The Middle Period 1817-1858 Part 32

Mr. Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, moved the reference of this part of the message to the Judiciary committee in the House of Representatives, and made a speech in support of his motion, which was an anti-slavery harangue of the most radical and violent character, and in the course of which he denounced the President and Mr. Webster in unmeasured language as apostates from principle and suitors for Southern favor. The reckless outburst of radical extravagance, although somewhat balanced by many points of sound sense, disgusted the House, and it voted down Mr. Giddings' motion by a large majority.

[Sidenote: Pet.i.tions for the repeal of the law.]

[Sidenote: The Shadrach case.]

Pet.i.tions began now to flow into Congress for the repeal of the law.

Generally they were laid upon the table, but more than once a fierce debate was opened, which threatened to precipitate another contest over the right of pet.i.tion. It was about the time that the Senate was considering what {370} to do with one of these pet.i.tions, offered by Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, in February of 1851, that the news of the failure of the law in the Shadrach case reached Washington. Shadrach, claimed slave of John DeBree, of Norfolk, Va., was rescued by a negro mob, while held in custody in the court-house in Boston under a warrant from the United States Commissioner, Mr. George T. Curtis, and was spirited away to Canada. The mob seems to have had no difficulty in accomplishing its purpose.

[Sidenote: The investigation of the case by Congress.]

The Senate, on motion of Mr. Clay, pa.s.sed a resolution, on February 18th, 1851, calling upon the President for information concerning the failure of the law in the Shadrach case, and the means he had adopted to meet the occurrence, and asking the President if, in his opinion, further means should be placed at his disposal by Congress for enabling him to execute the laws with more success.

On the 21st, the reply of the President was received. It contained an account of the occurrence in Boston; a summary of the laws of the United States and of Ma.s.sachusetts on the subject of confining United States prisoners in the jails of the Commonwealth, which demonstrated the fact that Ma.s.sachusetts had forbidden the use of her jails and the aid of her officials in fugitive slave cases; a declaration of opinion that the President was authorized by the Const.i.tution to use the regular army and navy, when, in his judgment, it was necessary for the suppression of violence and the execution of the laws, and without giving warning of his intention by any proclamation; and a suggestion to Congress to confirm this opinion by a positive act, which would include the militia as well as the regular army and navy, and would authorize a marshal or commissioner of the {371} United States to summon an organized militia force as a part of the posse comitatus.

[Sidenote: The question of increasing the power of the President to execute the law.]

Mr. Clay immediately moved the reference of the communication to the Judiciary committee. This motion called out a three days debate in the Senate, during which it became manifest that the extremists, from both the North and the South, had little faith in the power of the Government to execute the law, and were unfavorable to the policy of using the military power in its execution. Mr. Chase and Mr. Hale, on the one side, and Mr. Butler, Mr. Davis, and Mr. Rhett, on the other, contended that the provision of the Const.i.tution guaranteeing the rendition of fugitive slaves did not require a Congressional act, even if it authorized one. Mr. Davis said that he would see Ma.s.sachusetts quit the Union rather than execute the law by military power within her limits. It was evident that these men were not anxious to have the law executed at all. Their motives for the same must have been very different, but it would hardly be an unfair speculation if one should imagine that the slaveholders were not averse to having the failure of the law for another count in their indictment against the Union.

The moderate men, however, of both the North and the South, claimed that the law was const.i.tutional, that it was politic and necessary, that it had been successfully executed in a number of cases, that it could be executed in practically all cases, that it must be, even though it should require the whole military power of the country, and that the great ma.s.s of the people would sustain it as carrying out the pledges of the Const.i.tution.

Mr. Clay's motion was finally unanimously voted, and, on March 3rd, two reports were presented to the {372} Senate, one signed by all the members of the Judiciary committee except Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, and the other by Mr. Butler alone. The former expressed the opinion that the President already possessed full and adequate powers to execute the laws, and that no further legislation upon the subject was necessary. It also held that the organized military could be summoned and used by a civil officer as a part of the posse comitatus.

