A School History of the United States Part 41

[Footnote 2: After Amos A. Lawrence, secretary of the Aid Society. It was a city of tents. Not a building existed. Later came the log cabin, which was a poor affair, as timber was scarce. The sod hut now so common in the Northwest was not thought of. In the early days the "hay tent"

was the usual house, and was made by setting up two rows of poles, then bringing their tops together, thatching the roof and sides with hay. The two gable ends (in which were the windows and doors) were of sod.]

What was thus taking place at Lawrence happened elsewhere, so that by October, 1854, that part of Kansas along the Missouri River was held by the slave-state men, and the part south of the Kansas River by the free-state men.[1]

[Footnote 1: The proslavery towns were Atchison, Leavenworth, Lecompton, Kickapoo. The antislavery towns were Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, Waubunsee, Hampden, Ossawatomie.]

In November of the same year the struggle began. There was to be an election of a territorial delegate[1] to represent Kansas in Congress, and a day or two before the time set for it the Missourians came over the border in armed bands, took possession of the polls, voted illegally, and elected a proslavery delegate.

[Footnote 1: Each territory is allowed to send a delegate to the House of Representatives, where he can speak, but not vote.]

%388. Kansas a Slave Territory.%--The election of members of the territorial legislature took place in March, 1855, and for this the Missourians made great preparations. On the principle of popular sovereignty the people of Kansas were to decide whether the territory should be slave or free. Should the majority of the legislature consist of free-state men, then Kansas would be a free territory. Should a majority of proslavery men be chosen, then Kansas was doomed to have slavery fastened on her, and this the Missourians determined should be done. For weeks before the election, therefore, the border counties of Missouri were all astir. Meetings were held, and secret societies, called Blue Lodges, were formed, the members of which were pledged to enter Kansas on the day of election, take possession of the polls, and elect a proslavery legislature. The plan was strictly carried out, and as election day drew near, the Missourians, fully armed, entered Kansas in companies, squads, and parties, like an invading army, voted, and then went home to Missouri. Every member of the legislature save one was a proslavery man, and when that body met, all the slave laws of Missouri were adopted and slavery was formally established in Kansas.

%389. The Topeka Free-State Const.i.tution.%--The free-state men repudiated the bogus legislature, held a convention at Topeka, made a free-state const.i.tution, and submitted it to the popular vote. The people having ratified it (of course no proslavery men voted), a governor and legislature were chosen. When the legislature met, senators were elected and Congress was asked to admit Kansas into the Union as a state.

%390. Personal Liberty Laws; the Underground Railroad.%--The feeling of the people of the free states toward slavery can be seen from many signs. The example set by Vermont in 1850 was followed in 1854 by Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Michigan, and in 1855 by Maine and Ma.s.sachusetts, in each of which were pa.s.sed "Personal Liberty laws,"

designed to prevent free negroes from being carried into slavery on the claim that they were fugitive slaves. Certain state officers were required to act as counsel for any one arrested as a fugitive, and to see that he had a fair trial by jury. To seize a free negro with intent to reduce him to slavery was made a crime.

Another sign of the times was the sympathy manifested for the operations of what was called the Underground Railroad. It was, of course, not a railroad at all, but an organization by which slaves escaping from their masters were aided in getting across the free states to Canada.

%391. Breaking up of Old Parties.%--Thus matters stood when, in 1856, the time came to elect a President, and found the old parties badly disorganized. The political events of four years had produced great changes. The death of Clay[1] and Webster[2] deprived the Whigs of their oldest and greatest leaders. The earnest support that party gave to the Compromise of 1850 and the execution of the fugitive-slave law estranged thousands of voters in the free states. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, opposed as it was by every Northern Whig, completed the ruin and left the party a wreck.

[Footnote 1: June 29, 1852.]

[Footnote 2: October 24, 1852.]

But the Democrats had also suffered because of the Kansas-Nebraska law and the repeal of the Compromise of 1820. No anti-extension-of-slavery Democrat could longer support the old party. Thousands had therefore broken away, and, acting with the dissatisfied Whigs, formed an unorganized opposition known as "Anti-Nebraska men."

%392. The Movement against Immigrants.%--Many old Whigs, however, could not bring themselves to vote with Democrats. These joined the American or Know-nothing party. From the close of the Revolution there had never been a year when a greater or less number of foreigners did not come to our sh.o.r.es. After 1820 the numbers who came each twelvemonth grew larger and larger, till they reached 30,000 in 1830, and 60,000 in 1836, while in the decade 1830-1840 more than 500,000 immigrants landed at New York city alone.

As the newcomers hurried westward into the cities of the Mississippi valley, the native population was startled by the appearance of men who often could not speak our language. In Cincinnati in 1840 one half the voters were of foreign birth. The cry was now raised that our inst.i.tutions, our liberties, our system of government, were at the mercy of men from the monarchical countries of Europe. A demand was made for a change in the naturalization law, so that no foreigner could become a citizen till he had lived here twenty-one years.

%393. The American Republicans or Native Americans.%--Neither the Whigs nor the Democrats would endorse this demand, so the people of Louisiana in 1841 called a state convention and founded the American Republican, or, as it was soon called, the Native American party. Its principles were

1. Put none but native Americans in office.

2. Require a residence of twenty-one years in this country before naturalization.

3. Keep the Bible in the schools.

4. Protect from abuse the proceedings necessary to get naturalization papers.

As the members would not tell what the secrets of this party were, and very often would not say whom they were going to vote for, and when questioned would answer "I don't know," it got the name of "Know-nothing" party.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. II., pp.

