THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
The Connection of California with the Mississippi
Valley--Nebraska--Mr. Douglas' Nebraska Bill and Report--The
Surprising Assumptions in the Report--Mr. Douglas' Purpose--The Report
and Bill Together in Conflict with the Act of 1820--The New
Section--Mr. Dixon's Proposed Amendment--Mr. Blair's Letter in
Reference to Mr. Seward's Connection with Dixon's Proposition--Douglas
and Dixon--Mr. Douglas' New Bill--The Free-soil Protest Against the
Bill--Mr. Douglas' Reply to the Address--Mr. Chase's First Amendment
to the Bill--The Southern Whigs Aroused by Mr. Wade's Accusations--Mr.
Chase's Amendment Lost--Mr. Douglas' Last Change in the Wording of the
Clause--Mr. Everett's Views--Mr. Houston's Opposition to the Bill--Mr.
Bell's Attitude Toward the Bill--Mr. Douglas' Amendment Passed by the
Senate--Mr. Chase's Amendments--Mr. Bell's Argument Against the
Bill--Mr. Douglas' Final Argument--The Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill by the Senate--Analysis of the Vote Upon the Bill--Development of
Popular Opposition to the Bill--The Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the
House--The Relation of the Administration to the Bill--President
Pierce and Mr. Davis--The Bill Taken up in the Committee of the Whole
of the House of Representatives--Mr. A. H. Stephens' Management of the
Bill--The Bill Passed and Signed by the President--Analysis of the
Vote on the Bill in the House--What the Figures Taught--The
Kansas-Nebraska Act a Stupendous Fallacy.
When President Fillmore's last annual message to Congress was sent in,
on December 6th, 1852, the quiet of the country in regard to the
slavery question was more {381} complete than it had been since 1830.
The President did not even mention the subject. Evidently the people
believed that the Measures of 1850, and their cordial endorsement in
the elections just passed, had finally solved the great question, in
so far as the Congress could solve it at all. But never was there a
more deceptive peace. It was merely the dead calm before the dread
cyclone.
[Sidenote: The connection of California with the Mississippi valley.]
This time the storm came from the Northwest. After the acquisitions of
the territory upon the Pacific coast, it was immediately apparent that
these new possessions must be connected, so soon as possible, with the
line of Commonwealths on the west bank of the Mississippi by the
Territorial organization of the country lying between. Mr. Douglas had
conceived this idea as far back as 1847, and had endeavored from that
time forward to secure the attention of Congress for its realization.
The seemingly more important questions involved in the Compromise
Measures gave little room for the consideration of other subjects
between 1848 and 1850. Now, however, that these questions had
apparently received their final settlement, the moment seemed
opportune for the solution of the problem of binding the Pacific slope
with the settled country of the west valley of the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: Nebraska.]
In the Congressional session of 1852-53, a bill passed the House of
Representatives for organizing the region lying between Missouri and
the Rocky Mountains, and between the latitudes thirty-six degrees,
thirty minutes, and forty-three degrees, into the Territory of
Nebraska. A vote upon the measure was, however, not reached in the
Senate before the close of the session.
During the consideration of the bill in the House, Mr. Howe, of
Pennsylvania, asked Mr. Giddings, of Ohio, {382} who was a member of
the committee on Territories, from which the bill had come, why there
was no clause in the bill prohibiting slavery. Mr. Giddings replied
that the Act of 1820 did that for all of this territory. Whereupon Mr.
Howe used these significant words: "I should like to know of the
gentleman of Ohio, if he has not some recollection of a compromise
made since that time." Mr. Giddings quietly replied: "That does not
affect this question."
During the discussion of the bill in the Senate, Mr. Atchison, of
Missouri, said that one of his objections to the organization of this
Territory was that Missouri would be surrounded on three sides by free
soil, into which the slaves of the citizens of Missouri could easily
escape, but that, as he could see no prospect of a repeal of the Act
of 1820 making this region free soil, he would not be willing to delay
the organization of the Territory on that account.
There is no explanation of the language used by these three gentlemen,
except that Mr. Howe had conceived that, in some way or other, the
Measures of 1850 had modified the Act of 1820 prohibiting slavery in
the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes,
and that Mr. Giddings and Mr. Atchison had never thought of such a
thing.
On December 14th, 1853, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, introduced a bill into the
Senate for the organization of Nebraska Territory. It was referred to
the committee on Territories, of which Mr. Douglas was chairman.
[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' Nebraska bill and report.]
On January 4th, 1854, Mr. Douglas presented a bill from the committee,
with a special report, in which latter document the principles of the
laws of the United States in respect to slavery in the Territories, as
understood by the committee, or rather as Mr. Douglas {383} understood
them, were stated. The report was a more important document than the
bill, since the bill, drawn in vague terms upon this subject, was to
be interpreted by the principles declared in the report. The first
paragraph of the report read: "The principal amendments which your
committee deem it their duty to commend to the favorable action of the
Senate, in a special report, are those in which the principles
established by the Compromise Measures of 1850, so far as they are
applicable to Territorial organization, are proposed to be affirmed
and carried into practical operation within the limits of the new
Territory." The report then declares these principles to be: "That all
questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new
States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the
people residing therein, by their appropriate representatives, to be
chosen by them for that purpose: That all cases involving title to
slaves, and questions of personal freedom, are to be referred to the
adjudication of the local tribunals, with the right of appeal to the
Supreme Court of the United States: That the provisions of the
Constitution of the United States, in respect to fugitives from
service, are to be carried into faithful execution in all the
organized Territories the same as in the States."
[Sidenote: The surprising assumptions in the report.]
These were most astonishing and confusing propositions in a variety of
respects. In the first place, the claim that the Compromise Acts of
1850 contained any general principles of Territorial organization in
respect to slavery, which were applicable to any other Territories
than those organized under these Acts, was a surprising assumption. It
was an induction from one precedent when there were half a dozen
precedents against it. The fact was that the Acts of 1850 only set up
a rule for a single case, a rule patched {384} up by compromise, and
not derived from any general principle. This claim was also, if
admitted, highly confusing. Was it a principle of the Constitution,
and therefore supreme over all Congressional policies in the case? Or
was it simply a principle of Congressional policy? If the former, then
it had already rendered the prohibition upon slavery in the Louisiana
territory, by the Act of 1820, nugatory. If it was the latter, then it
would require a new act of Congress to apply it to any other Territory
than Utah and New Mexico. In the second place, the statement, also
contained in the report, that there was a pronounced conflict of
opinion in the country upon the question of the constitutional
validity of the Act of 1820, prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana
territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, was equally
surprising. Nobody had heard the noise of any such conflict. The fact
is, that conflict was yet to be aroused. And, lastly, it was most
highly surprising and confusing that the attempt to rouse this
conflict should proceed from the bosom of the party which had won its
splendid victory under the peace issue upon the subject of slavery,
and should be inaugurated by a member of that party from the North.
[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' purpose.]
What was, or what could have been, Mr. Douglas' purpose? It is held by
most historians that it was simply a reckless and dishonest bid for
Southern support, in his ambitious plans to gain the presidency. Most
of Mr. Douglas' political opponents at the time believed that he was
animated solely by that desire. His character was, according to their
view, that of a scheming politician, who would sacrifice anything and
anybody for his own advancement. While we can understand this radical
estimate of him by those with whom he was in daily conflict, it does
seem that the historians, with his subsequent career before them,
might {385} suspect, at least, that some conviction of the
rightfulness of his views may have aided in moving him to the position
which he took. Mr. Douglas was a Western Democrat; that is, he was a
radical Democrat. He had, therefore, an exaggerated notion of the
virtues of the people, and of the importance of local autonomy. He
resented the idea that the sturdy adventurers who accomplished the
first settlement of a Western Territory were not as fully capable of
local self-government, from the very outset, as the "effeminate"
inhabitants of an Eastern Commonwealth. He repudiated the notion that
they needed any pupilage from the general Government in the management
of public affairs. He was not alone in such views. It is safe to say
that the mass of the people in his section held the same views at that
time. They have not progressed much beyond them now. Is it not, then,
fair to say that Mr. Douglas, in all probability, really believed that
the reference of the questions in regard to slavery to the residents
of each Territory, as well as to those of each "State," was the true
principle of the political science of the Republic, and the true
policy of its legislation? If his convictions and his ambition went
hand in hand, and if his convictions were not the product of his
ambition, should he be so harshly criticised for declaring them? It is
true that his announcement of them filled the land with clamor and
angry dispute, and that their adoption by Congress led to violence,
bloodshed, and war; but can we conclude that he had any conception
whatsoever that this could be the result of them? Is it not far more
probable that he thought the quiet of the country would be confirmed
and forever established by their general acceptance? There is
certainly ground for this view of his motives. It is certainly very
improbable that there was ever any balancing, in his mind, of risks to
his country's peace {386} and safety against his ambition for the
presidency. It is much more probable that he believed his principles,
without his presidency, would contribute, in high degree, to the peace
and welfare of his country, but that, taken together with his
presidency, they would shed untold blessings upon the land. This is no
unusual psychology. It is decidedly common.
[Sidenote: The doctrines of the report at first not inserted in the
bill.]
Mr. Douglas did not, however, insert his doctrine of popular
sovereignty in the Territories, and his dictum as to the repeal of the
slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820 by the principles of the Acts
of 1850, in the bill. Possibly he thought it unnecessary. Possibly he
did not venture to do so. Possibly he did intend to leave things in
such an ambiguous shape that one interpretation might be put upon them
in one section, and a somewhat different one in another. He would
hardly have been an American politician if he had not, at some time or
other in his life, practised something of this kind. This is what they
call feeling the public pulse, which is a main point in the practice
of democratic statesmanship. It is not particularly edifying to the
academic statesman, but it is business, and Americans are a business
people. Mr. Douglas simply modelled the bill after the Utah and New
Mexico bills, in respect to slavery, that is, he made no mention of
the subject in that part of the bill which provided for the
Territorial period, but added a clause which read: "When admitted as a
State, the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be
received into the Union, with or without slavery, as its Constitution
may prescribe at the time of its admission."
[Sidenote: The report and bill together in conflict with the Act of
1820.]
Taken apart from the report, the bill might be interpreted as not in
conflict with the Act of 1820, but taken with the report, it meant the
repeal of the Act of 1820, and the attribution of all power over the
question of {387} slavery in the Territory to those who might squat
upon its soil. Of course it was entirely within the power of Congress
to repeal the Act of 1820. The restraints resting upon Congress in
regard to this matter were moral, not legal. If Congress would,
nevertheless, do it, it must do it in the form of a statute, and not
in that of a report doubting the constitutionality of the Act, or even
declaring it unconstitutional. It was entirely natural that the demand
should be made for clearing the bill of its ambiguities.
[Sidenote: The new section.]
Before the demand came, however, the committee itself did something in
this direction. When the bill was printed, on January 7th, it
contained twenty sections. On the 10th, a revised edition of it
appeared, which contained twenty-one sections. The last section was
the dictum of the report in regard to the principles of the Measures
of 1850 upon the subject of slavery in the Territories. The committee
explained that it had been left out of the first draft by a clerical
error. This change did not, however, clear the bill of all ambiguity.
The added provision was declaratory only, and did not expressly repeal
the Act of 1820.
[Sidenote: Mr. Dixon's proposed amendment.]
At length, on the 16th, Mr. Dixon, of Kentucky, gave notice to the
Senate that he should move, as an amendment to the bill, a provision
expressly repealing the Act of 1820 in so far as it prohibited slavery
in any of the Territories of the United States.
[Sidenote: Mr. Blair's letter in reference to Mr. Seward's connection
with Dixon's proposition.]
In a letter of May 17th, 1873, to Mr. Gideon Welles, Mr. Montgomery
Blair wrote of Mr. Seward: "I shall never forget how shocked I was at
his telling me that he was the man who put Archy Dixon, the Whig
Senator from Kentucky in 1854, up to moving the repeal of the {388}
Missouri compromise, as an amendment to Douglas' first Kansas
[Nebraska?] bill, and had himself forced the repeal by that movement,
and had thus brought to life the Republican Party. Dixon was to
out-Herod Herod at the South, and he was to out-Herod Herod at the
North."
If this be true, it was a most reprehensible trick of unscrupulous
politics. Mr. Seward scoffed at the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"
in the Territories as arrant nonsense, and knew that the assertion of
any such doctrine as a principle of the law of the country in respect
to Territorial organization would rouse the North to angry and bitter
resistance. What he did, he did with his eyes open. His vision did not
probably reach so far as to civil war, but he knew that the risks of
another slavery agitation were very grave. Neither could the ambiguity
in Mr. Douglas' bill, and the necessity for relieving it of this
obscurity, palliate such an offense. If he desired to make Mr.
Douglas' bill entirely plain he should have done this, not by holding
out a temptation to the South to enter upon a new course of slavery
extension, but by an amendment asserting the continuing validity of
the slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820. Mr. Sumner did this very
thing on the next day. It was, however, too late to chain the spirit
which Dixon's fatal move had loosed.
[Sidenote: Douglas and Dixon.]
It is said that Mr. Douglas was surprised and disconcerted by Mr.
Dixon's notice, and endeavored to dissuade him from carrying out his
expressed intention, but was finally convinced by Mr. Dixon that the
proposed amendment was only the fair and honest statement of
constitutional principles, and of the legal results of the Compromise
of 1850, and only made distinct and express what was unclear, though
implied, in the bill.
{389} [Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' new bill.]
On the 23rd, Mr. Douglas brought in a new bill, and offered it as a
substitute for the original bill. The new bill contained a clause
declaring that that part of the Act of 1820 prohibiting slavery in the
Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was
inoperative, being contrary to, and superseded by, the principles of
the legislation of 1850. Mr. Douglas' new bill changed the southern
boundary from thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to thirty-seven
degrees, made the northern boundary run up to the forty-ninth parallel
west of Minnesota Territory, and cut this vast domain of nearly five
hundred thousand square miles in area into two Territories by the
fortieth parallel of latitude, the one to the north of it to be called
Nebraska, and the one to the south of it Kansas. Mr. Dixon immediately
expressed himself as satisfied with the provisions of the new bill,
and said that they fulfilled the purposes of the amendment which he
had intended to offer, and that he should, therefore, withhold the
same. The Senate agreed to take up the bill on the following Monday.
[Sidenote: The Free-soil protest against the bill.]
[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' reply to the address.]
On the same day that Mr. Douglas presented this second bill, there
appeared in the _National Era_, the Abolition journal at Washington,
and in several New York City papers, the noted address, signed by
Messrs. Chase, Sumner, Wade, Smith, and De Witt, in which the Douglas
bill was denounced in the most trenchant language as "a gross
violation of a sacred pledge, as a criminal betrayal of precious
rights, as a part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a
vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers
from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism
inhabited by masters and slaves." The contents of this celebrated
paper constituted, it may be said, the {390} first draft of the creed
of the party to be founded on the doctrine of resistance to slavery
extension, the Republican party. The propositions contained in it
drove Mr. Douglas to a fierce diatribe against their authors, in which
he included an elaborate argument in defence of his dictum, that the
Measures of 1850 had rendered the slavery prohibition in the Act of
1820 inoperative. He contended that the fact that Congress had, in the
joint resolution admitting Texas, provided that in Texan territory
north of the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes slavery
should be prohibited, proved that Congress and the people of the
United States understood the legislation of 1820 to mean that the line
of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was to be run through any and
all territory that might be subsequently acquired by the United
States; that the refusal of Congress to do this in regard to the
territory acquired from Mexico had made the establishment of a new
principle in regard to slavery in the Territories necessary; that that
principle, as established by the legislation of 1850, was the
neutrality of Congress in the question, and the right of the residents
in each Territory to settle the question for themselves; and that this
new principle had superseded the old principle and rendered all
legislation under the old principle inoperative.
[Sidenote: Mr. Chase's amendment to the bill.]
[Sidenote: The Southern Whigs aroused by Mr. Wade's accusations.]
[Sidenote: The Douglas doctrine convincing to many.]
[Sidenote: Mr. Chase's amendment lost.]
Such jurisprudence in respect to the effect upon each other of
statutes relating to different and distinct Territories had never been
heard before, and it was easy to show it to be a tissue of sophistries
from beginning to end. It was entirely evident that Mr. Douglas and
his committee shrank from proposing a bare and bald repeal of the
slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820, and sought to avoid the
responsibility of doing so under the convenient claim that it had
already been repealed. But {391} Mr. Chase was determined to make them
take this responsibility, and to expose their fallacies in their
attempts to escape it. On February 3rd, Mr. Chase moved to remove from
the bill the words referring to the Measures of 1850, and their effect
upon the Act of 1820, and make the bill simply repeal the slavery
prohibition of the Act of 1820, in so far as it applied to the
Territories to be organized by the bill. Mr. Chase supported his
amendment in a powerful speech, in which he demonstrated most clearly
the fallacy and the duplicity of the doctrine which held that the
legislation of 1850 in regard to Utah and New Mexico had repealed the
legislation of 1820 in regard to the Louisiana territory north of
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. Both he and his colleague, Mr.
Wade, went, however, too far in denouncing the subterfuge as a
conspiracy between the Southerners and the friends of Douglas to
extend slavery. It was especially imprudent, to say the least, in Mr.
Wade to do so. The Southern Whigs were highly incensed at the charge
of conspiring with Northern Democrats, made by one of their own party,
and they repudiated the accusation with great earnestness. Besides
this, the Douglas idea of "popular sovereignty," or, as we now call
it, home rule, in the Territories, had won many adherents. There is no
question that a great many men, in both the North and the South, now
began to feel that Mr. Douglas had discovered the true principle in
regard to slavery in the Territories. Mr. Chase's amendment was lost
by a vote of thirty to thirteen. The thirteen voting in favor of the
amendment were all from the North. Of those voting against it, ten
were from the North, and twenty from the South. Nineteen Senators, ten
of whom were from the South, did not vote at all. The {392} vote meant
that the large majority of those voting held that, in some way or
other, the legislation of 1850 had repealed the slavery prohibition in
the legislation of 1820. This was execrable jurisprudence, and even
Mr. Cass, who was really the father of the idea of home rule in the
Territories, dissented from it, and voted for Mr. Chase's amendment.
[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' last change in the wording of the clause.]
In spite of this support by the majority, Mr. Douglas was apparently
disquieted by the attitude of Mr. Cass, and by the arguments against
the correctness of his doctrine. He, himself, now moved to strike out
of the bill the words: "which was superseded by the principles of the
legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, and is
hereby declared inoperative," and to insert instead thereof the words:
"which being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by
Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by
the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is
hereby declared inoperative and void, it being the true intent and
meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or
State, nor exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof
perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in
their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."
[Sidenote: Mr. Everett's views.]
In a most able argument, remarkable both for its strong logic and its
admirable temper, Mr. Everett demonstrated the weakness of Mr.
Douglas' proposition in its last form, the declaration of
inconsistency between the legislation of 1820 and that of 1850. He
showed conclusively that, in place of an inconsistency, here were
simply two policies in reference to different Territories, in which
different conditions and relations obtained. He predicted that the
{393} insistence upon the same policy for all the Territories would
lead to the struggle for determining whether they should be all slave
or all free, and he demonstrated that "popular sovereignty" in the
Territories was an illusion, since Congress could not by any act of
its own divest itself of its duty, laid upon it by the Constitution,
to legislate for the Territories. Mr. Everett was a member of the
committee on Territories, from which the bill had proceeded, and his
views should, on this account, have possessed an added weight.
