In January, 1853, Mrs. Douglas died. In 1856 he married Miss Adele
Cutts of Washington, a Southern lady of good family.
He was reelected Senator in 1853 without serious opposition. He had
hitherto been one of the most earnest defenders of the sacredness
of the Missouri Compromise. He had strenuously sought to extend
it to the Pacific. In 1848 he had declared it as inviolable as
the Constitution, "canonized in the hearts of the American people
as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless
enough to disturb." But events had moved fast and he moved with
them, adjusting his opinions to the advancing demands of the dominant
wing of his party.
During half a century the people of the South had been in control
of the Government, but Nature and advancing civilization had been
steadily against them. They had won a brilliant victory in the
Southwest, but found it barren. The only remaining territory in
which they could hope to plant slavery was that stretching westward
from Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota to the borders of Utah and Oregon.
It was wholly unorganized, devoted mainly to Indian reservations.
The plan was to organize this region, embracing the present States
of Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and parts
of Colorado and Wyoming, into a Territory to be called Nebraska.
The final contest between freedom and slavery for the possession
of the public domain was now to be waged.
The South was at this time in peculiarly favorable situation. The
right to recover runaway slaves was secured. Both the political
parties had declared in favor of maintaining and faithfully executing
the Compromise. The people of both sections were in favor of
maintaining and faithfully executing the Compromise. The people
of both sections were in favor of standing by their bargain in good
faith, the South enjoying its slavery and the North its freedom in
peace. There is no apparent reason why this could not have lasted
for many years. But the South could not rest easy under the sense
of increasing hostility to slavery and wanted to entrench it more
strongly against assault. It would like more Senators and was ready
to stake everything on the capture of this last territory out of
which new States could be carved.
Congress met for a memorable session on December 5th, 1853. Douglas
was chairman of the Committee on Territories, and his trusted
lieutenant, Richardson, was chairman of the Territorial Committee
of the House. He was thus in position to control the legislation
of deepest importance and greatest political interest. During the
closing days of the last session Richardson had pushed through the
House a bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska. It was reported
to the Senate, referred to the Committee on Territories and Douglas
attempted in vain to hurry it through.
Dodge of Iowa, now introduced in the Senate a bill for the organization
of the Territory which was a copy of the House bill of the last
session. It was referred to the Committee on Territories. Douglas
as chairman on January 4th reported it to the Senate in an altered
form, accompanied by an elaborate report. It provided that when
the Territory or any part of it should be admitted as a State it
should be with or without slavery as its Constitution should provide.
The report justified this non-committal attitude by citing the
similar provisions in the Utah and New Mexico bills. It declared
it a disputed point whether slavery was prohibited in Nebraska by
valid enactment. The constitutional power of Congress to regulate
the domestic affairs of the Territories was doubted. The Committee
declined to discuss the question which was so fiercely contested
in 1850. Congress then refrained from deciding it. The Committee
followed that precedent by neither affirming nor repealing
the Missouri Compromise, nor expressing any opinion as to its
validity. It intimated that in 1850 Congress already doubted its
constitutionality. The Compromise was now doomed. The inventive
genius of the Senate now applied itself to the task of shifting
the odium of its repeal upon the previous Congress.
While this bill was pending in the Senate Douglas was anxiously
scanning the field to ascertain what effect it was producing among
the people. The South was not likely to be duped. If the Missouri
Compromise was in force that alone excluded slavery, and no advantage
could accrue from organizing the new Territory without mention of
the subject. It did not care to take the risk of proving the law
of 1820 invalid. Let it be repealed. But the thought of explicitly
repealing the Missouri Compromise, which he had been wont to declare
inviolably sacred, appalled him. He dreaded its effect in Illinois
and throughout the Puritanical North, where moral ideas were
annoyingly obtrusive. The South, though not demanding the repeal
of the Compromise, would surely welcome it with joy and gratitude.
The question of expediency was a hard one.
The bill, consisting of twenty sections, was printed on January
2d in the Washington Sentinel. Again, on the 10th of January, it
appeared in the same paper with another section added. The new
section provided that the question of slavery during the territorial
period should be left to the inhabitants, that appeals to the Supreme
Court should be allowed in all cases involving title to slaves or
questions of personal freedom, and that the Fugitive Slave Law should
be executed in the Territories as in the States. This remarkable
change in the form and spirit of the bill was explained as resulting
from an error of the copyist, who had omitted this vital section
from it as originally printed.
On the 16th of January Senator Dixon of Kentucky offered an
amendment repealing the Missouri Compromise. The next day Sumner
gave notice of an amendment affirming it. The question could no
longer be dodged. When Dixon's amendment was offered, Douglas,
who was greatly annoyed by it, went to his seat and implored him
to withdraw it. But he refused. He called upon Dixon and took him
for a drive. They talked of the Nebraska bill and the amendment.
