EFFORTS FOR PEACE
The desire for peace in 1850 was wide-spread. Union loving people, North
and South, hoped that the Compromise would result in a cessation of the
strife that had so long divided the section; and the election of
Franklin Pierce, in 1852, as President, on a platform strongly approving
that Compromise, was promising. But anti-slavery leaders, instead of
being convinced by such arguments as those of Webster, were deeply
offended by the contention that legislators, in passing personal liberty
laws, had violated their oaths to support the Constitution. They were
angered also by the presumptuous attempt to "arrest the whole
anti-slavery movement."
The new fugitive slave law was stringent; it did not give jury trial; it
required bystanders to assist the officers in "slave-catching," etc. For
these and other reasons the law was assailed as unconstitutional. All
these contentions were overruled by the Supreme Court when a case
eventually came before it. The court decided that the act was, in all
its provisions, fully authorized by the Constitution.[53] But in their
present mood, no law that was efficient would have been satisfactory to
the multitudes of people, by no means all "Abolitionists," who had
already made up their minds against the "wicked" provision of the
Constitution that required the delivery of fugitive slaves. This
deep-seated feeling of opposition to the return to their masters of
escaping slaves was soon to be wrought up to a high pitch by a novel
that went into nearly every household throughout the North--"Uncle Tom's
Cabin." On its appearance the poet Whittier, who had so ferociously
attacked Webster in the verses quoted in the last chapter, "offered up
thanks for the fugitive slave law, for it gave us 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"
[53] Ableman _v._ Boothe, 21 How., 506.
Rufus Choate, a celebrated lawyer and Whig leader, is reported to have
said of "Uncle Tom's Cabin": "That book will make two millions of
Abolitionists." Drawing, as it did, a very dark picture of slavery, it
aroused sympathy for the escaping slave and pictured in glowing colors
the dear, sweet men and women who dared, for his sake, the perils of the
road in the darkness of night and all the dangers of the law. Mrs. Stowe
was _making heroes of law-breakers, preaching the higher law_.
Mrs. Stowe declared she had not written the book for political effect;
she certainly did not anticipate the marvellous results that followed
it. That book made vast multitudes of its readers ready for the new
sectional and anti-slavery party that was to be organized two years
after its appearance. It was the most famous and successful novel ever
written. It was translated into every language that has a literature,
and has been more read by American people than any other book except the
Bible. As a picture of what was conceivable under the laws relating to
slavery there was a basis for it. Though there were laws limiting the
master's power, cruelty was nevertheless possible.
Here, then, Mrs. Stowe's imagination had full scope. Her book, however,
has in it none of the strident harshness, none of the purblind ferocity
of Garrison, in whose eyes every slave-holder was a fiend. "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" assailed a system; it did not assault personally, as the
arch-agitator did, every man and woman to whom slaves had come, whether
by choice or chance. Light and shadow and the play of human nature made
Mrs. Stowe's picture as attractive in many of its pages as it was
repulsive and unfair in others. Mrs. Shelby was a type of many a noble
mistress, a Christian woman, and when financial misfortunes compelled
the sale of the Shelby slaves and the separation of families, we have
not only what might have been, but what sometimes was, one of the evils
of slavery, which, by reason of the prevailing agitation, the humanity
of the age could not remedy. But Mrs. Stowe's slave-master, Legree, was
impossible. The theory was inconceivable that it was cheaper to work to
death in seven years a slave costing a thousand dollars, than to work
him for forty years. Millions of our people, however, have accepted
"Uncle Tom" as a fact, and have wept over him; they have accepted also
as a fact the monster Legree.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" lives to-day as a classic on book shelves and as a
popular play. The present generation get most of their opinions about
slavery as it was in the South from its pages, and not one in ten
thousand of those who read it ever thinks of the inconsistency between
the picture of slavery drawn there and that other picture, which all the
world now knows of--the Confederate soldier away in the army, his wife
and children at home faithfully protected by slaves--not a case of
violence, not even a single established case, during four years,
although there were four millions of negroes in the South, of that crime
against white women that, after the reconstruction had demoralized the
freedmen, became so common in that section.
