Douglas served two terms in the House and was again elected in
1846, but in January following was chosen Senator, taking his seat
on March 4th, 1847. In April following he married Martha Denny
Martin, daughter of a wealthy North Carolina planter and slave-owner.
The Senate, during the early years of his service, was in its
intellectual gifts altogether the most extraordinary body ever
assembled in the United States. Rarely, if ever, in the history of
the world, have so many men of remarkable endowment, high training
and masterful energy been gathered in a single assembly. It was the
period when the generation of Webster, Clay and Calhoun overlapped
that of Seward, Chase and Sumner, when the men who had set at the
feet of the Revolutionary Fathers and had striven to settle the
interpretation of the Constitution met the men who were destined
to guide the Nation through the Civil War and settle the perplexing
questions arising from it.
Webster was now an old man, his face deep lined with care,
disappointment and dissipation. Though sixty-eight years old and
the greatest orator of the century, his heart was still consumed
with unquenchable thirst of the honor of succeeding John Tyler
and James K. Polk. Calhoun, now sixty-five years old, a ghastly
physical wreck, still represented South Carolina and dismally
speculated on the prospect of surviving the outgrown Union. Cass,
equal in years with Calhoun, still held his seat in the Senate and
cherished the delusive hope of yet reaching the Presidency. Benton
was closing his fifth and last term in the Senate, and Clay, the
knightly leader of the trimming Whigs, though now in temporary
retirement, was soon to return and resume his old leadership.
Within the first four years of Douglas' service, Salmon P. Chase,
William H. Seward and Charles Sumner made their appearance in the
Senate. A new generation of giants seemed providentially supplied
as the old neared the end of their service. Douglas, though serving
with both these groups of statesmen, belonged to neither. Running
his career side by side with the later school of political leaders
and sharing in the great struggles on which their fame, in large
part, rests, his character and ideals were those of the older
generation.
The questions confronting Congress were of transcendent interest
and incalculable importance. A sudden and astounding expansion had
occurred, calling for the highest, wisest and most disinterested
statesmanship in providing governments for the newly acquired
domain. A million and a half miles of new territory, extending
through sixteen degrees of latitude, was now to be organized; the
future destiny of this vast territory, and indirectly that of free
institutions generally, was supposed to depend on the decision of
Congress. Above all, the fate of the American apple of discord,
human slavery, was understood to be involved in the construction
of territorial and State governments for these new possessions. It
was deemed by the South indispensable to the safety and permanence
of slavery to plant it in them.
For that half-disguised purpose they had been acquired at great
expense of blood and money. New States, it was hoped, might now be
created south of the line below which slavery flourished, balancing
those to be admitted from the growing Northwest. Thus far the
adventurous West had powerfully supported the South in its schemes
of conquest, but had no sympathy with slavery. The old North,
thought ready to submit to its continued existence in the States
where already established, was implacably hostile to its further
spread.
It was not a question of ethics or of sober statesmanship, but one
of practical politics, that divided the North and the South at this
period. Each hoped to secure for itself the alliance and sympathy
of the new States thereafter admitted. Each applied itself to the
task of shaping the Territories and moulding the future States to
serve its ulterior views.
When Congress attempted to organize territorial governments,
the people of the North insisted on the exclusion of slavery from
Oregon and the territory acquired from Mexico. The people of the
South made no resistance to its exclusion from Oregon. It was
already excluded by "the ordinance of Nature or the will of God."
But that the vast territory torn from Mexico, acquired by the common
blood and treasure, should now be closed to their institution, was
intolerable. To secure it they had sinned deep. After the conquest
their position was peculiarly awkward. The laws of Mexico excluding
slavery continued in force. Hence in all this territory slavery
was as effectually prohibited as in Massachusetts until Congress
could accomplish the odious work of introducing it by express
enactment. Calhoun strenuously argued the novel proposition that,
on the overthrow of the authority of the Mexican government by
American arms, the laws and constitution of Mexico were extinguished
and those of the United States, so far as applicable, occupied the
vacant field; that the Federal Constitution carried slavery with
it wherever it went, except where by the laws of a sovereign State
it was excluded.
He announced the proposition afterwards established by the Supreme
Court, that, as the Constitution proprio vigore carried slavery
into all the Territories, neither the territorial legislatures nor
Congress itself had power to interfere with the right of holding
slaves within them.
Webster conclusively answered this refined sophistry, pointing
out that slavery was merely a municipal institution, in derogation
of the common right of mankind, against the native instincts of
humanity, dependent wholly for its right of existence upon local
legislation, and that the real demand of the people of the South
was not to carry their slaves into the new Territories, but to
carry with them the slave codes of their several States.
