XXI

THE LAST STRUGGLE OF SLAVERY

DURING the whole of Mr. Buchanan's administration the country was drifting steadily toward civil war. The issue between slavery and anti-slavery was joined at all points. The Dred Scott decision, promulgated by the Supreme Court soon after the new President was inaugurated, sustained the Southerners' contention as to their rights of property so fully as to justify the bitter comment upon it that it made "Slavery national, Freedom sectional." The Republicans would not accept the dictum as final. If the Constitution must be taken to support the view taken by the court, they would refuse to obey the Constitution and follow the "higher law" proclaimed by Seward.

The struggle over Kansas, which had begun in the first year of Pierce's administration, continued under his successor until early in 1861, after secession had begun, when the State was admitted without slavery. The story of the contest fills one of the darkest pages of American political history. It is a record of perfidy and violence. The attempt to force the Lecompton constitution upon the people, under the patronage of the executive department of the government, was matched in baseness by the offer by Congress of a bribe to the people if they would accept it. The South, struggling as it was to maintain the political power of the section and of its social system, and backed by the highest judicial authority in the land, had a technical justification for every claim which it put forth to the possession of Kansas as a field for the extension of slavery. But, on the other hand, the moral sense of the Northern people was outraged by the effort to force slavery upon an unwilling people, and by the repeated violations of good faith which were resorted to in order to make the attempt successful. Kansas had seven governors in five years.

One of them was removed because he would not be made the tool of the pro-slavery party. Another, a

Mississippian, an ex-senator, and Secretary of the Treasury during the whole of Polk's administration, resigned because the President would not keep officially the pledge which he had made verbally to the governor, that the people of Kansas should be allowed to vote on the whole Lecompton constitution.

The line which separated the Republican and the Democratic parties was broad; but there was a great variety of opinion within the ranks of each party. Even the Abolitionists were beginning to think that an organization had been formed which they could join with consistency, one from which they might hope great things. There was a wide difference, nevertheless, between them and the most conservative Republicans, who would not go beyond a firm and decided conviction that slavery could not exist in any Territory in opposition either to the will of Congress or to that of the people of the Territory. But while the Republicans, being a party in opposition, could and did act together, the Democrats were split into two factions. Senator Douglas, who had been a leader for the South in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, revolted against the attempt to force the Lecompton constitution upon the people of Kansas. Public opinion in the North was so strong as to carry almost the whole of the Democratic party of that section with him. In the South he had some followers, and in the North many Democrats opposed his "popular sovereignty " doctrine and accepted the Southern view. The office-holders stood by the administration, which opposed Douglas, with a reasonable apprehension of the consequences of taking another course. No doubt there were many men at the North who were intellectually convinced that the constitutional position assumed in defence of slavery extension was correct; while others were with the administration because it was the administration, and favored the Southern view because the ascendency of slavery as a political power, if secured by their assistance, would give them office and standing in the party.

Since the time of Andrew Jackson the personal qualities of the President had had little influence upon the course of public events. But now the weakness of Mr. Buchanan encouraged the Southern extremists to press their advantage; it made possible the formation of a strong Northern faction in open revolt against administration measures, and it rendered the

Republicans more resolute in their opposition to all the aggressions of slavery. Before the President was inaugurated, many of his moderate Northern supporters had hoped that he would incline toward a conservative policy, and resist the extremists of both sections. They saw him resign himself into the hands of the slavery propagandists and work their will. It is easy to see, after the event, that the conflict, which assumed the form of open war soon after his term closed, was really irrepressible, and that sooner or later it would have come to that, no matter who had been President. Yet there can be no doubt that Buchanan's lack of force hastened the war by sustaining one party in its greatest pretensions, and by goading the other party to more desperate resistance.

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Douglas won the applause of the Republicans by his opposi tion to the administration's programme in Kansas, but he soon showed that his course was not prompted by hostility to slavery. He adhered to his "popular sovereignty" theories, and admitted that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down." The great series of debates between him and Abraham Lincoln, in the canvass of 1858, each of the disputants being the candidate of his party for the Illinois senatorship, brought out in the clearest possible light the wide. difference between even Douglas's Democracy and the conservative Republicanism of Lincoln. Incidentally, while it strengthened Douglas as the favorite of the Northern Democrats for the presidency, it disclosed to the astonished eyes of the Republicans a leader worthy to take rank with the foremost.

The four years' term of Mr. Buchanan was filled with most important events, which tended to embitter politics and to prepare men for the great civil conflict that was impending. Beside those already mentioned, the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry was the most startling. The tragic death of Senator Broderick, of California, a supporter of Douglas, in a duel with an adherent of the administration, stirred the people of the North profoundly. These occurrences and many others which cannot even be mentioned kept the popular pulse beating fast, and indicated to those who could read the signs of the times the profound crisis in the health of the body politic which was soon to come. There were large numbers of men, North and South, who observed the growing strife between the two sections of the country with almost agonized sorrow. Beside the old Whigs, whom time in its rapid flight had left

behind the age, and the Native Americans of the South, who hated the Democrats, and yet could not join the Republican party, there were hosts of well-meaning men, all over the country, who feared that the bitter conflict would end in war. They deemed it a duty to the Union to endeavor to restore harmony. In the North they feared disunion more than they feared slavery; in the South they hated disunion almost as much as they hated abolition. The several elements mentioned above became temporarily united in the Constitutional Union party, as patriotic a party as was ever organized, but one which could not succeed in its mission because the time had come when the self-preservation of the South, as a political power, and the moral sense of the North, demanded that the pending question be settled finally and forever.

A series of momentous conventions began when the delegates of the Democratic party assembled at Charleston, South Carolina, on the 23d of April, 1860. There was a full delegation from every State of the Union, and contesting delegations appeared from New York and Illinois. In New York the "hards," led by Fernando Wood, had been elected by districts; while the 66 softs," "who were favorable to Senator Douglas, were chosen by a state convention, which met at Syracuse in the autumn of 1859. The two Illinois delegations were respectively for and against Mr. Douglas. As soon as Mr. Francis B. Flournoy, of Arkansas, had taken the chair as temporary presiding officer of the convention, an angry debate began upon the contested seats, for the national committee had given tickets of admission, in each case, to the Douglas delegates, and had shut out their opponents.

On the first day of the convention nothing was done except to appoint committees. On the second day Mr. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, was made the permanent presiding officer; a committee on resolutions was appointed; and it was voted not to vote for candidates of the party until a platform had been adopted. The third day was occupied in deciding the contests for seats, - in favor of the New York "softs," and the Douglas men from Illinois. It was only on the 27th of April, the fifth day of the convention, that the committee on resolutions reported to the assembly a majority and two or three minority sets of resolutions. Two days of fierce debate, and of numerous propositions to amend, followed; and, on the 28th, a motion was carried to recommit the whole subject to the committee.

Later on the same day the committee reported back a series of resolutions, asserting, as the previous majority report had done, the extreme Southern view of the question of slavery in the Territories. These resolutions were subsequently adopted by the convention of seceders some months later, and will be found on page 287. A minority report was presented, which, although signed by less than one half of the members of the platform committee, represented more than one half the electoral votes of the whole country. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, who throughout the convention occupied an attitude peculiar to himself, presented a second minority report, which consisted of the Cincinnati platform of 1856, without any change whatever. Much debate, and a determined effort to postpone the vote on the substitution of the minority reports, followed; but on Monday, the 30th, a vote was reached. General Butler's platform was rejected, by yeas 105, nays 198. The minority resolutions presented by Mr. Samuels, of Iowa, were then substituted for those of the majority, by 165 to 138. These resolutions were in the following terms:

1. Resolved, That we, the Democracy of the Union, in convention assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolutions unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles by the Democratic convention at Cincinnati in the year 1856, believing that Democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature when applied to the same subject-matters; and we recommend as the only further resolutions the following:

Inasmuch as differences of opinion exist in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a territorial legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress, under the Constitution of the United States, over the institution of slavery within the Territories,

2. Resolved, That the Democratic party will abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on the questions of constitutional law.

3. Resolved, That it is the duty of the United States to afford ample and complete protection to all its citizens, whether at home or abroad, and whether native or foreign.

4. Resolved, That one of the necessities of the age, in a military, commercial, and postal point of view, is speedy communication between the Atlantic and Pacific States; and the Democratic party pledge such constitutional government aid as will insure the construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast at the earliest practicable period.