Mr. Butler, while agreeing with the other members in recommending no further legislation for the execution of the law, denied that the President had the power from the Const.i.tution to use the regular army and navy at his own discretion in suppressing insurrections and executing the laws, and held that the President could employ these forces for such purposes in the same manner only that he could employ the militia, that is, under the Congressional Acts of 1795 and 1807, which required, among other things, that a proclamation should precede the actual employment of military power in such cases.

Congress closed its session, on the next day, without having changed or modified the law, and without having given the President any additional means for its execution. The thoughts of men were turned again upon the incidents of its execution.

[Sidenote: The Sims case.]

During the spring of 1851, several cases of slave apprehension occurred, the most exciting of which was that of Thomas Sims, claimed in Boston by Mr. James Potter, of Georgia. He was arrested by the City Marshal on the charge of having committed a larceny, and put under guard in the Court House. Charles G. Loring, Robert Rantoul, Jr., and Samuel E. Sewall, lawyers of much ability and men of high social standing, offered their services in defence of the negro. After applying to several judges of the {373} supreme court of the Commonwealth, without success, for a writ of habeas corpus, they finally obtained one from Judge Woodbury, and argued the case before him. The Judge finally refused to interfere with the possession of the negro by the United States Marshal. The United States Commissioner, Mr. George T. Curtis, then heard the case, and issued the certificate for the rendition of the fugitive to his master. In the early morning of the next day, the negro was conducted by three hundred armed policemen to the wharf and placed on board a vessel bound for Savannah. The vessel sailed safely out of port, and the Fugitive Slave Law was, at last, executed in Boston.

[Sidenote: Excitement in Boston over the rendition of Sims.]

During the trial, and for a week afterward, the city was in a fever of excitement. Meetings of the citizens were held in Tremont Temple and Washington Hall, and on the Common, at which the eloquence of Phillips, Channing, Edmund Quincy, and Horace Mann, and the violent words of Garrison and Parker, stirred the indignation of their hearers and lashed it into an almost rebellious fury. A very large part of the inhabitants felt that a stain had been put upon the city, which must be wiped out by any means necessary to accomplish it.

The summer months of 1851 now pa.s.sed without any notable instances of resistance to the law, and conservative men, of both the North and the South, began to hope that the worst was over, and that the North would acquiesce without further opposition in the execution of the odious Act.

[Sidenote: The "Jerry rescue."]

In the early autumn, however, violence again appeared. The minor outbreaks were soon overshadowed by an event which occurred at Syracuse, N. Y., in October, 1851. A negro, named Jerry McHenry, who had lived for several years in Syracuse, was suddenly {374} seized and carried before the United States Commissioner. In the course of the hearing he eluded the officer having him in charge, and bounded out of the court-room. He was, however, overtaken and, after a fierce struggle, recaptured and brought back. A little later, a party of highly respectable men, led by Gerrit Smith and the Rev. S. J. May, broke into the court-room, rescued the negro, and smuggled him safely across the Canadian boundary. Eighteen of these gentlemen were indicted and ordered to appear for trial. But the whole community manifested so much active sympathy with them that the matter was quietly dropped.

[Sidenote: The President's rebuke.]

In his message to Congress, of December 2nd, 1851, President Fillmore referred to these cases of resistance to the execution of the law; declared the law to be required by the Const.i.tution; denounced the opposition to its execution as directed against the Const.i.tution and the Union itself; repeated his dictum that the Compromise Measures were a final settlement of the subjects embraced in them; and congratulated the country upon the general acquiescence in these Measures manifested throughout the Union.

[Sidenote: Mr. Foote's finality resolutions.]

Two days later, Mr. Foote introduced into the Senate a resolution declaring these Measures to be a definite settlement of the questions embraced in them, and recommending acquiescence in them by all good citizens.

[Sidenote: The failure of the resolutions to pa.s.s the Senate, but their success in the House.]

The debate upon this proposition, which began December 8th, and lasted, off and on, until February 28th, was, in the main, a discussion between four Southern members--Mr. Foote, Mr. Butler, Mr.

