=Causes Leading to Secession--Secession of the Cotton States=
Very shortly after the organization of the government under the new
Constitution, petitions upon the subject of the slave trade began to be
presented to Congress, mostly from the Quakers of Pennsylvania, that
"non-resisting" sect "conscientiously opposed to all war." Some of the
petitions were very inflammatory in their character, and caused much
excited debate in the early Congresses, and one presented by Warren
Mifflin, a Quaker of Delaware, urging the injustice of slavery and the
necessity for its abolition, was returned to him by order of the House at
the second session of the second Congress on account of its incendiary and
mischievous character.
In January, 1805, the first proposition for the abolition of slavery in
the District of Columbia was made. It was made by Sloan, a democratic
representative from New Jersey, and was "that all children born after the
ensuing 4th of July should be free at certain ages," but it was refused a
reference to a committee and was then rejected by a vote of 77 to 31. It
is a little remarkable in view of subsequent events that 26 of the 31 were
Northern Democrats, and that only 5 constituting the remainder of the vote
for the proposition were Northern Federalists.
After the passage of the acts in the United States and Great Britain
abolishing the slave trade, the agitation on the subject of slavery abated
very considerably for a number of years, only, however, to be revived at a
later period in a more virulent form.
In the year 1812, the state of Louisiana, erected out of the territory
of Orleans, was admitted into the Union as a slave state, and that part
of the territory east of the Pearl river and bordering on the Gulf of
Mexico, was added to the territory of Mississippi. The name of Mississippi
was then given to the territory of Louisiana.
In 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union as a free state, and in 1817,
Mississippi was admitted as a slave state, the residue of the territory of
that name taking the name of Alabama.
In 1818, Illinois was admitted as a free state and in 1819, Alabama came
in as a slave state. This increase of the number of slave states did not
increase the number of slaves, as the slaves introduced into them came
from the older slave states. If any slaves were introduced from Africa or
any foreign country, it was by such evasion of the laws as will take place
under any government, and they were not so introduced to any appreciable
extent.
In 1819, towards the close of the 15th Congress, a bill was introduced
into the House of Representatives to authorize the erection of the state
of Missouri out of part of the territory of that name, and on motion of
Tallmadge, of New York, a clause was inserted in the bill prohibiting
the further introduction of slaves and granting freedom to the afterborn
children of those already there, on arriving at the age of twenty-five,
the proposition being carried by a vote of 87 to 76. This proposed
restriction caused a very excited debate, in the course of which Cobb, of
Georgia, said that "a fire had been kindled which all the water of the
ocean could not put out, and which only seas of blood could extinguish;"
he did not "hesitate to declare that if the northern members persisted,
the Union would be dissolved." The bill, however, passed the House with
the restriction, but in the Senate, the latter was stricken out, the
clause prohibiting the further introduction of slaves by a vote of 24 to
16, and the one freeing the children by a larger vote, there being only 7
votes for retaining it. The House refused to concur with the Senate and
the bill was lost.
At the same time the Missouri bill was introduced, another bill was
presented for establishing Arkansas territory out of that part of the
Missouri territory south of 36° 30´, and a clause was inserted into it
granting freedom to all afterborn children of slaves, at the age of
twenty-five, but a clause prohibiting the further introduction of slaves
was defeated by a vote of 70 to 71 and the clause for freeing the children
of those already in the territory was stricken out. Taylor of New York
then proposed to add a proviso to the bill that neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude should exist in any of the territories of the United
States north of 36° 30´, but his motion was defeated and the bill for
organizing Arkansas Territory passed both houses without any restriction.
Before the meeting of the next Congress, Massachusetts authorized the
formation of the District of Maine into a state and a Constitution was
adopted by the people in that district for that purpose. In the meantime
there was much agitation in the North upon the subject of excluding
slavery from the territory west of the Mississippi. Upon the meeting
of the 16th Congress, a bill was introduced to authorize the people of
Missouri to frame a State Constitution, but on motion of Taylor, the
author of the proposed proviso excluding slavery from the territories
north of 36° 30´, a committee was appointed to consider the subject of
prohibiting slavery west of the Mississippi, and the Missouri bill was
postponed to await the action of the committee.
A bill had been introduced for the admission of Maine--and after the
defeat of a motion to postpone it until the Missouri bill came up--was
passed. When this bill came up in the Senate, a clause for the admission
of Missouri, was attached to it, after the defeat of a motion to insert
in the latter a proviso for the prohibition of slavery, and Thomas,
a senator from Illinois, then proposed an amendment prohibiting the
introduction of slavery into any of the remaining territory north of 36°
30´, which was adopted by a vote of 34 to 10; the senators from Virginia,
South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and one senator from North Carolina and
Mississippi each voting in the negative. The bill was then passed by a
vote of 24 to 20, all the senators from the slave states and the two from
Illinois voting in the affirmative, and those voting in the negative being
from the free states.
The House refused to concur in the Senate's amendment, and the Senate
adhered, therefore a committee of conference was appointed. In the
meantime, the House had been debating the Missouri bill, and pending the
conference it was passed by a vote of 93 to 84 with a clause prohibiting
the further introduction of slaves. When this bill went to the Senate,
the prohibition was stricken out and the Thomas proviso attached, and it
was then passed and returned to the House. The Committee of Conference
at the same time reported recommending that the Senate recede from its
amendment to the Maine bill and that the House pass the Missouri bill as
amended by the Senate. The House agreed to the amendment to the Missouri
bill, striking out the clause for prohibiting slavery, by a vote of 90
to 87, and to that inserting the Thomas proviso, by a vote of 134 to 42,
35 of the latter being Southern members who objected to the proviso as
unconstitutional, and 5 being Northern men who objected because it did not
go far enough. The Senate receded from its amendment to the Maine bill and
both bills were thus passed.
President Monroe signed the Missouri bill after much hesitation, upon
having his scruples as to the constitutionality of the proviso removed,
and upon being assured that the restriction as to the territories extended
to them only while in the territorial condition.
The bill in relation to Maine admitted that state into the Union at once,
but that in regard to Missouri was a mere act enabling the people to frame
a Constitution, and a joint resolution for the admission of the state
after the formation of the Constitution was still necessary.
When the Constitution was presented at the next session of Congress, it
was found to contain a clause requiring the legislature to pass laws to
prevent free persons of color from settling in the state, and as the
admission of Maine was complete, the Northern members took occasion to
object to the admission of Missouri because of this clause, though Ohio
and Indiana had passed laws forbidding the settling of free persons of
color in those states, and there was an old law of Massachusetts to the
same effect, still unrepealed. A resolution offered in the House for the
admission of Missouri, with its Constitution as it stood, was defeated by
a vote of 78 to 93, those voting in the negative being Northern members.
After much discussion and excitement and the defeat in the House of
an effort to compromise the question, on motion of Mr. Clay, a joint
committee was appointed to take the subject into consideration, and this
committee reported a joint resolution for the admission of Missouri,
after the state legislature should have given a solemn pledge, that
the Constitution should not be construed to authorize any act and that
no act should be passed "by which any of the citizens of either of the
states should be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and
immunities to which they are entitled under the Constitution of the United
States." The President being authorized to announce by proclamation, the
adoption of the pledge, and Missouri then to become a state in the Union,
this resolution was adopted, the vote being 86 to 52 in the House, all the
votes in the negative, excepting four, being given by Northern members and
the four Southern members not being willing to submit to the concession.
Since the rejection of the proposition for compromise in the House on the
same basis, news had been received of the final ratification by Spain of
the treaty for the cession of Florida, and as by that treaty the United
States relinquished all claim to Texas, thus reducing the whole of the
territory south of 36° 30´ and west of the Mississippi to the Territory of
Arkansas, comprising the present state of Arkansas and the small tract of
Indian country west of it, while there remained an immense domain north
of that parallel, stretching across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific,
a few Northern members were induced to cast their votes for the last
proposition, thus securing its passage.
The required pledge was given by the legislature of Missouri, and that
state was thus admitted into the Union in 1821. For a long time, the
arrangement by which the passage of the enabling act for Missouri was
secured, was called _compromise_, and the line of 36° 30´ was called "The
Missouri Compromise Line." The subject was fully explained by Mr. Clay
in the Senate in 1850, and it will be seen that the arrangement was no
compromise at all, but was merely one of those legislative expedients
often adopted to secure the passage of a measure. As it passed, the
restriction was merely a legislative enactment, liable to repeal at any
time like any other law. But few of the Northern members agreed to the
arrangement, and at the very next session of Congress, the great mass of
them repudiated the idea of its being a compromise by voting against the
admission of Missouri, upon a mere pretext.
The only compromise made at all was that made with the state of Missouri
about the construction of her Constitution. Nevertheless, the Southern
States were always to regard this legislative adoption of the line 36° 30´
as a settlement of the question of slavery in the territories, provided it
was adhered to as such in principle and spirit, but it was not accepted by
the Northern people in that light and was made by them the ground-work for
new demands and encroachments.
