After the adjournment he devoted himself to a new and unfamiliar
task. He prepared an article for Harper's Magazine on the slavery
question and its relation to party politics, in which he defended
his position, explained his philosophy and sought to throw light
on this confused subject. The article made some stir at the time.
It contained nothing, however, which he had not already said much
better in his speeches. He was not a man of literary culture or
habits. His thought was brightest and his eloquence highest when
the battle was raging.
The article had the good fortune to provoke a rather elaborate
anonymous reply from Jeremiah S. Black, Buchanan's Attorney-general.
Black was a profound lawyer and better writer than Douglas. While
he would have been no match for him in senatorial debate or on the
stump, he completely eclipsed him as a literary controversialist.
Moreover, Black was standing on firm ground, simply insisting
that his party accept the decision of the Supreme Court as law and
conform its conduct to it without evasion or pettifoggery; while
Douglas was striving to stand in mid-air, nullifying the decision
by clever tricks and condemning as anarchists the Republicans, who
frankly confessed their hostility to it. He gravely argued that
Congress could grant to a territorial legislature power which the
Constitution denied to itself. Black's answer was crushing and
showed conclusively that there was no basis in either law or logic
for those peculiar doctrines in which Douglas differed from his
party. Black judiciously avoided all discussion of the ethics
of the question, confining himself to an examination of the legal
basis of Douglas' special creed, proving clearly that it had been
utterly swept away.
On the night of October 16th occurred John Brown's mad exploit at
Harper's Ferry. Congress opened on December 5th. On the 12th of
January Douglas' heretical opinions on the right of the people to
exclude slavery from the Territories were called in question. The
Southern Senators pressed upon him the fact that he had agreed to
abide by the decision of the Supreme Court on the disputed question,
and, now that the South had been sustained by the decision, he had
virtually repudiated it by his Illinois speeches. No man holding
such opinions, they declared, was a sound Democrat or could possibly
receive the vote of a Southern State at the Charleston Convention.
They justified their action in removing him from his chairmanship
of the Committee on Territories by a rehearsal of his heretical
opinions and announced their purpose to oppose his presidential
aspirations. He defended himself against this irregular attack
with great ability and courage, maintaining the soundness of his
Democracy and imputing heresy to his accusers, who were seeking
to debauch the ancient Democratic faith by infusing into it their
late-invented doctrines. At last, wearied by the irregular debate,
he sarcastically proposed that, as his health was poor, they all
make their attacks upon him and present their charges; when they
were through he would "fire at the lump" and vindicate every word
he had said.
A few days later he offered a resolution to instruct the Judiciary
Committee to prepare a bill to suppress and punish conspiracies in
one State to invade or otherwise molest the people or property of
another, and addressed the Senate upon it. He expressed his firm
and deliberate conviction that the John Brown raid at Harper's
Ferry was the natural, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines
and teachings of the Republican party as explained and the enforced in
speeches of its leaders in and out of Congress. He said that when
he returned home in 1858 for the purpose of canvassing Illinois with
a view to reelection, he had to meet this issue of the irrepressible
conflict. Lincoln had already proclaimed the existence of inexpiable
hostility between free States and slave States. Later, Seward had
announced it in his Rochester speech. It was evidently the creed
of his party. The Harper's Ferry outrage was a natural and logical
consequence of these pernicious doctrines. John Brown was simply
practicing their philosophy at Harper's Ferry. The causes that
produced this invasion were still in active operation. These
teachers of rebellion were disseminating their deadly principles.
Let Congress pass appropriate laws and make such example of the
leaders of these conspiracies as to strike terror into the hearts
of the others and there would be an end of this crusade.
With all his courage in meeting recent attacks, it was plain
that his only hope of the Presidency lay in the prospect of his
reconciliation with the Southern leaders. They needed his help
to prevent the Radicals, Seward, Chase and Lincoln, from carrying
the next election. He needed their help to compass the nomination.
He decided without lowering his standard to win them back by the
mere efficiency of his service. But the Southern leaders were not
in search of a Northern master. They wanted servants in the high
places of Government not less humble than the blacks who tilled
their plantations. They instinctively knew that he was not and
could not be such a servant. Rather than support him they would
see Seward elected. He at least frankly avowed his hostility. If
they elected Douglas and he declined to obey, their position would
be awkward. If a sectional Republican were elected, they could
secede and set up an independent Government.
On the 7th of May Davis spoke in support of a series of radical
resolutions introduced by him on February 2nd, declaring that
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature had power to impair
the Constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to
take his slave property into the common Territories and there hold
it; that it was the duty of Congress to protect this right; and
that the inhabitants had no power either by direct legislation or
by their unfriendly attitude to exclude slavery until they formed
a State Constitution. He spoke with great force in support of them.
He ascribe the authorship of the pernicious heresy of squatter
sovereignty to Cass, and threw doubt on the soundness of Douglas'
Democracy by a long recital of what he regarded as unsound and
heretical opinions and votes. He showed the complete failure of
his distinctive policy in Kansas and the authoritative rejection
of his principles by the Supreme Court. While the speech was
courteous and dignified in manner, apparently delivered to elucidate
the subject rather than to injure Douglas, it portrayed the wreck
of his statesmanship and exposed the unsoundness of his Democracy
with dangerous clearness while his candidacy was in the hands of
the National Convention.
A week later he replied. Already the Charleston Convention, and
with it his candidacy, had virtually gone to pieces because of
Southern hostility to him and his principles. Davis was the head
o the Southern junta, and the debate in the Senate was known to
express in cold phrase, the passions that had rent the Convention
and threatened to disrupt the party.
As Douglas, anxious but unfaltering, rose to speak, there was
a hush in the crowded Chamber. After a sneering allusion to his
controversy with Black, he announced his purpose to defend himself
against the attack made by Davis. The speech occupied two days
in its delivery and was a unique and artistic piece of senatorial
politics. It was addressed less to the Senate than to the adjourned
Charleston Convention. He exhaustively proved the soundness
of Democracy and repelled the charge of heresy by rehearsing the
history of Democratic Conventions and platforms since 1848, quoting
the declarations of the party and its leaders in Convention, on
the platform and through the press.
Cass, he said, the author of the now deadly doctrine of popular
sovereignty, was nominated in 1848. The Compromise of 1850
embodied that principle. The Kansas-Nebraska struggle was settled
by expressly adopting it. The Cincinnati platform, on which all
Democrats had stood for four years, distinctly affirmed it. The
Charleston Convention, within a few days, had reaffirmed it. His
own speeches showed that he had adhered to it constantly from the
beginning of his career. The change was not in him but in the
Southern wing of the party. He protested that he did not desire
the nomination and only permitted his name to be used that he might
be vindicated against the presumptuous efforts of a little coterie
to cast doubt upon his Democracy and their attempt to proscribe
him as a heretic might be rebuked.
The most hostile critic must feel some sympathy for him in his
new and indefensible position. His now heretical opinions had
but recently borne the authentic stamp of Democracy. His party,
following its real sentiments and the judicial interpretation of
the Constitution, had silently abandoned its old creed to which he
still clung with tenacity and ardor.
Davis, answering, asked him the blunt question, whether, if elected
President, he would sign a bill to protect slave property in States,
Territories, or the District of Columbia. He declined to answer
suggesting the impropriety of declaring in advance what he would
do if elected.
Congress adjourned on June 25th.