THE REVOLT OF DOUGLAS
The language of President Buchanan's annual message, the summary
dismissal of Acting Governor Stanton, and the resignation of Governor
Walker abruptly transferred the whole Lecompton question from Kansas
to Washington; and even before the people of the Territory had
practically decided it by the respective popular votes of December
21,1857, and January 4,1858, it had become the dominant political
issue in the Thirty-fifth Congress, which convened on December 7,
1857. The attitude of Senator Douglas on the new question claimed
universal attention. The Dred Scott decision, affirming constitutional
sanction and inviolability for slave property in Territories, had
rudely damaged his theory. But we have seen how in his Springfield
speech he ingeniously sought to repair and rehabilitate "popular
sovereignty" by the sophism that a master's abstract constitutional
right to slave property in a Territory was a "barren and a worthless
right unless sustained, protected, and enforced by appropriate police
regulations," which could only be supplied by the local Territorial
Legislatures; and that the people of Kansas thus still possessed the
power of indirect prohibition.
[Sidenote] 1857.
To invent and utter this sophism for home consumption among his
distant constituents on the 12th of June (a few days before the
Lecompton delegates were elected), and in so unobtrusive a manner as
scarcely to attract a ripple of public notice, was a light task
compared with that which confronted him as Senator, at the meeting of
Congress in December, in the light of John Calhoun's doings and
powers, of the scandal of the Oxford fraud, and of the indignation of
Northern Democrats against the betrayal of Walker and Stanton.
One of his first experiences was a personal quarrel with Buchanan.
When he reached Washington, three days before the session, he went to
the President to protest against his adopting the Lecompton
Constitution and sending it to Congress for acceptance. Buchanan
insisted that he must recommend it in his annual message. Douglas
replied that he would denounce it as soon as it was read. The
President, excited, told him "to remember that no Democrat ever yet
differed from an administration of his own choice without being
crushed. Beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives."
[Sidenote] Douglas, Milwaukee Speech, October 13, 1860.
"Mr. President," retorted Douglas, "I wish you to remember that
General Jackson is dead."
In the election of Mr. Buchanan as President the South had secured a
most important ally for the work of pro-slavery reaction. Trained in
the belief that the South had hitherto been wronged, he was ready on
every occasion to appear as her champion for redress; and Southern
politicians were now eager to use his leadership to make their views
of public policy and constitutional duty acceptable to the North.
Respectable in capacity but feeble in will, he easily submitted to
control and guidance from a few Southern leaders of superior
intellectual force. In his inaugural, he sought to prepare public
opinion for obedience to the Dred Scott decision, and since its
publication he had undertaken to interpret its scope and effect.
Replying to a memorial from certain citizens of New England, he
declared in a public letter, "Slavery existed at that period, and
still exists in Kansas, under the Constitution of the United States.
This point has at last been finally decided by the highest tribunal
known to our laws. How it could ever have been seriously doubted is a
mystery."[1] In the same letter he affirmed the legality of the
Lecompton Convention, though he yet clearly expressed his expectation
that the constitution to be framed by it would be submitted to the
popular vote for "approbation or rejection."
[Sidenote] 1857.
But when that convention adjourned, and made known its cunningly
devised work, the whole South instantly became clamorous to secure the
sectional advantages which lay in its technical regularity, its strong
affirmance of the "property" theory, and the extraordinary power it
gave to John Calhoun to control the election and decide the returns.
This powerful reactionary movement was not lost upon Mr. Buchanan. He
reflected it as unerringly as the vane moves to the change of the
wind. Long before the meeting of Congress, the Administration organ,
the "Washington Union," heralded and strongly supported the new
departure. When, on the 8th of December, the President's annual
message was transmitted and read, the Lecompton Constitution, as
framed and submitted, was therein warmly indorsed and its acceptance
indicated as the future Administration policy.
[Sidenote] Buchanan, Annual Message, December 8, 1857.
