Congress had confessed its incompetency to deal with the Kansas
problem and referred it to the decision of rude squatters on
the frontier. They dealt with this grave congressional question
in characteristic fashion. An Emigrant Aid Society, organized in
Massachusetts, was among the means adopted by the North to colonize
the Territory and mold its institutions. The adventurous frontiersmen
of western Missouri were chiefly relied on by the South to shape
the new State. The Emigrant Society founded the town of Lawrence
and established there a formidable anti-slavery colony. The Missouri
squatters organized a "Self-Defensive Association" and attempted
to drive out the Northern settlers. Elections were held by the
colonists from the North and their Missouri neighbors in which the
Missourians outnumbered their rivals and captured the territorial
government. The Northern colonists organized a State and attempted
to run it. Irregular warfare was maintained between the Lawrence
squatters and the invading Missourians to determine which faction
was entitled to exercise the sovereignty delegated by Congress.
The House passed a bill to admit Kansas with the Constitution
adopted at Topeka by the Northern settlers in their abortive effort
to organize a State. It failed in the Senate and a few days later
the Federal troops dispersed the usurping State legislature. The
Governor seeing that all civil authority was ended, negotiate a
truce between the warring factions, resigned and hastened away from
the scene of the disastrous experiment of Squatter Sovereignty.
The meeting of Congress on December 3rd, 1855, marked another stage
in the great struggle. So completely were the parties disorganized
that it was found impossible to classify this Congress. From
December 3rd to February 2nd the House was unable even to organize
itself. On December 31st the President sent in his message. He
disposed of the overshadowing problem in a few brief words and
devoted the message to ephemeral matters long since as completely
forgotten as himself. Although civil war had been raging in Kansas
for many months and the carnival of crime was still in progress
on that frontier, he gravely assured Congress that it was a matter
of congratulation that the Republic was tranquilly advancing in a
career of prosperity and peace. He told them that the people of
the Territory were clothed with the power of self-government and
that he had not felt justified in interfering with their exercise
of that right. But on January 24th he sent another message announcing
in general terms the disappointment of his hopes and recommending
an enabling act for the admission of Kansas as a State.
The Senate consisted of thirty-four Democrats, twelve Whigs and
thirteen Republicans. Douglas was the recognized leader of the
majority, without whose presence they were unwilling to take any
decisive action. But he was detained by sickness and did not take
his seat until February 11th.
On the 12th of March he presented to the Senate a most elaborate
report from his Committee, together with a bill to authorize the
people of Kansas to organize a State whenever they should number
93,420.
It is impossible to read this report, which was prepared by himself,
without admiring his subtle art and consummate skill. He argued
away the power of Congress to impose restrictions on new States
applying for their admission, other than that the Constitution be
republican in form, and insisted that the people of the Territories
must be left perfectly free to form their own institutions and were
entitled to admission as matter of right. He traced the trouble
to the pernicious activity of the Emigrant Aid Company, which had
attempted to force New England institutions and customs upon the
Territory. He accused this Company of systematic colonization
and drew a moving picture of the march of these political colonists
across Missouri, pouring out their denunciations of slavery,
exhibiting their hostility to the institutions of that State, until
at last the people in alarm resolved on defense. He admitted that
there might be some cause for regret over the occasional errors
and excesses of the Missourians; but it must not be forgotten that
they were defending their internal prosperity and domestic security
against the invasion of New England fanatics, who were bringing
in their grain "the horrors of servile insurrection and intestine
war."
The attempt to organize a State government at Topeka he condemned
as a seditious movement, designed to overthrow the territorial
government and the authority of the United States. He justified
the law referring the question of slavery to the inhabitants, and
traced its failure to the intemperate passions of those who had
precipitated this mad contest for mastery.
Collamer of Vermont presented the minority report, condemning the
violence of the friends of slavery, deploring the fearful results
of the experiment of Squatter Sovereignty and urging speedy admission
of the State. It condemned the provision of the law referring
the question of slavery to the inhabitants and traced the entire
trouble to that blunder.
Sumner at once denounced the report of the majority, intimated
his purpose of properly setting the brand of falsehood upon it in
a subsequent speech, and told them to "begin their game with loaded
dice."
Douglas angrily challenged him to deny a single fact in the report
and said he was ready to overwhelm him with proof. "We are ready
to meet the issue," he said, "and there will be no dodging. We
intend to meet it boldly; to require submission to the laws and
to the constituted authorities; to reduce to subjection those who
resist them, and to punish rebellion and treason. I am glad that
a defiant spirit is exhibited here; we accept the issue."
Two days later Trumbull spoke in unsparing criticism of the report of
the Committee. It happened that Douglas was absent when he began.