Rhett, and Mr. Clemens--during which the history of the movements of the Southern leaders in 1850 and 1851 were brought to light, beginning with the Southern Address, issued {375} from Washington before the pa.s.sage of the Compromise Measures, for the purpose of producing a united action on the part of the South in behalf of Southern rights, and the call of the Nashville convention by the Mississippi legislature, and ending with the demand of the convention for the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to the Pacific Ocean, and the declaration by the convention and by conventions in Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina, of the abstract right of secession as a principle of the political system of the Union. It was evident that these movements had approached dangerously near to an attempt at something like practical secession, and that the Southern leaders were now anxious to underrate their significance. The Northern Senators allowed these Southern brethren to proceed with criminations and recriminations against each other, until they themselves were convinced that they would lose more by the continuance of the debate than they could gain by the pa.s.sage of the resolution. After a fiery speech by Mr. Clemens, on February 28th, 1852, the attempt to pa.s.s the resolution was abandoned in the Senate.

The House of Representatives, on the other hand, incited by memorials sent into it by the legislatures of New Jersey and Iowa, actually pa.s.sed resolutions, on April 5th, 1852, by a large majority, declaring the finality of the Measures.

Pet.i.tions began again to pour into the Senate for the repeal of the law. Mr. Seward, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Sumner presented such pet.i.tions and tried to get a hearing upon them, but the Senate voted to lay them all on the table.

[Sidenote: The National conventions of 1852 and the finality of the compromise measures.]

Such was the situation when the two great parties a.s.sembled in their National conventions for the {376} nomination of their respective candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. It was indicated from the first day of the Congressional session of 1851-52, that the finality of the Compromise Acts would be a plank in the platforms of both parties, although it was soon revealed that the Whig party leaders were divided upon the subject.

The Democratic convention met June 1st, at Baltimore, and, on account of the three-cornered fight between Buchanan, Ca.s.s, and Douglas, was obliged to produce a "dark horse." This proved to be General Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, a good lawyer, a brave soldier, a fine orator, and a courtly gentleman. He was known to be a true friend to the Compromise Acts, and was entirely acceptable to the South. The platform contained the finality plank.

The Whig convention met fifteen days later, at the same place. The Northern Whigs, under the lead of Seward, were determined to defeat both Fillmore and Webster, chiefly on account of their fidelity in the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. The Southerners were for Fillmore first, and then Webster, for the same reason. A sufficient number of the Northern delegates voted with the Southerners to put the finality plank into the platform, and then offered the Southerners one of their own fellow-citizens, General Scott, the military hero of the country.

The Southerners finally accepted the offer.

If Seward desired the defeat and destruction of the Whig party, he could not have acted more adroitly. It was to be foreseen that the Northern Whigs would not be wholly faithful to their own choice upon that platform, and that many of the Southern Whigs would arrive at the conclusion that the Democratic platform and the Democratic candidate furnished stronger guarantees for {377} the finality of the Compromise Measures than the Whig platform and candidate did.

[Sidenote: The deaths of Clay and of Webster, and the appearance of a Free-soil candidate.]

Clay died at the beginning of the campaign, and Webster at the end of it; and, in the midst of it, Sumner succeeded in getting in his ferocious attack on the Fugitive Slave Law, in a four hours speech before the Senate, and the Free-soilers set up a candidate, Mr. Hale, for the suffrages of the Abolitionists and the anti-slavery-extensionists. All of these events were unfavorable to the Whigs; still, they did not probably determine the result. The people were determined to have peace in regard to the slavery question, and they felt that the Democratic party was more likely to give them the peace they desired than the Whig party.

[Sidenote: The overwhelming Democratic victory of 1852.]

The Democratic victory was overwhelming. Twenty-seven Commonwealths gave their electoral vote for General Pierce, and only four gave theirs for General Scott; while the popular vote cast for Mr. Hale was only about one-half as large as that cast for Mr. Van Buren in 1848.

