Slavery and Four Years of War Part 18

"Declared that the Const.i.tution confers on Congress sovereign power over the Territories of the United States for their government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy and Slavery."

On the other hand, the Democratic party in 1856, fresh from the contest in Congress over the Nebraska Bill and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, denied the right of Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories, and declared it

"The right of the people of all the Territories, including Kansas and Nebraska ... to form a Const.i.tution, with or without domestic slavery, and be admitted into the Union."

There were other but minor issues discussed in 1856. John C.

Fremont was nominated by the Republicans and James Buchanan by the Democrats. Douglas failed of the Presidential prize through violent antagonism from the South, especially from Jefferson Davis, Wm. L.

Yancey, Robert Toombs, and other leading pro-slavery statesmen.

They distrusted him, though he had led them to victory in 1854 in repealing the 36 30' restriction of slavery, and in throwing open, as we have seen, the Nebraska territorial empire to the influx of slaves. He was patriotic, and hence could not be depended on to take the next step towards forcing slavery into the Territories and to favor a dissolution of the Union.

Buchanan, a pliant tool, was elected by a plurality vote over Fremont and Fillmore, the candidate of the American party. Fremont carried, with good majorities, all the free States save Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.

The popular discussion of the slavery question in the campaign was thorough, memorable, exciting, educating, and, though resulting in defeat to the anti-slavery party, it marked the trend of public sentiment, and clearly foreshadowed that it would soon triumph.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 still further elucidated to the ma.s.ses of the people the issues impending, and indicated that the end of slavery extension was near.

The Dred Scott decision, announced March, 1857, had completely overthrown, so far as it could be done by judicial-political _obiter dicta_, Douglas's Popular Sovereignty theory, leaving him with only the northern end (and that not united) of his party endeavoring to uphold it.

Next came the Presidential campaign of 1860, the last in which a slave party partic.i.p.ated.

The Democratic party met in delegate convention in April, 1860, in Charleston, South Carolina, and after seven days of struggle, during which disunion threats were made by Yancey and others, the delegates from the Cotton States--South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas--seceded, for the alleged reason that a majority of the convention adopted the 1856 Democratic platform which upheld the Douglas - Popular Sovereignty doctrine as applied to the Territories.

The seceding delegates had voted for a platform declaring the right of all citizens to settle in the Territories with all their property (including slaves) "without its being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or territorial legislation," and further,

"That it is the duty of the Federal Government in all its departments to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and property in the Territories, and wherever else its const.i.tutional authority extends."

This was not only the new doctrine of the Supreme Court, but to it was superadded the further claim that the Const.i.tution _required_ Congress and all the departments of the government to protect the slaveholder with his slaves, when once in a Territory, against territorial legislation or other unfriendly acts. By this most startling doctrine the Const.i.tution was to become an instrument to _establish and protect slavery_ in all the territorial possessions of the Republic.

Douglas failed of nomination at Charleston for want of a two thirds vote of the entire convention as originally organized. The convention adjourned to meet, June 11th, at Baltimore, and the seceding branch of it also adjourned to meet at the same time at Richmond, but later it decided to meet with and again become a part of the convention at Baltimore. At this time the South had control of the Senate, and May 25, 1860, before the convention rea.s.sembled, and after a most acrimonious debate into which Douglas was drawn and in which Jefferson Davis bitterly a.s.sailed him, the resolutions of the latter were pa.s.sed, affirming the "_property_" theory, with the new doctrine of const.i.tutional protection of it in the Territories added.

The convention rea.s.sembled, and at the end of five days' wrangle and recrimination, during which the members called each other "disorganizers," "bolters," "traitors," "disunionists," "abolitionists,"

accompanied by violent threats, it disrupted again, its chairman, Caleb Cushing, of Ma.s.sachusetts, led the bolters and was followed by the delegates generally from the Southern States. They organized at once a separate convention.

Douglas was nominated by the originally organized convention, and John C. Breckinridge by the bolters, each on the sharply defined platform relating to slavery, mentioned above.

Still another political body a.s.sembled in Baltimore in 1860, to wit: "The Const.i.tutional Union Convention." It met May 9th. Its platform was intended to be comprehensive and so simple and patriotic that everybody might endorse it. It declared against recognizing any principle other than

"_The Const.i.tution of the Country, the Union of the States, and the Enforcement of the Laws._"

John Bell of Tennessee was nominated on this broad platform for President, with Edward Everett of Ma.s.sachusetts for Vice-President, both eminently respectable statesmen, but the times were not auspicious for mere generalized principles or mere respectability.

The great Wigwam - Republican Convention met at Chicago, May 16, 1860, with delegates from all the free States, the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Its platform was long, and affirmed the principles of the Declaration of Independence, p.r.o.nounced against interfering with slavery in the States, denounced the John Brown raid as "among the gravest of crimes," and, in the main, was temperate and conservative.

On the question of slavery in the Territories it was radical:

"That the new dogma that the Const.i.tution, of its own force, carries slavery in to any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself," etc.

"That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom, ... and we deny the authority of Congress, or a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory in the United States."

Lincoln of Illinois, Seward of New York, Chase of Ohio, and Cameron of Pennsylvania were the princ.i.p.al candidates for nomination, but the contest turned out to be between Lincoln and Seward, each of whom was regarded eminently qualified for the Presidency and an especial representative of his party on the slavery issue.

Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot, and Hannibal Hamlin, a st.u.r.dy New England statesman, was nominated for Vice-President.

Slavery, with its tri-cornered issues, was the sole absorbing question discussed in the campaign. In the South, the Breckinridge wing a.s.sailed the Douglas party, which combated _it_ there in turn.

In the North, the Republican party attacked furiously both the Douglas and Breckinridge wings of the Democratic party; they, in turn, fighting back and fighting each other.

The Bell and Everett party, though it claimed to be the only party of the Const.i.tution, fell into ridicule, as it really advocated no well-defined principles on any subject whatsoever. Bell and Everett, however, carried Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. Lincoln carried all the Northern States, save three of the electoral votes in New Jersey.

Of the 303 electoral votes, Lincoln had 180, Douglas 12 (Missouri 9 and New Jersey 3), Breckinridge 72, and Bell 39, thus giving Lincoln 57 over all. He was the first and only President elected on a direct slavery issue.

The slavery question, thus sharply presented, was decided at the polls by the people, and their verdict was for freedom in the Territories. No more slave States; no more dilution of slavery by spreading it (as was once advocated by Clay and others) for its amelioration.

It must live or die in States wherein it was established. Neither successful secession, state-rights, nor accomplished disunion could extend it. Like all wrong, it could not stand still; to flourish, it must be aggressive and progressive. To limit it was to strangle it. This its votaries well understood.

In the history of the world there never were more brilliant, more devoted, more earnest, more infatuated, and yet more inconsistent propagandists of the inst.i.tution of human slavery than in our Republic during the period of the agitation of nullification--state- rights--secession--disunion lines. They were of the Calhoun school.

They declaimed in halls of legislation and on the stump and rostrum for "Liberty," and hugged closely _human slavery_, often professing to believe it of _divine right_.

XXII DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION

Secession was at hand! At first it was justified under the banner of state-rights, on the theory that the Union was a voluntary compact of States which could be broken at the will of one or all.

That a Republic was only an experiment, to exist until overthrown by any member of it. That the blood of the Revolution was shed, not for the establishment of an independent nation, but for a confederacy of separate states. In the guise of nullification it appeared, as we have seen, 1832; excessive tariff duties were the pretext. In 1835 it a.s.sumed to be the champion of slavery, because on the slavery question only could the South be united. It is due to history to say, of the decade preceding 1860, patriotism was not universal even in the free States. Slavery had her votaries there. Interests of trade affected many. Prejudice against the blacks and ties of kinship affected others. Parties and affiliations and love of political power controlled the policy of influential men in all sections of the country.

The South was aggressive, and smarted under its defeats in attempts to extend its beloved inst.i.tution. The prayer of Calhoun for a united South was fast being realized, and a fatal destiny goaded on its leaders. Slavery, indeed, no longer stood on a firm foundation. Public sentiment had sapped it. It could not live and tolerate free speech, and a free press, or universal education even of the white race where it existed. All strangers sojourning in the South were under espionage; they, though innocent of any designs on slavery, were often brutally treated and driven away.

It was only the distinguished visitors who were entertained with the much boasted-of Southern hospitality. The German or other industrious foreign emigrant rarely, if ever, ventured into the South.

Its towns and cities languished. Slavery was bucolic and patriarchal.

It could not, in its most prosperous state, flourish on small plantations; nor could the many own slaves or be interested in their labor. Not exceeding two tenths of the white race South owned, at any time, or were interested in slave labor or slaves.

The eight tenths had no political or social standing. They were, in a large sense, in another form, white slaves.

The Border States held their negroes by a precarious tenure. The most intelligent were constantly escaping. The inter-traffic in slaves bred in the more northern slave States was likely to become less profitable. And patrols by night, to insure order, had become generally necessary.

The publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had a great effect on public sentiment North, and some influence even in the South. _The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It_, written by Hilton R. Helper, a poor white man of North Carolina (1857), an arraignment of slavery from the standpoint of the white majority South, was denounced as incendiary in Congress. Sherman of Ohio, having in some way endorsed its publication, when a candidate for Speaker, was denounced by Millson of Virginia, who declared that "one who consciously, deliberately, and of purpose lent his name and influence to the propagation of such writings is not only not fit to be Speaker, but is not fit to live."

Sherman's endors.e.m.e.nt of the Helper book caused his defeat for Speaker, and a riot occurred in the House during this contest: Not quite bloodshed. Of the scene, Morris of Illinois said:

"A few more such scenes ... and we shall hear the crack of the revolver and see the gleam of the brandished blade."

The contents of the book, though temperate in tone, were said by Pryor of Virginia to deal only "in rebellion, treason, and insurrection."

Scenes, most extraordinary, were not unfrequently enacted in the House of Representatives, all having the effect to inflame the public mind. Some of these were brought on by violent speeches of Northern statesmen, made in response to the defiant att.i.tude or utterances of Southern men, boastful of their bravery.

One such scene was precipitated in 1860 by Owen Lovejoy of Illinois, who, in a speech to the House, denounced

"Slaveholding as worse than robbing, than piracy, than polygamy.

The enslavement of human beings because they are inferior ... is the doctrine of the Democrats, and the doctrine of devils as well!

and there is no place in the universe outside the five-points of h.e.l.l and the Democratic party where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace."