SUMMARY OF THE SLAVERY QUESTIONS FROM 1787 TO 1860—THE ANTI-SLAVERY
AGITATION IN THE NORTH—GROWTH AND POLITICAL TRIUMPH OF THE
REPUBLICAN PARTY—FATAL DIVISIONS AMONG THE DEMOCRATS—MR.
BUCHANAN DECLINES TO BE REGARDED AS A CANDIDATE FOR A SECOND
ELECTION.
As the reader is now approaching the period when, for the first time
in our political history, a President of the United States was
elected by the votes of the free States alone, a retrospective view
of those events which preceded and contributed to that result is
necessary to a correct understanding of the great national schism of
1860-61.
The beginning of the year 1860 found the people of the United States
in the enjoyment of as great a measure of prosperity as they had
ever known. It was to close with a condition of feeling between the
two sections of the Union entirely fatal to its peace and
threatening to its perpetuity. In the future of our country there
will come a time when our posterity will ask, why should there ever
have been any “North” or any “South,” in the sense in which those
divisions have been marked in so long a period of our national
history. When the inquirer learns that from the time of the
formation and establishment of the Constitution of the United
States, the existence of slavery in certain States was nearly the
sole cause of the sectional antagonism typified by those terms, he
will have to trace, through various settlements, the successive
adjustments of questions which related to this one dangerous and
irritating subject.
This portion of our national history is divided into distinct
stages, at each of which some thing intended to be definite and
final was reached. It is also filled by the disastrous influence of
causes which unsettled what had once been determined as a series of
compacts between the sections; causes which continued to operate
until the year that witnessed the beginning of a great catastrophe.
The Constitution of the United States, so far as it related in any
way to the condition of slavery, was the result of agreements and
adjustments between the Northern and the Southern States, which have
been called “compromises.” It is not material to the present purpose
to consider either the moral justification for these arrangements,
or whether there was an equality or an inequality as between the two
sections, in what they respectively gained or conceded. Both
sections gained the Union of the whole country under a system of
government better adapted to secure its welfare and happiness than
it had known before; and what this system promised was abundantly
fulfilled. The precise equivalent which the Southern States
received, by the settlement made in the formation of the
Constitution, was the recognition of slavery as a condition of
portions of their population by a right exclusively dependent upon
their own local law, and exclusively under their own control as a
right of property; and to this right of property was annexed a
stipulation that the master might follow his slave from the State
whence he had escaped into any other State, and require him to be
given up, even if the law of that other State did not recognize the
condition of servitude. One other concession was made by the
Northern States: that although the slaves of the Southern States
were regarded as property, they should be so far considered as
persons as to be reckoned in a certain ratio in fixing the basis of
representation in the popular branch of Congress, and by consequence
in fixing the electoral vote of the State in the choice of a
President of the United States. The special equivalent which the
Northern States received for these concessions was in the
establishment of what is called “the commercial power,” or the power
of Congress to regulate for the whole country the trade with foreign
nations and between the States; a power which it was foreseen was to
be one of vast importance, which was one of the chief objects for
which the new Union was to be formed, and which proved in the event
to be all, and more than all, that had been anticipated for it.
Viewed in the light of mutual stipulations, these so-called
“compromises” between the two sections were laid at the basis of the
Constitution, forming a settlement fixed in the supreme law of the
land, and therefore determinate and final.
Contemporaneously with the formation of the Constitution, and before
its adoption, the Congress of the Confederation was engaged in
framing an ordinance for the government of the Northwestern
Territory, a region of country north and west of the Ohio, which
Virginia and other States had ceded to the United States during the
war of the revolution. From this region the ordinance excluded
slavery by an agreement made in that Congress between the Northern
and the Southern States. The Constitution did not take notice of
this Northwestern Territory by its specific designation, but it was
made to embrace a provision empowering the new Congress “to make all
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and all other
property of the United States,” and also a provision for the
admission into the Union of new States, to be formed out of any
territory belonging to the United States. For a long period after
the adoption of the Constitution, these two provisions, taken
together, were regarded as establishing a plenary power of
legislation over the internal condition of any territory that might
in any way become the property of the United States, while it
remained subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, and down
to the time when its inhabitants were to be permitted to form
themselves into a State that was to be admitted into the Union upon
an equality with all the other States. Under this process, between
the years 1792 and 1820, nine new States were admitted into the
Union; five of them with slavery and four of them without it. Of
these, three were formed out of parts of the Northwestern Territory,
and they therefore derived their character as free States from the
admitted force of the ordinance of 1787; while the others were not
within the scope of that ordinance, but derived their character from
the legislative authority of Congress under the Constitution.
It was not until the year 1820 that this recognized practice of
admitting a State into the Union as a free or as a slave State,
according to the character of its early settlement, and the
legislation which governed the Territorial condition, incurred any
serious danger of interruption. But in that year, Missouri, which
was a part of the territory ceded in 1803 by France to the United
States under the name of Louisiana, was in a condition to seek
admission into the Union. Slavery had existed there from the first
settlement of the country, and when it became necessary to authorize
the free inhabitants to form a State constitution, preparatory to
admission into the Union, it was certain that, if left to
themselves, they would not abolish a domestic relation that had long
existed among them, and in which no inconsiderable part of their
wealth was involved. It was proposed to require them to abolish it,
as a condition precedent to the admission of the State into the
Union. On this so-called “Missouri Restriction,” a violent sectional
struggle ensued in Congress, which ended in what has since been
known as the “Missouri Compromise.” This was embodied in the organic
act, passed on the 6th of March, 1820, which authorized the people
of the then Territory of Missouri to form a State constitution and
government. The compromise consisted, on the one hand, in the
omission of the proposed restriction as a condition of admission
into the Union, and, on the other hand, in a guarantee of perpetual
freedom throughout all the remainder of the Louisiana territory
lying north of the parallel of 36° 30´. This was accompanied,
however, by a proviso, which saved the right to reclaim any person
escaping into that region, from whom labor or service was lawfully
claimed in any State or Territory of the United States. The parallel
of 36° 30´ was adopted as the line north of which slavery or
involuntary servitude might not be permitted to exist as an
institution or condition recognized by the local law, because it was
assumed as a practical fact that north of that line the slavery of
the African race could not, from the nature of the climate, be
profitably introduced, whilst it was equally assumed that in those
portions of the Louisiana purchase south of that line, the habits of
the contiguous States, and the character of the climate would induce
a settlement by persons accustomed to hold and depend upon that
species of labor in the cultivation of the soil, and in the wants of
domestic life. The principle of the Missouri Compromise, therefore,
as a final settlement made between the two sections of the Union in
respect to the whole of the Louisiana purchase, was that north of
the parallel of 36° 30´, slavery could never be introduced, but that
south of that line, slavery might be established according to the
will of the free inhabitants. Regarded in the light of a division of
this vast territory, this compromise secured to the North quite as
much as, if not more than, it secured to the South. Regarded in the
light of a settlement of a dangerous and exciting controversy, on
which the whole Union could repose, the Missouri Compromise disposed
of the future character of all the territory then belonging to the
United States, not including the Northwestern Territory, the
character of which was fixed by the ordinance of 1787. For a quarter
of a century afterward, the two sections of North and South rested
in peace upon the settlement of 1820, so far as discussion of the
subject of slavery in the halls of Congress could be induced by the
application of new States to be admitted into the Union. But in
1845, when Texas, a foreign, an independent, and a slave State, was
annexed to the Union, the subject of an increase in the number of
slave States came again into discussion, in which angry sectional
feeling was carried to a dangerous point. Texas was finally admitted
into the Union as a slaveholding State, with a right to divide
herself into four new States, with or without slavery; but one of
the express conditions of the annexation was a recognition of the
Missouri Compromise line, so that north of that line no new State
could be framed out of any portion of Texas unless slavery should be
excluded from it. The wisdom and policy of the Missouri Compromise
were thus again recognized, and it remained undisturbed for a period
of thirty-four years from the time of its enactment, as a covenant
of peace between the North and the South.
The war between the United States and Mexico, which was terminated
by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, resulted in the
acquisition by the United States of a vast region of country which
was not embraced by the Missouri Compromise. At the time of this
acquisition, Mr. Buchanan earnestly advocated the extension of the
line of 36° 30´ through the whole of this new territory to the
Pacific Ocean, as the best mode of adjustment.
