Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics Part 14

[Footnote 310: _Ibid._, Chapter III. See Article VI of the Const.i.tution.]

[Footnote 311: _Ibid._, Chapter IV. See also Moses, History of Illinois, Vol. I, p. 324.]

[Footnote 312: Harris, Negro Servitude, pp. 125, 136-357]

[Footnote 313: Journal of the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1847, pp.

453-456.]

[Footnote 314: _Whig Almanac_, 1841.]

[Footnote 315: _Ibid._, 1845.]

[Footnote 316: Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties, pp. 326-327.]

[Footnote 317: Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties, pp. 328-329.]

[Footnote 318: House Journal, p. 52.]

[Footnote 319: All these fifteen voted for the Democratic candidate for Speaker of the House.]

[Footnote 320: House Journal, p. 52; Senate Journal, p. 44. See also Harris, Negro Servitude in Illinois, p. 177.]

[Footnote 321: See Speech in Senate, December 23, 1851.]

[Footnote 322: See the writer's article on "The Genesis of Popular Sovereignty" in the _Iowa Journal of History and Politics_ for January, 1905.]

[Footnote 323: Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, pp. 241-242.]

[Footnote 324: _Northwestern Gazette_, March 19, 1842.]

[Footnote 325: September 27, 1849.]

[Footnote 326: Compare his utterances on the following dates: January 10, 1849; January 22, 1849; October 23, 1849 at Springfield, Illinois; February 12, 1850; June 3, 1850.]

CHAPTER IX

MEASURES OF ADJUSTMENT

When Congress a.s.sembled in December, 1849, statesmen of the old school, who could agree in nothing else, were of one mind in this: the Union was in peril. In the impressive words of Webster, "the imprisoned winds were let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy South combined to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and disclose its profoundest depths." Clay and Calhoun were equally apprehensive. Yet there were younger men who shared none of these fears. To be sure, the political atmosphere of Washington was electric. The House spent weeks wrangling over the Speakership, so that when the serious work of legislation began, men were overwrought and excitable. California with a free const.i.tution was knocking at the door of the Union. President Taylor gave Congress to understand that at no distant day the people of New Mexico would take similar action. And then, as though he were addressing a body of immortals, he urged Congress to await calmly the action of the people of the Territories.

Douglas was among those unimpressionable younger men who would not believe the Union to be in danger. Perhaps by his Southern connections he knew better than most Northern men, the real temper of the South.

Perhaps he did not give way to the prevailing hysteria, because he was diverted from the great issues by the pressing, particular interests of his const.i.tuents. At all events, he had this advantage over Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, that when he did turn his attention to schemes of compromise, his vision was fresh, keen, and direct. He escaped that subtle distortion of mental perception from which others were likely to suffer because of long-sustained attention. To such, Douglas must have seemed unemotional, unsensitive, and lacking in spiritual fineness.

Illinois with its North and its South was also facing a crisis. To the social and political differences that bisected the State, was added a keen commercial rivalry between the sections. While the State legislature under northern control was appropriating funds for the Illinois and Michigan ca.n.a.l, it exhibited far less liberality in building railroads, which alone could be the arteries of traffic in southern Illinois. At a time when railroads were extending their lines westward from the Atlantic seaboard, and reaching out covetously for the produce of the Mississippi Valley, Illinois held geographically a commanding position. No roads could reach the great river, north of the Ohio at least, without crossing her borders. The avenues of approach were given into her keeping. To those who directed State policy, it seemed possible to determine the commercial destinies of the Commonwealth by controlling the farther course of the railroads which now touched the eastern boundary. Well-directed effort, it was thought, might utilize these railroads so as to build up great commercial cities on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Mississippi. State policy required that none of these cross-roads should in any event touch St. Louis, and thus make it, rather than the Illinois towns now struggling toward commercial greatness, the entrepot between East and West. With its unrivalled site at the mouth of the Missouri, Alton was as likely a compet.i.tor for the East and West traffic, and for the Mississippi commerce, as St. Louis. Alton, then, must be made the terminus of the cross-roads.[327]

The people of southern Illinois thought otherwise. Against the background of such distant hopes, they saw a concrete reality. St.

Louis was already the market for their produce. From every railroad which should cross the State and terminate at St. Louis, they antic.i.p.ated tangible profits. They could not see why these very real advantages should be sacrificed on the altar of northern interests.

After the opening of the northern ca.n.a.l, they resented this exclusive policy with increased bitterness.

Upon one point, and only one, the people of northern and southern Illinois were agreed: they believed that every possible encouragement should be given to the construction of a great central railroad, which should cross the State from north to south. Such a railroad had been projected as early as 1836 by a private corporation. Subsequently the State took up the project, only to abandon it again to a private company, after the bubble of internal improvements had been p.r.i.c.ked.

Of this latter corporation,--the Great Western Railroad Company,--Senator Breese was a director and the accredited agent in Congress. It was in behalf of this corporation that he had pet.i.tioned Congress unsuccessfully for pre-emption rights on the public domain.[328]

Circ.u.mstances enlisted Douglas's interest powerfully in the proposed central railroad. These circ.u.mstances were partly private and personal; partly advent.i.tious and partly of his own making. The growing sectionalism in Illinois gave politicians serious concern. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the integrity of political parties, when sectional issues were thrust into the foreground of political discussion. Yankee and Southerner did not mix readily in the caldron of State politics. But a central railroad which both desired, might promote a mechanical mixture of social and commercial elements. Might it not also, in the course of time, break up provincial feeling, cause a transfusion of ideas, and in the end produce an organic union?

In the summer of 1847, Senator-elect Douglas took up his residence in Chicago, and identified himself with its commercial interests by investing in real estate.[329] Few men have had a keener instinct for speculation in land.[330] By a sort of sixth sense, he foresaw the growth of the ugly but enterprising city on Lake Michigan. He saw that commercially Chicago held a strategic position, commanding both the lake traffic eastward, and the interior waterway gulfward by means of the ca.n.a.l. As yet, however, these advantages were far from realization. The city was not even included within the route of the proposed central railroad. Influential business men, Eastern capitalists, and shippers along the Great Lakes were not a little exercised over this neglect. In some way the claims of Chicago must be urged upon the promoters of the railroad. Just here Douglas could give invaluable aid. He pointed out that if the railroad were to secure a land grant, it would need Eastern votes in Congress. The old Cairo-Galena line would seem like a sectional enterprise, likely to draw trade down the Mississippi and away from the Atlantic seaports.

But if Chicago were connected with the system, as a terminal at the north, the necessary congressional support might be secured.[331]

During the summer, Douglas canva.s.sed the State, speaking repeatedly in behalf of this larger project. For a time he hoped that Senator Breese would co-operate with him. Numerous conferences took place both before and after Congress had a.s.sembled; but Douglas found his colleague reluctant to abandon his pre-emption plan. Regardless of the memorials which poured in upon him from northern Illinois, Breese introduced his bill for pre-emption rights on the public domain, in behalf of the Holbrook Company, as the Great Western Railway Company was popularly called. Thereupon Douglas offered a bill for a donation of public lands to aid the State of Illinois in the construction of a central railroad from Cairo to Galena, with a branch from Centralia to Chicago.[332] Though Breese did not actively oppose his colleague, his lack of cordiality no doubt prejudiced Congress against a grant of any description. From the outset, Douglas's bill encountered obstacles: the opposition of those who doubted the const.i.tutional power of Congress to grant lands for internal improvements of this sort; the opposition of landless States, which still viewed the public domain as a national a.s.set from which revenue should be derived; and, finally, the opposition of the old States to the new. Nevertheless, the bill pa.s.sed the Senate by a good majority. In the House it suffered defeat, owing to the undisguised opposition of the South and of the landless States both East and West. The Middle States showed distrust and uncertainty. It was perfectly clear that before such a project could pa.s.s the House, Eastern and Southern representatives would have to be won over.[333]

After Congress adjourned, Douglas journeyed to the State of Mississippi, ostensibly on a business trip to his children's plantation. In the course of his travels, he found himself in the city of Mobile--an apparent digression; but by a somewhat remarkable coincidence he met certain directors of the Mobile Railroad in the city. Now this corporation was in straits. Funds had failed and the construction of the road had been arrested. The directors were casting about in search of relief. Douglas saw his opportunity. He offered the distraught officials an alliance. He would include in his Illinois Central bill a grant of land for their road; in return, they were to make sure of the votes of their senators and representatives.[334]

Such, at least, is the story told by Douglas; and some such bargain may well have been made. Subsequent events give the color of veracity to the tale.

When Douglas renewed his Illinois Central bill in a revised form on January 3, 1850, Senator Breese had been succeeded by Shields, who was well-disposed toward the project.[335] The fruits of the Mobile conference were at once apparent. Senator King of Alabama offered an amendment, proposing a similar donation of public lands to his State and to Mississippi, for the purpose of continuing the projected central railroad from the mouth of the Ohio to the port of Mobile.

Douglas afterward said that he had himself drafted this amendment, but that he had thought best to have Senator King present it.[336] Be that as it may, the suspicion of collusion between them can hardly be avoided, since the amendment occasioned no surprise to the friends of the bill and was adopted without division.

The project now before Congress was of vastly greater consequence than the proposed grant to Illinois. Here was a bill of truly national importance. It spoke for itself; it appealed to the dullest imagination. What this amended bill contemplated, was nothing less than a trunk line connecting the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, indeed, as Douglas well said, "nationality had been imparted to the project," At the same time, it offered substantial advantages to the two landless States which would be traversed by the railroad, as well as to all the Gulf States. As thus devised, the bill seemed reasonably sure to win votes.

Yet it must not be inferred that the bill pa.s.sed smoothly to a third reading. There was still much shaking of heads among senators of the strict construction school. Many were conquered by expediency and threw logic to the winds; some preferred to be consistent and spoil a good cause. The bill did not sail on untroubled seas, even after it had been steered clear of const.i.tutional shoals. It narrowly ran foul of that obstinate Western conviction, that the public lands belonged of right to the home-seeker, to whose interests all such grants were inimical, by reason of the increased price of adjoining sections of land.[337]

The real battleground, however, was not the Senate, but the House. As before, the bill pa.s.sed the upper chamber by an ample margin of votes.[338] In the lower house, there was no prolonged debate upon the bill. Const.i.tutional scruples do not seem to have been ruffled. The main difficulty was to rivet the attention of the members. Several times the bill was pushed aside and submerged by the volume of other business. Finally, on the same day that it pa.s.sed the last of the compromise measures, on the 17th of September, 1850, the House pa.s.sed the Illinois Central Railroad bill by a vote of 101 to 75.[339]

A comparison of this vote with that on the earlier bill shows a change of three votes in the Middle States, one in the South, ten in the Gulf States, and five in Tennessee and Kentucky.[340] This was a triumphant vindication of Douglas's sagacity, for whatever may have been the services of his colleagues in winning Eastern votes,[341] it was his bid for the vote of the Gulf States and of the landless, intervening States of Kentucky and Tennessee which had been most effective. But was all this anything more than the clever manoeuvering of an adroit politician in a characteristic parliamentary game? A central railroad through Illinois seemed likely to quell factional and sectional quarrels in local politics; to merge Northern and Southern interests within the Commonwealth; and to add to the fiscal resources of State and nation. It was a good cause, but it needed votes in Congress.

Douglas became a successful procurator and reaped his reward in increased popularity.

There is an aspect of this episode, however, which lifts it above a mere log-rolling device to secure an appropriation. Here and there it fired the imagination of men. There is abundant reason to believe that the senior Senator from Illinois was not so sordid in his bargaining for votes as he seemed. Above and apart from the commercial welfare of the Lake Region, the Mississippi Valley, and the Gulf Plains, there was an end subserved, which lay in the background of his consciousness and which came to expression rarely if ever. Practical men may see visions and dream dreams which they are reluctant to voice. There was genuine emotion beneath the materialism of Senator Walker's remarks (and he was reared in Illinois), when he said: "Anything that improves the connection between the North and the South is a great enterprise.

To cross parallels of lat.i.tude, to enable the man of commerce to make up his a.s.sorted cargo, is infinitely more important than anything you can propose within the same parallels of lat.i.tude. I look upon it as a great chain to unite North and South."[342] Senator Shields of Illinois only voiced the inmost thought of Douglas, when he exclaimed, "The measure is too grand, too magnificent a one to meet with such a fate at the hands of Congress. And really, as it is to connect the North and South so thoroughly, it may serve to get rid of even the Wilmot Proviso, and tie us together so effectually that the idea of separation will be impossible."[343]

The settlement of the West had followed parallels of lat.i.tude. The men of the Lake Plains were transplanted New Englanders, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians; the men of the Gulf Plains came from south of Mason and Dixon's line,--pioneers both, aggressive, bold in initiative, but alienated by circ.u.mstances of tremendous economic significance. If ever North should be arrayed against South, the makeweight in the balance would be these pioneers of the Northwest and Southwest. It was no mean conception to plan for the "man of commerce" who would cross from one region to the other, with his "a.s.sorted cargo,"[344] for in that cargo were the destinies of two sections and his greatest commerce was to consist in the exchange of imponderable ideas. The ideal which inspired Douglas never found n.o.bler expression, than in these words with which he replied to Webster's slighting reference to the West:

"There is a power in this nation greater than either the North or the South--a growing, increasing, swelling power, that will be able to speak the law to this nation, and to execute the law as spoken. That power is the country known as the great West--the Valley of the Mississippi, one and indivisible from the gulf to the great lakes, and stretching, on the one side and the other, to the extreme sources of the Ohio and Missouri--from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains.

There, Sir, is the hope of this nation--the resting place of the power that is not only to control, but to save, the Union. We furnish the water that makes the Mississippi, and we intend to follow, navigate, and use it until it loses itself in the briny ocean. So with the St.

