The Middle Period 1817-1858 Part 33

When President Fillmore's last annual message to Congress was sent in, on December 6th, 1852, the quiet of the country in regard to the slavery question was more {381} complete than it had been since 1830.

The President did not even mention the subject. Evidently the people believed that the Measures of 1850, and their cordial endors.e.m.e.nt in the elections just pa.s.sed, had finally solved the great question, in so far as the Congress could solve it at all. But never was there a more deceptive peace. It was merely the dead calm before the dread cyclone.

[Sidenote: The connection of California with the Mississippi valley.]

This time the storm came from the Northwest. After the acquisitions of the territory upon the Pacific coast, it was immediately apparent that these new possessions must be connected, so soon as possible, with the line of Commonwealths on the west bank of the Mississippi by the Territorial organization of the country lying between. Mr. Douglas had conceived this idea as far back as 1847, and had endeavored from that time forward to secure the attention of Congress for its realization.

The seemingly more important questions involved in the Compromise Measures gave little room for the consideration of other subjects between 1848 and 1850. Now, however, that these questions had apparently received their final settlement, the moment seemed opportune for the solution of the problem of binding the Pacific slope with the settled country of the west valley of the Mississippi.

[Sidenote: Nebraska.]

In the Congressional session of 1852-53, a bill pa.s.sed the House of Representatives for organizing the region lying between Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, and between the lat.i.tudes thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, and forty-three degrees, into the Territory of Nebraska. A vote upon the measure was, however, not reached in the Senate before the close of the session.

During the consideration of the bill in the House, Mr. Howe, of Pennsylvania, asked Mr. Giddings, of Ohio, {382} who was a member of the committee on Territories, from which the bill had come, why there was no clause in the bill prohibiting slavery. Mr. Giddings replied that the Act of 1820 did that for all of this territory. Whereupon Mr.

Howe used these significant words: "I should like to know of the gentleman of Ohio, if he has not some recollection of a compromise made since that time." Mr. Giddings quietly replied: "That does not affect this question."

During the discussion of the bill in the Senate, Mr. Atchison, of Missouri, said that one of his objections to the organization of this Territory was that Missouri would be surrounded on three sides by free soil, into which the slaves of the citizens of Missouri could easily escape, but that, as he could see no prospect of a repeal of the Act of 1820 making this region free soil, he would not be willing to delay the organization of the Territory on that account.

There is no explanation of the language used by these three gentlemen, except that Mr. Howe had conceived that, in some way or other, the Measures of 1850 had modified the Act of 1820 prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, and that Mr. Giddings and Mr. Atchison had never thought of such a thing.

On December 14th, 1853, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, introduced a bill into the Senate for the organization of Nebraska Territory. It was referred to the committee on Territories, of which Mr. Douglas was chairman.

[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' Nebraska bill and report.]

On January 4th, 1854, Mr. Douglas presented a bill from the committee, with a special report, in which latter doc.u.ment the principles of the laws of the United States in respect to slavery in the Territories, as understood by the committee, or rather as Mr. Douglas {383} understood them, were stated. The report was a more important doc.u.ment than the bill, since the bill, drawn in vague terms upon this subject, was to be interpreted by the principles declared in the report. The first paragraph of the report read: "The princ.i.p.al amendments which your committee deem it their duty to commend to the favorable action of the Senate, in a special report, are those in which the principles established by the Compromise Measures of 1850, so far as they are applicable to Territorial organization, are proposed to be affirmed and carried into practical operation within the limits of the new Territory." The report then declares these principles to be: "That all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein, by their appropriate representatives, to be chosen by them for that purpose: That all cases involving t.i.tle to slaves, and questions of personal freedom, are to be referred to the adjudication of the local tribunals, with the right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States: That the provisions of the Const.i.tution of the United States, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into faithful execution in all the organized Territories the same as in the States."

[Sidenote: The surprising a.s.sumptions in the report.]

