Political Recollections
by George Washington Julian · English · Gutenberg #22959 · 545,374 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Political Recollections
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Political Recollections
Author: George Washington Julian
Release date: October 11, 2007 [eBook #22959]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22959
Credits: Produced by Ed Ferris
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLITICAL RECOLLECTIONS ***
Produced by Ed Ferris
Transcriber's notes:
Names have been corrected. "Indianians" changed to "Indianans".
LoC call number: E415.7.J9 1969
POLITICAL RECOLLECTIONS
1840 to 1872.
BY
GEORGE W. JULIAN.
MNEMOSYNE PUBLISHING CO., INC.
MIAMI, FLORIDA
1969
Originally Published in Chicago 1884
COPYRIGHT
By JANSEN, McCLURG & CO.,
A. D. 1883.
First Mnemosyne reprinting 1969
Reprinted from a copy in the
Fisk University Library Negro Collection
Copyright ©1969 Mnemosyne Publishing Co., Inc. Miami, Florida
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:
78-83885
PREFACE.
The following chapters are devoted mainly to facts and incidents
connected with the development of anti-slavery politics from the
year 1840 to the close of the work of Reconstruction which followed
the late civil war. Other topics, however, are occasionally noticed,
while I have deemed it proper to state my own attitude and course
of action respecting various public questions, and to refer more
particularly to the political strifes of my own State. In doing
this, I have spoken freely of conspicuous personalities in connection
with their public action, or their peculiar relations to myself;
but my aim has been to deal fairly and state only the truth, while
striving to weave into my story some reminiscences of the men and
events of by-gone times, which may interest the reader. In the
endeavor to elucidate the orderly progress of anti-slavery opinions
and their translation into organized action, I have summarized and
re-stated many of the familiar facts of current American politics
during the period embraced; but I hope I have also made a slight
contribution to the sources of history bearing upon a world-famous
movement, touching which we should "gather up the fragments that
nothing be lost."
G. W. J.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE HARRISON CAMPAIGN--THE BEGINNING OF ANTI-SLAVERY POLITICS.
The "Hard-cider" Frolic of 1840--The Issues--Swartwout and Political
Corruption--The Demand for a Change--Character of Gen. Harrison--
Personal Defamation--Mass-meetings and Songs--Crushing Defeat of
the Democrats--First Appearance of the Slavery Issue in Politics--
Pro-slavery Attitude of Harrison and Van Buren--Events favoring
the Growth of Anti-slavery Opinion--Clay and Mendenhall--Texas'
Annexation and John Tyler.
CHAPTER II.
CAMPAIGN OF 1844--ANNEXATION AND SLAVERY.
The Nomination of Clay--His Position on the Slavery Question and
Annexation--Van Buren's Letter to Hammett, and its Effect upon the
South--His Repudiation, and the Nomination of Polk--The Surprise
of the Country--Unbounded Confidence of the Whigs--The Course of
the New York Democrats--The "Kane Letter"--Trouble among the Whigs
on the Annexation Question--Fierceness of the Contest, and singular
Ability of the Leaders--The Effect of Clay's Defeat upon the Whigs
--Causes of the Defeat--The Abolitionists, and the Abuse heaped
upon them--Cassius M. Clay--Mr. Hoar's Mission to South Carolina--
Election of John P. Hale--Annexation, and War with Mexico--Polk's
Message, and the Wilmot Proviso--The Oregon Question, and Alex. H.
Stephens.
CHAPTER III.
CAMPAIGN OF 1848--ITS INCIDENTS AND RESULTS.
Approach of another Presidential Campaign--Party Divisions threatened
by the Wilmot Proviso--Nomination of Gen. Cass--The "Nicholson
Letter"--Democratic Division in New York--Nomination of Gen. Taylor
--Whig Divisions--Birth of the Free Soil Party--Buffalo Convention
--Nomination of Van Buren and Adams--Difficulty of uniting on Van
Buren--Incidents--Rev. Joshua Leavitt--Work of the Campaign--Webster
and Free Soil--Greeley and Seward--Abuse of Whig Bolters--Remarkable
Results of the Canvass.
CHAPTER IV.
REMINISCENCES OF THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS.
Novel Political Complications--Compromise Measures--First Election
to Congress--Sketch of the "Immortal Nine"--The Speakership and
Wm. J. Brown--Gen. Taylor and the Wilmot Proviso--Slaveholding
Bluster--Compromise Resolutions of Clay and Retreat of Northern
Whigs--Visit to Gen. Taylor--To Mr. Clay--His Speeches--Webster's
Seventh of March Speech--Calhoun--Speech on the Slavery Question.
CHAPTER V.
THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS (CONTINUED).
Fracas between Col. Benton and Senator Foster--Character of Benton
--Death of Gen. Taylor--The Funeral--Defeat of the "Omnibus Bill"
--Its Triumph in Detail--Celebration of the Victory--"Lower Law"
Sermons and "Union-Saving" Meetings--Slaveholding Literature--
Mischievous Legislation--Visit to Philadelphia and Boston--Futile
Efforts to suppress Agitation--Andrew Johnson and the Homestead
Law--Effort to censure Mr. Webster--Political Morality in this
Congress--Temperance--Jefferson Davis--John P. Hale--Thaddeus
Stevens--Extracts from Speeches--Famous Men in both Houses--Free
Soilers and their Vindication.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
Pro-slavery Reaction--Indiana and Ohio--Race for Congress--Free
Soil Gains in other States--National Convention at Cleveland--
National Canvass of 1852--Nomination of Pierce and Scott, and the
"finality" Platforms--Free Soil National Convention--Nomination of
Hale--Samuel Lewis--The Whig Canvass--Webster--Canvass of the
Democrats--Return of New York "Barnburners" to the Party--The Free
Soil Campaign--Stumping Kentucky with Clay--Rev. John G. Fee--
Incidents--Mob Law in Indiana--Result of the Canvass--Ruin of the
Whigs--Disheartening Facts--The other Side of the Picture.
CHAPTER VII.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (CONTINUED).
A Notable Fugitive Slave Case--Inauguration of Pierce--Repeal of
the Missouri Compromise--Its Effects upon the Parties--The Free
Soil Position--Know-Nothingism--The Situation--First Steps in the
Formation of the Republican Party--Movements of the Know-Nothings
--Mistake of the Free Soilers--Anti-slavery Progress--Election of
Banks as Speaker--Call for a Republican National Convention at
Pittsburg--Organization of the Party--The Philadelphia Convention
and its Platform--Nomination of Fremont--Know-Nothing and Whig
Nominations--Democratic Nomination and Platform--The Grand Issue
of the Campaign--The Democratic Canvass--The splendid Fight for
Fremont--Triumph of Buchanan--Its Causes and Results--The Teaching
of Events.
CHAPTER VIII.
PROGRESS OF REPUBLICANISM.
The Dred Scott Decision--Struggle for Freedom in Kansas--Instructive
Debates in Congress--Republican Gains in the Thirty-fifth Congress
--The English Bill--Its Defeat and the Effect--Defection of Douglas
--Its Advantages and its Perils--Strange Course of the New York
Tribune and other Papers--Republican Retreat in Indiana--Illinois
Republicans stand firm, and hold the Party to its Position--Gains
in the Thirty-sixth Congress--Southern Barbarism and Extravagance
--John Brown's Raid--Cuba and the Slave-trade--Oregon and Kansas--
Aids to Anti-slavery Progress--The Speakership and Helper's Book--
Southern Insolence and Extravagance--Degradation of Douglas--Slave-
code for the Territories--Outrages in the South--Campaign of 1860
--Charleston Convention and Division of the Democrats--Madness of
the Factions--Bell and Everett--Republican Convention and its
Platform--Lincoln and Seward--Canvass of Douglas--Campaign for
Lincoln--Conduct of Seward--Republican Concessions and slave-holding
Madness.
CHAPTER IX.
THE NEW ADMINISTRATION AND THE WAR.
Visit to Mr. Lincoln--Closing Months of Mr. Buchanan's Administration
--Efforts to avoid War--Character of Buchanan--Lincoln's Inauguration
--His War Policy--The Grand Army of Office-seekers--The July Session
of Congress--The Atmosphere of Washington--Battle of Bull Run--
Apologetic Resolve of Congress--First Confiscation Act--Gen.
Fremont's Proclamation and its Effect--Its Revocation--Regular
Session of Congress--Secretary Cameron--Committee on the Conduct
of the War--Its Conference with the President and his Cabinet--
Secretary Stanton and General McClellan--Order to march upon
Manassas.
CHAPTER X.
THE NEW ADMINISTRATION AND THE WAR (CONTINUED).
The Wooden Guns--Conference with Secretary Stanton--His Relations
to Lincoln--Strife between Radicalism and Conservatism--Passage of
the Homestead Law--Visit to the President--The Confiscation Act
and Rebel Land owners--Greeley's "Prayer of Twenty Millions," and
Lincoln's Reply--Effort to disband the Republican Party--The Battle
of Fredericksburg and General Burnside--The Proclamation of
Emancipation--Visit to Mr. Lincoln--General Fremont--Report of the
War Committee--Visit to Philadelphia and New York--Gerrit Smith--
The Morgan Raid.
CHAPTER XI.
INCIDENTS AND END OF THE WAR.
Campaigning in Ohio--Attempted Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law--
Organized Movement in Favor of Chase for the Presidency--Confiscation
of Rebel Lands--Fort Pillow, and the Treatment of Union Soldiers
at Richmond--Mr. Lincoln's Letter to Hodges--Southern Homestead
Bill, and Controversy with Mr. Mallory--Nomination of Andrew Johnson
--Enforcement of Party Discipline--Mr. Lincoln's Change of Opinion
as to Confiscation of Rebel Lands--Opposition to him in Congress--
General Fremont and Montgomery Blair--Visit to City Point--Adoption
of the XIII Constitutional Amendment--Trip to Richmond, and Incidents
--Assassination of the President--Inauguration of Johnson and
Announcement of his Policy--Feeling toward Mr. Lincoln--Capitulation
of Gen. Johnston.
CHAPTER XII.
RECONSTRUCTION AND SUFFRAGE--THE LAND QUESTION.
Visit of Indianans to the President--Gov. Morton and Reconstruction
--Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War--Discussion of
Negro Suffrage and Incidents--Personal Matters--Suffrage in the
District of Columbia--The Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment--
Breach between the President and Congress--Blaine and Conkling--
Land Bounties and the Homestead Law.
CHAPTER XIII.
MINERAL LANDS AND THE RIGHT OF PRE-EMPTION.
The Lead and Copper Lands of the Northwest--The gold-bearing Regions
of the Pacific, and their Disposition--A legislative Reminiscence
--Mining Act of 1866, and how it was passed--Its deplorable Failure,
and its Lesson--Report of the Land Commission--The Right of Pre-
emption, and the "Dred Scott Decision" of the Settlers.
CHAPTER XIV.
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT.
Gov. Morton and his Scheme of Gerrymandering--The XIV Amendment--
Hasty Reconstruction and the Territorial Plan--The Military Bill--
Impeachment--An amusing Incident--Vote against Impeachment--The
Vote reversed--The popular Feeling against the President--The Trial
--Republican Intolerance--Injustice to Senators and to Chief Justice
Chase--Nomination of Gen. Grant--Re-nomination for Congress--Personal
--Squabble of Place-hunters--XVI Amendment.
CHAPTER XV.
GRANT AND GREELEY.
The new Cabinet--Seeds of Party Disaffection--Trip to California--
Party Degeneracy--The liberal Republican Movement--Re-nomination
of Grant--The Cincinnati Convention--Perplexities of the Situation
--The Canvass for Greeley--Its Bitterness--Its peculiar Features--
The Defeat--The Vindication of Liberals--Visit to Chase and Sumner
--Death of Greeley.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUDING NOTES.
Party Changes caused by the Slavery Issue--Notable Men in Congress
during the War--Sketches of prominent Men in the Senate and House
--Scenes and Incidents--Butler and Bingham--Cox and Butler--Judge
Kelley and Van Wyck--Lovejoy and Wickliffe--Washburn and Donnelly
--Oakes Ames--Abolitionism in Washington early in the War--Life at
the Capital--The new Dispensation and its Problems.
INDEX
POLITICAL RECOLLECTIONS.
CHAPTER I.
THE HARRISON CAMPAIGN--THE BEGINNING OF ANTI-SLAVERY POLITICS.
The "hard-cider" frolic of 1840--The issues--Swartwout and political
corruption--The demand for a change--Character of Gen. Harrison--
Personal defamation--Mass-meetings and songs--Crushing defeat of
the Democrats--First appearance of the slavery issue in politics--
Pro-slavery attitude of Harrison and Van Buren--Events favoring
the growth of anti-slavery opinion--Clay and Mendenhall--Texas
annexation and John Tyler.
Through the influence of early associations, I began my political
life as a Whig, casting my first presidential ballot for General
Harrison, in 1840. I knew next to nothing of our party politics;
but in the matter of attending mass-meetings, singing Whig songs
and drinking hard cider, I played a considerable part in the
memorable campaign of that year. So far as ideas entered into my
support of the Whig candidate, I simply regarded him as a poor man,
whose home was a log cabin, and who would in some way help the
people through their scuffle with poverty and the "hard times";
while I was fully persuaded that Van Buren was not only a graceless
aristocrat and a dandy, but a cunning conspirator, seeking the
overthrow of his country's liberties by uniting the sword and the
purse in his own clutches, as he was often painted on the party
banners. In these impressions I was by no means singular. They
filled the air, and seemed to be wafted on every breeze. Horace
Greeley's famous campaign organ, "The Log Cabin," only gave them
voice and fitting pictorial effect, and he frankly admitted in
later years that his Whig appeals, with his music and wood engravings
of General Harrison's battle scenes, were more "vivid" than "sedately
argumentative." No one will now seriously pretend that this was
a campaign of ideas, or a struggle for political reform in any
sense. It was a grand national frolic, in which the imprisoned
mirth and fun of the people found such jubilant and uproarious
expression that anything like calmness of judgment or real seriousness
of purpose was out of the question in the Whig camp.
As regards party issues, General Harrison, singularly enough, was
not a Whig, but an old fashioned States-Rights Democrat of the
Jeffersonian school. His letters to Harmar Denny and Sherrod
Williams committed him to none of the dogmas which defined a Whig.
No authentic utterance of his could be produced in which he had
ever expressed his agreement with the Whig party on the questions
of a protective tariff, internal improvements, or a national bank.
There was very high Whig authority for saying that the bank question
was not an issue of the canvass, while Van Buren's great measure
for separating the currency from the banks became a law pending
the Presidential struggle. In fact, it was because no proof of
General Harrison's party orthodoxy could be found, that he was
nominated; and the Whig managers of the Harrisburg Convention felt
obliged to sacrifice Henry Clay, which they did through the basest
double-dealing and treachery, for the reason that his right angled
character as a party leader would make him unavailable as a candidate.
As to John Tyler, he was not a Whig in any sense. It is true that
he had opposed the removal of the deposits, and voted against
Benton's expunging resolutions, but on all the regular and recognized
party issues he was fully committed as a Democrat, and was, moreover,
a nullifier. The sole proof of his Whiggery was the apocryphal
statement that he wept when Clay failed to receive the nomination,
while his political position was perfectly understood by the men
who nominated him. There was one policy only on which they were
perfectly agreed, and that was the policy of avowing no principles
whatever; and they tendered but one issue, and that was a change
of the national administration. On this issue they were perfectly
united and thoroughly in earnest, and it was idle to deny that on
their own showing the spoils alone divided them from the Democrats
and inspired their zeal.
The demand of the Whigs for a change was well-founded. Samuel
Swartwout, the New York Collector of Customs, had disgraced the
Government by his defalcations; and, although he was a legacy of
Mr. Van Buren's "illustrious predecessor," and had been "vindicated"
by a Senate committee composed chiefly of his political opponents,
he was unquestionably a public swindler, and had found shelter
under Mr. Van Buren's administration. He was the most conspicuous
public rascal of his time, but was far from being alone in his
odious notoriety. The system of public plunder inaugurated by
Jackson was in full blast, and an organized effort to reform it
was the real need of the hour; but here was the weak point of the
Whigs. They proceeded upon the perfectly gratuitous assumption
that the shameless abuses against which they clamored would be
thoroughly reformed should they come into power. They took it for
granted that a change would be equivalent to a cure, and that the
people would follow them in thus begging the very question on which
some satisfactory assurance was reasonably required. They seemed
totally unconscious of the fact that human nature is essentially
the same in all parties, and that a mere change of men without any
change of system would be fruitless. They laid down no programme
looking to the reform of the civil service. They did not condemn
it, and their sole panacea for the startling frauds and defalcations
of Van Buren's administration was the imagined superior virtue and
patriotism of the Whigs. In the light of this fact alone, it is
impossible to account for the perfectly unbounded and irrepressible
enthusiasm which swept over the land during the campaign, and so
signally routed the forces of Democracy. Something more than empty
promises and windy declamation was necessary, and that something,
in an evil hour, was supplied by the Democrats themselves.
General Harrison was a man of Revolutionary blood. He commanded
the confidence of the chief Fathers of the Republic. He was a man
of undoubted bravery, and had made a most honorable record, both
as a soldier and a civilian, upon ample trial in both capacities.
He was unquestionably honest and patriotic, and the fact that he
was a poor man, and a plain farmer of the West, could properly form
no objection to his character or his fitness for the Presidency.
But the Democratic orators and newspapers assailed him as an
"imbecile." They called him a "dotard" and a "granny." They said
he had distinguished himself in war by running away from the enemy.
One Democratic journalist spoke of him, contemptuously, as a man
who should be content with a log cabin and a barrel of hard cider,
without aspiring to the Presidency. The efforts to belittle his
merits and defile his good name became systematic, and degenerated
into the most unpardonable personal abuse and political defamation.
This was exactly what the Whigs needed to supplement their lack of
principles. It worked like a charm. It rallied the Whig masses
like a grand battle-cry. Mass-meetings of the people, such as had
never been dreamed of before, became the order of the day. The
people took the work of politics into their own keeping, and the
leaders became followers. The first monster meeting I attended
was held on the Tippecanoe battle-ground, on the 29th and 30th of
May. In order to attend it I rode on horseback through the mud
and swamps one hundred and fifty miles; but I considered myself
amply compensated for the journey in what I saw and enjoyed. The
gathering was simply immense; and I remember that James Brooks,
since conspicuous in our national politics, tried to address the
multitude from the top of a huge log cabin. Large shipments of
hard cider had been sent up the Wabash by steamer, and it was
liberally dealt out to the people in gourds, as more appropriate
and old-fashioned than glasses. The people seemed to be supremely
happy, and their faces were so uniformly radiant with smiles that
a man who was detected with a serious countenance was at once
suspected as an unrepentant "Loco-foco." But by far the largest
meeting of the campaign was that held at Dayton, on the 12th day
of September, where General Harrison spoke at length. He was the
first "great man" I had seen; and, while gazing into his face with
an awe which I have never since felt for any mortal, I was suddenly
recalled from my rapt condition by the exit of my pocket-book.
The number in attendance at this meeting was estimated at two
hundred thousand, and I think it could not have been far out of
the way. I am sure I have never seen it equaled, although I have
witnessed many great meetings within the past forty years. The
marked peculiarity of all the gatherings of this campaign was a
certain grotesque pomp and extravagance of representation suggestive
of a grand carnival. The banners, devices and pictures were
innumerable, while huge wagons were mounted with log cabins, cider
barrels, canoes, miniature ships, and raccoons.
But the most distinguishing feature of the campaign was its music.
The spirit of song was everywhere, and made the whole land vocal.
The campaign was set to music, and the song seriously threatened
to drown the stump speech. Whiggery was translated into a tune,
and poured itself forth in doggerel rhymes which seemed to be born
of the hour, and exactly suited to the crisis. I give a few
specimens, partly from memory, and partly from "The Harrison and
Log Cabin Song Book" of 1840, a copy of which is before me:
What has caused the great commotion, motion, motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on, on,
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too--Tippecanoe and Tyler too;
And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van;
Van is a used up man;
And with them we'll beat little Van.
Like the rushing of mighty waters, waters, waters,
On it will go,
And in its course will clear the way
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too--Tippecanoe and Tyler too;
And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van;
Van is a used up man;
And with them we'll beat little Van.
