Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics Part 28

"Ignore Lecompton, ignore Topeka; treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pa.s.s a fair bill--the one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit; have a fair election--and you will have peace in the Democratic party, and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a fair vote. They never will be satisfied without it. They never should be satisfied without a fair vote on their Const.i.tution....

"Frame any other bill that secures a fair, honest vote, to men of all parties, and carries out the pledge that the people shall be left free to decide on their domestic inst.i.tutions for themselves, and I will go with you with pleasure, and with all the energy I may possess. But if this Const.i.tution is to be forced down our throats, in violation of the fundamental principle of free government, under a mode of submission that is a mockery and insult, I will resist it to the last. I have no fear of any party a.s.sociations being severed. I should regret any social or political estrangement, even temporarily; but if it must be, if I can not act with you and preserve my faith and my honor, I will stand on the great principle of popular sovereignty, which declares the right of all people to be left perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions in their own way. I will follow that principle wherever its logical consequences may take me, and I will endeavor to defend it against a.s.sault from any and all quarters. No mortal man shall be responsible for my action but myself. By my action I will compromit no man."[637]

The speech made a profound impression. No one could mistake its import. The correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ was right in thinking that it "marked an important era in our political history."[638] Douglas had broken with the dominant pro-slavery faction of his party. How far he would carry his party with him, remained to be seen. But that a battle royal was imminent, was believed on all sides. "The struggle of Douglas with the slave-power will be a magnificent spectacle to witness," wrote one who had hitherto evinced little admiration for the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.[639]

Douglas kept himself well in hand throughout his speech. His manner was at times defiant, but his language was restrained. At no time did he disclose the pain which his rupture with the administration cost him, except in his closing words. What he had to expect from the friends of the administration was immediately manifest. Senator Bigler of Pennsylvania sprang to the defense of the President. In an irritating tone he intimated that Douglas himself had changed his position on the question of submission, alluding to certain private conferences at Douglas's house; but as though bound by a pledge of secrecy, Bigler refrained from making the charge in so many words.

Douglas, thoroughly aroused, at once absolved, him from any pledges, and demanded to know when they had agreed not to submit the const.i.tution to the people. The reply of Bigler was still allusive and evasive. "Does he mean to say," insisted Douglas excitedly, "that I ever was, privately or publicly, in my own house or any other, in favor of a const.i.tution without its being submitted to the people?" "I have made no such allegation," was the reply. "You have allowed it to be inferred," exclaimed Douglas in exasperated tones.[640] And then Green reminded him, that in his famous report of January 4, 1854, he had proposed to leave the slavery question to the decision of the people "by their appropriate representatives chosen by them for that purpose," with no suggestion of a second, popular vote. Truly, his most insidious foes were now those of his own political household.

Anti-slavery men welcomed this revolt of Douglas without crediting him with any but self-seeking motives. They could not bring themselves to believe other than ill of the man who had advocated the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Republicans accepted his aid in their struggle against the Lecompton fraud, but for the most part continued to regard him with distrust. Indeed, Douglas made no effort to placate them. He professed to care nothing for the cause of the slave which was nearest their hearts. Hostile critics, then, were quick to point out the probable motives from which he acted. His senatorial term was drawing to a close. He was of course desirous of a re-election. But his nominee for governor had been defeated at the last election, and the State had been only with difficulty carried for the national candidates of the party. The lesson was plain: the people of Illinois did not approve the Kansas policy of Senator Douglas. Hence the weatherc.o.c.k obeyed the wind.

In all this there was a modic.u.m of truth. Douglas would not have been the power that he was, had he not kept in touch with his const.i.tuency.

But a sense of honor, a desire for consistency, and an abiding faith in the justice of his great principle, impelled him in the same direction. These were thoroughly honorable motives, even if he professed an indifference as to the fate of the negro. He had pledged his word of honor to his const.i.tuents that the people of Kansas should have a fair chance to p.r.o.nounce upon their const.i.tution. Nothing short of this would have been consistent with popular sovereignty as he had expounded it again and again. And Douglas was personally a man of honor. Yet when all has been said, one cannot but regret that the sense of fair play, which was strong in him, did not a.s.sert itself in the early stages of the Kansas conflict and smother that lawyer's instinct to defend, a client by the technicalities of the law. Could he only have sought absolute justice for the people of Kansas in the winter of 1856, the purity of his motives would not have been questioned in the winter of 1858.

Even those colleagues of Douglas who doubted his motives, could not but admire his courage. It did, indeed, require something more than audacity to head a revolt against the administration. No man knew better the th.o.r.n.y road that he must now travel. No man loved his party more. No man knew better the hazard to the Union that must follow a rupture in the Democratic party. But if Douglas nursed the hope that Democratic senators would follow his lead, he was sadly disappointed.

Three only came to his support--Broderick of California, Pugh of Ohio, and Stuart of Michigan,--while the lists of the administration were full. Green, Bigler, Fitch, in turn were set upon him.

Douglas bitterly resented any attempt to read him out of the party by making the Lecompton const.i.tution the touchstone of genuine Democracy; yet each day made it clearer that the administration had just that end in view. Douglas complained of a tyranny not consistent with free Democratic action. One might differ with the President on every subject but Kansas, without incurring suspicion. Every pensioned letter writer, he complained, had been intimating for the last two weeks that he had deserted the Democratic party and gone over to the Black Republicans. He demanded to know who authorized these tales.[641] Senator Fitch warned him solemnly that the Democratic party was the only political link in the chain which now bound the States together. "None ... will hold that man guiltless, who abandons it upon a question having in it so little of practical importance ...

and by seeking its destruction, thereby admits his not unwillingness that a similar fate should be visited on the Union, perhaps, to subserve his selfish purpose."[642] These attacks roused Douglas to vehement defiance. More emphatically than ever, he declared the Lecompton const.i.tution "a trick, a fraud upon the rights of the people."

If Douglas misjudged the temper of his colleagues, he at least gauged correctly the drift of public sentiment in Illinois and the Northwest.

Of fifty-six Democratic newspapers in Illinois, but one ventured to condone the Lecompton fraud.[643] Ma.s.s meetings in various cities of the Northwest expressed confidence in the course of Senator Douglas.

He now occupied a unique position at the capital. Visitors were quite as eager to see the man who had headed the revolt as to greet the chief executive.[644] His residence, where Mrs. Douglas dispensed a gracious hospitality, was fairly besieged with callers.[645]

Washington society was never gayer than during this memorable winter.[646] None entertained more lavishly than Senator and Mrs.

Douglas. Whatever unpopularity he incurred at the Capitol, she more than offset by her charming and gracious personality. Acknowledged as the reigning queen of the circle in which she moved, Mrs. Douglas displayed a social initiative that seconded admirably the independent, self-reliant att.i.tude of her husband. When Adele Cutts Douglas chose to close the shutters of her house at noon, and hold a reception by artificial light every Sat.u.r.day afternoon, society followed her lead.

There were no more brilliant affairs in Washington than these afternoon receptions and hops at the Douglas residence in Minnesota Block.[647] In contrast to these functions dominated by a thoroughly charming personality, the formal precision of the receptions at the White House was somewhat chilling and forbidding. President Buchanan, bachelor, with his handsome but somewhat self-contained niece, was not equal to this social rivalry.[648] Moreover, the cares of office permitted the perplexed, wearied, and timid executive no respite day or night.

Events in Kansas gave heart to those who were fighting Lecomptonism.

At the election appointed by the convention, the "const.i.tution with slavery" was adopted by a large majority, the free-State people refusing to vote; but the legislature, now in the control of the free-State party, had already provided for a fair vote on the whole const.i.tution. On this second vote the majority was overwhelmingly against the const.i.tution. Information from various sources corroborated the deductions which unprejudiced observers drew from the voting. It was as clear as day that the people of Kansas did not regard the Lecompton const.i.tution as a fair expression of their will.[649]

Ignoring the light which made the path of duty plain, President Buchanan sent the Lecompton const.i.tution to Congress with a message recommending the admission of Kansas.[650] To his mind, the Lecompton convention was legally const.i.tuted and had exercised its powers faithfully. The organic act did not bind the convention to submit to the people more than the question of slavery. Meantime the Supreme Court had handed down its famous decision in the Dred Scott case.

Fortified by this dictum, the President told Congress that slavery existed in Kansas by virtue of the Const.i.tution of the United States.

"Kansas is, at this moment, as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina"! Slavery, then, could be prohibited only by const.i.tutional provision; and those who desired to do away with slavery would most speedily compa.s.s their ends, if they admitted Kansas at once under this const.i.tution.