These were most astonishing and confusing propositions in a variety of respects. In the first place, the claim that the Compromise Acts of 1850 contained any general principles of Territorial organization in respect to slavery, which were applicable to any other Territories than those organized under these Acts, was a surprising a.s.sumption. It was an induction from one precedent when there were half a dozen precedents against it. The fact was that the Acts of 1850 only set up a rule for a single case, a rule patched {384} up by compromise, and not derived from any general principle. This claim was also, if admitted, highly confusing. Was it a principle of the Const.i.tution, and therefore supreme over all Congressional policies in the case? Or was it simply a principle of Congressional policy? If the former, then it had already rendered the prohibition upon slavery in the Louisiana territory, by the Act of 1820, nugatory. If it was the latter, then it would require a new act of Congress to apply it to any other Territory than Utah and New Mexico. In the second place, the statement, also contained in the report, that there was a p.r.o.nounced conflict of opinion in the country upon the question of the const.i.tutional validity of the Act of 1820, prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, was equally surprising. n.o.body had heard the noise of any such conflict. The fact is, that conflict was yet to be aroused. And, lastly, it was most highly surprising and confusing that the attempt to rouse this conflict should proceed from the bosom of the party which had won its splendid victory under the peace issue upon the subject of slavery, and should be inaugurated by a member of that party from the North.

[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' purpose.]

What was, or what could have been, Mr. Douglas' purpose? It is held by most historians that it was simply a reckless and dishonest bid for Southern support, in his ambitious plans to gain the presidency. Most of Mr. Douglas' political opponents at the time believed that he was animated solely by that desire. His character was, according to their view, that of a scheming politician, who would sacrifice anything and anybody for his own advancement. While we can understand this radical estimate of him by those with whom he was in daily conflict, it does seem that the historians, with his subsequent career before them, might {385} suspect, at least, that some conviction of the rightfulness of his views may have aided in moving him to the position which he took. Mr. Douglas was a Western Democrat; that is, he was a radical Democrat. He had, therefore, an exaggerated notion of the virtues of the people, and of the importance of local autonomy. He resented the idea that the st.u.r.dy adventurers who accomplished the first settlement of a Western Territory were not as fully capable of local self-government, from the very outset, as the "effeminate"

inhabitants of an Eastern Commonwealth. He repudiated the notion that they needed any pupilage from the general Government in the management of public affairs. He was not alone in such views. It is safe to say that the ma.s.s of the people in his section held the same views at that time. They have not progressed much beyond them now. Is it not, then, fair to say that Mr. Douglas, in all probability, really believed that the reference of the questions in regard to slavery to the residents of each Territory, as well as to those of each "State," was the true principle of the political science of the Republic, and the true policy of its legislation? If his convictions and his ambition went hand in hand, and if his convictions were not the product of his ambition, should he be so harshly criticised for declaring them? It is true that his announcement of them filled the land with clamor and angry dispute, and that their adoption by Congress led to violence, bloodshed, and war; but can we conclude that he had any conception whatsoever that this could be the result of them? Is it not far more probable that he thought the quiet of the country would be confirmed and forever established by their general acceptance? There is certainly ground for this view of his motives. It is certainly very improbable that there was ever any balancing, in his mind, of risks to his country's peace {386} and safety against his ambition for the presidency. It is much more probable that he believed his principles, without his presidency, would contribute, in high degree, to the peace and welfare of his country, but that, taken together with his presidency, they would shed untold blessings upon the land. This is no unusual psychology. It is decidedly common.

[Sidenote: The doctrines of the report at first not inserted in the bill.]

Mr. Douglas did not, however, insert his doctrine of popular sovereignty in the Territories, and his dictum as to the repeal of the slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820 by the principles of the Acts of 1850, in the bill. Possibly he thought it unnecessary. Possibly he did not venture to do so. Possibly he did intend to leave things in such an ambiguous shape that one interpretation might be put upon them in one section, and a somewhat different one in another. He would hardly have been an American politician if he had not, at some time or other in his life, practised something of this kind. This is what they call feeling the public pulse, which is a main point in the practice of democratic statesmanship. It is not particularly edifying to the academic statesman, but it is business, and Americans are a business people. Mr. Douglas simply modelled the bill after the Utah and New Mexico bills, in respect to slavery, that is, he made no mention of the subject in that part of the bill which provided for the Territorial period, but added a clause which read: "When admitted as a State, the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as its Const.i.tution may prescribe at the time of its admission."

[Sidenote: The report and bill together in conflict with the Act of 1820.]

Taken apart from the report, the bill might be interpreted as not in conflict with the Act of 1820, but taken with the report, it meant the repeal of the Act of 1820, and the attribution of all power over the question of {387} slavery in the Territory to those who might squat upon its soil. Of course it was entirely within the power of Congress to repeal the Act of 1820. The restraints resting upon Congress in regard to this matter were moral, not legal. If Congress would, nevertheless, do it, it must do it in the form of a statute, and not in that of a report doubting the const.i.tutionality of the Act, or even declaring it unconst.i.tutional. It was entirely natural that the demand should be made for clearing the bill of its ambiguities.