The unwavering fidelity during the four years of war of so many slaves
to the families of their absent masters, and the fact that those who,
during that war, left their homes to seek their freedom invariably went
without doing any vengeful act, is a phenomenon that speaks for itself.
It tells of kindly relations between master and slave. It is not to be
denied that where the law gave so much power to the master there were
individual instances of cruelty, nor is it supposable that there were
not many slaves who were revengeful; but at the same time there was,
quite naturally, among slaves who were all in like case, a more clannish
and all-pervading public opinion than could have been found elsewhere.
It was that all-pervading and rigid standard of kindly feeling among the
slaves to their masters that made the rule universal--fidelity toward
the master's family, at least to the extent of inflicting no injury.
What a surprise to many this conduct of the slave was may be gathered
from a telling Republican speech made by Carl Schurz during the campaign
of 1860.[54] A devotee of liberty, recently a revolutionist in his
native land, and, like other foreigners, disregarding all constitutional
obstacles, Mr. Schurz had naturally espoused the cause of anti-slavery
in this country. He had absorbed the views of his political associates
and now contended that secession was an empty threat and that secession
was impossible. "The mere anticipation of a negro insurrection," he
said, "will paralyze the whole South." And, after ridiculing the alarm
created by the John Brown invasion, the orator said that in case of a
war between the South and the North, "they will not have men enough to
quiet their friends at home; what will they have to oppose to the enemy?
Every township will want its home regiment; every plantation its
garrison; and what will be left for its field army?"
[54] Fite, "Presidential Campaign of 1860," p. 243.
Slavery in the South eventually proved to be, instead of a weakness, an
element of strength to the Confederates, and Mr. Lincoln finally felt
himself compelled to issue his proclamation of emancipation as a
military necessity--the avowed purpose being to deprive the Confederates
of the slaves who were by their labor supporting their armies in the
field.
The faithfulness during the war of the slave to his master has been a
lesson to the Northerner, and it has been a lesson, too, to the
Southerner. It argues that the danger of bloody insurrections was
perhaps not as great as had been apprehended where incendiary
publications were sent among them. That danger, however, did exist, and
if the fear of it was exaggerated, it was nevertheless real, and was
traceable to the Abolitionists.
The rights of the South in the territories had now been discussed for
years and Stephen A. Douglas, a Democratic senator from Illinois, had
reached the conclusion that under the Constitution Southerner and
Northerner had exactly the same right to carry their property, whatever
it might be, into the territories, which had been purchased with the
common blood and treasure of both sections, a view afterward sustained
by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case.
Douglas, "entirely of his own motion,"[55] introduced, and Congress
passed, such a bill--the Kansas-Nebraska act. The new act replaced the
Missouri Compromise. This the Southerners considered had been a dead
letter for years. Every "personal liberty" law passed by a Northern
State was a violation of it.
[55] "Parties and Slavery," Theodore Clarke Smith, professor of history
in Williams College, p. 96.
Ambition was now playing its part in the sectional controversy. Douglas
was a Democrat looking to the presidency and had here made a bid for
Southern support. On the other hand was Seward, an "old line Whig,"
aspiring to the same office. The South had been the dominant element in
national politics and the North was getting tired of it. Seward's idea
was to organize all the anti-slavery voters and to appeal at the same
time to the pride and jealousy of the North as a section.
The immediate effect of the Kansas-Nebraska act was to aggravate
sectionalism. It opened up the territory of Kansas, allowing it to come
into the Union with or without slavery, as it might choose. Slave State
and free State adventurers rushed into the new territory and struggled,
and even fought, for supremacy. The Southerners lost. Their resources
could not match the means of organized anti-slavery societies, and the
result was an increase, North and South, of sectional animosity.
