Abraham Lincoln: a History Volume I Part 11

[Sidenote: Ibid., p. 392.]

It does not appear that sectional motives operated for or against the foregoing enactment; they were probably held in abeyance by other considerations. But it must not be inferred therefrom that the slavery question was absent or dormant in the country. There was already a North and a South. At that very time the const.i.tutional convention was in session in Philadelphia. George Washington and his fellow delegates were grappling with the novel problems of government which the happy issue of the Revolution and the lamentable failure of the Confederation forced upon the country. One of these problems was the presence of over half a million of slaves, nearly all in five Southern States. Should they be taxed? Should they be represented? Should the power to regulate commerce be allowed to control or terminate their importation? Vital questions these, which went not merely to the incidents but the fundamental powers of government. The slavery question seemed for months an element of irreconcilable discord in the convention. The slave-trade not only, but the domestic inst.i.tution itself, was characterized in language which Southern politicians of later times would have denounced as "fanatical" and "incendiary." Pinckney wished the slaves to be represented equally with the whites, since they were the Southern peasantry. Gouverneur Morris declared that as they were only property they ought not to be represented at all. Both the present and the future balance of power in national legislation, as resulting from slaves already in, and hereafter to be imported into, old and new States, were debated under various possibilities and probabilities.

Out of these divergent views grew the compromises of the Const.i.tution. 1. The slaves were to be included in the enumeration for representation, five blacks to be counted as three whites. 2. Congress should have the right to prohibit the slave-trade, but not till the lapse of twenty years. 3. Fugitive slaves should be delivered to their owners. Each State, large or small, was allowed two senators; and the apportionment of representatives gave to the North thirty-five members and fourteen senators, to the South thirty members and twelve senators. But since the North was not yet free from slavery, but only in process of becoming so, and as Virginia was the leading State of the Union, the real balance of power remained in the hands of the South.

The newly formed Const.i.tution went into successful operation. Under legal provisions already made and the strong current of abolition sentiment then existing, all the Eastern and Middle States down to Delaware became free. This gain, however, was perhaps more than numerically counterbalanced by the active importation of captured Africans, especially into South Carolina and Georgia, up to the time the traffic ceased by law in 1808. Jefferson had meanwhile purchased of France the immense country west of the Mississippi known as the Louisiana Territory. The free navigation of that great river was a.s.sured, and the importance of the West immeasurably increased. The old French colonies at New Orleans and Kaskaskia were already strong outposts of civilization and the nuclei of spreading settlements. Attracted by the superior fertility of the soil, by the limitless opportunities for speculation, by the enticing spirit of adventure, and pushed by the restless energy inherent in the Anglo-Saxon character, the older States now began to pour a rising stream of emigration into the West and the South-west.

In this race the free States, by reason of their greater population, wealth, and commercial enterprise, would have outstripped the South but for the introduction of a new and powerful influence which operated exclusively in favor of the latter. This was the discovery of the peculiar adaptation of the soil and climate of portions of the Southern States, combined with cheap slave-labor, to the cultivation of cotton. Half a century of experiment and invention in England had brought about the concurrent improvement of machinery for spinning and weaving, and of the high-pressure engine to furnish motive power. The Revolutionary war was scarcely ended when there came from the mother- country a demand for the raw fiber, which promised to be almost without limit. A few trials sufficed to show Southern planters that with their soil and their slaves they could supply this demand with a quality of cotton which would defy compet.i.tion, and at a profit to themselves far exceeding that of any other product of agriculture. But an insurmountable obstacle yet seemed to interpose itself between them and their golden harvest. The tedious work of cleaning the fiber from the seed apparently made impossible its cheap preparation for export in large quant.i.ties. A negro woman working the whole day could clean only a single pound.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES K. POLK.]

[Sidenote: Memoir of Eli Whitney, "American Journal of Science," 1832.]