[Sidenote: Mr. Houston's opposition to the bill.]
Mr. Houston, of Texas, another member of the committee, now declared
himself against the bill, on the ground, among other reasons, that it
would reopen the slavery question by the destruction of one of the
great measures upon which the settlement of that question rested.
[Sidenote: Mr. Bell's attitude toward the bill.]
It was furthermore suspected that Mr. Bell, of Tennessee, another
member of the committee, was opposed to the bill. This suspicion
turned out to be true. The bill can hardly be regarded therefore as
having been reported by the committee at all. The committee consisted
of six Senators, and it was at last found that it had, at no time,
received the support of more than three. Of these three, two were from
the North, Douglas, of Illinois, and Jones, of Iowa, and one was from
the South, Johnson, of Arkansas.
[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' amendment passed by the Senate.]
The vote upon this amendment was taken on February 15th. Thirty-five
Senators voted for it, and ten against it. Of those voting for it,
twenty-four were from the North and eleven from the South. Of those
voting against it, nine were from the North and one, Mr. Houston, was
from the South. Mr. Bell voted for the amendment for the reason, as he
afterwards explained, that he thought Mr. Douglas ought to be allowed
to perfect his bill.
{394} [Sidenote: Mr. Chase's second amendment.]
[Sidenote: Mr. Pratt's amendment to Mr. Chase's amendment.]
Mr. Chase now suspected that there might be some catch concealed in
the last words of the amendment just adopted. These words, it will be
remembered, were: "subject only to the Constitution of the United
States." Mr. Chase, therefore, moved to add the words: "under which
the people of the Territory, through their appropriate
representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the existence of
slavery therein." Mr. Chase now put the home rule principle in regard
to slavery in the Territories to the test, for if the people of a
Territory could not, under the Constitution of the United States,
prohibit slavery in the Territories, then was the Douglas doctrine a
mere deception, a mere jugglery of words. Mr. Chase put his
proposition, however, in a form which appeared one-sided, and Mr.
Badger, of North Carolina, the best constitutional lawyer from the
South in the Senate, contended that Mr. Chase's amendment would have
the effect of denying to the Territories the power to admit slavery,
and thus destroy, from that side, the home rule principle of the bill.
To remedy this defect, Mr. Pratt moved to amend Mr. Chase's
proposition so as to make it read that the people might introduce or
prohibit slavery in the Territories. But this was an amendment to Mr.
Chase's amendment to Mr. Douglas' amendment, and was held to be
unparliamentary, unless Mr. Chase would accept it, and incorporate it
into his amendment. This he refused to do, on the ground, first, that
he did not believe that the Territories could, under the Constitution,
introduce slavery, and, second, on the ground that the union of his
proposition and that of Mr. Pratt in a single amendment would unite
those who did not believe that the people of a Territory could
introduce slavery with those who did not believe they could prohibit
slavery {395} against the entire amendment, and probably defeat it,
while, if the two propositions could be voted on separately, they
would both probably pass, and the bill would be cleared of all
ambiguity.
[Sidenote: Mr. Chase's amendment lost.]
Mr. Chase's attitude toward Mr. Pratt's motion compelled the Senate to
vote upon his proposition separately, and the amendment was lost by a
vote of thirty-six to ten.
[Sidenote: Mr. Badger's amendment.]
Just before the close of the debate on Mr. Chase's motion, Mr. Walker,
of Wisconsin, startled the Senate by the declaration that the repeal
of the Act of 1820 prohibiting slavery would revive the old French law
legitimizing slavery in all of the territory acquired from France.
Both Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Badger said it would not have that effect,
but on different grounds. In order to quiet apprehension on this
point, and remove the difficulty out of the way of the passage of the
bill, Mr. Badger gave notice that so soon as the vote should be taken
on Mr. Chase's motion, he should move an amendment to the bill
providing that "nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to
revive or put in force any law or regulation, which may have existed
prior to 1820, either protecting, establishing, prohibiting, or
abolishing slavery." After the vote upon Mr. Chase's motion, Mr.
Badger offered this amendment, and it was voted, without debate, by a
very large majority.
[Sidenote: Mr. Chase's third amendment.]
Mr. Chase now turned his assaults upon other points of the bill. Mr.
Douglas had been impressed by the taunts of the opponents of the bill
that home rule was to be granted to the people of the Territories only
upon the subject of slavery, but that they were to continue in all
other respects subject to the control of the general Government, and
he now moved to strike out the veto power of {396} Congress over
Territorial legislation, in the cases in hand, and to so modify the
usual veto power of the Territorial governors as to allow a two-thirds
majority of the Territorial legislatures to overcome it. These
propositions were voted without debate. Whereupon Mr. Chase moved that
the governors, secretaries, and judges of the two Territories be
elected by the people instead of being appointed by the President.
