Abraham Lincoln: a History Volume Ii Part 6

[Sidenote] 19 Howard, pp. 460-1.

A single phase of the controversy will serve to ill.u.s.trate the general drift of the discussion throughout the Union. Some three months after the delivery of the opinion of the court, Senator Douglas found himself again among his const.i.tuents in Illinois, and although there was no political campaign in progress, current events and the roused state of public feeling seemed to require that he should define his views in a public speech. It marks his acuteness as a politician that he already realized what a fatal stab the Dred Scott decision had given his vaunted principle of "Popular Sovereignty," with which he justified his famous repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He had ever since argued that Congressional prohibition of slavery was obsolete and useless, and that the choice of slavery or freedom ought to be confided to the local Territorial laws, just as it was confided to local State const.i.tutions. But the Dred Scott decision announced that slaves were property which Congress could not exclude from the Territories, adding also the inevitable conclusion that what Congress could not do a Territorial Legislature could not.

Difficult as this made his task of reconciling his favorite theory with the Dred Scott decision, such was his political boldness, and such had been his skill and success in sophistry, that he undertook even this hopeless effort. Douglas, therefore, made a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on the 12th of June, 1857, in which he broadly and fully indorsed and commended the opinion of Chief-Justice Taney and his concurring a.s.sociates, declaring that "Their judicial decisions will stand in all future time, a proud monument to their greatness, the admiration of the good and wise, and a rebuke to the partisans of faction and lawless violence. If unfortunately any considerable portion of the people of the United States shall so far forget their obligations to society as to allow the partisan leaders to array them in violent resistance to the final decision of the highest judicial tribunal on earth, it will become the duty of all the friends of order and const.i.tutional government, without reference to past political differences, to organize themselves and marshal their forces under the glorious banner of the Union, in vindication of the Const.i.tution and supremacy of the laws over the advocates of faction and the champions of violence."

Proceeding then with a statement of the case, he continued: "The material and controlling points in the case, those which have been made the subject of unmeasured abuse and denunciation, may be thus stated: 1st. The court decided that under the Const.i.tution of the United States, a negro descended from slave parents is not and cannot be a citizen of the United States. 2d. That the act of March 6, 1820, commonly called the Missouri Compromise act, was unconst.i.tutional and void before it was repealed by the Nebraska act, and consequently did not and could not have the legal effect of extinguishing a master's right to his slave in that Territory. While the right continues in full force under the guarantees of the Const.i.tution, and cannot be divested or alienated by an act of Congress, it necessarily remains a barren and a worthless right, unless sustained, protected, and enforced by appropriate police regulations and local legislation, prescribing adequate remedies for its violation. These regulations and remedies must necessarily depend entirely upon the will and wishes of the people of the Territory, as they can only be prescribed by the local legislatures. Hence the great principle of popular sovereignty and self-government is sustained and firmly established by the authority of this decision."

It is scarcely possible that Douglas convinced himself by such a glaring _non sequitur_; but he had no other alternative. It was a desperate expedient to shield himself as well as he might from the damaging recoil of his own temporizing statesmanship. The declaration made thus early is worthy of historical notice as being the substance and groundwork of the speaker's famous "Freeport doctrine," or theory of "unfriendly legislation," to which Lincoln's searching interrogatories drove him in the great Lincoln-Douglas debates of the following year.

Repeated and amplified at that time, it became in the eyes of the South the unpardonable political heresy which lost him the Presidential nomination and caused the rupture of the Democratic National Convention at Charleston in the summer of 1860. For the moment, however, the sophism doubtless satisfied his many warm partisans. He did not dwell on the dangerous point, but trusted for oratorical effect rather to his renewed appeals to the popular prejudice against the blacks, so strong in central Illinois, indorsing and emphasizing Chief-Justice Taney's a.s.sertion that negroes were not included in the words of the Declaration of Independence, and arguing that if the principle of equality were admitted and carried out to its logical results, it would necessarily lead not only to the abolition of slavery in the slave-States, but to the general amalgamation of the two races.