The proposition for the prohibition of slavery in the territories, was
not one in favor of the freedom of the slaves themselves, as their
introduction into those territories would not increase the number of
slaves, but would expand them on a wider sphere, thus rendering it easier
to adopt measures for emancipation, at least in some of the states if that
was desirable, and making the condition of the slaves more comfortable if
emancipation did not take place; while the restriction of the institution
to the states where it existed, would forever close the door on any steps
for its voluntary abolition and render the condition of the slaves much
less desirable. Diffusion was much the best policy for both masters and
slaves, and the opposition to the introduction of the latter into the
territories was only a political manoeuvre for the purpose of obtaining
a sectional preponderance of power, and in all of the debates, the views
expressed by the advocates of the restriction tended to the furtherance of
that object.
By the final ratification of the treaty between the United States and
Spain in the year 1821, Florida became a territory of the United States
and a territorial government was soon formed therefor.
After the admission of Missouri into the Union, there was a subsidence in
the agitation upon the subject of slavery for a number of years, though
every now and then a petition from some Quaker meeting was received and
quietly disposed of.
In the year 1834, the British parliament passed an act for the abolition
of slavery in the British West Indies, her colonies in those islands
being all of the slave colonies left to Great Britain. These colonies
had dwindled into insignificance and formed but a very inconsiderable
part of her gigantic colonial system. Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and her possessions in the East Indies furnished an ample field for
British settlement and colonial trade, which dwarfed into very diminutive
proportions the British interests in the West Indies. Great Britain could
therefore afford to be philanthropic and at the cost of £20,000,000 (about
$96,000,000) she gave liberty to a very few more than 600,000 slaves,
who were placed in a condition of apprenticeship for several years to
enable the planters to accommodate themselves to the new order of things
by degrees. She had abandoned the slave trade after, by the loss of the
American colonies, she had ceased to have a large interest in the subject
of slavery, and this grant of £20,000,000 for the freedom of all of the
negro slaves left in her dominions, was the final atonement she made for
the millions she had consigned to slavery, and the millions who had been
cast overboard, to meet a watery grave, on their route to slavery.
To make her own gracious act more conspicuous, she turned propagandist
and commenced denouncing the system of slavery which she had been so
instrumental in fixing upon the world, as un-Christian, inhuman and
barbarous. Having, as she considered, cast the beam out of her own eye,
she could see more distinctly the mote in that of others, but she made
no restitution of the hundreds of millions she derived from the profits
of the inhuman traffic as she now styled it, and which had assisted in
building up her marine, manufactures and commerce. Having thus washed
her hands of the sin, as she imagined, she became most intolerant in
her opinions and denunciations of those upon whom she had entailed the
institution of slavery by her avarice and power, furnishing another
example of those,
"Who compound for sins they're inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to."
Emissaries soon came out from Great Britain to the United States and began
the agitation of the abolition of slavery there. The preponderance of
women in the New England States caused them to be selected as proselytes
for the new crusade. There was also a class of men in that section,
offshoots of the old persecuting theocracy who furnished recruits to the
agitators. There were doubtless many who really believed slavery to be a
great sin and wrong, who joined in the crusade from conscientious motives.
Knaves there were in plentiful supply, gowned and ungowned, who were ready
for anything which would tend to their personal advancement in position or
their pecuniary profit. Out of these materials abolition societies were
formed and petitions began to pour into Congress for the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia and other places within the Federal
jurisdiction, while the mails were filled with incendiary publications
calculated to stir up insurrections. John Quincy Adams, who had held
political office from his earliest manhood, until he became President,
obtained a return to political life by his election to the lower House of
Congress. Shortly after his return there, in presenting one of the chronic
petitions of the Quakers for the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia, he had taken occasion to notify the House and the country that
he had no sympathy with the views of the politicians, yet he joined the
new agitators.
This new agitation in Congress began about 1834-5 and was continued with
great violence for several years, a petition being presented by Mr.
Adams, during the time, for the dissolution of the Union. After much
exasperation of feeling growing out of the presentation of the petitions
in both Houses of Congress and the circulation of incendiary publications,
some respite from the excitement in Congress was obtained by the adoption
of a rule in the lower House for laying petitions on the table on their
presentation, without debate, and by the conservative action of the
Senate. The agitation, however was continued at the North and began
to have an important influence upon the canvass for the presidential
elections. The law for the recovery of fugitive slaves, always inefficient
because of the refusal or failure of the states' officers to enforce it,
had now become a dead letter by the resistance to its execution by mobs
and the still more mischievous action of several of the legislatures of
the free states. The circulation of incendiary publications through the
mails had been forbidden by Congress, but the Northern press was prolific
in the production of gross libels upon the character of the people of the
Southern states and misrepresentations of the institution of slavery as it
existed there; even the Constitution of the United States was denounced by
the new lights as "a league with hell and a covenant with death."
