1856-1857

the Democrats, a result which insured the election of Buchanan. When the results of the November election were known it was found that Buchanan had received altogether 174 electoral votes, as against 114 for Frémont and 8 for Fillmore, and that the Democrats had secured a majority in the next House of Representatives. Buchanan carried, besides Pennsylvania and Indiana, California, Illinois, New Jersey and all the Southern States except Maryland, whose electoral vote was received by Fillmore. The disappointment of the Republicans was bitter, but considering that the party had been organized less than two years, the strength which it had shown was cause for congratulation. Perhaps it was better for the party that Frémont was defeated, for had he been elected it is practically certain that the slave States would have seceded as they had threatened to do, in which case the union would probably have gone to pieces for lack of a wise and vigorous executive to meet the great issue. The defeat of the Republicans postponed secession for another four years, during which period the party developed a man who was to lead them to victory and be ready, when the great issue came, to meet it with wisdom and strength.

J

Chapter XXVII

ADMINISTRATION OF BUCHANAN

1857-1861

I

THE DRED SCOTT DECISION

AMES BUCHANAN was the last President to be elected by the Democrats for nearly thirty years. It is indeed practically

certain that he would have been defeated in 1856 had it not been for the influence of a few able and conservative men in the North like Rufus Choate, who believed that Buchanan's large experience in public affairs, his acknowledged capacity and his conservatism afforded a better guarantee for domestic peace than did the character of Frémont. Buchanan declared shortly after his election that the great object of his administration should be to arrest, if possible, the agitation of the slavery question and to destroy sectional parties.

As Cabinet advisers he chose three men from the North and four from the South, the most distinguished member being the veteran Lewis Cass of Michigan, who was appointed Secretary of State. The new President did not conceal his sympathy with the movement to acquire Cuba, and is said to have declared that "if I can be instrumental in settling the slavery question upon the terms I have mentioned, and then add Cuba to the Union, I shall be willing to give up the ghost and let Breckinridge take the government.” 1 In his inaugural address Buchanan announced that he had determined not to be a candidate for reëlection, and that, therefore, there would be no motive to influence his conduct in administering the government except the desire to serve his country faithfully and conscientiously. The most significant utterance of the address, however, related to the Kansas troubles. On this point he stated that a difference of opinion having arisen in regard

1 Greeley, “American Conflict,” vol. i. p. 278.

1857

to the time when the people of the Territory should decide the question of slavery for themselves, the matter would be speedily and finally settled by the Supreme Court. To this decision, whatever it might be, he said he would cheerfully submit, with all good citizens, although his own opinions were fixed.2

A few days thereafter the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the famous Dred Scott case, a decision which aroused bitter feeling throughout the North and brought the country a step nearer to civil war. Dred Scott was a negro slave who had been taken by his master, an army surgeon, from Missouri to Fort Snelling in what is now Minnesota, a region from which slavery had been forever excluded by the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820. Scott upon his return to Missouri, after two years' residence at Fort Snelling, brought suit in a State court for the recovery of his freedom, alleging that his residence in free territory had operated to divest him of his slave status. The case, after going through the State courts, the highest of which decided against him, was taken by Scott to the United States Circuit Court, where it was decided that although a citizen with capacity to sue in the courts of the United States, his temporary residence in free territory had not operated to make him a free man. Thereupon Scott's counsel appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court, before which the case was twice argued with great thoroughness and learning. At this time the Court was composed of nine members, as now, five of whom were from the slave States and three from the free States, and all were Democrats except two. The Chief Justice whose name is most closely identified with the decision was Roger B. Taney of Maryland. Taney had first come into public notice as the Secretary of the Treasury who had faithfully served Jackson by removing the deposits from the United States Bank. He had also served Jackson as Attorney General and upon the death of Marshall in 1835 was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, He was an able lawyer, a judge of the strictest integrity, but was an old man now approaching his eightieth year, and doubtless flattered himself that on account of the great respect in which the Court was held the slavery question could be settled by a dictum from that august tribunal.

