r
|i
r
HISTORY
OF THE
NITED STATES
FROM
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850
BY
JAMES FORD RHODES
VOL. I
IS5O-IS54-
NEW YORK
ARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1899
E
\
v.
Copyright, 1892, by JAMES FORD RHODES.
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Introduction 1
Negro slaves brought to Virginia 3
Growth of slavery 3
Introduction of slavery into Georgia 5
Slavery in the northern colonies 6
English opinion of slavery and the slave-trade 7
Creditable attitude of Virginia towards slavery 8
Decision of Lord Mansfield 9
Washington's and Jefferson's opinions of slavery 10
. Franklin's opinion of slavery 11
Extent of the slave-trade 11
The Declaration of Independence 12
Slavery in the Revolutionary War 13
Legislation of Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. 14
Jefferson Ordinance of 1784 15
0-linance of 1787 16
- Slavery and the Constitution 17
America in advance of Europe in moral attitude towards slavery 20
Washington as a slave-holder, and his opinion of slavery. ..... 21
Position of Hamilton and Madison 21
Jefferson and John Adams 22
Slavery question in the First Congress 23
The first Fugitive Slave law, 1793 24
Eifecl or i e invention of the cotton-gin 25
iv CONTENTS
Purchase of Louisiana 27
Belief in 1804 that slavery was diminishing in power 28
Prohibition of the foreign slave-trade 29
The question of the admission of Missouri 30
Growing importance of the Senate 33
Speech of William Pinkney 34
<\ The Missouri Compromise 36
The Missouri Compromise, a political necessity 38
Beginning of the Nullification trouble 40
John C. Calhoun
^& Debate between Webster and Hayne
fjjpCTtlhoun and Nullification
Nullification Ordinance of South Carolina
Compromise Tariff of 1833 49
Debate between WTebster and Calhoun 50
William Lloyd Garrison and the Liberator 5->
The Nat Turner Insurrection 5(5
Southern excitement regarding the abolitionist movement.... 57
American Anti-slavery Society 5,)
Mob violence at the North directed against the abolitionists.. 61
The influence of Garrison 6f;
Dr. Channing on " Slavery " 04
The President and Congress on publications of the abolitionists 6V
—••Change in Southern sentiment regarding slavery 68
John Quincy Adams 60
Webster's description of Northern sentiment on slavery 72
•—Growth of abolition sentiments 73
—-Character of the abolitionists 75
Texas question 75
Webster on Texas annexation 77
President Tyler and Texas annexation 78
Calhoun and Texas .... 8 )
Clay and Polk b<>
Annexation of Texas by joint resolution 85
Oregon question
The Mexican War
The Wilmot Proviso.. 90
CONTENTS V
Peace with Mexico, and acquisition of New Mexico and Cali-
fornia 93
*- TKe Calhoun theory $*)
i--The question of slavery in the territories 95
CHAPTER II
Zachary Taylor 99
"To the Victors belong the Spoils" 101
Fillmore and Seward 101
Taylor's ideas of the civil service 102
Nathaniel Hawthorne 103
John C. Calhoun 104
Southern sentiment 105
Northern sentiment 107
President Taylor's position 109
California Ill
Calif ornians form a State government and prohibit slavery. . . 115
Public sentiment on the assembling of Congress, December,
1849 116
Cobb of Georgia elected speaker 117
The President's message 119
The Senate of 1849-50 119
Henry Clay 120
Clay's plan of Compromise 122
Clay's speech 123
T'.ie rendition of fugitive slaves discussed 125
Calhoun's speech 127
Was the Union in danger in 1850? *. . 131
General Taylor 133
The real danger to the Union discussed 135
Daniel Webster 137
Webster's 7th-of-March speech 144
The 7th-of-March speech discussed 149
Reception by the country of the 7th-of-March speech 154
The altered verdict on the character of Webster discussed.. . . Q57
Webster and Burke compared <16CT
William H. Seward. . . . H>2
vi CONTENTS
Seward's speech
Seward's speech discussed
The debate on the Compromise Measures
Benton and Foote 169
The Committee of Thirteen 171
The Nashville convention 173
The position of the administration 175
Illness and death of President Taylor 175
Millard Fillmore : 178
State government formed in New Mexico 180
Compromise Measures
Compromise completed
Fugitive Slave law 185
reason of its enactment 187
Fillmore and the Fugitive Slave law 188
The Compromise discussed 189/
