Review (_continued_).--The Strength of the Democratic Party in
1853.--Popular Strength not so great as Electoral Strength.--The
New President's Pledge not to re-open the Slavery Question.--How
he failed to maintain that Pledge.--The North-west Territory.--Anti-
slavery Restriction of the Missouri Compromise.--Movement to repeal
it by Mr. Clay's Successor in the Senate.--Mr. Douglas adopts the
policy of repealing the Restriction.--It is made an Administration
Measure and carried through Congress.--Colonel Benton's Position.
--Anti-slavery Excitement developed in the Country.--Destruction
of the Whig Party.--New Political Alliances.--American Party.--Know-
Nothings.--Origin and Growth of the Republican Party.--Pro-slavery
Development in the South.--Contest for the Possession of Kansas.--
Prolonged Struggle.--Disunion Tendencies developing in the South.
--Election of N. P. Banks to the Speakership of the House.--The
Presidential Election of 1856.--Buchanan.--Fremont.--Fillmore.--
The Slavery Question the Absorbing Issue.--Triumph of Buchanan.--
Dred Scott Decision.--Mr. Lincoln's Version of it.--Chief Justice
Taney.
The Democratic party, seeing their old Whig rival prostrate,
naturally concluded that a long lease of power was granted them.
The victory of Pierce was so complete that his supporters could
not with closest scrutiny descry an opponent worthy of the slightest
consideration. If the leaders of that party, however, had deigned
to look below the surface, they would have learned a fact which,
if not disquieting, was at least serious and significant. This
fact was contained in the popular vote, which told an entirely
different story from that disclosed by the Presidential electors.
From the people Pierce received a total of 1,601,274 votes, Scott
1,386,580, Hale 155,825. It will be noted that, while receiving
only one-sixth as many electoral votes as Pierce, Scott received
more than five-sixths as many votes at the polls. Adding the vote
of Hale, it will be observed that out of a total exceeding three
millions, Pierce's absolute majority was but 58,896. Thoughtful
men, wise in the administration of government, skilled in the
management of parties, would have found in these figures food for
reflection and abundant reason for hoisting cautionary signals
along the shores of the political sea. The Democratic leaders were
not, however, disturbed by facts or figures, but were rather made
stronger in the confidence of their own strength. They beheld the
country prosperous in all its material interests, and they saw the
mass of the people content in both sections with the settlement of
the slavery question. Since the Compromise measures were enacted
in 1850, and especially since the two political parties had pledged
themselves in 1852 to accept those measures as a finality, the
slavery agitation had to a very large extent subsided. Disturbance
was not indeed infrequently caused by the summary arrest of fugitive
slaves in various parts of the North, under the stringent and harsh
provisions of the new law on that subject. But though these
peculiarly odious transactions exerted a deeper influence on public
opinion than the Democratic leaders imagined, they were local and
apparently under control. There was no national disquietude on
the vexed question of slavery when Franklin Pierce was installed
as President.
In his Inaugural address General Pierce pledged himself with evident
zeal to the upholding of the Compromise measures and to the rigid
enforcement of the laws. There is no doubt that a large majority
of the people of the United States--North and South--were satisfied
with the situation and bade God-speed to the popular President
whose administration opened so auspiciously. The year 1853 was
politically as quiet as Monroe's era of good feeling, and when
Congress came together in its closing month, the President dwelt
impressively upon the dangers we had passed and upon the blessings
that were in store for us. In tones of solemnity he declared that
when "the grave shall have closed over all who are now endeavoring
to meet the obligations of duty, the year 1850 will be recurred to
as a period of anxious apprehension." With high praise of the
Compromise legislation of that year he said "it had given renewed
vigor to our institutions and restored a sense of repose and security
to the public mind." Evidently remembering the pledge given by
the convention which nominated him "to resist all attempts at
renewing the agitation of the slavery question in or out of Congress,"
the President gave emphatic assurance that this "repose" should
suffer no shock during his term if he "had the power to avert it."
These words were addressed to Congress on the fifth day of December,
1853, and it would be uncandid to deny that even in the North they
were heartily approved by a large majority of the people,--perhaps
by a majority in every State.
OMINOUS MOVEMENT IN CONGRESS.
In precisely one month from the delivery of these words by the
President an ominous movement was made in Congress. Notwithstanding
all the vows of fealty to the Compromise of 1850, the pro-slavery
leaders of the South were not contented with the aspect of affairs.
The result of the Mexican war had deeply disappointed them. Its
most striking political effect thus far was the addition to the
Union of a large and imposing free State on the Pacific,--an empire
indeed in prospective wealth and power. In the battle between free
institutions and slave institutions, California represented a strong
flank movement threatening destruction to slavery. Her vote in
the Senate gave a majority of two to the free States. The equality
of the sections had been steadily maintained in the Senate since
the admission of Louisiana in 1812. The break now was ominous;
the claim of equality had been disregarded; the superstition which
upheld it was dispelled, and the defenders of slavery could see
only a long procession of free States marching from the North-West
to re-enforce a power already irresistibly strong. From what
quarter of the Union could this anti-slavery aggression be offset?
By what process could its growth be checked? Texas might, if she
chose to ask for her own partition, re-enforce the slave-power in
the Senate by four new States, as guaranteed in the articles of
annexation. But the very majesty of her dimensions protested
against dismemberment. Texas was as large as France, and from the
Sabine to the Rio Grande there was not a cotton-planter or a cattle-
herder who did not have this fact before his eyes to inflame his
pride and guide his vote against parting with a single square mile
of her magnificent domain. New Mexico and Utah were mountainous
and arid, inviting only the miner and the grazier and offering no
inducement for the labor of the slave. The right guaranteed to
these territories in the Compromise of 1850 to come in as slave
States was, therefore, as Mr. Webster had maintained, a concession
of form and not of substance to the South. Seeing slavery thus
hemmed in on all sides by nature as well as law, and sincerely
believing that in such a position its final extinction was but a
question of time, the Southern leaders determined to break the
bonds that bound them. From their own point of reasoning they were
correct. To stand still was certain though slow destruction to
slavery. To move was indeed hazardous, but it gave them a chance
to re-establish their equality in the administration of the
government, and for this they determined to risk every thing.
To the westward and north-westward of Missouri and Iowa lay a vast
territory which in 1854 was not only unsettled but had no form of
civil government whatever. It stretched from the north line of
Arkansas to the border of British America,--twelve and a half
degrees of latitude,--and westward over great plains and across
mountain ranges till it reached the confines of Utah and Oregon.
It was the unorganized remainder of the territory of Louisiana,
acquired from France in 1803, and in extent was ten times as large
as the combined area of New York and Pennsylvania. By the Missouri
Compromise every square mile of this domain had been honorably
devoted to freedom. At the period named Indian tribes roamed at
will throughout its whole extent and lighted their camp-fires on
the very borders of Missouri and Iowa. Herds of buffalo grazed
undisturbed on lands which to-day constitute the sites of large
cities. Fort Leavenworth was a far-western outpost, Council Bluffs
was on the frontier of civilization, and Omaha had not been named.