It is not necessary in this historical sketch to dwell on the
advantages or disadvantages of this plan. All that needs to be said
about it here is, that it commended itself to Mr. Buchanan as a plan
more acceptable to the people of both sections of the Union than any
other that could be devised. It was defeated by the proposal of the
so-called “Wilmot Proviso,” which aimed to exclude slavery from all
possible introduction into any part of this newly acquired
territory, without regard to the principle of division which was the
characteristic of the Missouri Compromise, and without recognizing
any claim of the slaveholding States to an equal enjoyment of the
common territory of the Union, in the manner in which they asserted
that claim. The Southern claim was that of a right to emigrate into
any Territory of the United States, with slaves, as part of the
property of the emigrant, just as a Northern man could emigrate into
such a Territory with whatever personal property he chose to take
with him. When, therefore, the admission of California as a State,
and the organization of Territorial governments for the other
provinces of Mexico that had been ceded to the United States came
before Congress, they came accompanied by a great sectional
excitement, that was partly due to the anti-slavery agitation that
had been going on in the North, and partly to the struggle for an
increase of the political power of the free States on the one side,
and of the slave States on the other, according as the future
character of these new acquisitions might be determined.
Having now reached the year 1850, the reader stands at a period at
which the character of freedom had been long impressed upon the
whole of the Northwestern Territories; at which the character of the
whole region of the Louisiana purchase had been for thirty years
determined by the principle of the Missouri Compromise; and at
which, what remained to be done was to adjust, by a final
settlement, the future character of the territory acquired from
Mexico, and to act upon any other questions concerning slavery that
demanded and admitted legislation by Congress. There were two such
questions that did not relate to the newly acquired territory. One
of these concerned the toleration of the domestic slave trade in the
District of Columbia, the abolition of which was loudly demanded by
the North. The other related to a Southern demand of a more
efficient law for the extradition of fugitives from service.
The Thirty-first Congress, assembled in December, 1849, was the one
which enacted the series of measures known as the “Compromise of
1850,” and which settled all the slavery questions that remained for
adjustment. In respect to the territory that had been acquired from
Mexico, there was danger for a time that all harmony of action would
be frustrated by the so-called “Wilmot Proviso,” which aimed to
impose as a fundamental condition of any legislation respecting any
part of that territory, a perpetual exclusion of slavery. Mr.
Buchanan was out of public office at this time, but his influence
was exerted in his own State, with success, to prevent the passage
by her legislature of instructing resolutions in favor of that
proviso. This led the way for its rejection by Congress. On the 4th
of February, 1850, resolutions favoring the proviso were laid upon
the table of the House of Representatives in Congress, by the vote
of 105 to 75. This important vote was followed in the Senate by five
measures, designed by Mr. Clay and supported by Mr. Webster and Mr.
Calhoun, which, after a long discussion, became laws in September,
1850, with the general concurrence of both the Whig and the
Democratic parties. The first of these Acts consisted of a new and
more efficient law for the extradition of fugitives from service, to
take the place of the old law of February 12th, 1793, which bore the
signature of Washington. By reason of a decision of the Supreme
Court, made in 1842, which had determined that Congress could not
constitutionally require State magistrates to perform a duty which
the Court declared to be one pertaining exclusively to the Federal
power, the law of 1793 had become almost inoperative. Although the
decision of the Court left the States at liberty to allow their
magistrates to act in such cases, many of the Northern States had
passed laws to prohibit them from rendering any official aid to the
claimant of a fugitive from service. It had become necessary,
therefore, for Congress to provide officers of Federal appointment
to execute an express mandate of the Federal Constitution. This was
the purpose of the new law of 1850.
The second of these “compromise measures” was an Act for the
immediate admission of California into the Union, as a free State,
embracing its whole territory, both south and north of the line of
the Missouri Compromise. The third and fourth measures were Acts for
the establishment of Territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah,
which secured to them respectively the right of admission as States
into the Union, “with or without slavery as their respective
constitutions might require.” The Act relating to New Mexico
declared that “no citizen of the United States shall be deprived of
his life, liberty or property in said Territory, except by the
judgment of his peers and the laws of the land;” thus making, from
abundant caution, a provision of the Federal Constitution obligatory
upon the Territorial legislature. Thus these two Acts, along with
the Missouri Compromise, comprehended all the territory belonging to
the United States, whether derived from Mexico or from France; there
was no territory remaining for the Wilmot Proviso to act upon, and
consequently the agitation of that proviso was excluded from the
halls of Congress. Moreover, the Act for establishing the Territory
of New Mexico withdrew from the jurisdiction of a slave State all
that portion of Texas which lay north of the parallel of 36° 30´, by
including it within the boundary of New Mexico. The fifth of the
compromise measures of 1850 was a law abolishing the domestic slave
trade within the District of Columbia.
It is not singular that a final settlement, which disposed of all
the slavery questions on which Congress could in any way act, should
have been acceptable to the people of the whole Union, excepting the
extremists of the two sections. The abolitionists of the North
denounced it, because it admitted of the possible and theoretical
establishment of slavery in New Mexico, notwithstanding the patent
fact that neither the soil nor the climate of that region could ever
make it a profitable form of labor, and because it recognized and
provided for the execution of that provision of the Constitution
which required the extradition of fugitives from service. The
extreme men of the South disliked the settlement, because it
admitted the great and rich State of California as a free State. But
when the Presidential election of 1852 approached, the general
approval of this settlement was made manifest. The national
convention of the Whig party nominated as its candidate for the
Presidency General Scott, who was supposed to be somewhat closely
affiliated, both personally and politically, with public men who
opposed and continued to denounce the compromise. But in their
“platform” the Whigs pledged themselves to maintain it as a binding
settlement, and to discountenance all attempts in or out of Congress
to disturb it. The Democratic national convention not only made
equally emphatic declarations of their purpose to maintain this
settlement inviolate, but by nominating a candidate who could not be
suspected of any lukewarmness on this, the great political question
of the time, they secured a majority of the electoral votes of both
free and slave States that was almost unprecedented. General Pierce
received 254 electoral votes out of 296, or 105 votes more than were
necessary to a choice. All the free States, excepting Massachusetts
and Vermont, and all the slave States, excepting Kentucky and
Tennessee, gave him their electoral votes. Never did a party come
into power with greater strength, and never was there a more
distinct political issue than that which placed General Pierce at
the head of the Government. The people at large distrusted the
soundness of the Whig candidate and his friends upon the compromise
of 1850, and being determined to maintain that settlement as final,
and to have no more agitation of slavery questions in Congress, they
entrusted the destinies of the country to the Democratic party.
But as not infrequently happens, the Democrats were in a majority so
large that it became unwieldy; and before the administration of
General Pierce had closed, a step was taken that was to lead to the
most serious consequences. This step was the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. The settlement, or “compromise” of 1850, made by the
consentaneous action of the North and the South, rested, as on a
corner stone, upon the inviolable character of the settlement of
1820, known as the Missouri Compromise. To preserve that earlier
compromise intact, was to preserve the later one; for if the
settlement made in 1820 in regard to all the territory derived from
France should be renounced, the door would be open for the
renunciation of the settlement made in 1850 respecting New Mexico
and Utah. Sweep away the compact which dedicated the whole Louisiana
territory north of 36° 30´ to perpetual freedom, and which gave to
the South whatever parts of it below that line might be adapted to
slave labor, and all Territories everywhere would be subject to a
new contention over the dogma that slavery did or that it did not go
into every Territory by virtue of a right derived from the
Constitution of the United States. There was no security for the
peace and harmony of the country, but to act upon the principle that
the settlement of 1850 rested for its foundation upon the inviolable
character and perpetual duration of the settlement of 1820.
