Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1
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Title: Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1
Author: James Gillespie Blaine
Release date: April 17, 2007 [eBook #21128]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21128
Credits: Produced by Ed Ferris
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY YEARS OF CONGRESS, VOL. 1 ***
Produced by Ed Ferris
Transcriber's note:
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Four notes from the Errata to Vol. I (in Vol. II) have been added, and
the other corrections indicated there made.
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2nd proof completed Apr. 11th, 2007.
Errata corrected Apr. 13th.
Submitted Apr. 13th.
[Frontispiece: v1.jpg]
[Signature] James G. Blaine
TWENTY YEARS OF CONGRESS:
FROM
LINCOLN TO GARFIELD.
WITH A REVIEW OF
THE EVENTS WHICH LED TO THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION OF 1860.
BY
JAMES G. BLAINE.
VOLUME I.
NORWICH, CONN.:
THE HENRY BILL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
1884.
COPYRIGHT, 1884,
BY JAMES G. BLAINE.
_All rights reserved._
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY,
BOSTON, MASS.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
A REVIEW OF THE EVENTS WHICH LED TO THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION OF
1860.
Original Compromises between the North and the South embodied in
the Constitution.--Early Dissatisfaction with National Boundaries.
--Acquisition of Louisiana from France by President Jefferson.--
Bonaparte's Action and Motive in ceding Louisiana.--State of
Louisiana admitted to the Union against Opposition in the North.--
Agitation of the Slavery Question in Connection with the Admission
of Missouri to the Union.--The Two Missouri Compromises of 1820
and 1821.--Origin and Development of the Abolition Party.--Struggle
over the Right of Petition.
CHAPTER II.
Review of events before 1860 (_continued_).--Early Efforts to
acquire Texas.--Course of President Tyler.--Mr. Calhoun appointed
Secretary of State.--His Successful Management of the Texas Question.
--His Hostility to Mr. Van Buren.--Letters of Mr. Clay and Mr. Van
Buren opposing the Annexation of Texas.--Mr. Clay nominated as the
Whig Candidate for the President in 1844.--Van Buren's Nomination
defeated.--Mr. Polk selected as the Democratic Candidate.--Disquietude
of Mr. Clay.--His Change of Ground.--His Defeat.--Prolonged Rivalry
between Mr. Clay and General Jackson.--Texas formally annexed to
the Union.
CHAPTER III.
Review (_continued_).--Triumph of the Democratic Party.--Impending
Troubles with Mexico.--Position of Parties.--Struggle for the
Equality of Free and Slave States.--Character of the Southern
Leaders.--Their Efforts to control the Government.--Conservative
Course of Secretaries Buchanan and Marcy.--Reluctant to engage in
War with Mexico.--The Oregon Question, 54 deg. 40', or 49 deg..--Critical
Relations with the British Government.--Treaty of 1846.--Character
of the Adjustment.--Our Probable Loss by Unwise Policy of the
Democratic Party.
CHAPTER IV.
Review (_continued_).--Relations with Mexico.--General Taylor
marches his Army to the Rio Grande.--First Encounter with the
Mexican Army.--Excitement in the United States.--Congress declares
War against Mexico.--Ill Temper of the Whigs.--Defeat of the
Democrats in the Congressional Elections of 1846.--Policy of Mr.
Polk in Regard to Acquisition of Territory from Mexico.--Three-
Million Bill.--The Famous Anti-slavery Proviso moved by David
Wilmot.--John Quincy Adams.--His Public Service.--Robert C. Winthrop
chosen Speaker.--Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.--Presidential Election
of 1848.--Effort of the Administration to make a Democratic Hero
out of the Mexican War.--Thomas H. Benton for Lieutenant-General.
--Bill defeated.--Nomination of General Taylor for the Presidency
by the Whigs.--Nomination of General Cass by the Democratic Party.
--Van Buren refuses to support him.--Democratic Bolt in New York.
--Buffalo Convention and the Organization of the Free-soil Party.
--Nomination of Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams.--Mr. Clay's
Discontent.--Mr. Webster's Speech at Marshfield.--General Taylor
elected.--The Barnburners of New York.--Character and Public Services
of Mr. Van Buren.
CHAPTER V.
Review (_continued_).--Contrast between General Taylor and General
Cass.--The Cabinet of President Taylor.--Political Condition of
the Country.--Effect produced by the Discovery of Gold in California.
--Convening of Thirty-first Congress.--Election of Howell Cobb as
Speaker.--President Taylor's Message.--His Recommendations Distasteful
to the South.--Illustrious Membership of the Senate.--Mr. Clay and
the Taylor Administration.--Mr. Calhoun's Last Speech in the Senate.
--His Death.--His Character and Public Services.--Mr. Webster's
7th of March Speech.--Its Effect upon the Public and upon Mr.
Webster.--Mr. Clay's Committee of Thirteen.--The Omnibus Bill.--
Conflict with General Taylor's Administration.--Death of the
President.--Mr. Fillmore reverses Taylor's Policy and supports the
Compromise Measures.--Defeat of Compromise Bill.--Passage of the
Measures separately.--Memorable Session of Congress.--Whig and
Democratic Parties sustain the Compromise Measures.--National
Conventions.--Whigs nominate Winfield Scott over Fillmore.--Mr.
Clay supports Fillmore.--Mr. Webster's Friends.--Democrats nominate
Franklin Pierce.--Character of the Campaign.--Overwhelming Defeat
of Scott.--Destruction of the Whig Party.--Death of Mr. Clay.--
Death of Mr. Webster.--Their Public Characters and Services
compared.
CHAPTER VI.
Review (_continued_).--The Strength of the Democratic Party in
1853.--Popular Strength not so great as Electoral Strength.--The
New President's Pledge not to re-open the Slavery Question.--How
he failed to maintain that Pledge.--The North-west Territory.--Anti-
slavery Restriction of the Missouri Compromise.--Movement to repeal
it by Mr. Clay's Successor in the Senate.--Mr. Douglas adopts the
policy of repealing the Restriction.--It is made an Administration
Measure and carried through Congress.--Colonel Benton's Position.
--Anti-slavery Excitement developed in the Country.--Destruction
of the Whig Party.--New Political Alliances.--American Party.--Know-
Nothings.--Origin and Growth of the Republican Party.--Pro-slavery
Development in the South.--Contest for the Possession of Kansas.--
Prolonged Struggle.--Disunion Tendencies developing in the South.
--Election of N. P. Banks to the Speakership of the House.--The
Presidential Election of 1856.--Buchanan.--Fremont.--Fillmore.--
The Slavery Question the Absorbing Issue.--Triumph of Buchanan.--
Dred Scott Decision.--Mr. Lincoln's Version of it.--Chief Justice
Taney.
CHAPTER VII.
Review (_continued_).--Continuance of the Struggle for Kansas.--
List of Governors.--Robert J. Walker appointed Governor by President
Buchanan.--His Failure.--The Lecompton Constitution fraudulently
adopted.--Its Character.--Is transmitted to Congress by President
Buchanan.--He recommends the Admission of Kansas under its Provisions.
--Pronounces Kansas a Slave State.--Gives Full Scope and Effect to
the Dred Scott Decision.--Senator Douglas refuses to sustain the
Lecompton Iniquity.--His Political Embarrassment.--Breaks with the
Administration.--Value of his Influence against Slavery in Kansas.
--Lecompton Bill passes the Senate.--Could not be forced through
the House.--The English Bill substituted and passed.--Kansas spurns
the Bribe.--Douglas regains his Popularity with Northern Democrats.
--Illinois Republicans bitterly hostile to him.--Abraham Lincoln
nominated to contest the Re-election of Douglas to the Senate.--
Lincoln challenges Douglas to a Public Discussion.--Character of
Each as a Debater.--They meet Seven Times in Debate.--Douglas re-
elected.--Southern Senators arraign Douglas.--His Defiant Answer.
--Danger of Sectional Division in the Democratic Party.
CHAPTER VIII.
Excited Condition of the South.--The John Brown Raid at Harper's
Ferry.--Character of Brown.--Governor Wise.--Hot Temper.--Course
of Republicans in Regard to John Brown.--Misunderstanding of the
Two Sections.--Assembling of the Charleston Convention.--Position
of Douglas and his Friends.--Imperious Demands of Southern Democrats.
--Caleb Cushing selected for Chairman of the Convention.--The South
has Control of the Committee on Resolutions.--Resistance of the
Douglas Delegates.--They defeat the Report of the Committee.--
Delegates from Seven Southern States withdraw.--Convention unable
to make a Nomination.--Adjourns to Baltimore.--Convention divides.
--Nomination of both Douglas and Breckinridge.--Constitutional
Union Convention.--Nomination of Bell and Everett.--The Chicago
Convention.--Its Membership and Character.--Mr. Seward's Position.
--His Disabilities.--Work of his Friends, Thurlow Weed and William
M. Evarts.--Opposition of Horace Greeley.--Objections from Doubtful
States.--Various Candidates.--Nomination of Lincoln and Hamlin.--
Four Presidential Tickets in the Field.--Animated Canvass.--The
Long Struggle over.--The South defeated.--Election of Lincoln.--
Political Revolution of 1860 complete.
CHAPTER IX.
The Tariff Question in its Relation to the Political Revolution of
1860.--A Century's Experience as to Best Mode of levying Duties.--
Original Course of Federal Government in Regard to Revenue.--First
Tariff Act.--The Objects defined in a Preamble.--Constitutional
Power to adopt Protective Measure.--Character of Early Discussions.
--The Illustrious Men who participated.--Mr. Madison the Leader.--
The War Tariff of 1812.--Its High Duties.--The Tariff of 1816.--
Interesting Debate upon its Provisions.--Clay, Webster, and Calhoun
take part.--Business Depression throughout the Country.--Continues
until the Enactment of the Tariff of 1824.--Protective Character
of that Tariff.--Still Higher Duties levied by the Tariff of 1828.
--Southern Resistance to the Protective Principle.--Mr. Calhoun
leads the Nullification Movement in South Carolina.--Compromise
effected on the Tariff Question.--Financial Depression follows.--
Panic of 1837.--Protective Tariff passed in 1842.--Free-trade
Principles triumph with the Election of President Polk.--Tariff of
1846.--Prosperous Condition of the Country.--Differences of Opinion
as to the Causes.--Surplus Revenue.--Plethoric Condition of the
Treasury.--Enactment of the Tariff of 1857.--Both Parties support
it in Congress.--Duties lower than at Any Time since the War of
1812.--Panic of 1857.--Dispute as to its causes.--Protective and
Free-trade Theories as presented by their Advocates.--Connection
of the Tariff with the Election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency.
--General Review.
CHAPTER X.
Presidential Election of 1860.--The Electoral and Popular Vote.--
Wide Divergence between the Two.--Mr. Lincoln has a Large Majority
of Electors.--In a Minority of 1,000,000 on Popular Vote.--Beginning
of Secession.--Rash Course of South Carolina.--Reluctance on the
Part of Many Southern States.--Unfortunate Meeting of South-Carolina
Legislature.--Hasty Action of South-Carolina Convention.--The Word
"Ordinance."--Meeting of Southern Senators in Washington to promote
Secession.--Unwillingness in the South to submit the Question to
Popular Vote.--Georgia not eager to Secede.--Action of Other States.
--Meeting of Congress in December, 1860.--Position of Mr. Buchanan.
--His Attachment to the Union as a Pennsylvanian.--Sinister Influences
in his Cabinet.--His Evil Message to Congress.--Analysis of the
Message.--Its Position destructive to the Union.--The President's
Position Illogical and Untenable.--Full of Contradictions.--Extremists
of the South approve the Message.--Demoralizing Effect of the
Message in the North and in the South.--General Cass resigns from
State Department.--Judge Black succeeds him.--Character of Judge
Black.--Secretaries Cobb, Floyd, and Thompson.--Their Censurable
Conduct in the Cabinet.--Their Resignation.--Re-organization of
Cabinet.--Dix, Holt, Stanton.--Close of Mr. Buchanan's Administration.
--Change in the President's Course.--The New Influences.--Analysis
of the President's Course.--There were two Mr. Buchanans.--Personal
and Public Character of Mr. Buchanan.
CHAPTER XI.
Congress during the Winter of 1860-61.--Leave-taking of Senators
and Representatives.--South Carolina the First to secede.--Her
Delegation in the House publish a Card withdrawing.--Other States
follow.--Mr. Lamar of Mississippi.--Speeches of Seceding Senators.
--Mr. Yulee and Mr. Mallory of Florida.--Mr. Clay and Mr. Fitzpatrick
of Alabama.--Jefferson Davis.--His Distinction between Secession
and Nullification.--Important Speech by Mr. Toombs.--He defines
Conditions on which the Union might be allowed to survive.--Mr.
Iverson's Speech.--Georgia Senators withdraw.--Insolent Speech of
Mr. Slidell of Louisiana.--Mr. Judah P. Benjamin's Special Plea
for his State.--His Doctrine of "A Sovereignty held in Trust."--
Same Argument of Mr. Yulee for his State.--Principle of State
Sovereignty.--Disproved by the Treaty of 1783.--Notable Omission
by Secession Senators.--Grievances not stated.--Secession Conventions
in States.--Failure to state Justifying Grounds of Action.--
Confederate Government fail likewise to do it.--Contrast with the
Course of the Colonies.--Congress had given no Cause.--Had not
disturbed Slavery by Adverse Legislation.--List of Measures Favorable
to Slavery.--Policy of Federal Government steadily in that Direction.
--Mr. Davis quoted Menaces, not Acts.--Governing Class in the South.
--Division of Society there.--Republic ruled by an Oligarchy.--
Overthrown by Election of Lincoln.--South refuses to acquiesce.
CHAPTER XII.
Congress in the Winter of 1860-61.--The North offers Many Concessions
to the South.--Spirit of Conciliation.--Committee of Thirteen in
the Senate.--Committee of Thirty-three in the House.--Disagreement
of Senate Committee.--Propositions submitted to House Committee.--
Thomas Corwin's Measure.--Henry Winter Davis.--Justin S. Morrill--
Mr. Houston of Alabama.--Constitutional Amendment proposed by
Charles Francis Adams.--Report of the Committee of Thirty-three.--
Objectionable Measures proposed.--Minority Report by Southern
Members.--The Crittenden Compromise proposed.--Details of that
Compromise.--Mr. Adams's Double Change of Ground.--An Old Resolution
of the Massachusetts Legislature.--Mr. Webster's Criticism Pertinent.
--Various Minority Reports.--The California Members.--Washburn and
Tappan.--Amendment to the Constitution passed by the House.--By
the Senate also.--New Mexico.--The Fugitive-slave Law.--Mr. Clark
of New Hampshire.--Peace Congress.--Invited by Virginia.--Assembles
in Washington.--Peace Measures proposed.--They meet no Favor in
Congress.--Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada originated.
--Prohibition of Slavery abandoned.--Republicans in Congress do
not ask it.--Explanation required.--James S. Green of Missouri.--
His Character as a Debater.--Northern Republicans frightened at
their own Success.--Anxious for a Compromise.--Dread of Disunion.
--Northern Democrats.--Dangerous Course pursued by them.--General
Demoralization of Northern Sentiment.
CHAPTER XIII.
Mr. Lincoln's Journey from Springfield to Washington.--Speeches on
the Way.--Reaches Washington.--His Secret Journey.--Afterwards
regretted.--Precautions for his Safety.--President Buchanan.--
Secretary Holt.--Troops for the Protection of Washington.--Inauguration
of Mr. Lincoln.--Relief to the Public Anxiety.--Inaugural Address.
--Hopefulness and Security in the North.--Mr. Lincoln's Appeal to
the South.--Fails to appease Southern Wrath.--Dilemma of the South.
--The New Cabinet.--The "Easy Accession" of Former Times.--Seward
Secretary of State.--Chase at the Head of the Treasury.--Radical
Republicans dissatisfied.--Influence of the Blairs.--Comment of
Thaddeus Stevens.--The National Flag in the Confederacy.--Flying
at only Three Points.--Defenseless Condition of the Government.--
Confidence of Disunion Leaders.--Extra Session of the Senate.--
Douglas and Breckinridge.--Their Notable Debate.--Douglas's Reply
to Wigfall.--His Answer to Mason.--Condition of the Territories.--
Slavery not excluded by Law.--Public Opinion in Maine, 1861.--Mr.
Lincoln's Difficult Task.--His Wise Policy.--His Careful Preparation.
--Statesmanship of his Administration.
CHAPTER XIV.
President Lincoln and the Confederate Commissioners.--Misleading
Assurance given by Judge Campbell.--Mr. Seward's Answer to Messrs.
Forsythe and Crawford.--An Interview with the President is desired
by the Commissioners.--Rage in the South.--Condition of the Montgomery
Government.--Roger A. Pryor's Speech.--President determines to send
Provisions to Fort Sumter.--Advises Governor Pickens.--Conflict
precipitated.--The Fort surrenders.--Effect of the Conflict on the
North.--President's Proclamation and Call for Troops.--Responses
of Loyal States.--Popular Uprising.--Democratic Party.--Patriotism
of Senator Douglas.--His Relations with Mr. Lincoln.--His Death.--
Public Service and Character.--Effect of the President's Call on
Southern States.--North Carolina.--Tennessee.--Virginia.--Senator
Mason's Letter.--Responses of Southern Governors to the President's
Call for Troops.--All decline to comply.--Some of them with Insolent
Defiance.--Governors of the Free States.--John A. Andrew, E. D.
Morgan, Andrew G. Curtin, Oliver P. Morton.--Energetic and Patriotic
Action of all Northern Governors.--Exceptional Preparation in
Pennsylvania for the Conflict.--Governors of Free States all
Republicans except in California and Oregon.--Critical Situation
on Pacific Coast.--Loyalty of its People.--President's Reasons for
postponing Session of Congress.--Election in Kentucky.--Union
Victory.--John J. Crittenden and Garrett Davis.--John Bell.--
Disappoints Expectation of Union Men.--Responsibility of Southern
Whigs.--Their Power to arrest the Madness.--Audacity overcomes
Numbers.--Whig Party of the South.--Its Brilliant Array of Leaders.
--Its Destruction.
CHAPTER XV.
Thirty-Seventh Congress assembles.--Military Situation.--List of
Senators: Fessenden, Sumner, Collamer, Wade, Chandler, Hale,
Trumbull, Breckinridge, Baker of Oregon.--List of Members of the
House of Representatives: Thaddeus Stevens, Crittenden, Lovejoy,
Washburne, Bingham, Conkling, Shellabarger.--Mr. Grow elected
Speaker.--Message of President Lincoln.--Its Leading Recommendations.
--His Account of the Outbreak of the Rebellion.--Effect of the
Message on the Northern People.--Battle of Bull Run.--Its Effect
on Congress and the Country.--The Crittenden Resolution adopted.--
Its Significance.--Interesting Debate upon it in the Senate.--First
Action by Congress Adverse to Slavery.--Confiscation of Certain
Slaves.--Large Amount of Business dispatched by Congress.--Striking
and Important Debate between Baker and Breckinridge.--Expulsion of
Mr. Breckinridge from the Senate.--His Character.--Credit due to
Union Men of Kentucky.--Effect produced in the South of Confederate
Success at Bull Run.--Rigorous Policy adopted by the Confederate
Government.--Law respecting "Alien Enemies."--Law sequestrating
their Estates.--Rigidly enforced by Attorney-General Benjamin.--An
Injudicious Policy.
CHAPTER XVI.
Second Session of Thirty-seventh Congress.--The Military Situation.
--Disaster at Ball's Bluff.--Death of Colonel E. D. Baker.--The
President's Message.--Capital and Labor.--Their Relation discussed
by the President.--Agitation of the Slavery Question.--The House
refuses to re-affirm the Crittenden Resolution.--Secretary Cameron
resigns.--Sent on Russian Mission.--Succeeded by Edwin M. Stanton.
--His Vigorous War Measures.--Victories in the Field.--Battle of
Mill Spring.--General Order of the President for a Forward Movement.
--Capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.--Prestige and Popularity
of General Grant.--Illinois Troops.--General Burnside's Victory in
North Carolina.--Effect of the Victories upon the Country.--Continued
Success for the Union in the South-West.--Proposed Celebration.--
The Monitor and the Merrimac.--Ericsson.--Worden.--Capture of New
Orleans by Farragut.--The Navy.--Its Sudden and Great Popularity.