The Republican party of Illinois had been greatly encouraged and strengthened by its success in electing the State officers in the previous autumn; and as their recognized leader and champion, Lincoln made a reply to this speech some two weeks later, June 26, 1857, also at Springfield. Though embracing other topics, the question of the hour, the Dred Scott decision, was nevertheless its chief subject. The extracts here presented from it will give the reader some idea of its power of statement and eloquence:

And now [said Mr. Lincoln] as to the Dred Scott decision. That decision declares two propositions--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United States courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the Territories. It was made by a divided court--dividing differently on the different points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of the decision, and in that respect I shall follow his example, believing I could no more improve on McLean and Curtis, than he could on Taney. He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision, as offering violent resistance to it. But who resists it? Who has, in spite of the decision, declared Dred Scott free, and resisted the authority of his master over him? Judicial decisions have two uses--first, to absolutely determine the case decided, and, secondly, to indicate to the public how other similar cases will be decided when they arise. For the latter use they are called "precedents" and "authorities." We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience to and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on const.i.tutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Const.i.tution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to it. Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents according to circ.u.mstances. That this should be so, accords both with common sense and the customary understanding of the legal profession. If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation, and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part based on a.s.sumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factions, it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country.

Rising above all questions of technical construction to the broad and universal aspects of the issue, Mr. Lincoln continued:

The Chief-Justice does not directly a.s.sert, but plainly a.s.sumes as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This a.s.sumption is a mistake. In some trifling particulars the condition of that race has been ameliorated; but as a whole, in this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the other way; and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two of the five States--New Jersey and North Carolina--that then gave the free negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away; and in a third--New York--it has been greatly abridged; while it has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional State, though the number of the States has more than doubled. In those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emanc.i.p.ate their slaves; but since then such legal restraints have been made upon emanc.i.p.ation as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days, legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State const.i.tutions to withhold that power from the legislatures. In those days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to the new countries was prohibited; but now Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would. In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is a.s.sailed, and sneered at, and construed and hawked at, and torn, till if its framers could rise from their graves they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house, they have searched his person and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can he produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is....

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people at the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope upon the chances of his being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can by much drumming and repeating fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in, from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes _all_ men, black as well as white, and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes. He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands, without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal and the equal of all others.

Chief-Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole human family; but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did not at once actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this grave argument comes to just nothing at all by the other fact that they did not at once or ever afterwards actually place all white people on an equality with one another. And this is the staple argument of both the Chief-Justice and the Senator, for doing this obvious violence to the plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men; but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created equal--equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to a.s.sert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circ.u.mstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting; the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The a.s.sertion that "all men are created equal"

was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, as, thank G.o.d, it is now proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the p.r.o.neness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

[1] The ownership of Dred Scott and his family pa.s.sed by inheritance to the family of a Ma.s.sachusetts Republican member of Congress. The following telegram, copied from the "Providence Post" into the "Washington Union," shows the action of the new owner: "St. Louis, May 26 [1857]. Dred Scott with his wife and two daughters were emanc.i.p.ated to-day by Taylor Blow, Esq. They had been conveyed to him by Mr.

Chaffee for that purpose."

CHAPTER VI

THE LECOMPTON CONSt.i.tUTION

The year 1857 brings us to a decided change in the affairs of Kansas, but with occurrences no less remarkable. Active civil war gradually ceased in the preceding autumn--a result due to the vigorous and impartial administration of Governor Geary and the arrival of the inclement winter weather.

[Sidenote] Geary to Marcy, Jan. 19, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 17, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 131.

[Sidenote] Geary, Veto Message, Feb. 18, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.

No. 17, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 167.

On the evening of the day the Legislature met (January 12, 1857), the pro-slavery party held a large political convention, in which it was confessed that they were in a hopeless minority in the Territory, and the general conclusion was reached that it was no longer worth while to attempt to form a slave-State in Kansas.[1] Many of its. .h.i.therto active leaders immediately and definitely abandoned the struggle. But the Missouri cabal, intrenched in the various territorial and county offices, held to their design, though their labors now a.s.sumed a somewhat different character. They denounced Governor Geary in their resolutions, and devised legislation to further their intrigues. By the middle of February, under their inspiration, a bill providing for a convention to frame a State const.i.tution was perfected and enacted.

The Governor immediately sent the Legislature his message, reminding them that the leading idea of the organic act was to leave the actual _bona fide_ inhabitants of the Territory "perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions in their own way," and vetoing the bill because "the Legislature has failed to make any provision to submit the const.i.tution when framed to the consideration of the people for their ratification or rejection." The Governor's argument was wasted on the predetermined legislators. They promptly pa.s.sed the act over his veto.

The cabal was in no mood to be thwarted, and under a show of outward toleration, if not respect, their deep hostility found such means of making itself felt that the Governor began to receive insult from street ruffians, and to become apprehensive for his personal safety.