The overwhelming defeat of the old Whig party in 1852 presaged its
dissolution. Until that election, both the Whig and Democratic parties
had been national, each endeavoring to hold and acquire strength, North
and South, and each combating, as best it could, the spirit of
sectionalism that had been steadily growing in the North, and South as
well, ever since the rise of Abolitionism. Both these old parties had
watched with anxiety the increase of anti-slavery sentiment in the
North. Both parties feared it. Alliance with the anti-slavery North
would deprive a party of support South and denationalize it. For years
prior to 1852 the drift of Northern voters who were opposed to slavery
had been as to the two national parties toward the Whigs, and the
tendency of conservative Northerners had been toward the Democratic
party. Thus the great body of the Whig voters in the North had become
imbued with anti-slavery sentiments, and now, with no hope of victory as
a national party and left in a hopeless minority, the majority of that
old party in that section were ready to join a sectional party when it
should be formed two years later. William H. Seward was still a Whig
when he made in the United States Senate his anti-slavery "higher law"
speech of 1850.
The Kansas-Nebraska act was a political blunder. The South, on any
dispassionate consideration, could not have expected to make Kansas a
slave State. The act was a blunder, too, because it gave the opponents
of the Democratic party a plausible pretext for the contention, which
they put forth then and which has been persisted in till this day, that
the new Republican party, immediately thereafter organized, was called
into existence by, and only by, the Kansas-Nebraska act.
As far back as 1850 it was clear that a new party, based on the
anti-slavery sentiment that had been created by twenty years of
agitation, was inevitable. Mr. Rhodes, speaking of conditions then,
says: "It was, moreover, obvious to an astute politician like Seward,
and probably to others, that a dissolution of parties was imminent; that
to oppose the extension of slavery, _the different anti-slavery elements
must be organized as a whole_; it might be called Whig or some other
name, but it would be based on the principle of the Wilmot
proviso"[56]--the meaning of which was, no more slave States.
[56] "Rhodes," vol. I, p. 192.
Between 1850 and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854, new
impulse had been given anti-slavery sentiment by fierce assaults on the
new fugitive slave law and, as has been seen, by "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
The Kansas-Nebraska act did serve as a cry for the rallying of all
anti-slavery voters. That was all. It was a drum-call, in answer to
which soldiers already enlisted fell into ranks, under a new banner. Any
other drum-call--the application of another slave State for admission
into the Union--would have served quite as well. Thus the Republican
party came into existence in 1854. Mr. Rhodes sums up the reason for the
existence of the new party and what it subsequently accomplished in the
following pregnant sentence, "The moral agitation had accomplished its
work, the cause (of anti-slavery) ... was to be consigned to a political
party that brought to a successful conclusion the movement begun by the
moral sentiment of the community,"[57]--which successful conclusion was,
of course, _the freeing of the slaves by a successful war_.
[57] Vol. I, p. 66.
For a time the new Republican party had a powerful competitor in another
new organization. This was the American or Know-Nothing party. This
other aspirant for power made an honest effort to revitalize the old
Whig party under a new name and, by gathering in all the conservatives
North and South, to put an end to sectionalism. Its signal failure
conveys an instructive lesson. After many and wide-spread rumors of its
coming, the birth of the American party was formally announced in 1854.
It had been organized in secret and was bound together with oaths and
passwords; its members delighted to mystify inquirers by refusing to
answer questions, and soon they got the name of "Know-Nothings." The
party had grown out of the "Order of the Star Spangled Banner,"
organized in 1850 to oppose the spread of Catholicism and indiscriminate
immigration--the two dangers that were said to threaten American
institutions.
The American party made its appeal: For the Union and against
sectionalism; for Protestantism, the faith of the Fathers, against
Catholicism that was being imported by foreigners; its shibboleth was
"America for the Americans."
The Americans or Know-Nothings everywhere put out in 1854 full tickets
and showed at once surprising strength. In the fall elections of that
year they polled over one-fourth of all the votes in New York,
two-fifths in Pennsylvania, and over two-thirds in Massachusetts, where
they made a clean sweep of the State and Federal offices.[58]
[58] Smith, "Parties and Slavery," pp. 118-20.
They struck directly at sectionalism by exacting of their adherents the
following oath:
"You do further swear that you will not vote for any one ... whom you
know or believe to be in favor of a dissolution of the Union ... or who
is endeavoring to produce that result."
