PROGRESS OF REPUBLICANISM.
The Dred Scott decision--The struggle for freedom in Kansas--
Instructive debates in Congress--Republican gains in the Thirty-
fifth Congress--The English bill--Its defeat and the effect--
Defection of Douglas--Its advantages and its perils--Strange course
of the New-York Tribune and other Republican papers--Republican
retreat in Indiana--Illinois Republicans stand firm, and hold the
party to its position--Gains in the Thirty-sixth Congress--Southern
barbarism and extravagance--John Brown's raid--Cuba and the slave
trade--Oregon and Kansas--Aids to anti-slavery progress--The
Speakership and Helper's book--Southern insolence and extravagance
--Degradation of Douglas--Slave code for the Territories--Outrages
in the South--Campaign of 1860--Charleston convention and division
of the Democrats--Madness of the factions--Bell and Everett--
Republican National Convention and its platform--Lincoln and Seward
--Canvass of Douglas--The campaign for Lincoln--Conduct of Seward
--Republican concessions and slave-holding madness.
The Republicans, however, were sorely disappointed by their defeat;
but this second great victory of slavery did not at all check the
progress of the anti-slavery cause. It had constantly gathered
strength from the audacity and recklessness of slave-holding
fanaticism, and it continued to do so. On the 6th of March, 1857,
the Supreme Court of the United States harnessed itself to the car
of slavery by its memorable decision in the case of Dred Scott,
affirming that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the
Territories, and, inferentially, that the Constitution carried with
it the right to hold slaves there, even against the will of their
people. The point was not before the court, and the opinion of
Chief Justice Taney was therefore purely extra-judicial. It was
simply a political harangue in defense of slavery. It created a
profound impression throughout the free States, and became a powerful
weapon in the hands of Republicans. It was against the whole
current of adjudications on the subject, and they denounced it as
a vile caricature of American jurisprudence. They characterized
it as the distilled diabolism of two hundred years of slavery,
stealthily aiming at the overthrow of our Republican institutions,
while seeking to hide its nakedness under the fig-leaves of judicial
fairness and dignity. They branded it as the desperate attempt of
slave-breeding Democracy to crown itself king, by debauching the
Federal judiciary and waging war against the advance of civilization.
Their denunciations of the Chief Justice were unsparing and
remorseless; and they described him as "pouring out the hoarded
villainies of a life-time into a political opinion which he tried
to coin into law." When Senator Douglas sought to ridicule their
clamor by inquiring whether they would take an appeal from the
Supreme Court of the United States to a town meeting, they answered:
"Yes, we appeal from the court to the people, who made the
Constitution, and have the right, as the tribunal of last resort,
to define its meaning." Nothing could more clearly have marked
the degradation to which the power of slavery had reduced the
country than this decision, and no other single event could have
so prepared the people for resistance to its aggressions. It was
thoroughly cold-blooded in its letter and spirit, and no Spanish
Inquisitor ever showed less sympathy for his victim than did the
Chief Justice for the slave.
But the Dred Scott iniquity did not stand alone. It had been
procured for the purpose of fastening slavery upon all the Territories,
and it had, of course, a special meaning when applied to the
desperate struggle then in progress to make Kansas a slave State.
The conduct of the Administration during this year, in its treatment
of the free State men of that Territory, forms one of the blackest
pages in the history of slavery. The facts respecting their labors,
trials, and sufferings, and the methods employed to force upon them
the Lecompton Constitution, including wholesale ballot-stuffing
and every form of ruffianism, pillage, and murder, need not be
recalled; but all these were but the outcroppings and counterpart
of the Dred Scott decision, and the horrid travesty of the principle
of popular sovereignty in the Territories. The whole power of the
Administration, acting as the hired man of slavery, was ruthlessly
employed for the purpose of spreading the curse over Kansas, and
establishing it there as an irreversible fact; and all the departments
of the Government now stood as a unit on the side of this devilish
conspiracy. Everybody knew the Lecompton constitution was the work
of outside ruffians, and not of the people of the Territory, whose
Legislature in February, 1858, solemnly protested against their
admission under that Constitution, and whose protest was totally
unheeded. The Congressional debates during this period greatly
contributed to the anti-slavery education of the people, by more
clearly unmasking the real spirit and designs of the slaveholders.
We were treated to the kind of talk then becoming current about
"Northern mud-sills," "filthy operatives," the "ownership of labor
by capital," and the beauties and beatitudes of slavery. Such
maddened extremists as Hammond and Keitt of South Carolina, and such
blatant doughfaces as Petit of Indiana, became capital missionaries
in the cause of freedom. Their words were caught up by the press
of the free States, and added their beneficent help to the work so
splendidly going forward through the providential agency of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin."
