Slavery and Four Years of War Part 11

Turning back to the negotiations for the first treaty with Mexico, we find, to her everlasting credit, though compelled to part with her possessions, she still desired they should continue to be free.

Slavery, as has already been shown, did not exist in Mexico by law; and California and New Mexico held no slaves, so, during the negotiations, the Mexican representatives begged for the incorporation of an article providing that slavery should be prohibited in all the territory to be ceded. N. P. Trist, the American Commissioner, promptly and fiercely resented the bare mention of the subject.

He replied that if the territory to be acquired were tenfold more valuable, and covered _a foot thick_ with pure gold, on the single condition that slavery was to be excluded therefrom, the proposition would not be for a moment entertained, nor even communicated to the President.(63)

Though the invocation was in behalf of humanity, the "invincible Anglo-Saxon race" (so cried Senator Preston in 1836) "could not listen to the prayer of superst.i.tious Catholicism, goaded on by a miserable priesthood."

Now that California and New Mexico were United States territory, how was it to be devoted to slavery to reward the friends of its acquisition?

As slavery was prohibited under Mexican law, this territory must by the law of nations remain free until slavery was, by positive enactment, authorized therein. This ancient and universal law, however, was soon to be disregarded or denied by the advocates of the doctrine that the Const.i.tution of the United States spread itself over territories, and, by force of it, legalized human slavery therein, and guaranteed to citizens of a State the right to carry their property--human slaves included--into United States territory and there hold it, by force of and protected by the Const.i.tution, in defiance of unfriendly territorial or Congressional legislation. This novel claim also sprung from the brain of Calhoun, and was met with the true view of slavery, to wit: That it was a creature solely of law; that it existed nowhere of natural right; that whenever a slave was taken from a jurisdiction where slaves could be held by law, to one where no law made him a slave, his shackles fell off and he became a free man. The soundness of the rule that a citizen of a State could carry his personal property from his State to a Territory was admitted, but it was claimed he could not hold it there if it were not such as the laws of the Territory recognized as property. In other words, he might transfer his property from a State to a Territory, but he could not take with him the law of his State authorizing him to hold it as property.

The law of the _situs_ is of universal application governing property.

It remains to briefly note the effort to extend and interpret the Const.i.tution, with the sole view to establish and perpetuate human slavery.

Near the close of the session of Congress (1848-49), Mr. Walker of Wisconsin, at the instigation of Calhoun moved, as a rider on an appropriation bill, a section providing a temporary government for such Territories, including a provision to "_extend the Const.i.tution of the United States to the Territories_." This astounding proposition was defended by Calhoun, and, with his characteristic straightforwardness, he avowed the true object of the amendment was to override the anti-slavery laws of the Territories, and plant the inst.i.tution of slavery therein, beyond the reach of Congressional or territorial law.

Mr. Webster expounded the Const.i.tution and combated the newly brought forward slave-extension doctrine, but a majority of the Senate voted for the amendment.

The House, however, voted down the rider, and between the two branches of Congress it failed. For a time appropriations of necessary supplies for the government were made to depend on the success of the measure.(64)

Thus again the newly acquired domain escaped the doom of perpetual slavery.

But we have done with the Mexican War and the acquisition of Mexican territory. It remains to be told how this vast domain was disposed of. No part of it ever became slave.

There was not time in Polk's administration to dispose of it.

General Zachary Taylor, the hero of Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and Buena Vista, became President, March 4, 1849. He was wholly without political experience and had never even voted at an election.

He was purely a professional soldier, and a Southerner by birth and training; was a patriot, possessed of great common sense, and knew nothing of intrigue, and was endowed with a high sense of justice, and believed in the rights of the majority. He belonged to no cabal to promote, extend, or perpetuate slavery, and, probably, in his conscience was opposed to it. His Southern friends could not use him, and when they demanded his aid, as President, to plant slavery in California, he not only declined to serve them, but openly declared that California should be free. In different words, but words of like import, he responded to them, as he did to General Wool, at a critical moment in the battle of Buena Vista. Wool remarked: "_General, we are whipped_." Taylor responded: "_That is for me to determine_."(65)

(57) Lt.-Col. Henry Clay, Jr., fell at Buena Vista February 23, 1847, and Maj. Edward Webster died at San Angel, Mexico, January 23, 1848.

(58) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., p. 680.

(59) _Ibid_., p. 681.

(60) Taylor became President March, 1849, succeeding Polk, and died in office July 9, 1850. Scott was nominated by his party (Whig) in 1852, and defeated; Franklin Pierce, a subordinate General of the war, was elected by his party (Democrat) President in 1852.

(61) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., pp. 688-692.

(62) _Hist. Ready Ref._, vol. i, p. 350.

(63) Trist's letter to Buchanan, Secretary of State, Von Holst, vol. iii., p. 334.

(64) Historical Ex., etc., _Dred Scott Case_, pp. 151-9. This is the first Congress where its sessions were continued after twelve o'clock midnight, of March 3d, in the odd years. _Ibid_., pp. 136-9.