It so happened that at this juncture, November, 1792, an ingenious Yankee student from Ma.s.sachusetts was boarding in the house of friends in Savannah, Georgia, occupying his leisure in reading law. A party of Georgia gentlemen from the interior, making a visit to this family, fell into conversation on the prospects and difficulties of cotton- culture and the imperative need of a rapidly working cleaning-machine. Their hostess, an intelligent and quick-witted woman, at once suggested an expedient. "Gentlemen," said Mrs. Greene, "apply to my young friend, Mr. Eli Whitney; he can make anything." The Yankee student was sought, introduced, and had the mechanical problem laid before him. He modestly disclaimed his hostess's extravagant praises, and told his visitors that he had never seen either cotton or cotton- seed in his life. Nevertheless, he went to work with such earnestness and success, that in a few months Mrs. Greene had the satisfaction of being able to invite a gathering of gentlemen from different parts of the State to behold with their own eyes the working of the newly invented cotton-gin, with which a negro man turning a crank could clean fifty pounds of cotton per day.

[Sidenote: 1808.]

[Sidenote: Compendium, Eighth Census, p. 13.]

This solution of the last problem in cheap cotton-culture made it at once the leading crop of the South. That favored region quickly drove all compet.i.tors out of the market; and the rise of English imports of raw cotton, from thirty million pounds, in 1790 to over one thousand million pounds in 1860, shows the development and increase of this special industry, with all its related interests. [Footnote: The Virginia price of a male "field hand" in 1790 was $250; in 1860 his value in the domestic market had risen to $1600.-SHERRARD CLEMENS, speech in H. E. Appendix "Congressional Globe," 1860-1, pp. 104-5.] It was not till fifteen years after the invention of the cotton-gin that the African slave-trade ceased by limitation of law. "Within that period many thousands of negro captives had been added to the population of the South by direct importation, and nearly thirty thousand slave inhabitants added by the acquisition of Louisiana, hastening the formation of new slave States south of the Ohio River in due proportion." [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (1) relocated to chapter end.]

It is a curious historical fact, that under the very remarkable material growth of the United States which now took place, the political influence remained so evenly balanced between the North and the South for more than a generation. Other grave issues indeed absorbed the public attention, but the abeyance of the slavery question is due rather to the fact that no considerable advantage as yet fell to either side. Eight new States were organized, four north and four south of the Ohio River, and admitted in nearly alternate order: Vermont in 1791, free; Kentucky in 1792, slave; Tennessee in 1796, slave; Ohio in 1802, free; Louisiana in 1812, slave; Indiana in 1816, free; Mississippi in 1817, slave; Illinois in 1818, free. Alabama was already authorized to be admitted with slavery, and this would make the number of free and slave States equal, giving eleven States to the North and eleven to the South.

The Territory of Missouri, containing the old French colonies at and near St. Louis, had attained a population of 60,000, and was eager to be admitted as a State. She had made application in 1817, and now in 1819 it was proposed to authorize her to form a const.i.tution. Arkansas was also being nursed as an applicant, and the prospective loss by the North and gain by the South of the balance of power caused the slavery question suddenly to flare up as a national issue. There were hot debates in Congress, emphatic resolutions by State legislatures, deep agitation among the whole people, and open threats by the South to dissolve the Union. Extreme Northern men insisted upon a restriction of slavery to be applied to both Missouri and Arkansas; radical Southern members contended that Congress had no power to impose any conditions on new States. The North had control of the House, the South of the Senate. A middle party thereupon sprang up, proposing to divide the Louisiana purchase between freedom and slavery by the line of 36 degrees 30', and authorizing the admission of Missouri with slavery out of the northern half. Fastening this proposition upon the bill to admit Maine as a free State, the measure was, after a struggle, carried through Congress (in a separate act approved March 6, 1820), and became the famous Missouri Compromise. Maine and Missouri were both admitted. Each section thereby not only gained two votes in the Senate, but also a.s.serted its right to spread its peculiar polity without question or hindrance within the prescribed limits; and the motto, "No extension of slavery," was postponed forty years, to the Republican campaign of 1860.

From this time forward, the maintenance of this balance of power,-the numerical equality of the slave States with the free,-though not announced in platforms as a party doctrine, was nevertheless steadily followed as a policy by the representatives of the South. In pursuance of this system, Michigan and Arkansas, the former a free and the latter a slave State, were, on the same day, June 15, 1836, authorized to be admitted. These tactics were again repeated in the year 1845, when, on the 3d of March, Iowa, a free State, and Florida, a slave State, were authorized to be admitted by one act of Congress, its approval being the last official act of President Tyler. This tacit compromise, however, was accompanied by another very important victory of the same policy. The Southern politicians saw clearly enough that with the admission of Florida the slave territory was exhausted, while an immense untouched portion of the Louisiana purchase still stretched away to the north-west towards the Pacific above the Missouri Compromise line, which consecrated it to freedom. The North, therefore, still had an imperial area from which to organize future free States, while the South had not a foot more territory from which to create slave States.