In the meantime, freedom had made large gains in the composition
of the Thirty-fifth Congress, which now had charge of the Lecompton
swindle. The Senate contained twenty Republican members and the
House ninety-two. Kansas had not been forced into the Union as a
slave State, but she was helpless at the feet of the Executive.
In the midst of the angry debate a new proposition was brought
forward, on the twenty-third of April, which was even more detestable
than the Lecompton bill itself. This was known as the "English
bill," which offered Kansas a very large and tempting land grant,
if she would come into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution,
but provided that if she voted to reject the land grant she should
neither receive the land nor be admitted as a State until the
Territory acquired a population sufficient to elect a representative
to the House. The infamy of this proposition was heightened by
the fact that these long-suffering pioneers, weary and harassed by
their protracted struggle and longing for peace, were naturally
tempted to purchase it at any price. It was a proposition of
gigantic bribery, after bluster and bullying had been exhausted.
It was, in fact, both a bribe and a menace, and measured at once
the political morality of the men who favored it, and the extremity
to which the slave-holders were driven in the prosecution of their
desperate enterprise. After a protracted debate in both Houses,
and at the end of a struggle of five months, the bill was passed
and received the Executive approval; but the rejoicing of the slave-
holders and their allies was short-lived. The people of Kansas
were not in the market. They had suffered too much and too long
in the battle for freedom to make merchandise of their convictions
and sacrifice the future of a great commonwealth. They spurned
the bribe, and took the chances of triumph through an indefinitely
prolonged conflict, while recruits to the ranks of freedom were
naturally falling into line throughout the Northern States.
In December of this year I attended another fugitive slave case in
Indianapolis. The claimant was one Vallandingham, of Kentucky,
whose agent caught the alleged fugitive in Illinois, and was passing
through Indianapolis on his way home. The counsel for the negro,
Ellsworth, Coburn, Colley, and myself, brought the case before
Judge Wallace, on _habeas corpus_, and had him discharged. The
claimant immediately had him arrested and taken before Commissioner
Rea, for trial. We asked for the continuance of the case on the
affidavit of the negro that he was free, and could prove it if
allowed three weeks' time in which to procure his witnesses; but
the Commissioner ruled that the proceeding was a summary _ex-parte_
one, and that the defendant had no right to any testimony. Of
course we were forced into trial, and after allowing secondary
proof where the highest was attainable, and permitting hearsay
evidence and mere rumor, the Commissioner granted his certificate
for the removal of the adjudged fugitive. We again brought the
case before Judge Wallace, on _habeas corpus_, when the negro denied
all the material facts of the marshal's return, under oath, and
asked to be allowed to prove his denial; but the Judge refused
this, and he was handed over to the marshal for transportation
South. On the trial he was shown to have been free by the act of
his master in sending him into a free State; but under cover of an
infamous law, and by the help of truculent officials, he was remanded
into slavery. The counsel for the negro, with a dozen or more who
joined them, resolved upon one further effort to save him. The
project was that two or three men selected for the purpose were to
ask of the jailer the privilege of seeing him the next morning and
giving him good-bye; and while one of the party engaged the jailer
in conversation, the negro was to make for the door, mount a horse
hitched near by, and effect his escape. The enterprise had a
favorable beginning. The negro got out, mounted a horse, and might
have escaped if he had been a good horseman; but he was awkward
and clumsy, and unfortunately mounted the wrong horse, and a very
poor traveler; and when he saw the jailer in pursuit, and heard
the report of his revolver, he surrendered, and was at once escorted
South. Walpole and his brother were for the claimant. This is
the only felony in which I was ever involved, but none of the
parties to it had any disposition whatever to confess it at the
time.
The Republican party gathered fresh courage and strength in the
year 1858 from the defection of Douglas. His unmistakable ability
and hitherto unquestioned devotion to slavery had singled him out
as the great leader and coming man of his party. He was ambitious,
and by no means scrupulous in his political methods. The moral
character of slavery gave him not the slightest concern, ostentatiously
declaring that he did not care whether it was "voted up or voted
down" in the Territories, and always lavishing his contempt upon
the negro. He was the great champion of popular sovereignty, but
at the same time fully committed himself to the decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States, whatever it might be; and after
that decision had been given, and, in effect, against his particular
hobby, he defended it, while vainly striving to vindicate his
consistency. But the Lecompton swindle was so revolting a mockery
of the right of the people of Kansas, that his own Democratic
constituents would not endorse it, and he was obliged, contrary to
his strong party inclinations, to take his stand against it. It
was an event of very great significance, both North and South, and
gave great comfort to anti-slavery men of all shades of opinion;
but it brought with it, at the same time, a serious peril to the
Republican party.