This was logical, but it made the "squatter-sovereignty" doctrine
ridiculous. It was, therefore, rejected with a considerable show of
spirit.
[Sidenote: Mr. Chase's fourth amendment.]
Mr. Chase now moved that the whole country should be organized as one
Territory instead of two. He seemed to anticipate that if two should
be established at the same time, the slaveholders would claim one.
This proved to be a correct suspicion. It was subsequently declared
throughout the South that the purpose in forming two Territories was
to give one to the North and the other to the South. And when the
North made the fight for Kansas, it was really felt in the South by
the mass of the people that a tacit agreement had been violated. The
Senators in favor of the bill had now come to think that Mr. Chase was
simply endeavoring to discredit the bill, and they quickly voted this
motion down by a large majority.
[Sidenote: Mr. Bell's argument against the bill.]
Down to this juncture, the bill had been considered in the Senate as a
committee of the Whole. It was now reported to the Senate as amended
by this committee, and, on March 3rd, it came to the vote upon its
final passage. It was at this point that Mr. Bell revealed his
opposition to the bill, and made his great argument, the greatest
effort of his long and useful life, against it. The speech was chiefly
a logical and an eloquent elaboration of the three propositions, that
popular sovereignty could not be {397} established in the Territories
by an Act of Congress, that the passage of the bill before the Senate
attempting it would produce a vast development of the anti-slavery
sentiment at the North, and that no practical benefits whatsoever
could accrue to the South by the repeal of the restriction upon
slavery extension in the Act of 1820. But the Southerners would not
listen to these words of wisdom from their own greatest colleague.
[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' final argument.]
Mr. Douglas is generally represented as having closed the debate,
although Mr. Houston spoke briefly after him in opposition to the
measure. Mr. Douglas' argument was masterful from every point of view
but the highest. His chief proposition was, that, when his committee
were charged with the duty of framing the bill, they were forced to
choose between the principle of Congressional intervention in the
Territories, in the matter of slavery, on the one hand, the principle
of 1820, the principle which had, for thirty years, filled the land
with agitation and conflict, and had been a standing menace to the
existence of the Union, and the principle of Congressional
non-intervention, on the other hand, the principle of the Measures of
1850, the principle which had tranquillized the country and cemented
anew the Union, the principle which both of the two great political
parties had unequivocally approved in their platforms of 1852, and
which the people of the whole country had just as unequivocally
approved in the elections of 1852. And his conclusion from this
proposition was, that, as servants of the people who had established
this principle of Congressional non-intervention, his committee were
morally obligated to make it the principle of the bill presented by
them for the organization of the new Territories, and that whoever
arraigned him and his committee for so doing virtually arraigned the
people of the United States. It was a {398} most excellent and refined
bit of demagogy, and it fell upon an audience whose mental _niveau_
was not quite high enough to distinguish between it and sound
reasoning. He enforced this argument by another piece of catching
demagogism, which, though not quite so refined, was equally effective.
It was the proud and boastful assertion that American citizens were
capable of self-government anywhere, whether in "States" or
Territories, and under all conditions, whether aided by long
established customs, or without any such guides to steady them in
their progress. It was evident that his opponents preferred to avoid
this point, and that he was sure he had them upon it. He was so
thoroughly democratic in his own feelings that he entertained no doubt
as to the triumph of his argument when stated in this form.
[Sidenote: The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill by the Senate.]
A few minutes before five o'clock on the morning of March 4th, after a
continuous session of seventeen hours, the vote upon the bill was
taken, resulting in thirty-seven voices in its favor and fourteen
against it. Eleven Senators had not voted. Of these, three sent word
that, if they could have been present, they would have voted for the
bill, and one that he would have voted against it. There were also two
vacancies at the moment, one in the Vermont delegation, and one in
that of North Carolina. This reduced the number of those who actually
refrained from voting, though present, to five. These gentlemen were
Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts, Mr. Wright, of New Jersey, Mr. Cooper,
of Pennsylvania, Mr. Clayton, of Delaware, and Mr. Pearce, of
Maryland, all Whigs with the exception of Mr. Wright.
[Sidenote: Analysis of the vote upon the bill.]
Counting the names of those who announced how they would have voted
had they been able to be present, and considering the Commonwealths in
whose delegations there were vacancies as represented fully by the one
{399} member from each, we may say that, in the Senate, New Hampshire,
Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, California, Virginia, Kentucky,
Missouri, North Carolina, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana voted for the bill; that Maine,
Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin voted against the
bill; that Connecticut, Tennessee, and Texas were divided; and that
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland were
doubtful. Not a single Northern Whig voted for the bill, and only two
Northern Whigs failed to vote against it. One Southern Whig, Mr. Bell,
voted against it, and two Southern Whigs, Mr. Clayton and Mr. Pearce,
failed to vote for it. Every Southern Democrat, except only Mr.
Houston, voted for the bill, while, even if we count Mr. Chase and Mr.
