Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics Part 13

It is our intention, however, to remove all our property to Illinois as soon as possible."[301] To correct the popular rumor, Douglas enclosed a statement which might be published editorially, or otherwise.

The dictated statement read as follows: "The Quincy _Whig_ and other Whig papers are publishing an article purporting to be copied from a Mississippi paper abusing Judge Douglas as the owner of 100 slaves and at the same time accusing him of being a Wilmot Free-soiler. That the article originated in this State, and was sent to Mississippi for publication in order that it might be re-published here we shall not question nor take the trouble to prove. The paternity of the article, the malice that prompted it, and the misrepresentations it contains are too obvious to require particular notice. If it had been written by a Mississippian he would have known that the statement in regard to the ownership of the negroes was totally untrue. No one will pretend that Judge Douglas has any other property in Mississippi than that which was acquired in the right of his wife by inheritance upon the death of her father, and anyone who will take the trouble to examine the statutes of that State in the Secretary's office in this City will find that by the laws of Mississippi all the property of a married woman, whether acquired by will, gift or otherwise, becomes her separate and exclusive estate and is not subject to the control or disposal of her husband nor subject to his debts. We do not pretend to know whether the father of Mrs. Douglas at the time of his death owned slaves in Mississippi or not. We have heard the statement made by the Whigs but have not deemed it of sufficient importance to inquire into its truth. If it should turn out so, in no event could Judge Douglas become the owner or have the disposal of or be responsible for them.

The laws of the State forbid it, and also forbid slaves under such circ.u.mstances from being removed without or emanc.i.p.ated within the limits of the State."

Born a Yankee, bred a Westerner, wedded to the mistress of a Southern plantation, Douglas represented a Commonwealth whose population was made up of elements from all sections. The influences that shaped his career were extraordinarily complex. No account of his subsequent public life would be complete, without reference to the peculiar social and political characteristics of his const.i.tuency.

The people of early Illinois were drawn southward by the pull of natural forces: the Mississippi washes the western border on its gulf-ward course; and the chief rivers within the State have a general southerly trend.[302] But quite as important historically is the convergence of the Ohio, the c.u.mberland, and the Tennessee on the southern border of Illinois; for it was by these waterways that the early settlers reached the Illinois Territory from the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. The apex of the irregular, inverted triangle of Illinois, thrust down to the 37th parallel of lat.i.tude, brought the first settlers well within the sphere of Southern influence. Two slave States flanked this southern end. Nearly one-half of Illinois lay south of a direct, westward extension of Mason and Dixon's line.

In the early days, the possession by the Indians of the northern areas accentuated the southern connections of Illinois. At the same time the absence at the North of navigable waterways and pa.s.sable highways between East and West, left the Ohio and its tributaries the only connecting lines of travel with the remote northern Atlantic States.

Had Illinois been admitted into the Union with the boundaries first proposed, it would have been, by all those subtle influences which go to make public sentiment, a Southern State. But the extension of the northern boundary to 42 30' gave Illinois a frontage of fifty miles on Lake Michigan, and deflected the whole political and social history of the Commonwealth. This contact with the great waterways of the North brought to the State, in the course of time, an immense share of the lake traffic and a momentous connection with the northern central and northern Atlantic States. The pa.s.sing of the Indians, the opening up of the great northern prairies to occupation, and the completion of the Illinois-Michigan ca.n.a.l made the northern part of Illinois fallow for New England seeding. Geographically, Illinois became the connecting link in the slender chain which bound the men of the lake and prairie plains with the men of the gulf plains. The inevitable interpenetration of Northern and Southern interests in Illinois, resulting from these contacts, is the most important fact in the social and political history of the State. It bred in Illinois statesmen a disposition to compromise for the sake of political harmony and economic progress, a pa.s.sionate attachment to the Union as the _sine qua non_ of State unity, and a glowing nationalism. Illinois was in short a microcosm: the larger problems of the nation existed there in miniature.

When Illinois was admitted to the Union in 1818, all the organized counties lay to the south of the projected national road between Terre Haute and Alton, hence well within the sphere of surrounding Southern influences. The society of Illinois was at this time predominantly Southern in its origin and characteristics.[303] Social life and political thought were shaped by Southern life and Southern thought.

