Liberty In The Nineteenth Century Part 4

One flourish of a pen, And fetters shall be riveted on millions more of men.

One drop of ink to sign a name, and Slavery shall find For all her surplus flesh and blood a market to her mind.

Awake New England! While you sleep, the foe advance their lines, Already on your stronghold's wall their b.l.o.o.d.y banner shines.

Awake and hurl them back again in terror and despair!

The time has come for earnest deeds: we 've not a man to spare."

If the Whigs had nominated Webster that May, on a platform opposing both annexation and disunion, they would have gained more votes at the North than they would have lost at the South. They might possibly have carried that election; and their strength in the Border States would have enabled them, sooner or later, to check the extension of slavery without bringing on civil war. Their platform was silent about Texas, as well as about the Union; their chief candidate, Clay, had already made compromises in the interest of the South in 1820 and 1833; he did so again in 1850; and he admitted, soon after the convention, that he "should be glad to see" Texas annexed, if it could be done without war.

This failure of the Whigs to oppose the extension of slavery, together with their having made the tariff highly protective in 1842, cost them so many votes in New York and Michigan that they lost the election.

Negligence and dissension at the North had enabled the South to set aside Van Buren in favour of Polk at the Democratic convention. The party was pledged to annex Texas; and Northern members were appeased by a crafty promise that all which was worth having in British America, west of the Rocky Mountains, should be acquired also. The declaration in the platform of 1840, that the government ought not "to foster one branch of industry to the detriment of others," was repeated in 1844, as often afterwards, but it was so cunningly explained away in Pennsylvania that this State voted for the President who signed the low-tariff bill of 1846.

The election of 1844 strengthened the influence of the South. Texas was soon annexed by the same Congress which had refused to do so previously, and was admitted like Florida, as a slave State, in spite of remonstrances made by the legislatures of Ma.s.sachusetts and Vermont, as well as by two-thirds of the Unitarian ministers.

In March, 1846, Polk's army invaded Mexico; her soldiers resisted; the Democrats in Congress voted that she had begun the war, which lasted for the next eighteen months; and the Whigs a.s.sented reluctantly. Most of the volunteers were Southerners, and there was much opposition at the North to warfare for the extension of slavery. The indignation was increased by the publication of Whittier's pathetic poem, _The Angels of Buena Vista_, as well as of that series of powerful satires, Lowell's _Biglow Papers_, The greatest achievement of literary genius thus far in America was the creation of _Birdofre-dom Sawin_; and no book except Mrs. Stowe's famous novel did so much for emanc.i.p.ation.

A foremost place among abolitionists was taken by Parker in 1845, when he began to preach in Boston. His first sermon against the war with Mexico was delivered the same month as the publication of the first of the _Biglow Papers_, June, 1846.

Early in 1847 he spoke with such severity, at an indignation meeting in Faneuil Hall, that his life was threatened by drunken volunteers. Other preachers that year in Ma.s.sachusetts followed his example so generally as to win praise from the Garrisonians, as well as from the most patriotic abolitionists; and great effect was produced by his _Letter to the People_, which showed, early in 1848, that slavery was ruining the prosperity, as well as the morals, of the South. More about his work may be found in Chapter V. There we shall see how active the Transcendentalists were in carrying on the revolt begun by Channing. The most important victory for liberty recorded in this chapter was that of 1844 over the protectionists. The defeat of the Garrisonians was due largely to their mistakes; and there was urgent need of a new anti-slavery movement on broader ground.

CHAPTER IV. EMANc.i.p.aTION

THE revolutionary movements of 1848 did much to encourage love of liberty in America, where the anti-slavery agitation was now becoming prominent in politics. The indignation against the Mexican war increased as it was found that nothing would be done to keep the promise of 1844, that Great Britain should be excluded from the Pacific. The purpose of the South, to enlarge the area of slavery but not that of freedom, was so plain that the northern Democrats proposed the Wilmot Proviso, by which slavery would have been forbidden in all territory acquired from Mexico; and they actually carried it through the House of Representatives, with the help of the Whigs, in 1846. Similar action was taken by the legislatures of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and seven other States. The Senate was so unwilling to have slavery prohibited anywhere as to oppose, merely on this account, a bill for giving a territorial government to Oregon.

I. Many of the New York delegates to the national Democratic convention in 1848 came pledged to "uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery," and were so badly treated that they withdrew. Ca.s.s was nominated as a friend to the South; the Mexican war was declared "just and necessary"; and abolitionism was denounced, as it had been in 1840 and 1844. Van Buren was nominated soon after by the anti-slavery Democrats. A similar movement had already been made by Sumner, Wilson, and other men who were known as "conscience Whigs," and who had some support from Clay and Webster. Both these candidates for the presidency were set aside in favour of a slave-holder, who had been very successful in conquering Mexico, but never cast a vote. In fact, General Taylor had taken so little interest in politics, that he was supported in the North as a friend, and in the South as an enemy, to the Wilmot Proviso. No opinion on this or any other question could be extorted from the majority; Wilson declared in the convention that he should do all he could to defeat its nominee; the conscience Whigs made an alliance with the Van Buren Democrats; and the new movement was joined by the "Liberty men," whose vote of sixty thousand had decided the election of 1844.

Thus was formed the Free Soil party, whose fundamental idea, like that afterwards held by the Republicans, was preservation of the Union by checking the extension of slavery.

Dougla.s.s and other Garrisonists were present at the Free Soil convention, where he was invited to speak. The new party pledged itself to "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labour, and Free Men." The national Government was to relieve itself of "all responsibility for slavery,"

and begin by prohibiting its extension. There should be "no more slave States," "no more slave territory," and "no more compromises with slavery." The convention also demanded that Oregon should be organised as a territory with free labour only; and this was granted at once by President Polk and both Houses of Congress. Most of the members of the convention were Transcendental enough to think that wisdom must be spontaneous; and their scorn of political machinery left it to be used for making Van Buren the candidate. Lowell, who was then at his height of productiveness, complained that,

"He aint half anti-slav'ry 'nough";

but Whittier exclaimed, that September:

"Now joy and thanks forever more!

The dreary night has well-nigh pa.s.sed: The slumbers of the North are o'er: The giant stands erect at last!"

The anti-slavery vote was nearly five times as large as in 1844. Ca.s.s would have been elected if the Free Soilers had supported him in New York. Their hostility gave that State, as well as Vermont and Ma.s.sachusetts, to Taylor, who thus became President. He also carried Georgia and seven other Southern States; but the West was solidly Democratic. It was not an anti-slavery victory, but a pro-slavery defeat.

II. The first question before the new President and Congress was about California. The discovery of gold, before the country was ceded by Mexico, had brought in crowds of settlers, but scarcely any slaves.

Unwillingness to have another free State prevented Polk and his Senate from allowing California to have any better government than a military one; and this was deprived of all authority by the desertion of the soldiers to the diggings. The settlers knew the value of a free government, and made one independently. The const.i.tution which they completed in October, 1848, was so anti-slavery that it was not sanctioned for nearly two years by Congress. Meantime there was no legal authority in California to levy taxes, or organise fire departments, or arrest criminals. Robberies and conflagrations were numerous; the mushroom cities were not graded, paved, or lighted; the uncertainty of t.i.tles to land caused fights in which lives were lost; and criminals became so desperate that several were lynched by a Vigilance Committee.

The duty of admitting California as a free State was urged upon the new Congress in December, 1849, by Taylor, who promised to make an unexpectedly good President. This plan had become so popular at the North that it was recommended by the Democratic State conventions of Ma.s.sachusetts and Wisconsin, as well as by the legislature of every Northern State, except Iowa. The House of Representatives could easily have been carried; for the Whigs and Free Soilers const.i.tuted a majority, and would have had some help from Northern Democrats. The Senate would probably not have consented until after another appeal to the people; but this might have been made with success at the elections of 1850.

Taylor had carried Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware. The last two States had permitted some Free Soil votes to be cast; this was also the case in Virginia; and anti-slavery meetings had been held publicly in St. Louis.