Sumner as Democrats, only six Northern Democrats voted against it. The
bill may thus be fairly considered to have been a Western and Southern
measure, and a Democratic measure. The Western Democracy, with its
crude and radical notions about local self-government, invited the
South into a position which turned out to be a snare and a pitfall. It
is not meant by this that the Western Democracy was insincere, but
only that it was crude and vulgarly over self-confident. And it is not
meant that the South was insincere, but only too eager to vindicate
its honor and dignity, by obliterating the inequality with the North
in regard to the common territory of the Union, under which it fancied
it had suffered since the restriction placed upon slavery extension by
the Act of 1820.
[Sidenote: Development of popular opposition to the bill.]
If the bill had been subjected to the plebiscite on February 1st, it
is very probable that the people in the Northern Commonwealths would
have sustained the positions taken by their respective Senators. Had
this been {400} done on March 1st, it is probable that this would not
have been the case in some of the Northern Commonwealths, whose
Senators voted for the measure. And had it been done on April 1st, it
is practically certain that it would not have been. After February
1st, there was developed throughout the North a very strong opposition
to the bill among the people. The most influential newspapers
denounced it. Numerous meetings, largely attended, protested against
it. The legislatures of several of the Commonwealths passed
resolutions condemning it. And the clergy generally arraigned it as
immoral, inhuman, and irreligious. The movements against it seem to
have been spontaneous and to have been connected with each other only
by the common sentiment against the extension of slavery. It is,
however, probable that the Address to the people, issued by Mr. Chase
and his Free-soil friends in the latter part of January, furnished the
necessary excitant. The Address seems to have been the text from which
most of these articles, protests, memorials, speeches, and sermons
were drawn. When the bill was sent to the House of Representatives, it
was thus evident to all impartial observers that its growing
unpopularity at the North would be a very great obstacle to its
passage by the House. Its friends felt that they must get it through
speedily or see it lost altogether.
Already, on January 31st, Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, Mr. Douglas'
lieutenant in the House of Representatives, had reported from the
House committee on Territories a bill for the organization of the
Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which was the same in substance
and language as that reported by Mr. Douglas to the Senate. It had
been discussed a little in the committee of the Whole House, but had
slumbered there after February 15th.
{401} [Sidenote: The Kansas-Nebraska bill in the House.]
On March 7th, the Senate bill was sent into the House for concurrence.
It was taken up for consideration on the twenty-first, and, after some
parliamentary passes, was referred to the House committee on
Territories.
[Sidenote: The relation of the Administration to the bill.]
Some of the historians teach that this would have been the end of the
bill, except for the interference of President Pierce and his two most
trusted advisers, Mr. Caleb Cushing and Mr. Jefferson Davis. Mr. Davis
relates his connection with the matter in his own book. He says that,
on Sunday morning, January 22nd, gentlemen from the two Congressional
committees on Territories called at his house and asked his aid in
obtaining an interview with the President; that he went with them to
the executive mansion, and secured for them the desired access to the
President; that the President listened patiently to the reading of the
bill for organizing Kansas and Nebraska; and that the President
decided that the bill "rested upon sound constitutional principles,
and recognized in it only a return to that rule which had been
infringed by the Compromise of 1820, and the restoration of which had
been foreshadowed by the legislation of 1850." Mr. Davis furthermore
specifically denies that the measure was inspired by President Pierce
or any member of his Cabinet. Of course, though not inspired, it may
have been aided on the way of its passage through Congress by the
Administration. The proof upon which these historians chiefly rely, in
their assertion that it was so aided, was the fact that the editorials
in the Washington _Union_ supported the bill, and the claim that this
paper was the organ of the Administration. But Mr. Sidney Webster,
President Pierce's private secretary at the time, has recently
declared that the Washington _Union_ was not President {402} Pierce's
organ in the Kansas-Nebraska matter, or in any other matter; that
President Pierce had no organ.
[Sidenote: President Pierce and Mr. Davis.]
The character of President Pierce was that of a punctilious gentleman.
Mr. Davis resembled him much in this general trait. In fact, it was
said to have been this likeness which drew them so closely together in
their friendship for each other. Men of such character are not
inclined to meddle, and a strong positive evidence is necessary to
substantiate any such charge against them. There is no doubt that the
President's view of the doctrine of the bill was well known. There is
no doubt that there were members of Congress who made a chief point of
coinciding with the Administration upon every subject, and who thought
that such servility would give weight to their recommendations for
official positions. And there is no doubt that the President appointed
some persons to office recommended by such members. But no
satisfactory evidence has been as yet produced to prove that President
Pierce gave or promised any patronage to any member for supporting the
bill, or withheld any to punish any member for not supporting it. In
fact, the President's attitude toward the two factions of the
Democratic party in New York in the matter of appointments, making
selections from both in almost equal numbers, without regard to the
Free-soil sentiments of the "Softs," manifests a quite different
spirit from that with which these historians represent him to have
been animated in meddling with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska
bill.
[Sidenote: The President's consistency.]