Sagaciously antic.i.p.ating this contingency, the Southern States had been largely instrumental in setting up the independent State of Texas, and were now urgent in their demand for her annexation to the Union. Two days before the signing of the Iowa and Florida bill, Congress pa.s.sed, and President Tyler signed, a joint resolution, authorizing the acquisition, annexation, and admission of Texas. But even this was not all. The joint resolution contained a guarantee that "new States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to the said State of Texas," and to be formed out of her territory, should hereafter be ent.i.tled to admission-the Missouri Compromise line to govern the slavery question in them. The State of Texas was, by a later resolution, formally admitted to the Union, December 29, 1845. At this date, therefore, the slave States gained an actual majority of one, there being fourteen free States and fifteen slave States, with at least equal territorial prospects through future annexation.

If the North was alarmed at being thus placed in a minority, there was ample reason for still further disquietude. The annexation of Texas had provoked the Mexican war, and President Polk, in antic.i.p.ation of further important acquisition of territory to the South and West, asked of Congress an appropriation of two millions to be used in negotiations to that end. An attempt to impose a condition to these negotiations that slavery should never exist in any territory to be thus acquired was the famous Wilmot Proviso. This particular measure failed, but the war ended, and New Mexico and California were added to the Union as unorganized Territories. Meanwhile the admission of Wisconsin in 1848 had once more restored the equilibrium between the free and the slave States, there being now fifteen of each.

It must not be supposed that the important political measures and results thus far summarized were accomplished by quiet and harmonious legislation. Rising steadily after 1820, the controversy over slavery became deep and bitter, both in Congress and the country. Involving not merely a policy of government, but a question of abstract morals, statesmen, philanthropists, divines, the press, societies, churches, and legislative bodies joined in the discussion. Slavery was a.s.sailed and defended in behalf of the welfare of the state, and in the name of religion. In Congress especially it had now been a subject of angry contention for a whole generation. It obtruded itself into all manner of questions, and clung obstinately to numberless resolutions and bills. Time and again it had brought members into excited discussion, and to the very verge of personal conflict in the legislative halls. It had occasioned numerous threats to dissolve the Union, and in one or more instances caused members actually to retire from the House of Representatives. It had given rise to resolutions of censure, to resignations, and had been the occasion of some of the greatest legislative debates of the nation. It had virtually created and annexed the largest State in the Union. In several States it had instigated abuse, intolerance, persecutions, trials, mobs, murders, destruction of property, imprisonment of freemen, retaliatory legislation, and one well-defined and formidable attempt at revolution. It originated party factions, political schools, and const.i.tutional doctrines, and made and marred the fame of great statesmen.

New Mexico, when acquired, contained one of the oldest towns on the continent, and a considerable population of Spanish origin. California, almost simultaneously with her acquisition, was peopled in the course of a few months by the world-renowned gold discoveries. Very unexpectedly, therefore, to politicians of all grades and opinions, the slavery question was once more before the nation in the year 1850, over the proposition to admit both to the Union as States. As the result of the long conflict of opinion hitherto maintained, the beliefs and desires of the contending sections had by this time become formulated in distinct political doctrines. The North contended that Congress might and should prohibit slavery in all the territories of the Union, as had been done in the Northern half by the Ordinance of 1787 and by the Missouri Compromise. The South declared that any such exclusion would not only be unjust and impolitic, but absolutely unconst.i.tutional, because property in slaves might enter and must be protected in the territories in common with all other property. To the theoretical dispute was added a practical contest. By the existing Mexican laws slavery was already prohibited in New Mexico, and California promptly formed a free State const.i.tution. Under these circ.u.mstances the North sought to organize the former as a Territory, and admit the latter as a State, while the South resisted and endeavored to extend the Missouri Compromise line, which would place New Mexico and the southern half of California under the tutelage and influence of slavery.

These were the princ.i.p.al points of difference which caused the great slavery agitation of 1850. The whole country was convulsed in discussion; and again more open threats and more ominous movements towards disunion came from the South. The most popular statesman of that day, Henry Clay, of Kentucky, a slaveholder opposed to the extension of slavery, now, however, a.s.sumed the leadership of a party of compromise, and the quarrel was adjusted and quieted by a combined series of Congressional acts. 1. California was admitted as a free State. 2. The Territories of New Mexico and Utah were organized, leaving the Mexican prohibition of slavery in force. 3. The domestic slave-trade in the District of Columbia was abolished. 4. A more stringent fugitive-slave law was pa.s.sed. 5. For the adjustment of her State boundaries Texas received ten millions of dollars.

[Sidenote: Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 208.]

These were the famous compromise measures of 1850. It has been gravely a.s.serted that this indemnity of ten millions, suddenly trebling the value of the Texas debt, and thereby affording an unprecedented opportunity for speculation in the bonds of that State, was "the propelling force whereby these acts were pushed through Congress in defiance of the original convictions of a majority of its members." But it must also be admitted that the popular desire for tranquillity, concord, and union in all sections never exerted so much influence upon Congress as then. This compromise was not at first heartily accepted by the people; Southern opinion being offended by the abandonment of the "property" doctrine, and Northern sentiment irritated by certain harsh features of the fugitive-slave law. But the rising Union feeling quickly swept away all ebullitions of discontent, and during two or three years people and politicians fondly dreamed they had, in current phraseology, reached a "finality" [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (2) relocated to chapter end.] on this vexed quarrel. The nation settled itself for a period of quiet to repair the waste and utilize the conquests of the Mexican war. It became absorbed in the expansion of its commerce, the development of its manufactures, and the growth of its emigration, all quickened by the riches of its marvelous gold-fields; until unexpectedly and suddenly it found itself plunged once again into political controversies more distracting and more ominous than the worst it had yet experienced.

[Relocated Footnote (1): No word of the authors could add to the force and eloquence of the following from a recent letter of the son of the inventor of the cotton-gin (to the Art Superintendent of "The Century"), stating the claims of his father's memory to the grat.i.tude of the South, hitherto apparently unfelt, and certainly unrecognized:

"NEW HAVEN, CONN.," Dec. 4, 1886. "... I send you a photograph taken from a portrait of my father, painted about the year 1821, by King, of Washington, when my father, the inventor of the cotton-gin, was fifty- five years old. He died January 25, 1825. The cotton-gin was invented in 1793; and though it has been in use for nearly one hundred years, it is virtually unimproved.... Hence the great merit of the South, financially and commercially. It has made England rich, and changed the commerce of the world. Lord Macaulay said of Eli Whitney: 'What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin has more than equaled in its relation to the power and progress of the United States.' He has been the greatest benefactor of the South, but it never has, to my knowledge, acknowledged his benefaction in a public manner to the extent it deserves-no monument has been erected to his memory, no town or city named after him, though the force of his genius has original invention. It has made caused many towns and cities to rise and flourish in the South....

"Yours very truly, E. W. WHITNEY."]

[Relocated Footnote (2): Grave doubts, however, found occasional expression, and none perhaps more forcibly than in the following newspaper epigram-describing "Finality":

To kill twice dead a rattlesnake, And off his scaly skin to take, And through his head to drive a stake, And every bone within him break, And of his flesh mincemeat to make, To burn, to sear, to boil, and bake, Then in a heap the whole to rake, And over it the besom shake, And sink it fathoms in the lake- Whence after all, quite wide awake, Comes back that very same old snake!]

CHAPTER XIX

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

The long contest in Congress over the compromise measures of 1850, and the reluctance of a minority, alike in the North and the South, to accept them, had in reality seriously demoralized both the great political parties of the country. The Democrats especially, defeated by the fresh military laurels of General Taylor in 1848, were much exercised to discover their most available candidate as the presidential election of 1852 approached. The leading names, Ca.s.s, Buchanan, and Marcy, having been long before the public, were becoming a little stale. In this contingency, a considerable following grouped itself about an entirely new man, Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois. Emigrating from Vermont to the West, Douglas had run a career remarkable for political success. Only in his thirty-ninth year, he had served as member of the legislature, as State's Attorney, as Secretary of State, and as judge of the Supreme Court in Illinois, and had since been three times elected to Congress and once to the Senate of the United States. Nor did he owe his political fortunes entirely to accident. Among his many qualities of leadership were strong physical endurance, untiring industry, a persistent boldness, a ready facility in public speaking, unfailing political shrewdness, an unusual power in running debate, with liberal instincts and progressive purposes. It was therefore not surprising that he should attract the admiration and support of the young, the ardent, and especially the restless and ambitious members of his party. His career in Congress was sufficiently conspicuous. As Chairman of the Committee on Territories in the Senate, he had borne a prominent part in the enactment of the compromise measures of 1850, and had just met and overcome a threatened party schism in his own State, which that legislation had there produced.

In their eagerness to push his claims to the presidency, the partisans of Douglas committed a great error. Rightly appreciating the growing power of the press, they obtained control of the "Democratic Review," a monthly magazine then prominent as a party organ, and published in it a series of articles attacking the rival Democratic candidates in very flashy rhetoric. These were stigmatized as "old fogies," who must give ground to a nominee of "Young America." They were reminded that the party expects a "new man." "Age is to be honored, but senility is pitiable"; "statesmen of a previous generation must get out of the way"; the Democratic party was owned by a set of "old clothes-horses"; "they couldn't pay their political promises in four Democratic administrations"; and the names of Ca.s.s and Marcy, Buchanan and Butler, were freely mixed in with such epithets as "pretenders," "hucksters," "intruders," and "vile charlatans."

Such characterization of such men soon created a flagrant scandal in the Democratic party, which was duly aired both in the newspapers and in Congress. It definitely fixed the phrases "old fogy" and "Young America" in our slang literature. The personal friends of Douglas hastened to explain and a.s.sert his innocence of any complicity with this political raid, but they were not more than half believed; and the war of factions, begun in January, raged with increasing bitterness till the Democratic National Convention met at Baltimore in June, and undoubtedly exerted a decisive influence over the deliberations of that body.

The only serious compet.i.tors for the nomination were the "old fogies" Ca.s.s, Marcy, and Buchanan on the one hand, and Douglas, the pet of "Young America," on the other. It soon became evident that opinion was so divided among these four that a nomination could only be reached through long and tedious ballotings. Beginning with some 20 votes, Douglas steadily gained adherents till on the 30th ballot he received 92. From this point, however, his strength fell away. Unable himself to succeed, he was nevertheless sufficiently powerful to defeat his adversaries. The exasperation had been too great to permit a concentration or compromise on any of the "seniors." Ca.s.s reached only 131 votes; Marcy, 98; Buchanan, 104; and finally, on the 49th ballot, occurred the memorable nearly unanimous selection of Franklin Pierce- not because of any merit of his own, but to break the insurmountable dead-lock of factional hatred. Young America gained a nominal triumph, old fogydom a real revenge, and the South a serviceable Northern ally. Douglas and his friends were discomfited but not dismayed. Their management had been exceedingly maladroit, as a more modest championship would without doubt have secured him the coveted nomination. Yet sagacious politicians foresaw that on the whole he was strengthened by his defeat. From that time forward he was a recognized presidential aspirant and compet.i.tor, young enough patiently to bide his time, and of sufficient prestige to make his flag the rallying point of all the free-lances in the Democratic party.

It is to this presidential aspiration of Mr. Douglas that we must look as the explanation of his agency in bringing about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. As already said, after some factious opposition the measures of 1850 had been accepted by the people as a finality of the slavery question. Around this alleged settlement, distasteful as it was to many, public opinion gradually crystallized. Both the National Conventions of 1852 solemnly resolved that they would discountenance and resist, in Congress or out of it, whenever, wherever, or however, or under whatever color or shape, any further renewal of the slavery agitation. This determination was echoed and reechoed, affirmed and reaffirmed, by the recognized organs of the public voice-from the village newspaper to the presidential message, from the country debating school to the measured utterances of senatorial discussion.

[Sidenote: Appendix "Congressional Globe" 1851-2, p. 63.]

[Sidenote: Douglas, Senate speech 1850. Appendix, 1849-50 pp. 369 to 372.]

[Sidenote: Douglas, Springfield speech, Oct. 28, 1849. Illinois "Register."]