The famous "ball" alluded to in this song originated with the Whigs
of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and was sent by them to a Mass
Convention held at Baltimore. It was ten or twelve feet in diameter,
and upon the ends of it, on blue ground, were stars corresponding
in number with the States of the Union. On its wide spaces of red
and white stripes various inscriptions were made, including the
following, which belongs to the poetry and music of the campaign:
With heart and soul
This ball we roll;
May times improve
As on we move.
This Democratic ball
Set rolling first by Benton,
Is on another track
From that it first was sent on.
Farewell, dear Van,
You're not our man;
To guide the ship,
We'll try old Tip.
The following, sung to the tune of "Old Rosin the Bow," was quite
as popular:
Come ye who, whatever betide her,
To Freedom have sworn to be true,
Prime up with a cup of hard cider,
And drink to old Tippecanoe.
On top I've a cask of as good, sir,
As man from the tap ever drew;
No poison to cut up your blood, sir,
But liquor as pure as the dew.
Parched corn men can't stand it much longer,
Enough is as much as we'll bear;
With Tip at our head, in October,
We'll tumble Van out of the chair.
Then ho! for March fourth, forty-one, boys,
We'll shout till the heavens' arched blue
Shall echo hard cider and fun, boys,
Drink, drink, to old Tippecanoe.
The following kindred verses will be familiar to everybody who
remembers the year 1840:
Ye jolly young lads of Ohio,
And all ye sick Vanocrats, too,
Come out from among the foul party,
And vote for old Tippecanoe.
Good men from the Van jacks are flying,
Which makes them look kinder askew,
For they see they are joining the standard
With the hero of Tippecanoe.
They say that he lived in a cabin,
And lived on old cider, too;
Well, what if he did? I'm certain
He's the hero of Tippecanoe.
I give the following verses of one of the best, which used to be
sung with tremendous effect:
The times are bad, and want curing;
They are getting past all enduring;
Let us turn out Martin Van Buren,
And put in old Tippecanoe.
The best thing we can do,
Is to put in old Tippecanoe.
It's a business we all can take part in,
So let us give notice to Martin
That he must get ready for sartin',
For we'll put in old Tippecanoe.
The best thing we can do
Is to put in old Tippecanoe.
We've had of their humbugs a plenty;
For now all our pockets are empty;
We've a dollar now where we had twenty,
So we'll put in old Tippecanoe.
The best thing we can do,
Is to put in old Tippecanoe.
The following verses are perfectly characteristic:
See the farmer to his meal
Joyfully repair;
Crackers, cheese and cider, too,
A hard but homely fare.
Martin to his breakfast comes
At the hour of noon;
Sipping from a china cup,
With a golden spoon.
Martin's steeds impatient wait
At the palace door;
Outriders behind the coach
And lackeys on before.
After the State election in Maine, a new song appeared, which at
once became a favorite, and from which I quote the following:
And have you heard the news from Maine,
And what old Maine can do?
She went hell bent for Governor Kent,
And Tippecanoe and Tyler too,
And Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
Such was this most remarkable Whig campaign, with its monster
meetings and music, its infinite drolleries, its rollicking fun,
and its strong flavor of political lunacy. As to the canvass of
the Democrats, the story is soon told. In all points it was the
reverse of a success. The attempt to manufacture enthusiasm failed
signally. They had neither fun nor music in their service, and
the attempt to secure them would have been completely overwhelmed
by the flood on the other side. It was a melancholy struggle, and
constantly made more so by the provoking enthusiasm and unbounded
good humor of the Whigs. It ended as a campaign of despair, while
its humiliating catastrophe must have awakened inexpressible
disappointment and disgust both among the leaders and masses of
the party.
This picture of party politics, forty-three years ago, is not very
flattering to our American pride, but it simply shows the working
of Democratic institutions in dealing with the "raw material" of
society and life at that time. The movement of 1840 was necessarily
transient and provisional, while underneath its clatter and nonsense
was a real issue. It was unrecognized by both parties, but it made
its advent, and the men who pointed its way quietly served notice
upon the country of their ulterior purposes.
As long ago as the year 1817, Charles Osborn had established an
anti-slavery newspaper in Ohio, entitled "The Philanthropist,"
which was followed in 1821 by the publication of Benjamin Lundy's
"Genius of Universal Emancipation." In 1831 the uprising of slaves
in Southampton County, Virginia, under the lead of Nat. Turner,
had startled the country and invited attention to the question of
slavery. In the same year Garrison had established "The Liberator,"
and in 1835 was mobbed in Boston, and dragged through its streets
with a rope about his neck. In 1837 Lovejoy had been murdered in
Alton, Illinois, and his assassins compared by the Mayor of Boston
to the patriots of the Revolution. In 1838 a pro-slavery mob had
set fire to Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, and defied the city
authorities in this service of slavery. President Jackson and Amos
Kendall, his Postmaster General, had openly set the Constitution
at defiance by justifying the rifling of the mails and the suppression
of the circulation of anti-slavery newspapers in the South. The
"gag" resolutions had been introduced in the House of Representatives
in 1836, which provoked the splendid fights of Adams, Giddings and
Slade for the right of petition and the freedom of speech. Dr.
Channing had published his prophetic letter to Henry Clay, on the
annexation of Texas, in 1837, and awakened a profound interest in
the slavery question on both sides of the Atlantic. We had been
disgraced by two Florida wars, caused by the unconstitutional
espousal of slavery by the General Government. President Van Buren
had dishonored his administration and defied the moral sense of
the civilized world by his efforts to prostitute our foreign policy
to the service of slavery and the slave trade. In February, 1839,
Henry Clay had made his famous speech on "Abolitionism," and thus
recognized the bearing of the slavery question upon the presidential
election of the following year. The Abolitionists had laid siege
to the conscience and humanity of the people, and their moral
appeals were to be a well-spring of life to the nation in its final
struggle for self-preservation; but as yet they had agreed upon no
organized plan of action against the aggressions of an institution
which threatened the overthrow of the Union and the end of Republican
government. But now they were divided into two camps, the larger
of which favored political action, organized as a party, and
nominated, as its candidate for President, James G. Birney, who
received nearly seven thousand votes.
This was a small beginning, but it was the beginning of the end.
That slavery was to be put down without political action in a
government carried on by the ballot was never a tenable proposition,
and the inevitable work was at last inaugurated. It was done
opportunely. Harrison and Van Buren were alike objectionable to
anti-slavery men who understood their record. To choose between
them was to betray the cause. Van Buren had attempted to shelter
the slave trade under the national flag. He had allied himself to
the enemies of the right of petition and the freedom of debate, as
the means of conciliating the South. He had taken sides with
Jackson in his lawless interference with the mails at the bidding
of slave-holders. In a word, he had fairly earned the description
of "a Northern man with Southern principles." General Harrison,
on the other hand, was a pro-slavery Virginian. While Governor of
Indiana Territory he had repeatedly sought the introduction of
slavery into that region through the suspension of the ordnance of
1787, which had forever dedicated it to freedom. He had taken
sides with the South in 1820 on the Missouri question. He had no
sympathy with the struggle of Adams and his associates, against
the gag and in favor of the right of petition, and regarded the
discussion of the slavery question as unconstitutional. The first
draft of his inaugural was so wantonly offensive to the anti-slavery
Whigs who had aided in his election, that even Mr. Clay condemned
it, and prevailed on the General to modify it. He had declared
that "the schemes of the Abolitionists were fraught with horrors,
upon which an incarnate devil only could look with approbation."
With such candidates the hour had fairly struck for anti-slavery
men, who believed in the use of the ballot, to launch the grand
movement which was finally to triumph over all opposition; while
to oppose this movement, however honestly, was to encourage men to
choose between parties equally untrustworthy, and by thus prolonging
their rule to defeat all practical anti-slavery work. It was the
singular mistake of the non-voting Abolitionists at this time,
that, while they looked forward to political action as the ultimate
result of their moral agitation, they vehemently opposed the
formation of an anti-slavery political party, and either withheld
their votes or divided them between these pro-slavery chieftains,
though giving by far the larger proportion to the Whig candidate.
From this time forward anti-slavery progress was more marked. The
struggle over the right of petition in Congress continued, and was
characterized by a constantly increasing measure of fierceness on
the part of the South. This is vividly depicted in a passage from
the diary of Mr. Adams, in March, 1841, in which he declares that
"The world, the flesh, and all the devils in hell are arrayed
against any man who now, in this North American Union, shall dare
to join the standard of Almighty God to put down the African slave
trade; and what can I, upon the verge of my seventy-fourth birthday,
with a shaking hand, a darkening eye, a drowsy brain, and with all
my faculties dropping from me one by one as the teeth are dropping
from my head, what can I do for the cause of God and man, for the
progress of human emancipation, for the suppression of the African
slave-trade? Yet my conscience presses me on; let me but die upon
the breach."
The celebrated trial of Mr. Adams the following year, for presenting
a petition from the citizens of Haverhill, requesting Congress to
take steps toward a peaceable dissolution of the Union, was a great
national event, and his triumph gave a new impulse to the cause of
freedom. The censure of Mr. Giddings which followed, for offering
resolutions in the House embodying the simplest truisms respecting
the relations of the General Government to slavery, and the elaborate
State paper of Mr. Webster, which provoked these resolutions, in
which he attempted to commit the Government to the protection of
slavery on the high seas, in accordance with the theories of Mr.
Calhoun, still further kept alive the anti-slavery agitation, and
awakened the interest of Northern men. A kindred aid, unwittingly
rendered the anti-slavery cause, was the infamous diplomacy of
General Cass, our Ambassador to France in 1842, in connection with
the Quintuple Treaty for the suppression of the African slave trade.
His monstrous effort to shield that trade under the flag of the
United States was characterized by Mr. Adams as "a compound of
Yankee cunning, of Italian perfidy, and of French _légéreté_,
cemented by shameless profligacy unparalleled in American diplomacy."
In October, 1842, Henry Clay himself became an anti-slavery agitator
through his famous "Mendenhall Speech" at Richmond, Indiana. In
response to a petition asking him to emancipate his slaves, he told
the people "that whatever the law secures as property _is_ property,"
and described his slaves as "being well fed and clad," and as
looking "sleek and hearty." "Go home, Mr. Mendenhall," said he,
"and mind your own business, and leave other people to take care
of theirs." Mr. Mendenhall was an anti-slavery Quaker; but Mr.
Clay, while rebuking him severely, took pains to compliment the
society itself on its practically pro-slavery attitude, and thus
stung into redoubled earnestness and zeal the men who had recently
been driven out of it on account of their "abolitionism." On the
day following this speech, which was the Sabbath, he was escorted
to the yearly meeting by Elijah Coffin, its clerk, seated in a very
conspicuous place, honored by every mark of the most obsequious
deference, and thus made the instrument of widening the breach
already formed in the society, while feeding the anti-slavery fires
which he was so anxious to assuage.
The work of agitation was still further kept alive by conflicts
between the Northern and Southern States respecting the reclamation
of fugitives from crime. Virginia had demanded of New York the
surrender of three colored sailors who were charged with having
aided a slave to escape. Governor Seward refused to deliver them
up, for the reason that the Constitutional provision on the subject
must be so understood as that States would only be required to
surrender fugitives accused of an offense considered a crime in
the State called upon to make the surrender as well as in the State
asking for it. Similar controversies occurred between other States,
in all of which the South failed in her purpose. The anti-slavery
spirit found further expression in 1843 in Massachusetts, whose
Legislature resolved to move, through the Representatives of the
State in Congress, an Amendment to the Constitution, basing
representation on the free population only of the States; which
proposition gave rise to a most memorable debate in the national
House of Representatives. It was in the August of the same year
that the voting Abolitionists held a National Convention in Buffalo,
in which all the free States, except New Hampshire, were represented;
while in the following year the Methodist Episcopal Church was rent
in twain by the same unmanageable question, which had previously
divided other ecclesiastical communions.
In the meanwhile, the question of Texan annexation had been steadily
advancing to the political front, and stirring the blood of the
people both North and South. This "robbery of a realm," as Dr.
Channing had styled it, was the unalterable purpose and unquenchable
desire of the slave-holding interest, and its accomplishment was
to be secured by openly espousing the principle that the end
justifies the means, and setting all consequences at defiance.
This is exactly what the Government did. The diplomacy through
which the plot was prosecuted was marked by a cunning, audacity,
and perfidy, which, in these particulars, leave the administration
of John Tyler unrivalled in its ugly pre-eminence, and form one of
the blackest pages in the history of the Republic. The momentous
question was now upon us; and on the dawning of the year 1844, all
parties saw that it was destined to be the overshadowing issue in
the ensuing presidential campaign.
CHAPTER II.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1844--ANNEXATION AND SLAVERY.
The nomination of Clay--His position on the slavery question and
annexation--Van Buren's letter to Hammet, and its effect upon the
South--His repudiation, and the nomination of Polk--The surprise
of the country--Unbounded confidence of the Whigs--The course of
the New York Democrats--The "Kane Letter"--Trouble among the Whigs
on the annexation question--Fierceness of the contest, and singular
ability of the leaders--The effect of Clay's defeat upon the Whigs
--Causes of the defeat--The Abolitionists, and the abuse heaped
upon them--Cassius M. Clay--Mr. Hoar's mission to South Carolina--
Election of John P. Hale--Annexation and war with Mexico--Polk's
message, and the Wilmot proviso--The Oregon question, and Alex. H.
Stephens.
The times were serious. The fun and frolic of 1840 had borne no
fruit, and that part of our history could not be repeated. The
campaign of 1844 promised to be a struggle for principle; and among
the Whigs all eyes were turned for a standard-bearer to Mr. Clay,
who had been so shabbily treated four years before. He was
unanimously nominated on the first of May, with Theodore Frelinghuysen
as the candidate for Vice President. The party issues were not
very sharply defined, but this was scarcely necessary with a
candidate who was proverbially regarded as himself "the embodiment
of Whig principles." On the subject of annexation, he clearly
defined his position in his letter of the 17th of April to the
"National Intelligencer." He declared that annexation and war with
Mexico were identical, and placed himself squarely against it,
except upon conditions specified, which would make the project of
immediate annexation impossible. On the slavery question, he had
not yet seriously offended the anti-slavery element in his own
party, and was even trusted by some of the voting anti-slavery men.
In a speech at Raleigh, in April of this year, he declared it to
be "the duty of each State to sustain its own domestic institutions."
He had publicly said that the General Government had nothing to do
with slavery, save in the matters of taxation, representation, and
the return of fugitive slaves. He had condemned the censure of
Mr. Giddings in 1842 as an outrage, and indorsed the principles
laid down in his tract, signed "Pacificus," on the relations of
the Federal Government to slavery, and the rights and duties of
the people of the free States. In his earlier years, he had been
an outspoken emancipationist, and had always frankly expressed his
opinion that slavery was a great evil. These considerations, and
especially his unequivocal utterances against the annexation scheme,
were regarded as hopeful auguries of a thoroughly united party,
and its triumph at the polls; while Mr. Webster, always on the
presidential anxious-seat, and carefully watching the signs of the
political zodiac, now cordially lent his efforts to the Whig cause.
With the Democracy, Mr. Van Buren was still a general favorite.
His friends felt that the wrong done him in 1840 should now be
righted, and a large majority of his party undoubtedly favored his
renomination. But his famous letter to Mr. Hammet, of Mississippi,
dated March 27th, on the annexation of Texas, placed a lion in his
path. In this lengthy and elaborate document he committed himself
against the project of immediate annexation, and the effect was at
once seen in the decidedly unfriendly tone of Democratic opinion
in the South. He had been faithful to the Slave oligarchy in many
things, but his failure in one was counted a breach of the whole
law. By many acts of patient and dutiful service he had earned
the gratitude of his Southern task-masters; but now, when driven
to the wall, he mustered the courage to say, "Thus far, no farther";
and for this there was no forgiveness. General Jackson came to
his rescue, but it was in vain. The Southern heart was set upon
immediate annexation as the golden opportunity for rebuilding the
endangered edifice of slavery, and Mr. Van Buren's talk about
national obligations and the danger of a foreign war was treated
as the idle wind. The Southern Democrats were bent upon his
overthrow, and they went about it in the Baltimore Convention of
the 27th of May as if perfectly conscious of their power over the
Northern wing of the party. They moved and carried the "two-thirds
rule," which had been acted on in the National Convention of 1832,
and afterward in that of 1835, although this could not have been
done without the votes of a majority of the convention, which was
itself strongly for Van Buren. The rule was adopted by a considerable
majority, the South being nearly unanimous in its favor, while the
North largely "supplied the men who handed Van Buren over to his
enemies with a kiss." Even General Cass, the most gifted and
accomplished dough-face in the Northern States, failed to receive
a majority of the votes of the Convention on any ballot, and James
K. Polk was finally nominated as the champion of immediate annexation,
with George M. Dallas as the candidate for Vice President.
The nomination was a perfect surprise to the country, because Mr.
Polk was wholly unknown to the people as a statesman. Like Governor
Hayes, when nominated in 1876, he belonged to the "illustrious
obscure." The astonished native who, on hearing the news, suddenly
inquired of a bystander, "Who the devil is Polk?" simply echoed
the common feeling, while his question provoked the general laughter
of the Whigs. For a time the nomination was somewhat disappointing
to the Democrats themselves; but they soon rallied, and finally
went into the canvass very earnestly, and with a united front.
The Whigs began the campaign in high hopes and in fact with unbounded
confidence in their success. Their great captain was in command,
and they took comfort in his favorite utterance that "truth is
omnipotent, and public justice certain." To pit him against such
a pigmy as Polk seemed to them a miserable burlesque, and they
counted their triumph as already perfectly assured. They claimed
the advantage on the question of annexation, and still more as to
the tariff, since the act of 1842 was popular, and Polk was known
to be a free-trader of the Calhoun school. As the canvass proceeded,
however, it became evident that the fight was to be fierce and
bitter to the last degree, and that the issue, after all, was not
so certain. Mr. Polk, notwithstanding his obscurity, was able to
rouse the enthusiasm of his party, North and South, to a very
remarkable degree. The annexation pill was swallowed by many
Democrats whose support of him had been deemed morally impossible.
In New York, where the opposition was strongest, leading Democrats,
with William Cullen Bryant as their head, denounced the annexation
scheme and repudiated the paragraph of the National platform which
favored it, and yet voted for Polk, who owed his nomination solely
to the fact that he had committed himself to the policy of immediate
and unconditional annexation, thus anticipating the sickly political
morality of 1852, when so many men of repute tried in vain to save
both their consciences and their party orthodoxy by "spitting upon
the platform and swallowing the candidate who stood upon it."
History will have to record that the action of these New York
Democrats saved the ticket in that State, and justly attaches to
them the responsibility for the very evils to the country against
which they so eloquently warned their brethren. The power of the
spoils came in as a tremendous make-weight, while the party lash
was vigorously flourished, and the "independent voter" was as
hateful to the party managers on both sides as we find him to-day.
Those who refused to wear the party collar were branded by the
"organs" as a "pestiferous and demoralizing brood," who deserved
"extermination." Discipline was rigorously enforced, and made to
take the place of argument. As regards the tariff question, Mr.
Polk's letter to Judge Kane, of Philadelphia, of the 19th of June,
enabled his friends completely to turn the tables on the Whigs of
Pennsylvania, where "Polk, Dallas, and the tariff of 1842," was
blazoned on the Democratic banners, and thousands of Democrats were
actually made to believe that Polk was even a better tariff man
than Clay. This letter, committing its free-trade author to the
principle of a revenue tariff, with "reasonable incidental protection
to our home industries," was translated into German and printed in
all the party papers; and as a triumphant effort to make the people
believe a lie, and a masterpiece of political duplicity employed
by the great party as a means of success, it had no precedent in
American politics. In later times, however, it has been completely
eclipsed by the scheme of "tissue ballots," and other wholesale
methods of balking the popular will in the South, by the successful
effort to cheat the nation out of the right to choose its Chief
Magistrate in 1876, and by the startling bribery of a great
commonwealth four years later, now unblushingly confessed by the
party leaders who accomplished it.
In the meantime the spirit of discontent began to manifest itself
among the Whigs of the South respecting Mr. Clay's attitude on the
question of annexation, and in a moment of weakness he wrote his
unfortunate "Alabama letter," of the 27th of July. In that letter
he said: "I do not think the subject of slavery ought to affect
the question one way or the other. Whether Texas be independent
or incorporated into the United States, I do not believe it will
prolong or shorten the duration of that institution." He also
declared that he would be "glad to see it, without dishonor, without
war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair
terms." These words were perfectly chilling to his anti-slavery
supporters, who were utterly opposed to annexation on _any_ terms,
because the power of slavery would thus inevitably be extended and
strengthened in the United States. The letter was an irreparable
mistake. It was a fresh example of his besetting tendency to
mediate between opposing policies, and undoubtedly drove from his
support many who would otherwise have followed the Whig banner to
the end.
But the Whigs kept up the fight. The issues were joined, and it
was too late to change front. The real question in dispute was
that of annexation, and the election of Polk was certain to secure
it, and to involve the nation in war. Clay was unquestionably
right in saying that annexation and war were identical; and, although
on the slavery question he might be feared as a compromiser, there
was no reason to doubt that, if elected, he would vigorously resist
the annexation scheme, except upon conditions already stated, which
could not fail to defeat it as a present measure and avoid the
calamities of war. I was inexpressibly disappointed and grieved
by his letter; but I agreed with Cassius M. Clay, that opposition
to annexation except "with the common consent of the Union" was
practically absolute opposition, and I therefore kept up the fight
in which I had enlisted in the beginning and made my first venture
as a stump speaker. I cared little about the old party issues.
I had outgrown the teachings of the Whigs on the subject of
protection, and especially their pet dogma of "the higher the duty
the lower the price of the protected article." As to a national
bank, I followed Webster, who had pronounced it "an obsolete idea";
and I totally repudiated the land policy of the Whigs, having at
that early day espoused the principle that the public lands should
cease to be a source of revenue, and be granted in small homesteads
to the landless poor for actual settlement and tillage. But on
the subject of slavery, though it had escaped my attention in the
hurrah of 1840, I was thoroughly aroused. This came of my Quaker
training, the speeches of Adams and Giddings, the anti-slavery
newspapers, and the writings of Dr. Channing, all of which I had
been reading with profound interest since the Harrison Campaign.
Being perfectly sure that annexation would lead to slavery-extension
and war, I thought it my clear and unhesitating duty to resist the
election of Polk with all my might. This I did to the end, and in
doing it I employed substantially the same arguments on which I
justified my separation from the Whigs four years later.
The contest proceeded with its variety of charges and counter-
charges, and was prosecuted on both sides with extraordinary vigor
and zeal in every part of the Union. I think it was everywhere
and pre-eminently a struggle between the men of brains on either
side. I am quite sure this was true in my own State. Indiana was
remarkable at that time, not only for her gifted stump orators,
but for her men of real calibre and power of argument. On the side
of the Whigs were such men as Oliver H. Smith, Joseph G. Marshall,
George G. Dunn, Joseph L. White, Richard W. Thompson, Caleb B.
Smith, George H. Proffit, Henry S. Lane, Samuel W. Parker, and
James H. Cravens. The Democrats could boast of Tilghman A. Howard,
James Whitcomb, Edward A. Hannegan, William W. Wick, John Law,
Joseph A. Wright, Jesse D. Bright, John W. Davis, Thomas J. Henly,
and John L. Robinson. The best talking talent of the nation was
called into service, including such Democratic giants as Thomas H.
Benton, William Allen, Silas Wright, Robert J. Walker, James
Buchanan, and Daniel S. Dickinson; and such Whigs to match them as
Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Thomas F. Marshall, Thomas Corwin,
S. S. Prentiss, Thomas Ewing, and W. C. Preston. The fight was
more ably if not more hotly contested than any preceding national
struggle, raging and blazing everywhere, while the forces marshaled
against each other were more evenly balanced than in any contest
since the year 1800. The race was so close that the result hung
in agonizing doubt and suspense up to the evening following the
election. Party feeling rose to a frenzy, and the consuming desire
of the Whigs to crown their great Chief with the laurels of victory
was only equaled by that of the Democrats for the triumph of the
unknown Tennessean whose nomination had provoked the aggravating
laughter of the enemy in the beginning.
It is not possible to describe the effect of Mr. Clay's defeat upon
the Whigs. It was wholly unexpected, and Mr. Clay especially
remained sanguine as to his triumph up to the last moment. When
the result became known, it was accepted by his friends as a great
national calamity and humiliation. It shocked and paralyzed them
like a great tragedy. I remember very vividly one zealous Whig,
afterward a prominent Free Soiler and Republican leader, who was
so utterly overwhelmed that for a week he lost the power of sleep,
and gave himself up to political sorrow and despair. Letters of
the most heart-felt condolence poured in upon Mr. Clay from all
quarters, and the Whigs everywhere seemed to feel that no statesman
of real eminence could ever be made President. They insisted that
an overwhelming preponderance of the virtue, intelligence and
respectability of the country had supported their candidate, while
the larger element of ignorance and "unwashed" humanity, including
our foreign-born population, gave the victory to Mr. Polk. Their
faith in republican government was fearfully shaken, while the
causes of the great disaster were of course sought out, and made
the text of hasty but copious moralizings. One of these causes
was the Kane letter, which undoubtedly gave Mr. Polk the State of
Pennsylvania. Another was the baneful influence of "nativism,"
which had just broken out in the great cities, and been made the
occasion of such frightful riot and bloodshed in Philadelphia as
to alarm our foreign-born citizens, and throw them almost unanimously
against the Whigs. The Abolitionists declared that Mr. Clay's
defeat was caused by his trimming on the annexation question, which
drew from him a sufficient number of conscientious anti-slavery
men to have turned the tide in his favor. The famous Plaquemine
frauds in Louisiana unquestionably lost that State to Mr. Clay.
This infamous conspiracy to strangle the voice of a sovereign State
was engineered by John Slidell, and it consisted of the shipment
from New Orleans to Plaquemine of two steamboats loaded with roughs
and villains, whose illegal votes were sufficient to turn the State
over to the Democrats.
But the cause of Mr. Clay's defeat which was dwelt upon with most
emphasis and feeling was the action of the Liberty party. Birney,
its candidate for President, received 66,304 votes, and these, it
was alleged, came chiefly from the Whig party. The vote of these
men in New York and Michigan was greater than the Democratic
majority, so that if they had united with the Whigs, Clay would
have been elected in spite of all other opposition. Mr. Polk's
plurality over Clay in New York was only 5,106, while Birney received
in that State 15,812; and Horace Greeley insisted that if only one
third of this vote had been cast for Mr. Clay, he would have been
President. The feeling of the Whigs against these anti-slavery
men was bitter and damnatory to the last degree. The Plaquemine
frauds, the Kane letter, and everything else, were forgotten in
the general and abounding wrath against these "fanatics," who were
denounced as the betrayers of their country and of the cause which
a very great and critical opportunity had placed it in their power
to save. "The Abolitionists deserve to be damned, and they will
be," said a zealous Whig to an anti-slavery Quaker; and this was
simply the expression of the prevailing feeling at this time, at
least in the West.
But this treatment of the Abolitionists was manifestly unjust.
Their organization four years before was neither untimely nor
unnecessary, but belonged to the inevitable logic of a great and
dominating idea. A party was absolutely necessary which should
make this idea paramount, and utterly refuse to be drawn away from
it by any party divisions upon subsidiary questions. It should be
remembered, too, that the Liberty party was made up of Democratic
as well as Whig deserters, and that if it had disbanded, or had
not been formed, the result of this election would have been the
same. The statement of Mr. Greeley, that one third of Birney's
vote in New York would have elected Clay, was unwarranted, unless
he was able to show what would have been the action of the other
two thirds. In justice to these Abolitionists it should also be
remembered and recorded, to say the very least, that Mr. Clay
himself divided with them the responsibility of his defeat by his
Alabama letter, and that now, in the clear perspective of history,
they stand vindicated against their Whig assailants, whose fevered
brains and party intolerance blinded their eyes to the truth.
Doubtless there were honest differences of opinion as to the best
method of serving the anti-slavery cause in this exasperating
campaign, and these differences may still survive as an inheritance;
but abolitionism, as a working force in our politics, had to have
a beginning, and no man who cherishes the memory of the old Free
Soil party, and of the larger one to which it gave birth, will
withhold the meed of his praise from the heroic little band of
sappers and miners who blazed the way for the armies which were to
follow, and whose voices, though but faintly heard in the whirlwind
of 1840, were made significantly audible in 1844. Although they
were everywhere totally misunderstood and grossly misrepresented,
they clearly comprehended their work and courageously entered upon
its performance. Their political creed was substantially identical
with that of the Free Soilers of 1848 and the Republicans of 1856
and 1860. They were anything but political fanatics, and history
will record that their sole offense was the espousal of the truth
in advance of the multitude, which slowly and finally followed in
their footsteps.
But the war against slavery was not at all intermitted by the
victory of the Democrats. Events are schoolmasters, and this
triumph only quickened their march toward the final catastrophe.
Cassius M. Clay, who had espoused the Whig cause in this canvass
with great vigor and zeal, and on anti-slavery grounds, re-enlisted
in the battle against slavery, and resolved to prosecute it by new
methods. He had been sorely tried by Mr. Clay's Alabama letter
and the Whig defeat, but he was now armed with fresh courage, and
resolved to "carry the war into Africa" by the establishment of
his newspaper, the "True American," in Lexington, in his own State.
His arraignment of slavery was so eloquent and masterly that a
large meeting of slave-holders appointed a committee to wait on
him, and request the discontinuance of his paper. His reply was:
"Go, tell your secret conclave of cowardly assassins that Cassius
M. Clay knows his rights, and how to defend them." These words
thrilled all lovers of liberty, and sounded to them like a trumpet
call to battle. Another fruitful event was the effort of Massachusetts,
in the fall of this year, to protect her colored seamen in the
ports of Charleston and New Orleans, where they were seized on
merchant ships and sold into slavery under local police regulations.
When Mr. Hoar visited Charleston as the accredited agent of his
State for the purpose of taking measures to test the constitutionality
of these regulations, the Legislature of South Carolina, by a vote
of one hundred and nineteen against one, passed a series of outrageous
resolutions culminating in a request to the Governor to expel him
from the State as a confessed disturber of the peace. He was
obliged summarily to depart, as the only means of escaping the
vengeance of the mob. This open and insolent defiance of the
national authority could not fail to strengthen anti-slavery opinion
in the Northern States. The same end was served by an unexpected
movement in New Hampshire. This State, like Massachusetts and
Vermont, had taken ground against annexation, but it wheeled into
line after Polk was nominated. John P. Hale, however, then a
Democratic member of Congress from that State, refused to follow
his party, and for this reason, after he had been formally declared
its choice for re-election, he was thrown overboard, and another
candidate nominated. No election, however, was effected, and his
seat remained vacant during the 29th Congress, but he obtained a
seat in the Legislature in 1846, and the following year was chosen
United States Senator, while Amos Tuck, afterward a prominent Free
Soiler, was elected to the Lower House of Congress. These were
pregnant events, and especially the triumph of Hale, who became a
very formidable champion of freedom, and a thorn in the side of
slavery till it perished.
In the meantime the hunger for immediate annexation had been whetted
by the election of Mr. Polk, and its champions hurried up their
work, and pushed it by methods in open disregard of the Constitution
and of our treaty obligations with Mexico. In the last hours of
the administration of John Tyler the atrocious plot received its
finishing touch and the Executive approval, and, in the apt words
of the ablest and fairest historian of the transaction, "the bridal
dress in which Calhoun had led the beloved of the slaveocracy to
the Union was the torn and tattered Constitution of the United
States." War with Mexico, as prophesied by the Whigs, speedily
followed. As early as August, 1845, General Taylor was ordered by
President Polk to advance to a position on the Nueces. In March
of the following year, in pursuance of further orders, his army
again advanced, taking its position on the east bank of the Rio
Grande, and, of course, on the soil of Mexico. Hostilities naturally
followed, and after two battles the President, in his message to
Congress, declared that "American blood has been shed on American
soil." This robust Executive falsehood, with which the slave power
compelled him to face the civilized world, must always hold a very
high rank in the annals of public audacity and crime. It is what
Thomas Carlyle might have styled "the second power of a lie," and
is only rivaled by the parallel falsehood of Congress in declaring
that "by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war exists
between that Government and the United States." In the message of
the President referred to, he recommended that a considerable sum
of money be placed at his disposal for the purpose of negotiating
a peace, and it was on the consideration of this message that David
Wilmot fortunately obtained the floor, and moved his memorable
proviso for the interdiction of slavery in any territory which
might be wrested from Mexico by our arms. This was the session of
Congress for 1846-47, and the proposition passed the House with
great unanimity as to the Northern members. At the following
session of Congress, on the 28th of February, 1848, the proviso
again came before the House, and the motion to lay it on the table
failed, all the Whigs and a large majority of the Democrats from
the free States voting in the negative. It passed the House on
the 13th of December following, on a similar division of parties
and sections, but the Senate refused to concur, and the Thirtieth
Congress adjourned without any provisions whatever for the organization
or government of our recently acquired Territories.
It is worth while to notice in passing that on the first introduction
of the Wilmot proviso, in August, 1846, General Cass was decidedly
in its favor, and regretted that it had been talked to death by
the long speech of John Davis; but on the 24th of December, 1847,
he wrote his famous "Nicholson letter," proclaiming his gospel of
"popular sovereignty" in the Territories, which proved the seed-
plot of immeasurable national trouble and disaster. "I am strongly
impressed with the opinion," said he, "that a great change is going
on in the public mind on this subject--in my own mind as well as
others"; and he had before declared, on the 19th of February, that
the passage of the Wilmot proviso "would be death to the war, death
to all hope of getting an acre of territory, death to the
administration, and death to the Democratic party." This was
thoroughly characteristic, and in perfect harmony with his action,
already referred to, respecting the Quintuple treaty; but it showed
how the political waters were being troubled by the slavery question,
and how impossible it was to accommodate the growing anti-slavery
feeling of the country by any shallow expedients.
But another conspiracy against freedom was now hatched; and if the
Senate had strangled the Wilmot proviso, it was gratifying to find
the House ready to strangle this monster of senatorial birth. I
allude to the now almost forgotten "Clayton Compromise," which
passed the Senate by a decided majority on the 26th of July. By
submitting the whole question of slavery in all our Territories to
the Supreme Court of the United States, as then constituted, it
would almost certainly have spawned the curse in all of them,
including Oregon, which had long been exposed to peril and massacre
by the reckless opposition of our slave-masters to a government
there without the recognition of slavery. The defeat of this
nefarious proposition, which was happily followed by the passage
of a bill giving Oregon a territorial government, is largely due
to Alexander H. Stephens, whose motion to lay it on the table in
the House prevailed by a small majority. In this action he had
the courage to separate himself from the great body of the leading
men of his own section; but in doing so he was prompted by his
supreme devotion to slavery. This he has since denied and labored
to explain in his private correspondence and published works, but
the record is fatally against him. He was unwilling to trust the
interests of the South in the hands of the Supreme Court, and his
speech of August 7th, in the House of Representatives, in defense
of his motion, gave very plausible reasons for his apprehensions;
but the Dred Scott decision of a few years later showed how completely
he misjudged that tribunal, and how opportunely his blindness came
to the rescue of freedom. It seems now to have been providential;
for in this Continental plot against liberty the superior sagacity
of Calhoun and his associates was demonstrated by subsequent events,
while Mr. Stephens, with his great influence in the South, could
almost certainly have secured its triumph if he had become its
champion instead of its enemy.
CHAPTER III.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1848--ITS INCIDENTS AND RESULTS.
The approach of another presidential campaign--Party divisions
threatened by the Wilmot proviso--Nomination of Gen. Cass--The
"Nicholson Letter"--Democratic division in New York--The nomination
of Gen. Taylor--Whig divisions--Birth of the Free Soil party--The
Buffalo Convention--Nomination of Van Buren and Adams--Difficulty
of uniting on Van Buren--Incidents--Rev. Joshua Leavitt--The work
of the campaign--Mr. Webster and Free Soil--Greeley and Seward--
Abuse of Whig bolters--Remarkable results of the canvass.
The approach of another presidential year was thus marked by a
steadily growing interest in the question of slavery. The conflict
with it seemed far more irrepressible than ever before. The Liberty
party had nominated John P. Hale as its candidate in 1847. The
Whigs in Massachusetts were threatened with an incurable division
into "Conscience Whigs" and "Cotton Whigs," growing out of the
question of annexation and the government of our new Territories.
The same causes were dividing the Democrats of New York, and the
feud was seriously aggravated by remembering the defeat of Mr. Van
Buren in 1844, for the one sin of opposing the immediate annexation
of Texas, while a large majority of the party favored his nomination.
The Van Buren element in the Democratic party threatened revolt in
other States, while both Whigs and Democrats in the North were
committed to the policy of the Wilmot proviso. This was to be the
great question of the ensuing national canvass, and the roused
spirit of the people of the free States seemed clearly to foreshadow
the triumph of freedom in the organization and government of our
Mexican acquisitions.
But the virtue and courage of our politicians were now to be severely
tried. The power of party discipline and the tempting bait of the
spoils were to be employed as never before in swerving men from
their convictions. The South, of course, was a perfect unit, and
fully resolved upon the spread of slavery over our Territories.
It had always been the absolute master of the Northern Democracy,
and had no dream of anything less than the supremacy of its own
will. Its favorite candidate was now Gen. Cass, and he was nominated
by the Baltimore National Convention on the 22d day of May. It
was a fit nomination for the party of slavery. He had been thirsting
for it many years, and had earned it by multiplied acts of the most
obsequious and crouching servility to his Southern overseers.
Again and again he had crawled in the dust at their feet, and, if
they could not now reward him with the presidency, it seemed utterly
useless for any Northern man to hope for their favor. The "Nicholson
letter" was not all that the South wanted, but it was a very
important concession, and with Gen. Cass as its interpreter it
meant the nearest thing possible to a complete surrender. In this
National Convention the State of New York had two sets of delegates,
both of which were formally admitted, as a compromise; but the
members of the Van Buren or Free Soil wing refused to take their
seats, and thus held themselves in reserve for such revolutionary
work as should afterward seem to them advisable.
The Whig National Convention met in Philadelphia on the 7th of
June. The party seemed completely demoralized by the defeat of
Mr. Clay in the previous canvass, and was now in search of "an
available candidate," and inspired by the same miserable policy of
expediency which had been so barren of results in 1840. The Northern
Whigs appeared to be unanimously and zealously committed to the
prohibition of slavery in our Territories, but equally unanimous
and zealous in the determination to succeed in the canvass. For
more than a year Gen. Taylor had been growing into favor with the
party as a candidate, and he had now become decidedly formidable.
The spectacle was a melancholy one, since it demonstrated the
readiness of this once respectable old party to make complete
shipwreck of everything wearing the semblance of principle, for
the sake of success. General Taylor had never identified himself
in any way with the Whig party. He had spent his life as a mere
soldier on the frontier, and had never given a vote. He had frankly
said he had not made up his mind upon the questions which divided
the parties. He not only refused to be the exponent of Whig
principles, but accepted the nomination of bodies of men not known
as Whigs, who scouted the idea of being bound by the acts of any
national convention. He was a very large slave-owner, and thus
identified in interest, and presumably in sympathy, with the South;
but he could not be induced to define his position. His active
supporters were chiefly from the slave-holding States and those
free States which had generally given Democratic majorities, while
the men most violent in their opposition to the Wilmot proviso were
his most conspicuous followers; but the Whigs from the free States
vouched for his soundness on the slavery issue. His letters
contained nothing but vague generalities, and he utterly declined
to commit himself on the question that was stirring the nation to
its depths. To the different sections of the Union he wore a
different face, and each section seemed confident that the other
would be duped, while cordially joining in a common struggle for
the spoils of office which constituted the sole bond of union.
His early letters, before he fell into the hands of the politicians,
were frank and unstudied, reflecting his character as a plain old
soldier without any political training; but his later letters were
diplomatic, not wanting in style and finish, and obviously written
by others. His second letter to Allison, on which the campaign
was finally fought, was written in the room of Alexander H. Stephens,
in Washington, after consulting with Toombs and Crittenden, and
afterward forwarded to Taylor, who gave it to the world as his own.
He had constantly about him a sort of political body-guard, or
"committee of safety," to direct his way during the canvass, and
no one could reasonably pretend that any principle whatever would
be settled by the election. He had whipped the Mexicans, and the
Whig platform was "Rough and Ready," "A little more Grape, Captain
Bragg," and political success.
The nomination, moreover, was accomplished by methods which made
it exceedingly exasperating to Mr. Clay and his friends. The
treachery of the Whig managers to their great leader exceeded that
which had sacrificed him at the Harrisburg Convention of 1839.