Whatever points of contact there were with the outside world were with the Southern world. The movement to make Illinois a slave State was motived by the desire to accelerate immigration from the South.

But people had already begun to come into the State who were not of Southern origin, and who succeeded in deflecting the current of Illinois politics at this critical juncture. The fertile river bottoms and intervening prairies of southern Illinois no longer sufficed. The new comers were impelled toward the great, undulating prairies which expand above the 39th parallel. The rise of new counties marks the volume of this immigration;[304] the att.i.tude of the older settlers toward it, fixes sufficiently its general social character. This was the beginning of the "Yankee" invasion, New York and Pennsylvania furnishing the vanguard.

As the northern prairies became accessible by the lake route and the stage roads, New England and New York poured a steady stream of homeseekers into the Commonwealth. By the middle of the century, this Northern immigration had begun to inundate the northern counties and to overflow into the interior, where it met and mingled with the counter-current. These Yankee settlers were viewed with hostility, not unmixed with contempt, by those whose culture and standards of taste had been formed south of Mason and Dixon's line.[305]

This sectional antagonism was strengthened by the rapid commercial advance of northern Illinois. Yankee enterprise and thrift worked wonders in a decade. Governor Ford, all of whose earlier a.s.sociations were with the people of southern Illinois, writing about the middle of the century, admits that although the settlers in the southern part of the State were twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years in advance, on the score of age, they were ten years behind in point of wealth and all the appliances of a higher civilization.[306] The completion of the ca.n.a.l between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, however much it might contribute to the general welfare of the State, seemed likely to profit the northern rather than the southern portion. It had been opposed at the outset by Southerners, who argued soberly that it would flood the State with Yankees;[307] and at every stage in its progress it had encountered Southern obstruction, though the grounds for this opposition were more wisely chosen.

Political ideals and customs were also a divisive force in Illinois society. True to their earlier political training, the Southern settlers had established the county as a unit of local government. The Const.i.tution of 1818 put the control of local concerns in the hands of three county commissioners, who, though elected by the people, were not subjected to that scrutiny which selectmen encountered in the New England town meeting. To the democratic New Englander, every system seemed defective which gave him no opportunity to discuss neighborhood interests publicly, and to call local officers to account before an a.s.sembly of the vicinage. The new comers in northern Illinois became profoundly dissatisfied with the autocratic board of county commissioners. Since the township might act as a corporate body for school purposes, why might they not enjoy the full measure of township government? Their demands grew more and more insistent, until they won substantial concessions from the convention which framed the Const.i.tution of 1848. But all this agitation involved a more or less direct criticism of the system which the people of southern Illinois thought good enough for Yankees, if it were good enough for themselves.[308]

In the early history of Illinois, negro slavery was a bone of contention between men of Northern and of Southern antecedents. When Illinois was admitted as a State, there were over seven hundred negroes held in servitude. In spite of the Ordinance of 1787, Illinois was practically a slave Territory. There were, to be sure, stalwart opponents of slavery even among those who had come from slave-holding communities; but taken in the large, public opinion in the Territory sanctioned negro slavery as it existed under a loose system of indenture.[309] Even the Const.i.tution of 1818, under which Illinois came into the Union as a free State, continued the old system of indenture with slight modification.[310]

It was in the famous contest over the proposed const.i.tutional convention of 1824 that the influence of Northern opinion respecting slavery was first felt. The contest had narrowed down to a struggle between those who desired a convention in order to draft a const.i.tution legalizing slavery and those who, from policy or principle, were opposed to slavery in Illinois. Men of Southern birth were, it is true, among the most aggressive leaders of the anti-convention forces, but the decisive votes against the convention were cast in the seven counties recently organized, in which there was a strong Northern element.[311]

This contest ended, the anti-slavery sentiment evaporated. The "Black Laws" continued in force. Little or no interest was manifested in the fate of indentured black servants, who were to all intents and purposes as much slaves as their southern kindred. The leaven of Abolitionism worked slowly in Illinois society. By an almost unanimous vote, the General a.s.sembly adopted joint resolutions in 1837 which condemned Abolitionism as "more productive of evil than of moral and political good." There were then not a half-dozen anti-slavery societies in the State, and these soon learned to confine their labors to central and northern Illinois, abandoning Egypt as hopelessly inaccessible to the light.[312]

The issues raised by the Mexican War and the prospective acquisition of new territory, materially changed the temper of northern Illinois.