The pro-slavery defeat in 1848 encouraged Southerners who knew the advantage of free labour to agitate for emanc.i.p.ation. The convention held for this purpose in Kentucky, in 1849, was attended by delegates from twenty-four counties; and its declaration that slavery was "injurious to the prosperity of the Commonwealth," was endorsed by Southern newspapers. Clay himself proposed a plan of gradual emanc.i.p.ation; and such a measure was called for, according to the _Richmond Southerner_ (quoted in Hoist's _Const.i.tutional History_, vol.

iii., p. 433), by "two-thirds of the people of Virginia." Admissions that "Kentucky must be free," that "Delaware and Maryland are now in a transition, preparatory to becoming free States," and that "Emanc.i.p.ation is inevitable in all the farming States, where free labour can be advantageously used," were published in 1853, at New Orleans, in De Bow's _Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States_ (vols.

i., p. 407; ii., p. 310; Hi., p. 60). A book which was written soon after by a North Carolinian named Helper, and denounced violently in Congress, shows how much those Southerners who did not hold slaves would have gained by emanc.i.p.ation; and what was so plainly for the interest of the majority of the voters would have been established by them, sooner or later, if it had not been for the breaking out of civil war.

How much danger there was, even in 1849, to slave-holders is shown by their threats to secede. They wished to increase the hostility between North and South in order to check the spread southwards of Northern views. It was in this spirit that Senators and Representatives from the cotton States demanded a more efficient law for returning fugitives.

Most of the thirty thousand then at the North had come from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri; and these States were invited to act with their southern neighbours against abolitionism.

There were very few secessionists at this time, except in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. President Taylor was so popular at the South, and so avowedly ready to take command himself against rebels, that no army could have been raised to resist him. Webster declared, in February, 1850, that there was no danger of secession; and the same opinion was held by Benton of Missouri, Seward, and other Senators.

There was not enough alarm at the North to affect the stock-market. All that the Whigs needed to do for the Union was to sustain it with all the strength which they could use for that purpose at the South. If they had also insisted that California should be admitted unconditionally, they would soon have had support enough from Northern Democrats in Congress.

The demand for a national party of freedom was urgent. The Free Soilers were too sectional; but the Whigs had so much influence at the South that they could have checked the extension of slavery without bloodshed; and this would have ensured the progress of emanc.i.p.ation.

III. All this might have been done if Clay's hatred of the abolitionists, who had refused to make him President, had not made him try to cripple them by another compromise. He proposed that California should be admitted at once and without slavery; that it should be left to the settlers in Utah and New Mexico to decide whether these territories should ultimately become free or slave States; that Texas should receive a large sum of money, as well as a great tract of land which she had threatened to take from New Mexico by force; and, worst of all, that a new fugitive-slave bill should be pa.s.sed. The law then on the statute books left the question whether the defendant should be enslaved to be decided by a magistrate elected by the people or appointed by the governor; and the court was so apt to be restricted by local legislation or public opinion, that recovery of fugitives was practically impossible in New England. The new law retained the worst provision of the old one; namely, that no jury could be asked to decide whether the defendant had ever been a slave. The princ.i.p.al change was that the judge was to come into such close relations with the national administration as to be independent of the people of the State.

In short, fugitive slaves were to be punished, and disloyal Texans rewarded, in order that California might get her rights.

This plan was approved by Webster, who hoped that the grateful South would make him President, and then help him restore those protective duties which had been removed in 1846. Other Northerners called the compromise one-sided; and so did men from those cotton States which were to gain scarcely anything. President Taylor would yield nothing to threats of rebellion. It was not until after his death that Clay's proposals could be carried through Congress; and it was necessary to present them one by one. The bill by which California was admitted, in September, 1850, was sandwiched in between those about Texas and the fugitives. The latter were put under a law by which their friends were liable to be fined or imprisoned; but the new Fugitive Slave Act had only three votes from the northern Whigs in the House of Representatives; and there were only four Senators who actually consented to all Clay's propositions.

The compromise seemed at first to have silenced both secessionists and abolitionists. The latter were a.s.sailed by worse mobs in Boston and New York than had been the case in these cities for many years. The rioters were sustained by public opinion; enthusiastic Union meetings were held in the large cities; and Webster's course was praised by leading ministers of all denominations, even the Unitarian. Abolitionism had apparently been reduced to such a position that it could lead to nothing but civil war. Parker complained, in May, 1850, that the clergy were deserting the cause. Phillips spoke at this time as if there were no anti-slavery ministers left. I once heard friendly hearers interrupt him by shouting out names like Parker's and Beecher's. He smiled, and began counting up name after name on the fingers of his left hand; but he soon tossed it up, and said with a laugh, "I have not got one hand full yet."