His accession to the Anti-Lecompton ranks was deemed so important
that many leading Republicans, of different States, thought he
should be welcomed and honored by the withdrawal of all party
opposition to his re-election to the Senate. They argued that in
no other way could the despotic power of the Democratic power be
so effectually broken, and the real interests of republicanism
advanced. This feeling, for a time, prevailed extensively, and
threatened to put in abeyance or completely supersede the principles
so broadly laid down in the national platform of 1856. The "New
York Tribune" took the lead in beating this retreat. It sympathized
with Douglas to the end of his canvass, and in connection with
kindred agencies probably saved him from defeat. It urged the
disbanding of the Republican party, and the formation of a new
combination against the Democrats, composed of Republicans, Douglas
Democrats, Know-Nothings, and old Whigs, but without any avowal of
principles. It proposed that by the common consent of these parties
the Republicans should be allowed to name the next candidate for
the Presidency, and the other parties the candidate for the Vice
Presidency; or that this proposition should be reversed, if found
advisable, with a view to harmony. The different wings of this
combination were to call themselves by such names and proclaim such
principles in different States and localities as might seem to them
most conducive to local success and united ascendancy. This
abandonment of republicanism was likewise favored by such papers
as the "Cincinnati Gazette," which pronounced the policy of
Congressional prohibition worthless as a means of excluding slavery
from the Territories, and openly committed itself to the admission
of more slave States, whenever demanded by a popular majority in
any Territory. "The Indianapolis Journal" and other leading
Republican organs spoke of Congressional prohibition as "murdered
by Dred Scott," and as having no longer any practical value. In
the spring of this year the Republicans of Indiana, in their State
convention, not only surrendered the policy of Congressional
prohibition, and adopted the principle of popular sovereignty, but
made opposition to the Lecompton Constitution the sole issue of
the canvass. Under such leaders as Oliver P. Morton and his Whig
and Know-Nothing associates, Republicanism simply meant opposition
to the latest outrage of slavery, and acquiescence in all preceding
ones; but this shameful surrender of the cause to its enemies was
deservedly condemned in the election which followed. The Legislature
of the State, however, at its ensuing session, overwhelmingly
endorsed the Douglas dogma, and even the better class of Republican
papers urged the abandonment of the Republican creed. But, very
fortunately for the cause, the Republicans of Illinois could not
be persuaded to take Mr. Douglas into their embrace on the score
of a single worthy act, and forget, if not forgive, his long career
of effective and untiring hostility to the principles they cherished;
and his nomination by the Democrats, on a platform very offensive
to Republicans, fully justified their course. The result was the
nomination of Mr. Lincoln as a candidate for the succession to Mr.
Douglas, and the great joint debate which did so much to educate
the mind of the free States and prepare the way for Mr. Lincoln's
nomination the following year, while revealing the moral unworthiness
of his great rival, and justifying the policy which made necessary
this memorable contest in Illinois.
The steady march of the Republican party toward ascendancy was
shown in the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met in December, 1859.