Arkansas had been admitted as a slave state in the year 1836 and Michigan
as a free state in 1837; and in 1845 Florida was admitted as a slave
state, the same act providing for the admission of Iowa, which was a free
state, but did not come in until 1846.
On the 29th of December, the independent Republic of Texas was admitted
into the Union as a state, and came in with slavery already established
there. This admission, or annexation as it was called, of Texas, resulted
in the war with Mexico and the establishment, at the close of the war
in 1848, of the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of Texas and the
acquisition of the provinces or territories of New Mexico and upper
California as United States territory.
The admission of Texas gave a new impulse to the antislavery agitation,
and the acquisition, by the war, of the new territory brought it again
prominently before Congress. Even before the close of the war with
Mexico, the old proposition for the exclusion of slavery from the public
territories was revived, with a view to its application to any territory
that might be acquired as a result of the war, and it was then designated
as the "Wilmot Proviso" from the name of the member re-introducing it. On
all propositions to establish governments of the newly acquired territory,
after the close of the war, the "Wilmot Proviso" was pressed with great
vehemence by Northern politicians, and was strenuously resisted by those
of the South.
The most extreme of the Southern politicians were willing to extend the
so-called Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30´ to the Pacific ocean,
and regard it as a final settlement of the question, but the Northern
advocates of the proviso would listen to no terms for an adjustment, and
thus again repudiated the principle and spirit of the settlement made by
the Missouri bill. Southern statesmen, while willing to accept the line of
36° 30´ for the sake of peace, did not claim the right to foster slavery
even upon the territory south of that line, by the action of Congress,
but they claimed that the question should be left where the Constitution
of the United States left it, that is, that the people settling in the
territories should be allowed freedom to adopt their own institutions when
they came to form state governments, and that Congress in the meantime
should adopt no measures to forestall their action. They urged that
the territory was acquired by the common blood and treasure, and that
Congress, therefore, in its action, should not give preference to one
section over another and thus virtually exclude the people of the South
from the newly acquired domain. This was a reasonable and just view of
the subject, and did not look to the increase of the number of slaves,
but merely to their expansion over a wider area, and the older states
from the rapidly increasing slave population. Nor was the proposition to
exclude slavery ever in the interest of freedom, for it sought merely to
confine slavery to the country where it already existed, and thus surround
the slave states with a cordon of free states, so as to increase year
by year, the difficulties of prospective emancipation, and render any
but a subversion of the institution by violence an impossibility. It was
as injurious to the slaves themselves as to the white population of the
states.
Had the would-be philanthropists been governed by an enlightened regard
for the welfare or freedom of the slaves, they would not have objected to
their introduction, either into the territory north of 36° 30´ or that
acquired from Mexico, for with the greater eagerness existing at the North
for emigration, as well as that from foreign countries and the want of
adaptation of the soil and climate of the greater part of the territory,
old and new, to the staples in the production of which slave labor could
be profitably employed, it was certain that much the larger population
settling in that territory would be from the free states and foreign
countries, and it was equally certain that, when the people came to form
new states, slavery would be prohibited and freedom given to the slaves
within the limits of most, if not all of those states.
But fanaticism of no kind, whether political or religious, listens to
reason, and among the pseudo-philanthropists there was much of the leaven
of that old spirit, which had prompted the hanging, burning and scourging
of "heretics and witches."
There were many politicians by trade, whose aspirations had been
unsuccessful and who cared nothing for the negro or the cause of freedom,
but who fell in with the "free-soil" movement, as it was called with the
selfish hope of building up a great sectional party under the auspices of
which they could obtain and retain that power which they had failed to
acquire otherwise. A very large mass of men rarely think for themselves
and among this class the leaders of the "free-soil" operated extensively
by impassioned appeals to their prejudices and passions, inducing them
to believe that their vital interests required that slavery should be
excluded by law from the territories. One of the shrewdest and most
far-seeing of the "free-soil" leaders boldly declared that there was a
"higher law" than the Constitution and that there was "an _impassable_
conflict between slavery and freedom."
It cannot be denied that there were extreme men at the South on the other
side, but they were made so mostly by the hostile attitude assumed by
their opponents.