Webster's friends boasted that Satan was trodden underfoot; but the compromise was taken as an admission by the Whigs that their party had cared too little about slavery. Many of its adherents went over, sooner or later, to the Democratic party, which had at least the merit of consistency. About half of the Free Soilers deserted what seemed to be a lost cause; but few if any went back to help the Whigs. The latter did not elect even three-fourths as many members of Congress in November, 1850, as they did in 1848; and they fared still worse in 1852.

Democratic aid enabled the Free Soilers in 1851 to send Sumner to represent them in the Senate, in company with Hale and Chase. Seward had already been sent there by the anti-slavery Whigs, and had met Webster's plea for the const.i.tutionality of the new Fugitive Slave Law by declaring that "There is a higher law than the Const.i.tution."

Sumner maintained in Washington, as he had done in Boston, that the Const.i.tution as well as the moral law forbade helping kidnappers. He was never a disunionist; but he insisted that "Unjust laws are not binding"; and he was supported by the mighty influence of Emerson.

The effects of Transcendentalism will be so fully considered in the next chapter but one, that I need speak here merely of what it did to encourage resistance to the new law which made philanthropy a crime.

The penalties on charity to fugitives were so severe as to call out much indignation from the rural clergy at the North. In November, 1850, the Methodist ministers of New York City agreed to demand the repeal of the law; and Parker wrote to Fillmore, who had been made President by Taylor's death, that among eighty Protestant pastors in Boston there were not five who would refuse hospitality to a slave. The first hunters of men who came there met such a resistance that they did not try to capture the fugitives. A negro who was arrested was taken by coloured friends from the court-house; and a second rescue was prevented only by filling the building with armed hirelings, surrounding it with heavy chains under which the judges were obliged to stoop, and finally calling out the militia to guard the victim through the streets of Boston. A slaveholder who was supposed to be trying to drag his own son back to bondage, was shot dead by coloured men in Pennsylvania. Other fugitives were rescued in Milwaukee and Syracuse. The new law lost much of its power in twelve months of such conflicts; and it was reduced almost to a dead letter by Personal Liberty bills, which were enacted in nearly every Northern State. The compromise was not making the North and South friends, but enemies.

The hostility was increased by the publication of the most influential book of the century. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had attracted much attention as a serial; and three thousand copies were sold on the day it appeared in book form, March 20, 1852. There was a sale that year of two hundred thousand copies, which were equally welcome in parlour, nursery, and kitchen. Dramatic versions had a great run; and one actress played "Little Eva" at more than three hundred consecutive performances. Some of the most effective scenes were intended to excite sympathy with fugitive slaves.

The total number of votes for all parties did not increase one-third as fast between 1848 and 1852 as between 1852 and 1856, when many of "Uncle Tom's" admirers went to the polls for the first time. The Whigs were so much ashamed of their party, that they permitted every State, except Ma.s.sachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee to be carried by the Democrats. The latter had the advantage, not only of unity and consistency as regards slavery, but of having made their low tariff so much of a success that there was another reduction in 1857. The two parties had been made nearly equal in Congress by the election of 1848; but the proportion was changed four years later, to two to one, and the beaten party soon went to pieces.

The Free Soil candidates and platform were singularly good in 1852; yet the vote was but little more than one-half as large as in 1848. There was no election between 1835 and 1865 when anti-slavery votes seemed so little likely to do any immediate good. The compromise looked like an irreparable error; and many reformers thought they could do nothing better than vote with the Democrats for free trade.

IV. The victors in 1852 might have had many years of supremacy, if they had kept true to the Jeffersonian principle of State rights. They were consistent in holding that the position of coloured people in each State ought to be determined by the local majority. The rights of Northerners had been invaded by the new law, which forbade hospitality to fugitives and demanded partic.i.p.ation in kidnapping; but this wrong might have been endured if the South had not denied the right of Kansas to become a free State. This was guaranteed by the compromise of 1820, which had been kept by the North. Early in 1854, Senator Douglas of Illinois proposed that the compact should be repudiated, and that it should be left for future settlers to decide whether there should be freedom or slavery in a region ten times as large as Ma.s.sachusetts, with a fertile soil and a climate warm enough for negro labour.