But in all free countries governed by political parties, and
especially at times when the party in power is in an extraordinary
majority, there are always men who feel that they are wiser than
others, and who are apt to couple their own aims as statesmen,
looking to the highest honors of their country, with new plans for
the management of public affairs. Such a man was the late Stephen
A. Douglas, a Senator in Congress from the State of Illinois from
1847 until his death, in 1861; a distinguished leader of the
Democratic party, who had been several times a candidate for the
nomination by his party to the Presidency. This very able man, who
had a considerable body of friends attached to him from his
energetic and somewhat imperious qualities, had been a strenuous
supporter of the Compromise of 1850, and had rendered very
efficient service in the adoption of that settlement. He seems to
have been somewhat suddenly led, in 1854, to the adoption of the
idea that it would be wise to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and
that in its place might be substituted a doctrine that the people
of a Territory have the same right and ought to have the same
sovereign power, while in the Territorial condition, to shape
their domestic institutions in their own way, as the people of a
State. He does not appear to have had the foresight to see that
the practical application of this doctrine would lead, in the
circumstances of the country, to a sectional struggle for the
possession and political dominion of a Territory, between
slaveholders and non-slaveholders, without the superintending and
controlling authority of Congress to prevent such a conflict by
determining the character of the Territory one way or the other.
As he could not remove the Missouri settlement without attacking
the constitutional power of Congress to legislate as it might see
fit on the condition of a Territory, he boldly determined to make
that attack, and to put in the place of the authority of Congress
the doctrine of “popular sovereignty” as a substitute for
Congressional legislation on the relations of master and slave.
When this ill-advised legislation, which tended in the most direct
manner to concentrate into political organization the Northern
dislike of slavery, received the sanction of the President,
General Pierce, on the 30th of May, 1854, Mr. Buchanan was out of
the country. He never approved of it, and had he been at home, it
is quite certain that it would have encountered his strenuous
opposition.
Turning now aside from the history of these successive settlements,
and the modes in which they were unsettled, in order to appreciate
the condition of feeling between the two sections of the Union at
the time when the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency was
effected exclusively by the electoral votes of the free States, the
reader should learn something of the history of the anti-slavery
agitation in the North; something of the effort to extend the
political power of the slave States as a barrier against anticipated
encroachments upon Southern rights; and something of the causes
which led to the assertion of the supposed right of State secession
from the Union, as a remedy against dangers apprehended to be in
store for the people of the South.
By the universal admission of all persons, whatever were their
sentiments or feelings concerning slavery, the Constitution of the
United States conferred no power upon Congress to act on it in any
State of the Union. This was as much acknowledged by the early
abolitionists as by all other men. They regarded the Constitution as
a “pro-slavery” instrument. They admitted that the supreme law of
the land recognized and to a certain extent upheld the principle
that slaves were property; and they therefore sought for a
justification of their attacks upon the Constitution in what they
denominated the “higher law,” which meant that when the individual
citizen believes that the moral law is in conflict with the law of
the land, the latter cannot rightfully bind his conscience or
restrain his conduct. Proclaiming it to be sinful to live in a
political confederacy which tolerated slavery anywhere within its
limits, they began by denouncing the Constitution as a “league with
death and a covenant with hell;” and it was not long before this
doctrine of the higher law was preached from pulpits and
disseminated by numerous publications in the New England States. The
dates of the organized anti-slavery societies are important to be
observed, because of the spontaneous movement in Virginia towards
the removal of slavery which shortly preceded them. The New England
Anti-slavery Society was organized in Boston, on the 30th of
January, 1832; the New York Society in October, 1833; and the
National Society at Philadelphia in December, 1833. Affiliated local
societies of the same kind sprang up at once in many towns and
villages of the North. At the time when these organizations were
first gathered, and for a long period thereafter, there was no
pending question upon the subject of the extension of slavery into
Territories of the United States. The country had been reposing
since 1820 upon the Missouri settlement; it was not until 1845 that
any addition of slave territory was threatened; and at the moment
when the first anti-slavery society was organized in Boston,
Virginia was on the verge of emancipating her slaves. Accordingly,
the nature, purposes and methods of the Northern anti-slavery
agitation between the year 1832 and the annexation of Texas in 1845,
and thence to the year 1860, form a most important subject of
political study.
The founders of the Northern anti-slavery societies, while taking
their stand in opposition to the Constitution, had yet, in all that
they asked Congress to do, to address themselves to a public body
every member of which had taken an oath to support that instrument.
In their own communities, those who carried on the agitation could
appeal to the emotional natures of men, women and children upon the
wrongs and the sin of slavery, and fill them with hatred of the
slaveholder, without discriminating between questions on which the
citizens of a non-slaveholding State could and those on which they
could not legitimately act. A great moral force of abhorrence of
slavery could thus be, and in fact was, in process of time
accumulated. This force expended itself in two ways; first, in
supplying to the managers of the agitation the means of sending into
the Southern States, pamphlets, newspapers and pictorial
representations setting forth the wrongs and cruelties of slavery.
For this purpose, the mails of the United States had, by the year
1835, been so much used for the circulation in the South of matter
which was there regarded as incendiary and calculated to promote
servile insurrections, that President Jackson deemed it to be his
duty to propose legislation to arrest such abuses of the post
office. Congress did not adopt his recommendation, and the abuse
remained unchecked.[58] Another mode in which the anti-slavery
agitation expended itself was in petitions to Congress. During the
session of 1835-6, and for several of the following years, Congress
was flooded with what were called “abolition petitions.” On some of
them Congress could legitimately act: such as those which prayed for
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the
forts, arsenals, and dock-yards of the United States situated in
slaveholding States. On others, which petitioned for a dissolution
of the Union on account of the existence of slavery in some of the
States, or for action on the subject of slavery in general, Congress
of course could do nothing. A question arose whether such petitions
could be received at all, which led to a very memorable and a very
excited discussion of the right of petition. Not only was a large
part of the time of Congress taken up with these topics, but the
opposing representatives of the two sections were guilty of excesses
in crimination and recrimination, which foreshadowed the formation
of two geographical parties, one Northern and the other Southern,
having nothing but slavery as the cause of their division.
Footnote 58:
See the message of President Jackson, December 3, 1835. It is not
intended in the text to express any opinion whether the abuse
could or could not have been restrained in the way proposed. The
fact that the President of the United States deemed it his duty to
make this recommendation attests the character of the abuse which
he sought to remedy.
One of the questions to which those who are to come after us will
seek for an answer, will be, what was the justification for this
anti-slavery agitation, begun in 1832 and continued for a period of
about ten years, during which there was no special effort on the
part of the South to extend the area of slavery? What, again, was
the unquestionable effect of this agitation in producing a revulsion
of feeling on the whole subject of slavery among the slaveholders
themselves? Was the time propitious for the accomplishment of any
good? Were the mode, the method, and the spirit of the agitation
such as men would resort to, who had a just and comprehensive sense
of the limitations upon human responsibility?
The time was most unfortunate. The Southern conscience did not then
need to be quickened or enlightened on the inherent wrong of African
slavery; nor did it need to be told that the system was one that
inflicted many evils upon society. Plans of emancipation, which the
Southerners themselves were far better fitted to form than any one
who was a stranger to their social condition, had already begun to
be considered by enlightened men in more than one of the older
Southern States. All that could be done by others who were beyond
their limits, to aid them in any aspect of the subject, was limited
by just such restraints as apply to any evil existing in a community
to which it is confined, and on which strangers can offer nothing
but the most considerate and temperate discussion of remedies
originating among those who have the burthen to bear. The grand
error of our early abolitionists was that they would not observe the
limitations of human duty. They were either citizens or residents of
non-slaveholding States. Foreigners, in respect to this matter, to
the States in which slavery existed, they carried on their
discussions, publications and organizations in communities whose
public opinion could have but an extremely narrow and subordinate
right to act on the subject at all. They either disregarded the fact
that the Constitution of the United States could never have been
established if it had not recognized the exclusive right of each
Southern State to govern the relation of master and slave—nay, that
the foreign slave trade without that Constitution could not have
been ended when it was, if at all—or else they denounced the
Constitution as an emanation from the bottomless pit. Grant that the
relation of servitude was a moral wrong, that the idea that man can
hold property in man was repugnant to the law of nature or the law
of God; grant that the political system of the Union, as our fathers
made it, ought to have been reformed by their descendants;—were
there no moral restraints resting upon those who enjoyed the
advantages and blessings of a Union which had been purchased by
certain concessions to the slaveholder? Did not the Constitution
itself provide for regular and peaceful changes which the progress
of society and the growing philanthropy of the age might find to be
necessary to the fuller practical development of the great truths of
liberty? Was there no way to deal with slavery but to attack the
slaveholder as a sinner, stained with the deepest of crimes against
God and his fellow-men? Was there nothing to be done to aid him in
ridding himself of the burthen of his sin, by discussing with him
the economical problems of his situation? Was it necessary for
strangers to demand instant and unqualified manumission, regardless
of what was to follow? Was it necessary to assail the Constitution
as an unholy covenant with sin, and, rejecting its restraints, to
disregard the wisdom that takes human nature as it is, that is
careful not to provoke reaction, that looks before and after, and
shapes its measures with a rational forecast of their adaptation to
the end?