The result of the agitation was that for some time no government could
be formed for any part of the new territory. The exasperation of feeling
between the two sections of the Union, and the danger to that Union
itself, became so great that in 1850 the more moderate of the leading
statesmen of the country, with Clay and Webster at their head, devoted
themselves to the adjustment of the threatening questions and their
efforts resulted in the adoption of certain measures commonly called
the "Compromise Measures of 1850." These measures consisted of a bill
for the admission of California into the Union, under a constitution
excluding slavery, which had been irregularly adopted a bill to establish
a territorial government for Utah and a bill to establish the northern
and western boundaries of Texas with her assent, and to establish
a territorial government for New Mexico, it being provided in the
territorial bills that states created out of the two territories organized
when the population should be sufficient, should be admitted into the
Union with or without slavery, as the people themselves might decide.
Along with these bills another was passed for enforcing the provision of
the Constitution in regard to the return of fugitive slaves, as the former
one could not be executed because most of the free states had prohibited
their officers from acting under it. These measures as a whole were not
acceptable to the extreme men of either section, but the more moderate
portion of the two leading political parties hoped that they would put
an end to the agitation and restore peace and concord to the country.
Such appeared to be their first effect, and both of the great political
parties, into which the country had been divided, without reference
to sections for many years--Democrat and Whig--in their platforms of
principles adopted in the canvass for President in 1852, gave their
adhesion to the "Compromise Measures of 1850" as a final settlement of the
questions embraced by them.
In 1848, a portion of the "free-soilers" had run Martin Van Buren, a
former President and a defeated candidate for the Democratic nomination,
as their candidate for the Presidency, but the party did not have
cohesiveness enough to give him its whole vote, and in 1852 the
"free-soil" party had no candidate, the members of it voting with the
parties to which they had previously been attached according to their
predilections, though there was still much muttering by the leaders.
The abolition party proper, however, had a candidate for form's sake.
In 1848, Wisconsin had been added to the Union as a free state, and there
were now in the Union sixteen free states and fifteen slave states, giving
to the free states the preponderance in the Senate, as they had long had
in the lower House. Neither Utah nor New Mexico was fitted at all for
slave labor, and there was no territory out of which it was likely that
another slave state could be formed, except by the sub-division of Texas,
while there was a prospect for the formation of several more free states,
at no distant day, out of the territory west of the Mississippi and north
of 36° 30´ and on the Pacific coast, the territories of Minnesota and
Oregon having already been organized.
By what was called the Compromise of 1850, the South had gained nothing
whatever, except the abstract principle inserted in the Utah and New
Mexico bills, of non-interference by Congress with the question of
slavery and the submission of the decision of the question to the people
of the territories when they came to frame their state governments,
while the North had gained the rich and growing state of California. The
bill for the restoration of fugitive slaves was in accordance with an
express stipulation in the Constitution, without which it would never
have been adopted. Yet the execution of this law was resisted from the
very beginning and very soon most of the free states passed laws, called
"personal liberty bills" which virtually nullified the act of Congress.
Several collisions ensued between the United States officers in their
efforts to execute the law and mobs in the free states who resisted its
execution, and even members on the floor of Congress denounced the law
and counselled resistance to it. This served to prevent that harmonious
feeling which had been expected from the adoption of the measures of
adjustment, and the new fugitive slave act became soon a dead letter
from the danger, difficulty and expense attending its execution. Not
only was the guaranty contained in the Constitution, and the act of
Congress to enforce it, thus rendered nugatory, but for many years slaves
had been enticed by agents from the North to make their escape and aid
had been furnished them while doing so, under a system which obtained
the designation of "The underground railroad." This was not confined
to citizens merely but was participated in by state officers who were
sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and instead of
compelling their citizens and officers to comply with the Constitution and
law, many of the free states passed laws to make it a felony for the owner
to arrest his slave or for any one to assist him.
At the session of Congress for 1853-54 in the introduction of a bill
for the establishment of governments for the territories of Kansas and
Nebraska, both north of 36° 30´, a proposition was made by Mr. Douglas,
a senator from Illinois, to incorporate a provision in regard to slavery
similar to that contained in the Utah and New Mexico bills. When the
measure was offered by a Northern man, it was supported by nearly all
of the Southern representatives as correct in principle, though it met
with the opposition of a few Southern representatives and statesmen,
who deprecated it as tending to arouse again the excitement which had
partially subsided.