While the venerable leaders who had ruled Congress and swayed public
opinion for thirty years were uttering philosophic disquisitions
on constitutional law or the ethics of slavery, Douglas had with
practical sagacity offered an amendment to the Oregon bill, extending
the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific. This would not
decide the great moral question between those who believed slavery
an unmixed good and those who believed it the sum of all villainies.
But he thought that moral ideas had no place in politics. It would
not decide the great question of constitutional law between those
who, like Calhoun, believed slavery the creature of the Federal
Constitution, and those, who, like Webster, believed it the creature
of local municipal law. But it promised a temporary respite to
the vexed question. He had already, in the House, advocated the
extension of this line through the Western Territories. He believed
that adhesion to this venerable Compromise, now as sacred as the
Constitution itself, was the hope of the future and succeeded in
persuading the Senate to adopt his amendment as the final solution
of the vexed problem. It was rejected in the House and the question
indefinitely postponed.
In the Territories, meanwhile, events moved fast. While Congress
had been wrangling over the new possessions, gold was discovered
in California. A tumultuous rush of people, unparalleled since the
Crusades, at once began by all routes from every region to the new
El Dorado. More than 80,000 settlers arrived in 1849. A spontaneous
movement of the people resulted in a Constitutional Convention,
which met at Monterey on September 3d of that year, and adopted a
Constitution which forever prohibited slavery. It was submitted
to a vote and adopted in November.
Congress met on December 3d and resumed the Sisyphean labors of the
last session. Douglas was chairman of the Committee on Territories,
to which were referred all measures affecting the recent
acquisitions--altogether the most momentous of the session--which
stirred the deepest passions of Congress and held the keenest attention
of the people. In the early days of December he submitted to his
Committee two bills. One provided for the immediate admission
of California; the other for the establishment of governments for
Utah and New Mexico and the adjustment of the Texas boundary. On
March 25th they were reported to the Senate. Meanwhile Taylor,
in a special message, had recommended the immediate admission of
California. Senator Mason had introduced a bill providing more
effective means for the summary return of fugitive slaves, in
effect converting the population of the free States into a posse
comitatus charged with the duty of hunting down the fugitive sand
returning him to bondage. The clash of arms had begun. Both sides
were passionately in earnest and resolved to encounter the utmost
extremity rather than yield. The Democrats had a small majority
in the Senate, while in the House neither party had a majority.
The Free Soilers held the balance of power, but by a refusal
to cooperate with the conservative opponents of slavery extension
left the control of the House in the hands of the Democrats. The
chief business of the early weeks of the session was the delivery
of defiant speeches and the presentation of resolutions defining
the opinions of various segments of distracted parties and revealing
the chasm that was opening between the friends and opponents of
slavery.
On the 21st of January the rival Whig chiefs of the Senate held
a confidential conference. Clay submitted a plan of compromise
covering the whole field of controversy. Webster promised his
cordial support. A week later Clay presented the first draft of
his famous slavery Compromise. He was under the sincere illusion
that he had been spared by Providence that he might save his country
in this great exigency and that his bill would secure long years
of peace and harmony. At least, as many of them were old men, it
would postpone the evil day until they had been safely gathered to
their fathers, and, according to the political morals of the age,
the next generation must take care of itself. Douglas moved to refer
the resolutions to the Committee on Territories; but, on motion of
Foote of Mississippi, they were referred to a select Committee of
Thirteen, consisting of three Northern Whigs, three Southern Whigs,
three Southern and three Northern Democrats, with Clay as chairman.
Douglas was not on this Committee. It was composed of old Senators
whose established reputations were expected to give credit to any
proposition of compromise.
On May 8th the Committee reported, recommending the immediate admission
of California, the establishment of territorial governments in New
Mexico and Utah with no mention of the slavery question, the settlement
of the Texas boundary dispute and the enactment of a law providing
for the more effectual return of fugitive slaves. Substantially
it was Douglas' two bills joined together, with Mason's Fugitive
Slave bill annexed. It was a mass of unrelated measures, jumbled
together for the illegitimate purpose of compelling support of the
whole from friends of the several parts.
Clay spoke for two days in support of his great masterpiece of
compromising statesmanship. He insisted that it should be accepted
by all for the reason that "neither party made any concession
of principle, but only of feeling and sentiment," and ingeniously
sought to soothe the anger of the North by the assurance that the
principle of popular sovereignty embodied in the bill was not only
eminently just and in harmony with the spirit of our institutions
but entirely harmless, inasmuch as the North had Nature on its
side, facts on its side and the truth staring it in the face that
there was no slavery in the Territories, proving that the law of
Nature was of paramount force.