Clay and Webster 190
Seward and Chase 192
fNorthern sentiment 194
I Southern sentiment • 196
I Northern sentiment on the Fugitive Slave law 196
CHAPTER III
The Clayton-Bulwer treaty 199
The Galphin Claim 202
The Hiilsemann letter 205
The finality of the Compromise 207
The Fugitive Slave law 207
The rescue of Shadrach 209
The rendition of Sims 211
Proclamation by vigilance committee 212
Faneuil Hall refused for a reception to Webster 213
Allen's attack on Webster 213
Reduction of rates of postage 215
The Lopez expedition to Cuba < 216
Riot in New Orleans 220
The working of the Fugitive Slave law . 222
CONTENTS yii
The " Jerry Kescue " 224
Southern sentiment 226
Charles Sumner 227
Benjamin F. Wade , 228
The Thirty-second Congress 229
Kossuth 231
The finality of the Compromise 243
The Democratic national convention of 1852 244
Lewis Cass 244
Stephen A. Douglas 244
James Buchanan 246
Marcy 246
Proceedings of the convention 247
Nomination of Pierce 248
Character of Pierce 249
The Whig national convention of 1852 252
Speech of Ruf us Choate 254
Nomination of Scott 256
Why Webster was not nominated 257
Character of Scott 259
Disappointment of Webster 260
Death of Clay 261
Disaffection to Scott 262
Democratic enthusiasm for Pierce 264
Sumner and the Fugitive Slave law 265
The Presidential campaign of 1852 269
Tour of Scott through the country 274
Election of Pierce 277
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 278
Death of Webster 285
Theodore Parker 288
Edward Everett 291
Everett's letter on the Cuban question 294
Fillmore 296
Thomas Corwin 298
Fillmore's administration . 301
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
Slavery 303
Frederic Law Olmsted 303
Cost of keeping slaves 305
Overseers 307
Negro regarded merely as property 308
Women under slavery 310
Cotton and slavery 311
The value of slaves 314
The breeding of slaves for market 315
Slaves were chattels ' 318
Slave auction 319
The domestic slave-trade -. 323
The flogging of slaves 325
Legislation forbidding the education of slaves 327
Religious teaching 329
Intellectual and moral condition of the slaves 333
The house servants 334
Amalgamation 335
Morals of slavery 336
The mulattoes 339
Effect of slavery on white children 343
The poor whites 344
The Southern oligarchy 345
The Southern aristocracy 347
Lack of comfort among the mass of slave-holders 349
Lack of schools 350
Criticism of Northern school-books 350
Criticism of Northern literature 352
Material prosperity of the North and the South 354
Differences between the North and the South 350
The virtues of the Southern aristocracy 359
The disadvantages of Southern society 361
" Uncle Tom's Cabin "...". 363
Southern defence of slaverv 365
European opinions 373
CONTENTS ix
Southern description of slavery 374
Denial of free speech at the South 375
Fear of slave risings 376
Fugitive slaves ., . . 378
The judgment of history on the Southern men 379
Jefferson, Calhoun, and Jefferson Davis 379
Reflections 380
CHAPTER V
Inauguration of Franklin Pierce 384
Formation of the cabinet 387
Jefferson Davis 388
Caleb Gushing 390
Buchanan 393
Soule 394
Hawthorne 396
Office-seeking 399
The yellow fever at New Orleans 400
The Crystal Palace Exhibition 414
The case of Martin Koszta 416
Standing of Pierce at the close of 1853 419
The Thirty-third Congress 421
Stephen A. Douglas 424
irw^)ouglas's report on Nebraska Territory 425
Political repose, January 1st, 1854, disturbed by Douglas .... 428
The amendment of Dixon 433
Interview of Douglas with Dixon 434
Douglas consults the President 437
***nie Kansas-Nebraska bill 439
The Appeal of the Independent Democrats 441
Douglas's speech 444
Chase's speech 448
Wade's retort to Badger 452
Seward's speech 453
Sumner's speech 454
Everett's speech 455
Cass's position 458
x CONTENTS
— • Differing constructions of the Kansas-Nebraska bill 459
Douglas's parliamentary management 461
Chase, the leader of the opposition 462
Public sentiment as seen in the press 463
Public sentiment as seen in public meetings 465
Public sentiment as seen by action of State legislatures 467
*"**Petitions against the Kansas-Nebraska act 468
"•"Southern sentiment , 468
Douglas's closing speech 470
^— The vote on the Kansas-Nebraska bill 475
" Popular Sovereignty " 477