The question was not one of any great practical importance, as the climate
and soil of Kansas and Nebraska furnished a more formidable barrier to
the introduction of slaves than any legal enactment. The proposition to
repeal the enactment as to the line of 36° 30´ violated no compromise, as
has been shown, and it violated no right of any of the Northern states or
people, but merely asserted a principle deducible from the Constitution
and right in itself; though in this case it was an abstract one.
The measure was passed with the assistance of some of the Northern
Democrats, and it had the effect so much dreaded by the conservative
men who opposed it, of reviving with new intensity the fires of the
former agitation and of giving new life to the languishing free-soil
or Republican party. Though they had never acceded to or complied with
the compromise in regard to Missouri or that of 1850, or even those of
the Constitution itself, the leaders of the free-soil party raised a
tremendous clamor about the violation of plighted faith, and soon the
agitation spread over the whole North with ten fold force.
The Puritan ministers of New England, successors of the Cotton-Mathers
of religious persecution and witches-killing notoriety, abandoned the
gospel of peace for dissertations upon the merits of Sharp's rifles, and
under their auspices a considerable number of armed emigrants were sent
to Kansas. In consequence of this movement some hot heads from the South
imprudently went to Kansas for the purpose of disputing the settlement
of that territory with the emissaries of the New England parsons. The
result was that a very disorderly condition of things ensued in the new
territories, as is always the case where reason gives way to passion.
Many wrongs and acts of violence were committed on both sides and there
was a tremendous howl about "bleeding Kansas" by the Northern parsons and
agitators, but not one slave was carried into Kansas and no one thought of
carrying any there.
The result of the agitation consequent on the theoretic extension of
slavery to Kansas and Nebraska, and of the troubles in Kansas, was the
appearance of John C. Fremont as the Republican free-soil candidate for
the presidency in 1856. He was beaten, but his vote showed the existence
of a formidable sectional party, in all of the free states, based on a
solitary idea. The strength of this party was still further increased
by an attempt to secure the admission of Kansas into the Union, under a
Constitution liberating slavery and adopted by a convention held during
the prevalence of the bitter feud there, but the most important result of
the Kansas troubles was the development of the character of John Brown, a
bold, desperate and fanatical Northern man, who made his appearance on the
scene of action, and participated largely in the outrages committed by the
free-soilers and abolitionists.
What gave the crowning stroke to the already over-heated animosity
between the two sections, was the appearance of John Brown on a new
theatre of action. The political parsons and the agitators of the North
did not confine themselves to the denunciation of the Southern people
and of slavery, but they lavished their anathemas upon the Constitution
which tolerated slavery and the Union which gave it, as they alleged,
protection. Nor were the denunciations confined to Northern pulpits and
abolition or free-soil papers, but were heard in the Senate Chamber and
on the floor of the House of Representatives, and were accompanied with
the most atrocious libels on the Southern people, in which they were
represented as barbarians who delighted in inflicting upon their slaves
the most revolting cruelties, and who engaged in the most debasing
immoralities. Encouraged by these open denunciations of the Constitution
and the Union, and stimulated by the picture of Southern wrongs and
cruelty to the slaves, which were constantly placed before his eyes, John
Brown gave way to the wild conceptions of a fanatical mind and undertook
to subvert the government of the United States and to redress the wrongs
of the slaves by deluging the Southern states in blood.
In the year 1858, he held a secret meeting or convention of reckless
fanatics like himself at Chatham, in Canada West, and devised a scheme
for a provisional government of the United States, of which he was to be
the head, with a cabinet appointed by himself, and he concocted a plan
for putting his government in operation by raising a rebellion among the
slaves and freeing them. All of these proceedings were kept from the
public until the month of October, 1859, when John Brown, with a band of
followers, made his appearance suddenly at Harper's Ferry, within the
limits of Virginia, surprised and captured the United States arsenal at
that place, which was without a guard; killed several citizens; captured
and imprisoned others, and committed a number of depredations and
robberies in the neighborhood. His pretended provisional government was
proclaimed and the object of the movement declared, but failing to receive
some expected re-inforcements, and not meeting with co-operation on the
part of the slaves for whom he brought a supply of arms and expected to
get others from the arsenal, he and his band of desperadoes were soon
surrounded and the greater part captured or killed. John Brown himself was
made a prisoner in a wounded condition and he and several of his followers
were tried under the laws of Virginia, convicted and executed for treason
and murder.
His plan of operations contemplated a servile insurrection in all of the
Southern states with all of the horrors of blood and rapine, and his
acts amounted to treason, not only against the state of Virginia, but
against the United States; yet there was reason to suspect that some of
the leaders of the Republican or free-soil party, were cognizant of his
designs if they did not secretly favor them. Certain it is that very
great sympathy was openly expressed for him by many individuals and by
public meetings at the North, and that the legislature of Massachusetts,
by an almost unanimous vote, adjourned over so as not to be in session on
the day of his execution, avowedly as a mark of respect for him, and of
condemnation at his execution.