Moreover, in the later forties a tide of immigration from the northeastern States, augmented by Germans who came in increasing numbers after the European agitation of 1848, was filling the northernmost counties with men and women who held positive convictions on the question of slavery extension. These transplanted New Englanders were outspoken advocates of the Wilmot Proviso. When they were asked to vote upon that article of the Const.i.tution of 1848 which proposed to prevent the immigration of free negroes, the fourteen northern counties voted no, only to find themselves outvoted two to one.[313] A new factor had appeared in Illinois politics.

Many and diverse circ.u.mstances contributed to the growth of sectionalism in Illinois. The disruptive forces, however, may be easily overestimated. The unifying forces in Illinois society were just as varied, and in the long run more potent. As in the nation at large so in Illinois, religious, educational, and social organizations did much to resist the strain of countervailing forces. But no organization proved in the end so enduring and effective as the political party. Illinois had by 1840 two well-developed party organizations, which enveloped the people of the State, as on a large scale they embraced the nation. These parties came to have an enduring, inst.i.tutional character. Men were born Democrats and Whigs.

Southern and Northern Whigs, Northern and Southern Democrats there were, of course; but the necessity of harmony for effective action tended to subordinate individual and group interests to the larger good of the whole. Parties continued to be organized on national lines, after the churches had been rent in twain by sectional forces.

Of the two party organizations in Illinois, the Democratic party was numerically the larger, and in point of discipline, the more efficient. It was older; it had been the first to adopt the system of State and district nominating conventions; it had the advantage of prestige and of the possession of office. The Democratic party could "point with pride" to an unbroken series of victories in State and presidential elections. By successful gerrymanders it had secured the lion's share of congressional districts. Above all it had intelligent leadership. The retirement of Senator Breese left Stephen A. Douglas the undisputed leader of the party.

The dual party system in Illinois, as well as in the nation, was seriously threatened by the appearance of a third political organization with hostility to slavery as its cohesive force. The Liberty party polled its first vote in Illinois in the campaign of 1840, when its candidate for the presidency received 160 votes.[314]

Four years later its total vote in Illinois was 3,469, a notable increase.[315] The distribution of these votes, however, is more noteworthy than their number, for in no county did the vote amount to more than thirty per cent of the total poll of all parties. The heaviest Liberty vote was in the northern counties. The votes cast in the central and southern parts of the State were indicative, for the most part, of a Quaker or New England element in the population.[316]

As yet the older parties had no reason to fear for their prestige; but in 1848 the Liberty party gave place to the Free-Soil party, which developed unexpected strength in the presidential vote. It rallied anti-slavery elements by its cry of "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men!" and for the first time broke the serried ranks of the older parties. Van Buren, the candidate of the Free-Soilers, received a vote of 15,774, concentrated in the northeastern counties, but reaching formidable proportions in the counties of the northwest and west.[317] Of the older organizations, the Whig party seemed less affected, Taylor having received 53,047 votes, an increase of 7,519 over the Whig vote of 1844. The Democratic candidate, Ca.s.s, received only 56,300, an absolute decrease of 1,620. This was both an absolute and a relative decline, for the total voting population had increased by 24,459. Presumptive evidence points to a wholesale desertion of the party by men of strong anti-slavery convictions. Whither they had gone--whether into the ranks of Whigs or Free-Soilers,--concerned Democratic leaders less than the palpable fact that they had gone somewhere.

At the close of this eventful year, the political situation in Illinois was without precedent. To offset Democratic losses in the presidential election, there were, to be sure, the usual Democratic triumphs in State and district elections. But the composition of the legislature was peculiar. On the vote for Speaker of the House, the Democrats showed a handsome majority: there was no sign of a third party vote. A few days later the following resolution was carried by a vote which threw the Democratic ranks into confusion: "That our senators in Congress be instructed, and our representatives requested, to use all honorable means in their power, to procure the enactment of such laws by Congress for the government of the countries and territories of the United States, acquired by the treaty of peace, friendship, limits, and settlement, with the republic of Mexico, concluded February 2, A.D. 1848; as shall contain the express declaration, that there shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in said territories, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."[318]