In such a contest he was single-handed against the whole pro-slavery town of Lecompton. The foundation of his authority was gradually sapped; and finding himself no longer sustained at Washington, where the private appeals and denunciations of the cabal were more influential than his official reports, he wrote his resignation on the day of Buchanan's inauguration, and a week later left the Territory in secrecy as a fugitive. Thus, in less than three years, three successive Democratic executives had been resisted, disgraced, and overthrown by the political conspiracy which ruled the Territory; and Kansas had indeed become, in the phraseology of the day, "the graveyard of governors."

The Kansas imbroglio was a political scandal of such large proportions, and so clearly threatened a dangerous schism in the Democratic party, that the new President, Buchanan, and his new Cabinet, proceeded to its treatment with the utmost caution. The subject was fraught with difficulties not of easy solution. The South, to retain her political supremacy, or even her equality, needed more slave-States to furnish additional votes in the United States Senate.

To make a slave-State of Kansas, the Missouri Compromise had been repealed, and a bogus legislature elected and supported by the successive Missouri invasions and the guerrilla war of 1856. All these devices had, however, confessedly failed of their object. Northern emigration and anti-slavery sentiment were clearly in possession of Kansas, and a majority of voters stood ready upon fair occasion to place her in the column of free-States. It had become a game on the chess-board of national politics. The moving pieces stood in Missouri and Kansas, but the players sat in Washington. In reality it was a double game. There was plot and under-plot. Beneath the struggle between the free-States and the slave-States were the intrigue and deception carried on between Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats. The Kansas-Nebraska act was a double-tongued statute, and the Cincinnati platform a Ja.n.u.s-faced banner. Momentary victory was with the Southern Democrats, for they had secured the nomination and election of President Buchanan--"a Northern man with Southern principles."

[Sidenote] Walker to Ca.s.s, July 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 32.

[Sidenote] Walker to Ca.s.s, Dec. 15, 1857. Ibid., p. 122.

Determined to secure whatever prestige could be derived from high qualification and party influence, Buchanan tendered the vacant governorship of Kansas to his intimate personal and political friend, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, a man of great ability and national fame, who had been Senator and Secretary of the Treasury. Walker, realizing fully the responsibility and danger of the trust, after repeated refusals finally accepted upon two distinct conditions: first, that General Harney should be "put in special command in Kansas with a large body of troops, and especially of dragoons and a battery," and retained there subject to his military directions until the danger was over; and second, that he "should advocate the submission of the const.i.tution to the vote of the people for ratification or rejection."

[Sidenote] March 7, 1856. June 25, 1856.

This latter had now become a vital point in the political game. The recent action of the Territorial Legislature and Geary's already mentioned veto message were before the President and his Cabinet.[2]

But much more important than these moves in Kansas was the prior determination of prominent Washington players. During the Kansas civil war and the Presidential campaign of the previous year, by way of offset to the Topeka Const.i.tution, both Senator Douglas and Senator Toombs wrote and introduced in the Senate bills to enable Kansas to form a State const.i.tution. The first by design, and the second by accident, contained a clause to submit such const.i.tution, when formed, to a vote of the people. Both these bills were considered not only by the Senate Committee on Territories, of which Douglas was chairman, but also by a caucus of Democratic Senators. Said Senator Bigler: "It was held, by those most intelligent on the subject, that in view of all the difficulties surrounding that Territory, [and] the danger of any experiment at that time of a popular vote, it would be better that there should be no such provision in the Toombs bill; and it was my understanding, in all the intercourse I had, that that convention would make a const.i.tution and send it here without submitting it to the popular vote."[3]

[Sidenote] Douglas, Milwaukee Speech, October 13, 1860.

This Toombs bill was, after modification in other respects, adopted by Douglas, and duly pa.s.sed by the Senate; but the House with an opposition majority refused its a.s.sent. All these preliminaries were well known to the Buchanan Cabinet, and of course also to Douglas. It is fair to a.s.sume that under such circ.u.mstances Walker's emphatic stipulation was deliberately and thoroughly discussed. Indeed, extraordinary urging had been necessary to induce him to reconsider his early refusals. Douglas personally joined in the solicitation.

Because of the determined opposition of his own family, Walker had promised his wife that he would not go to Kansas without her consent; and President Buchanan was so anxious on the point that he personally called on Mrs. Walker and persuaded her to waive her objections.[4]

Under influences like these Walker finally accepted the appointment, and the President and Cabinet acquiesced in his conditions without reserve. He wrote his inaugural address in Washington, using the following language: "I repeat then as my clear conviction that unless the convention submit the const.i.tution to the vote of the actual resident settlers, and the election be fairly and justly conducted, the const.i.tution will be and ought to be rejected by Congress."