Whilst it is not to be denied that our “Abolitionists” were men of a
certain kind of courage developed into rashness, of unbounded zeal,
of singular energy, of persistent consistency with their own
principles of action, and of that fanatical force which is derived
from the incessant contemplation of one idea to the exclusion of all
others, it must nevertheless be said that they were not statesmen.
There was no one among them of whom it can be said that he acted
with a statesmanlike comprehension of the difficulties of this great
subject, or with a statesman’s regard for the limitations on
individual conduct. Their situation was very different from that of
the public or private men in England, who gallantly led the early
crusade against the slave trade, or of those who afterwards brought
about emancipation in the British colonies. Whatever Parliament
thought fit to do in regard to slavery under the British flag or in
the British dominions, it had ample power to do, and what Parliament
might be made to do, was for the nation to determine. An English
statesman or philanthropist had, in either character, no
constitutional restraints to consider. He had to deal with both
moral and economical questions, and he could deal freely with
either. He could use argument, persuasion, invective, or
denunciation, and he could not be told by the Jamaica slaveholder,
you have entered into a solemn public compact with me which secures
to me the exclusive cognizance of this domestic relation, and by
that compact you purchased the very existence of the general
government under which we both live. But a citizen of the United
States, or a foreigner, taking his stand in a free State, stirring
up popular hatred of the slaveholder, sending into the Southern
States publications which were there regarded as incendiary,
persuading legislative bodies in the North to act against one of the
express conditions of the Federal Union, and renouncing all
Christian fellowship with Southern churches, surely violated the
spirit and in some respects the letter of the Constitution. He
provoked a sudden revulsion of feeling in the South, and brought
about a state of opinion which aimed to maintain slavery by texts of
scripture, by the examples of other nations, by the teachings of
Christ and his apostles, by the assumed relations of races, by the
supposed laws of public economy, and the alleged requirements of a
southern clime. He promoted, by an effect as inevitable as the
nature of man, a purpose to defend slavery through an increase of
its political power, to which a multiplication of slave States would
make a large addition. He thus sowed the wind, and, left to another
generation to reap the whirlwind.
These assertions must not be left unsupported by proof, and the
proof is at hand. In all periods of our history, prior to the civil
war, Virginia exercised great influence over the whole slaveholding
region. I have said that she was on the verge of emancipation when
the first anti-slavery society was organized in the North; and
although half a century has since elapsed, there are those living
who, like myself, can recollect that she was so. But to others the
fact must be attested by proof. It may be asserted as positively as
anything in history that, in the year 1832, there was nowhere in the
world a more enlightened sense of the wrong and the evil of slavery,
than there was among the public men and the people of Virginia. The
movement against it was spontaneous. It reached the general assembly
by petitions which evinced that the policy and justice of
emancipation had taken a strong hold on the convictions of portions
of the people of the State, whom no external influence had then
reached, and who, therefore, had free scope. Any Virginian could
place himself at the head of this movement without incurring
hostility or jealousy, and it was a grandson of Jefferson, Mr.
Jefferson Randolph, by whom the leading part in it was assumed.
Mr. Randolph represented in the assembly the county of Albemarle,
which was one of the largest slaveholding counties of the State. He
brought forward a bill to accomplish a gradual emancipation. It was
debated with the freedom of men who, undisturbed by external
pressure, were dealing with a matter of purely domestic concern. No
member of the house defended slavery, for the day had not come when
Southern men were to learn that it was a blessing, because those who
knew nothing of its burthens told them that it was a curse. There
could be nothing said anywhere, there had been nothing said out of
Virginia, stronger and truer, in depicting the evils of slavery,
than was said in that discussion by Virginia gentlemen, debating in
their own legislature a matter that concerned themselves and their
people. But finding that the house was not prepared for immediate
action on so momentous a subject, Mr. Randolph did not press his
bill to a vote. A resolution, however, was adopted, by a vote of 65
to 58, which shows what was the condition of the public sentiment of
Virginia at that moment. It declared, as the sense of the house,
“that they were profoundly sensible of the great evils arising from
the condition of the colored population of the commonwealth, and
were induced by policy, as well as humanity, to attempt the
immediate removal of the free negroes; but that further action for
the removal of the slaves should await a more definite development
of public opinion.”
Mr. Randolph was again elected by his constituents, upon this
special question. But in the mean time came suddenly the
intelligence of what was doing at the North. It came in an alarming
aspect for the peace and security of the whole South; since it could
not be possible that strangers should combine together to assail the
slaveholder as a sinner and to demand his instant admission of his
guilt, without arousing fears of the most dangerous consequences for
the safety of Southern homes, as well as intense indignation against
such an unwarrantable interference. From that time forth,
emancipation, whether immediate or gradual, could not be considered
in Virginia or anywhere else in the South. Public attention became
instantly fixed upon the means of resisting this external and
unjustifiable intermeddling with a matter that did not concern those
who intermeddled. A sudden revulsion of public sentiment in Virginia
was followed by a similar revulsion wherever Southern men had begun
to consider for themselves what could be done for the amelioration
of the condition of the colored race and for ultimate emancipation.
As the Northern agitation went on, increasing in bitterness and
gathering new forces, Southern statesmen cast about for new devices
to strengthen the political power of their section in the Federal
Government. These devices are to be traced to the anti-slavery
agitation in the North as their exciting cause, as distinctly as
anything whatever in the history of sectional feeling can be traced
back from an effect to a cause which has produced it.
But this was not the whole of the evil produced by the anti-slavery
agitation. It prevented all consideration by the higher class of
Northern statesmen of any method of action by which the people of
the free States could aid their Southern brethren in removing
slavery; and it presented to Northern politicians of the inferior
order a local field for cultivating popularity, as the excitement
went on increasing in violence and swept into its vortex the voters
whose local support was found to be useful. That there was a line of
action on which any Northern statesman could have entered,
consistently with all the obligations flowing from the letter and
the spirit of the Federal Constitution, is perfectly plain.
While it was impracticable for the people of the North to act
directly upon slavery in any State through the Federal Government,
it was not impracticable for that Government to follow, with
cautious steps, in auxiliary measures to aid what it could not
initiate. There were States which were becoming ripe for changes in
the condition of their colored population. Of course such changes
could be proposed, considered and acted upon only in each of those
States, as a measure that concerned its own domestic condition. But
there were many ways in which the Federal Government, without
transcending its constitutional powers, could incidentally assist
any State in what the State had of itself determined to do. The line
which separated what the Federal power could legitimately and
properly do from what was prohibited to it by every political and
moral consideration, was not difficult to be discovered. For
example, if the State of Virginia had in 1832-33 adopted any system
for colonizing her negroes, what was there to prevent the Federal
Government from granting a portion of the public lands for such a
purpose? If the subject of prospective emancipation had been
approached in this manner, without the disturbance produced by the
anti-slavery societies of the North, who can doubt that experiments
of the utmost consequence could have been tried, and tried
successfully, in a country possessing an almost boundless public
domain? But the sudden irruption of those societies into the field,
their disregard of all prudential and all constitutional restraints,
their fierce denunciations of the slaveholder, their demand for
instant and unqualified manumission, at once converted a question
which should have remained a matter for joint and friendly
coöperation of the two sections, into a struggle for political
supremacy of one section over the other in the councils of the
Federal Government. All measures and tendencies in the South, which
might have opened the way for subsidiary aid on the part of the
Federal power, were at once arrested; and it became a study with
Southern statesmen how they were to raise new barriers for the
defence of slavery, by increasing the political power of their
section within the Union. The old barriers had become, in their
eyes, but a feeble defence against those who proclaimed that the
Union itself was an accursed thing, and that if immediate
emancipation of the slaves was not adopted, the Union ought to be
broken up.
