Slavery and Four Years of War Part 8

Missouri, however, did not become a State until August, 1821.

Thus, for the time only was this question settled.

Of it Jefferson wrote, as if in prophecy:

"This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union."(43)

Clay wrote of the height to which the heated debate arose:

"The words civil war and disunion are uttered almost without emotion."(44)

(40) Later, Arkansas and Michigan (1836-7), Florida and Iowa (March 3, 1845) and Maine and Missouri were, in pairs--slave and free-- admitted as States.

(41) Both died July 4, 1826.

(42) Hildreth, vol. vi., p. 664.

(43) Jefferson's _Works_, vol. vii., p. 159.

(44) Clay's _Priv. Cor._, p. 61.

XIII NULLIFICATION--1832-3 (1835)

A debate arose in the United States Senate over a resolution of Senator Foote of Connecticut proposing to limit the sale of the public lands, which took a wide range. Hayne of South Carolina elaborately set forth the doctrine of nullification, claiming it inhered in each State under the Const.i.tution. He boldly announced that the Union formed was only a _league_ or a _compact_. This called forth from Webster his celebrated "Reply to Hayne," of January 26, 1830, in which he a.s.sailed and apparently overthrew the then new doctrine of nullification. He denounced its exercise as incompatible with a loyal adherence to the Const.i.tution, and showed historically that the government formed under it was not a mere "compact" or "_league_" between sovereign or independent States terminable at will. He then a.s.serted that any attempt of any State to act on the theory of nullification would inevitably entail civil war or a dissolution of the Union.

The first real attempt, however, at nullification, or the first attempt of a State to declare laws of Congress nugatory and of no binding force when not approved by the State, was made in South Carolina in 1832, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, then Vice-President of the United States, and hitherto a statesman of so much just renown, and esteemed so moderate and patriotic in his views on all national questions as to have been looked upon, with the special approval of the North, as eminently qualified for the Presidency. He hopefully aspired to it until he quarrelled with President Jackson; he had been in favor of a protective tariff.

Cotton was, as we have seen, the princ.i.p.al article of export, and the slaveholding cotton planters conceived the idea that to secure a market for it there must be no duties on imports, and that home manufactures of needed articles for consumption would restrict the foreign demand for the raw material. Besides, the South with its slave labor could not indulge in manufacturing. A tariff on imports meant protection to home industries and to free white labor, both inimical to slavery. Some leading Southern statesmen, adherents of slavery, had vehemently opposed the ratification of the Const.i.tution of 1787, on the ground that as it empowered Congress to levy import duties, it would encourage and build up home industries, with free labor; and they prophesied that with them slavery would eventually become unprofitable and therefore unpopular, hence would die. This idea never left the Southern mind, so, when the Confederacy of 1861 was formed, its Const.i.tution (framed at Montgomery, Alabama) prohibited such duties for the express reason that no branch of industry was to be promoted in the new slave government, using this language:

"Nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry."(45)

This was then supposed to be the highest bulwark of slavery. Its votaries understood its strength and weakness. Independent, well- paid free labor and industries (46) would enn.o.ble the men of toil, bring wealth and power, build up populous towns and cities, and consequently overwhelm, politically and otherwise, the inst.i.tution of slavery, or draw into successful social compet.i.tion with plantation life wealthy inhabitants who knew not slavery and its demoralizing influences.

Already, in 1832, the effects of protection on the prosperity of our country were manifest, especially since the Tariff Act of 1828, which levied a duty equivalent to 45 per cent. ad valorem. The Act of 1832 made a small reduction in the duties, but because it was claimed it did not distribute them equally, nullification was determined on as the remedy.

It was agreed by the strict constructionists of that day that a State Legislature could not declare a law of the United States void, but to do this the _people_ must speak through a convention.

Such a convention met in South Carolina, in November, 1832, and pa.s.sed a Nullification Ordinance, declaring the tariff acts "null and void," not binding on the State, and that under them no duties should be paid in the State after February 1, 1833.

Immediately thereafter medals were struck, inscribed "_John C.

Calhoun, first President of the Southern Confederacy_." Nullification, thus proclaimed, was the legitimate forerunner of secession.

President Jackson, with his heroic love of the Union, regarded the movement as only _treason;_ he called it that in his proclamations; he prepared to collect the duties in Charleston or to confiscate the cargoes; he warned the nullifiers by the presence of General Scott there that he would be promptly used to coerce the State into loyalty; and he seemed eager to find an excuse for arresting, condemning for treason, and hanging Calhoun, who then went to Washington as a Senator, resigning the Vice-Presidency.(47)

Jackson tersely said:

"To say that any State may, at pleasure, secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation."

The situation was too imminent for Calhoun's nerves. To confront an indignant nation, led by a fearless, never doubting President, was a different thing then from what it was in 1860-61 with Buchanan as President, surrounded as he was by traitors in his Cabinet.

Calhoun and his State backed down, and import duties continued to be collected in South Carolina, although a gradual reduction of them was made an excuse for Calhoun and his friends in Congress, in 1833, to vote for a protective tariff act, so recently before by them declared unconst.i.tutional.(48)

On a "Force Bill" and a new tariff act being pa.s.sed (March 15, 1833) the Nullification Ordinance was repealed in South Carolina.