In support of this alleged "finality" no one had taken a more decided stand than Senator Douglas himself. Said he: "In taking leave of this subject I wish, to state that I have determined never to make another speech upon the slavery question; and I will now add the hope that the necessity for it will never exist.... So long as our opponents do not agitate for repeal or modification, why should we agitate for any purpose! We claim that the compromise [of 1850] is a final settlement. Is a final settlement open to discussion and agitation and controversy by its friends? What manner of settlement is that which does not settle the difficulty and quiet the dispute? Are not the friends of the compromise becoming the agitators, and will not the country hold us responsible for that which we condemn and denounce in the abolitionists and Free-soldiers? These are matters worthy of our consideration. Those who preach peace should not be the first to commence and reopen an old quarrel." In his Senate speeches, during the compromise debates of 1850, while generally advocating his theory of "non-intervention," he had sounded the whole gamut of the slavery discussion, defending the various measures of adjustment against the attacks of the Southern extremists, and specifically defending the Missouri Compromise. More than this; he had declared in distinct words that the principle of territorial prohibition was no violation of Southern rights; and denounced the proposition of Calhoun to put a "balance of power" clause into the Const.i.tution as "a retrograde movement in an age of progress that would astonish the world." These repeated affirmations, taken in connection with his famous description of the Missouri Compromise in 1849, in which he declared it to have had "an origin akin to the Const.i.tution," and to have become "canonized in the hearts of the American people as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb," all seemed, in the public mind, to fix his position definitely; no one imagined that Douglas would so soon become the subject of his own anathemas.

The full personal details of this event are lost to history. We have only a faint and shadowy outline of isolated movements of a few chief actors, a few vague suggestions and fragmentary steps in the formation and unfolding of the ill-omened plot.

As the avowed representative of the restless and ambitious elements of the country, as the champion of "Young America," Douglas had so far as possible in his Congressional career made himself the apostle of modern "progress." He was a believer in "manifest destiny" and a zealous advocate of the Monroe doctrine. He desired-so the newspapers averred-that the Caribbean Sea should be declared an American lake, and nothing so delighted him as to pull the beard of the British lion. These topics, while they furnished themes for campaign speeches, for the present led to no practical legislation. In his position as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, however, he had control of kindred measures of present and vital interest to the people of the West; namely, the opening of new routes of travel and emigration, and of new territories for settlement. An era of wonder had just dawned, connecting itself directly with these subjects. The acquisition of California and the discovery of gold had turned the eyes of the whole civilized world to the Pacific coast. Plains and mountains were swarming with adventurers and emigrants. Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, and Minnesota had just been organized, and were in a feeble way contesting the sudden fame of the Golden State. The Western border was astir, and wild visions of lands and cities and mines and wealth and power were disturbing the dreams of the pioneer in his frontier cabin, and hurrying him off on the long, romantic quest across the continent.

Hitherto, stringent Federal laws had kept settlers and unlicensed traders out of the Indian territory, which lay beyond the western boundaries of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa, and which the policy of our early Presidents fixed upon as the final asylum of the red men retreating before the advance of white settlements. But now the uncontrollable stream of emigration had broken into and through this reservation, creating in a few years well-defined routes of travel to New Mexico, Utah, California, and Oregon. Though from the long march there came constant cries of danger and distress, of starvation and Indian ma.s.sacre, there was neither halting nor delay. The courageous pioneers pressed forward all the more earnestly, and to such purpose that in less than twenty-five years the Pacific Railroad followed Fremont's first exploration through the South Pa.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANKLIN PIERCE.]

Douglas, himself a migratory child of fortune, was in thorough sympathy with this somewhat premature Western longing of the people; and as chairman of the Committee on Territories was the recipient of all the letters, pet.i.tions, and personal solicitations from the various interests which were seeking their advantage in this exodus toward the setting sun. He was the natural center for all the embryo mail contractors, office-holders, Indian traders, land-sharks, and railroad visionaries whose coveted opportunities lay in the Western territories. It is but just to his fame, however, to say that he comprehended equally well the true philosophical and political necessities which now demanded the opening of Kansas and Nebraska as a secure highway and protecting bridge to the Rocky Mountains and our new-found El Dorado, no less than as a bond of union between the older States and the improvised "Young America" on the Pacific coast. The subject was not yet ripe for action during the stormy politics of 1850-1, and had again to be postponed for the presidential campaign of 1852. But after Pierce was triumphantly elected, with a Democratic Congress to sustain him, the legislative calm which both parties had adjured in their platforms seemed favorable for pushing measures of local interest. The control of legislation for the territories was for the moment completely in the hands of Douglas. He was himself chairman of the Committee of the Senate; and his special personal friend and political lieutenant in his own State, William A. Richardson, of Illinois, was chairman of the Territorial Committee of the House, He could therefore choose his own time and mode of introducing measures of this character in either house of Congress, under the majority control of his party-a fact to be constantly borne in mind when we consider the origin and progress of "the three Nebraska bills."