Word was carried to him and he hurried to the Senate. When Trumbull
closed and the usual motion to adjourn was made, he protested
against it and denounced the discourtesy of discussing the report
during his absence. He was vexed especially by his colleague's
exasperating statement that was a "life-long Democrat and was
representing the Democracy of Illinois in the Senate." He assured
them that Trumbull was without party standing in that state, and
proposed that they sign a joint resignation, thus submitting their
quarrel to the people. But there was a deeper wound than this which
still rankled, and he turned from his colleague to pour out his
wrath on Sumner for the publication of the "Appeal of the Independent
Democrats," and the old quarrel between them was rehearsed anew
with increasing bitterness on both sides.
On the 20th he spoke for two hours and a half in defense of his
report. Charges of fraud, violence or illegal voting, he said,
were made in but seven of the eighteen election districts into
which Kansas was divided, although ample provisions had been made
for the presentation of protests to the Governor. A large majority
of both branches of the legislature were elected by these eleven
districts where no complaints were made. At least a quorum must
have been legally elected. The minority report charged that on
the day of the territorial election, "large bodies of armed men
from the State of Missouri appeared at the polls in most of the
districts, and by most violent and tumultuous carriage and demeanor,
over-awed the defenseless inhabitants and by their own votes, elected
a large majority of the members of both houses of said Assembly."
But the report contained not a word about the eleven uncontested
districts affected by this invasion. In the eleven uncontested
districts the judges made their returns in due form and, no
protests nor charges of fraud or illegal voting being presented,
the Governor granted certificates of election as a matter of course.
The minority stated that in many districts protest had not been
made because the inhabitants, discouraged and intimidated by the
Missouri invaders, had let the matter pass. Yet at Lawrence and
Leavenworth, the chief centers of the alleged Missouri violence
the people were not intimidated from contesting the election, what
reason was there to suppose that elsewhere, remote from the scene
of trouble, they were so completely conquered that they dared not
protest against their wrongs and petition for redress of their
grievances?
The thirty-three judges appointed by the Government to conduct
the election in the eleven districts, all swore that the returns
contained a true statement of the votes polled by the lawful voters.
The Governor, two weeks after giving certificates of election,
issued his proclamation commanding the members to assemble on the
2d of July. He recognized the legitimacy of the legislature in
his message, invoking the Divine blessing on it and recommending
the passage of important laws. But he afterward quarreled with
the legislature. He then sought to repudiate it and impeach its
validity by charging that it had been elected by Missouri invaders.
The only evidence before the Committee tending to show irregularities
in the election was the hearsay statement of the Governor, which
flatly contradicted his solemn official declarations. The legislature
itself had investigated the elections of all members against whom
contests were filed and its legitimacy was finally and conclusively
established. The malcontents having failed to capture the
legislature, encouraged by Governor Reeder (who had meanwhile been
relieved from office), instituted their rebellious Topeka movement
and, in defiance of the law, attempted to organize a State.
The movement was revolutionary and intended to subvert the existing
Government. Only two laws enacted by the territorial legislature
were complained of as unjust,--that relating to elections and that
relating to slaves. The social, domestic and pecuniary relations
of the people had adjusted themselves to this body of laws which
Congress was asked to annul; and these friends of the negro who had
organized a rebellious State government in his behalf, had adopted
a Constitution which forever excluded him from the State. The
entire trouble in Kansas, he continued, rose not from any vice
inherent in the law, but from abuses of the rights given by it to
the people. The law simply permitted them to form their domestic
institutions in their own way. If that great principle had been
permitted free operation, there would have been no violence or
trouble in Kansas. The good order reigning in Nebraska, where the
law was fairly tried, was sufficient proof of its wisdom.
The opponents of this great principle had insisted on moulding the
State of Kansas from without. Having failed to induce Congress
to interfere in the internal affairs of the Territory, they then
sought to accomplish their purpose by means of a society organized
in Washington and charted in Massachusetts, with several millions
of capital. They had deliberately attempted to discredit the
Kansas-Nebraska bill and its supporters, in order to influence the
approaching presidential election. The whole responsibility for
the disturbance in Kansas rested upon the Massachusetts Emigrant
Aid Company and its affiliated societies. The people of Missouri
never contemplated the invasion of conquest of the Territory. If
they had imitated the example set by New England, they had done
it on the principle of self-defense, and had always been ready
to abandon their counter-movement as soon as the managers of the
New England invasion ceased their efforts to shape the domestic
institutions of the Territory by an unwarranted scheme of foreign
interference. When the cardinal principle of self-government
should be recognized as binding on all, there would be an end of
the slavery controversy, and the occupation of political agitators,
whose hopes of position and promotion depended upon their capacity
to disturb the country, would be gone.
The debate lingered along indecisively through the Spring weeks and
the Senators poured out their mutual recriminations with increasing
bitterness. Personal relations among them were seriously strained.