The petition of the clergymen 477
j The Kansas-Nebraska bill in the House 480
j The Kansas-Nebraska bill passed
I The Kansas-Nebraska bill discussed
Power and influence of Douglas 491
Character of Douglas 492
Northern sentiment 494
Southern sentiment 496
The Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the Fugitive Slave law 498
The Burns case . . . 500
HISTORY OF
THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER I
MY design is to write the history of the United States
from the introduction of the compromise measures of 1850
down to the inauguration of Grover Cleveland, thirty-five
years later. This period, the brief space of a generation,
was an era big with fate for our country, and for the Amer-
ican must remain fraught with the same interest that the
war of the Peloponnesus had for the ancient Greek, or the
struggle between the Cavalier and the Puritan has for
their descendants. It ranks next in importance to the
formative period — to the declaration and conquest of inde-
pendence and the adoption of the Constitution ; and Lincoln
and his age are as closely identified with the preservation
of the government as "Washington and the events which he
more than any other man controlled are associated with the
establishment of the nation. The civil war, described by
the great German historian whose genius has illuminated
the history of Rome as " the mightiest struggle and most
glorious victory as yet recorded in human annals," l is one of
1 History of Rome, Mommsen, vol. iv. p. 558.
I.-l
2 INTRODUCTION [Cn. I.
those gigantic events whose causes, action, and sequences
will be of perennial concern to him who seeks the wisdom
underlying the march of history. While we now clearly
see that the conflict between two opposing principles caus-
ing the struggle that led to the Missouri Compromise, and
renewed from time to time after that settlement, was des-
tined to result in the overthrow of one or the other, yet it
was not until the eleven years preceding the appeal to arms
that the question of negro slavery engrossed the whole at-
tention of the country. It then became the absorbing con-
troversy in Congress, and dominated all political contests;
the issue came home to every thinking citizen, and grew to
be the paramount political topic discussed in the city mart,
the village store, and the artisan's workshop. It was less
than three years before the secession of South Carolina that
Seward described our condition as "an irrepressible con-
flict," and Lincoln likened it to a house divided against
itself that could not stand. It is not difficult to trace the
different manifestations of the opposing principles in these
years. The signs of the times are so plain that he who runs
may read them.
It will be my aim to recount the causes of the triumph
of the Kepublican party in the presidential election of 1860,
and to make clear how the revolution in public opinion was
brought about that led to this result. Under a consti-
tutional government, the history of political parties is the
civil history of the country. I shall have to relate the down-
fall of the Whig party, the formation of the Kepublican,
and the defeat of the Democratic party, that, with brief in-
termissions, had conducted the affairs of the government
from the election of Jefferson, its founder and first Presi-
dent. The year that this party returned to power under
the leadership of Grover Cleveland is a fitting close of this
historical inquiry ; for by that time the great questions
which had their origin in the war had been settled as far as
they could be by legislation or executive direction. Time
only, that old common arbitrator, could do the rest. It is
CH. I.] NEGRO SLAVES BROUGHT TO VIRGINIA 3
noteworthy that when the Democrats regained the national
administration, it was under a leader in no way identified
with the position of his party on the issues of slavery and
the war. His nomination was an admission that the old
questions were settled; his election showed the belief by
the people that the Democratic party could be safely trust-
ed to cope with the administrative and economical problems
that were likely henceforward to engage the attention of
the country.
The compromise measures of 1850 wer^ a. p.nmpromisp.