[Sidenote: The new section.]

Before the demand came, however, the committee itself did something in this direction. When the bill was printed, on January 7th, it contained twenty sections. On the 10th, a revised edition of it appeared, which contained twenty-one sections. The last section was the dictum of the report in regard to the principles of the Measures of 1850 upon the subject of slavery in the Territories. The committee explained that it had been left out of the first draft by a clerical error. This change did not, however, clear the bill of all ambiguity.

The added provision was declaratory only, and did not expressly repeal the Act of 1820.

[Sidenote: Mr. Dixon's proposed amendment.]

At length, on the 16th, Mr. Dixon, of Kentucky, gave notice to the Senate that he should move, as an amendment to the bill, a provision expressly repealing the Act of 1820 in so far as it prohibited slavery in any of the Territories of the United States.

[Sidenote: Mr. Blair's letter in reference to Mr. Seward's connection with Dixon's proposition.]

In a letter of May 17th, 1873, to Mr. Gideon Welles, Mr. Montgomery Blair wrote of Mr. Seward: "I shall never forget how shocked I was at his telling me that he was the man who put Archy Dixon, the Whig Senator from Kentucky in 1854, up to moving the repeal of the {388} Missouri compromise, as an amendment to Douglas' first Kansas [Nebraska?] bill, and had himself forced the repeal by that movement, and had thus brought to life the Republican Party. Dixon was to out-Herod Herod at the South, and he was to out-Herod Herod at the North."

If this be true, it was a most reprehensible trick of unscrupulous politics. Mr. Seward scoffed at the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"

in the Territories as arrant nonsense, and knew that the a.s.sertion of any such doctrine as a principle of the law of the country in respect to Territorial organization would rouse the North to angry and bitter resistance. What he did, he did with his eyes open. His vision did not probably reach so far as to civil war, but he knew that the risks of another slavery agitation were very grave. Neither could the ambiguity in Mr. Douglas' bill, and the necessity for relieving it of this obscurity, palliate such an offense. If he desired to make Mr.

Douglas' bill entirely plain he should have done this, not by holding out a temptation to the South to enter upon a new course of slavery extension, but by an amendment a.s.serting the continuing validity of the slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820. Mr. Sumner did this very thing on the next day. It was, however, too late to chain the spirit which Dixon's fatal move had loosed.

[Sidenote: Douglas and Dixon.]

It is said that Mr. Douglas was surprised and disconcerted by Mr.

Dixon's notice, and endeavored to dissuade him from carrying out his expressed intention, but was finally convinced by Mr. Dixon that the proposed amendment was only the fair and honest statement of const.i.tutional principles, and of the legal results of the Compromise of 1850, and only made distinct and express what was unclear, though implied, in the bill.

{389} [Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' new bill.]

On the 23rd, Mr. Douglas brought in a new bill, and offered it as a subst.i.tute for the original bill. The new bill contained a clause declaring that that part of the Act of 1820 prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was inoperative, being contrary to, and superseded by, the principles of the legislation of 1850. Mr. Douglas' new bill changed the southern boundary from thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to thirty-seven degrees, made the northern boundary run up to the forty-ninth parallel west of Minnesota Territory, and cut this vast domain of nearly five hundred thousand square miles in area into two Territories by the fortieth parallel of lat.i.tude, the one to the north of it to be called Nebraska, and the one to the south of it Kansas. Mr. Dixon immediately expressed himself as satisfied with the provisions of the new bill, and said that they fulfilled the purposes of the amendment which he had intended to offer, and that he should, therefore, withhold the same. The Senate agreed to take up the bill on the following Monday.

[Sidenote: The Free-soil protest against the bill.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' reply to the address.]

On the same day that Mr. Douglas presented this second bill, there appeared in the _National Era_, the Abolition journal at Washington, and in several New York City papers, the noted address, signed by Messrs. Chase, Sumner, Wade, Smith, and De Witt, in which the Douglas bill was denounced in the most trenchant language as "a gross violation of a sacred pledge, as a criminal betrayal of precious rights, as a part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism inhabited by masters and slaves." The contents of this celebrated paper const.i.tuted, it may be said, the {390} first draft of the creed of the party to be founded on the doctrine of resistance to slavery extension, the Republican party. The propositions contained in it drove Mr. Douglas to a fierce diatribe against their authors, in which he included an elaborate argument in defence of his dictum, that the Measures of 1850 had rendered the slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820 inoperative. He contended that the fact that Congress had, in the joint resolution admitting Texas, provided that in Texan territory north of the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes slavery should be prohibited, proved that Congress and the people of the United States understood the legislation of 1820 to mean that the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was to be run through any and all territory that might be subsequently acquired by the United States; that the refusal of Congress to do this in regard to the territory acquired from Mexico had made the establishment of a new principle in regard to slavery in the Territories necessary; that that principle, as established by the legislation of 1850, was the neutrality of Congress in the question, and the right of the residents in each Territory to settle the question for themselves; and that this new principle had superseded the old principle and rendered all legislation under the old principle inoperative.