While it is true that the doctrines of the abolitionists were at
first regarded by the great body of the Northern people as the
ravings of fanatics, insomuch that they were sometimes subjected to
popular violence, they were nevertheless making progress. Year after
year the agitation was carried on in the same spirit, and year after
year the excitement on the whole subject of slavery continued to
grow until it reached a fresh impulse in the proposed annexation of
Texas. It should in justice be remembered that the effort at that
period to enlarge the area of slavery was an effort on the part of
the South, dictated by a desire to remain in the Union, and not to
accept the issue of an inherent incompatibility of a political union
between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. It was not at this
period that the Southern States embraced, or were much disposed to
embrace, the doctrine of “secession.” The views of the nature of the
Union, maintained by their most distinguished and powerful
statesman, Mr. Calhoun, in 1830-33, led logically to the deduction
that every State has, by the terms of the Federal compact, a right
to quit the Union when, in its own judgment, it deems that step
necessary. But no considerable body of persons in the South, out of
his own State, accepted his premises or followed them to their
conclusion, until long after he was in his grave; nor did he himself
propose secession as a remedy against what he and the whole South
regarded as the unwarrantable aggressions of the Northern
abolitionists. He aimed to strengthen the political power of his
section within the Union, and his whole course in regard to the
acquisition of Texas shows his conviction that if that country were
not brought under our dominion, there would be an exposed frontier,
from which England and the American abolitionists would operate
against slavery in the Southern section of the United States. The
previous history of the Union shows very plainly that prior to the
commencement of the Northern anti-slavery agitation, the political
equilibrium between the two sections had not been seriously
disturbed.
At the period which I am now considering, the public men of the
North who acted an important part in national affairs, and who
belonged, as Mr. Buchanan unquestionably did belong, to the higher
class of statesmen, had to act with a wise circumspection on this
subject of slavery. There was nothing that such a man could do, if
he regarded his public duty with an American statesman’s sense of
public obligation, but to stand aloof from and to discountenance
what was wrong in the doings of the anti-slavery agitators. In this
course of conduct he had often to discriminate between conflicting
claims of constitutional rights that unquestionably belonged to
every citizen of the United States, and acts which no citizen had a
right to do, or which it was in the highest and plainest sense
inexpedient to allow him to do. In these conflicts, right and wrong
became at times so mixed and intricate, that it required a resolute
and clear intellect to separate them, and a lofty courage in meeting
obloquy and misrepresentation. It was an easy matter, in the
exciting period of those slavery questions, to impute to a Northern
man of either of the great political parties of the time, a base
truckling to the South for his own ambitious purposes. After ages
must disregard the ephemeral vituperation of politics, and must
judge the statesmen of the past by the situation in which they
stood, by the soundness of their opinions, by their fidelity to
every unquestionable right, by the correctness of their policy, and
by the purity of their characters and their aims. There has been a
passionate disposition in our day to judge the public men of the
North, who had to act in great and peculiar crises of the sectional
conflict, and who did not give themselves up to a purely sectional
spirit, by a standard that was inapplicable to their situation,
because it was unjust, illogical and inconsistent with the highest
ideas of public duty in the administration of such a Government as
ours.
The anti-slavery agitation, begun in the North at the time and
carried on in the mode I have described, is to be deplored, because
of the certainty that sudden emancipation, which was alone
considered or cared for by the abolitionists, must be fraught with
great evils.
In whatever way sudden, universal and unqualified emancipation was
to be enforced, if it was to happen the negro could not be prepared
for freedom. He must take his freedom without one single aid from
the white man to fit him to receive it. Wise and thoughtful
statesmen saw this—the abolitionist did not see it. Men who had
passed their lives in the business of legislation and government,
knew full well, not only that the fundamental political bond of the
Union forbade interference by the people of the free States with the
domestic institutions of the slave States, but that emancipation
without any training for freedom could not be a blessing. Men who
had passed their lives in an emotional agitation for instant freedom
did not see or did not care for the inevitable fact, that freedom
for which no preparation had been made could not be a boon. When the
emancipation came, it came as an act of force applied in a civil war
and in the settlements which the war was claimed to have entailed as
necessities. No preparatory legislation, no helpful training in
morality and virtue, no education, no discipline of the human being
for his new condition, had prepared the negro to be a freeman.
While, therefore, it may be and probably is true, that the whites of
our Southern States have reason to rejoice, and do rejoice, in the
change which they deprecated and against which they struggled, it is
not true that the colored race have the same reason for
thankfulness. The Christianity and the philanthropy of this age have
before them a task that is far more serious, more weighty and more
difficult, than it would have been if the emancipation had been a
regulated process, even if its final consummation had been postponed
for generations. To this day, after twenty years of freedom, the
church, the press, society and benevolence have to encounter such
questions as these:—Whether the negro is by nature vicious,
intractable, thriftless—the women incurably unchaste, the men
incurably dishonest; whether the vices and the failings that are so
deplorable, and apparently so remediless, are to be attributed to
centuries of slavery, or are taints inherent in the blood. Who can
doubt that all such questions could have been satisfactorily
answered, if the Christianity of the South had been left to its own
time and mode of answering them, and without any external force but
the force of kindly respectful coöperation and forbearing Christian
fellowship.
It is a cause for exultation that slavery no longer exists in the
broad domain of this Republic—that our theory and our practice are
now in complete accord. But it is no cause for national pride that
we did not accomplish this result without the cost of a million of
precious lives and untold millions of money.
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise during the administration of
President Pierce (May, 1854), followed, as it was three years
afterwards, by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States,
that Congress could not constitutionally prohibit slavery in a
Territory of the States, gave a vast impetus to the tendencies which
were already bringing about a consolidation of most of the elements
of the anti-slavery feeling of the North into a single political
party. When Mr. Buchanan became the nominee of the Democratic party
for the Presidency, although the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
had already taken place, the decision of the Supreme Court in the
celebrated case of “Dred Scott” had not occurred,[59] and
consequently the Republican party, for this and other reasons, had
not acquired sufficient force to enable it to elect its candidate,
General Fremont. But during the administration of Mr. Buchanan, the
scenes which occurred in Kansas and which were direct consequences
of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, with the added excitement
which followed the announcement by a majority of the judges of the
Supreme Court of doctrines which the people of the North would not
accept, there was a field for sectional political action, such as
the Union had never before known. So that when the Republican party,
in the spring of 1860, assembled its delegates in convention at
Chicago, for the nomination of its candidates for the Presidency and
the Vice Presidency, adopted a “platform” on which no Southern man
of any prominence could place himself, and selected Northern
candidates for both offices, it was plain that the time had come
when there was to be a trial of political strength between the two
sections of the Union.
Footnote 59:
This case was decided in March, 1857, just after Mr. Buchanan’s
inauguration.
The “Chicago platform,” on which Mr. Lincoln was nominated and
elected as the candidate of the Republican party, while repudiating
with great precision the idea that Congress could in any way act
upon slavery in the States, contained the following resolution on
the subject of slavery in the Territories of the United States:
“That the normal condition of all the territory of the United
States is that of freedom; that as our republican fathers, when
they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained
that 'no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law,' it becomes our duty, by legislation,
whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision
of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we
deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial legislature, or
of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any
Territory of the United States.”
On the motives that dictated the assertion of this doctrine, I have
no speculations to offer, for I am not dealing with motives. That it
was a new political doctrine, and that it was a new departure in the
legislation of Congress on this subject of slavery in Territories
cannot be doubted. It rejected entirely the principle on which
Congress had acted for many years, for there had been acts of
Congress which had given legal existence to slavery in a Territory,
and acts of Congress which had prohibited it. It rejected the
principle of the Missouri Compromise, which had sanctioned an agreed
division of the Territories into those where slavery might not and
those where it might be allowed. It rejected all claim of right on
the part of the Southern slaveholder to take his slave property into
a Territory and have it there recognized as property while the
Territorial condition remained. It was a reading of the Constitution
diametrically opposed to the Southern reading. The political men who
framed this “platform” doubtless considered that the time had come
for a direct antagonism between the North and the South on this
subject, so that it might be decided by the votes of the people in a
Presidential election, whether the Southern claim for recognition of
slave property in any Territory of the United States, wherever
situated, was to prevail or be rejected. That such antagonism was
the consequence and the purpose of this declaration of a new
principle of action on this subject will be denied by no one.