When this desperate undertaking of John Brown to deluge the South with
fire and sword, and the marked sympathy for him expressed at the North,
were added to the failure of the Northern states to comply with their
plighted faith in regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves--to their
interference with the institutions of those states, the persistent libels
upon the Southern people, the encouragement given to the slaves to revolt
by incendiary publications, the attitude of hostility assumed by a great
number of the Northern representatives to the South on every occasion in
which anything had been proposed or done in regard to slavery, and to the
rapid growth of the party now coming into the ascendency on the ground of
enmity to the South and her institutions--it may be well conceived that a
profound sensation was created in the latter section.
South Carolina then proposed some agreement between the Southern states,
for the purpose of withdrawing from a compact, the obligations of which
had been so disregarded, but Virginia discouraged this proposition, as she
was exceedingly loth to take any step looking to the severance of a Union
which she had done so much to establish, and for which she had made so
many sacrifices.
By the commencement of the canvass for the Presidency in 1860, the
Democratic party had become divided on the question of the construction
of the slavery clause in the Kansas-Nebraska bill: that is whether the
power to exclude or adopt slavery could be exercised by the people of
the territories while in the territorial condition. Mr. Douglas and the
greater portion of the Northern Democrats contended for the former view,
while nearly all of the Southern Democrats advocated the latter. It was
contended by the Southern Democrats with great force and justice that if
Congress did not have the power to exclude slavery, the legislatures of
the territories, which derived their powers from the acts organizing the
territories could not have that power. This view was conclusive, for the
territorial legislatures, being now temporary bodies deriving their sole
powers from the acts of Congress, could not exercise greater powers than
the body which created them, while the people, when they came to form
constitutions, under that clause of the Constitution of the United States
providing for the admission of new states on the same footing with the
old, were necessarily vested with that sovereign power over this subject
and all others which belonged to the original states.
The Northern Democrats contended for what was called "Squatter
Sovereignty," that is, that this sovereign power of legislation vested
in the settlers of the territories from the beginning, and to propitiate
the free-soil sentiment, many of them contended that the clause in the
Kansas-Nebraska bill secured the territories to the north and free-soil
more effectually than could be done by Congressional legislation, as
settlers from the North could more readily take possession of the
territories and exclude slavery from them, than settlers from the
South could introduce slavery there, while in Congress the Southern
Representatives especially in the Senate where the sections were more
nearly equal, could, with the aid of a few Northern men, prevent any
interference with slavery. This view of the subject made the doctrine of
squatter sovereignty even more offensive than what was called the Wilmot
proviso, and Southern men contended that it was a trap to entrap them.
It was in fact not a question of construction of the clause in the
Kansas-Nebraska bill but of the Constitution itself. If Congress had no
power to legislate on the subject, then it could delegate none, and if
there was such a thing as "squatter sovereignty" it extended to all other
subjects as well as to slavery, and the settlers in the territories
might set up for themselves without any authority from Congress, which
would involve some very extraordinary consequences, including that even
of disposing of the public lands. The squatter sovereignty view of the
question was one not to be tolerated; and it applied to the Utah and New
Mexico bills as well as to that in regard to Kansas and Nebraska.
The great mass of Southern Whigs agreed with the Southern Democrats in
their way of interpreting the principle, but they did not regard the
question as one of sufficient practical importance to make a fight over,
and old party divisions and feuds prevented a coalescence of all of the
Southern men.
Though considered by many an abstract question, as it certainly was so far
as it applied to Kansas and Nebraska, it seemed to divide the Democratic
party into two wings, a Northern and a Southern one, with some adherents
to either wing from the opposite section. This division resulted in the
nomination of two sets of candidates by the Democratic party--Douglas of
Illinois and Johnson of Georgia by the Northern wing, and Breckenridge of
Kentucky and Lane of Oregon by the Southern wing. The Republican free-soil
or abolition party nominated Lincoln of Illinois and Hamlin of Maine,
while the Southern Whigs and a remnant of Northern Whigs, who had not
fused with the free-soilers and abolitionists, nominated Bell of Tennessee
and Everett of Massachusetts. The advocates of this latter ticket proposed
to sink every other issue and stand for "The Union, the Constitution, and
the enforcement of the Laws."
