Slavery and Four Years of War Part 13

"Coming as I do from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate, and well matured determination that no power, no earthly power, shall compel me to vote for the positive introduction of slavery, either south or north of that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly, too, our British ancestors for the introduction of this inst.i.tution upon the continent of America, I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California and New Mexico shall reproach us for doing just what we reproach Great Britain for doing for us."

The Wilmot Proviso made its appearance for the last time when Seward offered it as an amendment. It failed in the Senate by a vote of 23 to 33.

Finally, when the bill for the admission of California was ready for a vote, Turney of Tennessee moved to limit the southern boundary of the State to 36 30', so as to allow slavery in all territory south of that line. This failed, 24 to 32, the South voting almost unitedly for the amendment.

Mr. Benton was a prominent exception. To him the friends of freedom owed much for support, by speech and vote. While he opposed Clay's plan, he voted with the free State party on all questions of slavery, save on the Wilmot Proviso, which he deemed unnecessary to the exclusion of slavery from territory where the laws of Mexico, still in force, excluded it.

The California bill pa.s.sed, August 13th, 34 to 18. Clay is not recorded as voting. He may have been absent or paired. Webster had become Secretary of State, and Winthrop succeeded him in the Senate. To emphasize the opposition, ten Senators immediately had read at the Secretary's desk a protest, with a view to its being spread on the Journal. This was refused, after a most spirited debate, as being against precedent.(77) The protest was a long complaint against making the Territory of California a State without its being first organized, territorially, and an opportunity given to the South to make it a slave State, and for admitting it as a free State, thus destroying the equilibrium of the States; the protestors declaring that if such course were persisted in, it would lead to a dissolution of the Union. A bill establishing New Mexico with its present boundaries, also Utah, was pa.s.sed in August, leaving both to become States with or without slavery. A fugitive- slave act was likewise pa.s.sed at the same time in the Senate. The whole of the bills covered by the compromise having in some form pa.s.sed the Senate, went to the House, where, after some animated discussion, they all pa.s.sed, in September following, and were approved by President Fillmore.

It remains to speak briefly of the Fugitive-Slave Act. It was odious to the North in the extreme. United States Commissioners were provided for to act instead of state magistrates, on whom jurisdiction was attempted to be conferred by the Act of 1793.

_Ex-parte_ testimony was made sufficient to determine the ident.i.ty of the negro claimed, and the affidavit of an agent or attorney was made sufficient. The alleged fugitive was not permitted, under any circ.u.mstances, to testify. He was denied the right to trial by jury. The cases were to be heard in a summary manner. The claimant was authorized to use all necessary force to remove the fugitive adjudged a slave. All process of any court or judge was forbidden to molest the claimant, his agent or attorney, in carrying away the adjudged slave. United States marshals and their deputies were authorized to summon bystanders as a _posse comitatus_; and all good citizens were commanded, by the act, to aid and a.s.sist in the prompt and efficient execution of the law; all under heavy penalty for failing to do so. The officers were liable, in a civil suit, for the value of the negro if he escaped. Heavy fine or imprisonment was to be imposed for hindering or preventing the arrest, or for rescuing or attempting to rescue, or for harboring or concealing the fugitive, and, if any person was found guilty of causing his escape, a further fine of $1000 by way of civil damages to the owner. In case the commissioner adjudged the negro was the claimant's slave, his fee was fixed at $10, and if he discharged the negro, it was only $5. The claimant had a right, in case of apprehended danger, to require the officer arresting the fugitive to remove him to the State from whence he fled, with authority to employ as many persons to aid him as he might deem necessary, the expense to be paid out of the United States Treasury. This act became a law September 18, 1850. The law contained so many odious provisions against all principles of natural justice and judicial precedents that it could not be executed in many places in the North. The consciences of civilized men revolted against it, and the Abolitionists did not fail to magnify its injustice; on the other hand, the pro-slavery agitators saw in its imperfect execution new and additional grounds for complaint against the North.

What, then, was intended to be a settlement of the slavery agitation proved to be really a most violent reopening of it.

Webster, like Clay, did not survive to witness the next great discussion in Congress on the slavery question, which resulted in overturning much that was supposed to have been settled; nor did they live to hear thundered from the supreme judicial tribunal of the Union the appalling doctrines of the Dred Scott decision.

Webster died October 24, 1852. Benton lived to condemn the great tribunal for this decision in most vehement terms. He died April 10, 1858. But few of the leading partic.i.p.ants of the 1850 debates lived to witness the final overthrow of slavery. Lewis Ca.s.s, however, who, though a Democrat, generally followed and supported Clay in his plan of compromise, not only lived to witness the birth of the new doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty" (and to support it), but to hear that slavery was, according to our Supreme Court, almost national; then to see disunion in the _live tree;_ then war; then slaves proclaimed free as a war measure; then disunion overthrown on the battle-field; then restoration of a more perfect Union, wherein slavery and involuntary servitude was forbidden by the Const.i.tution.(78)

In the succeeding Presidential election (1852) the two great parties endorsed the late action of Congress in relation to the Territories and slavery.

The Whig platform declared the acquiescence of the party in all its acts: "The act known as the Fugitive Slave Law included... .

as a settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous and exciting questions which they embrace... . We will maintain them and insist on their strict enforcement."