--Legislation in its Favor.--Battle of Shiloh.--Anxiety in the
North.--Death of Albert Sidney Johnston.--General Halleck takes
the Field.--Military Situation in the East.--The President and
General McClellan.--The Peninsular Campaign.--Stonewall Jackson's
Raid.--Its Disastrous Effect.--Fear for Safety of Washington.--Anti-
Slavery Legislation.--District of Columbia.--Compensated Emancipation.
--Colonization.--Confiscation.--Punishment of Treason.
CHAPTER XVII.
Ball's Bluff Disaster.--Mr. Conkling's Resolution of Inquiry.--
Unsatisfactory Reply of Secretary Cameron.--Second Resolution.--
Second Reply.--Incidental Debate on Slavery.--Arrest of General
Charles P. Stone.--His History.--His Response to Criticisms made
upon him.--Responsibility of Colonel Baker.--General Stone before
the Committee on the Conduct of the War.--His Examination.--Testimony
of Officers.--General Stone appears before the Committee a Second
Time.--His Arrest by Order of the War Department.--No Cause assigned.
--Imprisoned in Fort Lafayette.--Solitary Confinement.--Sees Nobody.
--His Wife denied Access to him.--Subject brought into Congress.--
A Search for the Responsibility of the Arrest.--Groundless Assumption
of Mr. Sumner's Connection with it.--Mr. Lincoln's Message in Regard
to the Case.--General Stone's Final Release by an Act of Congress.
--Imprisoned for One Hundred and Eighty-nine Days.--Never told the
Cause.--Never allowed a Trial.--Appears a Third Time before the
Committee.--The True Responsibility for the Arrest.--His Restoration
to Service.--His Resignation.--Joins the Khedive's Service.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The National Finances.--Debt when the Civil War began.--Deadly Blow
to Public Credit.--Treasury Notes due in 1861.--$10,000,000 required.
--An Empty Treasury.--Recommendation by Secretary Dix.--Secretary
Thomas recommends a Pledge of the Public Lands.--Strange Suggestions.
--Heavy Burdens upon the Treasury.--Embarrassment of Legislators.
--First Receipts in the Treasury in 1861.--Chief Dependence had
always been on Customs.--Morrill Tariff goes into Effect.--It meets
Financial Exigencies.--Mr. Vallandigham puts our Revenue at
$50,000,000, our Expenditures at $500,000,000.--Annual Deficiency
under Mr. Buchanan.--Extra Session in July, 1861.--Secretary Chase
recommends $80,000,000 by Taxation, and $240,000,000 by Loans.--
Loan Bill of July 17, 1861.--Its Provisions.--Demand Notes.--Seven-
thirties.--Secretary Chase's Report, December, 1861.--Situation
Serious.--Sales of Public Lands.--Suspension of Specie Payment.--
The Loss of our Coin.--Its Steady Export to Europe.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Legal-tender Bill.--National Finances at the Opening of the
Year 1862.--A Threefold Contest.--The Country thrown upon its own
Resources.--A Good Currency demanded.--Government takes Control of
the Question.--Authorizes the Issue of $150,000,000 of Legal-tender
Notes.--Mr. Spaulding the Author of the Measure.--His Speech.--
Opposed by Mr. Pendleton.--Position of Secretary Chase.--Urges the
Measure upon Congress.--Speeches by Thaddeus Stevens, Mr. Vallandigham,
Mr. V. B. Horton, Mr. Lovejoy, Mr. Conkling, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Morrill,
Mr. Bingham, Mr. Shellabarger, Mr. Pike and Others.--Spirited and
Able Debate.--Bill passes the House.--Its Consideration by the
Senate.--Speeches by Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Sherman, Mr. Sumner, Mr.
Bayard, Mr. Collamer and Others.--Bill passes the Senate.--Its
Weighty Provisions.--Secretary Chase on State Banks.--Policy of
the Legal-tender Bill.--Its Effect upon the Business and Prosperity
of the Country.--Internal Revenue Act.--Necessity of Large Sums
from Taxation.--Public Credit dependent on it.--Constitutional
Provisions.--Financial Policy of Alexander Hamilton.--Excises
Unpopular.--Whiskey Insurrection.--Resistance by Law.--Supreme
Court Decision.--Case of Hylton.--Provisions of New Act.--Searching
Character.--Great Revenue desired.--Credit due to Secretary Chase.
CHAPTER XX.
Elections of 1862.--Mr. Lincoln advances to Aggressive Position on
Slavery.--Second Session of Thirty-seventh Congress adjourns.--
Democratic Hostility to Administration.--Democratic State Conventions.
--Platforms in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.--Nomination
of Horatio Seymour for Governor of New York.--The President prepares
for a Serious Political Contest.--The Issue shall be the Union or
Slavery.--Conversation with Mr. Boutwell.--Proclamation of
Emancipation.--Meeting of Governors at Altoona.--Compensated
Emancipation proposed for Border States.--Declined by their Senators
and Representatives.--Anti-slavery Policy apparently Disastrous
for a Time.--October Elections Discouraging.--General James S.
Wadsworth nominated against Mr. Seymour.--Illinois votes against
the President.--Five Leading States against the President.--
Administration saved in Part by Border States.--Last Session of
Thirty-seventh Congress.--President urges Compensated Emancipation
again.--Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863.--Long Controversy
over Question of Compensation for Slaves.--Test Case of Missouri.
--Fourteen Million Dollars offered her.--General Pope's Campaign.
--Army of the Potomac.--Battle of Antietam.--McClellan removed.--
Burnside succeeds him.--Defeat at Fredericksburg.--Hooker succeeds
Burnside.--General Situation.--Arming of Slaves.--Habeas Corpus.--
Conscription Law.--Depressed and Depressing Period.
CHAPTER XXI.
The President's Border-State Policy.--Loyal Government erected in
Virginia.--Recognized by Congress and Senators admitted.--Desire
for a New State.--The Long Dissatisfaction of the People of Western
Virginia.--The Character of the People and of their Section.--Their
Opportunity had come.--Organization of the Pierpont Government.--
State Convention and Constitution.--Application to Congress for
Admission.--Anti-slavery Amendment.--Senate Debate: Sumner, Wade,
Powell, Willey, and Others.--House Debate: Stevens, Conway, Bingham,
Segar.--Passage of Bill in Both Branches.--Heavy Blow to the Old
State.--Her Claims deserve Consideration.--Should be treated as
generously at least as Mexico.
CHAPTER XXII.
National Currency and State Bank Currency.--In Competition.--Legal-
tender Bill tended to expand State Bank Circulation.--Secretary
Chase's Recommendation.--Favorably received.--State Bank Circulation,
$150,000,000.--Preliminary Bill to establish National Banks.--
Fessenden.--Sherman.--Hooper.--National Bank System in 1862.--
Discussed among the People.--Recommended by the President.--Mr.
Chase urges it.--Bill introduced and discussed in Senate.--Discussion
in the House.--Bill passed.--Hugh McCulloch of Indiana appointed
Comptroller of the Currency.--Amended Bank Act.--To remedy Defects,
Circulation limited to $500,000,000.--National Power.--State Rights.
--Taxation.--Renewed Debate in Senate and House.--Bill passed.--
Merits of the System.--Former Systems.--First Bank of the United
States.--Charters of United-States Banks, 1791-1816.--National
Banks compared with United-States Banks.--One Defective Element.--
Founded on National Debt.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Depression among the People in 1863.--Military Situation.--Hostility
to the Administration.--Determination to break it down.--Vallandigham's
Disloyal Speech.--Two Rebellions threatened.--General Burnside
takes Command of the Department of the Ohio.--Arrests Vallandigham.
--Tries him by Military Commission.--His Sentence commuted by Mr.
Lincoln.--Habeas Corpus refused.--Democratic Party protests.--
Meeting in Albany.--Letter of Governor Seymour.--Ohio Democrats
send a Committee to Washington.--Mr. Lincoln's Replies to Albany
Meeting and to the Ohio Committee.--Effect of his Words upon the
Country.--Army of the Potomac.--General Hooker's Defeat at
Chancellorsville.--Gloom in the Country.--The President's Letters
to General Hooker.--General Meade succeeds Hooker in Command of
the Army.--Battle of Gettysburg.--Important Victory for the Union.
--Relief to the Country.--General Grant's Victory at Vicksburg.--
Fourth of July.--Notable Coincidence.--State Elections favorable
to the Administration.--Meeting of Thirty-eighth Congress.--Schuyler
Colfax elected Speaker.--Prominent New Members in Each Branch.--E.
D. Morgan, Alexander Ramsey, John Conness, Reverdy Johnson, Thomas
A. Hendricks, Henry Winter Davis, Robert C. Schenck, James A.
Garfield, William B. Allison.--President's Message.--Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution.--First proposed by James M. Ashley.
--John B. Henderson proposes Amendment which passes the Senate.--
Debate in Both Branches.--Aid to the Pacific Railroads.--Lieutenant-
General Grant.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Presidential Election of 1864.--Preliminary Movements.--General
Sentiment favors Mr. Lincoln.--Some Opposition to his Renomination.
--Secretary Chase a Candidate.--The "Pomeroy Circular."--Mr. Chase
withdraws.--Republican National Convention.--Baltimore, June 7.--
Fremont and Cochrane nominated.--Speech of Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge.
--Mr. Lincoln renominated.--Candidates for Vice-President.--Andrew
Johnson of Tennessee nominated.--Democratic National Convention.--
Chicago, August 29.--Military Situation discouraging.--Character
of the Convention.--Peace Party prevails.--Speeches of Belmont,
Bigler, Hunt, Long, Seymour.--Nomination of General McClellan for
President.--George H. Pendleton for Vice-President.--Platform.--
Suits Vallandigham.--General McClellan accepts, but evades the
Platform.--General Fremont withdraws.--Success of the Union Army.
--Mr. Lincoln's Popularity.--General McClellan steadily loses
Ground.--Sheridan's Brilliant Victories.--General McClellan receives
the Votes of only Three States.--Governor Seymour defeated in New
York.
CHAPTER XXV.
President's Message, December, 1864.--General Sherman's March.--
Compensated Emancipation abandoned.--Thirteenth Amendment.--Earnestly
recommended by the President.--He appeals to the Democratic Members.
--Mr. Ashley's Energetic Work.--Democratic Opportunity.--Unwisely
neglected.--Mr. Pendleton's Argument.--Final Vote.--Amendment
adopted.--Cases arising under it.--Supreme Court.--Change of Judges
at Different Periods.--Peace Conference at Fortress Monroe.--
Secretary Chase resigns.--Mr. Fessenden succeeds him.--Mr. Fessenden's
Report.--Surrender of Lee.--General Grant's Military Character.--
Assassination of President Lincoln.--His Characteristics.--Cost of
the War.--Compared with Wars of Other Nations.--Our Navy.--Created
during the War.--Effective Blockade.--Its Effect upon the South.--
Its Influence upon the Struggle.--Relative Numbers in Loyal and
Disloyal States.--Comparison of Union and Confederate Armies.--
Confederate Army at the Close of the War.--Union Armies compared
with Armies of Foreign Countries.--Area of the War.--Its Effect
upon the Cost.--Character of Edwin M. Stanton.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Relations with Great Britain.--Close of the Year 1860.--Prince of
Wales's Visit to the United States.--Exchange of Congratulatory
Notes.--Dawn of the Rebellion.--Lord Lyons' Dispatch.--Mr. Seward's
Views.--Lord John Russell's Threats.--Condition of Affairs at Mr.
Lincoln's Inauguration.--Unfriendly Manifestations by Great Britain.
--Recognizes Belligerency of Southern States.--Discourtesy to
American Minister.--England and France make Propositions to the
Confederate States.--Unfriendly in their Character to the United
States.--Full Details given.--Motives inquired into.--Trent Affair.
--Lord John Russell.--Lord Lyons.--Mr. Seward.--Mason and Slidell
released.--Doubtful Grounds assigned.--Greater Wrongs against us
by Great Britain.--Queen Victoria's Friendship.--Isolation of United
States.--Foreign Aid to Confederates on the Sea.--Details given.--
So-called Neutrality.--French Attempt to establish an Empire in
Mexico.--Lord Palmerston in 1848, in 1859, in 1861.--Conclusive
Observations.
ADDENDUM
ERRATUM
APPENDICES
LIST OF STEEL PORTRAITS.
THE AUTHOR
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
CHARLES SUMNER
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN
JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE
HENRY WINTER DAVIS
THADDEUS STEVENS
BENJAMIN F. WADE
ELIHU B. WASHBURNE
ROBERT C. SCHENCK
WILLIAM D. KELLEY
SAMUEL SHELLABARGER
JUSTIN S. MORRILL
GEORGE S. BOUTWELL
REUBEN E. FENTON
OLIVER P. MORTON
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER
HENRY B. ANTHONY
THOMAS A. HENDRICKS
SIMON CAMERON
JAMES W. GRIMES
JOHN P. HALE
JOHN SHERMAN
WILLIAM WINDOM
JOHN B. HENDERSON
JOHN J. INGALLS
FREDERICK T. FRELINGHUYSEN
CARL SCHURZ
JOHN A. LOGAN
MAP SHOWING THE TERRITORIAL GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES
TWENTY YEARS OF CONGRESS.
CHAPTER I.
Original Compromises between the North and the South embodied in
the Constitution.--Early Dissatisfaction with National Boundaries.
--Acquisition of Louisiana from France by President Jefferson.--
Bonaparte's Action and Motive in ceding Louisiana.--State of
Louisiana admitted to the Union against Opposition in the North.--
Agitation of the Slavery Question in Connection with the Admission
of Missouri to the Union.--The Two Missouri Compromises of 1820
and 1821.--Origin and Development of the Abolition Party.--Struggle
over the Right of Petition.
The compromises on the Slavery question, inserted in the Constitution,
were among the essential conditions upon which the Federal Government
was organized. If the African slave-trade had not been permitted
to continue for twenty years, if it had not been conceded that
three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the apportionment
of representatives in Congress, if it had not been agreed that
fugitives from service should be returned to their owners, the
Thirteen States would not have been able in 1787 "to form a more
perfect union." These adjustments in the Constitution were effected
after the Congress of the old Confederation had dedicated the entire
North-west Territory to freedom. The ancient commonwealth of
Virginia had, for the good of all, generously and patriotically
surrendered her title to the great country north of the Ohio and
east of the Mississippi, which to-day constitutes five prosperous
and powerful States and a not inconsiderable portion of a sixth.
This was the first territory of which the General Government had
exclusive control, and the prompt prohibition of slavery therein
by the Ordinance of 1787 is an important and significant fact.
The anti-slavery restriction would doubtless have been applied to
the territory south of the Ohio had the power existed to impose
it. The founders of the government not only looked to the speedy
extinction of slavery, but they especially abhorred the idea of a
geographical line, with freedom decreed on one side, and slavery
established on the other. But the territory south of the Ohio
belonged to the Southern States of the Union,--Kentucky to Virginia;
Tennessee to North Carolina; Alabama and Mississippi to Georgia,
with certain co-extensive claims put forth by South Carolina. When
cessions of this Southern territory were made to the General
Government, the States owning it exacted in every case a stipulation
that slavery should not be prohibited. It thus came to pass that
the Ohio River was the dividing-line. North of it freedom was
forever decreed. South of it slavery was firmly established.
Within the limits of the Union as originally formed the slavery
question had therefore been compromised, the common territory
partitioned, and the Republic, half slave, half free, organized
and sent forth upon its mission.
The Thirteen States whose independence had been acknowledged by
George III., occupied with their outlying territories a vast area,
exceeding in the aggregate eight hundred thousand square miles.
Extended as was this domain, the early statesmen of the Union
discovered that its boundaries were unsatisfactory,--hostile to
our commercial interests in time of peace, and menacing our safety
in time of war. The Mississippi River was our western limit. On
its farther shore, from the Lake of the Woods to the Balize, we
met the flag of Spain. Our southern border was the 31st parallel
of latitude; and the Spanish Floridas, stretching across to the
Mississippi, lay between us and the Gulf of Mexico. We acquired
from Spain the right of deposit for exports and imports at New
Orleans, but the citizens of the Union who lived west of the
Alleganies were discontented and irritated to find a foreign power
practically controlling their trade by intercepting their access
to the sea. One of the great problems imposed upon the founders
of the Union was to remove the burdens and embarrassments which
obstructed the development of the Western States, and thus to render
their inhabitants as loyal by reason of material prosperity as they
already were in patriotic sympathy. The opportunity for relief
came from remote and foreign causes, without our own agency; but
the courageous statesmanship which discerned and grasped the
opportunity, deserved, as it has received, the commemoration of
three generations. The boundaries of the Union were vastly enlarged,
but the geographical change was not greater than the effect produced
upon the political and social condition of the people. The ambitions
developed by the acquisition of new territory led to serious
conflicts of opinion between North and South,--conflicts which
steadily grew in intensity until, by the convulsion of war, slavery
was finally extinguished.
TERRITORIAL CESSIONS IN AMERICA.
A great European struggle, which ended twelve years before our
Revolution began, had wrought important changes in the political
control of North America. The Seven Years' War, identical in time
with the French and Indian War in America, was closed in 1763 by
numerous treaties to which every great power in Europe was in some
sense a party. One of the most striking results of these treaties
on this side of the Atlantic was the cession of Florida to Great
Britain by Spain in exchange for the release of Cuba, which the
English and colonial forces under Lord Albemarle had wrested from
Spanish authority the preceding year. England held Florida for
twenty years, when among the disasters brought upon her by our
Revolution was its retrocession to Spain in 1783,--a result which
was accounted by our forefathers a great gain to the new Republic.
Still more striking were the losses of France. Fifty years before,
by the Treaty of Utrecht, France had surrendered to England the
island of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia (then including New Brunswick),
and the Hudson-bay Territory. She now gave up Canada and Cape
Breton, acknowledged the sovereignty of Great Britain in the original
thirteen Colonies as extending to the Mississippi, and, by a separate
treaty, surrendered Louisiana on the west side of the Mississippi,
with New Orleans on the east side, to Spain. Thus, in 1763, French
power disappeared from North American. The last square mile of
the most valuable colonial territory ever possessed by a European
sovereign was lost under the weak and effeminate rule of Louis XV.,
a reign not fitted for successful war, but distinguished only, as
one of its historians says, for "easy-mannered joyance, and the
brilliant charm of fashionable and philosophical society."
The country which France surrendered to Spain was of vast but
indefinite extent. Added to her other North-American colonies, it
gave to Spain control of more than half the continent. She continued
in possession of Louisiana until the year 1800, when, during some
European negotiations, Bonaparte concluded a treaty at San Ildefonso
with Charles IV., by which the entire territory was retroceded to
France. When the First Consul acquired Louisiana, he appeared to
look forward to a career of peace,--an impression greatly strengthened
by the conclusion of the treaty of Amiens the ensuing year. He
added to his prestige as a ruler when he regained from Spain the
American empire which the Bourbons had weakly surrendered thirty-
seven years before, and he expected a large and valuable addition
to the trade and resources of France from the vast colonial
possession. The formal transfer of so great a territory on a
distant continent was necessarily delayed; and, before the Captain-
general of France reached New Orleans in 1803, the Spanish authorities,
still in possession, had become so odious to the inhabitants of
the western section of the Union by their suspension of the right
of deposit at New Orleans, that there was constant danger of an
armed collision. Mr. Ross of Pennsylvania, an able and conservative
statesman, moved in the Senate of the United States that the
government be instructed to seize New Orleans. Gouverneur Morris,
a statesman of the Revolutionary period, then a senator from New
York, seconded Mr. Ross. So intense was the feeling among the
people that a large army of volunteers could have been easily raised
in the Mississippi valley to march against New Orleans; but the
prudence of Mr. Jefferson restrained every movement that might
involve us in a war with Spain, from which nothing was to be gained,
and by which every thing would be risked.
THE PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA.
Meanwhile Mr. Robert R. Livingston, our minister at Paris, was
pressing the French Government for concessions touching the free
navigation of the Mississippi and the right of deposit at New
Orleans, and was speaking to the First Consul, as a French historian
observes, in a tone which "arrested his attention, and aroused him
to a sense of the new power that was growing beyond the sea." Mr.
Livingston was re-enforced by Mr. Monroe, sent out by President
Jefferson as a special envoy in the spring of 1803, in order to
effect some adjustment of the irritating questions which were
seriously endangering the relations between France and the United
States. The instructions of Mr. Madison, then secretary of State,
to Mr. Monroe, show that the utmost he expected was to acquire from
France the city of New Orleans and the Floridas, of which he believed
France either then was, or was about to become, the actual owner.
Indeed, the treaty by which France had acquired Louisiana was but
imperfectly understood; and, in the slowness and difficulty of
communication, Mr. Madison could not accurately know the full extent
of the cession made at San Ildefonso. But Mr. Jefferson did not
wait to learn the exact provisions of that treaty. He knew
instinctively that they deeply concerned the United States. He
saw with clear vision that by the commercial disability upon the
western section of the Union its progress would be obstructed, its
already attained prosperity checked; and that possibly its population,
drawn first into discontent with the existing order of things,
might be seduced into new and dangerous alliances. He determined,
therefore, to acquire the control of the left bank of the Mississippi
to its mouth, and by the purchase of the Floridas to give to Georgia
and the Mississippi territory (now constituting the States of
Alabama and Mississippi) unobstructed access to the Gulf.
But events beyond the ocean were working more rapidly for the
interest of the United States than any influence which the government
itself could exert. Before Mr. Monroe reached France in the spring
of 1803, another war-cloud of portentous magnitude was hanging over
Europe. The treaty of Amiens had proved only a truce. Awkwardly
constructed, misconstrued and violated by both parties, it was
about to be formally broken. Neither of the plenipotentiaries who
signed the treaty was skilled in diplomacy. Joseph Bonaparte acted
for his brother; England was represented by Lord Cornwallis, who
twenty years before had surrendered the British army at Yorktown.
The wits of London described him afterwards as a general who could
neither conduct a war nor conclude a peace.
Fearing that, in the threatened conflict, England, by her superior
naval force, would deprive him of his newly acquired colonial
empire, and greatly enhance her own prestige by securing all the
American possessions which France had owned prior to 1763, Bonaparte,
by a dash in diplomacy as quick and as brilliant as his tactics on
the field of battle, placed Louisiana beyond the reach of British
power. After returning to St. Cloud from the religious services
of Easter Sunday, April 10, 1803, he called two of his most trusted
advisers, and, in a tone of vehemence and passion, said,--
"I know the full value of Louisiana, and have been desirous of
repairing the fault of the French negotiators who lost it in 1763.
A few lines of a treaty have restored it to me, and now I must
expect to lose it. . . . The English wish to take possession of
it, and it is thus they will begin the war. . . . They have already
twenty ships of the line in the Gulf of Mexico. . . . The conquest
of Louisiana would be easy. I have not a moment to lose in putting
it out of their reach. . . . The English have successively taken
from France the Canadas, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,
and the richest portions of Asia. But they shall not have the
Mississippi, which they covet."
The discussion went far into the night. The two ministers differed
widely in the advice which they gave the First Consul; one was in
favor of holding Louisiana at all hazards; the other urged its
prudent cession rather than its inevitable loss by war. They both
remained at St. Cloud for the night. At daybreak the minister who
had advised the cession was summoned by Bonaparte to read dispatches
from London, that moment received, which certainly foreshadowed
war, as the English were making military and naval preparations
with extraordinary rapidity. After reading the dispatches, the
First Consul said,
"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce
Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, it is the
whole colony without any reservation. I know the value of what I
abandon. It renounce it with the gravest regret. To attempt
obstinately to retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate
this affair with the envoy of the United States. Do not even wait
the arrival of Mr. Monroe. Have an interview this very day with
Mr. Livingston. . . . But I require a great deal of money for this
war. I will be moderate. I want fifty millions for Louisiana."
The minister, who was opposed to the sale, interposed, in a subsequent
interview, some observations "upon what the Germans call the _souls_,
as to whether they could be the subject of a contract or sale."
Bonaparte replied with undisguised sarcasm,--
"You are giving me the ideology of the law of nature. But I require
money to make war on the richest nation in the world. Send your
maxims to London. I am sure they will be greatly admired there."
The First Consul afterwards added, "Perhaps it will be objected
that the Americans will be found too powerful for Europe in two or
three centuries; but my foresight does not embrace such remote
fears. Besides, we may hereafter expect rivalries among the members
of the Union. The confederations, which are called perpetual, only
last till one of the contracting parties finds it in his interest
to break them."
SUCCESS OF JEFFERSON'S DIPLOMACY.
Two days after this conversation Mr. Monroe opportunely arrived,
and on the 30th of April the treaty ceding Louisiana to the United
States was formally concluded. Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston had
no authority to negotiate for so vast an extent of territory; but
the former was fully possessed of President Jefferson's views, and
felt assured that his instructions would have been ample if the
condition of France had been foreseen when he sailed from America.
Communication with Washington was impossible. Under the most
favorable circumstances, an answer could not be expected in less
then three months. By that time British ships would probably hold
the mouths of the Mississippi, and the flag of St. George be waving
over New Orleans. Monroe and Livingston both realized that hesitation
would be fatal; and they boldly took the responsibility of purchasing
a territory of unknown but prodigious extent, and of pledging the
credit of the government for a sum which, rated by the ability to
pay, was larger than a similar pledge to-day for five hundred
millions of dollars.
The price agreed upon was eleven million two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in six per cent United States bonds, the interest
of which was made payable in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, and the
principal at the treasury in Washington in sums of three millions
per annum, beginning fifteen years after the bonds were issued.
In a separate treaty made the same day, the United States agreed
to pay twenty million francs additional, to be applied by France
to the satisfaction of certain claims owed to American citizens.
Thus the total cost of Louisiana was eighty millions of francs,
or, in round numbers, fifteen millions of dollars.
No difficulty was experienced in putting the United States in
possession of the territory and of its chief emporium, New Orleans.
The French Government had regarded the possession of so much
consequence, that Bernadotte, afterwards King of Sweden, was at
one time gazetted as Captain-general; and, some obstacles supervening,
the eminent General Victor, afterwards Marshal of France and Duke
of Belluno, was named in his stead. But all these plans were
brushed aside by one stroke of Bonaparte's pen; and the United
States, in consequence of favoring circumstances growing out of
European complications, and the bold and competent statesmanship
of Jefferson, obtained a territory larger in area than that which
was wrested from the British crown by the Revolutionary war.
It seems scarcely credible that the acquisition of Louisiana by
Jefferson was denounced with a bitterness surpassing the partisan
rancor with which later generations have been familiar. No abuse
was too malignant, no epithet too coarse, no imprecation too savage,
to be employed by the assailants of the great philosophic statesman
who laid so broad and deep the foundations of his country's growth
and grandeur. President of a feeble republic, contending for a
prize which was held by the greatest military power of Europe, and
whose possession was coveted by the greatest naval power of the
world, Mr. Jefferson, through his chosen and trusted agents, so
conducted his important negotiation that the ambition of the United
States was successfully interposed between the necessities of the
one and the aggressive designs of the other. Willing to side with
either of these great powers, for the advantage of his own country,
not underrating the dangers of war, yet ready to engage in it for
the control of the great water-way to the Gulf, the President made
the largest conquest ever peacefully achieved, and at a cost so
small that the total sum expended for the entire territory does
not equal the revenue which has since been collected on its soil
in a single month in time of great public peril. The country thus
acquired forms to-day the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri,
Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota west of the Mississippi, Colorado
north of the Arkansas, besides the Indian Territory and the
Territories of Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Texas was also included
in the transfer, but the Oregon country was not. The Louisiana
purchase did not extend beyond the main range of the Rocky Mountains,
and our title to that large area which is included in the State of
Oregon and in the Territories of Washington and Idaho rests upon
a different foundation, or, rather, upon a series of claims, each
of which was strong under the law of nations. We claimed it first
by right of original discovery of the Columbia River by an American
navigator in 1792; second, by original exploration in 1805; third,
by original settlement in 1810, by the enterprising company of
which John Jacob Astor was the head; and, lastly and principally,
by the transfer of the Spanish title in 1819, many years after the
Louisiana purchase was accomplished. It is not, however, probable
that we should have been able to maintain our title to Oregon if
we had not secured the intervening country. It was certainly our
purchase of Louisiana that enabled us to secure the Spanish title
to the shores of the Pacific, and without that title we could hardly
have maintained our claim. As against England our title seemed to
us to be perfect, but as against Spain our case was not so strong.
The purchase of Louisiana may therefore be fairly said to have
carried with it and secured to us our possession of Oregon.
The acquisition of Louisiana brought incalculable wealth, power,
and prestige to the Union, and must always be regarded as the master-
stroke of policy which advanced the United States from a comparatively
feeble nation, lying between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, to
a continental power of assured strength and boundless promise.
The _coup d'etat_ of the First Consul was an overwhelming surprise
and disappointment to the English Government. Bonaparte was right
in assuming that prompt action on his part was necessary to save
Louisiana from the hands of the English. Twelve days after the
treaty ceding Louisiana to the United States was signed, the British
ambassador at Paris, Lord Whitworth, demanded his passports. At
Dover he met the French ambassador to England, General Andreossy,
who had likewise demanded his passports. Lord Whitworth loaded
General Andreossy with tokens of esteem, and conducted him to the
ship which was to bear him back to France. According to an eminent
historian, "the two ambassadors parted in the presence of a great
concourse of people, agitated, uneasy, sorrowful. On the eve of
so important a determination, the warlike passion subsided; and
men were seized with a dread of the consequences of a desperate
conflict. At this solemn moment the two nations seemed to bid each
other adieu, not to meet again till after a tremendous war and the
convulsion of the world."
THE DESIGNS OF ENGLAND FOILED.
England's acquisition of Louisiana would have proved in the highest
degree embarrassing, if not disastrous, to the Union. At that time
the forts of Spain, transferred to France, and thence to the United
States, were on the east side of the Mississippi, hundreds of miles
from its mouth. If England had seized Louisiana, as Bonaparte
feared, the Floridas, cut off from the other colonies of Spain,
would certainly have fallen into her hands by easy and prompt
negotiation, as they did, a few years later, into the hands of the
United States. England would thus have had her colonies planted
on the three land-sides of the Union, while on the ocean-side her
formidable navy confronted the young republic. No colonial
acquisition ever made by her on any continent has been so profitable
to her commerce, and so strengthening her military position, as
that of Louisiana would have proved. This fact was clearly seen
by Bonaparte when he hastily made the treaty ceding it to the United
States. That England did not at once attempt to seize it, in
disregard of Bonaparte's cession, has been a source of surprise to
many historians. The obvious reason is that she dreaded the
complication of a war in America when she was about to assume so
heavy a burden in the impending European conflict. The inhabitants
of the Union in 1803 were six millions in number, of great energy
and confidence. A large proportion of them were accustomed to the
sea and could send swarms of privateers to prey on British commerce.
Independent citizens would be even more formidable than were the
rebellious colonists in the earlier struggle with the mother country,
and, acting in conjunction with France, could effectively maintain
a contest. Considerations of this nature doubtless induced the
Addington ministry to acquiesce quietly in a treaty whose origin
and whose assured results were in every way distasteful, and even
offensive, to the British Government.
The extent and boundaries of the territory thus ceded by France
were ill-defined, and, in fact, unknown. The French negotiator
who conferred with Monroe and Livingston, declared a large portion
of the country transferred to be no better known at the time "than
when Columbus landed at the Bahamas." There was no way by which
accurate metes and bounds could be described. This fact disturbed
the upright and conscientious Marbois, who thought that "treaties
of territorial cession should contain a guaranty from the grantor."
He was especially anxious, moreover, that no ambiguous clauses
should be introduced in the treaty. He communicated his troubles
on this point to the First Consul, advising him that it seemed
impossible to construct the treaty so as to free it from obscurity
on the important matter of boundaries. Far from exhibiting any
sympathy with his faithful minister's solicitude on this point,
Bonaparte quietly informed him that, "if an obscurity did not
already exist, it would perhaps be good policy to put one in the
treaty." In the possibilities of the First Consul's future, the
acquisition of Spanish America may have been expected, or at least
dreamed of, by him; and an ill-defined, uncertain boundary for
Louisiana might possibly, in a few years, be turned greatly to his
advantage.
EXPANSION OF OUR BOUNDARIES.
There was certainly obscurity enough in the transfer to satisfy
the fullest desire of Bonaparte. France ceded Louisiana to the
United States "with all its rights and appurtenances," as acquired
by the retrocession from Spain under the treaty of San Ildefonso,
Oct. 1, 1800; and by that treaty Spain had "transferred it to France
with the same extent it then had in the hands of Spain, and that
it had when France previously possessed it, and such as it should
be with the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and
other States." This was simply giving to us what Spain had given
to France, and that was only what France had before given to Spain,
--complicated with such treaties as Spain might have made during
the thirty-seven years of her ownership. It was evident, therefore,
from the very hour of the acquisition, that we should have abundant
trouble with our only remaining neighbors in North America, Spain
and Great Britain, in adjusting the boundaries of the vast country
which we had so successfully acquired from France.
Fortunately for the United States, the patriotic and far-seeing
administration of Mr. Jefferson was as energetic in confirming as
it had been in acquiring our title to the invaluable domain. As
soon as the treaty was received the President called an extra
session of Congress, which assembled on the 17th of October, 1803.
Before the month had expired the treaty was confirmed, and the
President was authorized to take possession of the territory of
Louisiana, and to maintain therein the authority of the United
States. This was not a mere paper warrant for exhibiting a nominal
supremacy by floating our flag, but it gave to the President the
full power to employ the army and navy of the United States and
the militia of the several States to the number of eighty thousand.
It was a wise and energetic measure for the defense of our newly
acquired territory, which in the disturbed condition of Europe,
with all the Great Powers arming from Gibraltar to the Baltic,
might at any moment be invaded or imperiled. The conflict of arms
did not occur until nine years after; and it is a curious and not
unimportant fact, that the most notable defeat of the British troops
in the second war of Independence, as the struggle of 1812 has been
well named, occurred on the soil of the territory for whose protection
the original precaution had been taken by Jefferson.
With all these preparations for defense, Mr. Jefferson did not wait
to have our title to Louisiana questioned or limited. He set to
work at once to proclaim it throughout the length and breadth of
the territory which had been ceded, and to the treaty of cession
he gave the most liberal construction. According to the President,
Louisiana stretched as far to the northward as the Lake of the
Woods; towards the west as far as the Rio Grande in the lower part,
and, in the upper part, to the main chain of mountains dividing
the waters of the Pacific from the waters of the Atlantic. To
establish our sovereignty to the shores of the Pacific became a
matter of instant solicitude with the watchful and patriotic
President. In the previous session he had obtained from Congress
an appropriation of two millions of dollars "for the purpose of
defraying any extraordinary expenses which may be incurred in the
intercourse between the United States and foreign nations." In
the confidential message which so promptly secured the money, the
President suggested that the object to be accomplished was a better
understanding with the Indian tribes, and the fitting out of an
exploring and scientific expedition across the continent, though
our own domain at the time was terminated on the west by the
Mississippi. It was believed, that, between the lines of the
message, Congress could read that our negotiations with France and
Spain touching the free navigation of the Mississippi might soon
reach a crisis. Hence the prompt appropriation of a sum of money
which for the national treasury of that day was very large.
LEWIS AND CLARKE EXPEDITION.
The two men selected to conduct the expedition across the continent,
Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke, were especially fitted for
their arduous task. Both were officers in the army, holding the
rank of captain. Lewis had been private secretary to the President,
and Clarke was brother to the heroic George Rogers Clarke, whose
services were of peculiar value in the Revolutionary struggle.
Before they could complete the preparations for their long and
dangerous journey, the territory to be traversed had been transferred
to the United States, and the expedition at once assumed a significance
and importance little dreamed of when Jefferson first conceived
it. The original design had been a favorite one with Mr. Jefferson
for many years. When he resided at Paris as our minister, before
the Federal Government was organized, he encouraged a similar
expedition, to be fitted out in Kamtchatka, to sail to our western
coast, and thence to come eastward across the continent. This
design was to be executed by the somewhat noted John Ledyard, a
roving and adventurous man from Connecticut, who had accompanied
Captain Cook on his famous voyage to the Pacific, and whom Jefferson
afterwards met in Paris. The necessary authority was obtained from
the Russian Government; but, after Ledyard had reached the borders
of Kamtchatka, he was suddenly recalled, driven with speed day and
night in a closed carriage, on a return journey of several thousand
miles, and set down in Poland, penniless, and utterly broken in
health. This strange action was the offspring of jealousy on the
part of the Empress Catharine, who feared that the energy of the
young and vigorous government of the United States would absorb
the north-west coast of America, upon which the Russian Government
had already set its ambition.
The success of the Lewis and Clarke expedition aided greatly in
sustaining our title to the Oregon country. The joint leaders of
it became celebrated by their arduous achievement, and were rewarded
accordingly. Lewis was appointed governor of Louisiana territory
in 1807, and held the position until his death in 1809; while Clarke
was for a long period governor of the territory of Missouri, serving
in that capacity when the State was admitted to the Union. But
while the Lewis and Clarke expedition largely increased our knowledge
of the country, and added to the strength of our title, it did not
definitely settle any disputed question. With Spain we had constant
trouble in regard to the boundaries of Louisiana, both on the west
in the direction of Texas, and on the east along the confines of
Florida. She had always been dissatisfied with Bonaparte's transfer
of Louisiana to the United States. If that result could have been
foreseen, the treaty of San Ildefonso would never have been made.
The government of the United States believed that Louisiana, as
held by France, had bordered on the Rio Grande, and that, by the
treaty with Bonaparte, we were entitled to territory in the direction
of Florida as far as the Perdido. In the vexatious war with the
Seminoles, General Jackson did not hesitate to march across the
line, capture Pensacola, and seize the Barancas. The comments,
official and personal, which were made on that rash exploit, led
to controversies and estrangements which affected political parties
for many years after. Jackson's hostility to John Quincy Adams,
his exasperating quarrel with Clay, his implacable hatred for
Calhoun, all had their origin in events connected with the Florida
campaign of 1818.
To compose the boundary troubles with Spain, a treaty was negotiated
in 1819, which, with many gains, entailed some signal losses upon
the United States. The whole of Florida was ceded by Spain, an
acquisition which proved of great value to us in every point of
view. As Florida had become separated from the other Spanish
colonies by the cession of Louisiana, the government at Madrid
found difficulty in satisfactorily administering its affairs and
guarding its safety. South of the United States, to the Straits
of Magellan, the Spanish flag floated over every foot of the
continent except the Empire of Brazil and some small colonies in
Guiana. The cession of Louisiana to Bonaparte involved the loss
of Florida which was now formally transferred to the United States.
But Spain received more than an equivalent. The whole of Texas
was fairly included in the Louisiana purchase,--if the well-studied
opinion of such eminent statesmen as Clay, John Quincy Adams, Van
Buren, and Benton may be accepted,--and we paid dearly for Florida
by agreeing to retreat from the Rio Grande to the Sabine as our
south-western frontier, thus surrendering Texas to Mexico. The
western boundary of the Louisiana territory was defined as beginning
at the mouth of the Sabine (which is the boundary of the State of
Louisiana to-day), continuing along its western bank to the 32 deg. of
north latitude, thence by a line due north to the Red River, thence
up the Red River to the 100th meridian west from Greenwich, or the
23d west from Washington, thence due north to the Arkansas, thence
following the Arkansas to its source in latitude 42 deg., and thence
by that parallel to the Pacific Ocean. Should the Arkansas fall
short of the 42 deg., a due north line to that parallel was to be taken.
The United States solemnly renounced all claim to territories west
or south of the line just mentioned, and Spain renounced all claim
to territory east or north of it. Thus all boundary disputes with
Spain were ended, and peace was secured, though at a great cost;
as events in after years so fully proved.
LOUISIANA ADMITTED AS A STATE.