[Sidenote: Mr. Chase's amendment to the bill.]

[Sidenote: The Southern Whigs aroused by Mr. Wade's accusations.]

[Sidenote: The Douglas doctrine convincing to many.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Chase's amendment lost.]

Such jurisprudence in respect to the effect upon each other of statutes relating to different and distinct Territories had never been heard before, and it was easy to show it to be a tissue of sophistries from beginning to end. It was entirely evident that Mr. Douglas and his committee shrank from proposing a bare and bald repeal of the slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820, and sought to avoid the responsibility of doing so under the convenient claim that it had already been repealed. But {391} Mr. Chase was determined to make them take this responsibility, and to expose their fallacies in their attempts to escape it. On February 3rd, Mr. Chase moved to remove from the bill the words referring to the Measures of 1850, and their effect upon the Act of 1820, and make the bill simply repeal the slavery prohibition of the Act of 1820, in so far as it applied to the Territories to be organized by the bill. Mr. Chase supported his amendment in a powerful speech, in which he demonstrated most clearly the fallacy and the duplicity of the doctrine which held that the legislation of 1850 in regard to Utah and New Mexico had repealed the legislation of 1820 in regard to the Louisiana territory north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. Both he and his colleague, Mr.

Wade, went, however, too far in denouncing the subterfuge as a conspiracy between the Southerners and the friends of Douglas to extend slavery. It was especially imprudent, to say the least, in Mr.

Wade to do so. The Southern Whigs were highly incensed at the charge of conspiring with Northern Democrats, made by one of their own party, and they repudiated the accusation with great earnestness. Besides this, the Douglas idea of "popular sovereignty," or, as we now call it, home rule, in the Territories, had won many adherents. There is no question that a great many men, in both the North and the South, now began to feel that Mr. Douglas had discovered the true principle in regard to slavery in the Territories. Mr. Chase's amendment was lost by a vote of thirty to thirteen. The thirteen voting in favor of the amendment were all from the North. Of those voting against it, ten were from the North, and twenty from the South. Nineteen Senators, ten of whom were from the South, did not vote at all. The {392} vote meant that the large majority of those voting held that, in some way or other, the legislation of 1850 had repealed the slavery prohibition in the legislation of 1820. This was execrable jurisprudence, and even Mr. Ca.s.s, who was really the father of the idea of home rule in the Territories, dissented from it, and voted for Mr. Chase's amendment.

[Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' last change in the wording of the clause.]

In spite of this support by the majority, Mr. Douglas was apparently disquieted by the att.i.tude of Mr. Ca.s.s, and by the arguments against the correctness of his doctrine. He, himself, now moved to strike out of the bill the words: "which was superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, and is hereby declared inoperative," and to insert instead thereof the words: "which being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void, it being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions in their own way, subject only to the Const.i.tution of the United States."

[Sidenote: Mr. Everett's views.]

In a most able argument, remarkable both for its strong logic and its admirable temper, Mr. Everett demonstrated the weakness of Mr.

Douglas' proposition in its last form, the declaration of inconsistency between the legislation of 1820 and that of 1850. He showed conclusively that, in place of an inconsistency, here were simply two policies in reference to different Territories, in which different conditions and relations obtained. He predicted that the {393} insistence upon the same policy for all the Territories would lead to the struggle for determining whether they should be all slave or all free, and he demonstrated that "popular sovereignty" in the Territories was an illusion, since Congress could not by any act of its own divest itself of its duty, laid upon it by the Const.i.tution, to legislate for the Territories. Mr. Everett was a member of the committee on Territories, from which the bill had proceeded, and his views should, on this account, have possessed an added weight.

[Sidenote: Mr. Houston's opposition to the bill.]

Mr. Houston, of Texas, another member of the committee, now declared himself against the bill, on the ground, among other reasons, that it would reopen the slavery question by the destruction of one of the great measures upon which the settlement of that question rested.