It is equally certain that a political party could not come into the
field in a contest for the Presidency upon such a declaration,
without drawing into the discussion the whole subject of slavery as
a domestic institution, or a condition of society, both in States
and Territories. The intention was to draw a well defined line
between the relations of Congress to slavery in the States and the
relations of Congress to slavery in the Territories. Yet in the
excitements of a Presidential canvass, the Republican party of
necessity gathered into its folds those who had been for years
regardless of that distinction, and who assailed slavery in the
regions which were under the legislative power of Congress for the
purpose of assailing it everywhere. The campaign literature, the
speeches, the discussions, which dwelt on “the irrepressible
conflict” between slavery and freedom, and which proclaimed the
issue to be whether the United States would sooner or later become a
slaveholding nation or a free-labor nation—whether the Northern
States were to remain free or to become slave States—set forth with
great distinctness in the writings and the harangues, could have no
other effect than to array the two sections of the Union in a bitter
hostility, while in the South there were those who believed, or
affected to believe, that the people of the North, if successful in
electing a President upon this basis, would put forth all their
efforts to destroy slavery everywhere, as an institution
incompatible with the continued existence of freedom in the North.
All this hazard might, however, have been encountered and parried if
the Democratic party had been in a condition to nominate a suitable
candidate upon a “platform” fit to be opposed to that of the
Republicans, and capable of commending itself alike to Northern and
Southern voters. But when this party assembled in convention at
Charleston, on the 23d of April, 1860, it was in no condition to do
any good to the Union or to itself. If Mr. Buchanan had been a
younger man, and had been disposed to be a second time a candidate
for the Presidency, he might have united his party upon a basis of
action in regard to this dangerous matter of slavery in the
Territories, that would have commanded the support of a sufficient
number of States, Northern as well as Southern, to have elected him.
But he was averse to any longer continuance in public life, and he
was well aware how much Mr. Douglas had done which had tended to
divide the Northern and the Southern wings of his party. On the 14th
of April, 1860, he sent to Charleston the following letter, which
put an end to the idea, so far as it may have been entertained, of
his being regarded as a candidate for the nomination by the
Democratic National Convention.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO HON. ARNOLD PLUMER.]
WASHINGTON CITY, April 14, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR:—
I address you not only as a delegate from Pennsylvania to the
Charleston Democratic National Convention, but as an old and
valued friend. Whilst trusting that no member of that body will
propose my name as a candidate for reëlection, yet, lest this
might possibly prove to be the case, I require you, then,
immediately to inform the Convention, as an act of justice to
myself, that in no contingency can I ever again consent to become
a candidate for the Presidency. My purpose to this effect was
clearly indicated both in accepting the Cincinnati nomination, and
afterwards in my inaugural address, and has since been repeated on
various occasions, both public and private. In this determination
neither my judgment nor my inclination has ever for a moment
wavered. Deeply grateful to the great Democratic party of the
country, on whose continued ascendancy, as I verily believe, the
prosperity and perpetuity of our Confederate Republic depend, and
praying Heaven that the Convention may select as their candidate
an able, sound and conservative Democrat, in whose support we can
all cordially unite.—I remain, very respectfully, your friend,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
It is not at all difficult to see what Mr. Buchanan would have
recommended if he had been asked to shape the action of his party.
It is well known that he held it to be both right and expedient to
recognize the claim of Southern emigrants into the Territories to an
equal participation in the common domain of the Union, so far as to
have their property in slaves admitted during the continuance of the
Territorial condition. But he would have qualified this claim of
right by the application of the principle of the Missouri
Compromise; that is, by admitting it in Territories south of the
line of 36° 30´, and by excluding it in Territories north of that
line. This had been the former practice of Congress, and there could
be no good reason now for not expecting the people of the North to
make this concession to the South, excepting that Mr. Douglas had
indoctrinated a portion of the Northern Democrats with his panacea
of “popular sovereignty,” which was just as unacceptable to the
South as the principles of the “Chicago platform.”
Accordingly, when the Democratic Convention assembled at Charleston,
it soon found itself in an inextricable confusion of opinions as to
the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial legislature,
and as to the authority and duties of Congress, under the
Constitution of the United States, over slavery in the Territories.
While it was in the power of this Democratic Convention to
antagonize the Republican party with a platform, simple, reasonable
and just to all sections, on which the votes of all sections could
be asked, it became divided into a Northern and a Southern faction,
and wholly lost the opportunity of appealing to a national spirit of
harmony and good-will. The Northern faction, inspired by Mr.
Douglas, insisted on the adoption of his principle of “popular
sovereignty,” which ignored the Southern claim of a property right
protected by the Constitution. The Southern faction insisted on the
recognition of that right, in a way that ignored the governing
authority of both Congress and Territorial legislature.
Without some compromise, there could be no common platform and no
common candidate. After many ineffectual attempts to agree upon a
platform, and after some secessions of Southern delegates, fifty
ballotings for a candidate were carried on until the 3d of May. The
highest number of votes received at any time by Mr. Douglas was
152½, 202 being necessary to a nomination. The other votes were
scattered among different Northern and Southern men. The convention
then adjourned, to meet at Baltimore on the 18th of June, with a
recommendation that the party in the several States fill up all
vacancies in their respective delegations.[60] The result was that
when assembled at Baltimore, a dispute about the delegations
entitled to seats ended in a disruption of the convention into two
bodies, the one distinctly Northern, the other distinctly Southern.
The Northern Democratic Convention nominated Mr. Douglas as its
candidate, of course upon his platform of “popular sovereignty.” The
Southern Democratic Convention nominated Mr. Breckinridge as its
candidate, upon a platform of coequal rights of all the States in
all the Territories. Thus perished every hope of uniting the
Democratic party upon a political basis that would antagonize the
Republican platform in a sensible manner, and afford a reasonable
chance of preventing a sectional political triumph of the North over
the South, or of the free over the slave States.[61]
Footnote 60:
It appears from the following letter, written by General Dix to
Mr. Buchanan, after the Charleston Convention had adjourned, that
the course of the New York delegation in that body was not
acceptable to their constituents:
NEW YORK, May 9, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR:—
The course of the New York delegation at Charleston has caused
great dissatisfaction here, and earnest efforts will be made
before the meeting at Baltimore to induce a change of action on
the part of the majority. Mr. Douglas is not the choice of the
Democracy of this State; and if he were, we think it most
unreasonable to attempt to force on the States which must elect
the Democratic candidate (if he can be elected), a man they do not
want. We hope for the best, but not without the deepest concern.
I took the liberty of sending to you the address of the Democratic
General Committee of this city, published about three weeks ago.
It takes substantially the ground of the majority report from the
Committee on Resolutions at Charleston, and we think the New York
delegation should have supported them. I believe this is the
general feeling in this State. It certainly is in this city and
the southern counties. I have thought it right to say this to you,
and to express the hope that the New York delegation will go to
Baltimore prepared to sustain a candidate who will be acceptable
to our Southern friends. At all events, no effort will be spared
to bring about such a result.
I am, dear sir, sincerely yours,
JOHN A. DIX.
Footnote 61:
It should be said that the convention, when assembled at
Baltimore, became divided into two conventions, in consequence of
the withdrawal of the delegations of some of the most southern of
the Southern States, after they found that the friends of Mr.
Douglas were determined to thrust him upon them as the candidate.
It has been said that this was done to prevent any nomination, and
thereby to prepare the way for a dissolution of the Union. It is
more reasonable to believe that it was done to prevent the
nomination of a particular candidate. But if these delegates had
remained, Mr. Douglas could not have been nominated, and a
compromise candidate might have been selected, so as to preserve
the unity and strength of the party. For this reason, the
withdrawal was rash and unwise, for it brought into the field a
distinctly Southern Democratic candidate, with a distinctly
Southern platform. Mr. Douglas obtained the electoral vote of no
Southern, and Mr. Breckinridge obtained the electoral vote of no
Northern State.
Mr. Buchanan, after the two factions of the Democratic party had
made their nominations, pursued the course which became him as an
outgoing President. As a citizen, he had to choose between Mr.
Breckinridge and Mr. Douglas. The former represented more nearly the
political principles of Mr. Buchanan than any other candidate whom
he could support, and it was to Mr. Breckinridge that he gave all
the support which it was proper for him to give to any one. But his
views of the whole situation are apparent in the following letter,
written in July, 1860:—
[MR. BUCHANAN TO C. COMSTOCK.]
