THE CAMPAIGN OF 1844--ANNEXATION AND SLAVERY.
The nomination of Clay--His position on the slavery question and
annexation--Van Buren's letter to Hammet, and its effect upon the
South--His repudiation, and the nomination of Polk--The surprise
of the country--Unbounded confidence of the Whigs--The course of
the New York Democrats--The "Kane Letter"--Trouble among the Whigs
on the annexation question--Fierceness of the contest, and singular
ability of the leaders--The effect of Clay's defeat upon the Whigs
--Causes of the defeat--The Abolitionists, and the abuse heaped
upon them--Cassius M. Clay--Mr. Hoar's mission to South Carolina--
Election of John P. Hale--Annexation and war with Mexico--Polk's
message, and the Wilmot proviso--The Oregon question, and Alex. H.
Stephens.
The times were serious. The fun and frolic of 1840 had borne no
fruit, and that part of our history could not be repeated. The
campaign of 1844 promised to be a struggle for principle; and among
the Whigs all eyes were turned for a standard-bearer to Mr. Clay,
who had been so shabbily treated four years before. He was
unanimously nominated on the first of May, with Theodore Frelinghuysen
as the candidate for Vice President. The party issues were not
very sharply defined, but this was scarcely necessary with a
candidate who was proverbially regarded as himself "the embodiment
of Whig principles." On the subject of annexation, he clearly
defined his position in his letter of the 17th of April to the
"National Intelligencer." He declared that annexation and war with
Mexico were identical, and placed himself squarely against it,
except upon conditions specified, which would make the project of
immediate annexation impossible. On the slavery question, he had
not yet seriously offended the anti-slavery element in his own
party, and was even trusted by some of the voting anti-slavery men.
In a speech at Raleigh, in April of this year, he declared it to
be "the duty of each State to sustain its own domestic institutions."
He had publicly said that the General Government had nothing to do
with slavery, save in the matters of taxation, representation, and
the return of fugitive slaves. He had condemned the censure of
Mr. Giddings in 1842 as an outrage, and indorsed the principles
laid down in his tract, signed "Pacificus," on the relations of
the Federal Government to slavery, and the rights and duties of
the people of the free States. In his earlier years, he had been
an outspoken emancipationist, and had always frankly expressed his
opinion that slavery was a great evil. These considerations, and
especially his unequivocal utterances against the annexation scheme,
were regarded as hopeful auguries of a thoroughly united party,
and its triumph at the polls; while Mr. Webster, always on the
presidential anxious-seat, and carefully watching the signs of the
political zodiac, now cordially lent his efforts to the Whig cause.
With the Democracy, Mr. Van Buren was still a general favorite.
His friends felt that the wrong done him in 1840 should now be
righted, and a large majority of his party undoubtedly favored his
renomination. But his famous letter to Mr. Hammet, of Mississippi,
dated March 27th, on the annexation of Texas, placed a lion in his
path. In this lengthy and elaborate document he committed himself
against the project of immediate annexation, and the effect was at
once seen in the decidedly unfriendly tone of Democratic opinion
in the South. He had been faithful to the Slave oligarchy in many
things, but his failure in one was counted a breach of the whole
law. By many acts of patient and dutiful service he had earned
the gratitude of his Southern task-masters; but now, when driven
to the wall, he mustered the courage to say, "Thus far, no farther";
and for this there was no forgiveness. General Jackson came to
his rescue, but it was in vain. The Southern heart was set upon
immediate annexation as the golden opportunity for rebuilding the
endangered edifice of slavery, and Mr. Van Buren's talk about
national obligations and the danger of a foreign war was treated
as the idle wind. The Southern Democrats were bent upon his
overthrow, and they went about it in the Baltimore Convention of
the 27th of May as if perfectly conscious of their power over the
Northern wing of the party. They moved and carried the "two-thirds
rule," which had been acted on in the National Convention of 1832,
and afterward in that of 1835, although this could not have been
done without the votes of a majority of the convention, which was
itself strongly for Van Buren. The rule was adopted by a considerable
majority, the South being nearly unanimous in its favor, while the
North largely "supplied the men who handed Van Buren over to his
enemies with a kiss." Even General Cass, the most gifted and
accomplished dough-face in the Northern States, failed to receive
a majority of the votes of the Convention on any ballot, and James
K. Polk was finally nominated as the champion of immediate annexation,
with George M. Dallas as the candidate for Vice President.