51-58; McMaster's _With the Fathers_, pp. 87-106.]

For a time the party flourished greatly and secured six members of the House of Representatives, then it declined in power; but the immense increase in immigration between 1846 and 1850 again revived it, and.

somewhere in New York city in 1852 a secret, oath-bound organization, with signs, grips, and pa.s.swords, was founded, and spread with such rapidity that in 1854 it carried the elections in Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, and Delaware. Next year (1855) it elected the governors and legislatures of eight states, and nearly carried six more. Encouraged by these successes, the leaders determined to enter the campaign of 1856, and called a party convention which nominated Millard Fillmore and Andrew Jackson Donelson. Delegates from seven states left the convention because it would not stand by the Missouri Compromise, and taking the name North Americans nominated N. P. Banks. He would not accept, and the bolters then joined the Republicans.

%394. Beginning of the Republican Party.%--As early as 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was before Congress, the question was widely discussed all over the North and West, whether the time had not come to form a new party out of the wreck of the old. With this in view a meeting of citizens of all parties was held at Ripon, Wisconsin, at which the formation of a new party on the slavery issue was recommended, and the name Republican suggested. This was before the pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.

After its pa.s.sage a thousand citizens of Michigan signed a call for a state ma.s.s meeting at Jackson, where a state party was formed, named Republican, and a state ticket nominated, on which were Free-soilers, Whigs, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats. Similar "fusion tickets" were adopted in Wisconsin and Vermont, where the name Republican was used, and in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.

The success of the new party in Wisconsin and Michigan in 1854, and its yet greater success in 1855, led the chairmen of the Republican state committees of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ma.s.sachusetts, Vermont, and Wisconsin to issue a call for an informal convention at Pittsburg on February 22, 1856. At this meeting the National Republican party was formed, and from it went a call for a national nominating convention to meet (June 17, 1856) at Philadelphia, where John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton were nominated.

The Free-soilers had joined the Republicans and so disappeared from politics as a party.

The Whigs, or "Silver Grays," met and endorsed Fillmore.

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge and carried the election. The Whigs and the Know-nothings then disappeared from national politics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: James Buchanan]

%395. James Buchanan, Fifteenth President; the "Bred Scott Decision."%--When Buchanan and Breckinridge were inaugurated, March 4, 1857, certain matters regarding slavery were considered as legally settled forever, as follows:

1. Foreign slave trade forbidden.

2. Slave trade between the states allowed.

3. Fugitive slaves to be returned.

4. Whether a state should permit or abolish slavery to be determined by the state.

5. Squatter sovereignty to be allowed in Kansas and Nebraska, Utah and New Mexico territories.

6. The people in a territory to determine whether they would have a slave or a free state when they made a state const.i.tution.

Now there were certain questions regarding slavery which were not settled, and one of them was this: If a slave is taken by his master to a free state and lives there for a while, does he become free?

To this the Supreme Court gave the answer two days after Buchanan was inaugurated. A slave by the name of Dred Scott had been taken by his master from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois, and then to the free soil of Minnesota, and then back to the state of Missouri, where Scott sued for his freedom, on the ground that his residence on free soil had made him a free man. Two questions of vast importance were thus raised:

1. Could a negro whose ancestors had been sold as slaves become a citizen of one of the states in the Union? For unless Dred Scott was a citizen of Missouri, where he then lived, he could not sue in the United States court.

2. Did Congress have power to enact the Missouri Compromise? For if it did not then the restriction of slavery north of 3630' was illegal, and Dred Scott's residence in Minnesota did not make him free.

From the lower courts the case came on appeal to the Supreme Court, which decided

1. That Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore could not sue in the United States courts. His residence in Minnesota had not made him free.

2. That Congress could not shut slave property out of the territories any more than it could shut out a horse or a cow.

3. That the piece of legislation known as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was null and void. This confirmed all that had been gained for slavery by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and opened to slavery Oregon and Washington, which were free territories.

%396. Effect of the Dred Scott Decision.%--Hundreds of thousands of copies of this famous decision were printed at once and scattered broadcast over the country as campaign doc.u.ments. The effect was to fill the Southern people with delight and make them more reckless than ever, to split the Democratic party in the North; to increase the number of Republicans in the North, and make them more determined than ever to stop the spread of slavery into the territories.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %EXPANSION OF SLAVE SOIL IN THE UNITED STATES 1790-1860%]

%397. Struggle for Freedom in Kansas.%--We left Kansas in 1856 with a proslavery governor and legislature in actual possession, and a free-state governor, legislature, and senators seeking recognition at Washington. In 1857 there were so many free-state men in Kansas that they elected an antislavery legislature. But just before the proslavery men went out of power they made a proslavery const.i.tution,[1] and instead of submitting to the people the question, Will you, or will you not, have this const.i.tution? they submitted the question, Will you have this const.i.tution with or without slavery? On this the free settlers would not vote, and so it was adopted with slavery. But when the antislavery legislature met soon after, they ordered the question, Will you, or will you not, have this const.i.tution? to be submitted to the people. Then the free settlers voted, and it was rejected by a great majority. Buchanan, however, paid no attention to the action of the free settlers, but sent the Lecompton const.i.tution to Congress and urged it to admit Kansas as a slave state. But Senator Douglas of Illinois came forward and opposed this, because to force a slave const.i.tution on the people of Kansas, after they had voted against it, was contrary to the doctrine of "popular sovereignty." He, with the aid of other Northern Democrats, defeated the attempt, and Kansas remained a territory till 1861.