The Whigs of Virginia nominated Taylor on the credit of a forged
dispatch, to the effect that Kentucky had decided in his favor,
and thus abandoned her favorite son. General Scott had expressed
his willingness to run for Vice President if Clay should be nominated
for President, but the member of Congress who had been authorized
to make this known kept it a secret. Clay allowed his name to go
before the Convention on the assurance of Governor Bebb that Ohio
would stand by him, but the delegation voted for Scott. On the
first ballot, even seven delegates from Kentucky voted for Taylor,
and he was nominated by 171 votes, with 63 for Scott, and only 32
for Clay. Of the votes for Taylor, on the first ballot, 97 were
cast by States that had voted for Polk in 1844; and of the 94 Whig
delegates from the Free States he received the votes of only four.
He was nominated as the candidate of the Whigs who believed in the
extension of slavery, by a Convention which repeatedly and
contemptuously voted down the Wilmot proviso, already endorsed by
all the Whig Legislatures of the Free States, while no platform of
principles was adopted; and Horace Greeley was thus perfectly
justified in branding it as "the slaughter-house of Whig principles."
Such an exhibition of shameless political prostitution has rarely
been witnessed, and three of the leading Whigs of Massachusetts--
Charles Allen, Henry Wilson, and Stephen C. Phillips--left the
Convention in disgust, and severed their connection with the party
forever.
In this state of the country, and of the old parties, a new
organization and another nomination became inevitable. The followers
of Mr. Van Buren, in New York and other States, were aching for
the opportunity to make themselves felt in avenging the wrong done
to their chief in 1844, and were quite ready to strike hands with
the members of the Liberty party. The members of that party were
generally ready to withdraw their candidate for President and unite
with the anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats of the Northern States,
if an honorable basis of action could be agreed upon. The "Conscience
Whigs" of Massachusetts, and thousands of Whigs in other States,
who regarded the freedom of our Territories as a vital issue, and
were thoroughly soured by the nomination of General Taylor, were
equally anxious to fuse with the other elements of political
discontent, and make their voices heard in a new and independent
organization. There was little time for delay, and as soon as the
troubled political elements would permit, a call was issued for a
National Free Soil Convention, at Buffalo, on the 9th of August.
The Convention was historic. It marked a new and significant
departure in party politics, and was a conspicuous milestone in
the anti-slavery journey. It met in a spacious pavilion, and was
one of the largest political gatherings ever assembled in the
country, and animated by unbounded earnestness and enthusiasm.
Its leading spirits were men of character and undisputed ability.
The "Barnburners" of New York were largely in attendance, including
such veteran leaders as Preston King, Benjamin F. Butler, David
Dudley Field, Samuel J. Tilden, and James W. Nye. Ohio sent a
formidable force headed by Joshua R. Giddings, Salmon Chase, and
Samuel Lewis. The "Conscience Whigs" of Massachusetts were well
represented, with Charles Francis Adams, Stephen C. Phillips, and
Francis W. Bird, in the front. The Liberty party sent its delegates,
including such men as the Rev. Joshua Leavitt, Samuel Lewis, and
Henry B. Stanton. The disappointed Clay Whigs were there, led by
such representative men as Joseph L. White, who were eager to lay
hold of any weapon by which they could hope to strike down the
betrayers of the Whig cause. The "Land Reformers" and "Workingmen"
of New York were represented, as also the special advocates of
"Cheap postage for the people," who longed to be rid of the tariff
of twenty-five cents on the privilege of sending a single letter
through the mails, and whose wishes afterward found expression in
the platform.
Could these elements be harmonized? Could the bolters from the
Whig party overcome their traditional hatred of Martin Van Buren?
If so, could the Liberty party men be prevailed upon to give up
their chosen candidate, and labor for the election of the "foxy
old politician" whose reputation for tricky and ambidextrous
political methods had become proverbial? If not, could the
Barnburners, with their large following, be united on the candidate
of the Liberty party, or some new man? These questions had to be
met; but preliminary to the nomination was the construction of a
platform. This was accomplished without serious difficulty, and,
considering the circumstances of the country, it was perhaps the
most admirable declaration of principles ever promulgated by any
party. It was chiefly the work of Mr. Chase, assisted by Charles
Francis Adams, Benjamin F. Butler, and others, and it declared,
among its pregnant and telling sentences, that "Congress has no
more power to make a slave than to make a king," and that "it is
the duty of the Federal Government to relieve itself of all
responsibility for the existence or continuance of slavery wherever
that Government possesses authority to legislate and is thus
responsible for its existence." The reading of these declarations
called forth thunders of applause, while the last plank in the
platform "resolved, that we inscribe on our banner free soil, free
speech, free labor, and free men, and under it we will fight on
and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our
exertions."
The nominating Convention assembled in the large Universalist Church
in Buffalo. Mr. Van Buren was not understood as desiring the
nomination, but it was now authoritatively stated that he would
accept it if tendered, and that he would, without hesitation or
evasions, accept the platform of the Convention. The different
elements of this movement had been in conference, and the time for
action was at hand. In common with my Whig associates, I had all
along felt that I could not support Mr. Van Buren under any
circumstances; but the pervading tone of earnestness in the
Convention, and the growing spirit of political fraternity, had
modified our views. We saw that several of the great leaders of
the Liberty party were quite ready to meet the "Barnburners" on
common ground. It seemed very desirable to combine with so large
a body of helpers, and to profit by their experience and training
in the school of practical politics. Mr. Van Buren had certainly
gone great lengths as the servant of the slave power, but there
was _one_ great and vital issue to freedom on which he had taken
the right side, and maintained it without flinching in the presence
of a great temptation; and for this he had been anathematized by
the South, and driven into retirement. If nominated by the anti-
slavery men of the free States, and squarely committed to their
principles, it was altogether improbable, if not morally impossible,
that he would again lend himself to the service of slavery. Besides,
the whole country had been so demoralized by this evil that it was
not easy to find any public man of eminence whose record had been
spotless; and it was a part of the work of earnest anti-slavery
men to forget party memories and prejudices for the sake of the
cause, and to cultivate the virtues of hope and trust, rather than
the spirit of doubt and suspicion, in dealing with a man who was
now ready to unfurl the flag of freedom, and had been stricken down
by her foes. The nomination of Mr. Van Buren would undoubtedly
mean the freedom of our Territories and the denationalization of
slavery, and this was the great point. In this movement there was
no element of compromise. It was wholly unhampered by a Southern
wing; and even should the nominee betray the men who now trusted
him, their choice of him, as their standard bearer, would be
vindicated by the circumstances of the hour.
Mr. Chase, then in the prime of his manhood, and a splendid figure,
was the president of this nominating Convention, and its work
proceeded. There was a feeling of intense anxiety about the result,
and an earnestness and real seriousness which I have never witnessed
in any other Convention. There were leading Whigs and Liberty
party men, whose action in respect to Mr. Van Buren was not yet
generally known. Several delegates remarked, "I want to know what
Samuel Lewis will do before I decide," or, "I want to hear from
Joshua Leavitt." After the nomination of Mr. Van Buren had been
moved, Mr. Leavitt rose from his seat, and all eyes were instantly
turned upon him. He was then in middle life, and his tall and
erect form and fine physiognomy were singularly striking. He was
full of emotion, and seemed at first to lack the power of utterance,
while the stillness of death prevailed in the Convention. He began
by saying: "Mr. Chairman, this is the most solemn experience of
my life. I feel as if in the immediate presence of the Divine
Spirit." He paused here for a few moments, while there did not
seem to be a dry eye in the Convention; but he proceeded grandly
with his speech, defined his position, and seconded the motion for
Mr. Van Buren's nomination, upon which the mingled political
enthusiasm and religious fervor of the Convention broke over all
bounds, and utterly defied description. Men laughed and cried at
the same time, and gave themselves up to the perfect abandon of
their feelings. All divisions had completely died away, and the
nomination of Mr. Van Buren by acclamation became a matter of
course. Charles Francis Adams was then nominated for Vice President,
when the Convention adjourned, and its members returned to their
homes to prepare for the coming canvass under the banner of "Van
Buren and Free Soil--Adams and Liberty."
The new national party was now launched, and the work of the
presidential canvass began in earnest. John A. Dix, then one of
the United States Senators from New York, was nominated for Governor,
with Seth M. Gates, the anti-slavery colleague of Adams and Giddings
in Congress, for Lieutenant-Governor. The Free Soil State Convention
of Ohio set the ball in motion in that State, and the new party,
by securing the balance of power in the Legislature, was able to
place Mr. Chase in the Senate of the United States. Stephen C.
Phillips was nominated for Governor in Massachusetts, where the
movement was very formidable, and exceedingly annoying to the
"Cotton Whigs." Like conventions were held in Indiana and other
free States, organizations effected, and candidates nominated,
while the movement extended to the border slave states, in which
it afterward did excellent service. The canvass of the Democrats
was not remarkably enthusiastic. The division of the party and
the probable loss of the State of New York had a very depressing
influence. The Whig canvass was perhaps marked by still less
earnestness and spirit. It was hollow and false, and the best men
in the party felt it. The only enthusiasm of the campaign was in
the new party, and it was perfectly spontaneous and fervid. The
most remarkable feature of this contest was the bitterness of the
Whigs toward the Free Soilers, and especially those who had deserted
from the Whig ranks. They seemed to be maddened by the imputation
that they were not perfectly sound on the Free Soil issue. This
was particularly true of Mr. Webster, who had been branded by Mr.
Adams as a "Traitor to freedom," as far back as the year 1843, and
who afterward justified these strong words in his "Seventh of March
Speech." In the Whig State Convention of Massachusetts, held at
Springfield, in 1847, Mr. Webster, speaking of the Wilmot proviso,
had said: "Did I not commit myself to that in the year 1838, fully,
entirely? I do not consent that more recent discoverers shall take
out a patent for the discovery. Allow me to say, sir, it is not
their thunder." He then claimed Free Soil as a distinctive Whig
doctrine, and in a speech at Abingdon, he now said: "The gentlemen
who have joined this new party, from among the Whigs, pretend that
they are greater lovers of liberty and greater haters of slavery
than those they leave behind them. I do not admit it. I do not
admit any such thing. I think we are as good Free Soil men as they
are." The same ground was urged by Washington Hunt, James Brooks,
and other leading Whigs; and Mr. Greeley declared that "at no time
previously had Whig inculcations throughout the free States been
so decidedly and strongly hostile to the extension of slavery, and
so determined in requiring its inhibition by Congress, as during
the canvass of 1848." These statements appear very remarkable,
when it is remembered that the Whig nominee was a Louisiana planter,
and that he was nominated at the bidding of the slave-holding wing
of the party, and by a convention which not only contemptuously
voted down the Wilmot proviso, but treated its advocates as
"fanatics." But even Governor Seward strangely clung to the old
party after the death and burial of its conscience, and seriously
brought his personal integrity into question by urging the support
of General Taylor upon those who favored the abolition of slavery.
In a speech at Cleveland, Ohio, in October of that year, he said:
"Freedom insists on the emancipation and development of labor;
slavery demands a soil moistened with tears and blood--freedom a
soil that exults under the elastic tread of man in his native
majesty. These elements divide and classify the American people
into two parties," and he proceeded to argue as if the Whigs and
Democrats were thus divided, when he knew that both were in the
absolute control of the slave power.
The Free Soilers, of course, did not particularly relish these
moral lectures on slavery by men who had sold their principles at
public auction for the chance of office and plunder through the
elevation of a mere military chieftain to the Presidency. But the
Whigs were not content with claiming the complete monopoly of anti-
slavery virtue, and parading it before the country; they became
abusive and insulting to the full measure of their insincerity.
Their talk about "renegades" and "apostates" anticipated the abuse
heaped upon the Greeley men of 1872, when the Republican party had
so completely triumphed over the integrity of its earlier life.
The course of the Whigs in Indiana supplies a striking illustration.
After the presidential election of 1844, I resolved that I would
never vote for another slaveholder, and the course of events and
my own reflections had constantly strengthened this purpose. I
saw no honorable way of escape, and my position was well known to
my Whig brethren; but, as soon as General Taylor was nominated,
the policy of browbeating and threats was invoked. I had no taste
for politics, and had determined to devote myself entirely to my
profession. I was especially anxious to avoid any strife with the
Whigs, who were overwhelmingly in the ascendant in Eastern Indiana,
and in whose ranks were most of my clients and best friends. But
the party leaders talked to me in the imperative mood. They saw
my embarrassment, and seemed determined to coerce me into submission
by the supposed extremity of my situation; and I was obliged to
offer them open defiance. I was made an elector for Van Buren and
Adams in the Fourth Indiana District, and entered upon the contest
with a will; and from that time forth I was subjected to a torrent
of billingsgate which rivalled the fish market. Words were neither
minced nor mollified, but made the vehicles of political wrath and
the explosions of personal malice. The charge of "abolitionism"
was flung at me everywhere, and it is impossible now to realize
the odium then attaching to that term by the general opinion. I
was an "amalgamationist" and a "woolly-head." I was branded as
the "apostle of disunion" and "the orator of free-dirt." It was
a standing charge of the Whigs that I carried in my pocket a lock
of the hair of Frederick Douglass, to regale my senses with its
aroma when I grew faint. They declared that my audiences consisted
of "eleven men, three boys, and a negro," and sometimes I could
not deny this inventory was not very far from the truth. I was
threatened with mob violence by my own neighbors, and treated as
if slavery had been an established institution of the State, with
its machinery of overseers and background of pauperized whites;
while these same Whigs, as if utterly unconscious of the irony of
their professions, uniformly resolved, in their conventions, that
"the Whig party is the only true Free Soil party."
I was not, of course, a non-resistant in the warfare, and for two
months I gave myself up to the work absolutely. I was seriously
embarrassed in the outset by the question of transportation, having
neither horse nor carriage, nor the financial ability to procure
either; but an anti-slavery Quaker, and personal friend, named
Jonathan Macy, came to my rescue. He furnished me an old white
horse, fully seventeen hands high, and rather thin in flesh, but
which served my purpose pretty well. I named him "Old Whitey," in
honor of General Taylor's famous war steed, and sallied forth in
the work of the campaign. Having a first-class pair of lungs and
much physical endurance, I frequently spoke as often as three times
a day, and generally from two to three hours at each meeting. I
spoke at cross-roads, in barns, in pork houses, in saw-mills, in
any place in which a few or many people would hear me; but I was
rarely permitted to enter any of the churches. I was so perfectly
swallowed up in my work and dominated by the singleness of my
purpose, that I took no thought of anything else; and the vigor of
my invective in dealing with the scurrilous attacks of my assailants
was very keenly realized, and, I believe, universally acknowledged.
With the truth on my side, I was delighted to find myself perfectly
able, single-handed, to fight my battle against the advantages of
superior talent and the trained leadership of men of established
reputations on the stump. But the fight, as I have said, was
unspeakably relentless, vitriolic and exhausting, and nothing could
redeem it but an overmastering sense of duty and self-respect.
The worst passions of humanity were set on fire among the Whigs by
this provoking insurrection against their party as the mere tool
of slavery, while animosities were engendered that still survive,
and which many men have carried to their graves. This is only a
single illustration of the spirit of the canvass, for similar
conflicts marked the struggle in Ohio, Massachusetts and other
States, and they were made inevitable by the desperation of a party
already dead in its trespasses, and which deserved a funeral instead
of a triumph.
The results of this contest were most remarkable. General Taylor
was elected but his triumph was the death of the Whig party. The
long-coveted prize of the presidency was snatched from General
Cass, and the Democratic party divided and humiliated by its struggle
to serve two masters, while the friends of Mr. Van Buren had their
longed-for revenge. The Free Soil ticket received a little less
than three hundred thousand votes, and failed to carry the electoral
vote of a single State; but the effect of the movement was inestimably
important. It seated Chase in the United States Senate from Ohio,
and sent to the lower branch of Congress a sufficient number of
anti-slavery men from different States to hold the balance of power
in that body. It was very savingly felt in Congress in July of
this year, on the vote by which Oregon, with a territory nearly
equal to that of the thirteen original States, narrowly escaped
the damnation of slavery. It emphasized the demand of the million
for "cheap postage," and the freedom of the public domain, and thus
helped stereotype these great measures into law; and it played its
part in creating the public opinion which compelled the admission
of California as a free State. These were great achievements, but
they were mere preliminaries to the magnificent and far-reaching
work of succeeding years, of which the revolt of 1848 was the
promise and pledge.
CHAPTER IV.
REMINISCENCES OF THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS.
Novel political complications--The Compromise Measures--First
election to Congress--Sketch of the "immortal nine"--The speakership
and Wm. J. Brown--Gen. Taylor and the Wilmot proviso--Slave-holding
banter--Compromise resolutions of Clay, and retreat of Northern
Whigs--Visit to Gen. Taylor--To Mr. Clay--His speeches--Webster's
seventh of March speech--Character of Calhoun--Speech on the slavery
question.
The scheme of "pacification" and "final settlement," which was
launched in 1850, under the leadership of Henry Clay, constitutes
one of the chief landmarks in the history of the great conflict
between freedom and slavery. It was the futile attempt of legislative
diplomacy to escape the fatal logic of antecedent facts. The war
with Mexico, like the annexation of Texas which paved the way for
it, was inspired by the lust for slave territory. No sophistry
could disguise this fact, nor could its significance be overstated.
The prophets of slavery saw clearly that restriction meant destruction.
They girded themselves for battle on this issue, and were not at
all placated by Northern disclaimers of "abolitionism," and reiterated
disavowals of any right or purpose to intermeddle with slavery as
the creature of State law. Its existence was menaced by the policy
of confinement and ultimate suffocation; and therefore no compromise
of the pending strife over its prohibition in New Mexico, Utah and
California was possible.
This strife was aggravated by its peculiar relations to the dominant
political parties. The sacrifice of Martin Van Buren in 1844,
because of his manly letter on the annexation of Texas, had been
a sore trial to his devoted friends. They could neither forgive
nor forget it; and when the opportunity for revenge finally came
in 1848, they laid hold of it with the sincerest and most heartfelt
satisfaction. As we have seen, they bolted from their party, threw
themselves into the Free Soil movement, and thus made the defeat
of Gen. Cass inevitable by the election of Gen. Taylor. Thousands
of these bolting Democrats, particularly in the State of New York,
cared more for the personal and political fortunes of Mr. Van Buren
than for the slavery question, as their subsequent return to their
party allegiance made manifest; but their action was none the less
decisive in the emergency which called it forth. The trouble in
the Whig camp was also serious. The last hopes of Mr. Clay and
his worshipers had perished forever in the nomination of the hero
of the Mexican war and the owner of two hundred slaves, by a
Convention which became famous as "the slaughter house of Whig
principles." Very many of these Clay Whigs, like the devotees of
Mr. Van Buren, would have been satisfied with almost any dispensation
of the slavery issue if their chief had been nominated, but they
were now enlisted in the anti-slavery army, and, like Joseph L.
White, of Indiana, vociferously shouted for "liberty and revenge."
Mr. Webster and his friends were also profoundly disgusted, and
lent a strong hand to the work of party insubordination, while the
election of Gen. Taylor was quite naturally followed by formidable
party coalitions. One of these, as already stated, made Salmon P.
Chase a senator of the United States from Ohio, as John P. Hale
had been chosen from New Hampshire some time before, and Charles
Sumner came in a little later from Massachusetts; and the House of
Representatives now contained nine distinctly anti-slavery men,
chosen from different States by kindred combinations, who had
completely renounced their allegiance to the old parties, and were
able to wield the balance of power in that body. Such were the
complications of the great problem which confronted the Thirty-
first Congress at the opening of its first session, on the third
day of December, 1849.
In this Congress I was a representative, for the first time, of
the Fourth Indiana District. This district contained a large Quaker
population, and in the matter of liberality and progress was in
advance of all other portions of the State; and yet the immeasurable
wrath and scorn which were lavished upon the men who deserted the
Whig party on account of the nomination of General Taylor can
scarcely be conceived. The friends of a life-time were suddenly
turned to enemies, and their words were often dipped in venom. It
seemed as if a section of Kentucky or Virginia had in some way
usurped the geography of Eastern Indiana, bringing with it the
discipline of the slave-master, and a considerable importation of
"white trash." The contest was bitter beyond all precedent; but
after a hard fight, and by a union of Free Soilers, Democrats, and
Independent Whigs, I was elected by a small majority. Owing to
serious illness, resulting from the excitement and overwork of the
canvass, I did not reach Washington till the 19th of December--just
in time to cast my vote for speaker on the fifty-sixth ballot in
this first important "dead-lock" in the organization of the House.