Lawrence. We intend to keep open and enjoy both of these great outlets to the ocean, and all between them we intend to take under our especial protection, and keep and preserve as one free, happy, and united people. This is the mission of the great Mississippi Valley, the heart and soul of the nation and the continent."[345]

Meantime Congress was endeavoring to avert the clash of sections by other measures of accommodation. The veteran Clay, in his favorite role of peacemaker, had drafted a series of resolutions as a sort of legislative programme; and with his old-time vigor, was pleading for mutual forbearance. All wounds might be healed, he believed, by admitting California with her free const.i.tution; by organizing territorial governments without any restriction as to slavery, in the region acquired from Mexico; by settling the Texas boundary and the Texas debt on a fair basis; by prohibiting the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia; and by providing more carefully for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Clay, Calhoun, and Webster had spoken with all the weight of their years upon these propositions, before Douglas was free to address the Senate.

It was characteristic of Douglas that he chose to speak on the concrete question raised by the application of California for admission into the Union. His opening words betrayed no elevation of feeling, no alarmed patriotism transcending party lines, no great moral uplift. He made no direct reference to the state of the public mind. Clay began with an invocation; Webster pleaded for a hearing, not as a Ma.s.sachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American and as a Senator, with the preservation of the Union as his theme; Douglas sprang at once to the defense of his party. With the brush of a partisan, he sketched the policy of Northern Democrats in advocating the annexation of Texas, repudiating the insinuations of Webster that Texas had been sought as a slave State. He would not admit that the whole of Texas was bound to be a slave Territory. By the very terms of annexation, provision had been made for admitting free States out of Texas. As for Webster's "law of nature, of physical geography,--the law of the formation of the earth," from which the Senator from Ma.s.sachusetts derived so much comfort, it was a pity that he could not have discovered that law earlier. The "law of nature" surely had not been changed materially since the election, when Mr. Webster opposed General Ca.s.s, who had already enunciated this general principle.[346]

In his reply to Calhoun, Douglas emanc.i.p.ated himself successfully from his gross partisanship. Planting himself firmly upon the national theory of the Federal Union, he hewed away at what he termed Calhoun's fundamental error--"the error of supposing that his particular section has a right to have a 'due share of the territories' set apart and a.s.signed to it." Calhoun had said much about Southern rights and Northern aggressions, citing the Ordinance of 1787 as an instance of the unfair exclusion of the South from the public domain. Douglas found a complete refutation of this error in the early history of Illinois, where slavery had for a long time existed in spite of the Ordinance. His inference from these facts was bold and suggestive, if not altogether convincing.

"These facts furnish a practical ill.u.s.tration of that great truth, which ought to be familiar to all statesmen and politicians, that a law pa.s.sed by the national legislature to operate locally upon a people not represented, will always remain practically a dead letter upon the statute book, if it be in opposition to the wishes and supposed interests of those who are to be affected by it, and at the same time charged with its execution. The Ordinance of 1787 was practically a dead letter. It did not make the country, to which it applied, practically free from slavery. The States formed out of the territory northwest of the Ohio did not become free by virtue of the ordinance, nor in consequence of it ... [but] by virtue of their own will."[347]

Douglas was equally convinced that the Missouri Compromise had had no practical effect upon slavery. So far from depriving the South of its share of the West, that Compromise had simply "allayed an unfortunate excitement which was alienating the affections of different portions of the Union." "Slavery was as effectually excluded from the whole of that country, by the laws of nature, of climate, and production, before, as it is now, by act of Congress."[348] As for the exclusion of the South from the Oregon Territory, the law of 1848 "did nothing more than re-enact and affirm the law which the people themselves had previously adopted, and rigorously executed, for the period of twelve years." The exclusion of slavery was the deliberate act of the people of Oregon: "it was done in obedience to that great Democratic principle, that it is wiser and better to leave each community to determine and regulate its own local and domestic affairs in its own way."[349]

An amendment to the Const.i.tution to establish a permanent equilibrium between slave and free States, Douglas rightly characterized as "a moral and physical impossibility." The cause of freedom had steadily advanced, while slavery had receded. "We all look forward with confidence to the time when Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and probably North Carolina and Tennessee, will adopt a gradual system of emanc.i.p.ation. In the meantime," said he, with the exultant spirit of the exuberant West, "we have a vast territory, stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, which is rapidly filling up with a hardy, enterprising, and industrious population, large enough to form at least seventeen new free States, one half of which we may expect to see represented in this body during our day. Of these I calculate that four will be formed out of Oregon, five out of our late acquisition from Mexico, including the present State of California, two out of the territory of Minnesota, and the residue out of the country upon the Missouri river, _including Nebraska_. I think I am safe in a.s.suming, that each of these will be free territories and free States whether Congress shall prohibit slavery or not. Now, let me inquire, where are you to find the slave territory with which to balance these seventeen free territories, or even any one of them?"[350] Truer prophecy was never uttered in all the long controversy over the extension of slavery.