WASHINGTON, July 5, 1860.
DEAR SIR:—
I have received yours of the 3d inst., and although I do not write
letters on the subject to which it refers, I have determined to
address you a few lines.
The equality of the States in the Territories is a truly
Democratic doctrine which must eventually prevail. This is all for
which I have ever contended. The Supreme Court of the United
States,—a coördinate branch of the Government, to which the
decision of this question constitutionally belongs, have affirmed
this equality, and have placed property in slaves upon the same
footing with all other property. Without self-degradation, the
Southern States cannot abandon this equality, and hence they are
now all in a flame. Non-intervention on the part of Congress with
slavery in the Territories, unless accompanied by non-intervention
on the part of the Territorial legislatures, amounts to nothing
more in effect than to transfer the Wilmot Proviso from Congress
to these legislatures. Whilst the South cannot surrender their
rights as coequal States in the confederacy, what injury can it
possibly do to the Northern States to yield this great Democratic
principle? If they should not do this, then we will have the
Democratic party divided, South and North, just as the Methodist
Church has been divided, and another link binding the Union
together will be broken. No person can fairly contend that either
assemblage at Baltimore, at the time the nominations were made,
was a Democratic National Convention; hence every Democrat is free
to choose between the two candidates. These are, in brief, my
sentiments. I regret that they so widely differ from your own. You
have taken your own course, which you had a perfect right to do,
and you will, I know, extend a similar privilege to myself.
Yours very respectfully,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
The sole part that was taken by President Buchanan, in any public
manner, in the election of 1860, was in a speech which he made from
the portico of the White House, on the evening of July 9th, when a
great crowd assembled in front of the mansion and called him out. In
the course of his remarks, he said:
I have ever been the friend of regular nominations. I have never
struck a political ticket in my life. Now, was there anything done
at Baltimore to bind the political conscience of any sound
Democrat, or to prevent him from supporting Breckinridge or Lane?
[“No! no!”] I was contemporary with the abandonment of the old
Congressional convention or caucus. This occurred a long time ago;
very few, if any, of you remember it. Under the old Congressional
convention system, no person was admitted to a seat except the
Democratic members of the Senate and House of Representatives.
This rule rendered it absolutely certain that the nominee, whoever
he might be, would be sustained at the election by the Democratic
States of the Union. By this means it was rendered impossible that
those States which could not give an electoral vote for the
candidate when nominated, should control the nomination and
dictate to the Democratic States who should be their nominee.
This system was abandoned—whether wisely or not, I shall express
no opinion. The National Convention was substituted in its stead.
All the States, whether Democratic or not, were equally to send
delegates to this convention according to the number of their
Senators and Representatives in Congress.
A difficulty at once arose which never could have arisen under the
Congressional convention system. If a bare majority of the
National Convention thus composed could nominate a candidate, he
might be nominated mainly by the anti-Democratic States against
the will of a large majority of the Democratic States. Thus the
nominating power would be separated from the electing power, which
could not fail to be destructive to the strength and harmony of
the Democratic party.
To obviate this serious difficulty in the organization of a
National Convention, and at the same time to leave all the States
their full vote, the two-thirds rule was adopted. It was believed
that under this rule no candidate could ever be nominated without
embracing within the two-thirds the votes of a decided majority of
the Democratic States. This was the substitute adopted to retain,
at least in a great degree, the power to the Democratic States
which they would have lost by abandoning the Congressional
convention system. This rule was a main pillar in the edifice of
national conventions. Remove it and the whole must become a ruin.
This sustaining pillar was broken to pieces at Baltimore by the
convention which nominated Mr. Douglas. After this the body was no
longer a national convention; and no Democrat, however devoted to
regular nominations, was bound to give the nominee his support; he
was left free to act according to the dictates of his own judgment
and conscience. And here, in passing, I may observe that the
wisdom of the two-thirds rule is justified by the events passing
around us. Had it been faithfully observed, no candidate could
have been nominated against the will and wishes of almost every
certain Democratic State in the Union, against nearly all the
Democratic Senators, and more than three-fourths of the Democratic
Representatives in Congress. [Cheers.]
I purposely avoid entering upon any discussion respecting the
exclusion from the convention of regularly elected delegates from
different Democratic States. If the convention which nominated Mr.
Douglas was not a regular Democratic convention, it must be
confessed that Breckinridge is in the same condition in that
respect. The convention that nominated him, although it was
composed of nearly all the certain Democratic States, did not
contain the two-thirds; and therefore every Democrat is at perfect
liberty to vote as he thinks proper, without running counter to
any regular nomination of the party. [Applause and cries of “three
cheers for Breckinridge and Lane.”] Holding this position, I shall
present some of the reasons why I prefer Mr. Breckinridge to Mr.
Douglas. This I shall do without attempting to interfere with any
individual Democrat or any State Democratic organization holding
different opinions from myself. The main object of all good
Democrats, whether belonging to the one or the other wing of our
unfortunate division, is to defeat the election of the Republican
candidates; and I shall never oppose any honest and honorable
course calculated to accomplish this object.
To return to the point from which I have digressed, I am in
favor of Mr. Breckinridge, because he sanctions and sustains the
perfect equality of all the States within their common
Territories, and the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United
States, establishing this equality. The sovereign States of this
Union are one vast partnership. The Territories were acquired by
the common blood and common treasure of them all. Each State,
and each citizen of each State, has the same right in the
Territories as any other State and the citizens of any other
State possess. Now what is sought for at present is, that a
portion of these States should turn around to their sister
States and say, “We are holier than you are, and while we will
take our property to the Territories and have it protected
there, you shall not place your property in the same position.”
That is precisely what is contended for. What the Democratic
party maintain, and what is the true principle of Democracy is,
that all shall enjoy the same rights, and that all shall be
subject to the same duties. Property—this Government was framed
for the protection of life, liberty, and property. They are the
objects for the protection of which all enlightened governments
were established. But it is sought now to place the property of
the citizen, under what is called the principle of squatter
sovereignty, in the power of the Territorial legislature to
confiscate it at their will and pleasure. That is the principle
sought to be established at present; and there seems to be an
entire mistake and misunderstanding among a portion of the
public upon this subject. When was property ever submitted to
the will of the majority? [“Never.”] If you hold property as an
individual, you hold it independent of Congress or of the State
legislature, or of the Territorial legislature—it is yours, and
your Constitution was made to protect your private property
against the assaults of legislative power. [Cheers.] Well, now,
any set of principles which will deprive you of your property,
is against the very essence of republican government, and to
that extent makes you a slave; for the man who has power over
your property to confiscate it, has power over your means of
subsistence; and yet it is contended, that although the
Constitution of the United States confers no such power—although
no State legislature has any such power, yet a Territorial
legislature, in the remote extremities of the country, can
confiscate your property!
[A VOICE. “They can't do it; they ain't going to do it.”]
There is but one mode, and one alone, to abolish slavery in the
Territories. That mode is pointed out in the Cincinnati platform,
which has been as much misrepresented as anything I have ever
known. That platform declares that a majority of the actual
residents in a Territory, whenever their number is sufficient to
entitle them to admission as a State, possess the power to “form a
constitution with or without domestic slavery, to be admitted into
the Union upon terms of perfect equality with the other States.”
If there be squatter sovereignty in this resolution, I have never
been able to perceive it. If there be any reference in it to a
Territorial legislature, it has entirely escaped my notice. It
presents the clear principle that, at the time the people form
their constitution, they shall then decide whether they will have
slavery or not. And yet it has been stated over and over again
that, in accepting the nomination under that platform, I endorsed
the doctrine of squatter sovereignty. I suppose you have all heard
this repeated a thousand times.
[A VOICE. “We all knew it was a lie!”]
Well, I am glad you did.
How beautifully this plain principle of constitutional law
corresponds with the best interests of the people! Under it,
emigrants from the North and the South, from the East and the West
proceed to the Territories. They carry with them that property
which they suppose will best promote their material interests;
they live together in peace and harmony. The question of slavery
will become a foregone conclusion before they have inhabitants
enough to enter the Union as a State. There will then be no
“bleeding Kansas” in the Territories; they will all live together
in peace and harmony, promoting the prosperity of the Territory
and their own prosperity, until the time shall arrive when it
becomes necessary to frame a constitution. Then the whole question
will be decided to the general satisfaction. But, upon the
opposite principle, what will you find in the Territories? Why,
there will be strife and contention all the time. One Territorial
legislature may establish slavery and another Territorial
legislature may abolish it, and so the struggle will be continued
throughout the Territorial existence. The people, instead of
devoting their energies and industry to promote their own
prosperity, will be in a state of constant strife and turmoil,
just as we have witnessed in Kansas. Therefore, there is no
possible principle that can be so injurious to the best interests
of a Territory as what has been called squatter sovereignty.