Meanwhile territorial government had been established over a large
section of the country acquired from France; and it was rapidly
peopled by an enterprising emigration, almost wholly from the
Southern States. Louisiana sought to enter the Union in 1811, and
then for the first time occurred an agitation in Congress over the
admission of a slave State. Opposition to it was not, however,
grounded so much upon the existence of slavery as upon the alleged
violation of the Constitution in forming a State from territory
not included in the original government of the Union. Josiah Quincy
of Massachusetts made a violent speech against it, declaring that
if Louisiana were admitted, "the bonds of this Union are virtually
dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their
moral obligations; and that, as it will be right of all, so it will
be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation, amicably
if they can, violently if they must." Mr. Quincy was disquieted
at the mere thought of extending the Union beyond its original
limits. He had "heard with alarm that six States might grow up
beyond the Mississippi, and that the mouth of the Ohio might be
east of the centre of a contemplated empire." He declared that
"it was not for these men that our fathers fought, not for them
that the Constitution was adopted. Our fathers were not madmen:
they had not taken degrees at the hospital of idiocy." He maintained
with great vehemence that there was "no authority to throw the
rights and liberties of this people into 'hotchpot' with the wild
men of the Missouri, nor with the mixed, though more respectable,
race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands in the
mouth of the Mississippi." Mr. Quincy's sentiments were far more
radical than those held by the mass of Northern or New-England
people, yet there was undoubtedly a strong opposition to the
admission of Louisiana. Many Northern men had opposed the purchase
of the territory from France, believing it to be unconstitutional;
and they dreaded the introduction of senators and representatives
from territory which they considered foreign. Nevertheless the
bill admitting the State passed the House by a vote of two-thirds
of the members. The opposition was wholly from the North, and
largely from New England. The contest was confined to Congress--
the issue failing to excite popular interest. A majority of the
people, both North and South, were convinced that the ownership of
the mouth of the Mississippi was of inestimable value to the Union,
and that it could not be permanently secured except by admitting
as a State the territory which included and controlled it. This
conclusion was strengthened by the near approach of war with Great
Britain, soon after formally declared. The advantage of a loyal
and devoted population at New Orleans, identified in interest and
in sympathy with the government, was too evident to need argument.
If the weight of reason had not already been on the side of admitting
Louisiana, the necessities of war would have enforced it.
Six years after Louisiana entered the Union, Missouri applied for
admission as a slave State. A violent agitation at once arose,
continued for two years, and was finally allayed by the famous
compromise of 1820. The outbreak was so sudden, its course so
turbulent, and its subsidence so complete, that for many years it
was regarded as phenomenal in our politics, and its repetition in
the highest degree improbable if not impossible. The "Missouri
question," as it was popularly termed, formally appeared in Congress
in the month of December, 1818; though during the preceding session
petitions for a State government had been received from the
inhabitants of that territory. When the bill proposing to admit
the State came before the House, Mr. James Tallmadege, jun., of
New York, moved to amend it by providing that "the further introduction
of slavery be prohibited in said State of Missouri, and that all
children born in that State after its admission to the Union shall
be free at the age of twenty-five years." The discussion which
followed was able, excited, and even acrimonious. Mr. Clay took
an active part against the amendment, but his great influence was
unavailing in the face of the strong anti-slavery sentiment which
was so suddenly developed in the North. Both branches of Mr.
Tallmadge's amendment were adopted and the bill was passed. In
the Senate the anti-slavery amendment encountered a furious opposition
and was rejected by a large majority. The House refused to recede;
and, amid great excitement in the country and no little temper in
Congress, each branch voted to adhere to its position. Thus for
the time Missouri was kept out of the Union.
On the second day after the opening of the next Congress, December,
1819, Mr. John Holmes presented a memorial in the House of
Representatives from a convention which had been lately held in
the District of Maine, praying for the admission of said district
into the Union "as a separate and independent State, on an equal
footing with the original States." On the same day, and immediately
after Mr. Holmes had taken his seat, Mr. John Scott, territorial
delegate, brought before the House the memorial presented in the
previous Congress for the admission of Missouri on the same terms
of independence and equality with the old States as prayed for by
Maine. From that hour it was found impossible to consider the
admission of Maine and Missouri separately. Geographically remote,
differing in soil, climate, and products, incapable of competing
with each other in any pursuit, they were thrown into rivalry by
the influence of the one absorbing question of negro slavery.
Southern men were unwilling that Maine should be admitted unless
the enabling Act for Missouri should be passed at the same time,
and Northern men were unwilling that any enabling Act should be
passed for Missouri which did not contain an anti-slavery restriction.
Mr. Clay, then an accepted leader of Southern sentiment,--which in
his later life he ceased to be,--made an earnest, almost fiery,
speech on the question. He declared that before the Maine bill
should be finally acted on, he wanted to know "whether certain
doctrines of an alarming character, with respect to a restriction
on the admission of new States west of the Mississippi, were to be
sustained on this floor." He wanted to know "what conditions
Congress could annex to the admission of a new State; whether,
indeed, there could be a partition of its sovereignty."
THE FIRST MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
Despite the eloquence and the great influence of the Speaker, the
Southern representatives were overborne and the House adopted the
anti-slavery restriction. The Senate refused to concur, united
Maine and Missouri in one bill, and passed it with an entirely new
feature, which was proposed by Mr. Jesse B. Thomas, a senator from
Illinois. That feature was simply the provision, since so widely
known as the Missouri Compromise, which forever prohibited slavery
north of 36 deg. 30' in all the territory acquired from France by the
Louisiana purchase. The House would not consent to admit the two
States in the same bill, but finally agreed to the compromise; and
in the early part of March, 1820, Maine became a member of the
Union without condition. A separate bill was passed, permitting
Missouri to form a constitution preparatory to her admission,
subject to the compromise, which, indeed, formed one section of
the enabling Act. Missouri was thus granted permission to enter
the Union as a slave State. But she was discontented with the
prospect of having free States on three sides,--east, north, and
west.
Although the Missouri Compromise was thus nominally perfected, and
the agitation apparently ended, the most exciting, and in some
respects the most dangerous, phase of the question was yet to be
reached. After the enabling Act was passed, the Missouri Convention
assembled to frame a constitution for the new State. The inhabitants
of the Territory had become angered by the long delay imposed upon
them, caused, as they believed, by the introduction of a question
which concerned only themselves, and which Congress had no right
to control. In this resentful mood they were led by the extremists
of the convention to insert a provision in the constitution,
declaring that "it shall be the duty of the General Assembly, as
soon as may be, to pass such laws as may be necessary to prevent
free negroes or mulattoes from coming to or settling in this State
under any pretext whatever." As soon as the constitution with this
obnoxious clause was transmitted to Congress by the President, the
excitement broke forth with increased intensity and the lines of
the old controversy were at once re-formed.
The parliamentary struggle which ensued was bitter beyond precedent;
threats of dissolving the Union were frequent, and apprehension of
an impending calamity was felt throughout the country. The discussion
continued with unabated vigor and ardor until the middle of February,
and the Congress was to terminate on the ensuing fourth of March.
The House had twice refused to pass the bill admitting Missouri,
declaring that the objectionable clause in her organic law was not
only an insult to every State in which colored men were citizens,
but was in flat contradiction of that provision in the Federal
Constitution which declares that "the citizens of each State shall
be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in
the several States."
THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
The defeat, apparently final, of the admission of Missouri, created
intense indignation. Southern senators and representatives charged
that they were treated unjustly by the North, and dealt with unfairly
in Congress. In pursuance of the compromise of the year before,
Maine had been admitted and her senators were in their seats. The
organs of Southern opinion accused the North of overreaching the
South in securing, under the name of a compromise, the admission
of Maine, while still retaining the power to exclude Missouri. A
feeling that bad faith had been practiced is sure to create
bitterness, and the accusation of it produces increased bitterness
in return. The North could easily justify itself by argument, but
the statement without argument apparently showed that the South
had been deceived. The course pursued by the senators from Maine,
--John Holmes and John Chandler,--in voting steadily for the
admission of Missouri, tended greatly to check recrimination and
relieve asperity of feeling. Mr. Holmes was a man of ability, of
experience in public affairs, and of eminent distinction at home.
With a rare gift of humor, and with conversational talent almost
unrivaled, he exerted an influence over men in private and social
intercourse which gave him singular power in shaping public questions.
He was an intimate friend and political supporter of Mr. Clay, and
their cordial co-operation at this crisis evoked harmony from chaos,
and brought a happy solution to a question that was troubling every
patriotic heart. They united in a final effort, and through the
instrumentality of a joint committee of seven senators and twenty-
three representatives,--of which Mr. Holmes was chairman on the
part of the Senate, and Mr. Clay on the part of the House,--a second
and final compromise was effected, and the admission of Missouri
secured. This compromise declared that Missouri should be admitted
to the Union upon the fundamental condition that no law should ever
be passed by her Legislature enforcing the objectionable provision
in her constitution, and that by a solemn public act the State
should declare and record her assent to this condition, and transmit
to the President of the United States an authentic copy of the Act.
Missouri accepted the condition promptly but not cheerfully, feeling
that she entered the Union under a severe discipline, and with hard
and humiliating conditions. It was in this compromise, not in the
one of the preceding session, that Mr. Clay was the leading spirit.
Though the first was the more important, and dealt with larger
questions of a more enduring nature, it did not at the time create
so great an impression on the public mind as the second, nor did
its discussion produce so much antagonism between the North and
the South. Thirty years after these events Mr. Clay called attention
to the fact that he had received undeserved credit for the Missouri
Compromise of 1820, which he had supported but not originated. On
the other hand, he had received only the slightest mention for his
agency in the second compromise, which he had really originated
and carried through Congress. The second compromise had passed
out of general recollection before Mr. Clay's death, though it had
made him a Presidential candidate at forty-three years of age.
The most remarkable fact connected with the excitement over the
Missouri question, which engrossed the country for more than two
years, was the absence of any premonition of its coming. There
had been no severe political struggle in the nation since the
contest between Madison and De Witt Clinton in 1812. Monroe had
been chosen almost without opposition in 1816, and, even while the
Missouri controversy was at its height, he was re-elected in 1820
by a practically unanimous vote, the North and the South being
equally cordial in supporting him. In the House of Representatives,
where the battle was so fierce, and the combatants were so evenly
divided, Mr. Clay had been chosen speaker with only eight adverse
votes, and these were given by men who acted from personal prejudice,
and not from political difference. But the outbreak indicated,
and indeed heralded, the re-forming of old party lines. The apparent
unanimity only concealed a division that was already fatally
developed. The party of Jefferson by its very success involved
itself in ruin. Its ancient foe, the eminent and honorable party
of Federalists, made but a feeble struggle in 1816, and completely
disappeared from the national political field four years later,
and even from State contests after the notable defeat of Harrison
Gray Otis by William Eustis for governor of Massachusetts in 1823.
But no political organization can live without opposition. The
disappearance of the Federalists was the signal for factional
divisions among their opponents; and the old Republican party,
which had overthrown the administration of John Adams in 1800,
which had laid the embargo, and forced a war with England, was now
nearing its end. It divided into four parts in the Presidential
election of 1824, and with its ancient creed and organization never
re-appeared in a national contest. Jefferson had combined and
indeed largely created its elements. He beheld it everywhere
victorious for a quarter of a century, and he lived to see it
shattered into fragments by the jealousy of its new leaders. The
Democratic and Whig parties were constructed upon the ruins of the
old organizations. In each were to be found representatives of
the Republicanism of Jefferson and the Federalism of Hamilton.
The ambition of both to trace their lineage to the former was a
striking proof of its popular strength.
The Missouri question marked a distinct era in the political thought
of the country, and made a profound impression on the minds of
patriotic men. Suddenly, without warning, the North and the South,
the free States and the slave States, found themselves arrayed
against each other in violent and absorbing conflict. During the
interval between the adoption of the Federal Constitution and the
admission of Missouri, there had been a great change in the Southern
mind, both as to the moral and the economic aspects of slavery.
This revolution of opinion had been wrought in large degree by the
cotton-plant. When the National Government was organized in 1789,
the annual export of cotton did not exceed three hundred bales.
It was reckoned only among our experimental products. But, stimulated
by the invention of the gin, production increased so rapidly, that,
at the time of Missouri's application for admission to the Union,
cotton-planting was the most remunerative industry in the country.
The export alone exceeded three hundred thousand bales annually.
But this highly profitable culture was in regions so warm that
outdoor labor was unwelcome to the white race. The immediate
consequence was a large advance in the value of slave-labor, and
in the price of slaves. This fact had its quick and decisive
influence, even in those slave-holding States which could not raise
cotton. The inevitable and speedy result was a consolidation of
the political power necessary to protect an interest at once so
vast and so liable to assault.
It was not unnatural that this condition should lead to a violent
outburst on the slavery question, but it was nevertheless wholly
unexpected. The causes which let to it had not been understood
and analyzed. The older class of statesmen, who had come down from
the period of the Revolution, from the great work of cementing the
Union and framing the Constitution, deplored the agitation, and
viewed the results with the gravest apprehension. The compromise
by a geographical line, dividing the slave States from the free,
was regarded by this class of patriots as full of danger,--a constant
menace to the peace and perpetuity of the Union. To Mr. Jefferson,
still living in vigorous old age, the trouble sounded like an alarm-
bell rung at midnight. While the measure was pending in Congress,
he wrote to a member of the House of Representatives, that "the
Missouri question is the most portentous one which has ever threatened
the Union. In the gloomiest hour of the Revolutionary war I never
had any apprehensions equal to those which I feel from this source."
Men on both sides of the controversy began to realize its significance
and to dread its probable results. They likened the partition of
the country by a geographical line unto the ancient agreement
between Abraham and Lot, where one should go to the right, and the
other to the left, with the certainty of becoming aliens, and the
possibility of becoming enemies.
THE MISSOURI ADJUSTMENT SATISFACTORY.
With the settlement of the Missouri question, the anti-slavery
agitation subsided as rapidly as it had arisen. This was a second
surprise to thinking men. The results can, however, be readily
explained. The Northern States felt that they had absolutely
secured to freedom a large territory west and north of Missouri.
The Southern States believed that they had an implied and honorable
understanding,--outside and beyond the explicit letter of the law,
--that new States south of the Missouri line could be admitted with
slavery if they desired. The great political parties then dividing
the country accepted the result and for the next twenty years no
agitation of the slavery question appeared in any political
convention, or affected any considerable body of the people.
Within that period, however, there grew up a school of anti-slavery
men far more radical and progressive than those who had resisted
the admission of Missouri as a slave State. They formed what was
known as the Abolition party, and they devoted themselves to the
utter destruction of slavery by every instrumentality which they
could lawfully employ. Acutely trained in the political as well
as the ethical principles of the great controversy, they clearly
distinguished between the powers which Congress might and might
not exercise under the limitations of the Constitution. They began,
therefore, by demanding the abolition of slavery in the District
of Columbia, and in all the national forts, arsenals, and dock-
yards, where, without question or cavil, the exclusive jurisdiction
belonged to Congress; they asked that Congress, under its constitutional
authority to regulate commerce between the States, would prohibit
the inter-State slave-trade; and they prayed that our ships sailing
on the high-seas should not be permitted by the government to carry
slaves as part of their cargo, under the free flag of the United
States, and outside the local jurisdiction that held them in bondage.
They denied that a man should aid in executing any law whose
enforcement did violence to his conscience and trampled under foot
the Divine commands. Hence they would not assist in the surrender
and return of fugitive slaves, holding it rather to be their duty
to resist such violation of the natural rights of man by every
peaceful method, and justifying their resistance by the truths
embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and, still more
impressively, by the precepts taught in the New Testament.
While encountering, on these issues, the active hostility of the
great mass of the people in all sections of the Union, the
Abolitionists challenged the respect of thinking men, and even
compelled the admiration of some of their most pronounced opponents.
The party was small in number, but its membership was distinguished
for intellectual ability, for high character, for pure philanthropy,
for unquailing courage both moral and physical, and for a controversial
talent which has never been excelled in the history of moral reforms.
It would not be practicable to give the names of all who were
conspicuous in this great struggle, but the mention of James G.
Birney, of Benjamin Lundy, of Arthur Tappan, of the brothers Lovejoy,
of Gerrit Smith, of John G. Whittier, of William Lloyd Garrison,
of Wendell Phillips, and of Gamaliel Bailey, will indicate the
class who are entitled to be held in remembrance so long as the
possession of great mental and moral attributes gives enduring and
honorable fame. Nor would the list of bold and powerful agitators
be complete or just if confined to the white race. Among the
colored men--often denied the simplest rights of citizenship in
the States where they resided--were found many who had received
the gift of tongues, orators by nature, who bravely presented the
wrongs and upheld the rights of the oppressed. Among these Frederick
Douglass was especially and richly endowed not only with the strength
but with the graces of speech; and for many years, from the stump
and from the platform, he exerted a wide and beneficent influence
upon popular opinion.
THE ABOLITION PARTY ORGANIZED.
In the early days of this agitation, the Abolitionists were a
proscribed and persecuted class, denounced with unsparing severity
by both the great political parties, condemned by many of the
leading churches, libeled in the public press, and maltreated by
furious mobs. In no part of the country did they constitute more
than a handful of the population, but they worked against every
discouragement with a zeal and firmness which bespoke intensity of
moral conviction. They were in large degree recruited from the
society of Friends, who brought to the support of the organization
the same calm and consistent courage which had always distinguished
them in upholding before the world their peculiar tenets of religious
faith. Caring nothing for prejudice, meeting opprobrium with
silence, shaming the authors of violence by meek non-resistance,
relying on moral agencies alone, appealing simply to the reason
and the conscience of men, they arrested the attention of the nation
by arraigning it before the public opinion of the world, and
proclaiming its responsibility to the judgment of God.
These apostles of universal liberty besieged Congress with memorials
praying for such legislative measures as would carry out their
designs. Failure after failure only served to inspire them with
fresh courage and more vigorous determination. They were met with
the most resolute resistance by representative from the slave-
holding States, who sought to deny them a hearing, and declared
that the mere consideration of their propositions by Congress would
not only justify, but would inevitably precipitate, a dissolution
of the Union. Undaunted by any form of opposition, the Abolitionists
stubbornly maintained their ground, and finally succeeded in creating
a great popular excitement by insisting on the simple right of
petition as inseparable from free government and free citizenship.
On this issue John Quincy Adams, who had entered the House of
Representatives in 1831, two years after his retirement from the
Presidency, waged a memorable warfare. Not fully sympathizing with
the Abolitionists in their measures or their methods, Mr. Adams
maintained that they had the right to be heard. On this incidental
issue he forced the controversy until it enlisted the attention
of the entire country. He finally drove the opponents of free
discussion to seek shelter under the adoption of an odious rule in
the House of Representatives, popularly named the "Atherton gag,"
from Mr. Charles G. Atherton, a Democratic representative from New
Hampshire, who reported it to the House in December, 1838. The
rule was originally devised, however, in a caucus of Southern
Democratic members. In the light of the present day, when slavery
no longer exists in the land, when speech is absolutely free, in
and out of Congress, it is hard to believe that during the Presidency
of Mr. Van Buren, and under the speakership of Mr. Polk, the House
of Representatives voted that "every petition, memorial, resolution,
proposition, or paper, touching or relating in any way or to any
extent whatever to slavery or the abolition thereof, shall on
presentation, without any further action thereon, be laid upon the
table, without being debated, printed, or referred."
The Southern representatives, both Democrats and Whigs, and the
Northern Democrats, sustained this extraordinary resolution, which
became widely known as the 21st Rule of the House. The Northern
Whigs, to their honor be it said, were steadily against it. The
real design of the measure was to take from Mr. Adams the power of
precipitating a discussion on the slavery question, but the most
unskilled should have seen that in this it would fail. It resembled
in its character the re-actionary and tyrannical edicts so frequently
employed in absolute governments, and was unsuited to the temper,
ran counter to the judgment, and proved offensive to the conscience,
of the American people.
Profoundly opposed as were many citizens to a denial of the right
of petition, very few wished to become identified with the cause
of the Abolitionists. In truth it required no small degree of
moral courage to take position in the ranks of that despised
political sect forty-five years ago. Persecutions of a petty and
social character were almost sure to follow, and not infrequently
grievous wrongs were inflicted, for which, in the absence of a
disposition among the people to see justice done, the law afforded
no redress. Indeed, by an apparent contradiction not difficult to
reconcile, many of those who fought bravely for the right of the
Abolitionists to be heard in Congress by petition, were yet enraged
with them for continually and, as they thought, causelessly, raising
and pressing the issue. They were willing to fight for the right
of the Abolitionists to do a certain thing, and then willing to
fight the Abolitionists for aimlessly and uselessly doing it. The
men who were governed by these complex motives were chiefly Whigs.
They felt that an increase of popular strength to the Abolitionists
must be at the expense of the party which, continuing to make Clay
its idol, was about to make Harrison its candidate. The announcement,
therefore, on the eve of the national contest of 1840, that the
Abolitionists had nominated James G. Birney of Michigan for President,
and Francis J. Le Moyne of Pennsylvania for Vice-President, was
angrily received by the Whigs, and denunciations of the movement
were loud and frequent. The support received by these candidates
was unexpectedly small, and showed little ground, in the judgment
of the Whigs, for the course taken by the Abolitionists. Their
strength was almost wholly confined to New England, Western New
York, and the Western Reserve of Ohio. It was plainly seen, that,
in a large majority of the free States, the Abolitionists had as
yet made no impression on public opinion.