The President's message with the Lecompton const.i.tution was referred to the Committee on Territories and gave rise to three reports: Senator Green of Missouri presented the majority report, recommending the admission of Kansas under this const.i.tution; Senators Collamer and Wade united on a minority report, leaving Douglas to draft another expressing his dissent on other grounds.[651] Taken all in all, this must be regarded as the most satisfactory and convincing of all Douglas's committee reports. It is strong because it is permeated by a desire for justice, and reinforced at every point by a consummate marshalling of evidence. Barely in his career had his conspicuous qualities as a special pleader been put so unreservedly at the service of simple justice. He planted himself firmly, at the outset, upon the incontrovertible fact that there was no satisfactory evidence that the Lecompton const.i.tution was the act and deed of the people of Kansas.[652]

It had been argued that, because the Lecompton convention had been duly const.i.tuted, with full power to ordain a const.i.tution and establish a government, consequently the proceedings of the convention must be presumed to embody the popular will. Douglas immediately challenged this a.s.sumption. The convention had no more power than the territorial legislature could confer. By no fair construction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act could it be a.s.sumed that the people of the Territory were authorized, "at their own will and pleasure, to resolve themselves into a sovereign power, and to abrogate and annul the organic act and territorial government established by Congress, and to ordain a const.i.tution and State government upon their ruins, without the consent of Congress." Surely, then, a convention which the territorial legislature called into being could not abrogate or impair the authority of that territorial government established by Congress.

Hence, he concluded, the Lecompton const.i.tution, formed without the consent of Congress, must be considered as a memorial or pet.i.tion, which Congress may accept or reject. The convention was the creature of the territorial legislature. "Such being the case, whenever the legislature ascertained that the convention whose existence depended upon its will, had devised a scheme to force a const.i.tution upon the people without their consent, and without any authority from Congress, ... it became their imperative duty to interpose and exert the authority conferred upon them by Congress in the organic act, and arrest and prevent the consummation of the scheme before it had gone into operation."[653] This was an unanswerable argument.

In the prolonged debate upon the admission of Kansas, Douglas took part only as some taunt or challenge brought him to his feet. While the bill for the admission of Minnesota, also reported by the Committee on Territories, was under fire, Senator Brown of Mississippi elicited from Douglas the significant concession, that he did not deem an enabling act absolutely essential, so long as the const.i.tution clearly embodied the will of the people. Neither did he think a submission of the const.i.tution always essential; it was, however, a fair way of ascertaining the popular will, when that will was disputed." Satisfy me that the const.i.tution adopted by the people of Minnesota is their will, and I am prepared to adopt it. Satisfy me that the const.i.tution adopted, or said to be adopted, by the people of Kansas, is their will, and I am prepared to take it.... I will never apply one rule to a free State and another to a slave-holding State."[654] Nevertheless, even his Democratic colleagues continued to believe that slavery had something to do with his opposition. In the cla.s.sic phraseology of Toombs, "there was a 'n.i.g.g.e.r' in it."

The opposition of Douglas began to cause no little uneasiness. Brown paid tribute to his influence, when he declared that if the Senator from Illinois had stood with the administration, "there would not have been a ripple on the surface." "Sir, the Senator from Illinois gives life, he gives vitality, he gives energy, he lends the aid of his mighty genius and his powerful will to the Opposition on this question."[655] But Douglas paid a fearful price for this power. Every possible ounce of pressure was brought to bear upon him. The party press was set upon him. His friends were turned out of office. The whole executive patronage was wielded mercilessly against his political following. The Washington _Union_ held him up to execration as a traitor, renegade, and deserter.[656] "We cannot affect indifference at the treachery of Senator Douglas," said a Richmond paper. "He was a politician of considerable promise. a.s.sociation with Southern gentlemen had smoothed down the rugged vulgarities of his early education, and he had come to be quite a decent and well-behaved person."[657] To political denunciation was now to be added the sting of mean and contemptible personalities.