The nomination was a perfect surprise to the country, because Mr.
Polk was wholly unknown to the people as a statesman. Like Governor
Hayes, when nominated in 1876, he belonged to the "illustrious
obscure." The astonished native who, on hearing the news, suddenly
inquired of a bystander, "Who the devil is Polk?" simply echoed
the common feeling, while his question provoked the general laughter
of the Whigs. For a time the nomination was somewhat disappointing
to the Democrats themselves; but they soon rallied, and finally
went into the canvass very earnestly, and with a united front.
The Whigs began the campaign in high hopes and in fact with unbounded
confidence in their success. Their great captain was in command,
and they took comfort in his favorite utterance that "truth is
omnipotent, and public justice certain." To pit him against such
a pigmy as Polk seemed to them a miserable burlesque, and they
counted their triumph as already perfectly assured. They claimed
the advantage on the question of annexation, and still more as to
the tariff, since the act of 1842 was popular, and Polk was known
to be a free-trader of the Calhoun school. As the canvass proceeded,
however, it became evident that the fight was to be fierce and
bitter to the last degree, and that the issue, after all, was not
so certain. Mr. Polk, notwithstanding his obscurity, was able to
rouse the enthusiasm of his party, North and South, to a very
remarkable degree. The annexation pill was swallowed by many
Democrats whose support of him had been deemed morally impossible.
In New York, where the opposition was strongest, leading Democrats,
with William Cullen Bryant as their head, denounced the annexation
scheme and repudiated the paragraph of the National platform which
favored it, and yet voted for Polk, who owed his nomination solely
to the fact that he had committed himself to the policy of immediate
and unconditional annexation, thus anticipating the sickly political
morality of 1852, when so many men of repute tried in vain to save
both their consciences and their party orthodoxy by "spitting upon
the platform and swallowing the candidate who stood upon it."
History will have to record that the action of these New York
Democrats saved the ticket in that State, and justly attaches to
them the responsibility for the very evils to the country against
which they so eloquently warned their brethren. The power of the
spoils came in as a tremendous make-weight, while the party lash
was vigorously flourished, and the "independent voter" was as
hateful to the party managers on both sides as we find him to-day.
Those who refused to wear the party collar were branded by the
"organs" as a "pestiferous and demoralizing brood," who deserved
"extermination." Discipline was rigorously enforced, and made to
take the place of argument. As regards the tariff question, Mr.
Polk's letter to Judge Kane, of Philadelphia, of the 19th of June,
enabled his friends completely to turn the tables on the Whigs of
Pennsylvania, where "Polk, Dallas, and the tariff of 1842," was
blazoned on the Democratic banners, and thousands of Democrats were
actually made to believe that Polk was even a better tariff man
than Clay. This letter, committing its free-trade author to the
principle of a revenue tariff, with "reasonable incidental protection
to our home industries," was translated into German and printed in
all the party papers; and as a triumphant effort to make the people
believe a lie, and a masterpiece of political duplicity employed
by the great party as a means of success, it had no precedent in
American politics. In later times, however, it has been completely
eclipsed by the scheme of "tissue ballots," and other wholesale
methods of balking the popular will in the South, by the successful
effort to cheat the nation out of the right to choose its Chief
Magistrate in 1876, and by the startling bribery of a great
commonwealth four years later, now unblushingly confessed by the
party leaders who accomplished it.