(65) _Hist. of Mexican War_ (Wilc.o.x), p. 223.

XVI COMPROMISE MEASURES--1850

The slavery agitation first began in 1832 on a false tariff issue, and precipitated upon the country in 1835, on the lines of nullification and disunion, and was again revived at the close of the Mexican War, and continued violently through 1849 and 1850.

The year 1850 will be ever memorable in the history of the United States as a year wherein all the baleful seeds of disunion were sown, which grew, to ripen, a little more than ten years later, into _disunion_ in fact. Prophetically, a leading South Carolina paper in its New Year-Day edition, said:

"When the future historian shall address himself to the task of portraying the rise, progress, and decline of the American union, the year _1850_ will arrest his attention, as denoting and presenting the first marshalling and arraying of those hostile forces and opposing elements which resulted in dissolution."

At the close of Polk's administration an inflammatory address, drawn and signed by Calhoun and forty-one other members of Congress from the slave States, was issued, filled with unfounded charges against the North, professing to be a warning to the South that a purpose existed to abolish slavery and bring on a conflict between the white and black races, and to San Domingoize the South, which could only be avoided, the address states:

"By fleeing the homes of ourselves and ancestors, and by abandoning our country to our slaves, to become the permanent abode of disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness."

This manifesto did not go quite to the extent of declaring for a dissolution of the Union, but it appealed to the South to become united, saying, if the North did not yield to its demands, the South would be the a.s.sailed, and

"Would stand justified by all laws, human and divine, in repelling a blow so dangerous, without looking to consequences, and to resort to all means necessary for that purpose."(66)

The _Southern Press_ was set up in Washington to inculcate the advantages of disunion, and to inflame the South against the North.

It portrayed the advantages which would result from Southern independence; and a.s.sumed to tell how Southern cities would recover colonial superiority; how ships of all nations would crowd Southern ports and carry off the rich staples, bringing back ample returns, and how Great Britain would be the ally of the new "United States South." In brief, it a.s.serted that a Southern convention should meet and decree a separation unless the North surrendered to Southern demands for the extension of slavery, for its protection in the States, and for the certain return of fugitive slaves; it urged also that military preparation be made to maintain what the convention might decree.

A disunion convention actually met at Nashville, near the home of Jackson, but the old hero was then in his grave.(67) It a.s.sumed to represent seven States. It invited the a.s.sembling of a "Southern Congress." South Carolina and Mississippi alone responded to this call. In the Legislature of South Carolina secession and disunion speeches were delivered, and throughout the South public addresses were made, and the press advocated and threatened dissolution of the Union unless the North yielded all.(68)

All this and more to immediately effect the introduction of slavery into California and New Mexico. The South saw clearly that the free people of the Republic were resolved that there should be no more slave States, but believed that the mercantile, trading people, and small farmers of the North would not fight for their rights, and hence intimidation seemed to them to promise success.

It had its effect on many, and, unfortunately, on some of America's greatest statesmen.

By a singular coincidence the Thirty-first Congress, which met December, 1849, embraced among its members Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Ca.s.s, Corwin, Seward, Salmon P. Chase, John P. Hale, Hamlin of Maine, James M. Mason, Douglas of Illinois, Foote and Davis of Mississippi, of the Senate; and Joshua R. Giddings, Horace Mann, Wilmot of Pennsylvania, Robert C. Schenck, Robert C. Winthrop, Alexander H. Stephens, and Thaddeus Stevens, of the House.

To avert the impending storm of slavery agitation then threatening disunion, Clay, by a set of resolutions, with a view to a "_lasting compromise_," on January 29, 1850, proposed in the Senate a general plan of compromise and a committee of thirteen to report a bill or bills in accordance therewith.

His plan was:

1. The admission of California with her free Const.i.tution.

2. Territorial governments for the other territory acquired from Mexico, without any restriction as to slavery.

3. The disputed boundary between Texas and New Mexico to be determined.

4. The _bona fide_ public debt of Texas, contracted prior to annexation, to be paid from duties on foreign imports, upon condition that Texas relinquish her claim to any part of New Mexico.

5. The declaration that it was inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, without the consent of Maryland and the people of the District, and without compensation to owners of slaves.

6. The prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

7. A more effectual provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves.

8. A declaration that Congress has no power to interfere with the slave trade between States.

These resolutions and the plan embodied led to a most noteworthy discussion, chiefly partic.i.p.ated in by Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, Seward, and Foote. The debate was opened by Clay. He favored the admission of California with her already formed free State Const.i.tution, but he exclaimed:

"I shall go with the Senator from the South who goes farthest in making penal laws and imposing the heaviest sanctions for the recovery of fugitive slaves and the restoration of them by their owners."

He, however, tried to hold the olive branch to both the North and the South, and pleaded for the Union. He pathetically pleaded for mutual concessions, and deprecated, what he then apprehended, _war_ between the sections, exclaiming: