Congress in the Winter of 1860-61.--The North offers Many Concessions
to the South.--Spirit of Conciliation.--Committee of Thirteen in
the Senate.--Committee of Thirty-three in the House.--Disagreement
of Senate Committee.--Propositions submitted to House Committee.--
Thomas Corwin's Measure.--Henry Winter Davis.--Justin S. Morrill--
Mr. Houston of Alabama.--Constitutional Amendment proposed by
Charles Francis Adams.--Report of the Committee of Thirty-three.--
Objectionable Measures proposed.--Minority Report by Southern
Members.--The Crittenden Compromise proposed.--Details of that
Compromise.--Mr. Adams's Double Change of Ground.--An Old Resolution
of the Massachusetts Legislature.--Mr. Webster's Criticism Pertinent.
--Various Minority Reports.--The California Members.--Washburn and
Tappan.--Amendment to the Constitution passed by the House.--By
the Senate also.--New Mexico.--The Fugitive-slave Law.--Mr. Clark
of New Hampshire.--Peace Congress.--Invited by Virginia.--Assembles
in Washington.--Peace Measures proposed.--They meet no Favor in
Congress.--Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada originated.
--Prohibition of Slavery abandoned.--Republicans in Congress do
not ask it.--Explanation required.--James S. Green of Missouri.--
His Character as a Debater.--Northern Republicans frightened at
their own Success.--Anxious for a Compromise.--Dread of Disunion.
--Northern Democrats.--Dangerous Course pursued by them.--General
Demoralization of Northern Sentiment.
While the Secession leaders were engaged in their schemes for the
disruption of the National Government and the formation of a new
confederacy, Congress was employing every effort to arrest the
Disunion tendency by making new concessions, and offering new
guaranties to the offended power of the South. If the wild
precipitation of the Southern leaders must be condemned, the
compromising course of the majority in each branch of Congress will
not escape censure,--censure for misjudgment, not for wrong intention.
The anxiety in both Senate and House to do something which should
allay the excitement in the slave-holding section served only to
develop and increase its exasperation and its resolution. A man
is never so aggressively bold as when he finds his opponent afraid
of him; and the efforts, however well meant, of the National Congress
in the winter of 1860-61 undoubtedly impressed the South with a
still further conviction of the timidity of the North, and with a
certainty that the new confederacy would be able to organize without
resistance, and to dissolve the Union without war.
COMMITTEES OF CONCILIATION.
Congress had no sooner convened in December, 1860, and received
the message of Mr. Buchanan, with its elaborate argument that the
National Government possessed no power to coerce a State, than in
each branch special committees of conciliation were appointed.
They were not so termed in the resolutions of the Senate and House,
but their mission was solely one of conciliation. They were charged
with the duty of giving extraordinary assurances that Slavery was
not to be disturbed, and of devising measures which might persuade
Southern men against the rashness on which they seemed bent. In
the Senate they raised a committee of thirteen, representing the
number of the original States of the Union. In the House the
committee was composed of thirty-three members, representing the
number of States then existing. In the Senate, Mr. Powell of
Kentucky was chairman of the committee of thirteen, which was
composed of seven Democrats, five Republicans, and the venerable
Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky, who belonged to neither party. It
contained the most eminent men in the Senate of all shades of
political opinion. In the House, Thomas Corwin was made chairman,
with a majority of Republicans of the more conservative type, a
minority of Democrats, and Mr. Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, who
held a position similar to that occupied by Mr. Crittenden in the
Senate.
The Senate committee promptly disagreed, and before the close of
December reported to the Senate their inability to come to any
conclusion. The committee of thirty-three was more fortunate, or
perhaps unfortunate, in being able to arrive at a series of
conclusions which tended only to lower the tone of Northern opinion
without in the least degree appeasing the wrath of the South. The
record of that committee is one which cannot be reviewed with pride
or satisfaction by any citizen of a State that was loyal to the
Union. Every form of compromise which could be suggested, every
concession of Northern prejudice and every surrender of Northern
pride, was urged upon the committee. The measures proposed to the
committee by members of the House were very numerous, and those
suggested by the members of the committee themselves seemed designed
to meet every complaint made by the most extreme Southern agitators.
The propositions submitted would in the aggregate fill a large
volume, but a selection from the mass will indicate the spirit
which had taken possession of Congress.
Mr. Corwin of Ohio wished a declaration from Congress that it was
"highly inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia
unless with the consent of the States of Maryland and Virginia."
Mr. Winter Davis suggested the Congress should request the States
to revise their statutes with a view to repeal all personal-liberty
bills, and further that the Fugitive-slave Law be so amended as to
secure trial by jury to the fugitive slave, not in the free State
where he was arrested, but in the slave State to which he might be
taken. Mr. Morrill of Vermont offered a resolution declaring that
all accessions of foreign territory shall hereafter be made by
treaty stipulation, and that no treaty shall be ratified until it
had received the legislative assent of two-thirds of all the States
of the Union, and that neither Congress nor any Territorial
Legislature shall pass any law establishing or prohibiting slavery
in any Territory thus acquired until it shall have sufficient
population to entitle it to admission to the Union. Mr. Houston
of Alabama urged the restitution of the Missouri line of 36 deg. 30'.