The language of this message discloses with what subtle ingenuity
words, phrases, definitions, ideas, and theories were being invented
and plied to broaden and secure every conquest of the pro-slavery
reaction. An elaborate argument was made to defend the enormities of
the Lecompton Constitution. The doctrine of the Silliman letter, that
"slavery exists in Kansas under the Constitution of the United
States," was assumed as a conceded theory. "In emerging from the
condition of territorial dependence into that of a sovereign State,"
the people might vote "whether this important domestic institution
should or should not continue to exist." "Domestic institutions" was
defined to mean slavery. "Free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions"--the phrase employed in the Kansas-Nebraska act--was
construed to mean a vote to continue or discontinue slavery. And "if
any portion of the inhabitants shall refuse to vote, a fair
opportunity to do so having been presented, ... they alone will be
responsible for the consequences." "Should the constitution without
slavery be adopted by the votes of the majority, the rights of
property in slaves now in the Territory are reserved.... These slaves
were brought into the Territory under the Constitution of the United
States and are now the property of their masters. This point has at
length been finally decided by the highest judicial tribunal of the
country."
However blind Buchanan might be to the fact that this extreme
interpretation shocked and alarmed the sentiment of the North; that if
made before the late Presidential campaign it would have defeated his
own election; and that if rudely persisted in, it might destroy the
Democratic ascendency in the future, the danger was obvious and
immediately vital to Douglas. His senatorial term was about to expire.
To secure a reelection he must carry the State of Illinois in 1858,
which had on an issue less pronounced than this defeated his colleague
Shields in 1854, and his lieutenant Richardson in 1856. But more than
this, his own personal honor was as much involved in his pledges to
the voters of Illinois as had been that of Governor Walker to the
voters of Kansas. His double-dealing caucus bargain had thus placed
him between two fires--party disgrace at Washington and popular
disgrace in Illinois. In such a dilemma his choice could not be
doubtful. At all risk he must endeavor to sustain himself at home.
[Sidenote] Douglas, Senate Speech, December 9, 1857. "Globe," p. 18.
He met the encounter with his usual adroitness and boldness. Assuming
that the President had made no express recommendation, he devoted his
speech mainly to a strong argument of party expediency, repelling
without reserve and denouncing without stint the work of the Lecompton
Convention. "Stand by the doctrine," said he, "that leaves the people
perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions for themselves,
in their own way, and your party will be united and irresistible in
power. Abandon that great principle and the party is not worth saving,
and cannot be saved after it shall be violated. I trust we are not to
be rushed upon this question. Why shall it be done? Who is to be
benefited? Is the South to be the gainer? Is the North to be the
gainer? Neither the North nor the South has the right to gain a
sectional advantage by trickery or fraud.... But I am told on all
sides, 'Oh! just wait; the pro-slavery clause will be voted down.'
That does not obviate any of my objections; it does not diminish any of
them. You have no more right to force a free-State constitution on
Kansas than a slave-State constitution. If Kansas wants a slave-State
constitution she has a right to it; if she wants a free-State
constitution she has a right to it. It is none of my business which
way the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted down
or voted up. Do you suppose, after the pledges of my honor that I
would go for that principle and leave the people to vote as they
choose, that I would now degrade myself by voting one way if the
slavery clause be voted down, and another way if it be voted up? I
care not how that vote may stand.... Ignore Lecompton; ignore Topeka;
treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair
bill--the one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit;
have a fair election--and you will have peace in the Democratic party,
and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a
fair vote. They will never be satisfied without it.... But if this
constitution is to be forced down our throats in violation of the
fundamental principle of free government, under a mode of submission
that is a mockery and insult, I will resist it to the last."
President Buchanan and the strong pro-slavery faction which was
directing his course paid no attention whatever to this proposal of a
compromise. Shylock had come into court to demand his bond, and would
heed no pleas of equity or appeals to grace. The elections of December
21 and January 4 were held in due time, and with what result we have
already seen. John Calhoun counted the votes on January 13 and
declared the "Lecompton Constitution with slavery" adopted, prudently
reserving, however, any announcement concerning the State officers or
Legislature under it. This much accomplished, he hurried away to
Washington, where he was received with open arms by the President and
his advisers, who at once proceeded with a united and formidable
effort to legalize the transparent farce by Congressional sanction.