The Democrats themselves were surprised. Since the "era of good feeling," no presidential candidate had received such a vote, either popular or electoral, as that now given to General Pierce. The country accepted the decision, and settled down into universal acquiescence in the Compromise Measures, and in the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, in most sections cheerfully, but in some sullenly and with bitterness of heart.

[Sidenote: The true policy of the slaveholders, and their failure to discern it.]

Had the slaveholders made a wise use of this, to them, most favorable turn in affairs, there is little question that they might have preserved indefinitely their peculiar inst.i.tution where it existed.

But wisdom in the case meant that the slaveholders should themselves give no further {378} occasion for slavery agitation. It meant that they should cease to claim the rendition of their fugitive slaves by the general Government; that they should turn their attention to perfecting the police administration in the slaveholding Commonwealths for preventing the escape of their slaves, and let the few slaves who might have cleverness enough to elude the police of these Commonwealths go; and that they should, above all things, abstain from any attempt to extend slavery beyond the limits placed upon it by existing law. The status of every inch of the territory of the United States, in reference to the legality or illegality of slavery, was now fixed, and the public opinion of the country, of the world, and of the age, would never permit that status to be altered to the advantage of slavery.

It is an interesting, though by no means an inexplicable, fact that the slaveholders in the Commonwealths south of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, showed more tendency to follow this view of their best policy than those within these border Commonwealths. These latter were an efficient protection to the former in preventing the escape of slaves, while they were themselves exposed in much higher degree to loss. Still, it would have been the true policy for the slaveholders in these also to have looked to their own police administration for the recapture of their runaways before the latter had reached free soil, and to have considered that a slave having sufficient intelligence to elude this had already attained the point of mental activity and of courage which required in good morals his liberation, and made his further retention in slavery both a wrong to himself and a danger to the peace of the slaveholding community in which he might be held in bondage.

We may fairly say that the slaveholders in the more southern Commonwealths sustained the Fugitive Slave {379} Law more out of consideration for their brothers in the border Commonwealths than for the sake of their own immediate interests, or from their own convictions of its policy, while they would have greatly preferred the restriction of slavery to the territory south of the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to the Pacific, with some sort of a guarantee of its existence there during the Territorial period, to any chance of extending slavery north of that line by the repeal of the prohibitions already existing. It is not at all surprising, in view of this state of feeling in 1852, that, ten years later, the Confederates considered themselves left in the lurch by the border Commonwealths, in the support of whose views and interests they had done so much to provoke the North to the contest.

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CHAPTER XIX.

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

The Connection of California with the Mississippi Valley--Nebraska--Mr. Douglas' Nebraska Bill and Report--The Surprising a.s.sumptions in the Report--Mr. Douglas' Purpose--The Report and Bill Together in Conflict with the Act of 1820--The New Section--Mr. Dixon's Proposed Amendment--Mr. Blair's Letter in Reference to Mr. Seward's Connection with Dixon's Proposition--Douglas and Dixon--Mr. Douglas' New Bill--The Free-soil Protest Against the Bill--Mr. Douglas' Reply to the Address--Mr. Chase's First Amendment to the Bill--The Southern Whigs Aroused by Mr. Wade's Accusations--Mr.

Chase's Amendment Lost--Mr. Douglas' Last Change in the Wording of the Clause--Mr. Everett's Views--Mr. Houston's Opposition to the Bill--Mr.

Bell's Att.i.tude Toward the Bill--Mr. Douglas' Amendment Pa.s.sed by the Senate--Mr. Chase's Amendments--Mr. Bell's Argument Against the Bill--Mr. Douglas' Final Argument--The Pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill by the Senate--a.n.a.lysis of the Vote Upon the Bill--Development of Popular Opposition to the Bill--The Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the House--The Relation of the Administration to the Bill--President Pierce and Mr. Davis--The Bill Taken up in the Committee of the Whole of the House of Representatives--Mr. A. H. Stephens' Management of the Bill--The Bill Pa.s.sed and Signed by the President--a.n.a.lysis of the Vote on the Bill in the House--What the Figures Taught--The Kansas-Nebraska Act a Stupendous Fallacy.