The result of the conference was that Douglas said to him: "I
have become perfectly satisfied that it is my duty as a fair minded
national statesman, to cooperate with you as proposed in securing
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise restriction. It is due
to the South; it is due to the Constitution, heretofore palpably
infracted; it is due to that character for consistency which I have
heretofore labored to maintain. The repeal will produce much stir
and commotion in the free States * * * * for a season. I shall be
assailed by demagogues and fanatics there without stint. * * * *
Every opprobrious epithet will be applied to me. I shall probably
be hung in effigy. * * * * I may become permanently odious among
those whose friendship and esteem I have heretofore possessed.
This proceeding may end my political career. But, acting under
the sense of duty which animates me, I am prepared to make the
sacrifice. I will do it."
The bluff Kentuckian was much affected, and with deep emotion
exclaimed: "Sir, I once recognized you as a demagogue, a mere party
manager, selfish and intriguing. I now find you a warm hearted
and sterling patriot. Go forward in the pathway of duty as you
propose, and, though the whole world desert you, I never will."
He had now decided on his course. Cass, who had been forestalled by
his alert rival, was understood to be ready to step into the breach
if Douglas faltered. He was on perilous heights where a false step
would be fatal. Already a storm of opposition was brewing in the
North, which would surely break upon him with fury if he proposed
the repeal. It might fail in the House and thus leave him with
both the North and South angrily condemning him,--the South for
his rashness and the North for his treachery. Pierce was known
to be opposed to the express repeal of the Compromise. On Sunday,
January 22d, Douglas called on the Secretary of War, Jefferson
Davis, explained the proposed change and sought the help of
the Administration in passing the bill. Davis was overjoyed and
at once accompanied him to the White House. Pierce received his
distinguished visitors, discussed the plan with them and promised
his help.
The next morning Douglas offered in the Senate a substitute for
the original Nebraska bill, in which two radical changes appeared.
The new bill divided the proposed Territory, calling the southern
part Kansas and the northern part Nebraska, and declared the Missouri
Compromise superseded by the legislation of 1850 and now inoperative.
On the next day appeared the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats
in Congress to the People of the United States." The paper was
written by Chase and corrected by Sumner. It denounced the original
Kansas-Nebraska bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge, a
criminal betrayal of precious rights, part of an atrocious plot to
exclude free labor and convert the Territory into a dreary region
of despotism inhabited by masters and slaves, a bold scheme against
American liberty, worthy of an accomplished architect of ruin.
It declared in a postscript, written after the substitute bill
was offered by Douglas on January 23d, that not a man in Congress
or out of it, not even Douglas himself, pretended at the time of
their passage that the measures of 1850 would repeal the Missouri
Compromise. "Will the people," it asked, "permit their dearest
interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game
and destroyed by false facts and false inferences?"
The Appeal, which (except the postscript) was written before the
substitute was offered, was published in many papers in the North
and produced a deep sensation. On the 30th Douglas entered the
Senate Chamber angry and excited. He had already begun to hear
the distant mutterings of the storm. He opened the debate on his
substituted bill, but he was smarting under the cruel lash and,
before beginning his argument, poured out his rage on the authors
of the Appeal. He accused Chase of treacherously procuring a
postponement of the consideration of the bill for a week in order
to circulate their libel upon him. Chase interrupted him with angry
emphasis. Douglas waxed furious and poured out his "senatorial
billingsgate" upon the offenders. Yet, amidst his wrath, he kept
his head and made a keen and ingenious defense of his course.
The basis of his argument was the proposition, assumed though no
where stated, that while the laws of Congress were specific and
enacted to meet particular demands, the PRINCIPLE embodied in each
law was general, and if the philosophic principle of any law was
repugnant to that of any prior law, however foreign to each other
the subjects might be, the latter must be held to repeal the former
by implication; that the principle of the legislation of 1850 was
repugnant to that of the Missouri Compromise and hence repealed
it.
Chase at once replied briefly to the fiery attack, and on February
3d delivered an elaborate speech against the bill, which Douglas
recognized as the strongest of the session. As a legal argument
it was a complete and crushing answer to the quibbling sophistry
of the advocates of implied repeal. But it was not merely the
argument of a great lawyer. It was the earnest remonstrance of a
moralist who believed in the eternal and immeasurable difference
between right and wrong.