[Sidenote] Douglas, Milwaukee Speech, October 13, 1860.

He submitted this draft of his inaugural to President Buchanan, who read and approved the doc.u.ment and the promise. Secretary Ca.s.s wrote his official instructions in accordance with it. On Walker's journey West he stopped at Chicago and submitted his inaugural to Douglas, who also indorsed his policy. The new Governor fondly believed he had removed every obstacle to success, and every possibility of misunderstanding or disapproval by the Administration, such as had befallen his predecessors. But President Buchanan either deceived him at the beginning, or betrayed him in the end.

[Sidenote] Walker, Testimony, Covode Committee Report, p. 109.

With Governor Walker there was sent a new Territorial secretary.

Woodson, who had so often abused his powers during his repeated service as acting Governor, was promoted to a more lucrative post to create the vacancy. Frederick P. Stanton, of Tennessee, formerly a representative in Congress, a man of talent and, as the event proved, also a man of courage, was made secretary. Both Walker and Stanton being from slave-States, it may be presumed that the slavery question was considered safe in their hands. Walker, indeed, entertained sentiments more valuable to the South in this conjuncture. He believed in the balance of power; he preferred that the people of Kansas should make it a slave-State; he was "in favor of maintaining the equilibrium of the Government by giving the South a majority in the Senate, while the North would always necessarily have a majority in the House of Representatives." Both also entered on their mission with the feelings entertained by the President and Democratic party; namely, that the free-State men were a mischievous insurrectionary faction, willfully disturbing the peace and defying the laws. Gradually, however, their personal observation convinced them that this view was a profound error.

[Sidenote] Walker to Buchanan, June 28, 1857. Ibid., p. 115.

[Sidenote] Walker, Testimony. Ibid., p. 107.

[Sidenote] Walker, Inaugural, May 27, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 11.

Governor Walker arrived in the Territory late in May, and it required but short investigation to satisfy him that any idea of making Kansas a slave-State was utterly preposterous. Had everything else been propitious, climate alone seemed to render it impossible. But popular sentiment was also overwhelmingly against it; he estimated that the voters were for a free-State more than two to one. All the efforts of the pro-slavery party to form a slave-State seemed to be finally abandoned. If he could not make Kansas a slave-State, his next desire was to make her a Democratic State. "And the only plan to accomplish this was to unite the free-State Democrats with the pro-slavery party, and all those whom I regarded as conservative men, against the more violent portion of the Republicans." He, therefore, sought by fair words to induce the free-State men to take part in the election of delegates to the const.i.tutional convention. His inaugural address, quoting the President's instructions, promised that such election should be free from fraud and violence; that the delegates should be protected in their deliberations; and that if unsatisfactory, "you may by a subsequent vote defeat the ratification of the const.i.tution."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT J. WALKER.]

[Sidenote] Walker, Topeka Speech, June 6, 1857, in "Washington Union" of June 27, 1857.

This same policy was a few weeks later urged at Topeka, where a ma.s.s meeting of the free-State men was called to support and instruct another sitting of the "insurrectionary" free-State Legislature elected under the Topeka Const.i.tution. The Governor found a large a.s.semblage, and a very earnest discussion in progress, whether the "Legislature" should pursue only nominal action, such as would in substance amount to a pet.i.tion for redress of grievances, or whether they should actually organize their State government, and pa.s.s a complete code of laws. The moderate free-State men favored the former, the violent and radical the latter, course. When their ma.s.s meeting adjourned, they called on the Governor at his lodgings; he made a speech, in which he renewed the counsels and promises of his inaugural address. "The Legislature," said he, "has called a convention to a.s.semble in September next. That const.i.tution they will or they will not submit to the vote of a majority of the then actual resident settlers of Kansas. If they do not submit it, I will join you, fellow-citizens, in lawful opposition to their course. And I cannot doubt, gentlemen, that one much higher than I, the Chief Magistrate of the Union, will join you in that opposition." His invitation to them to partic.i.p.ate in the election of a convention produced no effect; they still adhered to their resolve to have nothing to do with any affirmative proceedings under the bogus laws or Territorial Legislature. But the Governor's promise of a fair vote on the const.i.tution was received with favor. "Although this ma.s.s convention,"

reports the Governor, "did not adopt fully my advice to abandon the whole Topeka movement, yet they did vote down by a large majority the resolutions prepared by the more violent of their own party in favor of a complete State organization and the adoption of a code of State laws."

[Sidenote] Walker to Ca.s.s, July 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 27.

[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 29.

[Sidenote] Walker to Ca.s.s, July 15, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 30.