Small wonder that even the vigorous health of "the Little Giant"

succ.u.mbed to these a.s.saults. For a fortnight he was confined to his bed, rising only by sheer force of will to make a final plea for sanity, before his party took its suicidal plunge. He spoke on the 22d of March under exceptional conditions. In the expectation that he would speak in the forenoon, people thronged the galleries at an early hour, and refused to give up their seats, even when it was announced that the Senator from Illinois would not address the Senate until seven o 'clock in the evening. When the hour came, crowds still held possession of the galleries, so that not even standing room was available. The door-keepers wrestled in vain with an impatient throng without, until by motion of Senator Gwin, ladies were admitted to the floor of the chamber. Even then, Douglas was obliged to pause several times, for the confusion around the doors to subside.[658] He spoke with manifest difficulty, but he was more defiant than ever. His speech was at once a protest and a personal vindication. Denial of the right of the administration to force the Lecompton const.i.tution upon the people of Kansas, went hand in hand with a defense of his own Democracy. Sentences culled here and there suggest not unfairly the stinging rebukes and defiant challenges that accentuated the none too coherent course of his speech:

"I am told that this Lecompton const.i.tution is a party test, a party measure; that no man is a Democrat who does not sanction it ... Sir, who made it a party test? Who made it a party measure?... Who has interpolated this Lecompton const.i.tution into the party platform?... Oh! but we are told it is an Administration measure. Because it is an Administration measure, does it therefore follow that it is a party measure?" ... "I do not recognize the right of the President or his Cabinet ... to tell me my duty in the Senate Chamber." "Am I to be told that I must obey the Executive and betray my State, or else be branded as a traitor to the party, and hunted down by all the newspapers that share the patronage of the government, and every man who holds a petty office in any part of my State to have the question put to him, 'Are you Douglas's enemy? if not, your head comes off.'" "I intend to perform my duty in accordance with my own convictions. Neither the frowns of power nor the influence of patronage will change my action, or drive me from my principles. I stand firmly, immovably upon those great principles of self-government and state sovereignty upon which the campaign was fought and the election won.... If, standing firmly by my principles, I shall be driven into private life, it is a fate that has no terrors for me. I prefer private life, preserving my own self-respect and manhood, to abject and servile submission to executive will. If the alternative be private life or servile obedience to executive will, I am prepared to retire. Official position has no charms for me when deprived of that freedom of thought and action which becomes a gentleman and a senator.'"[659]

On the following day, the Senate pa.s.sed the bill for the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton const.i.tution, having rejected the amendment of Crittenden to submit that const.i.tution to a vote of the people of Kansas. A similar amendment, however, was carried in the House. As neither chamber would recede from its position, a conference committee was appointed to break the deadlock.[660] It was from this committee, controlled by Lecomptonites, that the famous English bill emanated.

Stated briefly, the substance of this compromise measure--for such it was intended to be--was as follows: Congress was to offer to Kansas a conditional grant of public lands; if this land ordinance should be accepted by a popular vote, Kansas was to be admitted to the Union with the Lecompton const.i.tution by proclamation of the President; if it should be rejected, Kansas was not to be admitted until the Territory had a population equal to the unit of representation required for the House of Representatives.

Taken all in all, the bill was as great a concession as could be expected from the administration. Not all were willing to say that the bill provided for a vote on the const.i.tution, but Northern adherents could point to the vote on the land ordinance as an indirect vote upon the const.i.tution. It is not quite true to say that the land grant was a bribe to the voters of Kansas. As a matter of fact, the amount of land granted was only equal to that usually offered to the Territories, and it was considerably less than the area specified in the Lecompton const.i.tution. Moreover, even if the land ordinance were defeated in order to reject the const.i.tution, the Territory was pretty sure to secure as large a grant at some future time. It was rather in the alternative held out, that the English bill was unsatisfactory to those who loved fair play. Still, under the bill, the people of Kansas, by an act of self-denial, could defeat the Lecompton const.i.tution. To that extent, the supporters of the administration yielded to the importunities of the champion of popular sovereignty.

Under these circ.u.mstances it would not be strange if Douglas "wavered."[661] Here was an opportunity to close the rift between himself and the administration, to heal party dissensions, perhaps to save the integrity of the Democratic party and the Union. And the price which he would have to pay was small. He could a.s.sume, plausibly enough,--as he had done many times before in his career,--that the bill granted all that he had ever asked. He was morally sure that the people of Kansas would reject the land grant to rid themselves of the Lecompton fraud. Why hesitate then as to means, when the desired end was in clear view?