In the meantime the spirit of discontent began to manifest itself
among the Whigs of the South respecting Mr. Clay's attitude on the
question of annexation, and in a moment of weakness he wrote his
unfortunate "Alabama letter," of the 27th of July. In that letter
he said: "I do not think the subject of slavery ought to affect
the question one way or the other. Whether Texas be independent
or incorporated into the United States, I do not believe it will
prolong or shorten the duration of that institution." He also
declared that he would be "glad to see it, without dishonor, without
war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair
terms." These words were perfectly chilling to his anti-slavery
supporters, who were utterly opposed to annexation on _any_ terms,
because the power of slavery would thus inevitably be extended and
strengthened in the United States. The letter was an irreparable
mistake. It was a fresh example of his besetting tendency to
mediate between opposing policies, and undoubtedly drove from his
support many who would otherwise have followed the Whig banner to
the end.
But the Whigs kept up the fight. The issues were joined, and it
was too late to change front. The real question in dispute was
that of annexation, and the election of Polk was certain to secure
it, and to involve the nation in war. Clay was unquestionably
right in saying that annexation and war were identical; and, although
on the slavery question he might be feared as a compromiser, there
was no reason to doubt that, if elected, he would vigorously resist
the annexation scheme, except upon conditions already stated, which
could not fail to defeat it as a present measure and avoid the
calamities of war. I was inexpressibly disappointed and grieved
by his letter; but I agreed with Cassius M. Clay, that opposition
to annexation except "with the common consent of the Union" was
practically absolute opposition, and I therefore kept up the fight
in which I had enlisted in the beginning and made my first venture
as a stump speaker. I cared little about the old party issues.
I had outgrown the teachings of the Whigs on the subject of
protection, and especially their pet dogma of "the higher the duty
the lower the price of the protected article." As to a national
bank, I followed Webster, who had pronounced it "an obsolete idea";
and I totally repudiated the land policy of the Whigs, having at
that early day espoused the principle that the public lands should
cease to be a source of revenue, and be granted in small homesteads
to the landless poor for actual settlement and tillage. But on
the subject of slavery, though it had escaped my attention in the
hurrah of 1840, I was thoroughly aroused. This came of my Quaker
training, the speeches of Adams and Giddings, the anti-slavery
newspapers, and the writings of Dr. Channing, all of which I had
been reading with profound interest since the Harrison Campaign.
Being perfectly sure that annexation would lead to slavery-extension
and war, I thought it my clear and unhesitating duty to resist the
election of Polk with all my might. This I did to the end, and in
doing it I employed substantially the same arguments on which I
justified my separation from the Whigs four years later.
The contest proceeded with its variety of charges and counter-
charges, and was prosecuted on both sides with extraordinary vigor
and zeal in every part of the Union. I think it was everywhere
and pre-eminently a struggle between the men of brains on either
side. I am quite sure this was true in my own State. Indiana was
remarkable at that time, not only for her gifted stump orators,
but for her men of real calibre and power of argument. On the side
of the Whigs were such men as Oliver H. Smith, Joseph G. Marshall,
George G. Dunn, Joseph L. White, Richard W. Thompson, Caleb B.
Smith, George H. Proffit, Henry S. Lane, Samuel W. Parker, and
James H. Cravens. The Democrats could boast of Tilghman A. Howard,
James Whitcomb, Edward A. Hannegan, William W. Wick, John Law,
Joseph A. Wright, Jesse D. Bright, John W. Davis, Thomas J. Henly,
and John L. Robinson. The best talking talent of the nation was
called into service, including such Democratic giants as Thomas H.
Benton, William Allen, Silas Wright, Robert J. Walker, James
Buchanan, and Daniel S. Dickinson; and such Whigs to match them as
Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Thomas F. Marshall, Thomas Corwin,
S. S. Prentiss, Thomas Ewing, and W. C. Preston. The fight was
more ably if not more hotly contested than any preceding national
struggle, raging and blazing everywhere, while the forces marshaled
against each other were more evenly balanced than in any contest
since the year 1800. The race was so close that the result hung
in agonizing doubt and suspense up to the evening following the
election. Party feeling rose to a frenzy, and the consuming desire
of the Whigs to crown their great Chief with the laurels of victory
was only equaled by that of the Democrats for the triumph of the
unknown Tennessean whose nomination had provoked the aggravating
laughter of the enemy in the beginning.
It is not possible to describe the effect of Mr. Clay's defeat upon
the Whigs. It was wholly unexpected, and Mr. Clay especially
remained sanguine as to his triumph up to the last moment. When
the result became known, it was accepted by his friends as a great
national calamity and humiliation. It shocked and paralyzed them
like a great tragedy. I remember very vividly one zealous Whig,
afterward a prominent Free Soiler and Republican leader, who was
so utterly overwhelmed that for a week he lost the power of sleep,
and gave himself up to political sorrow and despair. Letters of
the most heart-felt condolence poured in upon Mr. Clay from all
quarters, and the Whigs everywhere seemed to feel that no statesman
of real eminence could ever be made President. They insisted that
an overwhelming preponderance of the virtue, intelligence and
respectability of the country had supported their candidate, while
the larger element of ignorance and "unwashed" humanity, including
our foreign-born population, gave the victory to Mr. Polk. Their
faith in republican government was fearfully shaken, while the
causes of the great disaster were of course sought out, and made
the text of hasty but copious moralizings. One of these causes
was the Kane letter, which undoubtedly gave Mr. Polk the State of
Pennsylvania. Another was the baneful influence of "nativism,"
which had just broken out in the great cities, and been made the
occasion of such frightful riot and bloodshed in Philadelphia as
to alarm our foreign-born citizens, and throw them almost unanimously
against the Whigs. The Abolitionists declared that Mr. Clay's
defeat was caused by his trimming on the annexation question, which
drew from him a sufficient number of conscientious anti-slavery
men to have turned the tide in his favor. The famous Plaquemine
frauds in Louisiana unquestionably lost that State to Mr. Clay.
This infamous conspiracy to strangle the voice of a sovereign State
was engineered by John Slidell, and it consisted of the shipment
from New Orleans to Plaquemine of two steamboats loaded with roughs
and villains, whose illegal votes were sufficient to turn the State
over to the Democrats.
But the cause of Mr. Clay's defeat which was dwelt upon with most
emphasis and feeling was the action of the Liberty party. Birney,
its candidate for President, received 66,304 votes, and these, it
was alleged, came chiefly from the Whig party. The vote of these
men in New York and Michigan was greater than the Democratic
majority, so that if they had united with the Whigs, Clay would
have been elected in spite of all other opposition. Mr. Polk's
plurality over Clay in New York was only 5,106, while Birney received
in that State 15,812; and Horace Greeley insisted that if only one
third of this vote had been cast for Mr. Clay, he would have been
President. The feeling of the Whigs against these anti-slavery
men was bitter and damnatory to the last degree. The Plaquemine
frauds, the Kane letter, and everything else, were forgotten in
the general and abounding wrath against these "fanatics," who were
denounced as the betrayers of their country and of the cause which
a very great and critical opportunity had placed it in their power
to save. "The Abolitionists deserve to be damned, and they will
be," said a zealous Whig to an anti-slavery Quaker; and this was
simply the expression of the prevailing feeling at this time, at
least in the West.
But this treatment of the Abolitionists was manifestly unjust.
Their organization four years before was neither untimely nor
unnecessary, but belonged to the inevitable logic of a great and
dominating idea. A party was absolutely necessary which should
make this idea paramount, and utterly refuse to be drawn away from
it by any party divisions upon subsidiary questions. It should be
remembered, too, that the Liberty party was made up of Democratic
as well as Whig deserters, and that if it had disbanded, or had
not been formed, the result of this election would have been the
same. The statement of Mr. Greeley, that one third of Birney's
vote in New York would have elected Clay, was unwarranted, unless
he was able to show what would have been the action of the other
two thirds. In justice to these Abolitionists it should also be
remembered and recorded, to say the very least, that Mr. Clay
himself divided with them the responsibility of his defeat by his
Alabama letter, and that now, in the clear perspective of history,
they stand vindicated against their Whig assailants, whose fevered
brains and party intolerance blinded their eyes to the truth.
Doubtless there were honest differences of opinion as to the best
method of serving the anti-slavery cause in this exasperating
campaign, and these differences may still survive as an inheritance;
but abolitionism, as a working force in our politics, had to have
a beginning, and no man who cherishes the memory of the old Free
Soil party, and of the larger one to which it gave birth, will
withhold the meed of his praise from the heroic little band of
sappers and miners who blazed the way for the armies which were to
follow, and whose voices, though but faintly heard in the whirlwind
of 1840, were made significantly audible in 1844. Although they
were everywhere totally misunderstood and grossly misrepresented,
they clearly comprehended their work and courageously entered upon
its performance. Their political creed was substantially identical
with that of the Free Soilers of 1848 and the Republicans of 1856
and 1860. They were anything but political fanatics, and history
will record that their sole offense was the espousal of the truth
in advance of the multitude, which slowly and finally followed in
their footsteps.
But the war against slavery was not at all intermitted by the
victory of the Democrats. Events are schoolmasters, and this
triumph only quickened their march toward the final catastrophe.
Cassius M. Clay, who had espoused the Whig cause in this canvass
with great vigor and zeal, and on anti-slavery grounds, re-enlisted
in the battle against slavery, and resolved to prosecute it by new
methods. He had been sorely tried by Mr. Clay's Alabama letter
and the Whig defeat, but he was now armed with fresh courage, and
resolved to "carry the war into Africa" by the establishment of
his newspaper, the "True American," in Lexington, in his own State.
His arraignment of slavery was so eloquent and masterly that a
large meeting of slave-holders appointed a committee to wait on
him, and request the discontinuance of his paper. His reply was:
"Go, tell your secret conclave of cowardly assassins that Cassius
M. Clay knows his rights, and how to defend them." These words
thrilled all lovers of liberty, and sounded to them like a trumpet
call to battle. Another fruitful event was the effort of Massachusetts,
in the fall of this year, to protect her colored seamen in the
ports of Charleston and New Orleans, where they were seized on
merchant ships and sold into slavery under local police regulations.
When Mr. Hoar visited Charleston as the accredited agent of his
State for the purpose of taking measures to test the constitutionality
of these regulations, the Legislature of South Carolina, by a vote
of one hundred and nineteen against one, passed a series of outrageous
resolutions culminating in a request to the Governor to expel him
from the State as a confessed disturber of the peace. He was
obliged summarily to depart, as the only means of escaping the
vengeance of the mob. This open and insolent defiance of the
national authority could not fail to strengthen anti-slavery opinion
in the Northern States. The same end was served by an unexpected
movement in New Hampshire. This State, like Massachusetts and
Vermont, had taken ground against annexation, but it wheeled into
line after Polk was nominated. John P. Hale, however, then a
Democratic member of Congress from that State, refused to follow
his party, and for this reason, after he had been formally declared
its choice for re-election, he was thrown overboard, and another
candidate nominated. No election, however, was effected, and his
seat remained vacant during the 29th Congress, but he obtained a
seat in the Legislature in 1846, and the following year was chosen
United States Senator, while Amos Tuck, afterward a prominent Free
Soiler, was elected to the Lower House of Congress. These were
pregnant events, and especially the triumph of Hale, who became a
very formidable champion of freedom, and a thorn in the side of
slavery till it perished.
In the meantime the hunger for immediate annexation had been whetted
by the election of Mr. Polk, and its champions hurried up their
work, and pushed it by methods in open disregard of the Constitution
and of our treaty obligations with Mexico. In the last hours of
the administration of John Tyler the atrocious plot received its
finishing touch and the Executive approval, and, in the apt words
of the ablest and fairest historian of the transaction, "the bridal
dress in which Calhoun had led the beloved of the slaveocracy to
the Union was the torn and tattered Constitution of the United
States." War with Mexico, as prophesied by the Whigs, speedily
followed. As early as August, 1845, General Taylor was ordered by
President Polk to advance to a position on the Nueces. In March
of the following year, in pursuance of further orders, his army
again advanced, taking its position on the east bank of the Rio
Grande, and, of course, on the soil of Mexico. Hostilities naturally
followed, and after two battles the President, in his message to
Congress, declared that "American blood has been shed on American
soil." This robust Executive falsehood, with which the slave power
compelled him to face the civilized world, must always hold a very
high rank in the annals of public audacity and crime. It is what
Thomas Carlyle might have styled "the second power of a lie," and
is only rivaled by the parallel falsehood of Congress in declaring
that "by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war exists
between that Government and the United States." In the message of
the President referred to, he recommended that a considerable sum
of money be placed at his disposal for the purpose of negotiating
a peace, and it was on the consideration of this message that David
Wilmot fortunately obtained the floor, and moved his memorable
proviso for the interdiction of slavery in any territory which
might be wrested from Mexico by our arms. This was the session of
Congress for 1846-47, and the proposition passed the House with
great unanimity as to the Northern members. At the following
session of Congress, on the 28th of February, 1848, the proviso
again came before the House, and the motion to lay it on the table
failed, all the Whigs and a large majority of the Democrats from
the free States voting in the negative. It passed the House on
the 13th of December following, on a similar division of parties
and sections, but the Senate refused to concur, and the Thirtieth
Congress adjourned without any provisions whatever for the organization
or government of our recently acquired Territories.
It is worth while to notice in passing that on the first introduction
of the Wilmot proviso, in August, 1846, General Cass was decidedly
in its favor, and regretted that it had been talked to death by
the long speech of John Davis; but on the 24th of December, 1847,
he wrote his famous "Nicholson letter," proclaiming his gospel of
"popular sovereignty" in the Territories, which proved the seed-
plot of immeasurable national trouble and disaster. "I am strongly
impressed with the opinion," said he, "that a great change is going
on in the public mind on this subject--in my own mind as well as
others"; and he had before declared, on the 19th of February, that
the passage of the Wilmot proviso "would be death to the war, death
to all hope of getting an acre of territory, death to the
administration, and death to the Democratic party." This was
thoroughly characteristic, and in perfect harmony with his action,
already referred to, respecting the Quintuple treaty; but it showed
how the political waters were being troubled by the slavery question,
and how impossible it was to accommodate the growing anti-slavery
feeling of the country by any shallow expedients.
But another conspiracy against freedom was now hatched; and if the
Senate had strangled the Wilmot proviso, it was gratifying to find
the House ready to strangle this monster of senatorial birth. I
allude to the now almost forgotten "Clayton Compromise," which
passed the Senate by a decided majority on the 26th of July. By
submitting the whole question of slavery in all our Territories to
the Supreme Court of the United States, as then constituted, it
would almost certainly have spawned the curse in all of them,
including Oregon, which had long been exposed to peril and massacre
by the reckless opposition of our slave-masters to a government
there without the recognition of slavery. The defeat of this
nefarious proposition, which was happily followed by the passage
of a bill giving Oregon a territorial government, is largely due
to Alexander H. Stephens, whose motion to lay it on the table in
the House prevailed by a small majority. In this action he had
the courage to separate himself from the great body of the leading
men of his own section; but in doing so he was prompted by his
supreme devotion to slavery. This he has since denied and labored
to explain in his private correspondence and published works, but
the record is fatally against him. He was unwilling to trust the
interests of the South in the hands of the Supreme Court, and his
speech of August 7th, in the House of Representatives, in defense
of his motion, gave very plausible reasons for his apprehensions;
but the Dred Scott decision of a few years later showed how completely
he misjudged that tribunal, and how opportunely his blindness came
to the rescue of freedom. It seems now to have been providential;
for in this Continental plot against liberty the superior sagacity
of Calhoun and his associates was demonstrated by subsequent events,
while Mr. Stephens, with his great influence in the South, could
almost certainly have secured its triumph if he had become its
champion instead of its enemy.