Now, let me place the subject before you in another point of view.
The people of the Southern States can never abandon this great
principle of State equality in the Union without self-degradation.
[“Never!”] Never without an acknowledgment that they are inferior
in this respect to their sister States. Whilst it is vital to them
to preserve their equality, the Northern States surrender nothing
by admitting this principle. In doing this they only yield
obedience to the Constitution of their country as expounded by the
Supreme Court of the United States. While for the North it is
comparatively a mere abstraction, with the South it is a question
of co-equal State sovereignty in the Union.
If the decrees of the high tribunal established by the
Constitution for the very purposes are to be set at naught and
disregarded, it will tend to render all property of every
description insecure. What, then, have the North to do? Merely to
say that, as good citizens, they will yield obedience to the
decision of the Supreme Court, and admit the right of a Southern
man to take his property into the Territories, and hold it there
just as a Northern man may do; and it is to me the most
extraordinary thing in the world that this country should now be
distracted and divided because certain persons at the North will
not agree that their brethren at the South shall have the same
rights in the Territories which they enjoy. What would I, as a
Pennsylvanian, say or do, supposing anybody was to contend that
the legislature of any Territory could outlaw iron or coal within
the Territory? [Laughter and cheers.] The principle is precisely
the same. The Supreme Court of the United States have
decided,—what was known to us all to have been the existing state
of affairs for fifty years,—that slaves are property. Admit that
fact, and you admit everything. Then that property in the
Territories must be protected precisely in the same manner with
any other property. If it be not so protected in the Territories,
the holders of it are degraded before the world.
We have been told that non-intervention on the part of Congress
with slavery in the Territories is the true policy. Very well. I
most cheerfully admit that Congress has no right to pass any law
to establish, impair or abolish slavery in the Territories. Let
this principle of non-intervention be extended to the Territorial
legislatures, and let it be declared that they in like manner have
no power to establish, impair or destroy slavery, and then the
controversy is in effect ended. This is all that is required at
present, and I verily believe all that will ever be required.
Hands off by Congress and hands off by the Territorial
legislature. [Loud applause.] With the Supreme Court of the United
States I hold that neither Congress nor the Territorial
legislature has any power to establish, impair or abolish slavery
in the Territories. But if, in the face of this positive
prohibition, the Territorial legislature should exercise the power
of intervening, then this would be a mere transfer of the Wilmot
proviso and the Buffalo platform from Congress, to be carried into
execution in the Territories to the destruction of all property in
slaves. [Renewed applause.]
An attempt of this kind, if made in Congress, would be resisted by
able men on the floor of both houses, and probably defeated. Not
so in a remote Territory. To every new Territory there will be a
rush of free-soilers from the Northern States. They would elect
the first Territorial legislature before the people of the South
could arrive with their property, and this legislature would
probably settle forever the question of slavery according to their
own will.
And shall we for the sake of squatter sovereignty, which, from its
nature, can only continue during the brief period of Territorial
existence, incur the risk of dividing the great Democratic party
of the country into two sectional parties, the one North and the
other South? Shall this great party which has governed the country
in peace and war, which has raised it from humble beginnings to be
one of the most prosperous and powerful nations in the world—shall
this party be broken up for such a cause? That is the question.
The numerous, powerful, pious and respectable Methodist Church has
been thus divided. The division was a severe shock to the Union. A
similar division of the great Democratic party, should it
continue, would rend asunder one of the most powerful links which
binds the Union together.
I entertain no such fearful apprehensions. The present issue is
transitory, and will speedily pass away. In the nature of things
it cannot continue. There is but one possible contingency which
can endanger the Union, and against this all Democrats, whether
squatter sovereigns or popular sovereigns, will present a united
resistance. Should the time ever arrive when Northern agitation
and fanaticism shall proceed so far as to render the domestic
firesides of the South insecure, then, and not till then, will the
Union be in danger. A united Northern Democracy will present a
wall of fire against such a catastrophe!
There are in our midst numerous persons who predict the
dissolution of the great Democratic party, and others who contend
that it has already been dissolved. The wish is father to the
thought. It has been heretofore in great peril; but when divided
for the moment, it has always closed up its ranks and become more
powerful, even from defeat. It will never die whilst the
Constitution and the Union survive. It will live to protect and
defend both. It has its roots in the very vitals of the
Constitution, and, like one of the ancient cedars of Lebanon, it
will flourish to afford shelter and protection to that sacred
instrument, and to shield it against every storm of faction.
[Renewed applause.]
Now, friends and fellow-citizens, it is probable that this is the
last political speech that I shall ever make. [A VOICE. “We hope
not!”] It is now nearly forty years since I first came to
Washington as a member of Congress, and I wish to say this night,
that during that whole period I have received nothing but kindness
and attention from your fathers and from yourselves. Washington
was then comparatively a small town; now it has grown to be a
great and beautiful city; and the first wish of my heart is that
its citizens may enjoy uninterrupted health and prosperity. I
thank you for the kind attention you have paid to me, and now bid
you all a good-night. [Prolonged cheering.]
The observations contained in this chapter on the anti-slavery
agitation have been made because that agitation and its consequences
are great historical facts, necessary to be considered in a just
appreciation of the conduct of any American statesman who acted an
important part in national affairs during the quarter of a century
that preceded the civil war. The detail of Mr. Buchanan’s course on
this subject, down to the time when he became President, has been
given, and need not be repeated.
He was one of the earliest of the public men of the North to
discover and to point out the tendency of this agitation. That he
denounced it boldly and sincerely cannot be denied, even by those
who may not have held, or who do not now hold, the same opinions
concerning the “abolitionists” and their measures. He endeavored, at
an early period, to keep his own State of Pennsylvania free from the
adoption of such dogmas as the “higher law,” and to have its people
appreciate the mischiefs which the anti-slavery societies were
producing in the South. It is easy to impute this course to his
political relations to the Democratic party and to the dictates of
his own ambition as one of its principal Northern leaders, who, in
any future prospect of political honors beyond those which his own
State could bestow, might have to look to Southern support. But is
there no sensible, patriotic, sound and unselfish motive, no honest
and well grounded conviction, discoverable in what he did and said?
If his opinions about this agitation were substantially in
accordance with those of wise and judicious men, who could not have
been influenced by party spirit or personal objects, they may claim
to have been sincere and just, as certainly as they may claim to
have been courageously uttered.
It will not be doubted that when the abolition agitation began,
there was at least one man in the North, who, from his deep and
fervid interest in whatever concerned the rights of human nature and
the welfare of the human race, from his generous love of liberty and
his philanthropic tendencies, might be expected to welcome any
rational mode of removing the reproach and the evil of slavery from
the American name and the condition of American society. Such a man
was that celebrated New England divine, William Ellery Channing.
What his feelings were about the slavery that existed in our
Southern States, all who know anything of his character and his
writings know full well. His position as a clergyman and his
relations to the moral and spiritual condition of the age, put out
of the question the possibility of any political motive, other than
that broad, high and comprehensive view of public policy which was
above all the interests of party, and beyond all personal
considerations. If such a man foresaw the dangerous tendencies of
the abolition agitation, conducted in and from the North, and at the
same time discovered that the evil of slavery ought to be and might
be dealt with in a very different spirit and by far other means, it
is rational to conclude that men in public life and in political
positions might well place themselves in opposition to the spread of
such principles and the adoption of such methods as those of the
anti-slavery societies of the North. It was, in truth, the one thing
which it was their duty, as statesmen, to do.[62]
Footnote 62:
Dr. Channing’s attention was first drawn to the Northern
anti-slavery agitation in the year 183-, and there is nowhere on
record a more remarkable prophecy than that which he then made of
the effect of this agitation upon the people of the South. It is
contained in a letter which he then wrote to Mr. Webster, and
which has been public ever since the publication of Mr. Webster’s
collected works.