There was such prompt and intense indignation throughout the North at this breach of faith, that Douglas said he could find his way from Chicago to Boston by the light of the bonfires in which he was burned in effigy. The difference of opinion between city and country clergy ceased at once. An Episcopalian bishop headed the remonstrance which was signed by nearly every minister in New York City. Two other bishops signed the New England protest in company with the presidents of Yale, Brown, Williams, and Amherst, with the leaders of every Protestant sect, and with so many other clergymen that the sum total rose above three thousand, which was four-fifths of the whole number. Five hundred ministers in the North-west signed a remonstrance which Douglas was obliged to present; and so many such memorials came in from all the free States, as to show that there was very little pro-slavery feeling left among the clergy, except in the black belt north of the Ohio.

One-half of the Northern Democrats in the House of Representatives refused to follow Douglas. Leading men from all parties united to form the new one, which took the name of Republican on July 6, 1854, and gained control of the next House of Representatives. It was all the more popular because it began "on the sole basis of the non-extension of slavery." Victory over the South could be gained only by uniting the North; but Garrison still kept on saying, "If we would see the slave-power overthrown, the Union must be dissolved." On July 4, 1854, two days before the Republican party adopted its name, he burned the Const.i.tution of the United States amid several thousand spectators. Then it was that Th.o.r.eau publicly denied his allegiance to Ma.s.sachusetts, which was already doing its best to save Kansas.

Emigrants from New England were sent into that territory so rapidly that the Douglas plan seemed likely to hasten the time when it would be a free State. The South had insisted on the rights of the settlers; but they were outvoted, in November, 1854, and afterwards, by bands of armed Missourians, who marched off when they had carried the election. The Free State men were then supplied with rifles; and an anti-slavery const.i.tution was adopted by the majority of actual residents.

The minority were supported by the President, as well as by the "border-ruffians"; two rival governments were set up; and civil war began early in 1855. Lawrence, the princ.i.p.al town in Kansas, was sacked by command of the United States Marshal, the most important buildings burned, and much private property stolen. Five settlers, whose threats of violence had offended John Brown, were slain in cold blood by him and his men, in retaliation for the Lawrence outrage, in May, 1856. Anarchy continued; but the new State was not admitted until 1861.

Prominent among the Northerners who insisted on the right of Kansas to govern herself, was Sumner. His speech in the Senate in May, 1856, was so powerful that half a million copies were printed as campaign literature, and Whittier said, "It has saved the country." The orator had attacked some of his colleagues with needless severity; and on the day after the sack of Lawrence, he was a.s.saulted by a Representative from South Carolina in the Senate Chamber with such ferocity that he could not return to his seat before 1860. This cruel outrage against freedom of speech was universally applauded throughout the South.

There was indignation enough at the North in 1856 to have given the election to the Republicans, if the field had been clear; but Protestant bigotry enabled the South to choose the President who failed to oppose rebellion. The Catholics had objected as early as 1840 to the Protestantism which was taught, in part at their expense, to their children in the public schools. Some ways in which this was done then have since been abandoned; but the princ.i.p.al controversy has been about using a book which is universally acknowledged to be a bulwark of Protestantism. There would not be so much zeal at present for having it read daily in the schools, if it has no religious influence; and our Catholic citizens have a right to prefer that their children should be taught religion in ways not forbidden by their Church. Pupils have not had much moral or even religious benefit from school-books against which their conscience rebelled, however unreasonably.

The Catholic position in 1841, according to Bishop Hughes, afterwards Archbishop, was this: "We do not ask money from the school fund;--all our desire is that it should be administered in such a way as to promote the education of all" and "leave the various denominations each in the full possession of its religious rights over the minds of its own children. If the children are to be educated promiscuously, as at present, let religion in every shape and form be excluded."

The Catholics soon changed their ground, and demanded that their parochial schools should be supported by public money. This called out the opposition of a secret society, which insisted on keeping the Bible in the schools and excluding Catholics from office. The Know Nothings had the aid of so many Whigs in 1854 as to elect a large number of candidates, most of whom were friendly to the Republicans. The leaders wished to remain neutral between North and South; but it is hard to say whether the pledge of loyalty to the Union did not facilitate the capture of the organisation by the insatiable South early in 1856.

Beecher had already declared that the Know Nothing lodges were "catacombs of freedom" in which indignation against slavery was stifled.