Adventurous merchants passed over the plains to the South-West with
long caravans, engaged in the Santa-Fe trade, and towards the North-
West, hunters, trappers, and a few hardy emigrants penetrated the
"Platte country," and through mountain passes pointed out by the
trail of the Indian and the buffalo had in many instances safely
crossed to Oregon. The tide of emigration which had filled Iowa
and Wisconsin, and which by the gold excitement of California had
for a time been drawn to the Pacific slope, now set again more
strongly then ever to the Mississippi valley, demanding and needing
new lands for settlement and cultivation. To answer this requirement
a movement was made during the closing weeks of Mr. Fillmore's
administration to establish the territory of Nebraska. A bill to
that effect was passed by a two-thirds vote in the House. The
slight opposition that was made came from the South, but its
significance was not perceived. When the bill reached the Senate
Mr. Douglas, as chairman of the committee on territories, promptly
reported it, and made an apparently sincere effort to pass it. He
did not succeed. Every senator from the slave-holding States,
except those from Missouri,--which was locally interested in having
the territory organized,--voted against it;--and the measure,
antagonizing other business in which Northern senators were more
immediately interested, was laid upon the table two days before
President Pierce was inaugurated. The bill had fully recognized
the binding force of the Missouri Compromise, and if it had passed,
there could have been no pretense for the introduction of slavery
in the territory of Nebraska.
REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
Directly after the assurance so impressively given by the President
that the "repose" of the country on the slavery question "should
suffer no shock during his administration," the bill to organize
the Territory of Nebraska was again introduced in the Senate. The
motive for its defeat the preceding session was soon made apparent.
Mr. Archibald Dixon of Kentucky, the last Whig governor of that
State, had been chosen to succeed Mr. Clay in the Senate. But he
did not succeed to Mr. Clay's political principles. He belonged
to a class of men that had been recently and rapidly growing in
the South,--men avowedly and aggressively pro-slavery. Mr. Dixon
was the first to strike an open blow against the Missouri Compromise.
Mr. Clay had been honorably identified with the pacific work of
1820, and throughout his life believed that it had been effectual
in allaying the strife which in his judgment had endangered the
Union. It was an alarming fact that his own successor in the Senate
--less than two years after Mr. Clay's death--was the first to
assail his work and to re-open a controversy which was not to cease
till a continent was drenched in blood. Mr. Dixon made no concealment
of his motive and his purpose, declaring that he wished the
restriction removed because he was a pro-slavery man. He gave
notice early in January, 1854, that when the bill to organize the
Territory of Nebraska should come before the Senate, he would move
that "the Missouri Compromise be repealed, and that the citizens
of the several States shall be at liberty to take and hold their
slaves within any of the Territories." It was very soon found that
this was not a capricious movement by Mr. Dixon alone, but that
behind him there was a settled determination on the part of the
pro-slavery men to break down the ancient barrier and to remove
the honored landmark of 1820.
The Senate had a large Democratic majority, and there was probably
not one among them all who had not in the Presidential contest of
1852 publicly and solemnly vowed that the Compromise measures of
1850 were a final settlement of the slavery question, not in any
event, nor upon any pretext, to be disturbed. It was specially
embarrassing and perilous for Northern senators to violate pledges
so recently made, so frequently repeated. It much resembled the
breaking of a personal promise, and seemed to the mass of people
in the free State to be a gross breach of national honor. To escape
the sharp edge of condemnation, sure to follow such a transaction,
a pretense was put forth that the Compromise of 1820 was in conflict
with the Compromise of 1850, and that it was necessary to repeal
the former in order that the doctrine of non-intervention with
slavery in the Territories should become the recognized policy for
all the public domain of the United States. Mr. Douglas was the
first to adopt this construction. Indeed, to him may fairly be
ascribed the credit or the discredit of inventing it. He had a
strong hold on the South, and in his Congressional life had steadily
voted on the pro-slavery side of all public questions. But he
instinctively foresaw that his political future would be endangered
by advocating the repeal of the Missouri Compromise on the basis
and for the reason announced by Mr. Dixon. Hence the resort to
the doctrine of non-intervention under which the South should get
all they wished by having the right to carry their slaves into the
territory, and the North could be conciliated by the presentation
of another final settlement of all issues which threatened the
perpetuity of the Union.
Instead of the single Territory of Nebraska, Mr. Douglas reported
a measure to organize both Kansas and Nebraska; and in one of the
sections of the bill the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was declared
to be inoperative and void, because "inconsistent with the principle
of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and
Territories as recognized by the Compromise measures of 1850."
The bill further declared that "its true intent and meaning was
not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, and not to
exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." The North
was fairly stunned by the proposition made by Mr. Douglas. Had he
proposed to abolish the Constitution itself the surprise could
scarcely have been greater. The acting generation had grown to
manhood with profound respect and even reverence for the Missouri
Compromise, and had come to regard it almost as sacredly as though
it were part of the organic law of the Republic. If a Southern
man talked of its repeal it was regarded as the mere bravado of an
extremist. But now a Northern senator of remarkable ability, a
party leader, a candidate for the Presidency, had reported the
measure, and made it a test of Democratic faith, of administration
fealty. The contest that followed was severe and prolonged. The
bill was before Congress for a period of four months, and was
finally forced through to the utter destruction of good faith
between the sections. More than forty Democratic representatives
from the North flatly defied party discipline and voted against
the repeal. The Democratic representatives from the slave States
were consolidated in its favor, with the exception of John Millson,
an able member from Virginia, and the venerable Thomas H. Benton
of Missouri.
REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
After Colonel Benton's thirty years' service in the Senate had
terminated, the city of St. Louis sent him to the House in the autumn
of 1852. He had entered the Senate when Missouri came into the
Union as the result of the Compromise of 1820. He had remained
there until after the Compromise of 1850 was adopted. He denounced
the proceeding of Douglas with unsparing severity, and gave his
best efforts, but in vain, to defeat the bill. He pointed out the
fact that the original Compromise had been forced upon the North
by the South, and that the present proposition to repeal it had
been initiated "without a memorial, without a petition, without a
request from any human being. It was simply and only a contrivance
of political leaders, who were using the institution of slavery as
a weapon, and rushing the country forward to excitements and
conflicts in which there was no profit to either section, and
possibly great harm to both." Colonel Benton belonged to a class
of Southern Democrats who were passing away,--of whom he, indeed,
was the last in conspicuous stature. He represented the Democracy
of Andrew Jackson and of Nathaniel Macon,--not the Democracy of
Mr. Calhoun. He placed the value of the Union above the value of
slavery, and was a relentless foe to all who plotted against the
integrity of the government. But his day was past, his power was
broken, his influence was gone. Even in his own State he had been
beaten, and David R. Atchison installed as leader of the Democratic
party. His efforts were vain, his protest unheard; and amid the
sorrow and gloom of thinking men, and the riotous rejoicings of
those who could not measure the evil of their work, the Douglas
Bill was passed. On the thirtieth of May, 1854, the wise and
patriotic Compromise of March 6, 1820, was declared to be at an
end, and the advocates and the opponents of slavery were invited
to a trial of strength on the public domain of the United States.
No previous anti-slavery excitement bore any comparison with that
which spread over the North as the discussion progressed, and
especially after the bill became a law. It did not merely call
forth opposition; it produced almost a frenzy of wrath on the part
of thousands and tens of thousands in both the old parties, who
had never before taken any part whatever in anti-slavery agitation.
