A School History of the United States Part 42

[Footnote 1: The convention met at the town of Lecompton; in consequence of which the const.i.tution is known as the "Lecompton const.i.tution."]

%398. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates.%--The term of Douglas as senator from Illinois was to expire on March 4, 1859. The legislature whose duty it would be to elect his successor was itself to be elected in 1858. The Democrats, therefore, announced that if they secured a majority of the legislators, they would reelect Douglas. The Republicans declared that if they secured a majority, they would elect Abraham Lincoln United States senator. The real question of the campaign thus became, Will the people of Illinois have Stephen A. Douglas or Abraham Lincoln for senator?[1]

[Footnote 1: The Republican state convention at Springfield, June 16, 1858, "resolved, that Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas."]

The speech making opened in June, 1858, when Lincoln addressed the convention that nominated him at Springfield. A month later Douglas replied in a speech at Chicago. Lincoln, who was present, answered Douglas the next evening. A few days later, Douglas, who had taken the stump, replied to Lincoln at Bloomington, and the next day was again answered by Lincoln at Springfield. The deep interest aroused by this running debate led the Republican managers to insist that Lincoln should challenge Douglas to a series of joint debates in public. The challenge was sent and accepted, and debates were arranged for at seven towns[1]

named by Douglas. The questions discussed were popular sovereignty, the Dred Scott decision, the extension of slavery to the territories; and the discussion of them attracted the attention of the whole country.

Lincoln was defeated in the senatorial election; but his great speeches won for him a national reputation.[2]

[Footnote 1: One in each Congressional district except those containing Chicago and Springfield, where both Lincoln and Douglas had already spoken. For a short account of their debates see the _Century Magazine_ for July, 1887, p. 386.]

[Footnote 2: Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. II., pp.

308-339. Nicolay and Hay's _Life of Lincoln_, Vol. II., Chaps. 10-16.

John T. Morse's _Life of Lincoln_, Vol. I., Chap. 6.]

%399. John Brown's Raid into Virginia%.--As slavery had become the great political issue of the day, it is not surprising that it excited a lifelong and bitter enemy of slavery to do a foolish act. John Brown was a man of intense convictions and a deep-seated hatred of slavery. When the border ruffianism broke out in Kansas in 1855, he went there with arms and money, and soon became so prominent that he was outlawed and a price set on his head. In 1858 he left Kansas, and in July, 1859, settled near Harpers Ferry, Va. (p. 360). His purpose was to stir up a slave insurrection in Virginia, and so secure the liberation of the negroes. With this in view, one Sunday night in October, 1859, he with less than twenty followers seized the United States armory at Harpers Perry and freed as many slaves and arrested as many whites as possible.

But no insurrection or uprising of slaves followed, and before he could escape to the mountains he was surrounded and captured by Robert E. Lee, then a colonel in the army of the United States. Brown was tried on the charges of murder and of treason against the state of Virginia, was found guilty, and in December, 1859, was hanged.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harpers Ferry]

%400. Split in the Democratic Party.%--Thus it was that one event after another prolonged the struggle with slavery till 1860, when the people were once more to elect a President.

The Democratic nominating convention a.s.sembled at Charleston, S.C., in April, and at once went to pieces. A strong majority made up of Northern delegates insisted that the party should declare--"That all questions in regard to the rights of property in states or territories arising under the Const.i.tution of the United States are judicial in their character, and the Democratic party is pledged to abide by and faithfully carry out such determination of these questions as has been or may be made by the Supreme Court of the United States."

This meant to carry out the doctrine laid down in the Dred Scott decision, and was in conflict with the "popular sovereignty" doctrine of Douglas, which was that right of the people to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect and complete. The minority, composed of the extreme Southern men, rejected the former plan and insisted

1. "That the Democracy of the United States hold these cardinal principles on the subject of slavery in the territories: First, that Congress has no power to abolish slavery in the territories. Second, that the territorial legislature has no power to abolish slavery in any territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of slaves therein, nor any power to exclude slavery therefrom, nor any right to destroy or impair the right of property in slaves by any legislation whatever."

2. That the Federal government must protect slavery "on the high seas, in the territories, and wherever else its const.i.tutional authority extends."

Both majority and minority agreed in a.s.serting

1. That the Personal Liberty laws of the free states "are hostile in their character, subversive of the Const.i.tution, and revolutionary in their effect."

2. That Cuba ought to be acquired by the United States.

3. That a railroad ought to be built to the Pacific.

Their agreement was a minor matter. Their disagreement was so serious that when the minority could not have its way, it left the convention, met in another hall, and adopted its resolutions.

The majority of the convention then adjourned to meet at Baltimore, June 18. 1860. As it was then apparent that Douglas would be nominated, another split occurred, and the few Southern men attending, together with some Northern delegates, withdrew. Those who remained nominated Stephen A. Douglas and Herschel V. Johnson.

The second group of seceders met in Baltimore, adopted the platform of the first group of seceders from the Charleston convention, and nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Lincoln]

%401. The Const.i.tutional Union Party.%--Meanwhile (May 9) another party, calling itself the National Const.i.tutional Union party, met at Baltimore. These men were the remnants of the old Whig and American or Know-nothing parties. They nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Ma.s.sachusetts, and declared for "the Const.i.tution of the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws."

%402. Election of Lincoln.%--The Republican party met in convention at Chicago on May 16, and nominated Abraham Lincoln, and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. It

1. Repudiated the principles of the Dred Scott decision.

2. Demanded the admission of Kansas as a free state.

3. Denied all sympathy with any kind of interference with slavery in the states.

4. Insisted that the territories must be kept free.

5. Called for a railroad to the Pacific, and a homestead law.

The election took place in November, 1860. Of 303 electoral votes cast, Lincoln received 180; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; and Douglas, 12.

SUMMARY

1. The Compromise of 1850 did not settle the question of slavery in the territories, and an attempt to organize Kansas and Nebraska brought it up again.

2. In the organization of these territories a new political doctrine, "popular sovereignty," was announced.

3. This was applied in Kansas, and the struggle for Kansas began. The first territorial government was proslavery. The antislavery men then made a const.i.tution (Topeka) and formed a free state government.

Thereupon the proslavery men formed a const.i.tution (Lecompton) for a slave state. This was submitted to Congress and rejected, and Kansas remained a territory till 1861.

4. In the course of the struggle for free soil in Kansas the Whig party went to pieces, the Democratic was split into two wings, and the Know-nothing or Native American party and the Republican party arose.

5. The Republican party was defeated in 1856, but the Dred Scott decision in 1857 and the continued struggle in Kansas forced the question of slavery to the front, and in 1860 Lincoln was elected.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ]

CHAPTER XXVI

PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES BETWEEN 1840 AND 1860

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chicago in 1832]

%403. The Movement of Population.%--The twenty years which elapsed between the election of Harrison, in 1840, and the election of Lincoln, in 1860, had seen a most astonishing change in our country. In 1840 neither Texas, nor the immense region afterwards acquired from Mexico, belonged to us. There were then but twenty-six states and five territories, inhabited by 17,000,000 people, of whom but 876,000 lived west of the Mississippi River, mostly close to the river bank in Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The great Northwest was still a wilderness, and many a city now familiar to us had no existence. Toledo and Milwaukee and Indianapolis had each less than 3000 inhabitants; Chicago had less than 5000; and Cleveland, Columbus, and Detroit, each less than 10,000. Yet the rapid growth of cities had been one of the characteristics of the period 1830 to 1840.

The effect of new mechanical appliances on the movement of population was amazing. The day when emigrants settled along the banks of streams, pushed their boats up the rivers by means of poles, carried their goods on the backs of pack horses, and floated their produce in Kentucky broadhorns down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, was fast disappearing. The steamboat, the ca.n.a.l, the railroad, had opened new possibilities. Land once valueless as too far from market suddenly became valuable. Men grew loath to live in a wilderness; the rush of emigrants across the Mississippi was checked. The region between the Alleghanies and the great river began to fill up rapidly. During the twenty years, 1821 to 1841, but two states, Arkansas (1836) and Michigan (1837), were admitted to the Union, and but three new territories, Florida (1822-23), Wisconsin (1836), and Iowa (1838), were established.

So few people went west from the Atlantic seaboard states that in each one of them except Maine and Georgia population increased more rapidly than it had ever done for forty years. From the Mississippi valley states, however, numbers of people went to Wisconsin and Iowa.

In consequence of this, Iowa was admitted to the Union in 1846, and Wisconsin in 1848. Minnesota and Oregon were made territories. Florida and Texas had been admitted in 1845, and the number of states was thus raised to thirty before 1850. The population of the country in 1850 was 23,000,000. Two states in the Mississippi valley now had each of them more than a million of inhabitants.

%404. The First States on the Pacific.%--Until 1840 the people had moved westward steadily. Each state as it was settled had touched some other east, or north, or south of it. After 1840 people, attracted by the rich farming land and pleasant climate of Oregon, and after 1848 by the gold mines of California, rushed across the plains to the Pacific, and between 1850 and 1860 built up the states of California and Oregon (1859), and the territory of Washington (1853). Minnesota was admitted in 1858. The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,000,000.