He reminded them that the Missouri Compromise was a Southern measure,
approved by a Southern President, on the advice of a Southern
Cabinet. While in form a law, it had all the moral obligation of
a solemn contract. The considerations for the perpetual exclusion
of slavery in the Territories north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes
were the admission of Missouri with slavery, the permission of
slavery in the Territories south of 36 degrees and 30 minutes, and
the admission of new States south of that line with slavery if their
constitution should so provide. The North had honorably performed
its contract by the admission of Missouri and prompt consent to
the admission of all other slave States that had sought it. The
South had yielded nothing to the North under the contract, except
the admission of Iowa and the organization of Minnesota. The
slave States, having received all the contemplated benefits under
the contract and yielded none, proposed to declare it ended without
the consent of the free States. He closed with an appeal to the
honor of the South, earnestly imploring the Senators to reject the
bill as a violation of the plighted faith and solemn compact which
their fathers had made and which they were bound by every sacred
obligation faithfully to maintain.
Seward, speaking on the 17th cautioned them that the repeal of the
Compromise would be the destruction of the equilibrium between the
North and the South so long maintained, the loss of which would be
the wreck of the Union. He warned the North that if this territory
was surrendered to slavery the South would be vested with permanent
control of the Government; for every branch of it would be securely
within its power. Already it had absolute sway. One slave-holder
in a new Territory, with access to the Executive ear at Washington,
exercised more political influence than five hundred free men.
The recital of an old repeal was made for the demagogic purpose
of confusing the people, but was false in fact and false in law.
The Missouri Compromise was a purely local act. That of 1850 was
likewise local. They affected entirely different localities. Hence
the later law could not by implication repeal the former. It was
an ingenious device to attain the desired end by declaring that
done by a former Congress which no one then thought of doing, and
which the present Congress dared not boldly do. The doctrine of
popular sovereignty meant that the Federal Government should abandon
its constitutional duty and abdicate its power over he Territory
in favor of the first band of squatters who settled within it. It
meant that the interested cupidity of the first chance settlers
was more fit to guide the destinies of the infant Territory than
the collective wisdom of the American people.
Sumner, speaking a week later, declared that they were about to
determine forever the character of a new empire. An effort was
made on false assumptions of fact, in violation of solemn covenants
and the principles of the fathers, to open this immense region to
slavery. The measures of 1850 could not by any effort of interpretation,
by any wand of power, by an perverse alchemy, be transmuted into
a repeal of that prohibition of slavery. The pending proposition
was to abolish freedom. When the conscience of mankind was at last
aroused, they were about to open a new market to the traffickers
in flesh who haunted the shambles of the South. They had as much
right to repudiate the purchase of Louisiana as this compact.
Despite the temporary success of their political maneuvers, let
them not forget that the permanent and irresistible forces were all
arrayed against them. The plough, the steam engine, the railroad,
the telegraph, the book, were all waging war on slavery. Its
opponents could bide the storm of vituperation and calmly await
the judgment of the future.
There was at no time the slightest doubt that the bill would pass,
and the arguments against it were in the nature of protests against
a wrong that could not be averted and appeals to the future to
redress it.
From the beginning it had a well organized majority. But, assailed
by the invectives of Chase, Seward and Sumner, it could not stand
before the world undefended. There was but one man enlisted in
its support at all fit to measure swords with any of these great
leaders; but he was undoubtedly more than a match for them all.
At midnight on March 3rd Douglas rose to close the debate. The
great arguments were delivered; a safe majority was assured. While
numerous Senators still wanted to be heard in support of the bill,
all conceded his right to close and yielded him the floor. The
scenes of that wild night, while he charged upon his foes and stood
for hours at bay like a gladiator, repelling their savage assaults,
are among the most memorable in our congressional history.
He laughed at the charge that his bill had reopened the slavery
question against the will of both political parties, as expressed
in their platforms, and had disturbed the country at a time of
profound tranquility. These men, he declared, who where singing
paeans of praise over the legislation of 1850, were the same men
who had most bitterly opposed it and predicted dire results from
it, just as they were prophesying evil from the pending measure
which simply carried to its legitimate conclusion the beneficent
principle of the former law. The substance of all the opposition
speeches was contained in their manifesto published in January.
Chase in his speech had exhausted the entire argument. The others
merely followed in his tracks.
"You have seen them," he said, "on their winding way, meandering
the narrow and crooked path in Indian file, each treading close
upon the heels of the other, and neither venturing to take a step
to the right or left or to occupy one inch of ground which did not
bear the footprint of the Abolition champion."
The repeal of the Compromise was a mere incident of the bill. He
quoted his speeches in 1850 to show that he then defended the
popular sovereignty principle, also resolutions of the Illinois
legislature approving it. The Committee assumed in reporting
the original bill that the law of 1850 had repealed the Missouri
Compromise and hence did not mention it. Finding a diversity
of opinion and desiring to clear the ground for the unobstructed
operation of the principles of 1850 in all the Territories, they
had expressly recited the repeal. Did not the bill as originally
reported repeal the Missouri Compromise as effectually as the
amended bill did? If so, why this clamor about the amendment? They
denounced the original bill in their manifesto as a repeal of the
Missouri Compromise. If they told the truth in their manifesto their
speeches denouncing the amendment were false. If their speeches
were true their manifesto was false. The Missouri Compromise was
not a compact at all. It was simply a piece of ordinary legislation,
passed like other bills, by means of compromise and concession.