So conservative a statesman as Edward Everett, who had succeeded
John Davis as senator from Massachusetts, pointed out the fallacy
not to say the falsehood of the plea that the Compromise measures
of 1850 required or involved this legislation. This plea was an
afterthought, a pretense, contradicted by the discussion of 1850
in its entire length and breadth. In the North, conservative men
felt that no compromise could acquire weight or sanction or
sacredness, if one that had stood for a whole generation could be
brushed aside by partisan caprice or by the demands of sectional
necessity. The popular fury was further stimulated by the fact
that from the territory included in the Louisiana purchase, three
slave States had been added to the Union, and as yet only one free
State; and that the solemn guaranty securing all the domain north
of 36 deg. 30' was now to be trodden under foot when its operation was
likely to prove hostile to slavery and favorable to freedom. From
the beginning of the government the slave-holding interest had
secured the advantage in the number of States formed from territory
added to the original Union. The South had Louisiana, Arkansas,
and Missouri out of the purchase from France in 1803, Florida from
the purchase from Spain in 1819, and Texas, with its possibility
of being divided into four additional States, from the annexation
of 1845. The North had only Iowa from the Louisiana purchase and
California from the territory ceded by Mexico. The North would
not stop to consider its prospective advantages in the territory
yet to be settled, while the South could see nothing else. The
South realized that although it had secured five States and the
North only two, Southern territory was exhausted, while the creation
of free States in the North-West had just begun. Stripped of all
the disguises with which it was surrounded by the specious cry of
non-intervention by Congress, the majority in the North came to
see that it was in reality nothing but a struggle between the slave
States and the free States, growing more and more intense and more
and more dangerous day by day.
REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
The most striking result in the political field, produced by the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was the utter destruction of
the Whig party. Had the Southern Whigs in Congress maintained the
sacredness of the work of 1820, the party throughout the country
would have been able to make a sturdy contest, notwithstanding the
crushing defeat of Scott two years before. Not improbably in the
peculiar state of public opinion, the Whigs, by maintaining the
Compromise, might have been able to carry the Presidential election
of 1856. But with the exception of John Bell in the Senate and
seven members of the House, the entire Whig party of the South
joined the Democrats in repealing the Compromise. Of these seven,
Emerson Etheridge of Tennessee and Theodore G. Hunt of Louisiana
deserve especial and honorable mention for the courage with which
they maintained their position. But when John M. Clayton of
Delaware, who had voted to prohibit slavery in all the Territories,
now voted to strike down the only legal barrier to its extension;
when Badger of North Carolina, who had been the very soul of
conservatism, now joined in the wild cry of the pro-slavery Democrats;
when James Alfred Pearce of Maryland and James C. Jones of Tennessee
united with Jefferson Davis, the Whig party of the South ceased to
exist. Indeed, before this final blow large numbers of Southern
Whigs had gone over to the Democracy. Toombs and Stephens and
Judah P. Benjamin had been among the foremost supporters of Pierce,
and had been specially influential in consolidating the South in
his favor. But the great body of Whigs both in the South and in
the North did not lose hope of a strong re-organization of their
old party until the destruction of the Missouri Compromise had been
effected. That was seen and felt by all to be the end.
Thenceforward new alliances were rapidly formed. In the South
those Whigs who, though still unwilling to profess an anti-slavery
creed, would not unite with the Democrats, were re-organized under
the name of the American party, with Humphrey Marshall, Henry Winter
Davis, Horace Maynard, and men of that class, for leaders. This
party was founded on proscription of foreigners, and with special
hostility to the Roman-Catholic Church. It had a fitful and feverish
success, and in 1845-5, under the name of _Know-Nothings_, enrolled
tens of thousands in secret lodges. But its creed was narrow, its
principles were illiberal, and its methods of procedure boyish and
undignified. The great body of thinking men in the North saw that
the real contest impending was against slavery and not against
naturalization laws and ecclesiastical dogmas. The Know-Nothings,
therefore, speedily disappeared, and a new party sprang into
existence composed of anti-slavery Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats.
The latter infused into the ranks of the new organization a spirit
and an energy which Whig traditions could never inspire. The same
name was not at once adopted in all the free States in 1854, but
by the ensuing year there was a general recognition throughout the
North that all who intended to make a serious fight against the
pro-slavery Democracy would unite under the flag of the Republican
party. In its very first effort, without compact organization,
without discipline, it rallied the anti-slavery sentiment so
successfully as to carry nearly all the free States and to secure
a plurality of the members of the House of Representatives. The
indignation of the people knew no bounds. Old political landmarks
disappeared, and party prejudices of three generations were swept
aside in a day. With such success in the outset, the Republicans
prepared for a vigorous struggle in the approaching Presidential
election.
The anti-slavery development of the North was not more intense than
the pro-slavery development of the South. Every other issue was
merged in the one absorbing demand by Southern slave-holders for
what they sincerely believed to be their rights in the Territories.
It was not viewed on either side as an ordinary political contest.
It was felt to be a question not of expediency but of morality,
not of policy but of honor. It did not merely enlist men. Women
took large part in the agitation. It did not end with absorbing
the laity. The clergy were as profoundly concerned. The power of
the Church on both sides of the dividing-line was used with great
effect in shaping public opinion and directing political action.
The Missouri Compromise was repealed in May. Before the end of
the year a large majority of the people of the North and a large
majority of the people of the South were distinctly arrayed against
each other on a question which touched the interest, the pride,
the conscience, and the religion of all who were concerned in the
controversy. Had either side been insincere there would have been
voluntary yielding or enforced adjustment. But each felt itself
to be altogether in the right and its opponent altogether in the
wrong. Thus they stood confronting each other at the close of the
year 1854.
It was soon perceived by all, as the sagacious had seen from the
first, that the Missouri Compromise had not been repealed merely
to exhibit unity in the scope of the United-States statutes respecting
slavery in the Territories. This was the euphuistic plea of those
Northern senators and representatives who had given dire offense
to their constituents by voting for it. It was the clever artifice
of Douglas which suggested that construction. It was a deception,
and it was contradicted and exposed by the logic of argument in
the North and by the logic of action in the South. No double-
dealing was attempted by the Southern men. They understood the
question perfectly and left the apologies and explanations to
Northern men, who were hard pressed by anti-slavery constituents.
Southern men knew that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave
them a privilege which they had not before enjoyed,--the privilege
of settling with their slaves on the rich plains and in the fertile
valleys that stretched westward from the Missouri River. In
maintaining this privilege, they felt sure of aid from the Executive
of the United States, and they had the fullest confidence that in
any legal controversy the Federal judiciary would be on their side.
THE SOUTHERN STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS.