The principal if not the only question before the Court was whether Scott was a citizen of the United States and therefore 2 Richardson, "Messages and Papers of the Presidents,” vol. v. p. 431.

1857

capable of bringing a suit in the courts of the United States; that is, it was a question mainly of jurisdiction. The justices easily agreed that Scott was not a citizen of any State and therefore had no standing in the courts, and that the Circuit Court had erred in entertaining jurisdiction of the case. This done, it was unnecessary to pass judgment upon that part of the opinion of the Circuit Court which related to Scott's status as a slave. At first it was agreed that the opinion of the Court should be confined to the necessary questions involved without discussion of any others, but on account of the pressure brought to bear from the outside upon the Southern members of the Court it was decided to pronounce an opinion upon the constitutional question as to whether Congress had authority to exclude slavery from the Territories, as it had undertaken to do by the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820.

The venerable Chief Justice wrote what has often been considered the opinion of the Court, although each judge read a separate opinion of his own. He reviewed at great length the history of the negro race in America, declared that for more than a century negroes had been regarded as beings of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race; that they had been regarded as having no rights which the white man was bound to respect; that they were bought and sold like any other article of merchandise and that the whole legislative and judicial history of the country showed plainly that they were not intended to be clothed with the rights and privileges of citizenship. His conclusion on this point, therefore, was, that an African whose ancestors had been imported into this country and sold as slaves could not become a member of the political community with all the rights and privileges of citizens, such as the privilege of bringing suit in the courts of the United States. This was all that was necessary to the decision, but the Chief Justice went on to deliver an obiter dictum concerning the power of Congress over slavery in the Territories. On this point he declared that slave property enjoyed the same constitutional protection and guarantees as other property, and that consequently Congress had no more authority to exclude slavery from the Territories than it had to exclude other property. The conclusion from this reasoning was that the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820 was unconstitutional and void and that any citizen. could take slaves into any Territory of United States and hold them as such, in spite of any law of Congress or of the Territory

1857

to the contrary notwithstanding. Six other judges concurred in the opinion of Taney that Scott had no standing in the courts, and that the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820 was unconstitutional.

Justices Curtis and McLean dissented and delivered powerful opinions in support of their views. That of Justice Curtis especially deserves notice. It was a learned historical review of the history of slavery and a searching analysis of the questions at issue. He showed to the entire satisfaction of many that at the time the Federal Constitution was adopted free negroes descended from African slaves were not only regarded as citizens in at least five of the thirteen States, but possessed the right of suffrage on equal terms with white citizens. With regard to the power of Congress over slavery in the Territories, he showed with equal force that that power was intended to be plenary, and cited at least eight instances in which it had been exercised by the prohibition of slavery in such regions. Therefore, to hold the Missouri Act void. was to reverse the whole theory and practice of the government with regard to slavery in the Territories.

But the opinion of the Chief Justice was now looked upon as the law of the land. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had already modified the Missouri Compromise Act by introducing the squatter sovereignty principle, according to which the people of the Territory concerned might permit or prohibit slavery as they wished; but the opinion of the Chief Justice in the Dred Scott case swept away this doctrine. Henceforth, according to him, the Territories must be thrown open to slavery. Neither Congress nor the people of the Territories could exclude it, but both must afford it the same protection as other property received. It goes without saying that the people of the South were enthusiastic over the decision. and the opinion; even Douglas, the indefatigable champion of the now defunct doctrine of squatter sovereignty, endorsed the decision. as one worthy of the unqualified approval of all good citizens, and even asserted that the doctrine of squatter sovereignty could be reconciled with it. Among the Republicans and Free Soilers the judgment was a great disappointment and was widely denounced from pulpit and platform, and through the press of the North. The popular opinion of the more moderate anti-slavery people of the North was sententiously expressed by Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, who was then comparatively unknown outside of his State, when he said, "We think the decision is erroneous. We know the