The statement that the North had faithfully performed all the terms
of he alleged contract and, hence, the South was estopped from
repudiating it, was not supported by the evidence. The North had
broken it immediately by resisting the admission of Missouri with
slavery. A resolution of the New York legislature had been passed
a few months after the Compromise instructing their Senators and
Representatives to oppose the admission of Missouri or any other
State unless its Constitution prohibited slavery. Objection being
made to the slavery clause of the Constitution, Missouri had not
been admitted until 1821. The North having broken its alleged
contract, had relieved the South from all obligation under it, if
such obligation ever existed. All this moral indignation had been
stirred up over the repeal of an ordinary law. By their manifesto
and speeches the anti-slavery Senators had roused the people to rage
in their States. The citizens of Ohio had burned him in effigy.
He could be found hanging by the neck in all the towns in which
they had influence.
Chase protested his sorrow that the people of Ohio had offered this
insult. Douglas angrily reminded him of the vituperative epithets
contained in the manifesto, which evidently wounded him more
deeply than the coarser indignities. He drew Seward and Chase into
debate on the literal correctness of details of their arguments, as
to which he had the better of them, having fortified himself with
voluminous documents, and elaborately proved the inaccuracy of
their statements, and elaborately proved the inaccuracy of their
statements, which gave him a brilliant opportunity to indulge
in a burst of indignation and in his wrath at the errors of his
adversaries' neglect, the awkward moral question which, was the
core of the controversy. He intimated that Chase and Sumner had
obtained their seats in the Senate by questionable compromises.
Chase hotly branded the statement as false. Sumner contemptuously
denied that he had even sought the position, much less bargained for
it. The speech was closed with an earnest appeal to the Senators
to banish the subject of slavery forever and refer it to the
people to decide for themselves as they did other questions, with
assurance that this would result in a satisfactory settlement of
the vexed problem and bring abiding peace to all. As the day was
dawning he closed.
With difficulty the presiding officer had repressed the bursts of
applause in the crowded galleries. Even Seward, moved to admiration
by the overwhelming power and marvelous skill of his adversary,
impulsively cried out, "I never had so much respect for him as I
have to-night."
Amid the solemn hush of anxious expectancy the crowd awaited the
calling of the roll. While no one doubted the result, all listened
in breathless silence to the voting of the Senators as though it
were the voice of doom. Fourteen voted no, and were thirty-seven
voted yes. The Senate adjourned amid the loud booming of cannon
at the Navy Yard, which celebrated the great victory. In the chill
gray dawn, as they stood on the steps of the Capitol and listened
to the exultant booming of cannon, Chase said to Sumner:
"They celebrate a present victory, but the echoes they awake will
never rest until slavery itself shall die."
The bill now went to the House, where its management was entrusted
to Douglas' lieutenant, Richardson, chairman of the Territorial
Committee. But the country was aroused. The loud storm appalled
the Northern Members, whose votes were needed. Pierce hesitated
until goaded on by his Southern counselors. The attempt to refer
the bill to the Territorial Committee failed. It was referred to
the Committee of the Whole and went to the foot of a long calendar.
This alarmed Douglas, who now spent most of his time in the House
assisting Richardson. The Administration brought all of its
power to bear on the refractory Members, and on the 8th of May the
forces were ready for the attack. The House resolved itself into
a Committee of the Whole, laid aside all previous business and
proceeded to the consideration of the bill. The struggle at once
began between the domineering majority and the rebellious minority
and continued with increasing bitterness all day, all night and
until midnight of the 9th, when the session broke up in angry riot,
the enraged members leaping on their desks and shrieking in frenzy
or striving to assault each other with deadly weapons.
All were exhausted by the long, sleepless strain, and many were
drunk. Douglas was on the floor during most of the session, passing
about swiftly among his followers and directing their movements,
the master-spirit who guided the storm of his own raising. At
midnight the House, now a mere bedlam, adjourned.
The struggle dragged along from day to day, the minority stubbornly
contesting every inch, and the majority, under the personal direction
of Douglas, hesitating to use their power. At last, on May 22nd,
at nearly midnight, the final vote was forced and the bill passed
by a majority of thirteen. Among those voting against it was Thomas
H. Benton of Missouri, now a Member of the House, after his thirty
years' service in the Senate. His terse characterization is more
generally remembered than anything else said against it. Speaking
with a statesman's contempt of the explanatory clause, he said it
was "a little stump speech injected in the belly of the bill."