There was in the judgment of many Southern men a better opportunity
to effect an adjustment on this line of partition than upon any
other basis that had been suggested. But the plea carried with it
a national guaranty and protection of slavery on the southern side
of the line, and its effect would inevitably have been in a few
years to divide the Republic from ocean to ocean. Mr. Taylor of
Louisiana wanted the Constitution so amended that the rights of
the slave-holder in the Territories could be guarantied, and further
amended so that no person, "unless he was of the Caucasian race
and of pure and unmixed blood," should ever be allowed to vote for
any officer of the National Government.
PROPOSITIONS OF COMPROMISE.
Mr. Charles Francis Adams proposed that the Constitution of the
United States be so amended that no subsequent amendment thereto,
"having for its object any interference with slavery, shall originate
with any State that does not recognize that relation within its
own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every one of
the States composing the Union." No Southern man, during the long
agitation of the slavery questions extending from 1820 to 1860,
had ever submitted so extreme a proposition as that of Mr. Adams.
The most precious muniment of personal liberty never had such deep
embedment in the organic law of the Republic as Mr. Adams now
proposed for the protection of slavery. The well-grounded jealousy
and fear of the smaller States had originally secured a provision
that their right to equal representation in the Senate should never
be taken from them even by an amendment of the Constitution. Mr.
Adams now proposed to give an equal safeguard and protection to
the institution of slavery. Yet the proposition was opposed by
only three members of the committee of thirty-three,--Mason W.
Tappan of New Hampshire, Cadwallader C. Washburn of Wisconsin,
and William Kellogg of Illinois.
After a consideration of the whole subject, the majority of the
committee made a report embodying nearly every objectionable
proposition which had been submitted. The report included a
resolution asking the States to repeal all their personal-liberty
bills, in order that the recapture and return of fugitive slaves
should in no degree be obstructed. It included an amendment to
the Constitution as proposed by Mr. Adams. It offered to admit
New Mexico, which then embraced Arizona, immediately, with its
slave-code as adopted by the Territorial Legislature,--thus confirming
and assuring its permanent character as a slave State. It proposed
to amend the Fugitive-slave Law by providing that the right to
freedom of an alleged fugitive should be tried in the slave State
from which he was accused of fleeing, rather than in the free State
where he was seized. It proposed, according to the demand of Mr.
Toombs, that a law should be enacted in which all offenses against
slave property by persons fleeing to other States should be tried
where the offense was committed, making the slave-code, in effect,
the test of the criminality of the act,--an act which, in its
essential character, might frequently be one of charity and good
will.
These propositions had the precise effect which, in cooler moments,
their authors would have anticipated. They humiliated the North
without appeasing or satisfying the South. Five Southern members
made a minority report in which still further concessions were
demanded. They submitted what was known as the Crittenden Compromise,
demanding six amendments to the Constitution for the avowed purpose
of placing slavery under the guardianship and protection of the
National Government, and, after the example of Mr. Adams's proposed
amendment, intrenching the institution where agitation could not
disturb it, where legislation could not affect it, where amendments
to the Constitution would be powerless to touch it.
--The first amendment proposed that in "all the territory of the
United States south of the old Missouri line, either now held or
to be hereafter acquired, the slavery of the African race is
recognized as existing, not to be interfered with by Congress, but
to be protected as property by all the departments of the Territorial
Government during its continuance."
--The second amendment declared that "Congress shall have no power
to interfere with slavery even in those places under its exclusive
jurisdiction in the slave States."
--The third amendment took away from Congress the exclusive
jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, as guarantied in the
Constitution, declaring that Congress should "never interfere with
slavery in the District, except with the consent of Virginia and
Maryland, so long as it exists in the State of Virginia or Maryland,
nor without the consent of the inhabitants of the District, nor
without just compensation for the slaves. Nor shall Congress
prohibit officers of the General Government nor members of Congress
from bringing with them their slaves to the District, holding them
there during the time their duties may require them to remain, and
afterwards taking them from the District."
--The fourth amendment prohibited Congress from interfering with
the transportation of slaves from one State to another, or from
one State to any Territory south of the Missouri line, whether that
transportation be by land, by navigable river, or by the sea.
--The fifth amendment conferred upon Congress the power, and
prescribed its duty, to provide for the payment to the owner of a
fugitive slave his full value from the National Treasury, in all
cases where the marshal was prevented from arresting said fugitive
by violence or intimidation, or where the fugitive, after arrest,
was rescued by force.
--The sixth amendment provided for a perpetual existence of the
five amendments just quoted, by placing them beyond the power of
the people to change or revise--declaring that "no future amendment
to the Constitution shall ever be passed that shall affect any
provision of the five amendments just recited; that the provision
in the original Constitution which guaranties the count of three-
fifths of the slaves in the basis of representation, shall never
be changed by any amendment; that no amendment shall ever be made
which alters or impairs the original provision for the recovery of
fugitives from service; that no amendment shall be made that shall
ever permit Congress to interfere in any way with slavery in the
State where it may be permitted."
PROPOSITIONS OF COMPROMISE.
Before Mr. Corwin submitted his report, Mr. Charles Francis Adams
appears to have become disgusted with his own proposition for the
amendment of the Constitution. This disgust was caused by the
refusal of the Southern members of the committee to agree to the
declaration that "peaceful acquiescence in the election of the
Chief Magistrate, accomplished in accordance with every legal and
constitutional requirement, is the paramount duty of every good
citizen of the United States." The proposition of Mr. Adams to
this effect was amended by Mr. Millson of Virginia, who substituted
"high and imperative" for "paramount." But even in this modified
form, seven Southern members asked to be excused from voting upon
it, and Mr. Adams seems wisely to have thought that "if there could
not be agreement on a proposition so fundamental and essential as
that, it was of no use to seek any remedy for the existence of
evils by legislation of Congress." Mr. Adams, therefore, made a
report dissenting from the committee, stating that he had changed
his course, and now declined to recommend the very measures which
he had in good faith offered. This was on the 14th of January.
On the 31st of January Mr. Adams changed his course again, and
returned to the unqualified support of the measures proposed by
the committee. In his speech of that date, he asked, addressing
the South, "How stands the case, then? We offer to settle the
question finally in all of the present territory that you claim,
by giving you every chance of establishing Slavery that you have
any right to require of us. You decline to take the offer because
you fear it will do you no good. Slavery will not go there. Why
require protection where you will have nothing to protect? . . .
All you appear to desire it is for New Mexico. Nothing else is
left. Yet you will not accept New Mexico at once, because ten
years of experience have proved to you that protection has been of
no use thus far." These are somewhat extraordinary words in 1861
from a man who in 1850 had, as a Conscience Whig, declined to
support Mr. Webster for making in advance the same statements, and
for submitting arguments that were substantially identical.
During the debate, in which Mr. Adams arraigned the Disunionists
of the South with considerable power, he was somewhat embarrassed
by a Southern member who quoted resolutions which Mr. Adams had
introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1844, and which had
been passed by that body, respecting the annexation of Texas. He
had declared therein, just as Josiah Quincy had declared with
reference to the acquisition of Louisiana, "that the power to unite
an independent foreign State with the United States is not among
the powers delegated to the General Government by the Constitution
of the United States." He declared, further, that "the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between the people of
the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in
which it was understood and acceded to by them, is sincerely anxious
for its preservation; and that it is determined, as it doubts not
other States are, to submit to undelegated powers in no body of
men on earth; and that the project of the annexation of Texas,
unless resisted on the threshold, may tend to drive these States
into a dissolution of the Union." This resolution of Mr. Adams
was unfortunate in every respect for his position in the debate on
that day, since it really included and justified every constitutional
heresy entertained by Mr. Calhoun, and claimed for the State of
Massachusetts every power of secession or dissolution which was
now asserted by the Southern States.
Mr. Webster, in one of his ablest speeches (in reply to Mr. Calhoun
in February, 1833), devoted his great powers to demonstrating that
the Constitution was not "a compact," and that the people of the
States had not "acceded" to it. Mr. Adams had unfortunately used
the two words which, according to Mr. Webster, belonged only to
the lexicon of disloyalty. "If," said Mr. Webster, "in adopting
the Constitution nothing was done but _acceding to a compact_,
nothing would seem necessary in order to break it up but to _secede
from the same compact_." "Accession," as a word applied to
political association, implies coming into a league, treaty, or
confederacy. "Secession" implied departing from such league or
confederacy. Mr. Adams had further declared that the people of
Massachusetts are "faithful to the compact according to the plain
meaning and intent in which it was understood by them." But
according to Mr. Webster, and in accordance with the principles
absolutely essential to maintain a constitutional government,
Massachusetts had no part or lot in deciding the question which
Mr. Adams's resolution covered. If Massachusetts reserved to
herself the right to determine the sense in which she understood
her accession to the compact of the Federal Government, she gave
full warrant to South Carolina to determine for herself the sense
of the compact to which she acceded, and therefore justified the
action of the Southern States. Whether Texas was constitutionally
or unconstitutionally annexed to the Union was no more to be decided
by Massachusetts than the constitutionality of the prohibition of
Slavery north of the Missouri line was to be decided by South
Carolina. The position of Mr. Adams in 1844 had therefore returned
to plague its inventor in 1861, and in a certain sense to weaken
the position of the loyal States.
REPORT OF COMPROMISE COMMITTEE.
Various reports were submitted by members of the minority, of no
special significance, differing often on immaterial points. The
members from California and Oregon who represented the Breckinridge
party of the North, united in a recommendation for a general
convention to be called under the authority of the Constitution,
to propose such amendments as would heal all existing differences,
and afford sufficient guaranties to the growing interests of the
government and people. The only bold words spoken were in the able
report by Cadwallader C. Washburn of Wisconsin and Mason W. Tappan
of New Hampshire. They made an exhaustive analysis of the situation
in plain language. They reviewed ably and conclusively the report
made by Mr. Corwin for the majority of the committee, and spoke as
became men who represented the justice and the power of a great
Republic. They vindicated the conduct of the General Government,
and showed that the Union was not to be preserved by compromises
nor by sacrifice of principle. They regarded the discontent and
hostility in the South as without just cause, and intimated that
those States might purchase at a high price some valuable information
to be learned only in the school of experience. They embodied
their entire recommendations in a single resolution in which they
declared that the provisions of the Constitution were ample for
the preservation of the Union; that it needed to be obeyed rather
than amended; and that "our extrication from present difficulties
is to be looked for in efforts to preserve and protect the public
property and enforce the laws, rather than in new guaranties for
particular interests, or in compromises, or concessions to unreasonable
demands."
When the report of the committee of thirty-three came before the
House for action, the series of resolution were first tested by a
motion to lay upon the table, which was defeated by a vote of nearly
two to one; and after angry debate running through several days,
the resolutions, which were only directory in their character, were
adopted by a large majority. When the constitutional amendment was
reached, Mr. Corwin substituted for that which was originally
draughted by Mr. Adams, an amendment declaring that "no amendment
shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to
Congress the power to abolish, or interfere, within any State, with
the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held
to labor or service by the laws of said State." This was adopted
by a vote of 133 to 65. It was numbered as the thirteenth amendment
to the Federal Constitution, and would have made slavery perpetual
in the United States, so far as any influence or power of the
National Government could affect it. It intrenched slavery securely
in the organic law of the land, and elevated the privilege of the
slave-holder beyond that of the owner of any other species of
property. It received the votes of a large number of Republicans
who were then and afterwards prominent in the councils of the party.
Among the most distinguished were Mr. Sherman of Ohio, Mr. Colfax,
Mr. C. F. Adams, Mr. Howard of Michigan, Mr. Windom of Minnesota,
and Messrs. Moorhead and McPherson of Pennsylvania. The sixty-five
negative votes were all Republicans whom the excitement of the hour
did not drag from their moorings, and many of whom have since done,
as they had done before, signal service for their party and their
country. Thaddeus Stevens was at their head, and he was sustained
by the two Washburns, by Bingham of Ohio, by Roscoe Conkling, by
Anson Burlingame, by Owen Lovejoy, by Marston and Tappan of New
Hampshire, by Galusha A. Grow, by Reuben E. Fenton, and by others
who, if less conspicuous, were not less deserving.
When the proposition reached the Senate, it was adopted by a vote
of 24 to 12, precisely the requisite two-thirds. Among those who
aided in carrying it were Hunter of Virginia, Nicholson of Tennessee,
Sebastian of Arkansas, and Gwin of California, who soon after
proceeded to join the Rebellion. Eight Republican senators, Anthony
of Rhode Island, Baker of Oregon, Dixon and Foster of Connecticut,
Grimes and Harlan of Iowa, Morrill of Maine, and Ten Eyck of New
Jersey, voted in the affirmative. Only twelve out of twenty-five
Republican senators voted in the negative. Mr. Seward, Mr. Fessenden,
Mr. Collamer, and others among the weightiest Republican leaders
are not recorded as voting. As pairs were not announced, it may
be presumed that they consented to the passage of the amendment.
Before the resolution could reach the States for concurrence, either
by convention or Legislature, the evidences of Southern outbreak
had so increased that all such efforts at conciliation were seen
to be vain, and in the end they proved hurtful. Only two States,
Maryland and Ohio, gave their assent to the amendment. In the New-
England States it was rejected, and in many it was not acted upon.
Whoever reads the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution as it
now stands, and compares it with the one which was proposed by the
Thirty-sixth Congress, will be struck with the rapid revolution of
public sentiment, and will not be at a loss to draw some useful
lessons as to the course of public opinion and the conduct of public
men in times of high excitement.
THE CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE.
The propositions of the committee of thirty-three to admit New
Mexico as a slave State, and to amend the Fugitive-slave Law, were
both passed by the House, but were defeated or not acted upon in
the Senate. In that body the efforts of the friends of conciliation
were mainly confined to the Crittenden compromise which has already
been outlined in the proceedings of the House. But for the eminent
respectability of the venerable senator from Kentucky, his propositions
would have had short consideration. They were of a character not
to be entertained by a free people. They dealt wholly in the
finding of new guaranties for slavery, without attempting to intimate
the possible necessity of new guaranties for freedom. Perhaps the
most vicious feature in this whole series of proposed amendments
to the Constitution was the guaranty of slavery against the power
of Congress in all territory of the United States south of 36 deg. 30'.
This offered a premium upon the acquisition of territory, and was
an encouragement to schemes of aggression against friendly powers
south of the United States, which would always have had the sympathy
and support of one-half the Union, and could hardly have been
resisted by any moral power of the General Government. It would
have opened anew the old struggle for equality between free States
and slave States, and would in all probability have led the country
to war within three years from its adoption,--war with Mexico for
the border States of that Republic, war with Spain for the acquisition
of Cuba. This would have followed as matter of policy with Southern
leaders, whether they intended to abide in the Union, or whether
they intended, at some more advantageous and opportune moment, to
secede from it. If they concluded to remain, their political power
in the National Government would have been greatly increased from
the acquisition of new States. If they desired to secede, they
would have acquired a much more formidable strength and vastly
larger area by the addition of Southern territory to which the
Crittenden propositions would not only have invited but driven them.
While these propositions were under discussion, Mr. Clark of New
Hampshire offered as a substitute the resolution with which Messrs.
Washburn and Tappan had closed their report in the House,--a
resolution of which Mr. Clark was the author, and which he had
previously submitted to the consideration of the Senate. The test
question in the Senate was whether Mr. Clark's resolution should
be substituted for the Crittenden proposition, and this was carried
by a vote of 25 to 23. The twenty-five were all Republicans; the
twenty-three were all Democrats, except Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky
and Mr. Kennedy of Maryland, who had been supporters of Mr. Bell
in the Presidential election. It is a fact worthy of note that
six senators from the extreme Southern States sat in their seats
and refused to vote on the proposition. Had they chosen they could
have defeated the action. But they believed, with a certain
consistency and wisdom, that no measure could be of value to the
South unless it had the concurrence of senators from the North;
and with this motive they imposed upon the Republicans of the Senate
the responsibility of deciding the Crittenden proposition. It was
matter of congratulation with Republicans who did not lose their
judgment in that trying season, that the Senate stood firmly against
the fatal compromise which was urged by so many strong influences.
Much was forgiven for other unwise concessions, so long as this
was definitely rejected.
PROPOSITIONS OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE.
Meanwhile a body of men had assembled in the National Capital upon
the invitation of the State of Virginia, for the purpose of making
an earnest effort to adjust the unhappy controversy. The Peace
Congress, as it was termed, came together in the spirit in which
the Constitution was originally formed. Its members professed,
and no doubt felt, an earnest desire to afford to the slave-holding
States, consistently with the principles of the Constitution,
adequate guaranties for the security of their rights. Virginia's
proposition was brought to the National Capital by Ex-President
John Tyler, deputed by his State to that honorable duty. In response
to the invitation twenty-one States, fourteen free and seven slave,
had sent delegates, who assembled in Washington on the 4th of
February, 1861. After remaining in session some three weeks, the
Peace Congress submitted an article of amendment to the Constitution,
contained in seven sections, making as many distinct propositions.
--The first section restored the line of the Missouri Compromise
as it was before the repeal in 1854.
--The second provided that no further acquisition of territory
should be made except by the consent of a majority of all the
senators from the slave-holding States and a majority of all the
senators from the free States.
--The third declared that no amendment to the Constitution shall
be made interfering with Slavery in the States, nor shall Congress
prohibit it in the District of Columbia, nor interfere with the
inter-State slave-trade, nor place any higher rate of taxation on
slaves than upon land. At the same time it abolished the slave-
trade in the District of Columbia.
--The fourth provided that no construction of the Constitution
shall prevent any of the States aiding, by appropriate legislation,
in the arrest and delivery of fugitive slaves.
--The fifth forever prohibited the foreign slave-trade.
--The sixth declared that the amendments to the Constitution herein
proposed shall not be abolished or changed without the consent of
all the States.
--The seventh provided for the payment from the National Treasury
for all fugitive slaves whose recapture is prevented by violence.
These propositions met with little favor in either branch of Congress.
Mr. Crittenden, finding that he could not pass his own resolutions,
endeavored to substitute these, but could induce only six senators
to concur with him. In the House there was no action whatever upon
the report. The venerable Ex-President was chosen to preside over
the deliberations of the conference, but was understood not to
approve the recommendations. Far as they went, they had not gone
far enough to satisfy the demands of Virginia, and still less the
demands of the States which had already seceded. It is a curious
circumstance that one of the delegates from Pennsylvania, Mr. J.
Henry Puleston, was not a citizen of the United States, but a
subject of Queen Victoria, and is now (1884), and has been for
several years, a member of the British Parliament.
To complete the anomalies and surprises of that session of Congress,
it is necessary to recall the fact, that, with a Republican majority
in both branches, Acts organizing the Territories of Colorado,
Dakota, and Nevada were passed without containing a word of
prohibition on the subject of slavery. From the day that the
administration of Mr. Polk began its career of foreign acquisition,
the question of slavery in the Territories had been a subject of
controversy between political parties. When the Missouri Compromise
was repealed, and the Territories of the United States north of
the line of 36 deg. 30' were left without slavery inhibition or
restriction, the agitation began which ended in the overthrow of
the Democratic party and the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency
of the United States. It will therefore always remain as one of
the singular contradictions in the political history of the country,
that, after seven years of almost exclusive agitation on this one
question, the Republicans, the first time they had the power as a
distinctive political organization to enforce the cardinal article
of their political creed, quietly and unanimously abandoned it.
And the abandoned it without a word of explanation. Mr. Sumner
and Mr. Wade and Mr. Chandler, the most radical men in the Senate
on the Republican side, sat still and allowed the bill to be passed
precisely as reported by James S. Green of Missouri, who had been
the ablest defender of the Breckinridge Democracy in that body.
In the House, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, Mr. Owen Lovejoy, the Washburns,
and all the other radical Republicans vouchsafed no word explanatory
of this extraordinary change of position.
COLORADO, DAKOTA, AND NEVADA.
If it be said in defense of this course that all the Territories
lay north of 36 deg. 30', and were therefore in no danger of slavery,
it only introduces fresh embarrassment by discrediting the action
of the Republican party in regard to Kansas, and discrediting the
earnest and persistent action of the anti-slavery Whigs and Free-
Soilers, who in 1848 successfully insisted upon embodying the Wilmot
Proviso in the Act organizing the Territory of Oregon. Surely, if
an anti-slavery restriction were needed for Oregon, it was needed
for Dakota which lay in the same latitude. Beyond doubt, if the
Territory of Kansas required a prohibition against slavery, the
Territory of Colorado and the Territory of Nevada, which lay as
far south, needed it also. To allege that they could secure the
President's approval of the bills in the form in which they were
passed, and that Mr. Buchanan would veto each and every one of them
if an anti-slavery proviso were embodied, is to give but a poor
excuse, for, five days after the bills received the Executive
signature, Mr. Buchanan went out of office, and Abraham Lincoln
was installed as President.