At least fifteen representatives of what had hitherto been Democratic const.i.tuencies, had combined with the Whigs to embarra.s.s the Democratic delegation at Washington.[319] Their expectation seems to have been that they could thus force Senator Douglas to resign his seat, for he had been an uncompromising opponent of the Wilmot Proviso. Free-Soilers, Whigs, and Northern Democrats with anti-slavery leanings had voted for the instructions; only the Democrats from the southern counties voted solidly to sustain the Illinois delegation in its opposition to the Proviso.[320] While not a strict sectional vote, it showed plainly enough the rift in the Democratic party. A disruptive issue had been raised. For the moment a re-alignment of parties on geographical lines seemed imminent. This was precisely the trend in national politics at this moment.

There was a traditional remedy for this sectional malady--compromise.

It was an Illinois senator, himself a slave-owner, who had proposed the original Missouri proviso. Senator Douglas had repeatedly proposed to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, in the same spirit in which compromise had been offered in 1820, but the essential conditions for a compromise on this basis were now wanting.

It was precisely at this time, when the Illinois legislature was instructing him to reverse his att.i.tude toward the Wilmot Proviso, that Senator Douglas began to change his policy. Believing that the combination against him in the legislature was largely accidental and momentary, he refused to resign.[321] Events amply justified his course; but the crisis was not without its lessons for him. The futility of a compromise based on an extension of the Missouri Compromise line was now apparent. Opposition to the extension of slavery was too strong; and belief in the free status of the acquired territory too firmly rooted in the minds of his const.i.tuents. There remained the possibility of reintegrating the Democratic party through the application of the principle of "squatter sovereignty," Was it possible to offset the anti-slavery sentiment of his Northern const.i.tuents by an insistent appeal to their belief in local self-government?

The taproot from which squatter sovereignty grew and flourished, was the instinctive attachment of the Western American to local government; or to put the matter conversely, his dislike of external authority. So far back as the era of the Revolution, intense individualism, bold initiative, strong dislike of authority, elemental jealousy of the fruits of labor, and pa.s.sionate attachment to the soil that has been cleared for a home, are qualities found in varying intensity among the colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia. Nowhere, however, were they so marked as along the Western border, where centrifugal forces were particularly strong and local attachments were abnormally developed. Under stress of real or fancied wrongs, it was natural for settlers in these frontier regions to meet for joint protest, or if the occasion were grave enough, to enter into political a.s.sociation, to resist encroachment upon what they felt to be their natural rights. Whenever they felt called upon to justify their course, they did so in language that repeated, consciously or unconsciously, the theory of the social contract, with which the political thought of the age was surcharged. In these frontier communities was born the political habit that manifested itself on successive frontiers of American advance across the continent, and that finally in the course of the slavery controversy found apt expression in the doctrine of squatter sovereignty.[322]

None of the Territories carved out of the original Northwest had shown greater eagerness for separate government than Illinois. The isolation of the original settlements grouped along the Mississippi, their remoteness from the seat of territorial government on the Wabash, and the consequent difficulty of obtaining legal protection and efficient government, predisposed the people of Illinois to demand a territorial government of their own, long before Congress listened to their memorials. Bitter controversy and even bloodshed attended their efforts.[323]

A generation later a similar contest occurred for the separation of the fourteen northern counties from the State. When Congress changed the northern boundary of Illinois, it had deviated from the express provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, which had drawn the line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan. This departure from the Magna Charta of the Northwest furnished the would-be secessionists with a pretext. But an editorial in the _Northwestern Gazette and Galena Advertiser_, January 20, 1842, naively disclosed their real motive.

Illinois was overwhelmed with debt, while Wisconsin was "young, vigorous, and free from debt." "Look at the district as it is now,"

wrote the editor fervidly, "the _f.a.g end_ of the State of Illinois--its interest wholly disregarded in State legislation--in short, treated as a mere _province_--taxed; laid under tribute in the form of taxation for the benefit of the South and Middle." The right of the people to determine by vote whether the counties should be annexed to Illinois, was accepted without question. A meeting of citizens in Jo Daviess County resolved, that "until the Ordinance of 1787 was altered by common consent, the free inhabitants of the region had, in common with the free inhabitants of the Territory of Wisconsin, an absolute, vested, indefeasible right to form a permanent const.i.tution and State government."[324] This was the burden of many memorials of similar origin.