On the second day of February, 1858, President Buchanan transmitted to
Congress the Lecompton Constitution, "received from J. Calhoun, Esq.,"
and "duly certified by himself." The President's accompanying special
message argues that the organic law of the Territory conferred the
essential rights of an enabling act; that the free-State party stood
in the attitude of willful and chronic revolution; that their various
refusals to vote were a sufficient bar to complaint and objection;
that the several steps in the creation and work of the Lecompton
Convention were regular and legal. "The people of Kansas have, then,
'in their own way,' and in strict accordance with the organic act,
framed a constitution and State government, have submitted the
all-important question of slavery to the people, and have elected a
governor, a member to represent them in Congress, members of the State
Legislature, and other State officers. They now ask admission into the
Union under this constitution, which is Republican in form. It is for
Congress to decide whether they will admit or reject the State which
has thus been created. For my own part I am decidedly in favor of its
admission and thus terminating the Kansas question."
[Sidenote] 1858.
The vote of January 4 against the constitution he declared to be
illegal because it was "held after the Territory had been prepared for
admission into the Union as a sovereign State, and when no authority
existed in the Territorial Legislature which could possibly destroy
its existence or change its character." His own inconsistency was
lightly glossed over. "For my own part, when I instructed Governor
Walker in general terms, in favor of submitting the constitution to
the people, I had no object in view except the all-absorbing question
of slavery.... I then believed, and still believe, that under the
organic act, the Kansas Convention were bound to submit this
all-important question of slavery to the people. It was never,
however, my opinion that independently of this act they would have
been bound to submit any portion of the constitution to a popular
vote, in order to give it validity."
To the public at large, the central point of interest in this special
message, however, was the following dogmatic announcement by the
President: "It has been solemnly adjudged by the highest judicial
tribunal known to our laws that slavery exists in Kansas by virtue of
the Constitution of the United States. Kansas is, therefore, at this
moment as much a slave-State as Georgia or South Carolina. Without
this, the equality of the sovereign States composing the Union would
be violated, and the use and enjoyment of a territory acquired by the
common treasure of all the States would be closed against the people
and the property of nearly half the members of the Confederacy.
Slavery can, therefore, never be prohibited in Kansas except by means
of a constitutional provision and in no other manner can this be
obtained so promptly, if a majority of the people desire it, as by
admitting it into the Union under its present constitution."
In the light of subsequent history this extreme pro-slavery programme
was not only wrong in morals and statesmanship, but short-sighted and
foolhardy as a party policy. But to the eyes of President Buchanan
this latter view was not so plain. The country was apparently in the
full tide of a pro-slavery reaction. He had not only been elected
President, but the Democratic party had also recovered its control of
Congress. The presiding officer of each branch was a Southerner. Out
of 64 members of the Senate, 39 were Democrats, 20 Republicans, and
five Americans or Know-Nothings. Of the 237 members of the House, 131
were Democrats, 92 Republicans, and 14 Americans. Here was a clear
majority of fourteen in the upper and twenty-five in the lower House.
This was indeed no longer the formidable legislative power which
repealed the Missouri Compromise, but it seemed perhaps a sufficient
force to carry out the President's recommendation. His error was in
forgetting that this apparent popular indorsement was secured to him
and his party by means of the double construction placed upon the
Nebraska bill and the Cincinnati platform, by the caucus bargain
between the leaders of the South and the leaders of the North. The
moment had come when this unnatural alliance needed to be exposed and
in part repudiated.
The haste with which the Southern leaders advanced step by step,
forced every issue, and were now pushing their allies to the wall was,
to say the least, bad management, but it grew logically out of their
situation. They were swimming against the stream. The leading forces
of civilization, population, wealth, commerce, intelligence, were
bearing them down. The balance of power was lost. Already there were
sixteen free-States to fifteen slave-States. Minnesota and Oregon,
inevitably destined also to become free, were applying for admission
to the Union.
[Sidenote] Official Manifesto, Oct. 8, 1754.
[Sidenote] Senator Brown to Adams, June 18, 1856. Greeley, "Am.
Conflict," Vol. I., p. 278.
[Sidenote] Official proceedings, Pamphlet.