With the exception of two Indiana members, I had no personal
acquaintance in either branch of Congress, and, on entering the
old Hall of Representatives, my first thought was to find the Free
Soil members, whose political fortunes and experience had been so
similar to my own. The seat of Mr. Giddings was pointed out to me
in the northwest corner of the Hall, where I found the stalwart
champion of free speech busy with his pen. He received me with
evident cordiality, and at once sent a page for the other Free Soil
members. Soon the "immortal nine," as we were often sportively
styled, were all together: David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, then
famous as the author of the "Provsio," short and corpulent in
person, and emphatic in speech; Preston King, of New York, with
his still more remarkable rotundity of belt, and a face beaming
with good humor; the eccentric and witty "Jo Root," of Ohio, always
ready to break a lance with the slave-holders; Charles Allen, of
Massachusetts, the quiet, dignified, clear-headed and genial
gentleman, but a good fighter and the unflinching enemy of slavery;
Charles Durkee, of Wisconsin, the fine-looking and large-hearted
philanthropist, whose enthusiasm never cooled; Amos Tuck, of New
Hampshire, amiable and somewhat feminine in appearance, but firm
in purpose; John W. Howe, of Pennsylvania, with a face radiant with
smiles and good will, and full of anti-slavery fervor; and Joshua
R. Giddings, of Ohio, with his broad shoulders, giant frame,
unquenchable love of freedom, and almost as familiar with the
slavery question, in all its aspects, as he was with the alphabet.
These, all now gone to their reckoning, were the elect of freedom
in the lower branch of this memorable Congress. They all greeted
me warmly, and the more so, perhaps, because my reported illness
and doubtful recovery had awakened a peculiar interest in my fortunes
at that time, on account of the political situation, and the possible
significance of a single vote. John P. Hale happened to enter the
hall during these congratulations, and still further lighted up
the scene by his jolly presence; while Dr. Bailey, of the "National
Era," also joined in the general welcome, and at once confirmed
all the good opinions I had formed of this courageous and single-
minded friend of the slave. I was delighted with all my brethren,
and at once entered fully into their plans and counsels.
An incident connected with the organization of the House, which
caused intense excitement at the time, seems to deserve some notice.
It occurred on the 12th of December, while William J. Brown, of
Indiana, was being voted for as the Democratic candidate for Speaker.
He was a pro-slavery Democrat, through and through, and commanded
the entire and unhesitating confidence of Southern members; and
yet, on the last ballot for him, he received the votes of Allen,
Durkee, Giddings, King, and Wilmot, and came within two votes of
an election. The support of Mr. Brown by the leading Free Soilers
was a great surprise to both sides of the House, and the suspicion
that some secret arrangement had been made gave birth to a rumor
to that effect. After the balloting, while Mr. Bailey, of Virginia,
was on the floor, Mr. Ashmun, of Massachusetts, asked him whether
a secret correspondence had not taken place between some member of
the Free Soil party and Mr. Brown, by which the latter had agreed
to constitute the Committees on the Judiciary, on Territories, and
on the District of Columbia, in a manner satisfactory to that party.
Mr. Bailey scouted the idea, and asked Mr. Ashmun what authority
he had for the statement. Mr. Ashmun replied, "Common rumor"; to
which Mr. Bailey rejoined, "Does not the gentleman know that common
rumor is a common liar?" Turning to Mr. Brown, he said, "Has any
such correspondence taken place?" Mr. Brown shook his head, and
Mr. Bailey became more emphatic than ever in his denial. But the
fever was now up, and the Southern members scented treason. Several
of them withheld their votes from Mr. Brown because of his Free
Soil support, and thus prevented his election. He was in a very
trying dilemma with his Southern friends, while the Free Soilers
who had supported him were also placed in a novel predicament, and
subjected to catechism. The fact was finally revealed in the course
of a long and exciting debate, that Mr. Wilmot _had_ entered into
a correspondence with Mr. Brown on the subject of the organization
of the Committees named, and that the latter _had_ promised in
writing to constitute them as stated in Mr. Ashumn's inquiry--
declaring that he had "always been opposed to the extension of
slavery," and believed that "the Federal Government should be
relieved from the responsibility of slavery where it had the
constitutional right to abolish it." This, in substance, was the
whole Free Soil gospel; and the disappointment and rage of Southern
members, when the letter was produced, can be more easily imagined
than described. Mr. Brown labored very painfully to explain his
letter and pacify his Southern friends, but the effort was utterly
vain. He was branded with treachery and duplicity by Bailey,
Harris, Burt, Venable, Stanton, and McMullen, while no man from
the South pretended to excuse him. In the midst of great excitement
he withdrew from the contest for Speaker, and the catastrophe of
his secret maneuver was so unspeakably humiliating that even his
enemies pitied him. But he was unjustly dealt with by his Southern
brethren, whose fear of betrayal and morbid sensitiveness made all
coolness of judgment impossible. While he possessed very social
and kindly personal traits of character, no man in this Congress
was more inflexibly true to slavery, as his subsequent career amply
demonstrated. If he had been chosen Speaker he would doubtless
have placed some of the Free Soil members on the Committees specified,
but the whole power of his office would have been studiously
subservient to the behests of the slave oligarchy; and nothing
could excuse the conduct of Mr. Wilmot and his associates but their
entire ignorance of his political character and antecedents. I
regretted this affair most sincerely, for I knew Mr. Brown well,
and could undoubtedly have prevented the negotiation if I had been
present.
The Speakership was obviously the first question on which the slave
power must be met in the Thirty-first Congress. No question could
more completely have presented the entire controversy between the
free and slave States which had so stirred the country during the
previous eighteen months. In view of the well-nigh autocratic
power of the Speaker over legislative measures, no honest Free
Soiler could vote for a candidate who was not known to be sound on
the great issue. We could not support Howell Cobb, of Georgia,
the nominee of the Democratic party, however anxious our Democratic
constituents might be to have us do so; nor could we vote for Robert
C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, to please the Whigs and semi-Free
Soilers who affiliated with them, since Giddings, Palfrey and others
had demonstrated that he was wholly untrustworthy in facing the
ragged issue of slavery. This had been proved by his acts as
Speaker in the preceding Congress. We therefore united in the
determination to vote for neither of these candidates. The contest
was protracted till December 22d, when, on the sixty third ballot,
Mr. Cobb was chosen. The result was effected, by adopting, at the
instigation of the Whigs, what was called the "plurality rule,"
the operation of which enabled a minority to choose the speaker.
The Whigs, when they entered upon this proceeding, well knew that
the Free Soilers were willing and anxious to vote for Thaddeus
Stevens, or any other reliable member of the party. They well knew
that none of us would vote for Mr. Winthrop, under any circumstances,
and for excellent reasons which we had announced. Further, they
well knew that without Free Soil votes Mr. Cobb would certainly be
chosen; and yet the angry cry went up from the Whigs in Congress
and throughout the Northern States that the Free Soilers had elected
a slave-holder to be speaker of the House! For a time the ridiculous
charge served the purpose of its authors, but the subsequent career
of Mr. Winthrop finally and entirely vindicated the sagacity of
the men whose resolute opposition had thwarted his ambition.
In the further organization of the House Mr. Campbell, a Tennessee
slave-holder, was chosen clerk on the twentieth ballot, by the help
of Southern Democrats, over John W. Forney, who was then the
particular friend of James Buchanan, and who had made himself so
conspicuous by his abuse of anti-slavery men that the Free Soil
members could not give him their support. On the eighth ballot
Mr. Glossbrenner, of Pennsylvania, the nominee of the Democrats,
was chosen sergeant-at-arms, and after fourteen ineffectual ballots
for doorkeeper, Mr. Horner, the Whig incumbent in the preceding
Congress, was continued by resolution of the House. This was on
January 18th, and the organization of the House was not yet completed,
but further proceedings in this direction were now postponed till
the first of March.
In the meantime the slavery question had been receiving daily
attention. The strife over the Speakership had necessarily involved
it, and constantly provoked its animated discussion. The great
issue was the Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories,
then popularly known as the "Wilmot proviso"; and the first vote
on it was taken December 31st, upon the motion to lay on the table
Mr. Root's resolution which embodied it. The yeas were 83, nays
101; being a majority of only 18 in its favor. The Southern men
seemed to gather hope and courage from this vote. On January 4th,
the President sent in his special message relative to California
and New Mexico, announcing his famous "Non-action" policy, which
was simply another name for the "Non-intervention" dogma of Gen.
Cass. A year before he had declared that the new Territories must
not be "surrendered to the pistol and the bowie-knife"; but a new
light now dawned upon him, and he advised Congress to leave the
Territories to themselves till their people should be prepared to
ask admission into the Union as States. He talked glibly about
"geographical parties" and the "operation of natural causes" as
any trained Whig politician, and seemed to have totally forgotten
his repeated pledges not to interfere with the action of Congress
respecting "domestic questions." While the hand of the Executive
was thus at work, extreme men in both Houses led the way in violent
and inflammatory speeches. "When we ask for justice, and to be
let alone," said Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, "we are met by
the senseless and insane cry of Union, Union! Sir, I am disgusted
with it. When it comes from Northern gentlemen who are attacking
us, it falls on my ear as it would do if a band of robbers had
surrounded a dwelling, and when the inmates attempted to resist,
the assailants should raise the cry of peace, union, harmony!" He
gave out the threat, that unless the slave-holders were allowed to
extend their system over the virgin soil of our Territories, they
would block the wheels of Government, and involve the nation in
the horrors of civil war. He charged that the free States "keep
up and foster in the bosoms Abolition Societies, whose main purpose
is to scatter fire-brands throughout the South, to incite servile
insurrections, and stimulate by licentious pictures our negroes to
invade the persons of our white women." Mr. Brown, of Mississippi,
said he regarded slavery "as a great moral, social and _religious_
blessing,--a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master."
He graciously admitted that Northern people thought slavery an
evil; but he added, "Very well, think so; _but keep your thoughts
to yourselves_." Jefferson Davis, then as ever afterward, the
apostle of disunion, declared that "slavery existed in the tents
of the patriarchs, and in the households of His own chosen people";
that "it was established by the decree of Almighty God," and
"sanctioned in the Bible--in both Testaments--from Genesis to
Revelations." Southern members pointed to the battle-fields of
the Revolution, and warned the people of the free States to beware;
while the menace was uttered that if the representatives of the
Northern States should vote California into the Union as a free
State, without some compensating measures to the South, their
numbers would be decimated by violence. Mr. Toombs, in referring
to the exclusion of slavery from the common territory, said "I will
then, if I can, bring my children and my constituents to the altar
of liberty, and like Hamilcar, I will swear them to eternal hostility
to your foul domination." On January 29th, Mr. Clay introduced
his eight resolutions of compromise, which still further weakened
the anti-slavery policy of Northern Whigs; and when, on February
4th, another vote was taken on the Wilmot proviso, it was laid on
the table by yeas 104, noes 75;--showing a majority of 29, and a
change of 47 votes in a little more than one month! Thus began
the sickening career of political apostacy, which so gathered
momentum during the spring and summer months that it became impossible
to admit the free State of California into the Union until the
passage of the Texas Boundary Bill and the new Fugitive Slave Act
had been made certain.
Early in the session I called on President Taylor with Mr. Giddings
and Judge Allen. I had a very strong curiosity to see the man
whose name I had used so freely in two exasperating political
campaigns, and desired to stand corrected in my estimate of his
character, if I should find such correction to be demanded by the
truth. Our interview with the old soldier was exceedingly interesting
and amusing. I decidedly liked his kindly, honest, farmer-like
face, and his old-fashioned simplicity of dress and manners. His
conversation was awkward and labored, and evinced a lack of self-
possession; while his whole demeanor suggested his frontier life,
and that he had reached a position for which he was singularly
unfitted by training and experience, or any natural aptitude. In
the few remarks he addressed to me about farming in the West, he
greatly amused us by saying, "I would like to visit Indiana, and
see your plows, hoes--and other reaping implements"; failing, as
he often did, to find the word he wanted. He frequently mispronounced
his words, hesitated and stammered, and sometimes made a breakdown
in the middle of a sentence. But although he seemed to be in the
hands of the slave-holders, and was about to proclaim his policy
of non-intervention with slavery in the Territories, he impressed
me as being personally honest and patriotic. In this impression
I was fully confirmed later in the session, when he sorrowfully
but manfully resisted the attempt of Senator Davis, his son-in-law,
and other extreme men, to bully him into their measures, and avowed
his sympathy with the anti-slavery sentiment of the country. I
believe his dying words in July, "I have tried to do my duty," were
the key-note of his life, and that in the Presidential campaign of
1848, I did him much, though unintentional, injustice.
It was about the same time that I called with other Western members
to see Mr. Clay, at the National Hotel. He received us with the
most gracious cordiality, and perfectly captivated us all by the
peculiar and proverbial charm of his manners and conversation. I
remember nothing like it in the social intercourse of my life.
One of our party was Hon. L. D. Campbell, then a prominent Whig
politician of Ohio, and an old friend of Mr. Clay, who seemed
anxious to explain his action in supporting Gen. Scott in the
National Convention of 1848. He failed to satisfy Mr. Clay, whose
eye kindled during the conversation, and who had desired and counted
on the nomination himself. Mr. Clay, addressing him, but turning
to me, said: "I can readily understand the position of our friend
from Indiana, whose strong opinions on the slavery question governed
his action; but your position was different, and, besides, General
Scott had no chance for the nomination, and you were under no
obligation to support him." He spoke in kindly terms of the Free
Soil men; said they acted consistently in supporting Van Buren in
preference to Taylor, and that the election of the latter would
prove the ruin of the Whigs. I heard Mr. Clay's great speech in
the Senate on the Compromise Measures, and although I believed him
to be radically wrong, I felt myself at times drawn toward him by
that peculiar spell which years before had bound me to him as my
idolized political leader. I witnessed his principal encounters
with Col. Benton during this session, in which I thought the latter
had the better of the argument; but his reply to Mr. Barnwell, of
South Carolina, on July 22d, in which he said: "I owe a paramount
allegiance to the whole Union, a subordinate one to my State," and
denounced the treasonable utterances of Mr. Rhett, was altogether
inimitable and unsurpassed. In the same speech he showed as little
quarter to the Abolitionists. Turning to Mr. Hale, he said, "They
live by agitation. It is their meat, their bread, the air which
they breathe; and if they saw in its incipient state, a measure
giving them more of that food, and meat, and bread, and air, do
you believe they would oppose themselves to its adoption? Do you
not believe that they would _hail_ [Hale] it as a blessing? * * *
They see their doom as certain as there is a God in heaven, who
sends his providential dispensations to calm the threatening storm,
and to tranquilize agitated men. As certain as God exists in
heaven, your business, your vocation, is gone." His devotion to
the Union was his ruling passion, and in one of his numerous speeches
during this session he held up a fragment of Washington's coffin,
and with much dramatic effect pleaded for reconciliation and peace
between the warring sections.
His scheme of compromise, or "omnibus bill," was the darling child
of his political ambition and old age; and when, after lovingly
nursing it and gallantly fighting for it through seven or eight
weary months, he saw it cruelly dismembered on July 31st, and his
sovereign remedy for our national troubles insulted by the separate
passage of the bill providing a Territorial Government for Utah,
I could not help feeling a profound personal sympathy with him.
Beaten at last on every point, deserted by some senators in whom
he had trusted implicitly, crushed and exhausted by labors which
few young and vigorous men could have endured, he bowed to the
inevitable, and retired from the Senate Chamber. But in the next
morning, prior to his departure for the sea-shore, he was in his
seat; and with lightning in his eye, and figure erect as ever, he
paid his respects to the men whose work of political havoc he
deplored. His impassioned arraignment of the disunionists was
loudly applauded by the galleries, and clearly indicated the part
he would have played in the late Rebellion had his life been spared
to witness that direful event. "So long," said he, "as it pleases
God to give me a voice to express my sentiments, or an arm, weak
and enfeebled as it may be by age, that voice and that arm will be
on the side of my country, for the support of the general authority,
and for the maintenance of the powers of this Union."
I heard the famous "Seventh of March Speech" of Mr. Webster. To
me his oratory was a perfect surprise and curiosity. He not only
spoke with very unusual deliberation, but with pauses having no
relation whatever to the sense. His sentences were broken into
the oddest fragments, and the hearer was perplexed in the endeavor
to gather his meaning. In declaring, for example, that he "would
put in no Wilmot proviso for the purpose of a taunt," etc., he made
a long pause at "Wilmot," perhaps half a minute, and finally, having
apparently recovered his breath, added the word "proviso"; and
then, after another considerable pause, went on with his sentence.
His speaking seemed painfully laborious. Great drops of perspiration
stood upon his forehead and face, notwithstanding the slowness of
his utterance, suggesting, as a possible explanation, a very recent
and heavy dinner, or a greatly troubled conscience over his final
act of apostasy from his early New England faith. The latter was
probably the truth, since he is known to have long and seriously
pondered the question of his ultimate decision; and with his
naturally great and noble traits of character he could not have
announced it without manifest tokens of uneasiness. I was greatly
interested in the brief dialogue between him and Mr. Calhoun, which
followed this speech. Reference was made to their famous passage-
at-arms twenty years before; and Mr. Calhoun, while taking exception
to some of Mr. Webster's positions, congratulated him on his strong
deliverance in the interest of slavery. The great Carolinian was
then wrestling with the disease which soon afterward terminated
his life, and was thin, pale, and feeble of step; but his singularly
intellectual face, and the peculiar light which flashed from his
eye while speaking, made him the most strikingly picturesque figure
in the Senate. No man can compute the evils wrought by his political
theories; but in private life he was thoroughly upright and pure,
and no suspicion of political jobbery was ever whispered in connection
with his name. In his social relations he was most genial and
kindly, while he always welcomed the society of young men who sought
the aid of his friendly counsel. Politically, he has been singularly
misunderstood. He was not, as has been so generally thought, a
disunionist. He was the champion of State Sovereignty, but he
believed that this was the sure basis and bond of Union. He thought
the right of State nullification, if recognized, would hold the
central power in check, and thus cement the Union; while his devotion
to African slavery as a defensible form of society, and a solution
of the conflict between capital and labor, was doubtless as sincere
as it was fanciful.
During the first months of this session my spare time was devoted
to the preparation of a speech on the slavery question. My
constituents expected this, and so did my anti-slavery and Free
Soil friends generally. It was my darling purpose, and I resolved
to do my best upon it. I not only meant that they should not be
ashamed of it, but that, if possible, it should stand the test of
criticism, both as to matter and diction. I re-examined the question
in its various aspects, and more thoroughly than I had been able
to do before, giving special attention to the speeches of Southern
members in both Houses, and carefully noting their vulnerable
points. I overhauled the question of "Northern aggression" pretty
thoroughly, and endeavored to expose the absurdity of that complaint,
while crowding into my task such facts and arguments as would help
educate the people in right thinking. I had my task completed in
March, and now anxiously waited the opportunity for its delivery.
I was very curious to know how it would sound, and what would be
thought of it, while my constitutional self-distrust made me dread
the experiment unspeakably. My scuffle for the floor was a sore
trial of patience, and it was not until the fourteenth of May that
the competitive contest was ended. I got through with the work
better than I anticipated, was handsomely listened to, and went
home in triumph. A great burden of anxiety had been lifted, while
I received letters from the leading Abolitionists of New England
and elsewhere, very cordially complimenting the speech, which was
copied into the principal anti-slavery newspapers, and quite
favorably noticed. I was flattered beyond measure, and found my
self-esteem germinating into new life under these fertilizing dews.
CHAPTER V.
REMINISCENCES OF THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS (CONTINUED).
Fracas between Col. Benton and Senator Foote--Character of Benton
--Death of Gen. Taylor--The funeral--Defeat of the "Omnibus Bill"
--Its triumph in detail--Celebration of the victory--"Lower law"
sermons and "Union-saving" meetings--Slave-holding literature--
Mischievous legislation--Visit to Philadelphia and Boston--Futile
efforts to suppress agitation--Andrew Johnson and the homestead
law--Effort to censure Mr. Webster--Political morality in this
Congress--Temperance--Jefferson Davis and other notable men--John
P. Hale--Thaddeus Stevens--Extracts from speeches--The famous men
in both Houses--The Free Soilers and their vindication.
I happened to be in the Senate on April 17th, just before the
memorable fracas between Foote, of Mississippi, and Col. Benton.
They had had an unfriendly encounter not long before, and it was
well understood that Benton had made up his mind that Foote should
not henceforward name him or allude to him in debate. Foote had
said: "I do not denounce him as a _coward_--such language is
unfitted for this audience--but if he wishes to be blackguarded in
the discharge of his duty, and the culprit go unpunished? Is
language to be used here which would not be permitted to be used
in the lowest pot-house, tavern, or oyster cellar, and for the use
of which he would be turned out of any tavern by a decent landlord?"
Benton's wrath had not in the least cooled since this altercation.
Foote was on the floor, and in speaking of the late "Southern
address," referred to Benton in terms which everybody understood.
In an indirect way he became more and more personal as he proceeded.
Col. Benton finally arose from his seat with every appearance of
intense passion, and with a quick pace moved toward Foote, who was
addressing the Senate from his desk near the main aisle. The Vice
President demanded "order," and several senators tried to hold
Benton back, but he broke loose from his keepers, and was moving
rapidly upon his foe. When he saw Benton nearing him, Foote sprang
into the main aisle, and retreated toward the Vice President,
presenting a pistol as he fled, or, as he afterward expressed it,
"advanced backward." In the meantime Benton had been so obstructed
by the sergeant-at-arms and others that Foote, if disposed to shoot,
could not have done so without firing through the crowd. But
Benton, with several senators hanging to him, now proceeded round
the lobby so as to meet Foote at the opposite side of the Chamber.
Tearing himself away from those who sought to hold him, and throwing
open his bosom, he said: "Let him shoot me! The cowardly assassin
has come here to shoot me; let him shoot me if he dares! I never
carry arms, and he knows it; let the assassin fire!" He was an
embodied fury, and raged and raved, the helpless victim of his
passions. I had never seen such an uproar in a legislative body;
but the sergeant-at-arms at last restored order, when Mr. Clay
suggested that both parties should voluntarily enter into bonds to
keep the peace, upon which Benton instantly rose and said: "I'll
rot in jail, sir, before I will do it! No, sir! I'll rot in jail
first. I'll rot, sir!" and he poured forth a fresh torrent of
bitter words upon the man who was then so well known throughout
the Northern States as "Hangman Foote."* Benton was not only a
man of tremendous passion, but unrivalled as a hater. Nor did his
hatred spend itself entirely upon injustice and meanness. It was
largely personal and unreasoning. He was pre-eminently unforgiving.
He hated Calhoun with a real vengeance, styling him "John Cataline
Calhoun," and branding him as a "coward cur that sneaked to his
kennel when the Master of the Hermitage blew his bugle horn." He
seemed to relent a little, however, when he saw the life of the
great Carolinian rapidly ebbing away, and on one occasion declared
that, "When God lays his hand on a man, I take mine off." His wit
was sometimes as pungent as his invective. In his famous speech
on the Compromise measures, he gave Mr. Clay a telling hit by
comparing the boasted panacea of his "Omnibus Bill," or "five old
bills tacked together," to "old Dr. Jacob Townsend's sarsaparilla,"
and contrasting it with the alleged worthlessness of the same
measures when separately proposed, which he likened to "young Dr.
Samuel Townsend's" extract from the same vegetable. "Sarsaparilla"
was thus more widely advertised than ever before, but it aided the
triumph of the "young Dr.," and the defeat of Mr. Clay's pet scheme.
[* So named because of his declaration in the Senate the year
before, that if John P. Hale would come to Mississippi he would be
hung to "one of the tallest trees of the forest," and that he
(Foote) would himself "assist in the operation."]
The sudden death of Gen. Taylor, July 9, 1850, produced a very
profound impression. The shock to the people of the Northern States
was felt the more keenly because of the peculiarly threatening
aspect of public affairs, and of the unexpectedly manly course of
the President in withstanding the imperious and insolent demands
of the extreme men of his own section. Millard Fillmore then stood
well before the country, and was quite as emphatically committed
to the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the Free States as Gov.
Seward himself; but he was now to be severely tried, and no one
could tell whether he would be true to the policy of his predecessor
in resisting the ultra demands of the South, or repeat the perfidy
of John Tyler by flagrantly turning his back on his past life.
For the time, however, the national bereavement seemed too absorbing
for any political speculations. The funeral pageant, which took
place on the 13th, was very imposing. The funeral car was a long-
coupled running gear, with wheels carved from solid blocks of wood.
Over this was raised a canopy covered with broadcloth, and surmounted
by a magnificent eagle. Curtains of black and white silk in
alternating festoons hung from the canopy, with rosettes, fringes,
and tassels. The car was drawn by eight white horses, richly
caparisoned, and led by as many grooms, who were all white men.
"Old Whitey," the venerable war steed of the President, followed
immediately behind the remains of his master, and attracted universal
attention. The procession was accompanied by the tolling of bells,
the firing of heavy ordnance, and plaintive strains of music; and
the whole affair exceeded anything of the kind that had ever taken
place in Washington, although the outpouring of the people would
bear no comparison with that of several notable funerals of later
years.
The dreadful heat of the summer months, and the monotonous "ding-
dong" of the debate on the Compromise measures, made life dreary
enough. The "rump-session," as it was then called, became more
and more dismal as it dragged its slow length into the fall months.
Members grew pale and thin, and sighed for their homes; but the
Congressional mill had to be kept running till the grists of the
slave-power could be got fully ready for the hopper, and ground in
their regular order. Mr. Clay's Omnibus Bill having gone to pieces,
the "five gaping wounds" of the country, about which he had talked
so eloquently, called for treatment in detail; and by far the most
threatening of these was the dispute between Texas and New Mexico.
The remedy was the Texas Boundary Bill, which surrendered a large
belt of country to Texas and slavery, and gave her ten million
dollars besides. It was vehemently opposed in the House, and its
fate seemed to hang in doubt up to the final vote upon it; but
its passage was really assured from the beginning by the corrupt
appliances of its friends. Texas bonds, which were then worth ten
cents on the dollar, would be lifted nearly to par by this measure,
and its success was undoubtedly secured by the bribery of members.
The territorial question was disposed of by the legislative covenant
that new States might be admitted from our Mexican acquisitions,
either with or without slavery, as their people might determine.
This was not only an open abandonment of the Wilmot proviso, but
a legislative condemnation of the Missouri compromise line, as a
violation of the principle of "popular sovereignty," and was sure
to breed the mischiefs which followed four years later. But of
the several compromise or "healing measures" of this session, the
Fugitive Slave Bill was by far the most atrocious. It made the
_ex parte_ interested oath of the slave-hunter final and conclusive
evidence of the fact of escape, and of the identity of the party
pursued, while the simplest duties of humanity were punished as
felonies by fine and imprisonment. The method of its enactment
perfectly accorded with its character. It was reached on the
Speaker's table on September 12th, and on motion of Mr. Thompson,
of Pennsylvania, who served as the parliamentary hangman of his
employers, the previous question was seconded on its passage; and
thus, without reference to any committee, without even being printed,
and with no opportunity whatever for debate, it became a law. It
is needless to say that these pretended measures of final adjustment
paved the way for the repeal of the Missouri restriction, the bloody
raid into Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, and the final chapter
of the Civil War; while they completely vindicated the little party
of Independents in this Congress in standing aloof from the Whig
and Democratic organizations, and warning the country against
further submission to their rule. One hundred guns were fired in
Washington over the final triumph of slavery in this memorable
struggle; and Congress adjourned, at last, on September 30th, the
session having lasted nearly ten months, and being considerably
the longest thus far since the formation of the Government.
The adjournment was followed by great "Union-saving" meetings
throughout the country, which denounced "abolitionism" in the
severest terms, and endorsed the action of Congress. Multitudes
of "lower law" sermons by conservative Doctors of Divinity were
scattered over the Northern States through the mails, and a regular
system of agitation to _suppress_ agitation was inaugurated. The
sickly air of compromise filled the land, and for a time the deluded
masses were made to believe that the Free Soilers had brought the
country to the verge of ruin. Both clergy and laity zealously
dedicated themselves to the great work of sectional pacification.
The labors of Dr. Nehemiah Adams and Dr. Lord in this direction
will not be forgotten. The Rev. Moses Stuart, of Andover Theological
Seminary, in a work in the interest of peace, spoke of the "blessings
and comforts" of slavery, and declared that "Christ doubtless felt
that slavery might be made a very tolerable condition--aye, even
a blessing, to such as were shiftless and helpless." Another book,
entitled "Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or Southern Life as it is," was
issued from the press, in which it was said that slavery was
"authorized by God, permitted by Jesus Christ, sanctioned by the
Apostles, and maintained by good men in all ages." A very remarkable
book made its appearance, entitled "A Choice of Evils; or Thirteen
Years in the South. By a Northern man." Its author was a Mr.
Hooker, of Philadelphia. In this work he announced the discovery
that slavery is not only an unspeakable blessing, but a great
"missionary institution for the conversion of the heathen." One
of the chapters of this book is on "The Pleasures of Slavery." He
declared that the Southern slave is not merely contented, but a
"joyous fellow"; and that "in willing and faithful subjection to
a benignant and protecting power, and that visible to his senses,
he leans upon it in complete and sure confidence, as a trusting
child holds on to the hand of his Father, and passes joyously along
the thronged and jostling way, where he would not dare to be left
alone." Mr. Hooker declared that "his are the thoughts that make
glad the cared-for child, led by paternal hand"; and that "of all
the people in the world, the pleasures of the Southern slaves seem,
as they really are, most unalloyed." The press teemed with kindred
publications, while "Graham's Magazine," Harper's "Journal of
Civilization," the "Literary World," "Godey's Ladies' Book," and
other periodicals, joined in the united effort to shout the anti-
slavery agitation into silence.
During this session some laws were passed having no connection with
the slavery question, which were pregnant with very great mischief,
and have only yielded up their meaning as they have been practically
applied and extended. The act of September 28th, granting land
bounties to the soldiers of the Mexican war, opened the way for
the monopoly of many millions of acres of the public domain by
sharks and speculators, while proving a wretched mockery of the
just claims of the men in whose name it was urged. The Swamp Land
Act of the same date, owing to its loose and unguarded provisions
and shameful mal-administration, has been still more fruitful of
wide-spread spoilation and plunder. The act of September 20th,
granting alternate sections of land in aid of the Illinois Central
Railway, inaugurated our famous land-grant policy, which, becoming
more and more reckless and improvident in its exactions, and
cunningly combining the power of great corporations with vast
monopolies of the public domain, has signally eclipsed all other
schemes of commercial feudalism, and left to coming generations a
problem involving the very life of our popular institutions. The
fruits of this legislation were not foreseen at the time, but the
legislation itself fitly belongs to the extraordinary work of this
Congress.
The events of this session formed a new band of union among anti-
slavery men everywhere, and naturally strengthened the wish I had
long cherished to meet some of the famous people with whose names
I had been most familiar. Accordingly, I paid a visit to James
and Lucretia Mott in Philadelphia, which I greatly enjoyed, meeting
there Dr. Elder, J. Miller McKim, Dr. Furness, and other well known
friends of freedom. Oddly enough, I was invited to dine with Judge
Kane, then conspicuous through his remarkable rulings in fugitive
slave cases, and I found his manners and hospitality as charming
as his opinions about slavery were detestable. From Philadelphia
I went to Boston, and attended the Free Soil State Convention which
met there early in October, 1850, where Sumner and Burlingame were
the principal speakers. The latter was extremely boyish in
appearance, but was counted a marvel in native eloquence. Mr.
Sumner was then comparatively a young man, apparently somewhat
fastidious, with a winning face, commanding figure, and a voice
singularly musical. At this time he was only famous through his
orations, and I think knew relatively little of American life and
society outside of Boston and his books. He told me he had recently
been lecturing at several points out of the city, and had been
delighted to find the people so intelligent and so capable of
understanding him. He seemed much surprised when I told him how
many admirers he had in Indiana, and I found that others shared
his unflattering impressions respecting the general intelligence
of the West. At this convention I met Dr. Palfrey, then actively
interested in anti-slavery politics, and Charles Francis Adams,
the Free Soil nominee for Vice President in 1848, with whom I dined
at the old Adams mansion in Quincy a few days later. I enjoyed
the honor of a call from Theodore Parker while in the city, but
failed to meet Mr. Garrison, who was absent. At the "Liberator"
office, however, I met Stephen S. Foster, who entertained me with
his views on "non-resistance." I attended a spirited anti-fugitive-
slave-law meeting in Lynn, where I first met Wendell Phillips, and
enjoyed the long-coveted pleasure of hearing him speak. The music
of his voice so charmed me that I became completely his captive.
From Boston I went to Worcester, and after a delightful visit with
my excellent friend, Judge Allen, returned to my home in the West.
After a vacation of two months, the work of the Thirty-first Congress
was resumed at the opening of its second session. Members returned
so refreshed and invigorated that they did not appear like the same
men. All parties seemed more friendly, but the agitation of the
slavery question had not been suppressed. Thousands of fugitive
slaves had fled to Canada or to remote sections of the Northern
States, through the fear of recapture under the harsh features of
the new Fugitive Slave Act. The method of enforcing it in different
States, involving the intervention of the army and navy, had stirred
the blood of thousands who had else remained unmoved by the slavery
issue. The effort of the National Government to make the harboring
of a fugitive constructive treason, was the farthest thing possible
from a peace-offering to the Abolitionists, but the friends of the
Compromise measures failed to see that their scheme had proved
entirely abortive, and made one further effort to silence the voice
of humanity. They entered into a solemn compact in writing to
support no man for President or Vice President of the United States,
or for senator or representative in Congress, or member of a State
legislature, who was not known to be opposed to disturbing their
"final settlement" of the slavery question. The signature of Henry
Clay was the first on this document, and was followed by those of
various prominent men of the free and slave States, and of different
political parties. But the extreme men of the South and most of
the moderate men of the North refused to assume this obligation,
while the Free Soilers felt perfectly sure that their cause would
be advanced by the very measures which had been taken to defeat
it. In this they were not mistaken. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," born of
the Fugitive Slave Act, was then making its first appearance in
weekly numbers of Dr. Bailey's "National Era." Hildreth's "White
Slave" and Sumner's "White Slavery in the Barbary States" were
widely circulated, and exerted a powerful influence. The writings
of Judge Jay and William Goodell on the slavery question found more
readers than ever before, while the pro-slavery literature and
"south side" theology, already referred to, called forth replies
from various writers, and contributed largely to the general ferment
which the friends of the Compromise measures were so anxious to
tranquilize. Indeed, while the champions of slavery were exerting
themselves as never before to stifle the anti-slavery spirit of
the free States, the Abolitionists were delighted with the tokens
of progress which everywhere saluted their vision and animated them
with new courage and hope.
It was early in the first session of this Congress that several
members of the House introduced bills providing homesteads of one
hundred and sixty acres each to actual landless settlers, without
cost, on prescribed conditions of occupancy and improvement. The
first of these bills in the order of time was that of Andrew Johnson,
which was referred to the Committee on Agriculture, and subsequently
reported favorably, and debated at different times. Similar
propositions were offered in the Senate by Mr. Webster, and by
Senator Walker, of Wisconsin. The fact is also worthy of note,
that Horace Greeley, during his short term of service in the previous
Congress, had offered a bill giving landless men the right to pre-
empt one hundred and sixty acres for seven years, and, on condition
of occupancy and improvement, the "right of unlimited occupancy"
to forty acres of the same, without price, by a single man, or
eighty acres by the married head of a family. But the legislative
initiation of the Homestead law, substantially as we now have it,
belongs to the House of Representatives of the Thirty-first Congress,
and its policy was borrowed from the Free Soil platform of 1848
and the Land Reformers of New York. This measure completely reversed
the early policy of the Government, when settlers on the public
lands were dealt with as trespassers, while its triumph, years
afterward, marked an epoch in our legislation, and has done more
to make the American name honored and loved at home and abroad than
any single enactment since the year 1789. Having earnestly espoused
this policy years before, I sought the acquaintance of Mr. Johnson
for the purpose of co-operating with him in urging it, and found
him its sincere friend. Although loyal to his party, he seemed to
have little sympathy with the extreme men among its leaders, and
no unfriendliness to me on account of my decided anti-slavery
opinions. When my homestead speech was ready for delivery, although
the slave-holders hated its doctrines as heartily as they hated
"abolitionism" itself, and it was through his friendly tactics that
I finally obtained the floor, in opposition to the earnest wish
and determined purpose of Speaker Cobb.
Near the close of this session, at the instance of Charles Allen,
of Massachusetts, a man of real ability and stainless life, a
preamble and resolutions were offered by myself calling for a
committee to inquire into the alleged corrupt conduct of Daniel
Webster in accepting the office of Secretary of State as the
stipendary of Eastern capitalists. On the motion to suspend the
rules to allow this to be done, the yeas were only thirty-five;
but this vote was quite as large as could have been expected,
considering the excellent standing of Mr. Webster at that time with
the pro-slavery sentiment of the country. I think it is not doubted
that, being then poor, he accepted office, as he had done before,
on condition of pecuniary indemnity by his rich friends in Wall
street and State street; but in the light of the far greater
immoralities and profligacies of later times, it now seems a
relatively small matter.
Political morality was at a very low ebb during the period covered
by the Thirty-first Congress. The Whigs, now that they were in
power, saw nothing amiss in the spoils system inaugurated by Gen.
Jackson, which was in full blast. The President had declared that
he had "no friends to reward and no enemies to punish," but under
the party pressure he totally lost sight of these words, and seemed
almost as powerless to withstand it as did Gen. Grant in later
years. Thousands of officials were turned adrift for no other than
party reasons, while political nepotism was the order of the day.
Under the brief administration of Gen. Taylor, unprecedented
political jobbery prevailed, both in the legislative and executive
departments of the Government, and these evils seemed to be aggravated
by the accession of Mr. Fillmore, and to gather strength as the
spirit of liberty declined. Nor was the personal morality of
members more to be commended than their political. The vice of
intemperance was not, as now, restricted to a few exceptional cases,
but was fearfully prevalent. A glass of wine could sometimes be
seen on the desk of a senator while engaged in debate, and the free
use of intoxicating drinks by senators was too common to provoke
remark. It was still more common in the House; and the scenes of
drunkenness and disorder in that body on the last night of the last
session beggared description. Much of the most important legislation
of the session, involving the expenditure of many millions, remained
to be disposed of at that sitting; and, as a preparation for the
work, a large supply of whisky had been deposited in a room
immediately connected with the Hall of Representatives, which was
thronged by members at all hours of the night. The chairman of
the Ways and Means Committee became so exhilarated that he had to
be retired from his post; and some of his brethren, who had been
calling him to order in a most disorderly manner, were quite as
incapable of business as himself, while order had sought her
worshipers elsewhere. The exhibition was most humiliating, but it
now pleasantly reminds us of the wonderful changes which have been
wrought by thirty years.
In this Congress, the men who afterward became the chief leaders
of the Rebellion were conspicuous, and foreshadowed their future
course. Jefferson Davis had a military and magisterial look. His
estimate of himself was so exalted that his ordinary demeanor toward
others seemed like a personal condescension, if not an insinuation
of contempt. One of the most striking personalities in the Senate
was A. P. Butler, the colleague of Mr. Calhoun, and uncle of Preston
S. Brooks, of infamous memory. His robust physique, florid
complexion, sparkling eye, heavy bushy suit of snow-white hair,
and a certain indefinable expression of mischievous audacity, made
him a very attractive figure. In his eulogy upon Calhoun he marred
the solemnity of the occasion by pronouncing the world "always" as
if written "allers," and by kindred evidences of "life among the
lowly." The wit of John P. Hale was effective and unfailing, and
gave him a decided advantage over Mr. Chase, who had nothing but
his dignity and power of argument with which to confront the
tremendous odds against him. This was happily illustrated early
in the first session of this Congress, in his reply to Mr. Clemens,
of Alabama, who, in a furious tirade against the Abolitionists,
had pronounced the Union dissolved already. "There are many timid
people at the North," said Hale, "who have looked forward with
excited nerves and trembling fears at the 'wreck of matter and the
crush of worlds' which they believed would be the result of the
dissolution of this Union. I think they will be exceedingly quiet
now, when they find it has already taken place and they did not
know it, for the honorable senator from Alabama tells us it is
already dissolved. If it is not a matter too serious for pleasant
illustration, let me give you one. Once in my life, in the capacity
of a justice of the peace--for I held that office before I was a
senator--I was called on to officiate in uniting a couple in the
bonds of matrimony. They came up, and I made short work of it.