The next Ordinance of Secession of this State (1860) was based on the principles of the first one and the doctrines of Calhoun, slavery being the direct, as it had been the indirect, cause of their first enunciation. We must not antic.i.p.ate here.

In the debate, in 1833, between Webster and Calhoun, the former, as in his great reply to Hayne,(49) expounded the Const.i.tution as a "Charter of Union for all the States."

"The Const.i.tution does not provide for events that must be preceded by its own destruction.

"That the Const.i.tution is not a league, confederacy, or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacity, but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and creating direct relations between itself and individuals. That no State authority has power to dissolve these relations. That as to certain purposes the people of the United States are one people."

Nullification, attempted first on account of a protective tariff to foster home and young industries and for needed revenue to carry on the Federal government, was in two years, by its author, Calhoun, transferred, for a new cause on which to attempt to justify it-- from the tariff to domestic slavery. Calhoun soon discovered and admitted that the South could not be united against the North and for _disunion_ on opposition to a protective tariff. He therefore promptly sought an opportunity to bring forward in Congress the slavery question, and to attack the "_agitators_" and opponents of slavery extension in the North, and to threaten disunion if the inst.i.tution of slavery was not permitted to dictate the political policy of the Republic.

The exact method of reviving in Congress the whole subject of slavery so soon after nullification had been so signally suppressed by Jackson is worth briefly stating.

President Jackson, in his Annual Message, December, 1835, called attention to attempts to use the mails to circulate matter calculated to excite slaves to insurrection, but he did not recommend any legislation to prevent it. Mr. Calhoun moved in the Senate that so much of the message relating to mail transportation of incendiary publications be referred to a select committee of five.

He was made chairman of this committee, and, on his request, three others from the South, with but one from the North, were put on the committee, and he promptly made an elaborate and carefully- prepared report, going into the whole doctrine of states-rights and nullification.

In it he said:

"That the States which form our Federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, bound together by a const.i.tutional _compact_, and are possessed of all the powers belonging to distinct and separate States, etc.

"The Compact itself expressly provides that all powers not delegated are reserved to the States and the people... . On returning to the Const.i.tution, it will be seen that, while the power of defending the country against _external_ danger is found among the enumerated, the instrument is wholly silent as to the power of defending the _internal_ peace and security of the States: and of course reserves to the States this important power, etc.

"It belongs to slave-holding States, whose inst.i.tutions are in danger, and not to _Congress_, as is supposed by the message, to determine what papers are incendiary and intended to excite insurrection among the slaves, etc.

"It has already been stated that the States which comprise our Federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, united by a const.i.tutional compact. Among its members the laws of nations are in full force and obligation, except as altered or modified by the compact, etc.

"Within their limits, the rights of the slave-holding States are as full to demand of the States within whose limits and jurisdiction their peace is a.s.sailed, to adopt the measures necessary to prevent the same, and, if refused or neglected, _to resort to means to protect themselves_, as if they were separate and independent communities."

Here, perhaps, was the clearest statement yet made, not only of the independence of States from Federal interference and of their right, on their own whim, to break the "_compact_," but of the right of the slaveholding States to dictate to the other States legislation on the subject of slavery.

It was at once a declaration of independence for the Southern States, and a declaration of their right to hold all the Northern States so far subject to them as to be obliged, on demand, to pa.s.s and enforce any prescribed law in the interest of slavery. The South was to be the sole judge of what law on this subject was requisite for slavery's purposes.

No duty was demanded on this question of the Federal Government; and Southern States, according to Calhoun, owed it none where slavery was concerned.

Calhoun and his committee could discover no power in the Southern States to enforce their demands save to act as separate and independent communities--that is, by setting up for themselves.

This led logically to disunion, the result intended.

There was much in this report setting forth and professing to believe that it was the purpose of the North to emanc.i.p.ate the slaves, and through the agencies of organized anti-slavery societies bring about slave insurrections. The fanaticism of the North was descanted on, and the character of slavery and its wisdom as a social inst.i.tution upheld.

He further said:

"He who regards slavery in those States simply under the relation of master and slave, as important as that relation is, viewed merely as a question of property to the slave-holding section of the Union, has a very imperfect conception of the inst.i.tution, and the impossibility of abolishing it without disasters unexampled in the history of the world. To understand its nature and importance fully, it must be borne in mind that slavery, as it exists in the Southern States, involves _not only the relation of master and slave, but also the social and political relation of the two races_, of nearly equal numbers, from different quarters of the globe, and the most opposite of all others in every particular that distinguishes one race of men from another."

The whole report was replete with accusations against the North, and full of warning as to what the South would do should its demands not be complied with. The bill brought in by the committee was more remarkable than the report itself, and wholly inconsistent with its doctrine.

The bill provided high penalties for any postmaster who should knowingly receive and put into the mail any publication or picture _touching the subject of slavery_, to go into any State or Territory in which its circulation _was forbidden by state law_.