Thus panoplied they made a desperate contest for the possession of
Kansas. They had found that all the crops grown in Missouri by
slave labor could be as profitably cultivated in Kansas. Securing
Kansas, they would gain more than the mere material advantage of
an enlarged field for slave labor. New Mexico at that time included
all of Arizona; Utah included all of Nevada; Kansas, as organized,
absorbed a large part of what is now Colorado, stretched along the
eastern and northern boundary of New Mexico, and, crossing the
Rocky Mountains, reached the confines of Utah. If Kansas could be
made a slave State it would control New Mexico and Utah, and the
South could again be placed in a position of political equality if
not of command. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had shown
them for the first time that they could absolutely consolidate the
Southern vote in Congress in defense of slavery, regardless of
differences on all other issues. But this power was of no avail,
unless they could regain their equality in the Senate which had
been lost by what they considered the mishap of California's
admission. While Clay and Benton were in the Senate with their
old reverence for the Union and their desire for the ultimate
extinction of slavery, California could neither be kept out nor
divided on the line of 36 deg. 30'. But the new South, the South of
Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens, of Robert Toombs and
Judah P. Benjamin, of James M. Mason and John C. Breckinridge, had
made new advances, was inspired by new ambitions, and was determined
upon the consolidation of sectional power. The one supreme need
was another slave State. If this could be acquired they felt
assured that so long as the Union should exist no free State could
be admitted without the corresponding admission of another slave
State. They would perhaps have been disappointed. Possibly they
did not give sufficient heed to the influences which were steadily
working against slavery in such States as Delaware and Maryland,
threatening desertion in the rear, while the defenders of slavery
were battling at the front. They argued, however, and not unnaturally,
that prejudice can hold a long contest with principle, and that in
the general uprising of the South the tendency of all their old
allies would be to remain firm. They reckoned that States with
few slaves would continue to stand for Southern institutions as
stubbornly as States with many slaves. In all the States of the
South emancipation had been made difficult, and free negroes were
tolerated, if at all, with great reluctance and with constant
protest.
The struggle for Kansas was therefore to be maintained and possession
secured at all hazards. Although, as the Southern leaders realized,
the free States had flanked them by the admission of California
with an anti-slavery constitution, the Southern acquisition of
Kansas would pierce the very centre of the army of freedom, and
would enable the South thenceforth to dictate terms to the North.
Instead of the line of 36 deg. 30', upon which they had so frequently
offered to compromise, as a permanent continental division, they
would have carried the northern boundary of slave territory to the
40th parallel of latitude and even beyond. They slave States in
pursuing this policy were directed by men who had other designs
than those which lay on the surface. Since the struggle of 1850
the dissolution of the Union had been in the minds of many Southern
leaders, and, as the older class of statesmen passed away, this
design grew and strengthened until it became a fixed policy. They
felt that when the time came to strike, it was of the first importance
that they should have support and popular strength beyond the
Mississippi. California, they were confident, could be carried in
their interest, if they could but plant supporting colonies between
the Missouri and the Sierras. The Democratic party was dominant
in the State, and the Democracy was of the type personated by
William M. Gwin. Both her senators voted for the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, and stood by the extremists of the South as
steadily as if California bordered on the Gulf of Mexico. Dissolution
of the Union on the scale thus projected would, as the authors of
the scheme persuaded themselves, be certain of success. From the
Mississippi to the Missouri they would carry the new confederacy
to the southern line of Iowa. From the Missouri to the line of
Utah they would have the 40th degree of latitude; from Utah westward
they would have the 42d parallel, leaving the line of Oregon as
the southern boundary of the United States on the Pacific.
THE SOUTHERN STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS.
This policy was not absolute but alternative. If the slave-holders
could maintain their supremacy in the Union, they would prefer to
remain. If they were to be outvoted and, as they thought, outraged
by free-State majorities, then they would break up the government
and form a confederacy of their own. To make such a confederacy
effective, they must not take from the Union a relatively small
section, but must divide it from ocean to ocean. They could not
acquire a majority of the total population, but they aimed to secure
by far the larger share of the vast domain comprised in the United
States. The design was audacious, but from the stand-point of the
men who were committed to it, it was not illogical. Their entire
industrial system was founded upon an institution which was bitterly
opposed in the free States. They could see no way, and they no
longer desired to see a way, by which they might rid themselves of
the servile labor which was at once their strength and their
weakness. To abandon the institution was to sacrifice four thousand
millions of property specially protected by law. It was for the
existing generation of the governing class in the South to vote
themselves into bankruptcy and penury. Far beyond this, it was in
their judgment to blight their land with ignorance and indolence,
to be followed by crime and anarchy. Their point of view was so
radically different from that held by a large number of Northern
people that it left no common ground for action,--scarcely, indeed,
an opportunity for reasoning together. In the South they saw and
felt their danger, and they determined at all hazards to defend
themselves against policies which involved the total destruction
of their social and industrial fabric. They were not mere malcontents.
They were not pretenders. They did not aim at small things. They
had ability and they had courage. They had determined upon mastery
within the Union, or a Continental Empire outside of it.
While the South had thus resolved to acquire control of the large
Territory of Kansas, the North had equally resolved to save it to
freedom. The strife that ensued upon the fertile plains beyond
the Missouri might almost be regarded as the opening battle of the
civil war. The proximity of a slave State gave to the South an
obvious advantage at the beginning of the contest. Many of the
Northern emigrants were from New England, and the distance they
were compelled to travel exceeded two thousand miles. There were
no railroads across Iowa, none across Missouri. But despite all
impediments and all discouragements, the free-State emigrants,
stimulated by anti-slavery societies organized for the purpose,
far outnumbered those from the slave States. Had the vexed question
in the Territory been left to actual settlers it would have been
at once decided adversely to slavery. But the neighboring inhabitants
of Missouri, as the first election approached, invaded the Territory
in large numbers, and, with boisterous disturbance and threats of
violence, seized the polls, fraudulently elected a pro-slavery
Legislature, and chose one of their leaders named Whitfield as
delegate to Congress. Over six thousand votes were polled, of
which some eight hundred only were cast by actual settlers. There
were about three thousand legal voters in the Territory. The total
population was somewhat in excess of eight thousand, and there were
between two and three hundred slaves. The governor of the Territory,
Andrew H. Reeder, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, tried faithfully
and earnestly to arrest the progress of fraud and violence; but he
was removed by President Pierce, and Wilson Shannon of Ohio was
sent out in his stead. The free-State settlers, defrauded at the
regular election, organized an independent movement and chose
Governor Reeder their delegate to Congress to contest the seat of
Whitfield. These events, rapidly following each other, caused
great indignation throughout the country, in the midst of which
the Thirty-fourth Congress assembled in December, 1855. After a
prolonged struggle, Nathaniel P. Banks was chosen Speaker over
William Aiken. It was a significant circumstance, noted at the
time, that the successful candidate came from Massachusetts, and
the defeated one from South Carolina. It was a still more ominous
fact that Banks was chosen by votes wholly from the free States,
and that every vote from the slave States was given to Mr. Aiken,
except that of Mr. Cullen of Delaware, and that of Henry Winter
Davis of Maryland, who declined to vote for either candidate. It
was the first instance in the history of the government in which
a candidate for Speaker had been chosen without support from both
sections. It was a distinctive victory of the free States over
the consolidated power of the slave States. It marked an epoch.
CANVASS FOR THE PRESIDENCY.
The year 1856 opened with this critical, this unprecedented condition
of affairs. In all classes there was deep excitement. With
thoughtful men, both North and South, there was serious solicitude.
The country approached the strife of another Presidential election
with the consciences of men thoroughly aroused, with their passions
profoundly stirred. Three parties were coming into the field, and
it seemed impossible that any candidate could secure the approval
of a majority of the voters in the Union. In the Democratic ranks
there was angry contention. President Pierce, who had risked every
thing for the South, and had received unmeasured obloquy in the
North, was naturally anxious that his administration should be
approved by his own party. With all the patronage at his command,
he vigorously sought a renomination. But the party desired victory,
and they feared a contest which involved an approval of the
President's recreancy to solemn pledges voluntarily given. He had
been inaugurated with the applause and confidence of a nation. He
was sustained in the end by a helpless faction of a disorganized
party.
The distinguished secretary of State suffered with the President.
Mr. Marcy had personally disapproved the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, but he made no opposition, and the people held him
equally if not doubly guilty. It was said at the time that New-
York friends urged him to save his high reputation by resigning
his seat in the cabinet. But he remained, in the delusive hope
that he should receive credit for the evil he might prevent. He
was pertinently reminded that the evil he might prevent would never
be known, whereas the evil to which he consented would be read of
all men. New York had hopelessly revolted from Democratic control,
and Mr. Marcy's name was not presented as a Presidential candidate,
though he was at that time the ablest statesman of the Democratic
party. Mr. Douglas was also unavailable. He had gained great
popularity in the South by his course in repealing the Missouri
Compromise, but he had been visited with signal condemnation in
the North. His own State, always Democratic, which had stood firmly
for the party even in the overthrow of 1840, had now failed to
sustain him,--had, indeed, pointedly rebuked him by choosing an
opposition Legislature and sending Lyman Trumbull, then an anti-
slavery Republican, as his colleague in the Senate. General Cass
was seventy-four years old, and he was under the same condemnation
with Pierce and Marcy and Douglas. He had voted to repeal the
Missouri Compromise, and Michigan, which had never before faltered
in his support, now turned against him and embittered his declining
years by an expression of popular disapproval, which could not have
been more emphatic.
The candidates urged for the nomination were all from the North.
By a tacit but general understanding, the South repressed the
ambition of its leaders and refused to present any one of the
prominent statesmen from that section. Southern men designed to
put the North to a test, and they wished to give Northern Democrats
every possible advantage in waging a waging a warfare in which the
fruits of victory were to be wholly enjoyed by the South. If they
had wished it, they could have nominated a Southern candidate who
was at that moment far stronger than any other man in the Democratic
party. General Sam Houston had a personal history as romantic as
that of an ancient crusader. He was a native of Virginia, a
representative in Congress from Tennessee, and Governor of that
State before he was thirty-five. He was the intimate and trusted
friend of Jackson. Having resigned his governorship on account of
domestic trouble, he fled from civilized life, joined the Indians
of the Western plains, roved with them for years, adopted their
habits, and was made chief of a tribe. Returning to association
with white men, he emigrated to Texas and led the revolt against
Mexico, fought battles and was victorious, organized a new republic
and was made its President. Then he turned to his native land,
bearing in his hand the gift of a great dominion. Once more under
the Union flag, he sat in the Capitol as a senator of the United
States from Texas. At threescore years he was still in the full
vigor of life. Always a member of the Democratic party he was a
devoted adherent of the Union, and his love for it had but increased
in exile. He stood by Mr. Clay against the Southern Democrats in
the angry contest of 1850, declaring that "if the Union must be
dismembered" he "prayed God that its ruins might be the monument
of his own grave." He "desired no epitaph to tell that he survived
it." Against the madness of repealing the Missouri Compromise he
entered a protest and a warning. He notified his Southern friends
that the dissolution of the Union might be involved in the dangerous
step. He alone, of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, voted
against the mischievous measure. When three thousand clergymen of
New England sent their remonstrance against the repeal, they were
fiercely attacked and denounced by Douglas and by senators from
the South. Houston vindicated their right to speak and did battle
for them with a warmth and zeal which specially commended him to
Northern sympathy. All these facts combined--his romantic history,
his unflinching steadiness of purpose, his unswerving devotion to
the Union--would have made him an irresistibly strong candidate
had he been presented. But the very sources of his strength were
the sources of his weakness. His nomination would have been a
rebuke to every man who had voted for the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, and, rather than submit to that, the Southern Democrats,
and Northern Democrats like Pierce and Douglas and Cass, would
accept defeat. Victory with Houston would be their condemnation.
But in rejecting him they lost in large degree the opportunity to
recover the strength and popularity and power of the Democratic
party which had all been forfeited by the maladministration of
Pierce.
NOMINATION OF JAMES BUCHANAN.
With Houston impracticable, other Southern candidates purposely
withheld, and all the Northern candidates in Congress or of the
administration disabled, the necessity of the situation pointed to
one man. The Democratic managers in whose hands the power lay were
not long in descrying him. Mr. Buchanan had gone to England as
minister directly after the inauguration of Pierce. He had been
absent from the country during all the troubles and the blunders
of the Democracy, and never before was an _alibi_ so potential in
acquitting a man of actual or imputed guilt. He had been a candidate
for the Presidency ever since 1844, but had not shown much strength.
He was originally a Federalist. He was somewhat cold in temperament
and austere in manners, but of upright character and blameless
life. He lacked the affability of Cass, the gracious heartiness
of Pierce, the bluff cordiality of Douglas. But he was a man of
ability, and had held high rank as a senator and as secretary of
State. Above all he had never given a vote offensive to the South.
Indeed, his Virginia friend, Henry A. Wise, boasted that his record
was as spotless as that of Calhoun.
Buchanan's hour had come. He was a necessity to the South, a
necessity to his party; and against the combined force of all the
ambitious men who sought the place, he was nominated. But he had
a severe struggle. President Pierce and Senator Douglas each made
a persistent effort. On the first ballot Buchanan received 135
votes, Pierce 122, Douglas 33. Through sixteen ballots the contest
was stubbornly maintained, Buchanan gaining steadily but slowly.
Pierce was at last withdrawn, and the convention gave Buchanan 168,
Douglas 121. No further resistance was made, and, amid acclamation
and rejoicing, Buchanan was declared to be the unanimous choice of
the convention. Major John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, a young
man of popularity and promise, was nominated for the Vice-
Presidency.
Before the nomination of Buchanan and Breckinridge another Presidential
ticket had been placed in the field. The pro-slavery section of
the American party and the ghastly remnant of the Whigs had presented
Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency, and had associated with him Andrew
Jackson Donelson of Tennessee as candidate for the Vice-Presidency.
On the engrossing question of the day Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Fillmore
did not represent antagonistic ideas, and between them there could
be no contest to arouse enthusiasm or even to enlist interest in
the North. The movement for Fillmore afforded a convenient shelter
for that large class of men who had not yet made up their minds as
to the real issue of slavery extension or slavery prohibition.
The Republican party had meanwhile been organizing and consolidating.
During the years 1854 and 1855 it had acquired control of the
governments in a majority of the free States, and it promptly called
a national convention to meet in Philadelphia in June, 1856. The
Democracy saw at once that a new and dangerous opponent was in the
field,--an opponent that stood upon principle and shunned expediency,
that brought to its standard a great host of young men, and that
won to its service a very large proportion of the talent, the
courage, and the eloquence of the North. The convention met for
a purpose and it spoke boldly. It accepted the issue as presented
by the men of the South, and it offered no compromise. In its
ranks were all shades of anti-slavery opinion,--the patient
Abolitionist, the Free-Soiler of the Buffalo platform, the Democrats
who had supported the Wilmot Proviso, the Whigs who had followed
Seward.
NOMINATION OF JOHN C. FREMONT.
There was no strife about candidates. Mr. Seward was the recognized
head of the party, but he did not desire the nomination. He agreed
with his faithful mentor, Thurlow Weed, that his time had not come,
and that his sphere of duty was still in the Senate. Salmon P.
Chase was Governor of Ohio, waiting re-election to the Senate, and,
like Seward, not anxious for a nomination where election was regarded
as improbable if not impossible. The more conservative and timid
section of the party advocated the nomination of Judge McLean of
the Supreme Court, who for many years had enjoyed a shadowy mention
for the Presidency in Whig journals of a certain type. But Judge
McLean was old and the Republican party was young. He belonged to
the past, the party was looking to the future. It demanded a more
energetic and attractive candidate, and John C. Fremont was chosen
on the first ballot. He was forty-three years of age, with a
creditable record in the Regular Army, and wide fame as a scientific
explorer in the Western mountain ranges, then the _terra incognita_
of the continent. He was a native of South Carolina, and had
married the brilliant and accomplished daughter of Colonel Benton.
Always a member of the Democratic party, he was so closely identified
with the early settlement of California that he was elected one of
her first senators. To the tinge of romance in his history were
added the attractions of a winning address and an auspicious name.
The movement in his behalf had been quietly and effectively organized
for several months preceding the convention. It had been essentially
aided if not indeed originated by the elder Francis P. Blair, who
had the skill derived from long experience in political management.
Mr. Blair was a devoted friend of Benton, had been intimate with
Jackson, and intensely hostile to Calhoun. As editor of the _Globe_,
he had exercised wide influence during the Presidential terms of
Jackson and Van Buren, but when Polk was inaugurated he was supplanted
in administration confidence by Thomas Ritchie of the State-rights'
school, who was brought from Virginia to found another paper. Mr.
Blair was a firm Union man, and, though he had never formally
withdrawn from the Democratic party, he was now ready to leave it
because of the Disunion tendencies of its Southern leaders. He
was a valuable friend to Fremont, and gave to him the full advantage
of his experience and his sagacity.
William L. Dayton of New Jersey, who had served with distinction
in the Senate, was selected for the Vice-Presidency. His principal
competitor in the only ballot which was taken was Abraham Lincoln
of Illinois. This was the first time that Mr. Lincoln was
conspicuously named outside of his own State. He had been a member
of the Thirtieth Congress, 1847-9, but being a modest man he had
so little forced himself into notice that when his name was proposed
for Vice-President, inquiries as to who he was were heard from all
parts of the convention.
The principles enunciated by the Democratic and Republican parties
on the slavery question formed the only subject for discussion
during the canvass in the free States. From the beginning no doubt
was expressed that Mr. Buchanan would find the South practically
consolidated in his favor. Electoral tickets for Fremont were not
presented in the slave States, and Fillmore's support in that
section was weakened by his obvious inability to carry any of the
free States. The canvass, therefore, rapidly narrowed to a contest
between Buchanan and Fremont in the North. The Republican Convention
had declared it to be "both the right and imperative duty of Congress
to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism,--
polygamy and slavery." The Democratic Convention had presented a
very elaborate and exhaustive series of resolutions touching the
slavery question. They indorsed the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, and recognized the "right of the people of all the
territories to form a constitution with or without domestic slavery."
The resolution was artfully constructed. Read in one way it gave
to the people of the Territories the right to determine the question
for themselves. It thus upheld the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"
which Mr. Douglas had announced as the very spirit of the Act
organizing Kansas and Nebraska. A closer analysis of the Democratic
declaration, however, showed that this "popular sovereignty" was
not to be exercised until the people of the Territory were sufficiently
numerous to form a State constitution and apply for admission to
the Union, and that meanwhile in all the Territories the slave-
holder had the right to settle and to be protected in the possession
of his peculiar species of property. In fine, the Republicans
declared in plain terms that slavery should by positive law of the
nation be excluded from the Territories. The Democrats flatly
opposed the doctrine of Congressional prohibition, but left a margin
for doubt as to the true construction of the Constitution, and of
the Act repealing the Missouri Compromise, thus enabling their
partisans to present one issue in the North, and another in the
South.
The Democratic candidate in his letter of acceptance did not seek
to resolve the mystery of the platform, but left the question just
as he found it in the resolutions of the convention. The result
was that Northern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the belief, so
energetically urged by Mr. Douglas, that the people of the Territories
had the right to determine the slavery question for themselves at
any time. The Southern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the full
faith that slavery was to be protected in the Territories until a
State government should be formed and admission to the Union secured.
The Democratic doctrine of the North and the Democratic doctrine
of the South were, therefore, in logic and in fact, irreconcilably
hostile. By the one, slavery could never enter a Territory unless
the inhabitants thereof desired and approved it. By the other
slavery had a foot-hold in the Territories under the Constitution
of the United States, and could not be dislodged or disturbed by
the inhabitants of a Territory even though ninety-nine out of every
hundred were opposed to it. In the Territorial Legislatures laws
might be passed to protect slavery but not to exclude it. From
such contradictory constructions in the same party, conflicts were
certain to arise.
MR. BUCHANAN ELECTED PRESIDENT.
The Democrats of the North sought, not unsuccessfully, to avoid
the slavery question altogether. They urged other considerations
upon popular attention. Mr. Buchanan was presented as a National
candidate, supported by troops of friends in every State of the
Union. Fremont was denounced as a sectional candidate, whose
election by Northern votes on an anti-slavery platform would dissolve
the Union. This incessant cry exerted a wide influence in the
North and was especially powerful in commercial circles. But in
spite of it, Fremont gained rapidly in the free States. The
condition of affairs in Kansas imparted to his supporters a desperate
energy, based on principle and roused to anger. An elaborate and
exciting speech on the "Crime against Kansas," by Senator Sumner,
was followed by an assault from Preston S. Brooks, a member of the
House from South Carolina, which seriously injured Mr. Sumner, and
sensibly increased the exasperation of the North. When a resolution
of the House to expel Brooks was under consideration, he boasted
that "a blow struck by him then would be followed by a revolution."
This but added fuel to a Northern flame already burning to white-
heat. Votes by tens of thousands declared that they did not desire
a Union which was held together by the forbearance or permission
of any man or body of men, and they welcomed a test of any character
that should determine the supremacy of the Constitution and the
strength of the government.
The canvass grew in animation and earnestness to the end, the
Republicans gaining strength before the people of the North every
day. But Buchanan's election was not a surprise. Indeed, it had
been generally expected. He received the electoral votes of every
Southern State except Maryland, which pronounced for Fillmore. In
the North, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California
voted for Buchanan. The other eleven free States, beginning with
Maine and ending with Iowa, declared for Fremont. The popular vote
was for Buchanan 1,838,169, Fremont 1,341,264, Fillmore 874,534.
With the people, therefore, Mr. Buchanan was in a minority, the
combined opposition outnumbering his vote by nearly four hundred
thousand.
The Republicans, far from being discouraged, felt and acted as men
who had won the battle. Indeed, the moral triumph was theirs, and
they believed that the actual victory at the polls was only postponed.
The Democrats were mortified and astounded by the large popular
vote against them. The loss of New York and Ohio, the narrow escape
from defeat in Pennsylvania, the rebuke of Michigan to their veteran
leader General Cass, intensified by the choice of Chandler as his
successor in the Senate, the absolute consolidation of New England
against them, all tended to humiliate and discourage the party.
They had lost ten States which General Pierce had carried in 1852,
and they had a watchful, determined foe in the field, eager for
another trial of strength. The issue was made, the lines of battles
were drawn. Freedom or slavery in the Territories was to be fought
to the end, without flinching, and without compromise.
Mr. Buchanan came to the Presidency under very different auspices
from those which had attended the inauguration of President Pierce.
The intervening four years had written important chapters in the
history of the slavery contest. In 1853 there was no organized
opposition that could command even a respectable minority in a
single State. In 1857 a party distinctly and unequivocally pledged
to resist the extension of slavery into free territory had control
of eleven free States and was hotly contesting the possession of
the others. The distinct and avowed marshalling of a solid North
against a solid South had begun, and the result of the Presidential
election of 1856 settled nothing except that a mightier struggle
was in the future.
DECISION IN THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT.
After Buchanan's inauguration events developed rapidly. The
Democrats had carried the House, and therefore had control of every
department of the government. The effort to force slavery upon
Kansas was resumed with increased zeal. Strafford's policy of
"thorough" was not more resolute or more absolute than that now
adopted by the Southern leaders with a new lease of power confirmed
to them by the result of the election. The Supreme Court came to
their aid, and, not long after the new administration was installed,
delivered their famous decision in the Dred Scott case. This case
involved the freedom of a single family that had been held as
slaves, but it gave occasion to the Court for an exhaustive treatment
of the political question which was engrossing public attention.
The conclusion of the best legal minds of the country was that the
opinion of the Court went far beyond the real question at issue,
and that many of its most important points were to be regarded as
_obiter dicta_. The Court declared that the Act of Congress
prohibiting slavery in the Territories north of 36 deg. 30' was
unconstitutional and void. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise
was therefore approved by the highest judicial tribunal. Not only
was the repeal approved, its re-enactment was forbidden. No matter
how large a majority might be returned to Congress in favor of
again setting up the old landmark which had stood in peace and in
honor for thirty-four years, with the sanction of all departments
of the government, the Supreme Court had issued an edict that it
could not be done. The Court had declared that slavery was as much
entitled to protection on the national domain as any other species
of property, and that it was unconstitutional for Congress to decree
freedom for a Territory of the United States. The pro-slavery
interest had apparently won a great triumph. They naturally claimed
that the whole question was settled in their favor. But in fact
the decision of the Court had only rendered the contest more intense
and more bitter. It was received throughout the North with scorn
and indignation. It entered at once into the political discussions
of the people, and remained there until, with all other issues on
the slavery question, it was remanded to the arbitrament of war.
Five of the judges--an absolute majority of the court--were Southern
men, and had always been partisan Democrats of the State-rights'
school. People at once remembered that every other class of lawyers
in the South had for thirty years been rigidly excluded from the
bench. John J. Crittenden had been nominated and rejected by a
Democratic Senate. George E. Badger of North Carolina had shared
the same fate. They were followers of Clay, and not to be trusted
by the new South in any exigency where the interests of slavery
and the perpetuity of the Union should come in conflict. Instead,
therefore, of strengthening the Democratic party, the whole effect
of the Dred Scott decision was to develop a more determined type
of anti-slavery agitation. This tendency was promoted by the lucid
and exhaustive opinion of Benjamin R. Curtis, one of the two
dissenting judges. Judge Curtis was not a Republican. He had been
a Whig of the most conservative type, appointed to the bench by
President Fillmore through the influence of Mr. Webster and the
advice of Rufus Choate. In legal learning, and in dignity and
purity of character, he was unsurpassed. His opinion became,
therefore, of inestimable value to the cause of freedom. It
represented the well-settled conclusion of the most learned jurists,
was in harmony with the enlightened conscience of the North, and
gave a powerful rallying-cry to the opponents of slavery. It upheld
with unanswerable arguments the absolute right of Congress to
prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the Union. Every judge
delivered his views separately, but the dissenting opinion of Judge
McLean, as well as of the six who sustained the views of the Chief
Justice, arrested but a small share of public attention. The
argument for the South had been made by the venerable and learned
Chief Justice. The argument for the North had been made by Justice
Curtis. Perhaps in the whole history of judicial decisions no two
opinions were ever so widely read by the mass of people outside
the legal profession.
DECISION IN THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT.
It was popularly believed that the whole case was made up in order
to afford an opportunity for the political opinions delivered by
the Court. This was an extreme view not justified by the facts.
But in the judgment of many conservative men there was a delay in
rendering the decision which had its origin in motives that should
not have influenced a judicial tribunal. The purport and scope of
the decision were undoubtedly known to President Pierce before the
end of his term, and Mr. Buchanan imprudently announced in his
Inaugural address that "the point of time when the people of a
Territory can decide the question of slavery for themselves" will
"be speedily and finally settled by the Supreme Court, before whom
it is now pending." How Mr. Buchanan could know, or how he was
entitled to know, that a question not directly or necessarily
involved in a case pending before the Supreme Court "would be
speedily and finally settled" became a subject of popular inquiry.
Anti-slavery speakers and anti-slavery papers indulged in severe
criticism both of Mr. Buchanan and the Court, declaring that the
independence of the co-ordinate branches of the government was
dangerously invaded when the Executive was privately advised of a
judicial decision in advance of its delivery by the Court. William
Pitt Fessenden, who always spoke with precision and never with
passion, asserted in the Senate that the Court, after hearing the
argument, had reserved its judgment until the Presidential election
was decided. He avowed his belief that Mr. Buchanan would have
been defeated if the decision had not been withheld, and that in
the event of Fremont's election "we should never have heard of a
doctrine so utterly at variance with all truth, so utterly destitute
of all legal logic, so founded on error, and so unsupported by any
thing resembling argument."
Mr. Lincoln, whose singular powers were beginning to be appreciated,
severely attacked the decision in a public speech in Illinois, not
merely for its doctrine, but for the mode in which the decision
had been brought about, and the obvious political intent of the
judges. He showed how the Kansas-Nebraska Act left the people of
the Territories perfectly free to settle the slavery question for
themselves, "subject only to the Constitution of the United States!"
That qualification he said was "the exactly fitted niche for the
Dred Scott decision to come in and declare the perfect freedom to
be no freedom at all." He then gave a humorous illustration by
asking in homely but telling phrase, "if we saw a lot of framed
timbers gotten out at different times and places by different
workmen,--Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James,--and if we saw
these timbers joined together and exactly make the frame of a house,
with tenons and mortises all fitting, what is the conclusion? We
find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and
Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and
all worked upon a common plan before the first blow was struck."
This quaint mode of arraigning the two President, the Chief Justice
and Senator Douglas, was extraordinarily effective with the masses.
In a single paragraph, humorously expressed, he had framed an
indictment against four men upon which he lived to secure a conviction
before the jury of the American people.
The decision was rendered especially odious throughout the North
by the use of certain unfortunate expressions which in the heat of
the hour were somewhat distorted by the anti-slavery press, and
made to appear unwarrantably offensive. But there was no
misrepresentation and no misunderstanding of the essential position
of the Court on the political question. It was unmistakably held
that ownership in slaves was as much entitled to protection under
the Constitution in the Territories of the United States as any
other species of property, and that Congress possessed no power
over the subject except the power to legislate in aid of slavery.
The decision was at war with the practice and traditions of the
government from its foundation, and set aside the matured convictions
of two generations of conservative statesmen from the South as well
as from the North. It proved injurious to the Court, which
thenceforward was assailed most bitterly in the North and defended
with intemperate zeal in the South. Personally upright and honorable
as the judges were individually known to be, there was a conviction
in the minds of a majority of Northern people, that on all issues
affecting the institution of slavery they were unable to deliver
a just judgment; that an Abolitionist was, in their sight, the
chief of sinners, deserving to be suppressed by law; that the anti-
slavery agitation was conducted, according to their belief, by two
classes,--fanatics and knaves,--both of whom should be promptly
dealt with; the fanatics in strait-jackets and the knaves at the
cart's tail.