There were now twenty-four Republican senators, and one hundred
and nine representatives. Early in the first session of this
Congress an interesting debate occurred in the Senate on a proposition
to provide for the education of the colored children of the District
of Columbia. Mr. Mason condemned the proposition, and said it was
wise to prohibit the education of the colored race. Jefferson
Davis declared that the Government was not made for them, and that
"we have no right to tax our people to educate the barbarians of
Africa." These and kindred utterances were very well calculated
to aid the work of anti-slavery progress. John Brown's raid into
Virginia kindled the ire of the slave-holders to a degree as yet
unprecedented, and although his act found few defenders in the
Northern States, the heroism with which he met his fate, the pithy
correspondence between Gov. Wise and Mrs. Child, the language of
Southern senators in dealing with the subject, and the efforts made
to ferret out Brown's associates, all tended to strengthen the
growing hostility to slavery and prepare the way for the final
conflict. The designs of the slaveholders upon Cuba, which were
avowed in this Congress, and their purpose to acquire it for the
extension of slavery, by purchase if they could, but if not by war,
served the same purpose. The growing demand for the revival of
the African slave trade, as shown by the avowals of leading men in
both houses of Congress, and their cold-blooded utterances on the
subject, produced a profound impression on the country, and called
forth the startling fact that the city of New York was then one of
the greatest slave-trading marts in the world, and that from thirty
to sixty thousand persons a year were taken from Africa to Cuba by
vessels from that single port. Such facts as these, and that the
laws of the Union for the suppression of the traffic were not only
a dead letter but that the slave masters and their allies sullenly
refused to take any steps whatever for the remedy of this organized
inhumanity, were capital arguments for the Republicans, which they
employed with telling effect. The refusal to admit Oregon as a
State without a constitutional provision excluding people of color,
the rejection of Kansas on her application with a Constitution
fairly adopted by her people, and the great speech of Sumner on
"The Barbarism of Slavery," which this last application called
forth, all served their purpose in the growth of anti-slavery
opinion. So did the attempt to divide California for the purpose
of introducing slavery into the southern portion; the veto of an
Act of the Territorial Legislature of Kansas abolishing slavery,
and of a similar act in Nebraska; the acts of several Southern
States permitting free colored persons to sell themselves as slaves
if they chose to do so in preference to expulsion from the land of
their birth and their homes; the decision of the courts of Virginia
that slaves had no social or civil rights, and no legal capacity
to choose between being emancipated or sold as slaves; the refusal
of the Government to give a passport to a colored physician of
Massachusetts, for the reason that such privileges were never
conferred upon persons of color; and the revolutionary sentiments
uttered by governors and legislatures of various Southern States,
some of which declared that the election of a Republican President
would be sufficient cause for withdrawal from the Union. That
these were important aids to the progress of freedom was shown by
the passage of laws in various Northern States for the protection
of personal liberty, forbidding the use of local jails for the
detention of persons claimed as fugitive slaves, and securing for
them the right of trial by jury and the benefit of the writ of
_habeas corpus_. This healthy reaction was still further shown in
wholesome judicial decisions in several Northern States affirming
the citizenship of negroes, and denying the right of transit of
slave-holders with their slaves over their soil.
The struggle for the Speakership in this Congress, which lasted
eight weeks, was also a first-rate training school for Republicanism.
Helper's famous book, "The Impending Crisis," had made a decided
sensation throughout the country, and John Sherman, the principal
candidate of the Republicans for Speaker, had endorsed it, though
he now denied the fact. Mr. Millson of Virginia, declared that
the man who "consciously, deliberately, and of purpose, lends his
name and influence to the propagation of such writings, is not only
not fit to be Speaker, but he is not fit to live." De Jarnette,
of the same State, said that Mr. Seward was "a perjured traitor,
whom no Southerner could consistently support or even obey, should
the nation elect him President." Mr. Pryor said that eight million
Southern freemen could not be subjugated by any combination whatever,
"least of all by a miscellaneous mob of crazy fanatics and conscience-
stricken traitors." Mr. Keitt said that "should the Republican
party succeed in the next Presidential election, my advice to the
South is to snap the cords of the Union at once and forever." Mr.
Crawford of Georgia said, "we will never submit to the inauguration
of a black Republican President"; and these and like utterances
were applauded by the galleries. The growing madness and desperation
in the Senate were equally noteworthy. This was shown by the
removal of Mr. Douglas from the chairmanship of the Committee on
Territories, and the determined purpose to read him out of the
party for refusing to violate the principle of popular sovereignty
in the Territory of Kansas. The attempt to hunt down a man who
had done the South such signal service in dragooning the Northern
Democracy into its support could not fail to divide the party, and
at the same time completely unmask the extreme and startling designs
which the slave power had been stealthily maturing. But that power
was now absolutely bent upon its purpose, and morally incapable of
pausing in its work. Its demand was a slave code for the Territories,
and it would accept nothing less. Jefferson Davis was the champion
of this policy, which he embodied in a series of resolutions and
made them the text of an elaborate argument; and Mr. Douglas replied
in a speech which at once vindicated himself and overwhelmingly
condemned the party with which he had so long acted. The resolutions,
however, were adopted by the Senate, which thus proclaimed its
purpose to nationalize slavery.
In the meantime these remarkable legislative proceedings had their
counterpart in increasing lawlessness and violence throughout the
South. This was illustrated in such facts as the expulsion of
members of the Methodist Church North from Texas, the imprisonment
of Rev. Daniel Worth, in North Carolina, for circulating Helper's
"Impending Crisis"; the exile from Kentucky of the Rev. John G.