The desire of the people of Illinois to control local interests extended most naturally to the soil which nourished them. That the Federal Government should without their consent dispose of lands which they had brought under cultivation, seemed to verge on tyranny. It mattered not that the settler had taken up lands to which he had no t.i.tle in law. The wilderness belonged to him who subdued it.

Therefore land leagues and claim a.s.sociations figure largely in the history of the Northwest. Their object was everywhere the same, to protect the squatter against the chance bidder at a public land sale.

The concessions made by the const.i.tutional convention of 1847, in the matter of local government, gave great satisfaction to the Northern element in the State. The new const.i.tution authorized the legislature to pa.s.s a general law, in accordance with which counties might organize by popular vote under a township system. This mode of settling a bitter and protracted controversy was thoroughly in accord with the democratic spirit of northern Illinois. The newspapers of the northern counties welcomed the inauguration of the township system as a formal recognition of a familiar principle. Said the _Will County Telegraph_:[325] "The great principle on which the new system is based is this: that except as to those things which pertain to State unity and those which are in their nature common to the whole county, it is right that each small community should regulate its own local matters without interference." It was this sentiment to which popular sovereignty made a cogent appeal.

No man was more sensitive than Senator Douglas to these subtle influences of popular tradition, custom, and current sentiment. Under the c.u.mulative impression of the events which have been recorded, his confidence in popular sovereignty as an integrating force in national and local politics increased, and his public utterances became more a.s.sured and positive.[326] By the close of the year 1850, he had the satisfaction of seeing the collapse of the Free-Soil party in Illinois, and of knowing that the joint resolutions had been repealed which had so nearly accomplished his overthrow. A political storm had been weathered. Yet the diverse currents in Illinois society might again roil local politics. So long as a bitter commercial rivalry divided northern and southern Illinois, and social differences held the sections apart, misunderstandings dangerous to party and State alike would inevitably follow. How could these diverse elements be fused into a true and enduring union? To this task Douglas set his hand. The ways and means which he employed, form one of the most striking episodes in his career.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 294: Reid was afterward Governor of North Carolina and United States Senator.]

[Footnote 295: For many of the facts relating to Douglas's courtship and marriage, I am indebted to his son, Judge Robert Martin Douglas, of North Carolina.]

[Footnote 296: At the death of Colonel Martin, this plantation was worked by some seventeen slaves, according to his will.]

[Footnote 297: This impression is fully confirmed by the terms of his will.]

[Footnote 298: He was himself fully conscious of this influence. See his speech at Raleigh, August 30, 1860.]

[Footnote 299: The facts are so stated in Colonel Martin's will, for a transcript of which I am indebted to Judge R.M. Douglas.]

[Footnote 300: Extract from the will of Colonel Martin.]

[Footnote 301: This letter, dated August 3, 1850, is in the possession of Mrs. James W. Patton of Springfield, Illinois.]

[Footnote 302: The characteristics of Illinois as a const.i.tuency in 1850 are set forth in greater detail, in an article by the writer in the _Iowa Journal of History and Politics_, July, 1905.]

[Footnote 303: See Patterson, Early Society in Southern Illinois in the Fergus Historical Series, No. 14. Also Ford, History of Illinois, pp. 38, 279-280; and Greene, Sectional forces in the History of Illinois--in the Publications of Illinois Historical Library, 1903.]

[Footnote 304: Between 1818 and 1840, fifty-seven new counties were organized, of which fourteen lay in the region given to Illinois by the shifting of the northern boundary. See Publications of the Illinois Historical Library, No. 8, pp. 79-80.]

[Footnote 305: Ford, History of Illinois, pp. 280-281.]

[Footnote 306: _Ibid._, p. 280.]

[Footnote 307: See Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, Chapter on "State Policy."]

[Footnote 308: Shaw, Local Government in Illinois, in the Johns Hopkins University Studies, Vol. I; Newell, Township Government in Illinois.]

[Footnote 309: Harris, Negro Servitude in Illinois, Chapter II.]