THE COLONIZATION SOCIETY.
Any less earnest body of men would have been discouraged, but the
Abolition party was composed of devotees possessing the true martyr
spirit, and, instead of being appalled by defeat, they were inspired
with fresh zeal, and incited to new effort. They had not failed
to observe, that, while few were disposed to unite in extreme anti-
slavery measures, there was a growing number whose conscience was
aroused on the general subject of human bondage. The emancipation
of negroes with a view to their settlement in Africa, as advocated
by the Colonization Society, received the support of conservative
opponents of slavery, the sympathy of the Churches, and the patronage
of leading men among the slave-holders of the Border States. The
National Government was repeatedly urged to give its aid to the
scheme; and, during the excitement on the Missouri question, Congress
appropriated $100,000, nominally for the return of Africans who
had been unlawfully landed in the United States after the slave
trade was prohibited, but really as an indirect mode of promoting
the project of colonization. As a scheme for the destruction of
domestic slavery it was ridiculed by the Abolitionists, who in the
end violently opposed it as tending to deaden the public conscience
to the more imperative duty of universal emancipation. The
philanthropic efforts of the Society were abundantly rewarded,
however, by the establishment of the Republic of Liberia, whose
career has been eminently creditable and advantageous to the African
race.
CHAPTER II.
Review of events before 1860 (_continued_).--Early Efforts to
acquire Texas.--Course of President Tyler.--Mr. Calhoun appointed
Secretary of State.--His Successful Management of the Texas Question.
--His Hostility to Mr. Van Buren.--Letters of Mr. Clay and Mr. Van
Buren opposing the Annexation of Texas.--Mr. Clay nominated as the
Whig Candidate for the President in 1844.--Van Buren's Nomination
defeated.--Mr. Polk selected as the Democratic Candidate.--Disquietude
of Mr. Clay.--His Change of Ground.--His Defeat.--Prolonged Rivalry
between Mr. Clay and General Jackson.--Texas formally annexed to
the Union.
Soon after the failure of the Abolitionists to exhibit popular
strength, the slavery question was forced upon public attention
independently of their efforts, and by causes whose operation and
effect were not distinctly forseen by those who set them in motion.
The Americans who, in a spirit of adventure, migrated to Texas
after that province had revolted from Mexico, became the controlling
power in the young republic, and under the lead of General Sam
Houston, in the month of April, 1836, won a memorable victory over
the Mexican army at San Jacinto. Thenceforward, in differing
degrees of earnestness, the annexation of Texas became a subject
of consideration in the United States, but it was never incorporated
in the creed of either of the great parties until the Presidential
canvass of 1844. Not long after the death of President Harrison
in April, 1841, his successor, John Tyler, had serious disagreements
with the leading Whigs, both in his cabinet and in Congress,
respecting the establishment of a national bank. Mr. Clay led the
attack upon him openly and almost savagely, arraigning him as a
traitor to the principles upon which he had been elected, and
pursuing the quarrel so violently, that in September, five months
after Tyler's accession, every member of his cabinet resigned except
Mr. Webster. He lingered, unwelcome if not distrusted, until July,
1843, for the purpose of conducting the negotiations in regard to
the North-eastern boundary, which he brought to a termination by
the Ashburton Treaty. The new secretary of State, Abel P. Upshur
of Virginia,--who had been at the head of the Navy Department for
a few months,--was a man of strong parts and brilliant attainments,
but not well known outside of his own commonwealth, and subject
therefore to disparagement as the successor of a man so illustrious
as Mr. Webster. He grasped his new duties, however, with the hand
of a master, and actively and avowedly pursued the policy of
acquiring Texas. His efforts were warmly seconded by the President,
whose friends believed with all confidence that this question could
be so presented as to make Mr. Tyler the Democratic candidate in
the approaching Presidential election. What Mr. Upshur's success
might have been in the difficult field of negotiation upon which
he had entered, must be left to conjecture, for his life was suddenly
destroyed by the terrible accident on board the United-States
steamer "Princeton," in February, 1844, but little more than seven
months after he had entered upon his important and engrossing
duties.
ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT TYLER.
Mr. Tyler's administration being now fully committed to the scheme
of Texas annexation, the selection of a new secretary of State was
a matter of extreme importance. The President had been finally
separated from all sympathy with the party that elected him, when
Mr. Webster left the cabinet the preceding summer. But he had not
secured the confidence or the support of the Democracy. The members
of that party were willing to fill his offices throughout the
country, and to absorb the honors and emoluments of his administration;
but the leaders of positive influence, men of the grade of Van
Buren, Buchanan, Cass, Dallas, and Silas Wright, held aloof, and
left the government to be guided by Democrats who had less to risk,
and by Whigs of the type of Henry A. Wise of Virginia and Caleb
Cushing of Massachusetts, who had revolted from the rule of Mr.
Clay. It was the sagacity of Wise, rather than the judgment of
Tyler, which indicated the immense advantage of securing Mr. Calhoun
for the head of the cabinet. The great Southern leader was then
in retirement, having resigned from the Senate the preceding year.
By a coincidence worth nothing, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were
all at that moment absent from the Senate, each having voluntarily
retired. In later life, chastened by political adversity, they
returned to the chamber where, before their advent and since their
departure, there have been no rivals to their fame.
Naturally, Mr. Calhoun would have been reluctant to take office
under Tyler at any time, and especially for the brief remainder of
an administration which had been continually under the ban of public
opinion, and which had not the slightest prospect of renewal. With
quick observation and keen insight, however, he perceived a great
opportunity to serve the South, and to serve the South was with
him not only a principle, but a passion. He realized, moreover,
that the hour was at hand for an historic revenge which the noblest
of minds might indulge. He saw intuitively that the Texas question
was one of vast importance, with untold possibilities. He saw with
equal clearness that it had never been presented in such manner as
to appeal to the popular judgment, and become an active, aggressive
issue in the struggle for the Presidency. A large section of the
Democratic party had looked favorably upon annexation ever since
1836, but the leaders had dared not to include the scheme in the
avowed designs of party policy. They had omitted it purposely in
making up the issues for the Van Buren campaign of 1840, and, up
to the hour when Mr. Calhoun entered the State Department, the
intention of the managers was to omit it in the contest of 1844
against Mr. Clay. Mr. Tyler's advocacy of Texas annexation had
injured rather than promoted it in the estimation of the Democratic
party; but when Mr. Calhoun, with his astute management, and his
large influence in the slave-holding States, espoused it, the whole
tenor of Southern opinion was changed, and the Democracy of that
section received a new inspiration.
Mr. Van Buren, aspiring again to the Presidency, desired to avoid
the Texas issue. Mr. Calhoun determined that he should meet it.
He had every motive for distrusting, opposing, even hating, Van
Buren. The contest between them had been long and unrelenting.
When Van Buren, as secretary of State, was seized with the ambition
to succeed Jackson, he saw Calhoun in the Vice-Presidency, strongly
intrenched as heir-apparent; and he set to work to destroy the
friendship and confidence that existed between him and the President.
The rash course of Jackson in the Seminole campaign of 1818 had
been severely criticised in the cabinet of Monroe, and Mr. Calhoun,
as secretary of War, had talked of a court of inquiry. Nothing,
however, was done and the mere suggestion had been ten years
forgotten, when Jackson entered upon the Presidency, entertaining
the strongest friendship, both personal and political, for Calhoun.
But the damaging fact was unearthed and the jealousy of Jackson
was aroused. Calhoun was driven into a deadly quarrel, resigned
the Vice-Presidency, and went back to South Carolina to engage in
the nullification contest. Van Buren quickly usurped his place in
the regard and confidence of Jackson, and succeeded to the Presidency.
Calhoun, denounced in every paper under the control of the
administration, was threatened with prosecution, and robbed for a
time of the confidence of the Democratic party. By the strangely
and rapidly changing fortunes of politics, it was now in his power
to inflict a just retribution upon Van Bren. He did not neglect
the opportunity.
SECRETARY CALHOUN'S DIPLOMACY.
Mr. Calhoun urged the scheme of annexation with intense earnestness.
Taking up the subject where Mr. Upshur had left it, he conducted
the negotiation with zeal and skill. His diplomatic correspondence
was able and exhaustive. It was practically a frank avowal that
Texas must be incorporated in the Union. He feared that European
influence might become dominant in the new republic, and, as a
consequence, that anti-slavery ideas might take root, and thence
injuriously affect the interests, and to some extent the safety,
of the Southern States. In an instruction to William R. King, our
minister at Paris, Mr. Calhoun called his attention to the fact
that England regarded the defeat of annexation "as indispensable
to the abolition of slavery in Texas." He believed that England
was "too sagacious not to see what a fatal blow abolition in Texas
would give to slavery in the United States." Then, contemplating
the effect of the general abolition of slavery, he declared that
"to this continent it would be calamitous beyond description." It
would "destroy in a great measure the cultivation and production
of the great tropical staples, amounting annually in value to nearly
$300,000,000." It is a suggestive commentary on Mr. Calhoun's evil
foreboding, that the great tropical staple of the South has steadily
increased in growth under free labor, and that the development of
Texas never fairly began until slavery was banished from her soil.
Discussing the right of Texas to independence, in an instruction
to Wilson Shannon, our minister to Mexico, Mr. Calhoun averred that
"Texas had never stood in relation to Mexico as a rebellious province
struggling to obtain independence. The true relation between them
is that of independent members of a federal government, the weaker
of which has successfully resisted the attempts of the stronger to
conquer and subject her to its power." This was applying to the
constitution of Mexico the same construction which he had so long
and so ably demanded for our own. It was, indeed, but a paraphrase
of the State-sovereignty and State-rights theory, with which he
had persistently indoctrinated the Southern mind. Ten years after
Mr. Calhoun was in his grave, the same doctrine, in almost the same
form of expression, became familiar to the country as the Southern
justification for resorting to civil war.
The prompt result of Mr. Calhoun's efforts was a treaty of annexation
which had been discussed but not concluded under Mr. Upshur. It
was communicated to the Senate by the President on the 12th of
April, 1844. The effect which this treaty produced on the political
fortunes of two leading statesmen, one in each party, was extraordinary.
Prior to its negotiation, the Democrats throughout the Union were
apparently well united in support of Mr. Van Buren as their
Presidential candidate. Mr. Clay was universally accepted by the
Whigs,--his nomination by a national convention being indeed but
a matter of form. Relations of personal courtesy and confidence,
if not of intimate friendship, had always subsisted between Mr.
Clay and Mr. Van Buren during their prolonged public service. It
was now believed that they had come to an understanding, through
the negotiation of friends, to eliminate the Texas question from
the campaign of 1844 by defeating the Tyler-Calhoun treaty, and
agreeing to a general postponement of the subject, on the ground
that immediate annexation would plunge the country into war. Very
soon after the treaty was sent to the Senate by the President, Mr.
Clay published in the "National Intelligencer" his famous Raleigh
letter against annexation. The "Globe" of the same day contained
a more guarded communication from Mr. Van Buren, practically taking
the same ground. Considering the widely different characteristics
of the two men, the letters were singularly alike in argument and
inference. This fact, in connection with the identical time of
publication, strengthened the suspicion, if not the conclusion,
that there was a pre-arranged understanding between the eminent
authors.
The letter of Mr. Van Buren was fatal to his prospects. He was
caught in the toils prepared by Mr. Calhoun's diplomacy. His
disastrous defeat four years before by General Harrison had not
injured him within the lines of his own party, or shorn him of his
prestige in the nation. He still retained the undiminished confidence
of his old adherents in the North, and a large support from the
Southern Democracy outside of the States in which Mr. Calhoun's
influence was dominant. But the leading Democrats of the South,
now inflamed with the fever of annexation, determined upon Van
Buren's defeat as soon as his letter opposing the acquisition of
Texas appeared. They went to work industriously and skillfully to
compass that end. It was not a light task. The force of New York,
as has been so frequently and so signally demonstrated, is difficult
to overcome in a Democratic National Convention; and New York was
not only unanimously, but enthusiastically, for Mr. Van Buren.
Hitherto New York and the South had been in alliance, and their
joint decrees were the rule of action inside the Democratic party.
They were now separated and hostile, and the trial of strength that
ensued was one of the most interesting political contests ever
witnessed in the country. The Democratic masses had so long followed
Southern lead that they were bewildered by this new and unexpected
development. From the organization of the Federal Government to
that hour, a period of fifty-six years, Mr. Van Buren was the only
Northern man whom the Democracy had supported for the Presidency;
and Mr. Van Buren had been forced upon the party by General Jackson.
His title to his political estate, therefore, came from the South.
It remained strong because his supporters believed that Jackson
was still behind him. One word from the great chief at the Hermitage
would have compelled Mr. Van Buren to retire from the field. But
the name of Jackson was powerful with the Democratic masses.
Against all the deep plots laid for Van Buren's overthrow, he was
still able, when the national convention assembled at Baltimore in
May, 1844, to count a majority of the delegates in favor of his
nomination.
VAN BUREN AND THE TWO-THIRDS RULE.
The Texas treaty of annexation was still pending in the Senate with
a decided majority committed against its confirmation, both upon
public and partisan grounds. The Whig senators and the friends of
Van Buren had coalesced for its defeat after their respective chiefs
had pronounced against it. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Colonel
Benton were the leaders under whose joint efforts the work of
Calhoun was to be set at naught. But, in fact, the work of Calhoun
had already been effectually done and he could afford to disregard
the fate of the treaty. He had consolidated the Democratic delegates
from the slave-holding States against Mr. Van Buren, and the decree
had gone forth for his political destruction. Mr. Van Buren, with
the aid of the more populous North, had indeed secured a majority
of the convention, but an instrumentality was at hand to overcome
this apparent advantage. In the two preceding national conventions
of the Democratic party, the rule requiring a two-thirds vote of
all the delegates to make a nomination had been adopted at the
instance of Mr. Van Buren's friends in order to insure his victory.
It was now to be used for his defeat. Forseeing the result, the
same zealous and devoted friends of Mr. Van Buren resisted its
adoption. Romulus M. Sanders of North Carolina introduced the
rule, and was sustained with great vigor by Robert J. Walker of
Mississippi, and George W. Hopkins of Virginia. The leading
opponents of the rule were Marcus Morton of Massachusetts, Nathan
Clifford of Maine, and Daniel S. Dickinson of New York. The
discussion was conducted by Southern men on one side and by Northern
men on the other,--the first division of the kind in the Democratic
party. Slavery was the ominous cause! The South triumphed and
the rule was fastened upon the convention.
Immediately after this action Mr. Van Buren received a majority of
the votes on the first ballot, and it was not unnaturally charged
that many of those supporting him must have been insincere, inasmuch
as they had the full right, until self-restrained by the two-thirds
rule, to declare him the nominee. But this conclusion does not
necessarily follow. Mr. Van Buren had been nominated in the National
Democratic Conventions of 1835 and 1839 with the two-thirds rule
in operation; and now to force his nomination for a third time by
a mere slender majority was, in the judgment of wise and considerate
party leaders among his own friends, a dangerous experiment. They
instinctively feared to disregard a powerful and aggressive minority
stubbornly demanding that Mr. Van Buren should be subjected to the
same test which his friends had enforced in previous conventions.
Their argument was not satisfactorily answered, the rule was adopted,
and Mr. Van Buren's fate was sealed.
CALHOUN DEFEATS VAN BUREN.
The Southern men who insisted upon the rule had the courage to use
it. They had absolute control of more than one-third of the
convention; and, whatever might come, they were determined that
Mr. Van Buren should not be nominated. As the most effective mode
of assailing his strength, they supported a Northern candidate
against him, and gave a large vote for General Cass. This wrought
the intended result. It demoralized the friends of Mr. Van Buren
and prepared the way for a final concentration upon Mr. Polk, which
from the first had been the secret design of the Southern managers.
It was skillfully done, and was the direct result of the Texas
policy which Mr. Calhoun had forced the Democratic party to adopt.
To Mr. Van Buren it was a great blow, and some of his friends were
indisposed to submit to a result which they considered unfair.
For the first time in history of any convention, of either party,
a candidate supported by a majority of the delegates failed to be
nominated. The two-thirds rule, as Colonel Benton declared, had
been originally framed, "not to thwart a majority, but to strengthen
it." But it was remorselessly used to defeat the majority by men
who intended, not only to force a Southern policy on the government,
but to intrust that policy to the hands of a Southern President.
The support of Cass was not sincere, but it served for the moment
to embarrass the friends of Van Buren, to make the triumph of what
Benton called the Texas conspiracy more easy and more sure, and in
the end to lay up wrath against the day of wrath for General Cass
himself. Calhoun's triumph was complete. Politically he had gained
a great victory for the South. Personally he had inflicted upon
Mr. Van Buren a most humiliating defeat, literally destroying him
as a factor in the Democratic party, of which he had so long and
so successfully been the leader.
The details of Mr. Van Buren's defeat are presented because of its
large influence on the subsequent development of anti-slavery
strength in the North. He was sacrificed because he was opposed
to the immediate annexation of Texas. Had he taken ground in favor
of annexation, he would in all probability have been nominated with
a fair prospect of election; though the general judgment at that
time was that Mr. Clay would have defeated him. The overthrow of
Mr. Van Buren was a crisis in the history of the Democratic party,
and implanted dissensions which rapidly ripened into disaster.
The one leading feature, the forerunner of important political
changes, was the division of delegates on the geographical line of
North and South. Though receiving a clear majority of the entire
convention on the first ballot, Mr. Van Buren had but nine votes
from the slave States; and these votes, singularly enough, came
from the northern side of the line of the Missouri Compromise.
This division in a Democratic National Convention was, in many of
its relations and aspects, more significant than a similar division
in the two Houses of Congress.
Though cruelly wronged by the convention, as many of his supporters
thought, Mr. Van Buren did not himself show resentment, but
effectively sustained his successful competitor. His confidential
friend, Silas Wright, had refused to go on the ticket with Mr.
Polk, and George M. Dallas was substituted by the quick and competent
management of Mr. Robert J. Walker. The refusal of Mr. Wright led
the Whigs to hope for distraction in the ranks of the New-York
Democracy; but that delusion was soon dispelled by Wright's acceptance
of the nomination for governor, and his entrance into the canvass
with unusual energy and spirit. It was widely believed that
Jackson's great influence with Van Buren was actively exerted in
aid of Polk's election. It would have cruelly embittered the few
remaining days of the venerable ex-president to witness Clay's
triumph, and Van Buren owed so much to Jackson that he could not
be indifferent to Polk's success without showing ingratitude to
the great benefactor who had made him his successor in the Executive
chair. Motives of this kind evidently influenced Mr. Van Buren;
for his course in after years showed how keenly he felt his defeat,
and how unreconciled he was to the men chiefly engaged in compassing
it. The cooler temperament which he inherited from his Dutch
ancestry enabled him to bide his time more patiently than men of
Scotch-Irish blood, like Calhoun; but subsequent events plainly
showed that he was capable of nursing his anger, and of inflicting
a revenge as significant and as fatal as that of which he had been
made the victim,--a revenge which would have been perfect in its
gratification had it included Mr. Calhoun personally, as it did
politically, with General Cass.
Mr. Clay's letter opposing the annexation of Texas, unlike the
letter of Mr. Van Buren, brought its author strength and prestige
in the section upon which he chiefly relied for support in the
election. He was nominated with unbounded manifestations of
enthusiasm at Baltimore, on the first of May, with no platform
except a brief extract from one of his own letters embraced in a
single resolution, and containing no reference whatever to the
Texas question. His prospects were considered most brilliant, and
his supporters throughout the Union were absolutely confident of
his election. But the nomination of Mr. Polk, four weeks later,
surprised and disquieted Mr. Clay. More quickly than his ardent
and blinded advocates, he perceived the danger to himself which
the candidacy of Mr. Polk inevitably involved; and he at once became
restless and dissatisfied with the drift and tendency of the
campaign. The convention which nominated Mr. Polk took bold ground
for the immediate re-annexation of Texas and re-occupation of
Oregon. This peculiar form of expression was used to indicate that
Texas had already belonged to us under the Louisiana purchase, and
that Oregon had been wholly ours prior to the treaty of joint
occupancy with Great Britain. It further declared, that our title
to the whole of Oregon, up to 54 deg. 40' north latitude, was "clear
and indisputable"; thus carrying our claim to the borders of the
Russian possessions, and utterly denying and defying the pretension
of Great Britain to the ownership of any territory bordering on
the Pacific.
FATAL CHANGE IN MR. CLAY'S POSITION.
