SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES.
Hardly was Polk elected before it became evident to Benton and the other
Jacksonians that the days of the old Union or Nationalist Democracy were
over, and that the separatist and disunion elements within the party had
obtained the upper hand. The first sign of the new order of things was
the displacement of Blair, editor of the "Globe," the Democratic
newspaper organ. Blair was a strong Unionist, and had been bitterly
hostile to Calhoun and the Nullifiers. He had also opposed Tyler, the
representative of those states-rights and separatist Democrats, who by
their hostility to Jackson had been temporarily driven into the Whig
camp, and who, finding themselves in very uncongenial society, and
seeing, moreover, that their own principles were gradually coming to the
front in the old party, had begun drifting back again into it. Polk's
chances of election were so precarious that he was most anxious to
conciliate the Separatists; besides which he at heart sympathized with
their views, and had himself been brought forward in the Democratic
convention to beat the National candidate, Van Buren. Moreover, Tyler
withdrew from the contest in his favor; in part payment for which help,
soon after the election, Blair was turned out, and Ritchie of Virginia,
a man whose views suited the new Democratic leaders, was put in his
place; to the indignation not only of Benton, but also of Jackson
himself, then almost on his death-bed. Of course the break between the
two wings was as yet by no means complete. Polk needed the Union
Democrats, and the latter were still in good party standing. Benton
himself, as has been seen, was offered the command of all the forces in
Mexico, but the governmental policy, and the attitude of the party in
Congress after 1844, were widely different from what they had been while
Jackson's influence was supreme, or while the power he left behind him
was wielded by a knot of Union men.
From this time the slavery question dwarfed all others, and was the one
with which Benton, as well as other statesmen, had mainly to deal. He
had been very loath to acknowledge that it was ever to become of such
overshadowing importance; until late in his life he had not realized
that, interwoven with the disunionist movement, it had grown so as to
become in reality the one and only question before the people; but, this
once thoroughly understood, he henceforth devoted his tremendous
energies to the struggle with it. He possessed such phenomenal power of
application and of study, and his capacity for and his delight in work
were so extraordinary, that he was able at the same time to grapple with
many other subjects of importance, and to present them in a way that
showed he had thoroughly mastered them both in principle and detail,--as
witness his speech in favor of giving the control of the coast survey to
the navy; but henceforth the importance of his actions lay in their
relation to the slavery extension movements.
He had now entered on what may fairly be called the heroic part of his
career; for it would be difficult to choose any other word to express
our admiration for the unflinching and defiant courage with which,
supported only by conscience and by his loving loyalty to the Union, he
battled for the losing side, although by so doing he jeopardized and
eventually ruined his political prospects, being finally, as punishment
for his boldness in opposing the dominant faction of the Missouri
Democracy, turned out of the Senate, wherein he had passed nearly half
his life. Indeed, his was one of those natures that show better in
defeat than in victory. In his career there were many actions that must
command our unqualified admiration; such were his hostility to the
Nullifiers, wherein, taking into account his geographical location and
his refusal to compromise, he did better than any other public man, not
even excepting Jackson and Webster; his belief in honest money; and his
attitude towards all questions involving the honor or the maintenance
and extension of the Union. But in all these matters he was backed more
or less heartily by his state, and he had served four terms in the
federal Senate as the leading champion and representative, not alone of
Missouri, but also of the entire West. When, however, the slavery
question began to enter upon its final stage, Benton soon found himself
opposed to a large and growing faction of the Missouri Democracy, which
increased so rapidly that it soon became dominant. But he never for an
instant yielded his convictions, even when he saw the ground being thus
cut from under his feet, fighting for the right as sturdily as ever,
facing his fate fearlessly, and going down without a murmur. The
contrast between the conduct towards the slavery disunionists of this
Democrat from a slave-holding state, with a hostile majority at home
against him, and the conduct of Webster, a Whig, enthusiastically
backed by his own free state, in the same issue, is a painful one for
the latter. Indeed, on any moral point, Benton need have no cause to
fear comparison with any of his great rivals in the political arena.