Chief Justice Taney, who delivered the opinion which proved so
obnoxious throughout the North, was not only a man of great
attainments, but was singularly pure and upright in his life and
conversation. Had his personal character been less exalted, or
his legal learning less eminent, there would have been less surprise
and less indignation. But the same qualities which rendered his
judgment of apparent value to the South, called out intense hostility
in the North. The lapse of years, however, cools the passions and
tempers the judgment. It has brought many anti-slavery men to see
that an unmerited share of the obloquy properly attaching to the
decision has been visited on the Chief Justice, and that it was
unfair to place him under such condemnation, while two associate
Justices in the North, Grier and Nelson, joined in the decision
without incurring special censure, and lived in honor and veneration
to the end of their judicial careers. While, therefore, time has
in no degree abated Northern hostility to the Dred Scott decision,
it has thrown a more generous light upon the character and action
of the eminent Chief Justice who pronounced it. More allowance is
made for the excitement and for what he believed to be the exigency
of the hour, for the sentiments in which he had been educated, for
the force of association, and for his genuine belief that he was
doing a valuable work towards the preservation of the Union. His
views were held by millions of people around him, and he was swept
along by a current which with so many had proved irresistible.
Coming to the Bench from Jackson's Cabinet, fresh from the angry
controversies of that partisan era, he had proved a most acceptable
and impartial judge, earning renown and escaping censure until he
dealt directly with the question of slavery. Whatever harm he may
have done in that decision was speedily overruled by war, and the
country can now contemplate a venerable jurist, in robes that were
never soiled by corruption, leading a long life of labor and
sacrifice, and achieving a fame in his profession second only to
that of Marshall.
CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY AND MR. SUMNER.
The aversion with which the extreme anti-slavery men regarded Chief
Justice Taney was strikingly exhibited during the session of Congress
following his death. The customary mark of respect in providing
a marble bust of the deceased to be placed in the Supreme Court
room was ordered by the House without comment or objection. In
the Senate the bill was regularly reported from the Judiciary
Committee by the chairman, Mr. Trumbull of Illinois, who was at
that time a recognized leader in the Republican party. The
proposition to pay respect to the memory of the judge who had
pronounced the Dred Scott decision was at once savagely attacked
by Mr. Sumner. Mr. Trumbull in reply warmly defended the character
of the Chief Justice, declaring that he "had added reputation to
the Judiciary of the United States throughout the world, and that
he was not to be hooted down by exclamations about an emancipated
country. Suppose he did make a wrong decision. No man is infallible.
He was a great, learned, able judge."
Mr. Sumner rejoined with much temper. He said that "Taney would
be hooted down the pages of history, and that an emancipated country
would fix upon his name the stigma it deserved. He had administered
justice wickedly, had degraded the Judiciary, and had degraded the
age." Mr. Wilson followed Mr. Sumner in a somewhat impassioned
speech, denouncing the Dred Scott decision "as the greatest crime
in the judicial annals of the Republic," and declaring it to be
"the abhorrence, the scoff, the jeer, of the patriotic hearts of
America." Mr. Reverdy Johnson answered Mr. Sumner with spirit,
and pronounced an eloquent eulogium upon Judge Taney. He said,
"the senator from Massachusetts will be happy if his name shall
stand as high upon the historic page as that of the learned judge
who is now no more." Mr. Johnson directed attention to the fact
that, whether wrong or right, the Dred Scott decision was one in
which a majority of the Supreme Court had concurred, and therefore
no special odium should be attached to the name of the venerable
Chief Justice. Mr. Johnson believed the decision to be right, and
felt that his opinion on a question of law was at least entitled
to as much respect as that of either of the senators from Massachusetts,
"one of whom did not pretend to be a lawyer at all, while the other
was a lawyer for only a few months." He proceeded to vindicate
the historical accuracy of the Chief Justice, and answered Mr.
Sumner with that amplitude and readiness which Mr. Johnson displayed
in every discussion involving legal questions.
Mr. Sumner's protest was vigorously seconded by Mr. Hale of New
Hampshire and Mr. Wade of Ohio. The former said that a monument
to Taney "would give the lie to all that had been said by the
friends of justice, liberty, and down-trodden humanity," respecting
the iniquity of the Dred Scott decision. Mr. Wade violently opposed
the proposition. He avowed his belief that the "Dred Scott case
was got up to give judicial sanction to the enormous iniquity that
prevailed in every branch of our government at that period." He
declared that "the greater you make Judge Taney's legal acumen the
more you dishonor his memory by showing that he sinned against
light and knowledge." He insisted that the people of Ohio, whose
opinion he professed to represent, "would pay two thousand dollars
to hang the late Chief Justice in effigy rather than one thousand
dollars for a bust to commemorate his merits."
Mr. McDougall of California spoke in favor of the bill, and commented
on the rudeness of Mr. Sumner's speech. Mr. Carlile of West Virginia
spoke very effectively in praise of the Chief Justice. If the
decision was harsh, he said, no one was justified in attributing
it to the personal feelings or desires of the Chief Justice. It
was the law he was expounding, and he did it ably and conscientiously.
Mr. Sumner concluded the debate by a reply to Reverdy Johnson. He
said that, in listening to the senator from Maryland, he was
"reminded of a character, known to the Roman Church, who always
figures at the canonization of a saint as the _Devil's advocate_."
He added that, if he could help it, "Taney should never be recognized
as a saint by any vote of Congress." The incidents of the debate
and the names of the participants are given as affording a good
illustration of the tone and temper of the times. It was made
evident that the opponents of the bill, under Mr. Sumner's lead,
would not permit it to come to a vote. It was therefore abandoned
on the 23d of February, 1865.
HONORS TO TWO CHIEF JUSTICES.
Nine years after these proceedings, in January, 1874, the name of
another Chief Justice, who had died during the recess, came before
Congress for honor and commemoration. The Senate was still controlled
by a large Republican majority, though many changes had taken place.
All the senators who had spoken in the previous debate were gone,
except Mr. Sumner, who had meanwhile been chosen for his fourth
term, and Mr. Wilson, who had been elevated to the Vice-Presidency.
Mr. Howe of Wisconsin, a more radical Republican than Mr. Trumbull,
reported from the Judiciary Committee a bill originally proposed
by Senator Stevenson of Kentucky, paying the same tribute of respect
to Roger Brooke Taney and Salmon Portland Chase. The bill was
passed without debate and with the unanimous consent of the Senate.
Mr. Taney was appointed Chief Justice in 1836, when in his sixtieth
year. He presided over the court until his death in October, 1864,
a period of twenty-eight years. The Dred Scott decision received
no respect after Mr. Lincoln became President, and, without reversal
by the court, was utterly disregarded. When Mr. Chase became Chief
Justice, colored persons were admitted to practice in the courts
of the United States. When President Lincoln, in 1861, authorized
the denial of the writ of _habeas corpus_ to persons arrested on
a charge of treason, Chief Justice Taney delivered an opinion in
the case of John Merryman, denying the President's power to suspend
the writ, declaring that Congress only was competent to do it.
The Executive Department paid no attention to the decision, and
Congress, at the ensuing session, added its sanction to the
suspension. The Chief Justice, though loyal to the Union, was not
in sympathy with the policy or the measures of Mr. Lincoln's
administration.