On March 4th Calhoun attempted to speak, but found himself unable
and handed his speech to Mason who read it for him. He rejected
Clay's Compromise as futile and denied utterly the right of the
inhabitants of a Territory to exclude slavery. He accused the North
of having pursued a course of systematic hostility to Southern
institutions since the close of the Revolution, and cited the
Ordinance of 1787, the Missouri Compromise and the exclusion of
slavery from Oregon as instances of Northern aggression; and now,
he said, the final and fatal act of exclusion was attempted. He
denounced the action of the people of California in organizing a
State without congressional authority as revolutionary and rebellious.
He grimly announced that the South had no concessions to make, even
to save the poor wreck of a once glorious Union. He plainly told
them that if the Union was to be saved the North must save it. It
must open the Territories to slavery. It must surrender fugitive
slaves. It must cease agitating the slavery question. The
Constitution must be amended so as to restore to the South the
power of protecting itself. If they were not willing to do these
acts of justice, nor that the South should depart in peace, let
them say so, that it might know what to do when the question was
reduced to one of submission or resistance.
Three days later Webster delivered his famous 7th of March speech.
He criticized with severity the Northern Democracy for its eager
and officious subserviency to the South throughout the whole
controversy arising out of the Mexican War, hinting that it had
been even more eager to server than the South had been to accept
its service. He said that the Mexican War had been prosecuted for
the purpose of the acquisition of territory for the extension of
slavery, but that the nature of the country had defeated, in large
part, the hopes of the South. He declared that the whole question
of slavery was settled by a higher law than that of Congress and
that there was not then a foot of territory whose status was not
already fixed by the laws of the several States or the decree of
the Almighty; that, by the irrepealable laws of physical geography,
slavery was already excluded from California and New Mexico. He
"would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of Nature,
nor to reenact the will of God." He denounced the Abolitionists
and urged upon the Northern States the duty of faithfully and
energetically enforcing the abhorred Fugitive Slave Law.
Seward, speaking a few days later, insisted that it was their
clear duty to admit California under any Constitution adopted by
it, republican in form, and assured then that had its Constitution
permitted slavery he would still have deemed it his duty to vote
for its admission. He protested against the Fugitive Slave Law as
necessarily nugatory and utterly impossible of execution because
unanimously condemned by the public sentiment of the North. In
answer to the crushing argument that the Constitution carried
slavery into the Territories and that cheerful obedience must be
yielded to the supreme law, he announced the startling doctrine
that there was a HIGHER LAW than the Constitution, to which their
first duty was due; that slavery was a violation of this HIGHER
LAW and hence the Constitution itself was powerless to establish
it in the Territories.
On the 13th and 14th Douglas spoke. The speech was able and
adroit. It was marred by the introduction of party-politics into
a discussion of such gravity. He was always prone to lapse from
statesmanlike dignity to the level of the politician and viewed
most matters primarily in their relation to he transient questions
of party politics. He undertook the ambitious task of replying
to the speeches of Webster, Seward, and Calhoun. He repelled the
charge made by Webster that the Northern Democracy had surrendered
to the slave power in supporting the annexation of Texas and the
Mexican War, declaring that they had supported those measures from
patriotic motives, and that he was "one of those Northern Democrats
who supported annexation with all the zeal of his nature." "With
a touch of the Northwest--the Northwestern Democracy," sneered
Webster, who contemptuously looked upon him as a crude blustering
youth from the far West. But Webster, whose contempt for his coarse
taste was justified, had misjudged his resources and power.
"Yes, sir," replied Douglas, "I am glad to hear the Senator say
'With a touch of the Northwest'; I thank him for the distinction. We
have heard so much talk about the North and South, as if those two
sections were the only ones necessary to be taken into consideration
* * * that I am gratified to find that there are those who appreciate
the important truth that there is a power in this Nation, greater
than either the North or the South--a growing, increasing,
swelling power, that will be able to speak the law to this Nation
and to execute the law as spoken. That power is the country known
as the great West, the Valley of the Mississippi, one and indivisible
from the Gulf to the Great Lakes, stretching on the ones side and
the other to the extreme sources of the Ohio and the Missouri--from
the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains.