Still, the case of the South was not hopeless. Kansas was apparently
within their grasp. Existing law provided for the formation and
admission of four additional States to be carved out of Texas, which
would certainly become slave-States. Then there remained the possible
division of California, and a race for the possession of New Mexico
and Arizona. Behind all, or, more likely, before all except Kansas, in
the order of desired events, was the darling ambition of President
Buchanan, the annexation of Cuba. As United States Minister to England
he had publicly declared that if Spain refused to sell us that coveted
island we should be justified in wresting it from her by force; as
Presidential candidate he had confidentially avowed, amid the first
blushes of his new honor, "If I can be instrumental in settling the
slavery question upon the terms I have mentioned, and then add Cuba to
the Union, I shall, if President, be willing to give up the ghost, and
let Breckinridge take the government." Thus, even excluding the more
problematical chances which lay hidden in filibustering enterprises,
there was a possibility, easily demonstrable to the sanguine, that a
decade or two might change mere numerical preponderance from the free
to the slave-States. Nor could this possibility be waved aside by any
affectation of incredulity. Not alone Mr. Buchanan but the whole
Democratic party was publicly pledged to annexation. "Resolved," said
the Cincinnati platform, "that the Democratic party will expect of the
next Administration that every proper effort be made to insure our
ascendency in the Gulf of Mexico"; while another resolution declaring
sympathy with efforts to "regenerate" Central America was no less
significant.
[Illustration: JOHN CALHOUN.]
But to accomplish such marvels, they must not sit with folded hands.
The price of slavery was fearless aggression. They must build on a
deeper foundation than Presidential elections, party majorities, or
even than votes in the Senate. The theory of the government must be
reversed, the philosophy of the republic interpreted anew. In this
subtler effort they had made notable progress. By the Kansas-Nebraska
act they had paralyzed the legislation of half a century. By the Dred
Scott decision they had changed the Constitution and blighted the
Declaration of Independence. By the Lecompton trick they would show
that in conflict with their dogmas the public will was vicious, and in
conflict with their intrigues the majority powerless. They had the
President, the Cabinet, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, and,
by no means least in the immediate problem, John Calhoun with his
technical investiture of far-reaching authority. The country had
recovered from the shock of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and
rewarded them with Buchanan. Would it not equally recover from the
shock of the Lecompton Constitution?
It was precisely at this point that the bent bow broke. The great bulk
of the Democratic party followed the President and his Southern
advisers, even in this extreme step; but to a minority sufficient to
turn the scale the Lecompton scandal had become too offensive for
further tolerance.
In the Senate, with its heavy Democratic majority, the Administration
easily secured the passage of a bill to admit Kansas with the
Lecompton Constitution. Out of eleven Democratic Senators from free
States, only three--Douglas of Illinois, Broderick of California, and
Stuart of Michigan--took courage to speak and vote against the
measure. In the House of Representatives, however, with a narrower
margin of political power, the scheme, after an exciting discussion
running through about two months, met a decisive defeat. A formidable
popular opposition to it had developed itself in the North, in which
speeches and letters from Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton in
denunciation of it were a leading feature and a powerful influence.
The lower House of Congress always responds quickly to currents of
public sentiment; but in this case it caught direction all the more
promptly because its members were to be chosen anew in the ensuing
autumn. However much they might have party subordination and success
at heart, some of them felt that they could not defend before their
anti-slavery constituencies the Oxford frauds, the Calhoun
dictatorship, the theory that slave property is above constitutional
sanction, and the dogma that "Kansas is therefore at this moment as
much a slave-State as Georgia or South Carolina." When the test vote
was taken on April 1, out of the 53 Democratic representatives from
the free-States 31 voted for Lecompton; but the remaining 22,[2]
joining their strength to the opposition, passed a substitute,
originating with Mr. Crittenden of the Senate, which in substance
directed a resubmission of the Lecompton Constitution to the people of
Kansas;--if adopted, the President to admit the new State by a simple
proclamation; if rejected, the people to call a convention and frame a
new instrument.