At the election in 1860, Lincoln and Hamlin received the majority of the
popular vote in nearly all of the Northern states and by that vote alone
secured a majority of the votes of the electoral colleges, but they lacked
very nearly 1,000,000 votes of receiving a majority of the combined
popular vote of the United States. In this election the Southern people
were unanimous in their opposition to Lincoln and Hamlin though divided as
to the other candidates, the few thousands of votes given on the border
for the Republican ticket, being given by Northern men who had emigrated
across the line, and amounting to a very inconsiderable fraction.
It was the first time in the history of the Government that a mere
sectional candidate had been elected and this was done upon sectional
issues alone. This result presented an alarming state of things and
developed the fact that under a Republican form of Federal Government,
with suffrage nearly universal, it was perfectly practicable for a
minority to get possession of the government on sectional issues and
perhaps control it permanently. There had been, before, presidents elected
by a minority popular vote, but this was on National issues and the
support of the successful candidate was confined to no particular section.
Of the thirteen presidents elected, seven had been elected from Southern
states, and all of them received majorities of the popular vote except Mr.
Polk of Tennessee, and his principal opponent was Mr. Clay of Kentucky, a
Southern man.
Six had been selected from Northern states, and but one of them, Harrison
of Ohio, but a native of Virginia, received a majority of the popular
votes.
Of the Southern presidents, Washington's electoral vote was unanimous.
Jefferson received twenty Northern electoral votes at his first election,
and all but nine of them at his second. Madison received a majority of
Northern electoral votes at his first election and forty of them at his
second. Monroe received a very large majority of Northern electoral votes
at his first election and all but one at his last, that being the only
vote cast against him. Jackson received 73 Northern and Northwestern
electoral votes out of 147 cast, at his first election and a very large
majority at his second election. Polk received 103 of the same vote to 58
cast for Mr. Clay and Taylor received a large majority of the same vote.
Of the Northern presidents, John Adams received 12 electoral votes from
the South. John Quincy Adams received six electoral votes from the slave
states and was elected by the House of Representatives, receiving the
votes of several slave states. Van Buren received 61 out of 126 votes cast
by the slave states, 28 of the rest being cast for Harrison. Harrison
received a large majority of Southern electoral votes, as did Pierce and
Buchanan and in every election the majority of Northern electoral votes
had been cast for the successful candidates, except at Jefferson's first
election, Madison's second, Jackson's first and Buchanan's election and in
this the majority of that vote had been cast for Fremont, the sectional
Republican candidate. Two vice-presidents, Tyler from Virginia and
Fillmore of New York, had succeeded to the presidency by the deaths of the
incumbents and both of them had received majorities of the popular vote as
well as of the Northern electoral vote.
Lincoln's election therefore was the first instance of the election of a
mere sectional president. It was very evident that if the party electing
him continued in possession of the government for any length of time,
there would inevitably follow a subversion of the rights of the states
and a consolidation of all power in the Federal government under the
control of a sectional majority, not a majority of the whole. This form of
consolidation promised to be infinitely worse than an entire obliteration
of all state lines and a concentration of power in the hands of the entire
people.
Under the circumstances attending the election of Lincoln, those of the
Southern states which are usually designated the "Cotton States" deemed
that their own safety required their withdrawal from the Union, and they
consequently withdrew. The legislature of South Carolina was in session
for the purpose of appointing electors for president, and when the
result was ascertained, a convention for that state was called, which
adopted an ordinance of secession on the 20th of December, 1860. Georgia,
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana soon followed the example of
South Carolina, and a Congress of the seceding states met at Montgomery,
Alabama, early in February, 1861, and organized a provisional government
under the style of the "Confederate States of America," of which the
Honorable Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was appointed President, and
the Honorable A. H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President.
Texas had previously adopted an ordinance of secession which went into
effect when it was certified by the popular vote and that state soon
afterwards became also one of the Confederate States.
A permanent constitution was adopted for the Confederate States to go
into effect on the 22d of February, 1862, modelled after that of the
United States, but containing some changes in the details and the powers
delegated, with more ample recognition of states rights and a prohibition
of the introduction of slaves from any other than the slave-holding states
and territories of the United States.
The secession of these states had been without violence, except to
take possession of some forts and arsenals of the United States within
the limits of the seceding states, which had been accomplished without
bloodshed. Commissioners were appointed to the United States government,
to effect a peaceful settlement of all questions between the two
governments in regard to the public debt, territory, etc.
This change in the relations of the seceding states to the United
States resulted in no change whatever in the domestic affairs of those
states, but they continued to be regulated as before under the laws and
constitutions of the several states.