By this aggressive policy the Democratic party called forth the
enthusiasm of the people, both North and South, in favor of
territorial acquisition,--always popular with men of Anglo-Saxon
blood, and appealing in an especial manner to the young, the brave,
and the adventurous, in all sections of the country. Mr. Clay, a
man of most generous and daring nature, suddenly discovered that
he was on the timid side of all the prominent questions before the
people,--a position occupied by him for the first time. He had
led public sentiment in urging the war of 1812 against Great Britain;
had served with distinction in negotiating the Treaty of Peace at
Ghent; had forced the country into an early recognition of the
South-American republics at the risk of war with Spain; had fiercely
attacked the Florida Treaty of 1819, for surrendering our rightful
claim to Texas as part of the Louisiana purchase; and had, when
secretary of State, held high ground on the Oregon question in his
correspondence with the British Government. With this splendid
record of fearless policy throughout his long public career, a
defensive position, suddenly thrust upon him by circumstances which
he had not foreseen, betrayed him into anger, and thence naturally
into imprudence. All his expectations had been based upon a contest
with Mr. Van Buren. The issues he anticipated were those of national
bank, of protective tariff, of internal improvements, and the
distribution of the proceeds from the sale of the public lands,--
on all of which he believed he would have the advantage before the
people. The substitution of Mr. Polk changed the entire character
of the contest, as the sagacious leaders of the Southern Democracy
had foreseen. To extricate himself from the embarrassment into
which he was thrown, Mr. Clay resorted to the dangerous experiment
of modifying the position which he had so recently taken on the
Texas question. Apparently underrating the hostility of the Northern
Whigs to the scheme of annexation, he saw only the disadvantage in
which the Southern Whigs were placed, especially in the Gulf region,
and, in a less degree, in the northern tier of slave-holding States.
Even in Kentucky--which had for years followed Mr. Clay with immense
popular majorities--the contest grew animated and exciting as the
Texas question was pressed. The State was to vote in August; and
the gubernatorial canvass between Judge Owsley, the Whig candidate,
and General William O. Butler, the nominee of the Democrats, was
attracting the attention of the whole nation. This local contest
not only enlisted Mr. Clay's interest, but aroused his deep personal
feeling. In a private letter, since made public, he urged the
editors of the Whig press "to lash Butler" for some political
shortcoming which he pointed out. In a tone of unrestrained anger,
he declared that "we should have a pretty time of it with one of
Jackson's lieutenants at Washington, and another at Frankfort, and
the old man in his dotage at the Hermitage dictating to both." To
lose Kentucky was, for the Whigs, to lose every thing. To reduce
the Whig majority in Mr. Clay's own State would be a great victory
for the Democracy, and to that end the leaders of the party were
straining every nerve.
Mr. Clay realized that it was his position on the Texas question,
as defined in the Raleigh letter, which was endangering his prestige
in Kentucky. This fact, added to the pressure upon him from every
other slave-holding State, precipitated him into the blunder which
probably cost him his election. A few weeks after the nomination
of Mr. Polk, on the first day of July, 1844, Mr. Clay, while resting
quietly at Ashland, wrote to Stephen Miller of Tuscaloosa what has
since been known as his Alabama letter. It was written to relieve
the Southern Whigs, without anticipation of its effect upon the
fortunes of Northern Whigs. Mr. Clay was surrounded by men of the
South only, breathed their atmosphere, heard their arguments; and,
unmindful of the unrepresented Northern sentiment, he took the
fatal step. He declared, that, "far from having any personal
objection to the annexation of Texas," he "would be glad to see it
annexed, without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of
the Union, and upon just and fair terms." This letter received
the popular designation of Mr. Clay's political "death-warrant,"
from the disastrous effect it produced on his prospects in certain
free States where before its appearance he had been considered
irresistibly strong.
TRIUMPH OF POLK OVER CLAY.
The immediate and palpable effect of the Alabama letter in the
North was an increase of power and numbers to the Abolitionists.
To Mr. Clay this was its most destructive result. Prior to 1840
the Abolitionists had been so few and so scattered that they had
not attempted a national organization, or taken any part in the
political contests of the country. In that year, however, they
named James G. Birney as their candidate for the Presidency, and
cast for him only 6,745 votes out of a total of 2,410,778. In 1844
the Abolitionists again named Mr. Birney as their Presidential
candidate; and, until the appearance of the Alabama letter, the
general impression was that their vote would not be larger than in
1840. Indeed, so long as Mr. Clay held firmly to his opposition
to Texas annexation, the tendency of the Abolitionists was to prefer
him to Mr. Polk. But the moment the letter of surrender appeared
thousands of anti-slavery Whigs who had loyally supported Mr. Clay
went over at once to the Abolitionists. To the popular apprehension,
Mr. Clay had changed his ground, and his new position really left
little difference between himself and his opponent on the absorbing
question of Texas annexation, but it still gave to Mr. Polk all
the advantage of boldness. The latter was outspoken for the
annexation of Texas, and the former, with a few timid qualifications,
declared that he would be glad to see Texas annexed. Besides this,
Mr. Polk's position on the Oregon question afforded some compensation
by proposing to add a large area of free territory to offset the
increase of slave territory in Texas. Under such arguments the
Abolition party grew rapidly and steadily until, at the election,
they polled for Mr. Birney 58,879 votes. This vast increase over
the vote of 1840 was very largely at the expense of the Whig party,
and its specific injury to Mr. Clay is almost a matter of mathematical
demonstration. In New York the vote stood for Polk 237,588, for
Clay 232,482, for Birney, 15,812. The plurality for Mr. Polk was
only 5,106. In 1840 the vote for Mr. Birney in New York was
2,798.* But for the Alabama letter it has always been believed
that Mr. Clay would have received a sufficient number of the Birney
votes to give him a plurality. The election hinged on the result
in New York. One hundred and thirty-eight electoral votes were
necessary to a choice. With New York, Mr. Clay would have had a
total of one hundred and forty-one. Mr. Polk, with New York added
to his vote, received a total of one hundred and seventy, and was
elected President of the United States.
No contest for the Presidency, either before or since, has been
conducted with such intense energy and such deep feeling. Mr.
Clay's followers were not ordinary political supporters. They had
the profound personal attachment which is looked for only in
hereditary governments, where loyalty becomes a passion, and is
blind and unreasoning in its adherence and its devotion. The
logical complement of such ardent fidelity is an opposition marked
by unscrupulous rancor. This case proved no exception. The love
of Mr. Clay's friends was equaled by the hatred of his foes. The
zeal of his supporters did not surpass the zeal of his opponents.
All the enmities and exasperations which began in the memorable
contest for the Presidency when John Quincy Adams was chosen, and
had grown into great proportions during the long intervening period,
were fought out on the angry field of 1844. Mr. Polk, a moderate
and amiable man, did not represent the acrimonious character of
the controversy. He stood only as the passive representative of
its principles. Behind him was Jackson, aged and infirm in body,
but strong in mind, and unbroken in spirit. With him the struggle
was not only one of principle, but of pride; not merely of judgment,
but of temper; and he communicated to the legions throughout the
country, who regarded him with reverence and gratitude, a full
measure of his own animosity against Clay. In its progress the
struggle absorbed the thought, the action, the passion, of the
whole people. When its result was known, the Whigs regarded the
defeat of Mr. Clay, not only as a calamity of untold magnitude to
the country, but as a personal and profound grief, which touched
the heart as deeply as the understanding. It was Jackson's final
triumph over Clay. The iron-nerved old hero died in seven months
after this crowning gratification of his life.
GENERAL JACKSON AND MR. CLAY.
For twenty years these two great, brave men headed the opposing
political forces of the Union. Whoever might be candidates, they
were the actual leaders. John Quincy Adams was more learned than
either; Mr. Webster was stronger in logic and in speech; Calhoun
more acute, refined, and philosophic; Van Buren better skilled in
combining and directing political forces; but to no one of these
was given the sublime attribute of leadership, the faculty of
drawing men unto him. That is natural, not acquired. There was
not in the whole country, during the long period of their rivalry,
a single citizen of intelligence who was indifferent to Clay or to
Jackson. For the one without qualification, against the other
without reservation, was the rule of division from the northernmost
township of New England to the mouths of the Mississippi. Both
leaders had the highest courage; physical and moral, in equal
degree. Clay held the advantage of a rare eloquence; but Jackson
had a splendid military record, which spoke to the hearts of the
people more effectively than words. Members for twenty years of
the same party, they differed slightly, if at all, in political
principles when the contest began; but Jackson enjoyed the prestige
of a more lineal heirship to the creed of Jefferson, Madison, and
Monroe; while Clay, by his imprudence in becoming secretary of
State, incurred not only the odium of the "bargain and sale," but
a share of the general unpopularity which at that time attached to
the name of Adams. It is not in retrospect difficult to measure
the advantages which Jackson possessed in the long contest, and to
see clearly the reasons of his final triumph over the boldest of
leaders, the noblest of foes. Still less is it difficult to see
how largely the personality of the two men entered into the struggle,
and how in the end the effect upon the politics and prosperity of
the country would have been nearly the same had the winner and the
loser exchanged places. In each of them patriotism was a passion.
There never was a moment in their prolonged enmity and their
rancorous contests when a real danger to the country would not have
united them as heartily as in 1812, when Clay in the House and
Jackson on the field co-operated in defending the national honor
against the aggressions of Great Britain.
The election of Mr. Polk was an unquestionable verdict from the
people in favor of the annexation of Texas. Mr. Clay and Mr. Van
Buren had been able to defeat the treaty negotiated by Mr. Calhoun;
but the popular vote overruled them, and pronounced in favor of
the Democratic position after full and fair hearing. Mr. Tyler
was anxious that the scheme so energetically initiated by him should
be fully accomplished during his term. The short method of joint
resolution was therefore devised by the ever fertile brain of Mr.
Calhoun, and its passage through Congress intrusted to the skilful
management of Robert J. Walker, then a senator from Mississippi,
and already indicated for the portfolio of the Treasury in the new
administration. Mr. Polk was in consultation with Mr. Tyler during
the closing weeks of the latter's administration, and the annexation
by joint resolution had his full concurrence. It was passed in
season to receive the approval of President Tyler on the first day
of March, three days before the eventful administration of Mr. Polk
was installed in power. Its terms were promptly accepted by Texas,
and at the next session of Congress, beginning December, 1845, the
constitution of the new State was approved. Historic interest
attached to the appearance of Sam Houston and Thomas J. Rusk as
the first senators from the great State which they had torn from
Mexico and added to the Union.
The lapse of forty years and the important events of intervening
history give the opportunity for impartial judgment concerning the
policy of acquiring Texas. We were not guiltless towards Mexico
in originally permitting if not encouraging our citizens to join
in the revolt of one of the States of that Republic. But Texas
had passed definitely and finally beyond the control of Mexico,
and the practical issue was, whether we should incorporate her in
the Union or leave her to drift in uncertain currents--possibly to
form European alliances which we should afterwards be compelled,
in self-defense, to destroy. An astute statesman of that period
summed up the whole case when he declared that it was wiser policy
to annex Texas, and accept the issue of immediate war with Mexico,
than to leave Texas in nominal independence to involve us probably
in ultimate war with England. The entire history of subsequent
events has vindicated the wisdom, the courage, and the statesmanship
with which the Democratic party dealt with this question in 1844.
[* Total vote cast for James G. Birney, Abolition candidate for
President, in 1840 and in 1844:--
1840. 1844. 1840. 1844.
Connecticut . . . . 179 1,943 New York . . . . 2,798 15,812
Illinois . . . . . -- 149 Ohio . . . . . . 903 8,050
Indiana . . . . . . -- 2,106 Pennsylvania . . 343 3,138
Maine . . . . . . . 194 4,836 Rhode Island . . 42 107
Massachusetts . . . 1,621 10,860 Vermont . . . . 319 3,954
Michigan . . . . . 321 3,632
New Hampshire . . . 126 4,161 6,745 58,879
New Jersey . . . . 69 131 ]
CHAPTER III.
Review (_continued_).--Triumph of the Democratic Party.--Impending
Troubles with Mexico.--Position of Parties.--Struggle for the
Equality of Free and Slave States.--Character of the Southern
Leaders.--Their Efforts to control the Government.--Conservative
Course of Secretaries Buchanan and Marcy.--Reluctant to engage in
War with Mexico.--The Oregon Question, 54 deg., 40', or 49 deg..--Critical
Relations with the British Government.--Treaty of 1846.--Character
of the Adjustment.--Our Probable Loss by Unwise Policy of the
Democratic Party.
The annexation of Texas being accomplished, the next step was looked
for with absorbing interest. In the spring of 1845 the Democratic
party stood victor. Its policy had been approved by the people,
its administration was in power. But success had brought heavy
responsibilities, and imposed upon the statesmanship of Mr. Polk
the severest of tasks. Texas came to us with undefined boundaries,
and with a state of war at that moment existing between herself
and Mexico. We had annexed a province that had indeed maintained
a revolt for years against the central government of a neighboring
republic; but its independence had never been conceded, the hope
of its subjugation had never been abandoned. When Congress passed
the joint resolution of annexation, the Mexican minister entered
a formal protest against the proceeding, demanded his passports,
and left the United States. By this course, Mexico placed herself
in an unfriendly, though not necessarily hostile, attitude. The
general apprehension however was that we should drift into war,
and the first message of Mr. Polk aroused the country to the
impending danger. He devoted a large space to the Texas question,
informing Congress that "Mexico had been marshaling and organizing
armies, issuing proclamations, and avowing the intention to make
war on the United States, either by open declaration, or by invading
Texas." He had therefore "deemed it proper, as a precautionary
measure, to order a strong squadron to the coast of Mexico, and to
concentrate an efficient military force on the western frontier of
Texas." Every one could see what this condition of affairs portended,
and there was at once great excitement throughout the country. In
the North, the belief of a large majority of the people was that
the administration intended to precipitate war, not merely to coerce
Mexico into the acknowledgment of the Rio Grande as the boundary
of Texas, but also to acquire further territory for the purpose of
creating additional slave States. As soon as this impression, or
suspicion, got abroad, the effect was an anti-slavery revival which
enlisted the feelings and influenced the political action of many
who had never sympathized with the Abolitionists, and of many who
had steadily opposed them.
These men came from both the old political parties, but the larger
number from the Whigs. Indeed, during almost the entire period of
the anti-slavery agitation by the Abolitionists, there had existed
a body of men in the Whig ranks who were profoundly impressed with
the evils of slavery, and who yet thought they could be more
influential in checking its progress by remaining in their old
party, and, in many sections of the country, maintaining their
control of it. Of these men, John Quincy Adams stood undeniably
at the head; and with him were associated, in and out of Congress,
Mr. Seward, Mr. Benjamin F. Wade, Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Giddings, Mr.
Thaddeus Stevens, besides a large number of able and resolute men
of less public distinction, but of equal earnestness, in all parts
of the North. Subsequent events have led men to forget that Millard
Fillmore, then a representative from New York, was one of Mr.
Adams's early co-laborers in the anti-slavery cause, and that in
the important debate on the admission of Arkansas, with a constitution
making slavery perpetual, Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts led the
radical free sentiment of New England. A large number of distinguished
Democrats in the North also entertained the strongest anti-slavery
convictions, and were determined, at the risk of separating from
their party associates, to resist the spread of slavery into free
territory. Among the most conspicuous of these were Salmon P.
Chase, John P. Hale, Hannibal Hamlin, Preston King, John M. Niles,
David Wilmot, David K. Cartter, and John Wentworth. They had many
co-laborers and a band of determined and courageous followers.
They were especially strong in the State of New York, and, under
the name of Barnburners, wrought changes which affected the political
history of the entire country.
The two great parties on the eve of the Mexican war were thus
somewhat similarly situated. In the South all the members of both
were, by the supposed necessity of their situation, upholders of
slavery, though the Democrats were on this question more aggressive,
more truculent, and more menacing, than the Whigs. The Southern
Whigs, under the lead of Mr. Clay, had been taught that slavery
was an evil, to be removed in some practicable way at some distant
period, but not to be interfered with, in the States where it
existed, by outside influence or force. The Democrats, under the
head of Mr. Calhoun, defended the institution of slavery as right
in itself, as scripturally authorized, as essential in the economy
of labor, and as a blessing to both races. In the North both
parties were divided on the question; each had its anti-slavery
wing and its pro-slavery wing, with many local names to distinguish
them. Between the two a relentless controversy began,--a controversy
marked as much by epithet as by argument, and conducted with such
exasperation of feeling as clearly foreshadowed a break of existing
party lines, and the formation of new associations, through which,
in the phrase of that day, "men who thought alike could act
together."
THE ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY.
This being the condition of the two great parties which divided
the country, it was evident that the acquisition of territory from
Mexico must lead to an agitation of the slavery question, of which
no man could measure the extent, or foresee the consequences. It
was the old Missouri struggle renewed, with more numerous combatants,
a stronger influence of the press, a mightier enginery of public
opinion. It arose as suddenly as the agitation of 1820, but gave
indications of deeper feeling and more prolonged controversy. The
able and ambitious men who had come into power at the South were
wielding the whole force of the national administration, and they
wielded it with commanding ability and unflinching energy. The
Free-soil sentiment which so largely pervaded the ranks of the
Northern Democracy had no representative in the cabinet, and a man
of pronounced anti-slavery views was as severely proscribed in
Washington as a Roundhead was in London after the coronation of
Charles II.
The policy of maintaining an equality of slave States with free
States was to be pursued, as it had already been from the foundation
of the government, with unceasing vigilance and untiring energy.
The balancing of forces between the new States added to the Union
had been so skillfully arranged, that for a long period two States
were admitted at nearly the same time,--one from the South, and
one from the North. Thus Kentucky and Vermont, Tennessee and Ohio,
Mississippi and Indiana, Alabama and Illinois, Missouri and Maine,
Arkansas and Michigan, Florida and Iowa, came into the Union in
pairs, not indeed at precisely the same moment in every case, but
always with reference each to the other in the order named. On
the admission of Florida and Iowa, Colonel Benton remarked that
"it seemed strange that two territories so different in age, so
distant from each other, so antagonistic in natural features and
political institutions, should ripen into States at the same time,
and come into the Union by a single Act; but these very antagonisms
--that is, the antagonistic provisions on the subject of slavery--
made the conjunction, and gave to the two young States an inseparable
admission." During the entire period from the formation of the
Federal Government to the inauguration of Mr. Polk, the only
variation from this twin birth of States--the one free, the other
slave--was in the case of Louisiana, which was admitted in 1812,
with no corresponding State from the North. Of the original Thirteen
States, seven had become free, and six maintained slavery. Of the
fifteen that were added to the Union, prior to the annexation of
Texas, eight were slave, and seven were free; so that, when Mr.
Polk took the oath of office, the Union consisted of twenty-eight
States, equally divided between slave-holding and free. So nice
an adjustment had certainly required constant watchfulness and the
closest calculation of political forces. It was in pursuit of this
adjustment that the admission of Louisiana was secured, as an
evident compensation for the loss which had accrued to the slave-
holding interest in the unequal though voluntary partition of the
Old Thirteen between North and South.
The more rapid growth of the free States in population made the
contest for the House of Representatives, or for a majority in the
Electoral college, utterly hopeless to the South; but the constitutional
equality of all the States in the Senate enabled the slave interest
to defeat any hostile legislation, and to defeat also any nominations
by the President of men who were offensive to the South by reason
of their anti-slavery character. The courts of the United States,
both supreme and district, throughout the Union, including the
clerks and the marshals who summoned the juries and served the
processes, were therefore filled with men acceptable to the South.
Cabinets were constituted in the same way. Representatives of the
government in foreign countries were necessarily taken from the
class approved by the same power. Mr. Webster, speaking in his
most conservative tone in the famous speech of March 7, 1850,
declared that, from the formation of the Union to that hour, the
South had monopolized three-fourths of the places of honor and
emolument under the Federal Government. It was an accepted fact
that the class interest of slavery, by holding a tie in the Senate,
could defeat any measure or any nomination to which its leaders
might be opposed; and thus, banded together by an absolutely cohesive
political force, they could and did dictate terms. A tie-vote
cannot carry measures, but it can always defeat them; and any
combination of votes that possesses the negative power will in the
end, if it can be firmly held, direct and control the positive
action of the body to which it belongs. A strong minority, so
disciplined that it cannot be divided, will, in the hands of
competent leaders, annoy, distract, and often defeat, the majority
of a parliamentary body. Much more can one absolute half of a
legislative assembly, compactly united, succeed in dividing and
controlling the other half, which has no class interest to consolidate
it, and no tyrannical public opinion behind it, decreeing political
death to any member who doubts or halts in his devotion to one
supreme idea.
THE POLITICAL LEADERS OF THE SOUTH.
With one-half of the Senate under the control of the slave-holding
States, and with the Constitution declaring that no amendment to
it should ever destroy the equality of the States in the Senate,
the Southern leaders occupied a commanding position. Those leaders
constituted a remarkable body of men. Having before them the
example of Jefferson, of Madison, and of George Mason in Virginia,
of Nathaniel Macon in North Carolina, and of the Pinckneys and
Rutledges in South Carolina, they gave deep study to the science
of government. They were admirably trained as debaters, and they
became highly skilled in the management of parliamentary bodies.
As a rule, they were liberally educated, many of them graduates of
Northern colleges, a still larger number taking their degrees at
Transylvania in Kentucky, at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, and at
Mr. Jefferson's peculiar but admirable institution in Virginia.
Their secluded life on the plantation gave them leisure for reading
and reflection. They took pride in their libraries, pursued the
law so far as it increased their equipment for a public career,
and devoted themselves to political affairs with an absorbing
ambition. Their domestic relations imparted manners that were
haughty and sometimes offensive; they were quick to take affront,
and they not infrequently brought needless personal disputation
into the discussion of public questions; but they were, almost
without exception, men of high integrity, and they were especially
and jealously careful of the public money. Too often ruinously
lavish in their personal expenditures, they believed in an economical
government, and, throughout the long period of their domination,
they guarded the Treasury with rigid and unceasing vigilance against
every attempt at extravagance, and against every form of corruption.
Looking into the future, the Southern men took alarm lest the
equality of their section should be lost in the Senate, and their
long control of the Federal Government ended. Even with Texas
added to the Union, this equality was barely maintained, for
Wisconsin was already seeking admission; and the clause in the
articles of annexation providing that four new States might be
carved out of the territory of Texas whenever she asked it, gave
no promise of speedy help to the South. Its operation would, in
any event, be distant, and subject to contingencies which could
not be accurately measured. There was not another foot of territory
south of 36 deg. 30', save that which was devoted to the Indians by
solemn compact, from which another slave State could be formed.
North of 36 deg. 30' the Missouri Compromise had dedicated the entire
country to freedom. In extent it was, to the Southern view,
alarmingly great, including at least a million square miles of
territory. Except along its river boundaries it was little known.
Its value was underrated, and a large portion of it was designated
on our maps as the Great American Desert. At the time Texas was
annexed, and for several years afterwards, not a single foot of
that vast area was organized under any form of civil government.
Had the Southern statesmen foreseen the immense wealth, population,
and value of this imperial domain in the five great States and four
Territories into which it is to-day divided, they would have
abandoned the struggle for equality. But the most that was hoped,
even in the North, within any near period, was one State north of
Iowa, one west of Missouri, and one from the Oregon country. The
remainder, in the popular judgment, was divided among mountain
gorges, the arid plains of the middle, and the uninviting region
in the north, which the French _voyaguers_ had classed under the
comprehensive and significant title of _mauvaises terres_. With
only three States anticipated from the great area of the north-west,
it was the evident expectation of the Southern men who then had
control of the government, that, if war with Mexico should ensue,
the result would inevitably be the acquisition of sufficient
territory to form slave States south of the line of the Missouri
Compromise as rapidly as free States could be formed north of it;
and that in this way the ancient equality between North and South
could be maintained.
OUR RELATIONS WITH MEXICO.
But the scheme of war did not develop as rapidly as was desired by
the hot advocates of territorial expansion. A show of negotiation
for peace was kept up by dispatching Mr. John Slidell as minister
to Mexico upon the hint that that government might be willing to
renew diplomatic relations. When Mr. Slidell reached the city of
Mexico he found a violent contest raging over the Presidency of
the republic, the principal issue being between the war and anti-
war parties. Mr. Slidell was not received. The Mexican Government
declared, with somewhat of reason and consistency, that they had
been willing to listen to a special envoy who would treat singly
and promptly of the grave questions between the two republics, but
they would not accept a minister plenipotentiary who would sit down
near their government in a leisurely manner, as if friendly relations
existed, and select his own time for negotiation,--urging or
postponing, threatening or temporizing, as the pressure of political
interests in the United States might suggest. Mr. Slidell returned
home; but still the conflict of arms, though so imminent, was not
immediately precipitated. Mr. Polk's cautious and somewhat timid
course represented the resultant between the aggressive Democrat
of the South who was for war regardless of consequences, and the
Free-soil Democrat of the North who was for peace regardless of
consequences; the one feeling sure that war would strengthen the
institution of slavery, the other confident that peace would favor
the growth of freedom. As not infrequently happens in the evolution
of human events, each was mistaken in the final issue. The war,
undertaken for the extension of slavery, led in the end to its
destruction.
The leading influence in Mr. Polk's cabinet was divided between
Mr. Buchanan, secretary of State, and Mr. Marcy, secretary of War.
Both were men of conservative minds, of acute judgment in political
affairs of long experience in public life; and each was ambitious
for the succession to the Presidency. Neither could afford to
disregard the dominant opinion of the Southern Democracy; still
less could either countenance a reckless policy, which might
seriously embarrass our foreign affairs, and precipitate a dangerous
crisis in our relations with England. These eminent statesmen
quickly perceived that the long-standing issue touching our north-
western boundary, commonly known as the Oregon question, was
surrounded with embarrassments which, by mismanagement, might
rapidly develop into perils of great magnitude in connection with
the impending war with Mexico.
The Oregon question, which now became associated, if not complicated,
with the Texas question, originated many years before. By our
treaty with Spain in 1819, the southern boundary of our possessions
on the Pacific had been accurately defined. Our northern boundary
was still unadjusted, and had been matter of dispute with Great
Britain ever since we acquired the country. By the treaty of Oct.
20, 1818, the 49th parallel of north latitude was established as
the boundary between the United States and British America, from
the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains, as the Rocky Mountains
were then termed. In the same treaty it was agreed that any country
claimed by either the United States or Great Britain westward of
the Stony Mountains should, with its harbors, bays, and rivers, be
open for the term of ten years to the vessels, citizens, and subjects
of either power. This agreement was entered into solely for the
purpose of preventing disputes pending final settlement, and was
not to be construed to the prejudice of either party. This was
the beginning of the joint occupancy of the Oregon country, England
having with prompt and characteristic enterprise forced her way
across the continent after she had acquired Canada in 1763.
Stimulated by certain alleged discoveries of her navigators on the
north-west coast, Great Britain urged and maintained her title to
a frontage on the Pacific, and made a bold claim to sovereignty,
as far south as the mouth of the Columbia River, nearly, indeed,
to the northern border of California.
OUR CLAIM TO THE OREGON COUNTRY.
Nothing had been done towards an adjustment during the ten years
of joint occupancy, and when the term was about to expire, the
arrangement was renewed by special convention in 1827, for an
indefinite period,--each power reserving the right to terminate
the convention by giving twelve-months' notice to the other. The
President, John Quincy Adams, made the briefest possible reference
to the subject in his message to Congress, December, 1827; speaking
of it as a temporary compromise of the respective rights and claims
of Great Britain and the United States to territory westward of
the Rocky Mountains. For many years thereafter, the subject, though
languidly pursued in our diplomatic correspondence, was not alluded
to in a President's message, or discussed in Congress. The
contracting parties rested content with the power to join issue
and try titles at any time by simply giving the required notice.
The subject was also overshadowed by more urgent disputes between
Great Britain and the United States, especially that relating to
the North-eastern boundary, and that touching the suppression of
the African slave-trade. The latter involved the old question of
the right of search. The two governments came to an agreement on
these differences in 1842 by the negotiation of the convention
known as the Ashburton Treaty. In transmitting the treaty to
Congress, President Tyler made, for the first time since the
agreement for a joint occupancy was renewed in 1827, a specific
reference to the Oregon question. He informed Congress, that the
territory of the United States commonly called the Oregon country
was beginning to attract the attention of our fellow-citizens, and
that "the tide of our population, having reclaimed from the wilderness
the more contiguous regions, was preparing to flow over those vast
districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific
Ocean;" that Great Britain "laid claim to a portion of the country
and that the question could not be well included in the recent
treaty without postponing other more pressing matters." He
significantly added, that though the difficulty might not for
several years involve the peace of the two countries, yet he should
urge upon Great Britain the importance of its early settlement.
As this paragraph was undoubtedly suggested and probably written
by Mr. Webster, it attracted wide attention on both sides of the
Atlantic; and from that moment, in varying degrees of interest and
urgency, the Oregon question became an active political issue.
Before the next annual meeting of Congress, Mr. Upshur had succeeded
Mr. Webster in the State department; and the message of the President
took still more advanced ground respecting Oregon. For political
reasons, there was an obvious desire to keep the action of the
government on this issue well abreast of its aggressive movements
in the matter of acquiring Texas. Emboldened by Mr. Webster's
position of the preceding year, Mr. Upshur, with younger blood,
and with more reason for a demonstrative course, was evidently
disposed to force the discussion of the question with the British
Government. Under his influence and advice, President Tyler
declared, in his message of December, 1843, that "after the most
rigid, and, as far as practicable, unbiased, examination of the
subject, the United States have always contended that their rights
appertain to the entire region of country lying on the Pacific,
and embraced between latitude 42 deg. and 54 deg. 40'." Mr. Edward Everett,
at that time our minister in London, was instructed to present
these views to the British Government.
Before the President could send another annual message to Congress,
Mr. Calhoun had been for several months at the head of the State
Department, engaged in promoting, with singular skill and ability,
his scheme for the annexation of Texas. With his quick perception,
he discerned that if the policy apparently indicated by Mr. Webster
and aggressively pursued by Mr. Upshur, on the Oregon question,
should be followed, and that issue sharply pressed upon Great
Britain, complications of a most embarrassing nature might arise,
involving in their sweep the plans, already well matured, for
acquiring Texas. In order to avert all danger of that kind, Mr.
Calhoun opened a negotiation with the British minister in Washington,
conducting it himself, for the settlement of the Oregon question;
and at the very moment when the Democratic National Convention
which nominated Mr. Polk was declaring our title to the whole of
Oregon as far as 54 deg. 40' to be "clear and unquestionable," the
Democratic secretary of State was proposing to Her Majesty's
representative to settle the entire controversy by the adoption of
the 49th parallel as the boundary!
The negotiation was very nearly completed, and was suspended only
by some dispute in regard to the right of navigating the Columbia
River. It is not improbable that Mr. Calhoun, after disclosing to
the British Government his willingness to accept the 49th parallel
as our northern boundary, was anxious to have the negotiation
temporarily postponed. If the treaty had been concluded at that
time, it would have seriously interfered with the success of Mr.
Polk's candidacy by destroying the prestige of the "Fifty-four
forties," as Colonel Benton termed them. In Mr. Polk's election,
Mr. Calhoun was deeply and indeed doubly interested; first, because
of his earnest desire to defeat Mr. Clay, with whom he was at swords'
points on all public issues; and again, because, having assumed
the responsibility of defeating the nomination of Mr. Van Buren,
he was naturally desirous that his judgment should be vindicated
by the election of the candidate whom his Southern friends had put
forward. Urgently solicitous for the annexation of Texas, those
friends were indifferent to the fate of the Oregon question, though
willing that it should be made a leading issue in the North, where
it was presented with popular effect. The patriotic spirit of the
country was appealed to, and to a considerable extent aroused and
inflamed by the ardent and energetic declaration of our title to
the whole of Oregon. "Fifty-four forty or fight" became a Democratic
watchword; and the Whigs who attempted to argue against the
extravagance or inexpediency of the claim continually lost ground,
and were branded as cowards who were awed into silence by the fear
of British power. All the prejudice against the British Government
which had descended from the Revolution and from the war of 1812
was successfully evoked by the Democratic party, and they gained
immeasurably by keeping an issue before the people which many of
their leaders knew would be abandoned when the pressure of actual
negotiation should be felt by our government.
PRESIDENT POLK ON THE OREGON QUESTION.
Mr. Polk, however, in his Inaugural address, carefully re-examined
the position respecting Oregon which his party had taken in the
national canvass, and quoted part of the phrase used in the platform
put forth by the convention which nominated him. The issue had
been made so broadly, that it must be squarely met, and finally
adjusted. The Democrats in their eagerness had left no road for
honorable retreat, and had cut themselves off from the resources
and convenient postponements of diplomacy. Dangerous as it was to
the new administration to confront the issue, it would have been
still more dangerous to attempt to avoid it. The decisive step,
in the policy to which the administration was committed, was to
give formal notice to Great Britain that the joint occupancy of
the Oregon country under the treaty of 1827 must cease. A certain
degree of moral strength was unexpectedly imparted to the Democratic
position by the fact that the venerable John Quincy Adams was
decidedly in favor of the notice, and ably supported, in a unique
and powerful speech in the House of Representatives, our title to
the country up to 54 deg. 40'. The first convention for joint occupancy
had been negotiated while Mr. Adams was secretary of State, and
the second while he was President; so that, in addition to the
weight of authority with which he always spoke, his words seemed
entitled to special confidence on a question with which he was
necessarily so familiar. His great influence brought many Whigs
to the support of the resolution; and on the 9th of February, 1846,
the House, by the large vote of 163 to 54, declared in favor of
giving the treaty notice to Great Britain.
The country at once became alarmed by the growing rumors that the
resolution of the House was a direct challenge to Great Britain
for a trial of strength as to the superior title to the Oregon
country, and it was soon apparent that the Senate would proceed
with more circumspection and conservatism. Events were rapidly
tending toward hostilities with Mexico, and the aggrandizement of
territory likely to result from a war with that country was not
viewed with a friendly eye, either by Great Britain or France.
Indeed, the annexation of Texas, which had been accomplished the
preceding year, was known to be distasteful to those governments.
They desired that Texas might remain an independent republic, under
more liberal trade relations than could be secured from the United
States with its steady policy of fostering and advancing its own
manufacturing interests. The directors of the administration saw
therefore more and more clearly that, if a war with Mexico were
impeding, it would be sheer madness to open a quarrel with Great
Britain, and force her into an alliance against us. Mr. Adams and
those who voted with him did not believe that the notice to the
British Government would provoke a war, but that firmness on our
part, in the negotiation which should ensue, would induce England
to yield her pretensions to any part of Oregon; to which Mr. Adams
maintained, with elaboration of argument and demonstration, she
had no shadow of right.
Mr. Adams was opposed to war with Mexico, and therefore did not
draw his conclusions from the premises laid down by those who were
charged with the policy of the administration. They naturally
argued that a war with Great Britain might end in our losing the
whole of Oregon, without acquiring any territory on our south-
western border. The bare possibility of such a result would defeat
the policy which they were seeking to uphold, and would at the same
time destroy their party. In short, it became apparent that what
might be termed the Texas policy of the administration, and what
might be termed the Oregon policy, could not both be carried out.
It required no prophet to foresee which would be maintained and
which would be abandoned. "Fifty-four forty or fight" had been a
good cry for the political campaign; but, when the fight was to be
with Great Britain, the issue became too serious to be settled by
such international law as is dispensed on the stump.
COMPROMISE ON THE OREGON QUESTION.
A very bitter controversy over the question began in the Senate as
soon as the House resolution was received. But from the outset it
was apparent that those who adhered to the 54 deg. 40' policy, on which
Mr. Polk had been elected, were in a small minority. That minority
was led by General Cass; but its most brilliant advocate in debate
was Edward A. Hannegan, Democratic senator from Indiana, who angrily
reproached his party for playing false to the pledges on which it
had won a victory over the greatest political leader of the country.
He measured the situation accurately, read with discrimination the
motives which underlay the change of policy on the part of the
administration and its Southern supporters, and stated the whole
case in a quick and curt reply to an interruption from a pro-slavery
senator,--"If Oregon were good for the production of sugar and
cotton, it would not have encountered this opposition. Its possession
would have been at once secured." The change in the Democratic
position was greatly aided by the attitude of the Whig senators,
who almost unanimously opposed the resolution of notice to Great
Britain, as passed by the House. Mr. Webster, for the first if
not the only time in his senatorial career, read a carefully prepared
speech, in which he did not argue the question of rightful boundary,
but urged that a settlement on the line of the 49th parallel would
be honorable to both countries, would avert hostile feeling, and
restore amity and harmony. Mr. Berrien of Georgia made an exhaustive
speech, inquiring into the rightfulness of title, and urged the
line of 49 deg.. Mr. Crittenden followed in the same vein, and in a
reply to Senator William Allen of Ohio, chairman of Foreign Affairs,
made a speech abounding in sarcasm and ridicule. The Whigs having
in the campaign taken no part in the boastful demand for 54 deg. 40',
were not subjected to the humiliation of retracing imprudent steps
and retracting unwise declarations.
Under the influences at work in the Senate, events developed rapidly.
The House resolution of notice was defeated; and the Senate passed
a substitute of a less aggressive type, in which the House, through
the instrumentality of a conference committee, substantially
concurred. The resolution as finally adopted authorized the
President "at his discretion" to give notice for the termination
of the treaty to Great Britain. The preamble further softened the
action of Congress by declaring that the notice was given in order
that "the attention of the governments of both countries may be
the more earnestly directed to the adoption of all proper measures
for a speedy and amicable adjustment of the differences and disputes
in regard to said territory."
The Southern Democrats in the House receded from their action, and
the modified resolution was carried by nearly as large a vote as
had been the previous one for decided and peremptory notice. In
short, the great mass of the Southern Democrats in both Houses
precipitately threw the Oregon issue aside. They had not failed
to perceive that the hesitation of the administration in forcing
an issue with Mexico was due to the apprehension of trouble with
Great Britain, and they made haste to promote schemes of territorial
acquisition in the South-West by withdrawing the pretensions so
imprudently put forth in regard to our claims in the North-West.
Only forty-six votes were given in the House against what was termed
a disgraceful surrender. These were almost entirely from Northern
Democrats, though a few Southern Democrats refused to recede.
Among those who thus remained firm were Andrew Johnson, Stephen A.
Douglas, Howell Cobb, Preston King, and Allen G. Thurman.
The passage of the modified and friendly resolution of notice
dispelled all danger of trouble with Great Britain, and restored
a sense of security in the United States. Immediately after its
adoption, Mr. Buchanan, Secretary of State, under direction of the
President, concluded a treaty with the British minister on the
basis discussed by Mr. Calhoun two years before. The 49th parallel
was agreed upon as the boundary between the two countries, with
certain concessions for a defined period, touching the rights of
the Hudson-bay Company, and the navigation of the Columbia River
by the British. This treaty was promptly confirmed by the Senate,
and the long controversy over the Oregon question was at rest. It
had created a deep and wide-spread excitement in the country, and
came very near precipitating hostilities with Great Britain. There
is no doubt whatever that the English Government would have gone
to war rather than surrender the territory north of the 49th
parallel. This fact had made the winter and early spring of 1846
one of profound anxiety to all the people of the United States,
and more especially to those who were interested in the large
mercantile marine which then sailed under the American flag.
UNWISE AGITATION OF THE QUESTION.
In simple truth, the country was not prepared to go to war with
Great Britain in support of "our clear and unquestionable title"
to the whole of Oregon. With her strong naval force on the Pacific,
and her military force in Australasia, Great Britain could more
readily and more easily take possession of the country in dispute
than could the United States. We had no way of reaching Oregon
except by doubling Cape Horn, and making a dangerous sea-voyage of
many thousand miles. We could communicate across the continent
only by the emigrant trail over rugged mountains and almost trackless
plains. Our railway system was in its infancy in 1846. New-York
City did not have a continuous road to Buffalo. Philadelphia was
not connected with Pittsburg. Baltimore's projected line to the
Ohio had only reached Cumberland, among the eastern foot-hills of
the Alleghanies. The entire Union had but five thousand miles of
railway. There was scarcely a spot on the globe, outside of the
United Kingdom, where we could not have fought England with greater
advantage than on the north-west coast of America at that time.
The war-cry of the Presidential campaign of 1844 was, therefore,
in any event, absurd; and it proved to be mischievous. It is not
improbable, that, if the Oregon question had been allowed to rest
for the time under the provisions of the treaty of 1827, the whole
country would ultimately have fallen into our hands, and the American
flag might to-day be waving over British Columbia. The course of
events and the lapse of time were working steadily to our advantage.
In 1826 Great Britain declined to accept the 49th parallel, but
demanded the Columbia River as the boundary. Twenty years afterwards
she accepted the line previously rejected. American settlers had
forced her back. With the sweep of our emigration and civilization
to the Pacific coast two years after the treaty of 1846, when gold
was discovered in California, the tendency would have been still
more strongly in our favor. Time, as Mr. Calhoun said, "would have
effected every thing for us" if we could only have been patient
and peaceful.
Taking the question, however, as it stood in 1846, the settlement
must, upon full consideration and review, be adjudged honorable to
both countries. Wise statesmen of that day felt, as wise statesmen
of subsequent years have more and more realized, that a war between
Great Britain and the United States would not only be a terrible
calamity to both nations, but that it would stay the progress of
civilization throughout the world. Future generations would hold
the governing power in both countries guilty of a crime if war
should ever be permitted except upon the failure of every other
arbitrament. The harmless laugh of one political party at the
expense of the other forty years ago, the somewhat awkward receding
from pretensions which could not be maintained by the Executive of
the nation, have passed into oblivion. But a striking and useful
lesson would be lost if it should be forgotten that the country
was brought to the verge of war by the proclamation of a policy
which could not be, and was not intended to be, enforced. It was
originated as a cry to catch votes; and except with the ignorant,
and the few whose judgment was carried away by enthusiasm, it was
from the first thoroughly insincere. If the punishment could have
fallen only upon those who raised the cry, perfect justice would
have been done. But the entire country suffered, and probably
endured a serious and permanent loss, from the false step taken by
men who claimed what they could not defend and did not mean to
defend.
The Secretary of State, Mr. Buchanan, gained much credit for his
conduct of the Oregon question, both diplomatically and politically.
His correspondence with Mr. Pakenham, the British minister at
Washington, was conspicuously able. It strengthened Mr. Buchanan
at home, and gave him an enviable reputation in Europe. His
political management of the question was especially adroit. His
party was in sore trouble over the issue, and naturally looked to
him for relief and escape. To extricate the Administration from
the embarrassment caused by its ill-timed and boastful pretensions
to the line of 54 deg. 40' was a difficult and delicate task. To
accomplish it, Mr. Buchanan had recourse to the original and long
disused habit of asking the Senate's advice in advance of negotiating
the treaty, instead of taking the ordinary but at that time perilous
responsibility of first negotiating the treaty, and then submitting
it to the Senate for approval. As a leading Northern Democrat,
with an established reputation and a promising future, Mr. Buchanan
was instinctively reluctant to take the lead in surrendering the
position which his party had so defiantly maintained during the
canvass for the Presidency in 1844, and which he had, as Secretary
of State, re-affirmed in a diplomatic paper of marked ability.
When the necessity came to retreat, Mr. Buchanan was anxious that
the duty of publicly lowering the colors should not be left to him.
His device, therefore, shifted the burden from his own shoulders,
and placed it on the broader ones of the Senate.
Political management could not have been more clever. It saved
Mr. Buchanan in large degree from the opprobrium visited on so many
leading Democrats for their precipitate retreat on the Oregon
question, and commended him at the same time to a class of Democrats
who had never before been his supporters. General Cass, in order
to save himself as a senator from the responsibility of surrendering
our claim to 54 deg. 40', assumed a very warlike attitude, erroneously
supposing that popularity might be gained by the advocacy of a
rupture with England. Mr. Buchanan was wiser. He held the middle
course. He had ably sustained our claim to the whole of Oregon,
and now, in the interest of peace, gracefully yielded to a compromise
which the Senate, after mature deliberation, had advised. His
course saved the administration, not indeed from a mortifying
position, but from a continually increasing embarrassment which
seemed to force upon the country the cruel alternatives of war or
dishonor.
THE PRESIDENT AND MR. BUCHANAN.
Mr. Polk was, from some cause, incapable of judging Mr. Buchanan
generously. He seems to have regarded his Secretary of State as
always willing to save himself at the expense of others. He did
not fail to perceive that Mr. Buchanan had come out of the Oregon
trouble with more credit, at least with less loss, than any other
man prominently identified with its agitation and settlement. This
was not pleasing to the President. He had evidently not concealed
his distrust from the outset, and had cumbered his offer of a
cabinet position with conditions which seemed derogatory to the
dignity of Mr. Buchanan,--conditions which a man of spirit might
well have resented. He informed Mr. Buchanan that, as he should
"take no part himself between gentlemen of the Democratic party
who might become aspirants to the Presidency," he desired that "no
member of the cabinet should do so." He indeed expressed himself
to Mr. Buchanan in a manner so peremptory as to be offensive:
"Should any member of my cabinet become a candidate for the Presidency
or Vice-Presidency of the United States, it will be expected on
the happening of such an event that he will retire from the cabinet."
Remembering that Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams had each
been nominated for the Presidency while holding the position of
Secretary of State in the cabinet of his predecessor, Mr. Polk was
attaching a new and degrading condition to the incumbency of that
office.
Mr. Polk did not stop with one exaction. Addressing Mr. Buchanan
as if he were about to become a department clerk, he informed him
that he disapproved "the practice which has sometimes prevailed of
cabinet officers absenting themselves for long periods from the
seat of government," and practically demanded a pledge that Mr.
Buchanan would remain at his post, and be punctual in the discharge
of his official duties. In reading Mr. Polk's letter, the inference
seems natural that he felt under some pressing obligation to tender
to Mr. Buchanan the appointment of secretary of State, but desired
to accompany it with conditions which would subordinate him in the
general conduct of the administration. With a spirit of docility,
if not humility, altogether incomprehensible, Mr. Buchanan "accepted
the position cheerfully and cordially _on the terms on which the
offer was made._"
It is not surprising that, after agreeing to enter Mr. Polk's
cabinet on these conditions, Mr. Buchanan had abundant reason to
complain afterwards that the President did not treat him with
"delicacy and confidence." On several occasions he was on the
point of resigning his position. He was especially aggrieved that
the President refused to nominate him to the Supreme Bench in 1846
as the successor of Henry Baldwin. In view of Mr. Buchanan's
career, both before and after that time, it seems strange that he
should have desired the position. It seems stranger still that
Mr. Polk, after refusing to appoint him, should have nominated
George W. Woodward, a Pennsylvania Democrat, who was unacceptable
to Mr. Buchanan. Mr. Polk, however, appreciated the temperament
of Mr. Buchanan, and apparently knew how much he would endure
without resentment. While his presence in the cabinet was evidently
not a source of pleasure to the President, he realized that it
brought character, strength, and power to the administration. Mr.
Buchanan was an older man than Mr. Polk, was superior to him
intellectually, had seen a longer and more varied public service,
and enjoyed a higher personal standing throughout the country.
The timidity of Mr. Buchanan's nature made him the servant of the
administration when, with boldness, he might have been its master.
Had he chosen to tender his resignation in resentment of his
treatment by Mr. Polk, the administration would have been seriously
embarrassed. There was, at the time, no Northern Democrat of the
same rank to succeed him, except General Cass, and he was ineligible
by reason of his uncompromising attitude on the Oregon question.
Mr. Polk could not call a Southern man to the State Department so
long as Robert J. Walker was at the head of the Treasury. He could
not promote Mr. Marcy from the War Department without increasing
the discontent already dangerously developed in the ranks of the
New-York Democracy. Mr. Buchanan, therefore, held absolute control
of the situation had he chosen to assert himself. This he failed
to do, and continued to lend his aid to an administration whose
policy was destroying him in his own State, and whose patronage
was persistently used to promote the fortunes of his rivals and
his enemies.
Mr. Polk was by singular fortune placed at the head of one of the
most vigorous and important administrations in the history of the
government. He had not been trained in the higher duties of
statesmanship, and was not personally equal to the weighty
responsibilities which devolved upon him. He was overshadowed by
the ability of at least three members of his cabinet, and was keenly
sensible of their superiority. He had, however, a certain aptitude
for affairs, was industrious, and in personal character above
reproach. Mr. Webster described him with accuracy when he spoke
of him as "respectable but never eminent."
EARLY CAREER OF JAMES K. POLK.
When first elected to the House of Representatives in 1824, Mr.
Polk was but twenty-nine years of age. He was re-elected continuously
for fourteen years. He was one of the most pronounced adherents
of Jackson, and joined in the extreme and unreasonable opposition
to the administration of John Quincy Adams. The period of his
service in the House was distinguished by partisanship of a more
bigoted and vindictive type than prevailed at any other time in
the history of that body. He was Speaker during the last Congress
of Jackson's Presidency and during the first under the administration
of Van Buren. When the Whig members forced an inquiry in to the
conduct of Samuel Swartwout, the defaulting collector of customs
for the port of New York,--a case which figured prominently in the
exciting Presidential canvass of 1840,--they would not trust Mr.
Polk with the duty of naming the committee of investigation. The
House itself exercised the power of appointment, to the great
disparagement of the Speaker.
When Mr. Polk closed his service in the Chair, at the end of the
Twenty-fifth Congress, no Whig member could be found who was willing
to move the customary resolution of thanks,--an act of courtesy
which derives its chief grace by coming from a political opponent.
When the resolution was presented by a Democratic Representative
from the South, it was opposed in debate by prominent Whig members.
Henry A. Wise, who five years later supported Mr. Polk for the
Presidency, desired to have the resolution peremptorily ruled out
on a point of order. Sergeant S. Prentiss, the incomparably
brilliant member from Mississippi, attacked it most violently.
His impassioned invective did not stop short of personal indignity
and insult to Mr. Polk. He denied with emphatic iteration that
the Speaker had been "impartial." On the contrary he had been "the
tool of the Executive, the tool of his party." He analyzed Mr.
Polk's course in the appointment of committees, and with much detail
labored to prove his narrowness, his unfairness, his injustice as
a presiding officer. For one, he said, he was "not wiling to give
to Mr. Polk a certificate of good behaviour, to aid him in his
canvass for the governorship of Tennessee, for which he is known
to be a candidate." He believed "this vote of thanks was to be
used as so much capital, on which to do political business," and
he declared with much vehemence that he "was not disposed to furnish
it."
The opprobrious language of Prentiss did not wound Mr. Polk so
seriously as did the vote of the House on the resolution of thanks.
The Whigs, as a party, resisted its adoption. The Democrats could
not even bring the House to a vote upon the resolution without the
use of the _previous question_, and this, as a witty observer
remarked, was about as humiliating as to be compelled to call the
_previous question_ on resolutions of respect for a deceased member.
When the demand was made for "the main question to be put," the
Whigs, apparently eager to force the issue to the bitter end, called
for the _ayes_ and _noes_. John Quincy Adams, who headed the roll,
led off in the negative, and was sustained by such able and
conservative members as John Bell from Mr. Polk's own State, McKennan
of Pennsylvania, Evans of Maine, Corwin of Ohio, Menifee from the
Ashland district in Kentucky, and William Cost Johnson of Maryland.
The vote stood 92 to 75. Mr. Polk had been chosen Speaker by a
majority of thirteen. The Whigs had thus practically consolidated
their party against a vote of courtesy to the presiding officer of
the House.
Mr. Polk's situation was in the highest degree embarrassing, but
he behaved with admirable coolness and self-possession. He returned
his thanks to the "majority of the House," which had adopted the
resolution, significantly emphasizing the word "majority." He said
he regarded the vote just given "as of infinitely more value than
the common, matter-of-course, customary resolution which, in the
courtesy usually prevailing in parliamentary bodies, is passed at
the close of their deliberations." His reference "to the courtesy
usually prevailing in parliamentary bodies" was made, as an eye-
witness relates, with "telling accent, and with a manner that was
very disconcerting to the Whigs." His address was scrupulously
confined to "the majority of the House," and to the end Mr. Polk
exhibited, as was said at the time, "a magnificent contempt for
the insulting discourtesy of the Whigs."
EARLY CAREER OF JAMES K. POLK.
The incident was made very prominent in the ensuing canvass in
Tennessee, where Mr. Polk won a signal victory, and was installed
as governor. The Democrats treated the action of the House as a
deliberate insult, not merely to the Speaker, but to his State,
and not only to his State, but to the venerable ex-president, whose
residence at the Hermitage, in the judgment of his devoted followers,
made Tennessee illustrious and almost sacred ground. Jackson
himself was roused to intense indignation, and, though beyond
threescore and ten, was active and unceasing in his efforts to
insure a victory to Mr. Polk. The contest, though local in its
essential character, attracted observation and interest far beyond
the borders of the State.
The political importance of Mr. Polk was enhanced by the proscriptive
course of his opponents in the House of Representatives. The
refusal to join in the resolution of thanks operated in a manner
quite contrary to the expectations of the Whigs, and was indeed
effectively turned against them. The generous instincts of the
people condemned an attempt to destroy the honorable fame of a
public man by what they considered to be an act of spiteful
persecution. It was the opinion of John Bell, who of all men had
the best opportunity for impartial judgment in the premises, that
the vote of himself and his fellow Whigs on the resolution was an
indirect but potential cause of Mr. Polk's nomination and election
to the Presidency. It gave him prominence as a friend of Jackson,
and made him available as a candidate against Van Buren for the
Democratic nomination. The opponents of the latter instinctively
knew that it would be dangerous to defeat him with any one who did
not stand well with Van Buren's powerful patron. The events of
1839 and 1844 in the life of Mr. Polk have therefore an interesting
relation to each other.
CHAPTER IV.
Review (_continued_).--Relations with Mexico.--General Taylor
marches his Army to the Rio Grande.--First Encounter with the
Mexican Army.--Excitement in the United States.--Congress declares
War against Mexico.--Ill Temper of the Whigs.--Defeat of the
Democrats in the Congressional Elections of 1846.--Policy of Mr.
Polk in Regard to Acquisition of Territory from Mexico.--Three-
Million Bill.--The Famous Anti-slavery Proviso moved by David
Wilmot.--John Quincy Adams.--His Public Service.--Robert C. Winthrop
chosen Speaker.--Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.--Presidential Election
of 1848.--Effort of the Administration to make a Democratic Hero
out of the Mexican War.--Thomas H. Benton for Lieutenant-General.
--Bill defeated.--Nomination of General Taylor for the Presidency
by the Whigs.--Nomination of General Cass by the Democratic Party.
--Van Buren refuses to support him.--Democratic Bolt in New York.
--Buffalo Convention and the Organization of the Free-soil Party.
--Nomination of Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams.--Mr. Clay's
Discontent.--Mr. Webster's Speech at Marshfield.--General Taylor
elected.--The Barnburners of New York.--Character and Public Services
of Mr. Van Buren.
By a suggestive coincidence, the practical abandonment of the line
of 54 deg. 40' by the administration was contemporaneous with the
outbreak of the Mexican war. The modified resolution of notice to
Great Britain was finally passed in both branches of Congress on
the 23d of April, and on the succeeding day the first blood was
shed in that contest between the two Republics which was destined
to work such important results in the future and fortunes of both.
The army of occupation in Texas, commanded by General Zachary
Taylor, had, during the preceding winter, been moving westward with
the view of encamping in the valley of the Rio Grande. On the 28th
of March General Tyler took up his position on the banks of the
river, opposite Matamoros, and strengthened himself by the erection
field-works. General Ampudia, in command of the Mexican army
stationed at Matamoros, was highly excited by the arrival of the
American army, and on the 12th of April notified General Taylor to
break up his camp within twenty-four hours, and to retire beyond
the Nueces River. In the event of his failure to comply with these
demands, Ampudia announced that "arms, and arms alone, must decide
the question." According to the persistent claim of the Mexican
Government, the Nueces River was the western boundary of Texas;
and the territory between that river and the Rio Grande--a breadth
of one hundred and fifty miles on the coast--was held by Mexico to
be a part of her domain, and General Taylor consequently an invader
of her soil. No reply was made to Ampudia; and on the 24th of
April General Arista, who had succeeded to the command of the
Mexican army, advised General Taylor that "he considered hostilities
commenced, and should prosecute them."
BEGINNING OF MEXICAN WAR.
Directly after this notification was received, General Taylor
dispatched a party of dragoons, sixty-three in number, officers
and men, up the valley of the Rio Grande, to ascertain whether the
Mexicans had crossed the river. They encountered a force much
larger than their own, and after a short engagement, in which some
seventeen were killed and wounded, the Americans were surrounded,
and compelled to surrender. When intelligence of this affair
reached the United States, the war-spirit rose high among the
people. "Our country has been invaded," and "American blood spilled
on American soil," were the cries heard on every side. In the very
height of this first excitement, without waiting to know whether
the Mexican Government would avow or disavow the hostile act,
President Polk, on the 11th of May, sent a most aggressive message
to Congress, "invoking its prompt action to recognize the existence
of war, and to place at the disposition of the Executive the means
of prosecuting the contest with vigor, and thus hastening the
restoration of peace." As soon as the message was read in the
House, a bill was introduced authorizing the President to call out
a force of fifty thousand men, and giving him all the requisite
power to organize, arm, and equip them. The preamble declared that
"war existed by the act of Mexico," and this gave rise to an animated
and somewhat angry discussion. The Whigs felt that they were placed
in an embarrassing attitude. They must either vote for what they
did not believe, or, by voting against the bill, incur the odium
which always attaches to the party that fails by a hair's-breadth
to come to the defense of the country when war is imminent.
Prominent Whigs believed, that, as an historical and geographical
fact, the river Nueces was the western boundary of Texas, and that
the President, by assuming the responsibility of sending an army
of occupation into the country west of that river, pending negotiations
with Mexico, had taken a hostile and indefensible step. But all
agreed that it was too late to consider any thing except the honor
of the country, now that actual hostilities had begun. The position
of the Whigs was as clearly defined by their speakers as was
practicable in the brief space allowed for discussion of the war
bill. Against the protest of many, it was forced to a vote, after
a two hours' debate. The administration expected the declaration
to be unanimous; but there were fourteen members of the House who
accepted the responsibility of defying the war feeling of the
country by voting "no"--an act which required no small degree of
moral courage and personal independence. John Quincy Adams headed
the list. The other gentlemen were all Northern Whigs, or pronounced
Free-Soilers.
The Senate considered the bill on the ensuing day, and passed it
after a very able debate, in which Mr. Calhoun bore a leading part.
He earnestly deprecated the necessity of the war, though accused
by Benton of plotting to bring it on. Forty senators voted for
it, and but two against it,--Thomas Clayton of Delaware and John
Davis of Massachusetts. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Mr. Upham
of Vermont, when their names were called, responded, "Ay, except
the preamble." The bill was promptly approved by the President,
and on the 13th of May, 1846, the two Republics were declared to
be at war. In the South and West, from the beginning, the war was
popular. In the North and East it was unpopular. The gallant
bearing of our army, however, changed in large degree the feeling
in sections where the war had been opposed. No finer body of men
ever enlisted in an heroic enterprise than those who volunteered
to bear the flag in Mexico. They were young, ardent, enthusiastic,
brave almost to recklessness, with a fervor of devotion to their
country's honor. The march of Taylor from the Rio Grande, ending
with the unexpected victory against superior numbers at Buena Vista,
kept the country in a state of excitement and elation, and in the
succeeding year elevated him to the Presidency. Not less splendid
in its succession of victories was the march of Scott from Vera
Cruz to the city of Mexico, where he closed his triumphal journey
by taking possession of the capital, and enabling his government
to dictate terms of peace.
DEMOCRATIC DEFEAT IN 1846.
For the first and only time in our political history, an administration
conducting a war victorious at every step, steadily lost ground in
the country. The House of Representatives which declared war on
the 11th of May, 1846, was Democratic by a large majority. The
House, elected in the ensuing autumn, amid the resounding acclamations
of Taylor's memorable victory at Monterey, had a decided Whig
majority. This political reverse was due to three causes,--the
enactment of the tariff of 1846, which offended the manufacturing
interest of the country; the receding of the administration on the
Oregon question, which embarrassed the position and wounded the
pride of the Northern Democrats; and the wide-spread apprehension
that the war was undertaken for the purpose of extending and
perpetuating slavery. The almost unanimous Southern vote for the
hasty surrender of the line of 54 deg. 40', on which so much had been
staked in the Presidential campaign, gave the Whigs an advantage
in the popular canvass. The contrast between the boldness with
which the Polk administration had marched our army upon the territory
claimed by Mexico, and the prudence with which it had retreated
from a contest with Great Britain, after all our antecedent boasting,
exposed the Democrats to merciless ridicule. Clever speakers who
were numerous in the Whig party at that day did not fail to see
and seize their advantage.
The Mexican war had scarcely begun when the President justified
the popular suspicion by making known to Congress that one of its
objects was to be the acquisition of territory beyo
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