas in supporting the Compromise measures

of 1850, which he had defended as being "all founded upon the great

principle that every people ought to possess the right to form and

regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way," and that

"the same principle" should be "extended to all of the Territories of

the United States."

In accordance with his views and the resolution aforesaid, Mr. Douglas

in 1854, as we have already seen, incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska

Bill a clause declaring it to be "the true intent and meaning of the Act

not to legislate Slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it

therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and

regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to

the Constitution of the United States."

His position, as stated by himself, was, substantially that the

Lecompton Pro-Slavery Constitution was a fraud upon the people of

Kansas, in that it did not embody the will of that people; and he denied

the right of Congress to force a Constitution upon an unwilling people

--without regard, on his part, to whether that Constitution allowed or

prohibited Slavery or any other thing, whether good or bad. He held

that the people themselves were the sole judges of whether it is good or

bad, and whether desirable or not.

The Supreme Court of the United States had in the meantime made a

decision in a case afterward known as the "Dred Scott case," which was

held back until after the Presidential election of 1856 had taken place,

and added fuel to the political fire already raging. Dred Scott was a

Negro Slave. His owner voluntarily took him first into a Free State,

and afterward into a Territory which came within the Congressional

prohibitive legislation aforesaid. That decision in brief was

substantially that no Negro Slave imported from Africa, nor his

descendant, can be a citizen of any State within the meaning of the

Constitution; that neither the Congress nor any Territorial Legislature

has under the Constitution of the United States, the power to exclude

Slavery from any Territory of the United States; and that it is for the

State Courts of the Slave State, into which the negro has been conveyed

by his master, and not for the United States Courts, to decide whether

that Negro, having been held to actual Slavery in a Free State, has, by

virtue of residence in such State, himself become Free.