And, finally, the inconsistency which these historians find between
the President's message of December preceding and his attitude toward
the Kansas-Nebraska bill can be so explained as to appear a perfect
consistency. What the President said in his message was that the {403}
acquiescence of distinguished citizens in the Compromise Measures of
1850 had given renewed vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense
of repose and security to the public mind throughout the Union, and
that this repose should suffer no shock during his official term. If,
now, we consider these measures of 1850 as containing the principle of
home rule in the Territories in regard to the question of slavery, and
if we attribute the repose of the public mind upon this subject to
that principle, would it not be maintaining that repose to apply this
principle in the organization of the new Territories, and would it not
be destructive of that repose to undertake to settle the slavery
question in the new Territories by an act of Congress, either original
or confirmatory? This view is certainly intelligible. It was professed
and advanced by all the supporters of the bill. It was unquestionably
the view which the President took of the matter. It proved to be an
erroneous view, but the views which mortal men hold, and
conscientiously hold, are very frequently erroneous.
[Sidenote: The bill taken up in the committee of the Whole of the
House of Representatives.]
[Sidenote: Mr. A. H. Stephens' management of the bill.]
[Sidenote: The bill passed and signed by the President.]
The Senate bill slept in the committee of the Whole of the House of
Representatives from March 21st until May 8th. During this period its
friends were undoubtedly working for it, and its opponents against it.
By the latter date the leaders in favor of the bill knew that they had
a reliable majority in the House, and, on that day, Mr. Richardson
moved that the House go into committee of the Whole, for the purpose
of taking up the House Kansas-Nebraska bill for consideration. After
much parliamentary fencing, this was accomplished. Mr. Richardson then
proposed to substitute the Senate bill, shorn of the provision in it
confining suffrage and office-holding in these Territories {404} to
American citizens, for the House bill. The opponents of the bill now
entered upon a course of obstruction, and, although there was a safe
majority of about twenty in favor of the bill, they prevented such a
vote being taken in the committee of the Whole, as would bring the
matter to a crisis, for about two weeks. By this time Mr. Richardson
seems to have been completely demoralized, and Mr. Alexander H.
Stephens came forward and took the management of the bill into his own
hands. He moved to strike out the enacting clause of the House bill.
According to the rules of the House, this motion took the precedence
of all motions to amend, and the effect of it would be, if passed,
equivalent to the rejection of the bill, upon the happening of which
the committee must rise and report its action to the House. The House
could then refuse to concur with the report of the committee of the
Whole, upon the happening of which Mr. Richardson could then offer the
Senate bill, as a substitute, in the House, and in the House the
obstructive tactics of the opposition could be dealt with as they
could not be in the committee of the Whole. Mr. Stephens explained his
tactics to the committee, in order that the friends of the bill might
know how to vote. The opponents of the bill called this procedure a
new "gag," but Mr. Stephens remained firm, and drove the Senate bill
in this manner through the House by a vote of one hundred and thirteen
to one hundred. The Senate concurred in the omission of the provision
limiting suffrage and office-holding in the Territories to American
citizens; and the President signed the bill, on May 30th.
[Sidenote: Analysis of the vote on the bill in the House.]
Eighty-seven members from the North, of whom forty-five were Whigs,
counting the Free-soilers as Whigs, and forty-two of whom were
Democrats, voted against {405} the bill; while only forty-four members
from the North, all Democrats, voted for it. Sixty-nine members from
the South, of whom fifty-seven were Democrats and twelve were Whigs,
voted for the bill; while seven Whigs and two Democrats from the South
voted against it.
[Sidenote: What the figures taught.]
These figures pretty well disposed of the claim that the bill was a
tender from the North to the South. It was simply a Western and
Southern Democratic measure. Taken together with the vote in the
Senate, these figures also showed that the Whig party was a party
opposed to slavery extension, unanimously so in the North, and in some
degree in the South. They revealed that the Whig party in the North
was to be merged in a Northern party with the Free-soil element of the
Democratic party, and was to be overwhelmed in the South by the union
of the proslavery-extension Whigs with the Democrats. They indicated
that one sectional party was soon to hold the majority in the North,
and another in the South; and gave thus the fearful warning that the
North was, at last, to be arrayed against the South upon the subject
which was of greater interest to the South, in the minds of the
slaveholders, than the Union itself.
[Sidenote: The Kansas-Nebraska Act a stupendous fallacy.]
From the point of view of the present, we are compelled to regard the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act as probably the greatest error
which the Congress of the United States ever committed, and the
arguments by which it was supported as among the most specious
fallacies that have ever misled the minds of men. We must take this
ground, unless we assume that we could not have solved the slavery
problem in any other way than we did, and at any less cost. If we make
this assumption, we may then consider this Act as providential, in
{406} that it precipitated a crisis, which was bound to come, and
which would only have been made more terrible by delay. While,
however, we of the succeeding generation may explain the place of this
Act in our history in this way, no considerations of this kind can
justify the men who produced it, and placed it upon the statute-book.
That God should "make the wrath of man to praise him" does not excuse
the wrath of man.
{407}