Douglas found himself subjected to a new pressure, harder even to resist than any he had yet felt. Some of his staunch supporters in the anti-Lecompton struggle went over to the administration, covering their retreat by just such excuses as have been suggested. Was he wiser and more conscientious than they? A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,--he knew it well,--the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction. And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmanship, a compromise. His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust. They fully expected him to join his former a.s.sociates.

From them he could expect no sympathy in such a dilemma.[662] His political ambitions, no doubt, added to his perplexity. They were bound up in the fate of the party, the integrity of which was now menaced by his revolt. On the other hand, he was fully conscious that his Illinois const.i.tuency approved of his opposition to Lecomptonism and would regard a retreat across this improvised political bridge as both inglorious and treacherous. Agitated by conflicting emotions, Douglas made a decision which probably cost him more anguish than any he ever made; and when all has been said to the contrary, love of fair play would seem to have been his governing motive.[663]

When Douglas rose to address the Senate on the English bill, April 29th, he betrayed some of the emotion under which he had made his decision. He confessed an "anxious desire" to find such provisions as would permit him to support the bill; but he was painfully forced to declare that he could not find the principle for which he had contended, fairly carried out. He was unable to reconcile popular sovereignty with the proposed intervention of Congress in the English bill. "It is intervention with inducements to control the result. It is intervention with a bounty on the one side and a penalty on the other."[664] He frankly admitted that he did not believe there was enough in the bounty nor enough in the penalty to influence materially the vote of the people of Kansas; but it involved "the principle of freedom of election and--the great principle of self-government upon which our inst.i.tutions rest." And upon this principle he took his stand. "With all the anxiety that I have had," said he with deep feeling, "to be able to arrive at a conclusion in harmony with the overwhelming majority of my political friends in Congress, I could not bring my judgment or conscience to the conclusion that this was a fair, impartial, and equal application of the principle."[665]

As though to make reconciliation with the administration impossible, Douglas went on to express his distrust of the provision of the bill for a board of supervisors of elections. Instead of a board of four, two of whom should represent the Territory and two the Federal government, as the Crittenden bill had provided, five were to const.i.tute the board, of whom three were to be United States officials. "Does not this change," asked Douglas significantly, "give ground for apprehension that you may have the Oxford, the Shawnee, and the Delaware Crossing and Kickapoo frauds re-enacted at this election?"[666] The most suspicions Republican could hardly have dealt an unkinder thrust.

There could be no manner of doubt as to the outcome of the English bill in the Senate. Douglas, Stuart, and Broderick were the only Democrats to oppose its pa.s.sage, Pugh having joined the majority. The bill pa.s.sed the House also, nine of Douglas's a.s.sociates in the anti-Lecompton fight going over to the administration.[667] Douglas accepted this defection with philosophic equanimity, indulging in no vindictive feelings.[668] Had he not himself felt misgivings as to his own course?

By midsummer the people of Kansas had recorded nearly ten thousand votes against the land ordinance and the Lecompton const.i.tution. The administration had failed to make Kansas a slave State. Yet the Supreme Court had countenanced the view that Kansas was legally a slave Territory. What, then, became of the great fundamental principle of popular sovereignty? This was the question which Douglas was now called upon to answer.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 621: Report of the Covode Committee, pp. 105-106; Cutts, Const.i.tutional and Party Questions, p. 111; Speech of Douglas at Milwaukee, Wis., October 14, 1860, Chicago _Times and Herald_, October 17, 1860.]

[Footnote 622: Spring, Kansas, p. 213; Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 274.]

[Footnote 623: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 277-278.]

[Footnote 624: _Ibid._, pp. 278-279; Spring, Kansas, p. 223.]

[Footnote 625: See Article VII, of the Kansas const.i.tution, Senate Reports, No. 82, 35 Cong., 1 Sess.]

[Footnote 626: Schedule Section 14.]

[Footnote 627: Covode Report, p. 111.]

[Footnote 628: Chicago _Times_, November 19, 1857.]

[Footnote 629: Chicago _Times_, November 20 and 21, 1857.]

[Footnote 630: Speech at Milwaukee, October 14, 1860, Chicago _Times and Herald_, October 17, 1860.]

[Footnote 631: New York _Tribune_, December 3, 1857.]

[Footnote 632: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 5.]

[Footnote 633: Chicago _Times_, December 19, 1857.]

[Footnote 634: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 17.]

[Footnote 635: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 17-18.]