Both parties were conscious that their constituents shared their
passions and applauded their acrimony.
On the 19th and 20th of May, Sumner delivered his philippic on "The
Crime Against Kansas." The title of the speech was a gratuitous
insult to the power which had held sway in American politics for
fifty years and learned to enjoy that sense of superiority and
sacredness which characterized the hierarchy in the middle ages.
The assaults on brother Senators were brutal. Senator Butler of
South Carolina, a polite, formal gentleman of the old school, was
recognized as the social and intellectual head of the Southern
aristocracy. Douglas, though forever excluded from its inner
circles, was an efficient and useful ally.
These senatorial leaders of the slavery crusade in Kansas were the
victims of Sumner's bitter invective. He referred to them as the
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of slavery and, as if to prove that
this comparison was not a mere momentary inspiration of playful
humor but the elaboration of malignant hate, he developed the
parallel to its minute details. He described Douglas in his speech
defending his report as "piling one mass of elaborate error on
another mass and constraining himself to unfamiliar decencies of
speech." But he drew hope from the reflection that the Illinois
Senator "is but mortal man; against him is immortal principle.
With finite power he wrestles with the Infinite and he must fall.
Against him are stronger battalions than any marshaled by mortal
arm, the inborn, ineradicable, invincible sentiments of the human
heart; against him is Nature with all her subtle forces; against
him is God. Let him try to subdue these." He compared the Kansas
troubles to the barbarous warfare of the Scottish Highlands when
blackmail was levied and robberies committed by marauders "acting
under the inspiration of the Douglas of other days," and compared
Douglas' recent speech to "the efforts of a distinguished logician
to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed."
Douglas answered with extreme bitterness. He declared that Sumner's
speech had been got up like a Yankee bedquilt by sewing all the old
scraps and patches together. He pronounced his classic quotations
obscene and indecent.
"Is it his object," he asked, "to provoke some of us to kick
him as we would a dog in the street? * * * * * The Senator from
Massachusetts," he declared, "had his speech written, printed,
committed to memory, and practiced every night before the glass,
with a negro boy to hold the candle and watch the gestures." He
charged Sumner with perjury in taking the senatorial oath to his
personal grievance and complained that he had been burned and hung
in effigy under the advice of Sumner and his brother agitators
because of his unswerving devotion to the Constitution.
"I wish," he said, "the Senate to bear in mind that in the many
controversies in which I have been engaged since I have been a member
of this body, I never had one in which I was not first assailed. I
have always stood on the defensive. You arrange it on the opposite
side of the house to set your hounds after me and then complain
when I cuff them over the head and send them back yelping. I never
made an attack on any Senator; I have only repelled attacks." He
warned Sumner that Butler, who was absent during the speech, would
return to speak and act for himself.
Sumner briefly replied, defending himself against the charge
of disloyalty to the Constitution in his unwillingness to support
its fugitive slave clause, by quoting Jackson's famous dictum that
each man swears to support the Constitution as he understands it.
He then turned on Douglas with bitter scorn. He rebuked him for
his coarse personalities unbecoming a Senator and a gentleman.
"Let him remember," he said, "that the bowie-knife and bludgeon
are not the proper emblems of senatorial debate. Let him remember
that the swagger of Bob Acres and the ferocity of the Malay cannot
add dignity to this body. * * * * I will not go into the details
which have flowed out so naturally from his tongue. I only brand
them to his face as false. I say also to that Senator, and I wish
him to bear it in mind, that no person with the upright form of
man can be allowed--" He hesitated in doubt whether to proceed.
"Say it," exclaimed Douglas.
"I will say it," replied Sumner. "No person with the upright form
of man can be allowed, without violation of all decency, to switch
out from his tongue the perpetual stench of offensive personality.
Sir, that is not a proper weapon of debate, at least on this floor.
The noisome, squat and nameless animal to which I now refer is
not a proper model for an American Senator. Will the Senator from
Illinois take notice?"
"I will," answered Douglas, "and therefore will not imitate you in
that capacity, recognizing the force of the illustration."
"Again," replied Sumner, "the Senator has switched his tongue and
again he fills the Senate with its offensive odor."
Two days after the speech, Preston H. Brooks, a relative of
Butler, who represented a district of South Carolina in the House,
entered the Senate Chamber after adjournment and, finding Sumner in
his seat writing, approached him and struck him down with a heavy
cane. There was a brief struggle in which Sumner was stunned and
severely injured.
When the assault occurred Douglas was in the reception room adjoining
the Senate Chamber conversing with friends. A messenger ran in
shouting that someone was beating Mr. Sumner. He rose intending to
interfere in the fray, but, recalling their unpleasant relations,
returned to his seat. When the violence was ended he went to the
Chamber to see the result. Sumner, dazed, bruised and bleeding, had
been helped to his feet and was leaning against a chair. Douglas
cast a momentary glance at the victim of this brutal and cowardly
outrage, then passed on without comment.
On the day before the assault, the Missouri ruffians had sacked the
town of Lawrence. On the day following, John Brown's Pottawotamie
adventure occurred. A crisis was at hand imperiously demanding
more effective action on the part of Congress. The country was
aroused, alarmed and horrified. The Conventions were to be held
in June and it was necessary that the Democrats bestir themselves
and make some disposition of the harassing problem of Kansas.
The existing condition in the hag-ridden Territory was directly
chargeable to a measure whose authorship Douglas had boasted. There
was danger that the tragic failure of his masterpiece of state-craft
would wreck his party and load his own name with odium which even
his rugged vitality could not throw off. Such uncontrollable
passion had been stirred by his pending bill that it seemed prudent
to quietly drop it.
On the 24th of June, Toombs introduced a bill providing for the
taking of a census, the holding of an election of delegates to a
Constitutional Convention, and the orderly organization of a State.
It was referred to Douglas' Committee, which promptly reported
back an amended bill so infinitely better than the measures thus
far attempted that it seemed comparatively just. It provided for
the appointment of commissioners to prepare lists of all citizens
over twenty-one years old resident in the Territory since the 4th
of July, who were to vote at the election; also for the holding of
a Convention, the drafting of a Constitution and the admission of
the State.
There were three objections to the bill. The commissioners were
to be appointed by President Pierce. The 4th of July, from which
residence must date, was a time at which great numbers of Northern
settlers would be absent from the Territory on account of the
turbulence and disorder which had rendered life there not only
uncomfortable but unsafe. Moreover, no express provision was made
for submitting the Constitution to a vote. However, it was regarded
as a concession to the demands of an aroused public, clothed with
the power of promptly and authoritatively expressing its disapproval.
But there were those in the Senate who feared the gift-bearing
Greeks and thought it well, now that the majority had shown some
regard for public opinion, to insist upon an explicit declaration
of their purpose to submit the slavery question to the people of
the Territory fairly and without juggling tricks. On the 2d of
July, Trumbull offered an amendment declaring it to be the true
intent and meaning of the bill organizing the Territory of Kansas
to confer upon the inhabitants "full power at any time, through its
territorial legislature, to exclude slavery from said Territory or
to recognize and regulate it therein."
This amendment seemed with utmost fairness to declare the meaning
of that law precisely as Douglas expounded it. But the South had
already taken the advanced ground that, as the Constitution of the
United States expressly established slavery, it was not within the
power of Congress or its creature, the territorial legislature,
to abolish it. This was not the creed of the Northern Democracy,
which had embraced the popular sovereignty doctrine of Douglas
and Cass. To abandon that doctrine was to alienate the Northern
Democrats and lose the presidential election. To carry it out in
good faith was to surrender Kansas and the remaining Territories to
anti-slavery institutions; for it was already evident that popular
sovereignty meant free States. It was at no time a part of
the serious political philosophy of the South, but the ingenious
invention of the Northern leaders to hold their following. The
South had permitted is Northern allies to give currency to the
doctrine, but the more sagacious saw that it was a failure and
were preparing, when the election was over, to cast it aside and
announce the true Southern dogma, that no sovereignty except that
of a State could forbid slavery anywhere in the Union.
Already the Dred Scott case was pending in the Supreme Court
and had been once argued; but the decision was reserved until the
elections were over and the new President inaugurated. Well informed
Southern statesmen did not doubt that this ultra doctrine of their
party would receive the authoritative sanction of that tribunal
and the temporary scaffolding of popular sovereignty would then be
summarily kicked aside. They could not afford to adopt Trumbull's
declaration of power in the Territory to abolish slavery, for they
secretly expected to establish that it had no such power. They
could not afford to frankly declare against it while still courting
the Northern Democrats. Benjamin, who was an accomplished lawyer,
and with the lawyer's instincts depended more on constitutional
defenses than on wavering popular majorities, moved to add the
words "subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Now
that the Constitution had become the bulwark of slavery, there was
nervous dread that Congress and the people might forget that it
was the supreme law to which all legislation was subject. Douglas
earnestly objected to Trumbull's amendment. He protested against
it as wholly unnecessary. He also voted against it as did the
great majority of the Senators.
The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 33 to 12; but the House
declined to consider it, and on the 3d passed an act to admit Kansas
under the Topeka Constitution. No compromise of differences so
radical was possible. Douglas remarked truly to his biographer
that "it was evident during all the proceedings that the Republicans
were as anxious to keep the Kansas question open as the Democrats
were to close it, in view of the approaching presidential election."