"There, sir, is the hope of this Nation, the resting-place of the
power that is not only to control but to save the Union. We furnish
the water that makes the Mississippi and we intend to follow,
navigate and use it until it loses itself in the briny ocean. So
with the St. Lawrence. We intend to keep open and enjoy both of
these great outlets to the ocean, and all between them we intend
to take under our especial protection and keep and preserve as one
free, happy, and united people. This is the mission of the great
Mississippi Valley, the heart and soul of the Nation and the
continent. We know the responsibilities that devolve upon us, and
our people will show themselves equal to them. We indulge in no
ultraism, no sectional strifes, no crusades against the North and
the South. * * * We are prepared to fulfill all our obligations under
the Constitution as it is, and determined to maintain and preserve
it inviolate in its letter and spirit. Such is the position, the
destiny and purpose of the great Northwest."
He told Webster that, according to the doctrine of his 7th of March
speech, to permit Texas to be divided into several States would be
harmless, because slavery was excluded from a large part of it by
the ordinance of Nature, the will of God. He taunted him for not
having discovered his now celebrated principle of the ordinance of
Nature and will of God until after Taylor's election, and reminded
him that prior to the election Cass and Buchanan, the recognized
heads of the Democratic party, had advocated leaving the question
to the decision of the settlers in the Territories or, in other
words, leaving the ordinance of Nature and will of God to manifest
themselves. But Webster had then opposed Cass' election and
denounced his doctrines and proposed policies. The Whigs, having
run counter to the overwhelming popular sentiment in their unpatriotic
opposition to the Mexican War, found themselves ruined. They chose
a distinguished soldier of that war President, and hoped to rally
by adopting this Democratic doctrine.
He accused Seward of carrying New York for the Whigs in the late
election by assuring them that Taylor, though a slave-holder, would
approve the legislative monstrosity known as the Wilmot proviso,
excluding slavery forever from the new Territories. But Taylor
had ignored Seward's promise. New York's vote had elected Taylor
and a few weeks later Seward was chosen Senator. Taylor was made
President and Seward Senator by the latter's successful fraud.
Calhoun's charge of Northern aggression and encroachment he met
with a sweeping denial. Neither the North nor the South as such
had any right in the Territories, but all the people of the States
had equal rights there. The Ordinance of 1787, denounced by Calhoun
as a Northern aggression on Southern rights, was voted for by every
Southern State. That Ordinance did not, in fact, exclude the South,
or even slavery, from the Northwest Territory. A majority of the
settlers in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were from the South. Slavery
had actually existed in Indiana and Illinois and had but recently
disappeared. The Missouri Compromise was not an act of Northern
aggression, but was passed by a united South which had made repeated
efforts to extend it to the Pacific. The exclusion of slavery from
Oregon was not an act of Northern aggression, but the work of the
settlers during the period of joint occupancy under the treaty with
Great Britain, and should be accepted by the anti-slavery agitators
as proof of the wisdom of popular sovereignty. the objection that
the people of the South were forbidden to emigrate with their property
to the new Territories was simply a complaint that they could not
carry the laws of their States with them, but must be governed by
the laws of their new domicile. Calhoun's project of maintaining
an equilibrium between free and slave States or of compelling States
to accept or retain slavery against their will was impossible.
At the organization of the Government twelve of the thirteen States
had slavery. but six of them voluntarily abolished it. Delaware,
Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee would
yet adopt the system of gradual emancipation. Seventeen free States
would soon be formed out of the territory between the Mississippi
and the Pacific. Where would they find slave territory with which
to balance these States? If Texas were divided into five States,
three of them would be free. If Mexico were annexed, twenty of
her twenty-two States would be free by the ordinance of Nature or
the will of God. He urged the duty of promptly providing governments
for the unorganized domain and closed with a graceful tribute to
Clay and the prediction that the Territories would soon be organized,
California admitted and the controversy ended forever.
There were three generically distinct groups of statesmen participating
in this great debate--the aggressive, unyielding men of the South
to whom slavery was dearer than the Union; the temporizing politicians
of the North and the border, with their compromises and concessions,
hoping to save the Union by salving its wounds; and the stern
Puritans of the North, bent on rooting out the sins of the Nation,
through the heavens fell.
The climax of the debate was now past, but it continued to agitate
Congress until the middle of September. President Taylor, who had
exerted his influence against the Compromise, died on July 9th, and
was succeeded by Fillmore, who at once called Webster to the head
of his Cabinet and turned the Executive influence to the support
of the bill. It proved impossible, even with his help, to pass
it as a whole; but after it had gone to wreck its fragments were
gathered up and each of the several bills which were jumbled together
in the "Omnibus" was passed. The great Compromise was accomplished
and the slavery question declared settled forever.