During his career, the United States Senate was perhaps the most
influential, and certainly the ablest legislative body in the world; and
after Jackson's presidency came to an end the really great statesmen and
political leaders of the country were to be found in it, and not in the
executive chair. The period during which the great Missourian was so
prominent a figure in our politics, and which lasted up to the time of
the Civil War, might very appropriately be known in our history as the
time of the supremacy of the Senate. Such senators as Benton, Webster,
Clay, and Calhoun, and later on Douglas, Seward, and Sumner, fairly
towered above presidents like the obscure Southerners, Tyler and Polk,
or the truckling, timeserving Northern politicians, Pierce and Buchanan.
During the long interval coming between the two heroic ages of American
history,--the age of Washington and Franklin, and the age of Lincoln and
Grant,--it was but rarely that the nation gave its greatest gift to its
best or its greatest son.
Benton had come into the Senate at the same time that Missouri was
admitted into the Union, with thanks, therefore, to the same measure,
the Missouri Compromise bill. This shut out slavery from all territory
north of the line of 36 deg. 30', and did not make it obligatory even where
it was permissible; and the immediate cause of Benton's downfall was his
courage and persistency in defending the terms of this compromise from
the attacks of the Southern slavery extensionists and disunionists. The
pro-slavery feeling was running ever higher and higher throughout the
South; and his stand on this question aroused the most furious anger
among a constantly increasing number of his constituents, and made him
the target for bitter and savage assaults on the part of his foes, the
spirit of hostility against him being carried to such length as finally
almost to involve him in an open brawl on the floor of the Senate with
one of his colleagues, Foote, who, like his fellow fire-eaters, found
that Benton was not a man who could be bullied. Indeed, his iron will
and magnificent physique both fitted him admirably for such a contest
against odds, and he seems to have entered into it with a positive zest.
The political Abolitionists having put Polk in power, their action bore
fruit after its kind, and very soon the question had to be faced, as to
what should be done with the immense tracts of territory conquered from
Mexico. Benton opposed, as being needless and harmful, the Wilmot
Proviso, which forbade the introduction of slavery into any part of the
territory so acquired. He argued, and produced in evidence the laws and
Constitution of Mexico, that the soil of California and Mexico was
already free, and that as slavery would certainly never be, and indeed
could never be, introduced into either territory, the agitation of the
question could only result in harm. Calhoun and the other extreme
slavery leaders welcomed the discussion over this proviso, which led
Benton to remark that the Abolitionists and the Nullifiers were
necessary to each other,--the two blades of a pair of shears, neither of
which could cut until they were joined together.
When Calhoun introduced his famous resolutions declaring that Congress
had no power to interfere with slavery in the territories, and therefore
no power to prevent the admission of new states except on the condition
of their prohibiting slavery within their limits, Benton promptly and
strongly opposed them as being firebrands needlessly thrown to inflame
the passions of the extremists, and, moreover, as being disunionist in
tendency. The following is his own account of what then took place: "Mr.
Calhoun said he had expected the support of Mr. Benton 'as the
representative of a slave-holding state.' Mr. Benton answered that it
was impossible that he could have expected such a thing. 'Then,' said
Mr. Calhoun, 'I shall know where to find that gentleman.' To which Mr.
Benton said: 'I shall be found in the right place,--on the side of my
country and the Union.' This answer, given on that day and on the spot,
is one of the incidents of his life which Mr. Benton will wish posterity
to remember." We can easily pardon the vanity which wishes and hopes
that such an answer, given under such conditions, may be remembered.
Indeed, Benton's attitude throughout all this period should never be
forgotten; and the words he spoke in answer to Calhoun marked him as the
leader among those Southerners who held the nation above any section
thereof, even their own, and whose courage and self-sacrifice in the
cause of the Union entitled them to more praise than by right belongs to
any equal number of Northerners; those Southerners who in the civil war
furnished Farragut, Thomas, Bristow, and countless others as loyal as
they were brave. The effect of Benton's teachings and the still
remaining influence of his intense personality did more than aught else
to keep Missouri within the Union, when her sister states went out of
it.