On this platform General Winfield Scott was nominated for the Presidency.

The Democratic platform of the same year, having first denied that Congress had power under the Const.i.tution to interfere with slavery in the States, declared also that the party would "abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the Compromise measures settled by the last Congress,--the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor included."

Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, a subordinate officer (Brigadier- General) under Scott in Mexico, of no special renown, but a polite and respectable gentleman, was nominated and elected on this platform by a decided vote; Scott carrying only Ma.s.sachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The "Free-Soil" party nominated John P.

Hale of New Hampshire on a platform repudiating the Compromise measures, declaring against the aggressions of the slave power and for:

"No more slave States, no slave territory, no nationalized slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of slaves. That slavery is a sin against G.o.d, and a crime against man, which no human enactment or usage can make right; and that Christianity, humanity, and patriotism alike demand its abolition.

"That the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is repugnant to the Const.i.tution, to the principles of the common law," etc.

The Whig party, with this election, disappeared; its great leaders were dead, and it could not vie with the Democratic party in pro- slavery principles. There was no longer room for two such parties.

The American people were already divided and dividing on the living issue of freedom or slavery. Slavery, like all wrong, was ever aggressive, and demanded new const.i.tutional expositions in its interest by Congress and the courts, and it tolerated no more temporizing or compromises. Its advocates tried for a time to unite in the Democratic party.

(66) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., pp. 733-6.

(67) Jackson died June 8, 1845, past seventy-eight years of age.

(68) _Thirty Years' View_, ii., p. 782.

(69) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., p. 747.

(70) His remains were entombed in St. Philip's churchyard, Charleston, S. C. In 1865, on that city's occupancy by the Union forces, friends seized and secreted them from fancied desecration by the conquerors.--Draper's _Civil War in Am._, vol. i., p. 565.

(71) Born April 12, 1777, died June 29, 1852.

(72) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., p. 764.

(73) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., p. 759.

(74) _Ibid_., p. 765.

(75) _Hist. of the U. S._ (Rhodes), vol. i., pp. 134 (190).

(76) _Hist. Pac. States_, H. H. Bancroft, vol. xviii., p. 262.

(77) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., p. 770.

(78) Ca.s.s died March 17, 1866, eighty-two years of age.

XVII NEBRASKA ACT--1854

Over the disposition of the Territory of Nebraska it remained to have the last Congressional struggle for the extension of slavery.

This Territory in 1854 comprised what are now the States of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. It was a large part of the Louisiana Purchase, in area 485,000 square miles, twelve times as large as Ohio, about ten times the size of New York, 140,000 square miles larger than the original thirteen States,(79) and more than four times the area of Great Britain and Ireland. It was what was left of the purchase after Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Indian Territory were carved out. It then had only about one thousand white inhabitants.

The desire to still placate the threatening South and to win its political favor, led some great and patriotic men of the North to attempt measures in the interest of slavery.

On January 4, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, made a report embodying const.i.tutional theories not hitherto promulgated, and questioning or repudiating others long supposed to have been settled.

The report announced the discovery of a new principle of the Compromise measures of 1850.

It declared:

"They were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring effect than the mere adjustment of difficulties arising out of the recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to establish certain great principles, which would not only furnish adequate remedies for existing evils, but in all time to come avoid the perils of similar agitation by withdrawing the question of _slavery_ from the halls of Congress and the political arena, committing it to the arbitration of those who are immediately interested in and alone responsible for its consequences... . A question has arisen in regard to the right to hold slaves in the Territory of Nebraska... . It is a disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country by _valid_ enactment. In the opinion of eminent statesmen... . the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void."

The eighth section prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of 36 30', hence from the Nebraska Territory. The report reiterated the absurd doctrine:

"That the Const.i.tution... . secures to every citizen an inalienable right to move into any of the Territories with his property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanction of law."

(What law? The law of the place whence it came, or the law of the place to which it was taken? Not even an ox or an a.s.s can be held as property save under the law of the place where it is; nor is the t.i.tle to the soil valid except under the law of the place where it is located. As well as might a person claim the right to move to a Territory and there own the land by virtue of the Const.i.tution and the laws of the State of his former residence as to claim under them the right to own and sell his slave in a Territory. The difficulty is, while the emigrant might take with him his human chattel, he could not take with him the law permitting him to hold it.)

The report did not, however, as presented, propose to repeal the Missouri Compromise line that had stood thirty-four years with the approval of the first statesmen of all parties in the Union.

It a.s.sumed simply to interpret for the dead Clay and Webster their only four-year-old work, and ran thus:

"The Compromise Measures of 1850 affirm and rest upon the following propositions:

"First--That all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein.

"Second--That 'all cases involving the t.i.tle to slaves' and 'questions of personal freedom' are to be referred to the jurisdiction of the local tribunals, with the right to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

"Third--That the provisions of the Const.i.tution, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into faithful execution in all 'the organized Territories,' the same as in the States."

The first of these propositions, in another form, announced the new doctrine of popular sovereignty, soon thereafter popularly called "Squatter Sovereignty," in derision of the rights thus to be vested in the territorial _squatter_, however temporary his stay might be. It was opposed to the principle of Congressional right (expressly granted by the Const.i.tution (80)) to provide rules (laws) and regulations for United States territory until it became clothed with statehood.