As the October vote had been the turning-point in the local popular
struggle in the Territory, this adoption of the Crittenden-Montgomery
substitute, by a total vote of 120 to 112 in the House of
Representatives, was the culmination of the National intrigue to
secure Kansas for the South. It was a narrow victory for freedom; a
change of 5 votes would have passed the Lecompton bill and admitted
the State with slavery, and a constitutional prohibition against any
change for seven years to come. With his authority to control election
returns, there is every reason to suppose that Calhoun would have set
up a pro-slavery State Legislature, to choose two pro-slavery
senators, whom in its turn the strong Lecompton majority in the United
States Senate would have admitted to seats; and thus the whole chain
of fraud and usurpation back to the first Border-Ruffian invasion of
Kansas would have become complete, legal, and irrevocable, on plea of
mere formal and technical regularity.
Foiled in its main object, the Administration made another effort
which served to break somewhat the force and humiliation of its first
and signal defeat. The two Houses of Congress having disagreed as
stated, and each having once more voted to adhere to its own action,
the President managed to make enough converts among the anti-Lecompton
Democrats of the House to secure the appointment of a committee of
conference. This committee devised what became popularly known as the
"English bill," a measure which tendered a land grant to the new
State, and provided that on the following August 3d the people of
Kansas might vote "proposition accepted" or "proposition rejected."
Acceptance should work the admission of the State with the Lecompton
Constitution, while rejection should postpone any admission until her
population reached the ratio of representation required for a member
of the House. "Hence it will be argued," exclaimed Douglas, "in one
portion of the Union that this is a submission of the constitution,
and in another portion that it is not." The English bill became a law;
but the people of Kansas once more voted to reject the "proposition"
by nearly ten thousand majority.
[Sidenote] Douglas, Senate Speech, March 22, 1858. App. "Globe,"
pp. 199, 200.
Douglas opposed the English bill as he had done the Lecompton bill,
thus maintaining his attitude as the chief leader of the
anti-Lecompton opposition. In proportion as he received encouragement
and commendation from Republican and American newspapers, he fell
under the ban of the Administration journals. The "Washington Union"
especially pursued him with denunciation. "It has read me out of the
Democratic party every other day, at least, for two or three months,"
said he, "and keeps reading me out; and, as if it had not succeeded,
still continues to read me out, using such terms as 'traitor,'
'renegade,' 'deserter,' and other kind and polite epithets of that
nature." He explained that this arose from his having voted in the
Senate against its editor for the office of public printer; but he
also pointed out that he did so because that journal had become
pro-slavery to the point of declaring "that the emancipation acts of
New York, of New England, of Pennsylvania, and of New Jersey were
unconstitutional, were outrages upon the right of property, were
violations of the Constitution of the United States." "The proposition
is advanced," continued he, "that a Southern man has a right to move
from South Carolina with his negroes into Illinois, to settle there
and hold them there as slaves, anything in the constitution and laws
of Illinois to the contrary notwithstanding." Douglas further
intimated broadly that the President and Cabinet were inspiring these
editorials of the Administration organ, as part and parcel of the same
system and object with which they were pushing the Lecompton
Constitution with its odious "property" doctrine; and declared, "if my
protest against this interpolation into the policy of this country or
the creed of the Democratic party is to bring me under the ban, I am
ready to meet the issue."
He had not long to wait for the issue. The party rupture was radical,
not superficial. It was, as he had himself pointed out, part of the
contest for national supremacy between slavery and freedom. From time
to time he still held out the olive-branch and pointed wistfully to
the path of reconciliation. But the reactionary faction which ruled
Mr. Buchanan never forgave Douglas for his part in defeating Lecompton,
and more especially for what they alleged to be his treachery to his
caucus bargain, in refusing to accept and defend all the logical
consequences of the Dred Scott decision.
----------
[1] Buchanan to Silliman and others, Aug. 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.
No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 74.
[2] From California, 1; Illinois, 5; Indiana, 3; New Jersey, 1; New
York, 2; Ohio, 6; Pennsylvania, 4. For Lecompton: California, 1;
Connecticut, 2; Indiana, 3; New Jersey, 2; New York, 10; Ohio, 2;
Pennsylvania, 11.