Fee and his colony of peaceable and law-abiding people, on account
of their anti-slavery opinions; and the espionage of the mails by
every Southern postmaster, who under local laws had the power to
condemn and "burn publicly" whatever he deemed unfit for circulation,
which laws had been pronounced constitutional by Caleb Cushing,
while Attorney General of the United States under Mr. Pierce, and
were "cheerfully acquiesced in" by Judge Holt, Postmaster General
under Buchanan. In Virginia the spirit of lawlessness became such
a rage that one of her leading newspapers offered a reward of fifty
thousand dollars for the head of Wm. H. Seward, while another paper
offered ten thousand dollars for the kidnapping and delivery in
Richmond of Joshua R. Giddings, or five thousand dollars for his
head. In short, the reign of barbarism was at last fully ushered
in, and the whole nation was beginning to realize the truth of Mr.
Lincoln's declaration, which he borrowed from St. Mark, that "a
house divided against itself can not stand." The people of the
free States were at school, with the slaveholders as their masters;
and the dullest scholars were now beginning to get their lessons.
Even the Know-Nothings and Silver-Grey Whigs were coming up to the
anxious seat, under the enlightening influence and saving-grace of
slaveholding madness and crime. The hour was ripe for action, and
the dawn of freedom in the South was seen in the coming emancipation
of the North.
The Presidential Campaign of 1860 was a very singular commentary
on the Compromise measures of 1850 and the "finality" platforms of
1852. The sectional agitation which now stirred the country
outstripped all precedent, and completely demonstrated the folly
of all schemes of compromise. The Democratic National Convention
met in the city of Charleston on the twenty-third day of May. Its
action now seems astounding, although it was the inevitable result
of antecedent facts. The Democratic party had the control of every
department of the Government, and a formidable popular majority
behind it. It had the complete command of its own fortunes, and
there was no cause or even excuse for the division which threatened
its life. The difference between the Southern Democrats and the
followers of Douglas was purely metaphysical, eluding entirely the
practical common sense of the people. Both wings of the party now
stood committed to the Dred Scott decision, and that surrendered
everything which the extreme men of the South demanded. It was "a
quarrel about goats' wool," and yet the Southern Democrats were
maddened at the thought of submitting to the nomination of Douglas
for the Presidency. His sin in the Lecompton affair was counted
unpardonable, and they seemed to hate him even more intensely than
they hated the Abolitionists. A committee on resolutions was
appointed, which submitted majority and minority, or Douglas and
anti-Douglas, reports. These were hotly debated, but the Douglas
platform was adopted, which led to the secession of the Southern
delegates. On the fifty-seventh ballot Mr. Douglas received a
clear majority of the Electoral College, but the Convention then
adjourned till the eighteenth of June, in the hope that harmony
might in some way be restored. On reassembling this was found
impossible, and the balloting was resumed, which finally gave Mr.
Douglas all the votes cast but thirteen, and he was declared the
Democratic nominee. The Convention then nominated for the Vice
Presidency Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia, a disciple of Calhoun,
whose extreme opinions were well known. He was unequivocally
committed to the doctrine that neither the General Government nor
a Territorial Government can impair the right of slave property in
the common Territories. This illustration of the political profligacy
of the Douglas managers, and burlesque upon popular sovereignty,
was as remarkable as the madness of the seceders in fighting him
for his supposed anti-slavery prejudices. The bolters from this
convention afterward nominated John C. Breckenridge as their
candidate for President and Joseph Lane for Vice President. The
Democratic canvass was thus inaugurated, and the overthrow of the
party provided for in the mere wantonness of political folly.
On the ninth of May what was called the Constitutional Union Party
held its convention at Baltimore, and nominated John Bell for
President and Edward Everett for Vice President. It adopted no
platform, and owing to its neutrality of tint, its action had no
significance aside from its possible effect on the result of the
struggle between the Democrats and Republicans.
The Republican National Convention met at Chicago on the sixteenth
of May. It was attended by immense numbers, and its action was
regarded with profound and universal solicitude. The platform of
the Convention affirmed the devotion of the party to the union of
the States and the rights of the States; denounced the new dogma
that the Constitution carried slavery into the Territories; declared
freedom to be their normal condition; denied the power of Congress
or of a Territorial Legislature to give legal existence to slavery
in any territory; branded as a crime the reopening of the African
slave trade; condemned the heresy of Know-Nothingism, and demanded
the passage of a Homestead law. The principles of the party were
thus broadly stated and fully re-affirmed, and the issues of the
canvass very clearly presented. The leading candidates were Seward
and Lincoln, who pretty evenly divided the Convention, and thus
created the liveliest interest in the result. The friends of Mr.