Benton always regarded much of the slavery agitation in the South as
being political in character, and the result of the schemes of ambitious
and unscrupulous leaders. He believed that Calhoun had introduced a set
of resolutions that were totally uncalled for, simply for the purpose of
carrying a question to the Slave States on which they could be formed
into a unit against the Free States; and there is much to be said in
support of his view. Certainly the resolutions mark the beginning of the
first great slavery agitation throughout the Southern States, which was
engineered and guided for their own ends by politicians like Jefferson
Davis. These resolutions were absolutely inconsistent with many of
Calhoun's previous declarations; and that fact was also sharply
commented on by Benton in his speeches and writings. He also criticised
with caustic severity Calhoun's statements that he wished to save the
Union by forcing the North to take a position so agreeable to the South
as to make the latter willing not to separate. He showed that Calhoun's
proposed "constitutional" and "peaceable" methods of bringing this about
by prohibiting commercial intercourse between the two sections would
themselves be flagrant breaches of the Constitution and acts of
disunion,--all the more so as it was proposed to discriminate in favor
of the Northwest as against the Northeast. Calhoun wished to bring
about a convention of the Southern States, in order to secure the
necessary unity of action; and one of the main obstacles to the success
of the plan was Missouri's refusal to take part in it. Great efforts
were made to win her over, and to beat down Benton; the extreme
pro-slavery men honoring him with a hatred more intense than that they
harbored towards any Northerner. Some of Calhoun's recent biographers
have credited him with being really a Union man at heart. It seems
absolutely impossible that this could have been the case; and the
supposition is certainly not compatible with the belief that he retained
his right senses. Benton characterizes his system of slavery agitation,
very truthfully, as being one "to force issues upon the North under the
pretext of self-defense, and to sectionalize the South, preparatory to
disunion, through the instrumentality of sectional conventions, composed
wholly of delegates from the slave-holding states."
When the question of the admission of Oregon came up, Calhoun attempted
to apply to it a dogma wholly at variance with all his former positions
on the subject. This was the theory of the self-extension of the slavery
part of the Constitution to the territories; that is, he held that the
exclusion of slavery from any part of the new territory was itself a
subversion of the Constitution. Such a dogma was so monstrous in
character, so illogical, so inconsistent with all his former theories,
and so absolutely incompatible with the preservation of the Union, that
it renders it impossible to believe that his asseverations of devotion
to the latter were uttered honestly or in good faith. Most modern
readers will agree with Benton that he deliberately worked to bring
about secession.
Meanwhile the Missourian had gained an ally of his own stamp in the
Senate. This was Houston, from the new State of Texas, who represented
in that state, like Andrew Jackson in Tennessee, and Benton himself in
Missouri, the old Nationalist Democracy, which held the preservation of
the Union dear above all other things. Houston was a man after Benton's
own heart, and was thoroughly Jacksonian in type. He was rough, honest,
and fearless, a devoted friend and a vengeful enemy, and he promised
that combination of stubborn courage and capacity of devotion to an
ideal that renders a man an invaluable ally in a fight against odds for
principle.
After much discussion and amendment, the Oregon bill, containing a
radical anti-slavery clause, passed both houses and became a law in
spite of the violent opposition of some of the Southerners, headed by
Calhoun, who announced that the great strife between the North and the
South was ended, and that the time had come for the South to show that,
though she prized the Union, yet there were matters which she regarded
as of greater importance than its preservation. His ire was most
fiercely excited by the action of Benton and Houston in supporting the
bill, and after his return to South Carolina he denounced them by name
as traitors to the South,--"a denunciation," says Benton, "which they
took for a distinction; as what he called treason to the South they knew
to be allegiance to the Union." When it was proposed to extend by bill
the Constitution of the United States into the territories, with a view
to carrying slavery into California, Utah, and New Mexico, Benton was
again opposed to Calhoun. As a matter of course, too, he was the
stoutest opponent of the Southern convention and other similar disunion
movements that were beginning to take shape throughout the South,
instigated by the two rank secession states of South Carolina and
Mississippi.
Most of the momentous questions springing out of the war with Mexico
were left by Polk as legacies to his successor, when the former went out
of office, after an administration that Benton criticised with extreme
sharpness, although he tried to shield the president by casting the
blame for his actions upon his cabinet advisers; characterizing the
Mexican War as one of "speculation and intrigue," and as the "great
blot" of his four years' term of office, and ridiculing the theory that
we were acting in self-defense, or that our soil had been invaded. In
1848 the Democrats nominated Cass, a Northern pro-slavery politician of
moderate abilities, and the Whigs put up and elected old Zachary Taylor,
the rough frontier soldier and Louisiana slave-holder. The political
Abolitionists again took a hand in the contest, but this time abandoned
their abolition theories, substituting instead thereof the prohibition
of slavery in the new territories. They derived much additional
importance from their alliance with a disappointed politician in the
pivotal State of New York; and in this case, in sharp contrast to the
result in 1844, their actions worked good, and not evil. Van Buren,
chagrined and angered by the way he was treated by the regular
Democrats, organized a revolt against them, and used the banner of the
new Free Soil party as one under which to rally his adherents. This
movement was of consequence mainly in New York, and there it soon became
little more than a mere fight between the two sections of the Democracy.
Benton himself visited this all-important state to try to patch up
matters, but he fortunately failed. The factions proved very nearly
equal in strength; and as a consequence the Whigs carried the state and
the election, and once more held the reins of government.
When a Louisiana slave-holder was thus installed in the White House, the
extreme Southern men may have thought that they were sure of him as an
ally in their fight against freedom. But, if so, they soon found they
had reckoned without their host, for the election of Taylor affords a
curious, though not solitary, instance in which the American people
builded better than they knew in choosing a chief executive. Nothing
whatever was known of his political theories, and the Whigs nominated
him simply because he was a successful soldier, likely to take the
popular fancy. But once elected he turned out to have the very qualities
we then most needed in a president,--a stout heart, shrewd common sense,
and thorough-going devotion to the Union. Although with widely different
training from Benton, and nominally differing from him in politics, he
was yet of the same stamp both in character and principles; both were
Union Southerners, not in the least afraid of openly asserting their
opinions, and, if necessary, of making them good by their acts. In his
first and only annual message, Taylor expressed, upon all the important
questions of the day, views that were exactly similar to those advanced
before or after by Benton himself in the Senate; and he used similar
emphasis and plainness of speech. He declared the Union to be the
greatest of blessings, which he would maintain in every way against
whatever dangers might threaten it; he advised the admission of
California, which wished to come in as a free state; he thought that the
territories of Utah and New Mexico should be left as they were; and he
warned the Texans, who were blustering about certain alleged rights to
New Mexican soil, and threatening to take them by force of arms, that
this could not be permitted, and that the matter would have to be
settled by the judicial authority of the United States. Benton heartily
indorsed the message. Naturally, it was bitterly assailed by the
disunionists under Calhoun; and even Clay, who entirely lacked Taylor's
backbone, was dissatisfied with it as being too extreme in tone, and
conflicting with his proposed compromise measures. These same compromise
measures brought the Kentucky leader into conflict with Benton also,
especially on the point of their interfering with the immediate
admission of California into the Union.
This is not the place to discuss Clay's proposed compromise, which was
not satisfactory to the extreme Southerners, and still less so to the
Unionists and anti-slavery men. It consisted of five different parts,
relating to the recovery of fugitive slaves, the suppression of the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia, the admission of California as
a state, and the territorial condition of Utah and New Mexico. Benton
opposed it as mixing up incongruous measures; as being unjust to
California, inasmuch as it confounded the question of her admission with
the general slavery agitation in the United States; and above all as
being a concession or capitulation to the spirit of disunion and
secession, and therefore a repetition of the error of 1833. Benton
always desired to meet and check any disunion movement at the very
outset, and, if he had had his way, would have carried matters with a
high hand whenever it came to dealing with threats of such a proceeding;
and therein he was perfectly right. In regard to the proposed compromise
he believed in dealing with each question as it arose, beginning with
the admission of California, and refusing to have any compromise at all
with those who threatened secession.
The slavery extensionists endeavored to have the Missouri compromise
line stretched on to the Pacific. Benton, avowing his belief that
slavery was an evil, opposed this, and gave his reasons why he did not
wish to see the line which had been used to divide free and slave soil
in the French or Louisiana purchase extended into the lands won from
Mexico. Slavery had always existed in Louisiana, while it had been long
abolished in Mexico. "The Missouri compromise line, extending to New
Mexico and California, though astronomically the same as that in
Louisiana, would be politically directly the opposite. One went through
a territory all slave, and made one half free; the other would go
through territory all free, and make one half slave." In fact Benton, as
he grew older, unlike most of his compatriots, gained a clearer insight
into the effects of slavery. This was shown in his comments upon
Calhoun's statement, made in the latter's last speech, in reference to
the unequal development of the North and South; which, Benton said, was
partly owing to the existence of "slavery itself, which he (Calhoun) was
so anxious to extend." It was in this same speech that Calhoun hinted at
his plan for a dual executive,--one president from the Free and one from
the Slave States,--a childish proposition, that Benton properly treated
as a simple absurdity.
In his speech against the compromise, Benton discussed it, section by
section, with great force, and with his usual blunt truthfulness. His
main count was the injustice done to California by delaying her
admittance, and making it dependent upon other issues; but he made
almost as strong a point against the effort to settle the claims of
Texas to New Mexican territory. The Texan threats to use force he
treated with cavalier indifference, remarking that as long as New Mexico
was a territory, and therefore belonged to the United States, any
controversy with her was a controversy with the federal government,
which would know how to play her part by "defending her territory from
invasion, and her people from violence,"--a hint that had a salutary
effect upon the Texans; in fact the disunionists, generally, were not
apt to do much more than threaten while a Whig like Taylor was backed up
by a Democrat like Benton. He also pointed out that it was not
necessary, however desirable, to make a compact with Texas about the
boundaries, as they could always be settled, whether she wished it or
not, by a suit before the Supreme Court; and again intimated that a
little show of firmness would remove all danger of a collision. "As to
anything that Texas or New Mexico may do in taking or relinquishing
possession, that is all moonshine. New Mexico is the property of the
United States, and she cannot dispose of herself or any part of
herself, nor can Texas take her or any part of her." He showed a
thorough acquaintance with New Mexican geography and history, and
alluded to the bills he had already brought in, in 1844 and 1850, to
establish a divisional line between the territory and Texas, on the
longitude first of one hundred and then of one hundred and two degrees.
He recalled the fact that before the annexation of Texas, and in a bill
proposing to settle all questions with her, he had inserted a provision
forever prohibiting slavery in all parts of the annexed territory lying
west of the hundredth degree of longitude. He also took the opportunity
of formally stating his opposition to any form of slavery extension,
remarking that it was no new idea with him, but dated from the time when
in 1804, while a law student in Tennessee, he had studied Blackstone as
edited by the learned Virginian, Judge Tucker, who, in an appendix,
treated of, and totally condemned, black slavery in the United States.
The very difficulty, or, as he deemed it, the impossibility, of getting
rid of the evil, made Benton all the more determined in opposing its
extension. "The incurability of the evil is the greatest objection to
the extension of slavery. If it is wrong for the legislator to inflict
an evil which can be cured, how much more to inflict one that is
incurable, and against the will of the people who are to endure it
forever! I quarrel with no one for deeming slavery a blessing; I deem it
an evil, and would neither adopt it nor impose it on others." The
solution of the problem of disposing of existent slavery, he confessed,
seemed beyond human wisdom; but "there is a wisdom above human, and to
that we must look. In the mean time, do not extend the evil." In
justification of his position he quoted previous actions of Congress,
done under the lead of Southern men, in refusing again and again, down
to 1807, to allow slavery to be introduced into Indiana, when that
community petitioned for it. He also repudiated strongly the whole
spirit in which Clay had gotten up his compromise bill, stating that he
did not believe in geographical parties; that he knew no North and no
South, and utterly rejected any slavery compromises except those to be
found in the Constitution. Altogether it was a great speech, and his
opposition was one of the main causes of the defeat of Clay's measure.
Benton's position on the Wilmot Proviso is worth giving in his own
words: "That measure was rejected again as heretofore, and by the votes
of those who were opposed to extending slavery into the territories,
because it was unnecessary and inoperative,--irritating to the Slave
States, without benefit to the Free States, a mere work of
supererogation, of which the fruit was discontent. It was rejected, not
on the principle of non-intervention; not on the principle of leaving to
the territories to do as they pleased on the question, but because there
had been intervention; because Mexican law and constitution had
intervened, had abolished slavery by law in those dominions; which law
would remain in force until repealed by Congress. All that the opponents
to the extension of slavery had to do, then, was to do nothing. And they
did nothing."
Before California was admitted into the Union old Zachary Taylor had
died, leaving behind him a name that will always be remembered among our
people. He was neither a great statesman nor yet a great commander; but
he was an able and gallant soldier, a loyal and upright public servant,
and a most kindly, honest, and truthful man. His death was a greater
loss to the country than perhaps the people ever knew.
The bill for the admission of California as a free state, heartily
sustained by Benton, was made a test question by the Southern
disunionists; but on this occasion they were thoroughly beaten. The
great struggle was made over a proposition to limit the southern
boundary of the state to the line of 36 deg. 30', and to extend the Missouri
line through to the Pacific, so as to authorize the existence of slavery
in all the territory south of that latitude. This was defeated by a vote
of thirty-two to twenty-four. Not only Benton, but also Spruance and
Wales of Delaware, and Underwood of Kentucky, joined with the
representatives from the Free States in opposing it. Had it not been for
the action of these four slave-state senators in leaving their
associates, the vote would have been a tie; and their courage and
patriotism should be remembered. The bill was then passed by a vote of
thirty-four to eighteen, two other Southern senators, Houston of Texas,
and Bell of Tennessee, voting for it, in addition to the four already
mentioned. After its passage, ten of the senators who had voted against
it, including, of course, Jefferson Davis, and also Benton's own
colleague from Missouri, Atchison, joined in a protest against what had
been done, ending with a thinly veiled threat of disunion,--"dissolution
of the confederacy," as they styled it. Benton stoutly and successfully
opposed allowing this protest to be received or entered upon the
journal, condemning it, with a frankness that very few of his
fellow-senators would have dared to copy, as being sectional and
disunion in form, and therefore unfit even for preservation on the
records.
When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, through the help of some
Northern votes, Benton refused to support it; and this was the last act
of importance that he performed as United States Senator. He had risen
and grown steadily all through his long term of service; and during its
last period he did greater service to the nation than any of his
fellow-senators. Compare his stand against the slavery extremists and
disunionists, such as Calhoun, with the position of Webster at the time
of his famous seventh of March speech, or with that of Clay when he
brought in his compromise bill! In fact, as the times grew more
troublesome, he grew steadily better able to do good work in them.
It is this fact of growth that especially marks his career. No other
American statesman, except John Quincy Adams,--certainly neither of his
great contemporaries, Webster and Clay,--kept doing continually better
work throughout his term of public service, or showed himself able to
rise to a higher level at the very end than at the beginning. Yet such
was the case with Benton. He always rose to meet a really great
emergency; and his services to the nation grew steadily in importance
to the very close of his life. Whereas Webster and Clay passed their
zenith and fell, he kept rising all the time.