If, indeed, it be fairly and frankly admitted, as was the fact,
that receding from the anti-slavery position was part of the
conciliation policy of the hour, and that the Republicans did it
the more readily because they had full faith that slavery never
could secure a foothold in any of the Territories named, it must
be likewise admitted that the Republican party took precisely the
same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850, and acted from precisely
the same motives that inspired the 7th of March speech. Mr. Webster
maintained for New Mexico only what Mr. Sumner now admitted for
Colorado and Nevada. Mr. Webster acted from the same considerations
that now influenced and controlled the judgment of Mr. Seward. As
matter of historic justice, the Republicans who waived the anti-
slavery restriction should at least have offered and recorded their
apology for any animadversions they had made upon the course of
Mr. Webster ten years before. Every prominent Republican senator
who agreed in 1861 to abandon the principle of the Wilmot Proviso
in organizing the Territories of Colorado and Nevada, had, in 1850,
heaped reproach upon Mr. Webster for not insisting upon the same
principle for the same territory. Between the words of Mr. Seward
and Mr. Sumner in the one crisis and their votes in the other,
there is a discrepancy for which it would have been well to leave
on record an adequate explanation. The danger to the Union, in
which they found a good reason for receding from the anti-slavery
restriction on the Territories, had been cruelly denied to Mr.
Webster as a justifying motive. They found in him only a guilty
recreancy to sacred principle for the same act which in themselves
was inspired by devotion to the Union.
It was certainly a day of triumph for Mr. Douglas. He was justified
in his boast that, after all the bitter agitation which followed
the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Republicans adopted
his principle and practically applied its provisions in the first
Territory which they had the power to organize. Mr. Douglas had
been deprived of his chairmanship of the Committee of Territories
by the Southern leaders, and his place had been given to James S.
Green of Missouri. His victory therefore was complete when Mr.
Seward waived the anti-slavery guaranty on behalf of the Republicans,
and when Mr. Green waived the pro-slavery guaranty on behalf of
the Breckinridge Democracy. It was the apotheosis of Popular
Sovereignty, and Mr. Douglas was pardonable even for an excessive
display of self-gratulation over an event so suggestive and so
instructive. Mr. Grow, the chairman of Territories in the House,
frankly stated that he had agreed with Mr. Green, chairman of
Territories in the Senate, that there should be no reference whatever
to the question of slavery in any of the Territorial bills. It
cannot be denied that this action of the Republican party was a
severe reflection upon that prolonged agitation for prohibition of
slavery in the Territories by Congressional enactment. A surrender
of the principle with due explanation of the reasons, properly
recorded for the instruction of those who should come after, would
have left the Republican party in far better position than did the
precipitate retreat which they made without a word of apology,
without an attempt at justification.
If receding from the anti-slavery creed of the Republican party
was intended as a conciliation to the South, the men who made the
movement ought to have seen that it would prove ineffectual. The
Republicans no more clearly perceived that they risked nothing on
the question of slavery in organizing those Territories without
restriction, than the Southern leaders perceived that they would
gain nothing by it. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any
bird. The South had realized their inability to compete with
Northern emigration by their experience in attempting to wrest
Kansas from the control of free labor. They were not to be deluded
now by a nominal equality of rights in Territories where, in a long
contest for supremacy, they were sure to be outnumbered, outvoted,
and finally excluded by organic enactment. The political agitation
and the sentimental feeling on this question were therefore exposed
on both sides,--the North frankly confessing that they did not
desire a Congressional restriction against slavery, and the South
as frankly conceding that the demand they had so loudly made for
admission to the Territories was really worth nothing to the
institution of slavery. The whole controversy over the Territories,
as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to
an imaginary negro in an impossible place.
James Stephens Green, who was so prominent in this legislation,
who prepared and reported the bills, and who was followed by a
unanimous Senate, terminated his public service on the day Mr.
Lincoln was inaugurated. He was then but forty-four years of age,
and had served only four years in the Senate. He died soon after.
No man among his contemporaries had made so profound an impression
in so short a time. He was a very strong debater. He had peers,
but no master, in the Senate. Mr. Green on the one side and Mr.
Fessenden on the other were the senators whom Douglas most disliked
to meet, and who were the best fitted in readiness, in accuracy,
in logic, to meet him. Douglas rarely had a debate with either in
which he did not lose his temper, and to lose one's temper in debate
is generally to lose one's cause. Green had done more than any
other man in Missouri to break down the power of Thomas H. Benton
as a leader of the Democracy. His arraignment of Benton before
the people of Missouri in 1849, when he was but thirty-two years
of age, was one of the most aggressive and successful warfares in
our political annals. His premature death was a loss to the country.
He was endowed with rare powers which, rightly directed, would have
led him to eminence in the public service.
NORTHERN DEMORALIZATION.
It would be unjust to the senators and representatives in Congress
to leave the impression that their unavailing efforts at conciliating
the South were any thing more or less than a compliance with a
popular demand which overspread the free States. As soon as the
election was decided in favor of Mr. Lincoln, and the secession
movement began to develop in the South, tens of thousands of those
who had voted for the Republican candidates became affrighted at
the result of their work. This was especially true in the Middle
States, and to a very considerable extent in New England. Municipal
elections throughout the North during the ensuing winter showed a
great falling-off in Republican strength. There was, indeed, in
every free State what might, in the political nomenclature of the
day, be termed an utter demoralization of the Republican party.
The Southern States were going farther than the people had believed
was possible. The wolf which had been so long used to scare, seemed
at last to have come. Disunion, which had been so much threatened
and so little executed, seemed now to the vision of the multitude
an accomplished fact,--a fact which inspired a large majority of
the Northern people with a sentiment of terror, and imparted to
their political faith an appearance of weakness and irresolution.
Meetings to save the Union upon the basis of surrender of principle
were held throughout the free States, while a word of manly resistance
to the aggressive disposition of the South, or in re-affirmation
of principles so long contended for, met no popular response. Even
in Boston, Wendell Phillips needed the protection of the police in
returning to his home after one of his eloquent and defiant harangues,
and George William Curtis was advised by the Republican mayor of
Philadelphia that his appearance as a lecturer in that city would
be extremely unwise. He had been engaged to speak on "The Policy
of Honesty." But so great had been the change in popular feeling
in a city which Mr. Lincoln had carried by a vast majority, that
the owner of the hall in which Mr. Curtis was to appear, warned
him that a riot was anticipated if he should speak. Its doors were
closed against him. This was less than five weeks after Mr. Lincoln
was elected, and the change of sentiment in Philadelphia was but
an index to the change elsewhere in the North.
The South, meanwhile, had been encouraged in the work of secession
by thousands of Democrats who did not desire or look for the
dissolution of the Union, but wished to plot of secession to go
far enough, and the danger to the Union to become just imminent
enough, to destroy their political opponents. Men who afterwards
attested their loyalty to the Union by their lives, took part in
this dangerous scheme of encouraging a revolt which they could not
repress. They apparently did not comprehend that lighted torches
cannot be carried with safety through a magazine of powder; and,
though they were innocent of intentional harm, they did much to
increase an evil which was rapidly growing beyond all power of
control. As already indicated, the position of President Buchanan
and the doctrines of his message had aided in the development of
this feeling in the North. It was further stimulated by the
commercial correspondence between the two sections. The merchants
and factors in the South did not as a class desire Disunion, and
they were made to believe that the suppression of Abolitionism in
the North would restore harmony and good feeling. Abolitionism
was but another name for the Republican party, and in business
circles in the free State that party had come to represent the
source of all our trouble. These men did not yet measure the full
scope of the combination against the Union, and persisted in
believing that its worst enemies were in the North. The main result
of these misconceptions was a steady and rapid growth of strength
throughout the slave States in the movement for Secession.
ENACTMENT OF THE MORRILL TARIFF.
Fruitless and disappointing as were the proceedings of this session
of Congress on the subjects which engrossed so large a share of
public attention, a most important change was accomplished in the
revenue laws,--a change equivalent to a revolution in the economic
and financial system of the government. The withdrawal of the
Southern senators and representatives left both branches of Congress
under the control of the North, and by a considerable majority
under the direction of the Republican party. In the preceding
session of Congress the House, having a small Republican majority,
had passed a bill advancing the rate of duties upon foreign
importations. This action was not taken as an avowed movement for
protection, but merely as a measure to increase the revenue.
During Mr. Buchanan's entire term the receipts of the Treasury had
been inadequate to the payment of the annual appropriations by
Congress, and as a result the government had been steadily incurring
debt at a rate which was afterwards found to affect the public
credit at a critical juncture in our history. To check this
increasing deficit the House insisted on a scale of duties that
would yield a larger revenue, and on the 10th of May, 1860, passed
the bill. In the Senate, then under the control of the Democratic
party, with the South in the lead, the bill encountered opposition.
Senators from the Cotton States thought they saw in it the hated
principle of protection, and protection meant in their view, strength
and prestige for the manufacturing States of the North. The bill
had been prepared in committee and reported in the House by a New-
England member, Mr. Morrill of Vermont, which of itself was sufficient
in the eyes of many Southern men to determine its character and
its fate.
Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia was at the time Chairman of
the Senate Committee of Finance. He was a man of sturdy common
sense, slow in his methods, but strong and honest in his processes
of reasoning. He advanced rapidly in public esteem, and in 1839,
at thirty years of age, was chosen Speaker of the House of
Representatives. He was a sympathizer with the South-Carolina
extremists, and coalesced with the Whigs to defeat the regular
Democrats who were sustaining the Administration of Mr. Van Buren.
In 1847 Mr. Hunter was chosen senator from Virginia, and served
continuously till the outbreak of the war. He was a conservative
example of that class of border State Democrats who were blinded
to all interests except those of slavery.
The true wealth of Virginia, in addition to her agriculture and in
aid of it, lay in her vast deposits of coal and iron, in her
extensive forests, in her unsurpassed water power. Her natural
resources were beyond computation, and suggested for her a great
career as a commercial and manufacturing State. Her rivers on the
eastern slope connected her interior with the largest and finest
harbor on the Atlantic coast of North America, and her jurisdiction
extended over an empire beyond the Alleghanies. Her climate was
salubrious, and so temperate as to forbid the plea always used in
justification of negro slavery in the Cotton States, that the white
man could not perform agricultural labor. A recognition of Virginia's
true destiny would point to Northern alliances and Northern
sympathies. Mr. Hunter's sympathies were by birth and rearing with
the South. The alliances he sought looked towards the Gulf and
not towards the Lakes. Any measure which was displeasing to South
Carolina or Alabama was displeasing to Mr. Hunter, and he gave no
heed to what might be the relations of Virginia with the New England,
Middle, and Western States. He measured the policy of Virginia by
the policy of States whose geographical position, whose soil,
climate, products, and capacities were totally different from hers.
By Mr. Hunter's policy, Virginia could sell only slaves to the
South. A more enlightened view would have enabled Virginia to
furnish a large proportion of the fabrics which the Southern States
were compelled to purchase in communities far to the north of her.
Mr. Hunter was no doubt entirely honest in this course. He was
upright in all his personal and political relations, but he could
not forget that he was born a Southern man and a slave-holder. He
had a full measure of that pride in his State so deeply cherished
by Virginians. At the outset of his public career he became
associated with Mr. Calhoun, and early imbibed the doctrines of
that illustrious senator, who seldom failed to fascinate the young
men who fell within the sphere of his personal influence.
Mr. Hunter therefore naturally opposed the new tariff, and under
his lead all action upon it was defeated for the session. This
conclusion was undoubtedly brought about by considerations outside
of the legitimate scope of the real question at issue. The struggle
for the Presidency was in progress, and any concession by the slave
States on the tariff question would weaken the Democratic party
in the section where its chief strength lay, and would correspondingly
increase the prestige of Lincoln's supporters in the North and of
Mr. Fillmore's followers in the South. Mr. Hunter had himself just
received a strong support in the Charleston convention for the
Presidency, securing a vote almost equal to that given to Douglas.
This was an additional tie binding him to the South, and he responded
to the wishes of that section by preventing all action on the tariff
bill of the House pending the Presidential struggle of 1860.
SENATE VOTES ON THE MORRILL TARIFF.
But the whole aspect of the question was changed when at the ensuing
session of Congress the senators and representatives from the Cotton
States withdrew, and betook themselves to the business of establishing
a Southern Confederacy. Mr. Hunter's opposition was not relaxed,
but his supporters were gone. Opposition was thus rendered powerless,
and the first important step towards changing the tariff system
from low duties to high duties, from free-trade to protection, was
taken by the passage of the Morrill Bill on the second day of March,
1861. Mr. Buchanan was within forty-eight hours of the close of
his term and he promptly and cheerfully signed the bill. He had
by this time become not only emancipated from Southern thraldom
but in some degree embittered against Southern men, and could
therefore readily disregard objections from that source. His early
instincts and declarations in favor of a protective policy doubtless
aided him in a conclusion which a year before he could not have
reached without a conflict in his Cabinet that would probably have
ended in its disruption.
The passage of the Morrill Tariff was an event which would almost
have marked an era in the history of the government if public
attention had not been at once absorbed in struggles which were
far more engrossing than those of legislative halls. It was however
the beginning of a series of enactments which deeply affected the
interests of the country, and which exerted no small influence upon
the financial ability of the government to endure the heavy
expenditure entailed by the war which immediately followed. Theories
were put aside in the presence of a great necessity, and the belief
became general that in the impending strain on the resources of
the country, protection to home industry would be a constant and
increasing strength to the government.
On the passage of the bill in the Senate, on the 20th of February,
the yeas were 25 and the nays 14. No Democratic senator voted in
the affirmative and no Republican senator in the negative. It was
not only a sharp division on the party line but almost equally so
on the sectional line. Mr. Douglas, Mr. Rice of Minnesota, Mr.
Latham of California, and Mr. Lane of Oregon were the only Northern
senators who united with the compact South against the bill.
Senators from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas
were still taking part in the proceedings. Mr. Crittenden of
Kentucky and Mr. Kennedy of Maryland were favorable to the policy
of protection, but on this bill they withheld their votes. They
had not abandoned all hope of an adjustment of the Disunion troubles,
and deemed the pending measure too radical a change of policy to
be adopted in the absence of the senators and representatives from
seven States so deeply interested. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee,
sympathizing warmly with the Republicans on all questions relating
to the preservation of the Union, was too firmly wedded to the
theory of free-trade to appreciate the influence which this measure
would exert in aid of the national finances.
The test vote in the House was taken on the 27th of February, on
a motion made by Mr. Branch of North Carolina to lay the bill on
the table. Only 43 votes were given in favor, while 102 were
recorded against this summary destruction of the measure. The
sectional line was not so rigidly maintained as it was in the House.
Of the hostile vote 28 were from the South and 15 from the North.
The Virginia delegation, following Mr. Hunter's example, voted
solidly in opposition. The Southern men who voted for the bill
were in nearly every instance distinguished for their hostility to
secession. John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, Thomas A. R. Nelson,
and William B. Stokes of Tennessee, William C. Anderson, Francis
M. Bristow, Green Adams, and Laban T. Moore of Kentucky, separated
from their section, and in their support of a protective tariff
openly affiliated with the North.
The Morrill Tariff, as it has since been popularly known, was part
of a bill whose title indicates a wider scope than the fixing of
duties on imports. It provided also for the payment of outstanding
Treasury notes and authorized a loan. These additional features
did little to commend it to those who were looking to an alliance
with the Secessionists, nor did the obvious necessity of money for
the national Treasury induce the ultra disciples of free-trade in
the North to waive their opposition to a measure which distinctly
looked to the establishment of protection. It was a singular
combination of circumstances which on the eve of the Southern revolt
led to the inauguration of a policy that gave such industrial and
financial strength to the Union in its hour of dire necessity, in
the very crisis of its fate.