Seward had unbounded confidence in his nomination, and their devotion
to his fortunes was intense and absolute. The radical anti-slavery
element in the party idolized him, and longed for his success as
for a great and coveted national blessing. The delegates from New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, representing a
superficial and only half-developed Republicanism, labored with
untiring and exhaustless zeal for the nomination of Mr. Lincoln,
fervently pleading for "Success rather than Seward." Henry S. Lane
and Andrew G. Curtin, then candidates for Governor in the States
of Indiana and Pennsylvania, respectively, were especially active
and persistent, and their appeals were undoubtedly effective. When
Seward was defeated many an anti-slavery man poured out his tears
over the result, while deploring or denouncing the conservatism of
old fossil Whiggery, which thus sacrificed the ablest man in the
party, and the real hero of its principles. Time, however, led
these men to reconsider their estimate both of Seward and Lincoln,
and convinced them that the action of the convention, after all,
was for the best. On the second ballot Hamlin was nominated for
Vice President over Clay, Banks, Hickman, and others, and the
Republican campaign thus auspiciously inaugurated.
The canvass for Douglas was prosecuted with remarkable energy and
zeal. He was himself the great leader of his party on the stump,
and his efforts evinced singular courage, audacity, and will. It
soon became evident, however, that his election was impossible;
but this did not cool his ardor or relax his efforts. He kept up
the fight to the end; and after his defeat, and when he saw the
power that had destroyed him organizing its forces for the destruction
of the Union, he espoused the side of his country, and never faltered
in his course. But as to slavery he seemed to have no conscience,
regarding it as a matter of total moral indifference, and thus
completely confounding the distinction between right and wrong.
During the closing hours of his life he probably saw and lamented
this strange infatuation; and he must, at all events, have deplored
the obsequious and studied devotion of a life-time to the service
of a power which at last demanded both the sacrifice of his country
and himself. The canvass for Lincoln was conducted by the ablest
men in the party, and was marked by great earnestness and enthusiasm.
It was a repetition of the Fremont campaign, with the added difference
of a little more contrivance and spectacular display in its
demonstrations, as witnessed in the famous organization known as
the "Wide-Awakes." The doctrines of the Chicago platform were very
thoroughly discussed, and powerfully contributed to the further
political education of the people. The speeches of Mr. Seward were
singularly able, effective and inspiring, and he was the acknowledged
leader of his party and the idol of the Republican masses everywhere.
This was the day of his glory, and nothing yet foreshadowed the
political eclipse which awaited him in the near future. The triumph
of the Republicans in this struggle was not, however, final. A
great work yet remained to be done. A powerful anti-slavery party
had at last appeared, as the slow creation of events and the fruit
of patient toil and endeavor; but it had against it a popular
majority of nearly a million. Both Houses of Congress and the
Supreme Court of the United States disputed its authority and
opposed its advance. The President-elect could not form his cabinet
without the leave of the Senate, which was controlled by slavery,
nor could he set the machinery of his Administration in motion, at
home or abroad, through the exercise of his appointing power,
without the consent of his political opponents. As Mr. Seward
declared in the Senate, "he could not appoint a minister or even
a police agent, negotiate a treaty or procure the passage of a law,
and could hardly draw a musket from the public arsenal to defend
his own person." The champions of slavery had no dream of surrender,
and no excuse whatever for extreme measures; and with moderate
counsels and the prudent economy of their advantages, they were
the undoubted masters of their own fortunes for indefinite years
to come. But their extravagant and exasperating demands, and the
splendid madness of their latter day tactics as illustrated in
their warfare against Douglas, were the sure presages of their
overthrow. There was method in their madness, but it was the method
of self-destruction. This was made still more strikingly manifest
during the months immediately preceding the inauguration of Mr.
Lincoln. The Republicans, notwithstanding their great victory, so
recoiled from the thought of sectional strife that for the sake of
peace they were ready to forego their demand for the Congressional
prohibition of slavery in the Territories. They were willing to
abide by the Dred Scott decision and the enforcement of the Fugitive
Slave law. They even proposed a Constitutional amendment which
would have made slavery perpetual in the Republic; but the pampered
frenzy of the slave oligarchy defied all remedies, and hurried it
headlong into the bloody conspiracy which was to close forever its
career of besotted lawlessness and crime.