I asked the man if he would take the woman whom he held by the hand
to be his wedded wife; he replied, 'To be sure I will, I came here
to do that very thing.' I then put the question to the lady,
whether she would have the man for her husband. And when she
answered in the affirmative, I told them they were man and wife.
She looked up with apparent astonishment, and inquired 'Is that
all?' 'Yes,' I said, 'that is all.' 'Well,' said she, 'it is not
such a mighty affair as I expected it to be, after all.'"
Some of the finest of Mr. Seward's speeches were delivered during
the first session of this Congress, but in the same husky voice
which marked his later efforts. Decidedly the finest looking man
in the Senate was General Shields, of Illinois, then in his prime,
and crowned with the laurels he had won in the Mexican War. The
appearance of Mr. Douglas, familiarly known as the "little giant,"
was in striking contrast with that of his colleague. He cared
nothing about dignity and refinement, and had a slovenly and
"unwashed" appearance. The towering and erect form of General
Houston always commanded attention in the Senate, and he added to
his attractiveness by wearing an old-fashioned knit cap, and always
devoting a portion of his time to whittling a pine board. The most
fascinating member of the Senate was Soule, of Louisiana. There
was a tropical charm about his oratory, which was heightened by
his foreign accent and his singularly striking presence and
physiognomy. Winthrop was the most accomplished gentleman in the
House. Edward D. Baker, since so famous, was a member from Illinois,
but made no mark. Stephens, of Georgia, looked like a corpse, but
his clear and ringing voice always commanded attention, and his
words went directly to the mark. Toombs was recognized as a leader
of Southern opinion, but disfigured his speeches by his swagger
and defiance. Among the notable men from the Northern States,
Hannibal Hamlin, lately retired from public life, was in the Senate.
He was then a young man, erect, fine looking, a thorough Democrat,
but not the tool of slavery. Thaddeus Stevens was in the House,
and just at the beginning of his remarkable congressional life;
but the slave power, then in full sweep of its despotism, took good
care to keep him in the background in the organization of the
committees. He made several speeches, in which he displayed his
rare powers of invective, irony, and sarcasm, in dealing with the
Southern leaders; and no one who listened to his speech of Feb.
20, 1850, could ever forget his withering reply to Mr. Mead, of
Virginia, who had argued against the prohibition of slavery in the
Territories because it would conflict with the interests of Virginia
as a breeder of slaves. I quote the following:
"Let us pause for a moment over this humiliating confession. In
plain English, what does it mean? That Virginia is now only fit
to be the breeder, not the employer, of slaves! That she is reduced
to the condition that her proud chivalry are compelled to turn
slave-traders for a livelihood! Instead of attempting to renovate
the soil, and by their own honest labor compelling the earth to
yield her abundance; instead of seeking for the best breed of cattle
and horses to feed on her hills and valleys, and fertilize the
land, the sons of that great State must devote their time to
selecting and grooming the most lusty sires and the most fruitful
wenches, to supply the slave barracoons of the South! And the
learned gentleman pathetically laments that the profits of this
genteel traffic will be greatly lessened by the circumscription of
slavery! This is his picture, not mine."
Mr. Stevens was equally merciless in dealing with the tribe of
"dough-faces." This was illustrated in a speech later in the
session, in which he alluded to his colleague from Bucks County,
Mr. Ross, who had attacked him in a violent pro-slavery harangue:
"There is," said Mr. Stevens, "in the natural world, a little,
spotted, contemptible animal, which is armed by nature with a fetid,
volatile, penetrating _virus_, which so pollutes whoever attacks
it as to make him offensive to himself and all around him for a
long time. Indeed, he is almost incapable of purification. Nothing,
sir, no insult, shall provoke me to crush so filthy a beast." As
these words were being uttered, Mr. Ross was seen precipitately
making his way out of the hall under the return fire of his foe.
But Mr. Stevens then gave no clear promise of the wonderful career
as a parliamentary leader which awaited him in later years, when
perfectly unshackled by the power that at first held him in check.
The Thirty-first Congress was not alone remarkable for the great
questions it confronted and its shameless recreancy to humanity
and justice; it was equally remarkable for its able and eminent
men. In the Senate, the great triumvirate of Webster, Clay, and
Calhoun, appeared in public life for the last time. With them were
associated Benton, Cass, Douglas, Seward, Chase, Bell, Berrien,
Soule, Davis of Mississippi, Dayton, Hale, Ewing, Corwin, Hamlin,
Butler, Houston, and Mason. In the House were Thaddeus Stevens,
Winthrop, Ashmun, Allen, Cobb of Georgia, McDowell, Giddings,
Preston King, Horace Mann, Marshall, Orr, Schenck, Stanley, Toombs,
Alexander H. Stephens, and Vinton. If mere talent could have
supplemented the lack of conscience, the slave power might have
been overborne in 1850, and the current of American history turned
into the channels of liberty and peace. But the better days of
the Republic, when high integrity and unselfish devotion to the
country inspired our statesmen, were past, and we had entered upon
the era of mean ambitions and huckstering politics. "The bulk of
the nation," as Harriet Martineau said, a little later, "was below
its institutions," and our fathers "had laid down a loftier program
than their successors were able to fulfill." It was not strange,
therefore, that the little band of Free Soilers in this Congress
encountered popular obloquy and social outlawry at the Capital.
Their position was offensive, because it rebuked the ruling influences
of the times, and summoned the real manhood of the country to its
rescue. They were treated as pestilent fanatics because they
bravely held up the ideal of the Republic, and sought to make it
real. But they pressed forward along the path of their aspirations.
They found a solace for their social ostracism in delightful
gatherings which assembled weekly at the residence of Dr. Bailey,
where they met philanthropists, reformers, and literary notables.
They had the courage of their opinions, and the genuine satisfaction
which accompanies manliness of character; and they lived to see
their principles vindicated, and the political and social tables
turned upon the men who had honored them by their scorn and contempt.
The anti-slavery revolt of 1848, which they represented, saved
Oregon from slavery, made California a free State, and launched
the policy of free homes on the public domain which finally prevailed
in 1862; and it was the prophecy and parent of the larger movement
which rallied under Fremont in 1856, elected Lincoln in 1860, and
played its grand part in saving the nation from destruction by the
armed insurgents whom it had vanquished at the ballot-box. This
will be the sure award of history; but history will find another
parentage for the party despotism and political corruption which
have since disgraced the administration of the Government.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
Pro-slavery reaction--Indiana and Ohio--Race for Congress--Free
Soil gains in other States--National Convention at Cleveland--
National canvass of 1852--Nomination of Pierce and Scott, and the
"finality" platforms--Free Soil National Convention--Nomination of
Hale--Samuel Lewis--The Whig canvass--Webster--Canvass of the
Democrats--Return of New York "Barnburners" to the party--The Free
Soil campaign--Stumping Kentucky with Clay--Rev. John G. Fee--
Incidents--Mob law in Indiana--Result of the canvass--Ruin of the
Whigs--Disheartening facts--The other side of the picture.
The reaction which followed the passage of the compromise acts of
1850 was quite as remarkable as the anti-slavery revolt of 1848,
which frightened the champions of slavery into the espousal of
these desperate measures. Immense meetings were held in Philadelphia,
New York, Boston, and other cities and towns throughout the country,
in which leading Whigs and Democrats united in pledging themselves
to make the suppression of abolitionism paramount to any question
of party allegiance. These demonstrations were vigorously seconded
by leading clergymen and doctors of divinity, whose sermons were
plentifully scattered over the land under the frank of members of
Congress and otherwise. The press put forth its whole power on
the side of anti-slavery submission and peace, while the Executive
and Judicial departments of the Government made haste to abase
themselves by their super-serviceable zeal in the enforcement of
the new Fugitive Slave law. The tables seemed to be completely
turned, and the time-honored rule of our slave-masters impregnably
re-established. The anti-slavery commotion which a little while
before had rocked the country from one end of the Union to the
other was hushed in the restored order which succeeded, and gave
promise of that longed-for "finality" for which the two great
parties had so ardently labored.
In no section of the non-slaveholding States was this reaction more
strikingly felt than in the West, and especially in Illinois and
Indiana. These States were outlying provinces of the empire of
slavery. Their black codes and large Southern population bore
witness to their perfect loyalty to slave-holding traditions.
Indiana, while a Territory, had repeatedly sought the introduction
of slavery into her borders. Her black laws had disfigured her
legislation from the beginning, and in 1850 were made still blacker
by her new Constitution, the 13th article of which, forbidding
negroes from coming into the State and white men from encouraging
them to remain, was submitted to the people separately, and ratified
by a popular majority of nearly ninety thousand votes. Ten years
before, in the Harrison campaign, Mr. Bigger, the Whig candidate
for Governor, made himself very popular by proving that Van Buren
had favored negro suffrage in New York. In 1842, four of the
Indiana delegation in Congress--namely, Lane, Wallace, Thompson,
and Kennedy--voted for the censure of Mr. Giddings, which Mr. Clay
indignantly denounced at the time, and two only--namely, White and
Cravens--voted in the negative. Although the execution of the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was a matter of Federal cognizance
exclusively, yet the State code made the harboring of a fugitive
an offense against its peace and dignity, punishable by fine and
imprisonment. The colored people were denied any share in the
school fund, but were taxed for its support; and under the law
forbidding them to testify in cases where white men were parties,
they were at the mercy of any white villain who might take the
precaution of perpetrate an outrage upon them in the absence of
white witnesses. Of course, the organization of an anti-slavery
party strong enough to rule such States as these, was to be the
work of time, toil, and patience. It was only possible to lay the
foundation, and build as the material could be commanded; but the
Free Soilers, whether in the east or in the West, were undismayed
by the crisis, and fully resolved upon keeping up the fight. In
compliance with the wishes of my anti-slavery friends, and by way
of doing my part in the work, I decided to stand for a re-election
from the Fourth Indiana District in the spring of 1851. The Wilmot
proviso Democrats who had been chosen with me two years before on
the strength of their Free Soil pledges, including such men as
Joseph E. McDonald and Graham N. Fitch, now stood squarely on the
Compromise measures.
The Whigs of the State, following the lead of Webster and Clay,
and including Edward W. McGaughey, their only delegate in Congress,
had also completely changed their base. My competitor, Samuel W.
Parker, whom I had defeated two years before, and who had then
insisted that the Whigs were better anti-slavery men than the Free
Soilers themselves, now made a complete somersault, fully committing
himself to the Compromise acts, and especially the Fugitive Slave
law, which he declared he approved without changing the dotting of
an _i_ or the crossing of a _t_. Foote, Cass, and Webster were
now the oracles of the Whig faith; but, oddly enough, the Democrats,
who had formed by far the larger portion of my support two years
before, now stood firm, and I would undoubtedly have been re-elected
but for very vigorous outside interference. Wm. J. Brown, who had
intrigued with the leading Free Soilers for the Speakership in
1849, as I have already shown, and favored the passage of the Wilmot
proviso in order to "stick it at old Zach," was now the editor of
the "Sentinel," the State organ of the Democracy, which was
sufficiently orthodox on the slavery question to pass muster in
South Carolina. It was this organ which afterward insisted that
my abolitionism entitled me to at least five years service at hard
labor in the penitentiary. Mr. Brown's dread of this fearful heresy
seemed as intense as it was unbounded, and he resolved at all
hazards to avert any further alliance with it by Democrats in any
portion of the State. By very hard work and the most unscrupulous
expedients he succeeded in enlisting a few ambitious local magnates
of his party in the district, who were fully in sympathy with his
spirit and aims, and of whom Oliver P. Morton was the chief; and
by thus drawing away from the democracy from two to three hundred
pro-slavery malcontents and turning them over to my Whig competitor,
my defeat was accomplished.
But the effort to stem the tide of slavery fared better elsewhere.
While Mr. Webster was publicly ridiculing the "higher law," and
blurting his contempt upon one of the noted anti-slavery strongholds
of the country as "a laboratory of abolitionism, libel, and treason,"
Massachusetts sent Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United
States, and elected Horace Mann, Charles Allen and Robert Rantoul
as members of the House. Amos Tuck was returned from New Hampshire,
Preston King from New York, Thaddeus Stevens and John W. Howe from
Pennsylvania, Charles Durkee from Wisconsin, and Giddings and
Townsend from Ohio. These events were exceedingly gratifying, and
lent new life to the cause throughout the Northern States. During
the summer of this year Mr. Sumner moved the repeal of the Fugitive
Slave Act, and although it received but ten votes, it led to an
angry and protracted discussion, which showed how signally the
attempt to suppress anti-slavery agitation had failed. In the
latter part of September of this year a Free Soil National Convention
met at Cleveland, to take into consideration the state of the country
and the duty of anti-slavery men. It was large and enthusiastic.
It adopted a series of spirited resolutions and a timely public
address, and admirable speeches were made by Cassius M. Clay, Joshua
R. Giddings, Samuel Lewis, George Bradburn, and others. The only
drawback to the prevailing spirit of hopefulness and courage was
the absence of Mr. Chase, who had just withdrawn from the Free Soil
party and united his fortunes with the Democrats of Ohio, who had
adopted a platform which admitted an interpretation covering,
substantially, the principles of the Free Soil creed.
As the time for another Presidential election drew near, Whigs and
Democrats were alike engrossed with the consideration of their
"final settlement" of the slavery question, and their attitude
respecting it in the impending struggle. Among the latter there
was substantially no division. Their experience in 1848 with Gen.
Cass and his "Nicholson letter," had convinced them that nothing
was to be gained by mincing matters, and that a hearty, complete
and unhesitating surrender to slavery was the surest means of
success. The Democrats in Congress, both North and South, had very
generally favored this "settlement," and there was now no division
in the party except as to men. The candidates were Cass, Buchanan,
Douglas, and Marcy; and the National Convention assembled on the
first of June. The platform of the party began with the declaration
of its "trust in the intelligence, the patriotism, and the
discriminating justice of the American people"; and then, in the
fourth and fifth resolutions, pronounced the Fugitive Slave Act
equally sacred with the Constitution, and pledged the party to
"resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the
agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color
the attempt may be made." So far as slavery was concerned it thus
became a recognized and authoritative principle of American Democracy
to muzzle the press and crush out the freedom of speech, as the
means of upholding and perpetuating its power. On this platform
Franklin Pierce was nominated on the forty-ninth ballot; and in
his letter of acceptance he declared that "the principles it embraces
command the approbation of my judgment, and with them I believe I
can safely say that no word nor act of my life is in conflict."
It is difficult to conceive of any words by which he could more
completely have abdicated his manhood and self-respect, and sounded
the knell of his own conscience. There was no lower deep, and he
was evidently the right man in the right place.
The Whig National Convention assembled on the sixteenth of June,
with Scott, Fillmore and Webster as the candidates. There was yet
a considerable anti-slavery element in the party, but it was
paralyzed and powerless. It had made a fatal mistake in submitting
to the nomination of Gen. Taylor, and became still more completely
demoralized by the accession of Fillmore, who turned his back upon
his past life, and threw himself into the arms of the slave-holders.
The old party had gone astray too long and too far to return, and
now determined to seek its fortunes in the desperate effort to
outdo the Democrats in cringing servility to the South. The platform
of the Convention expressed the reliance of the Whigs "upon the
intelligence of the American people," but in its eighth resolution
declared their acquiescence in the Compromise Acts of 1850 "as a
final settlement, in principle and substance, of the subjects to
which they relate"; and it deprecated "all further agitation of
the questions thus settled, as dangerous to our peace," and pledged
the party "to discountenance all efforts to continue or renew such
agitation, whenever, wherever, or however made." On this platform,
which is well understood to have been the work of Mr. Webster, Gen.
Scott was nominated on the fifty-ninth ballot by a vote of two
hundred and twenty-seven to sixty-six, while the highest vote
received by Mr. Webster was twenty-nine. Here at last, the Whig
party had made a complete surrender of its integrity, and verified
all that had ever been said by Free Soilers as to its treachery to
freedom; and here, finally, these rival parties were tumbled together
into the ditch of slavery, and wallowing in the mire of their
degradation and shame. The only issue of the canvass was slavery,
and on this they were perfectly agreed, while each, for the sake
of the spoils of office, was trying to surpass the other in the
damning proofs of its treason to humanity and contempt for the
fundamental truths of republican government.
The spectacle was most pitiably humiliating, but I counted it an
omen of progress. The old parties were now unequivocally committed
to the policy of nationalizing the sectional interest of slavery,
and the way thus opened for a fair fight. The lines were clearly
drawn, and the issue unmistakably made between freedom and free
speech on the one side, and slavery and the gag on the other. I
thought we should have no more anti-slavery professions from Whigs
and Democrats, no further courting of Free-Soilers, and no more
mutual upbraidings of servility to the South; and that thus the
way would be smoothed for intelligent and effective anti-slavery
work.
The Free Soil National Convention met in Pittsburg on the eleventh
of August, and I believe an assemblage of purer men never convened
for any political purpose. All the compromising and trading elements
that had drifted into the movement in 1848 had now gravitated back
to the old parties, leaving a residuum of permanent adherents of
the cause, who were perfectly ready to brave the frowns of public
opinion and the proscription and wrath of the old parties. Henry
Wilson was made president of the convention, and the platform
adopted was substantially that of 1848. A few additional resolves,
however, were added, including the declaration "that emigrants and
exiles from the old world should find a cordial welcome to homes
of comfort and fields of enterprise in the new," and that "every
attempt to abridge their privilege of becoming citizens and owners
of the soil among us ought to be resisted with inflexible
determination." It was also declared "that the Free Democratic
party was not organized to aid either the Whig or Democratic wing
of the great Slave Compromise party of the Nation, but to defeat
them both; and that, repudiating and renouncing both as hopelessly
corrupt and utterly unworthy of confidence, the purpose of the Free
Democracy is to take possession of the Federal Government, and
administer it for the better protection of the rights and interests
of the whole people." On this platform John P. Hale was nominated
for the Presidency. My own nomination for the second place on the
ticket was to me a complete surprise. I fully expected this honor
would fall upon Samuel Lewis, of Ohio, and the delegation from my
own State was unitedly for him. He coveted the nomination, and so
did his many devoted friends, simply as a fitting recognition of
his faithful service in the cause of freedom, to which he had been
unselfishly devoted since the year 1841. He had made himself a
public benefactor by his long and powerful championship of the
cause of education in Ohio. He was a man of brains, and enthusiastically
devoted to every work of practical philanthropy and reform. As an
impassioned, eloquent, and effective popular orator, he had no
equal in the country. His profound earnestness, perfect sincerity,
and religious fervor conquered all hearts, and made his anti-slavery
appeals irresistible. He was a strong and brave old man, who richly
deserved whatever distinction his nomination could confer; but for
reasons unknown to me he encountered in the convention the formidable
opposition of Mr. Chase, and he wrote me very touchingly a few days
afterward that "among the thousands who have given their lives and
fortunes to this cause, my name will be forgotten, while those who
have coolly stood by and watched the signs of the times, and filled
their sails with the wind that others have raised, will go down to
history as heroes and martyrs in a cause for which they never fought
a battle nor suffered a sacrifice."
The canvass of the Whigs was totally without heart or enthusiasm.
The Southern wing of the party had dictated the platform, but did
not like Gen. Scott. Stephens and Toombs, of Georgia, and Jones
and Gentry, of Tennessee, refused to support him. The Northern
Whigs were greatly embarrassed, and while they felt constrained to
support the candidate, tried to relieve their consciences by
"spitting upon the platform" on which he stood. Mr. Webster did
not disguise his hostility to the ticket, and predicted the speedy
dissolution of the party. The Democrats were united in this contest.
Notwithstanding their atrocious platform they succeeded in persuading
the leading Barnburners of 1848 to return to the party and muster
again in the army of slavery. Dix, the Van Burens, David Dudley
Field, Tilden, and a host of others, including even Robert Rantoul
and Preston King, were now fighting for Pierce, while Bryant's
"Evening Post" and Greeley's "Tribune" cravenly submitted to the
shackles of slavery. In the light of such facts as these it was
easy to forecast the result of the contest.
The real enthusiasm of this campaign was in the ranks of the Free
Soilers. They had, of course, no dream of success, or even of
carrying a single electoral vote; but they were profoundly in
earnest, and united as one man against the combination of the old
parties in behalf of slavery. I took the stump, and early in the
campaign accepted an invitation to join Cassius M. Clay in the
canvass of the counties of Lewis, Bracken, and Mason, in Kentucky.