The effect of this oath at the South was almost magical. The Whig party
there was speedily absorbed by the Americans, and Southern Democrats by
thousands joined the new party that promised to save the Union.[59] But
the attitude of the Northern and Southern members of the American party
soon became fundamentally different. Southerners saw their Northern
allies in Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts passing "personal liberty"
laws.[60]
[59] The writer's father, who had been a nullifier and a lifelong
follower of Calhoun, joined the Know-Nothings in the hope of saving the
Union, but withdrew when he found that in the North the party was not
true to its Union pledges. Here was a typical case of Southern
unwillingness to resort to secession.
[60] _Ib._, pp. 138-9.
The Know-Nothings were strong enough in the elections of 1855 to
directly check the progress of the new Republican party; but the
American party, though it succeeded in electing a Speaker of the
national House of Representatives in February, 1856, soon afterward went
down to defeat. Even though led by such patriots as John Bell, of
Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, it could not stand
against the storm of passion that had been aroused by the crusade
against slavery.
There was a fierce and protracted struggle between the pro-slavery and
anti-slavery men in Kansas for possession of the territorial government.
Rival constitutions were submitted to Congress, and the debates over
these were extremely bitter. In their excitement the Democrats again
delighted their adversaries by committing what now seems to have been
another blunder. They advocated the admission of Kansas under the
"Lecompton Constitution." A review of the conflicting evidence appears
to show that the Southerners were fairly outnumbered in Kansas and that
the Lecompton Constitution did not express the will of the people.[61]
[61] Theodore Clarke Smith, "Parties and Slavery."
While "the war in Kansas" was going on, Charles Sumner, an Abolitionist
from Massachusetts, delivered in the Senate a speech of which he wrote
his friends beforehand: "I shall pronounce the most thorough Philippic
ever delivered in a legislative body." He was a classical scholar. _His
purpose was to stir up in the North a greater fury against the South
than Demosthenes had aroused in Athens against its enemies, the
Macedonians._ His speech occupied two days, May 28 and 29, 1855. At its
conclusion, Senator Cass, of Michigan, arose at once and pronounced it
"the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of
this high body." The speech attacked, without any sufficient excuse, the
personal character of an absent senator, Butler of South Carolina, a
gentleman of high character and older than Sumner. Among other
unfounded charges, it accused him of falsehood. Preston Brooks, a
representative from South Carolina, attacked Sumner in the Senate
chamber during a recess of that body and beat him unmercifully with a
cane. The provocation was bitter, indeed, but Brooks's assault was
unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the exasperated South applauded it, while
the North glorified Sumner as a martyr for free speech.
* * * * *
In less than two years the new Republican party had absorbed all the
Abolition voters, and in the election of 1856 was in the field with its
candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency--Fremont and
Dayton--upon a platform declaring it the duty of Congress to abolish in
the territories "those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery."
Excitement during that election was intense. Rufus Choate, the great
Massachusetts lawyer, theretofore a Whig, voiced the sentiment of
conservatives when he said it was the "duty of every one to prevent the
madness of the times from working its maddest act--the permanent
formation and the actual present triumph of a party which knows one-half
of America only to hate it," etc.
Senator Toombs, of Georgia, said: "The object of Fremont's friends is
the conquest of the South. I am content that they shall own us when they
conquer us."
The Democrats elected Buchanan; Democrats 174 electoral votes;
Republicans 74, all Northern; and the Know-Nothings, combined with a
remnant of Whigs, 8.
The work of sectionalism was nearly completed.
The extremes to which some of the Southern people now resorted show the
madness of the times. They encouraged filibustering expeditions to
capture Cuba and Nicaragua. These wild ventures were absolutely
indefensible. They had no official sanction and were only spontaneous
movements, but they met with favor from the Southern public, the
outgrowth of a feeling that, if these countries should be captured and
annexed as slave States, the South could the better, by their aid,
defend its rights in the Union. _The Wanderer_ and one or two other
vessels, contrary to the laws of the United States, imported slaves
from Africa, and when the participants were, some of them, indicted,
Southern juries absolutely refused to convict.
"Judgment had fled to brutish beasts,
And men had lost their reason."
When later the Southern States had seceded and formed a government of
their own their constitution absolutely prohibited the slave traffic.