[Sidenote: "Globe," Feb. 2, 1853, p. 474.]

[Sidenote: Ibid., Feb. 8, p. 542-544.]

[Sidenote: Ibid., Feb. 10, p. 566.]

[Sidenote: Ibid., Feb. 10, p. 559.]

The journal discloses that Richardson, of Illinois, chairman of the Committee on Territories of the House of Representatives, on February 2, 1853, introduced into the House "A bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska." After due reference, and some desultory debate on the 8th, it was taken up and pa.s.sed by the House on the 10th. From the discussion we learn that the boundaries were the Missouri River on the east, the Rocky Mountains on the west, the line of 36 degrees 30' or southern line of Missouri on the south, and the line of 43 degrees, or near the northern line of Iowa, on the north. Several members opposed it, because the Indian t.i.tle to the lands was not yet extinguished, and because it embraced reservations pledged to Indian occupancy in perpetuity; also on the general ground that it contained but few white inhabitants, and its organization was therefore a useless expense. Howard, of Texas, made the most strenuous opposition, urging that since it contained but about six hundred souls, its southern boundary should be fixed at 39 degrees 30', not to trench upon the Indian reservations. Hall, of Missouri, replied in support of the bill: "We want the organization of the Territory of Nebraska not merely for the protection of the few people who reside there, but also for the protection of Oregon and California in time of war, and the protection of our commerce and the fifty or sixty thousand emigrants who annually cross the plains." He added that its limits were purposely made large to embrace the great lines of travel to Oregon, New Mexico, and California; since the South Pa.s.s was in 42 degrees 30', the Territory had to extend to 43 degrees north.

[Sidenote: "Globe," Feb. 8, 1858, p. 543.]

[Sidenote: Ibid., Feb. 10, 1853, p. 565.]

The incident, however, of special historical significance had occurred in the debate of the 8th, when a member rose and said: "I wish to inquire of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Giddings], who, I believe, is a member of the Committee on Territories, why the Ordinance of 1787 is not incorporated in this bill? I should like to know whether he or the committee were intimidated on account of the platforms of 1852?" To which Mr. Giddings replied that the south line of the territory was 36 degrees 30', and was already covered by the Missouri Compromise prohibition. "This law stands perpetually, and I do not think that this act would receive any increased validity by a reenactment. There I leave the matter. It is very clear that the territory included in this treaty [ceding Louisiana] must be forever free unless the law be repealed." With this explicit understanding from a member of the committee, apparently accepted as conclusive by the whole House, and certainly not objected to by the chairman, Mr. Richardson, who was carefully watching the current of debate, the bill pa.s.sed on the 10th, ninety-eight yeas to forty-three nays. Led by a few members from that region, in the main the West voted for it and the South against it; while the greater number, absorbed in other schemes, were wholly indifferent, and probably cast their votes upon personal solicitation.

On the following day the bill was hurried over to the Senate, referred to Mr. Douglas's committee, and by him reported back without amendment, on February 17th; but the session was almost ended before he was able to gain the attention of the Senate for its discussion. Finally, on the night before the inauguration of President Pierce, in the midst of a fierce and protracted struggle over the appropriation bills, while the Senate was without a quorum and impatiently awaiting the reports of a number of conference committees, Douglas seized the opportunity of the lull to call up his Nebraska bill. Here again, as in the House, Texas stubbornly opposed it. Houston undertook to talk it to death in a long speech; Bell protested against robbing the Indians of their guaranteed rights. The bill seemed to have no friend but its author when, perhaps to his surprise, Senator D. R. Atchison, of Missouri, threw himself into the breach.