On my way to our first appointment I stopped at Maysville, where
I found myself in the midst of a considerable excitement about some
thirty or forty slaves who had just crossed the Ohio on their way
to Canada. I met Mr. Clay at the residence of the Rev. John G.
Fee, some eight miles distant in Lewis county, where we talked over
the plan of our campaign. Mr. Fee was the founder of an anti-
slavery colony, a free school, and a free church, in that region,
and was a scholar, philanthropist, and reformer. His whole heart
was in the anti-slavery cause, and his courage had never failed
him in facing the ruffianism and brutality which slavery employed
in its service; but I would not have felt very safe in this enterprise
without the presence of Mr. Clay, who was known in Kentucky, and
everywhere else, as "a fighting Christian," who would defend the
freedom of speech at any hazard. Our first meeting was in Mr.
Fee's church, in the rocky and mountainous region of the county,
where we had perfect order and an attentive and sympathetic audience.
From this point we proceeded the next day to our appointment in
Maysville, finding a good deal of excitement in the city as to the
propriety of allowing us to speak in the court house. It was
finally thrown open to us, and in the afternoon I was handsomely
introduced by Mr. Clay to a fine audience, speaking at length, and
with great plainness, on the issues of the canvass, and being
frequently applauded. Mr. Clay spoke at night to a still larger
audience, while perfect order prevailed. So far our success seemed
gratifying, and Mr. Fee was delighted; and we proceeded the following
morning to our next appointment at Brooksville, in Bracken county.
Here we found assembled a large crowd of that brutalized rabble
element which formed the background of slavery everywhere. The
aboriginal creatures gazed at us like so many wild animals, but
showed not the slightest disposition to enter the house in which
we were to speak. Mr. Clay remarked that they must be Whigs, since
they did not seemed inclined to "resist," but only to "discountenance"
our agitation; but we had come to speak, and with Mr. Fee's family
and a few friends who had come with us for an audience, we spoke
about an hour and a half each, just as if the house had been filled.
A few straggled in during the speaking, and several hung about the
windows and listened, though they tried to seem not to do so; but
the most remarkable and praiseworthy thing about this congregation
of Yahoos was that they did not mob us. It must have seemed to
them a strange waste of power to spare such notorious disturbers
of the peace, and return to their homes without any laurels. This
ended our work in Kentucky, where we could boast that the "finality"
platform had been openly set at defiance, and I returned to my work
on the other side of the Ohio.
Later in the canvass, on my return from Wisconsin and Illinois, I
learned that Andrew L. Robinson, the Free Soil candidate for Governor
of Indiana, had been mobbed in the city of Terre Haute, and prevented
from making an anti-slavery speech. This was not surprising, as
this section of the State was largely settled by people from
Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, who were as intolerant of
abolitionism as those of Bracken county already described. I
immediately sent a telegram making an appointment to speak in that
city, and on the day appointed reported for duty. I found my
friends uneasy and apprehensive. They evidently regretted my
coming, and some of them advised me quietly to return home. The
town was full of rumors that I was not to be allowed to speak, and
was to be "wabashed," as the rowdies phrased it. But I had no
thought of returning without being heard; and accordingly, at the
appointed hour, I repaired to the court house, where I found a
small crowd assembled, with restless countenances, and a gang of
ruffians outside, armed with stones and brickbats. The audience
gradually increased, and as I began to speak I noticed that the
roughs themselves began to listen, which they continued to do during
the hour and a half I devoted to the most unmistakable utterances
on the slavery question. The ringleader of the mob, for some
reason, failed to give the signal of attack, and free speech was
vindicated. Timid men grew brave, and boasted of the love of order
that had prompted the people of the town to stand by my rights;
yet the mob would probably have triumphed but for the presence of
Joseph O. Jones, the post-master of the city, himself a Kentuckian,
but a believer in the right of free speech and the duty of defending
it at all hazards.
The result of this Presidential canvass was a surprise to all
parties. The triumph of the Democrats was anticipated, but it was
far more signal than they expected. Pierce received two hundred
and fifty-four electoral votes, and Scott only forty-two, representing
only four States of the Union. So far as the Whig party was
concerned, the result was overwhelming and final. The party was
buried forever in the grave it had dug for itself. Hale received
a little more than one hundred and fifty-six thousand votes, being
about one-twentieth of the entire popular vote cast at this election;
so that nineteen-twentieths of the people of the United States in
1852, and only a little more than a dozen years before slavery was
swept from the land, voted themselves bound and dumb before this
Moloch of American politics, while only one-twentieth had the
courage to claim their souls as their own. These were very startling
facts after more than a quarter of a century of anti-slavery agitation,
and they were naturally interpreted by the victorious party everywhere
as clearly foreshadowing the complete triumph of the "final
settlement" made by Congress in 1850. Certainly they seemed very
disheartening to anti-slavery men; for, however confidently they
might believe in the final success of their struggle, they could
not fail to see the immense odds and fearful obstacles against
which they would have to contend. The debauched masses who had
been molded and kneaded by the plastic touch of slavery into such
base uses, were the only possible material from which recruits
could be drawn for a great party of the future, which should
regenerate our politics and re-enthrone the love of liberty; and
this should be remembered in estimating the courage and faith of
the men who in that dark hour held aloft the banner of freedom, in
spite of all temptations to go with the multitude.
But there was another view of the situation which thoughtful anti-
slavery men did not fail to enforce. The overwhelming triumph of
Pierce was not an unmixed victory for slavery. It had another
explanation. It was to be remembered, to the credit of the Whig
party, that thousands of its members, notwithstanding their dislike
of Pierce and their admiration of Gen. Scott as a man and a soldier,
and despite the attempted drill of their leaders and the influence
of Greeley and Seward, could not be induced to support the ticket,
and were now ready for further acts of independence. It was likewise
to be remembered that in the complete rout and ruin of the party
a great obstacle to anti-slavery progress had been removed. The
slave-holders at once recognized this fact. They had aimed to
defeat the party, not to annihilate it. They saw clearly what
slavery needed was two pretty evenly divided parties, pitted against
each other on economic issues, so that under cover of their strife
it could be allowed to have its way; and they were justly alarmed
at the prospect of a new movement, having its action upon moral
grounds, and gathering into its ranks the unshackled conscience
and intelligence of the Northern States. The "Washington Union,"
then the national organ of the Democracy, deplored the death of
the Whig party, and earnestly hoped for its resurrection. The fact
had always been patent to anti-slavery men that these parties were
alike the bulwarks of slavery, since the Southern wing of each gave
law to the whole body, and that until one or the other could be
totally destroyed, a really formidable anti-slavery party was
impossible. There was also great cause for encouragement in the
evident signs of a growing anti-slavery public opinion. "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" had found its way to the millions on both sides of the
Atlantic, and the rage for it among all classes was without parallel
in the history of literature. It was served up for the masses in
sixpenny editions, dramatized and acted on the stage, and coined
into poetry and song. Slave-holders were alarmed at its wonderful
success, because they saw the grand part it was playing in creating
that "public opinion of the civilized world" which Mr. Webster had
declared to be "the mightiest power on earth." The replies to this
wonderful book, and the anti-slavery and pro-slavery literature to
which it gave birth, largely contributed to the progress of freedom,
and the final repudiation of the "finality" which the great parties
had combined to establish.
Nor was the small vote for Hale a matter of serious discouragement.
It was much smaller than that cast for Van Buren in 1848; but that
was a deceptive epoch. Multitudes, and especially in the State of
New York, then voted the Free Soil ticket who had never before
shown any interest in the slavery question, and did not manifest
it afterward. They were not Free Soil men, but Van Buren men, who
hated Gen. Cass. The vote for Hale represented the _bona fide_
strength of our cause after this element had been eliminated, and
its quality went far to atone for its quantity. The proper test
of anti-slavery progress was a comparison of the anti-slavery vote
of 1844 with that of 1852, and this showed an increase of nearly
three-fold in the intervening space of eight years. This steady
evolution of anti-slavery opinion from the deadening materialism
and moral inertia of the times could not go backward, but in the
very nature of things would repeat itself, and gather fresh momentum
from every effort put forth to stay its advance.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (CONTINUED).
A notable fugitive slave case--Inauguration of Pierce--Repeal of
the Missouri compromise--Its effect upon the parties--The Free Soil
position--Know-Nothingism--The situation--First steps in the
formation of the Republican party--Movements of the Know-Nothings
--Mistake of the Free Soilers--Anti-slavery progress--Election of
Banks as Speaker--Call for a Republican National Convention at
Pittsburg--Organization of the party--The Philadelphia convention
and its platform--Nomination of Fremont--Know-Nothing and Whig
nominations--Democratic nomination and platform--The grand issue
of the campaign--The Democratic canvass--The splendid fight for
Fremont--Triumph of Buchanan--Its causes and results--The teaching
of events.
It was early in the year 1853 that a notable fugitive slave case
occurred in Indiana. The alleged fugitive was John Freeman, who
had once resided in Georgia, but for many years had been a resident
of Indianapolis and had never been a slave. The marshal of the
State, though he had voted against the passage of the Fugitive Act
of 1850, entered upon the service of Ellington, the claimant, with
a zeal and alacrity which made him exceedingly odious to anti-
slavery men. He accompanied Ellington into the jail in which
Freeman was confined, and compelled him to expose his shoulders
and legs, so that the witnesses could identify him by certain marks,
and swear according to the pattern, which they did. The case became
critical for Freeman; but the feeling in Indianapolis was so strong
in his favor that a continuance of the hearing was granted to enable
him to prepare his proofs. He hired friends to go to Georgia, who
succeeded in bringing back with them several men who had known him
there many years before, and testified that he was a free man. On
the day of the trial Ellington became the fugitive, while Freeman
was preparing his papers for a prosecution for false imprisonment.
The large crowd in attendance was quite naturally turned into an
anti-slavery meeting, which was made to do good service in the way
of "agitation." The men from Georgia were on the platform, and
while they were complimented by the speakers on their love of
justice and humanity in coming to the rescue of Freeman, no quarter
was given to the Northern serviles and flunkeys who had made haste
to serve the perjured villains who had undertaken to kidnap a
citizen of the State under the forms of an atrocious law. The
meeting was very enthusiastic, and the tables completely turned on
the slave-catching faction.
When President Pierce was inaugurated, on the fourth of March,
1853, the pride and power of the Democratic party seemed to be at
their flood. In his inaugural message he expressed the fervent
hope that the slavery question was "forever at rest," and he
doubtless fully believed that this hope would be realized. In his
annual message, in December following, he lauded the Compromise
measures with great emphasis, and declared that the repose which
they had brought to the country should receive no shock during his
term of office if he could avert it. The anti-slavery element in
the Thirty-third Congress was scarcely as formidable as in the
preceding one, though there were some accessions. Benjamin F. Wade
was now in the Senate, and De Witt of Massachusetts, Gerrit Smith
of New York, and Edward Wade of Ohio, were members of the House.
In the beginning the session gave promise of a quiet one, but on
the twenty-third of January the precious repose of the country, to
which the President had so lovingly referred in his message, was
rudely shocked by the proposition of Senator Douglas to repeal the
Missouri compromise. This surprising demonstration from a leading
friend of the Administration and a champion of the compromise
measures marked a new epoch in the career of slavery, and rekindled
the fires of sectional strife. After a very exciting debate in
both houses, which lasted four months, the measure finally became
a law on the thirtieth of May, 1854. It was a sprout from the
grave of the Wilmot proviso; for if, under the Constitution, it
was the duty of Congress to abandon the policy of restriction in
1850, and provide that Utah and New Mexico should be received into
the Union, with or without slavery, according to the choice of
their people, the Missouri compromise line should never have been
established, and was a rock of offense to the slave-holders. The
Compromise Acts of 1850 had not abrogated that line, and related
only to our Mexican acquisitions; but they had affirmed a principle,
and if that principle was sound, the Missouri restriction was
indefensible. The whole question of slavery was thus reopened,
for the sacredness of the compact of 1820 and the wickedness of
its violation depended largely upon the character of slavery itself,
and our constitutional relations to it.
On all sides the situation was exceedingly critical and peculiar.
The Whigs, in their now practically disbanded condition, were free
to act as they saw fit, and were very indignant at this new
demonstration in the interest of slavery, while they were yet in
no mood to countenance any form of "abolitionism." Multitudes of
Democrats were equally indignant, and were quite ready to join
hands with the Whigs in branding slavery with the violation of its
plighted faith. Both made the sacredness of the bargain of 1820
and the crime of its violation the sole basis of their hostility.
Their hatred of slavery was geographical, spending its force north
of the Missouri restriction. They talked far more eloquently about
the duty of keeping covenants, and the wickedness of reviving
sectional agitation, than the evils of slavery, and the cold-blooded
conspiracy to spread it over an empire of free soil. Their watch-
word and rallying cry was "the restoration of the Missouri compromise";
but this demand was not made merely as a preliminary to other
measures, which would restore the free States to the complete
assertion of their constitutional rights, but as a means of
propitiating the _spirit_ of compromise, and a convenient retreat
to the adjustment acts of 1850 and the "finality" platforms of
1852. In some States and localities the anti-slavery position of
these parties was somewhat broader; but as a general rule the ground
on which they marshaled their forces was substantially what I have
stated.
The position of the Free Soilers was radically different. They
opposed slavery upon principle, and irrespective of any compact or
compromise. They did not demand the restoration of the Missouri
compromise; and although they rejoiced at the popular condemnation
of the perfidy which had repealed it, they regarded it as a false
issue. It was an instrument on which different tunes could be
played. To restore this compromise would prevent the spread of
slavery over soil that was free; but it would re-affirm the binding
obligation of a compact that should never have been made, and from
which we were now offered a favorable opportunity of deliverance.
It would be to recognize slavery as an equal and honorable contracting
party, waiving its violated faith, and thus precluding us from
pleading its perfidy in discharge of all compromises. It would
degrade our cause to the level of those who washed their hands of
all taint of abolitionism, and only waged war against the Administration
because it broke up the blessed reign of peace which descended upon
the country in the year 1850. These Free Soilers insisted that
the breach of this compact was only a single link in a great chain
of measures aiming at the absolute supremacy of slavery in the
Government, and thus inviting a resistance commensurate with that
policy; and that this breach should be made the exodus of the people
from the bondage of all compromises. They argued that to cut down
the issue between slavery and freedom to so narrow, equivocal, and
half-hearted a measure, at a time when every consideration pleaded
for radical and thorough work, was practical infidelity to the
cause and the crisis. It was sporting with humanity, and giving
to the winds a glorious victory for the right when it was within
our grasp.
The situation was complicated by two other political elements.
One of these was Temperance, which now, for the first time, had
become a most absorbing political issue. The "Maine Law" agitation
had reached the West, and the demand of the temperance leaders was
"search, seizure, confiscation, and destruction of liquors kept
for illegal sale." Keenly alive to the evils of drunkenness, and
too impatient to wait for the inevitable conditions of progress,
they thought the great work could be accomplished by a legislative
short-cut. They insisted that the "accursed poison" of the
"rumseller," wherever it could be found, should be poured into the
gutter along with other filth, while he should be marched off to
answer to the charge of a crime against society, and take his rank
among other great offenders. Instead of directing their chief
attack against the appetite for drink and seeking to lessen the
demand, their effort was to destroy the supply. They had evidently
given no thought to the function of civil government in dealing
with the problem, nor did they perceive that the vice of drunkenness
is an effect, quite as much as a cause, having its genesis in the
unequal laws, in the domination of wealth over the poor, in the
lack of general education, in inherited infirmities, physical and
mental, in neglected household training; in a word, in untoward
social conditions which must be radically dealt with before we can
strike with effect at the root of the evil. They did not see that
the temperance question is thus a many-sided one, involving the
general uplifting of society, and that no legislation can avail
much which loses sight of this truth. For these very reasons the
agitation for a time swept everything before it. Its current was
resistless, because it was narrow and impetuous. If the leaders
had comprehended the logic of their work and its unavoidable
limitations, and had only looked forward to the overthrow of the
fabric of intemperance by undermining its foundations, the regular
current of politics would not have been perceptibly affected, while
the way would have been left open for a more perfect union on the
really vital and overshadowing issue of slavery.
The other element referred to made its appearance in the closing
months of 1853, and took the name of the Know-Nothing party. It
was a secret oath-bound political order, and its demand was the
proscription of Catholics and a probation of twenty-one years for
the foreigner as a qualification for the right of suffrage. Its
career was as remarkable as it was disgraceful. Thousands were
made to believe that the Romish hierarchy was about to overthrow
our liberties, and that the evils of "foreignism" had become so
alarming as to justify the extraordinary measures by which it was
proposed to counteract them. Thousands, misled by political knaves
through the arts of the Jesuits believed that the cause of freedom
was to be sanctified and saved by this new thing under the sun.
Thousands, through their unbridled credulity, were persuaded that
political hacks and charlatans were to lose their occupation under
the reign of the new Order, and that our debauched politics were
to be thoroughly purified by the lustration which it promised
forthwith to perform. Thousands, eager to bolt from the old parties,
but fearful of being shot down on the way as deserters, gladly
availed themselves of this newly devised "underground railroad" in
escaping from the service of their old masters. Under these various
influences the Whigs generally, and a large proportion of the Free
Soilers and Democrats, were enlisted in the service of this remarkable
movement. Pretending to herald a new era in our politics in which
the people were to take the helm and expel demagogues and traders
from the ship, it reduced political swindling to the certainty and
system of a science. It drew to itself, as the great festering
centre of corruption, all the known rascalities of the previous
generation, and assigned them to active duty in its service. It
was an embodied lie of the first magnitude, a horrid conspiracy
against decency, the rights of man, and the principle of human
brotherhood.
Its birth, simultaneously with the repeal of the Missouri compromise,
was not an accident, as any one could see who had studied the
tactics of the slave-holders. It was a well-timed scheme to divide
the people of the free States upon trifles and side issues, while
the South remained a unit in defense of its great interest. It
was the cunning attempt to balk and divert the indignation aroused
by the repeal of the Missouri restriction, which else would spend
its force upon the aggressions of slavery; for by thus kindling
the Protestant jealousy of our people against the Pope, and enlisting
them in a crusade against the foreigner, the South could all the
more successfully push forward its schemes.
On this ground, as an anti-slavery man, I opposed it with all my
might from the beginning to the end of its life. For a time it
carried everything with a high hand. It was not only irresistible
in numbers, but it fought in the dark. It pretended to act openly
and in friendly conference with its enemies as to questions which
it had already settled in secret conclave. Its opponents did not
know how to wage war against it, because they did not know who were
their friends. If a meeting was called to expose and denounce its
schemes, it was drowned in the Know-Nothing flood which, at the
appointed time, completely overwhelmed the helpless minority. This
happened in my own county and town, where thousands of men, including
many of my old Free Soil brethren, assembled as an organized mob
to suppress the freedom of speech; and they succeeded by brute
force in taking possession of every building in which their opponents
could meet, and silencing them by savage yells. At one time I
think I had less than a dozen political friends in the State, and
I could see in the glad smile which lighted up the faces of my old-
time enemies that they considered me beyond the reach of political
resurrection. But I never for a moment intermitted my warfare, or
doubted that in the end the truth would be vindicated, although I
did not dream that in less than two years I would be the recognized
leader of the men composing this mob, who would be found denying
their membership of this secret order, or confessing it with shame.
It was a strange dispensation; and no record of independent journalism
was ever more honorable than that of the "New York Tribune" and
"National Era," during their heroic and self-sacrificing fight
against this organized scheme of bigotry and proscription, which
can only be remembered as the crowning and indelible shame of our
politics. It admits of neither defense or palliation, and I am
sorry to find Henry Wilson's "History of the Rise and Fall of the
Slave Power" disfigured by his elaborate efforts to whitewash it
into respectability, and give it a decent place in the records of
the past.
Such were the elements which mingled and commingled in the political
ferment of 1854, and out of which an anti-slavery party was to be
evolved capable of trying conclusions with the perfectly disciplined
power of slavery. The problem was exceedingly difficult, and could
not be solved in a day. The necessary conditions of progress could
not be slighted, and the element of time must necessarily be a
large one in the grand movement which was to come. The dispersion
of the old parties was one thing, but the organization of their
fragments into a new one on a just basis was quite a different
thing. The honor of taking the first step in the formation of the
Republican party belongs to Michigan, where the Whigs and Free
Soilers
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/22959