jvith slavery and tha-last-of those settlemen.ts.,i.Iiat_well-
^jmeaning and patriotic men from both sides nLMason .and
Dixon's line were wont to devise when the slavervjg ues-
tion made un wj3lcome_intrusi on. To know the reason
-~Gfr7^$(^^ their Rcopp and
purpose, a retrospect is necessary of so much of the his-
tory nf_onr country a<a fpjqf.pp to the slavery question in
slaves, as is generally known, were brought to Vir-
ginia in the infancy of the colony. For fifty years after
the landing of the first cargo at Jamestown only a few ne-
groes were imported. But America had large new tracts of
land and few agricultural settlers; and these economical
conditions and the moral attitude of Christendom being
given, slavery was in the natural course of things certain to
be extended.1 At first the rigor of the law was aimed at
the restraint of intermarriage and of illicit intercourse be-
tween the races: public whipping, and admonition in the
church, were visited upon the guilty white man.8 But tow-
ards the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the laws
1 See Society in America, Harriet Martineau, vol. i. p. 347.
2 Short History of Euglish Colonies, Lodge, p. 67 ; History of United
States, Hildreth, vol. i. p. 521 ; vol. ii. pp. 178, 429 ; Hening, The Statutes
at Large. Being a Collection of the Laws of Virginia from 1619-1792.
Vol. i. pp. 146, 552 ; vol. ii. p. 170.
4 SLAVERY IN SOUTH CAROLINA [Cn. I.
of the colonies began to be stringent, foreshadowing in
their severity the inhuman slave codes of the Southern
States under the Union ; yet while the Virginia slave legis-
lation was ferocious, the custom was more lenient than the
law.1 In South Carolina, however, the advantage of negro
labor might be seen at its best, for it had a climate better
suited to the African than the northern colonies, and it was,
moreover, essentially a planting state. The rice plant had
at an early period been introduced from Madagascar, and
the rice of Carolina was soon esteemed the best in the
world. The cultivation of rice and indigo was unhealthy
but highly remunerative labor, and it became the great ob-
ject of the emigrant " to buy negro slaves, without which,"
the Secretary to the proprietors of Carolina wrote, " a
planter can never do any great matter."2 In less than a
century after the settlement of South Carolina, capital in-
vested in planting could easily be doubled in three or four
years. The mechanic left his trade and the merchant his
business to devote themselves to agriculture.3 Slaves could
be bought for about forty pounds each, and as they pro-
duced in twelve months more than enough rice and indigo
to pay their entire cost, they were a profitable investment,
and the temptation was great to work them beyond their
physical endurance. The plantersjiyed in fear of a rising
?re,jmd_the legislation regarding the slaves was
Jiarsh ami .cruel. TheTlegradatton "of the negroes was great ;
dispensing for the most part with the ceremony of marriage,
jhheir sfyynal mla-tinns -\vm?fi ..Innso. and irregular.4
In the neighboring colony of Georgia, the last of the thir-
1 Lodge, p. 69.
a An Account of the Province of Carolina, London, 1682, cited from
the Historical Collections of South Carolina, by B. R. Carroll, vol. ii.
p. 33.
8 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 392. The edition used is that of Appleton & Co.,
1887, having the author's last revision. South Carolina was settled in
1670.
* Lodge, p. 182.
CH. I.] SLAVERY IN GEORGIA 5
teen to be settled, the introduction of slaves was prohibited.
Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony, said : " Slavery is
against the Gospel as well as the fundamental law of Eng-
land. We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting
such a horrid crime." ! But the promised lucrative 'returns
from negro labor were more powerful than respect for the
law, and the Georgia planters began to hire slaves from
Carolina. It was not long before slaves direct from Africa
were landed at Savannah, while the laws against their in-
troduction ceased to be observed. Whitefield, believing
slavery an ordinance of God, designed for the eventual good
of the African, and also having an eye to its present advan-
tage to the colonist, argued earnestly for the introduction of
slaves into Georgia;2 and his practice conformed to his doc-
trine, for he bought a plantation on which, at the time of his
death, there were seventy-five slaves ; these he bequeathed
to a lady whom he called one of the " elect." 3 The Meth-
odist evangelist acted in consistency with the age, and so
did his contemporary, Jonathan Edwards, the exponent of
Calvinism in New England, who left, among other property,
a negro boy. Nor did the pure life and liberal opinions of
Bishop Berkeley lead him to a position on slavery in advance
1 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 287. s Ibid., p. 299.
8 Life and Times of John Wesley, Tyerman. In this work a curious
letter from Whitefield in 1751 is printed, from which I make the fol-
lowing extracts : " As for the lawfulness of keeping slaves I have no
doubt. It is plain hot countries cannot be cultivated without negroes.
What a flourishing country Georgia might have been, had the use of
them been permitted years ago. . . . Though it is true they are brought
in a wrong way from their own country, and it is a trade not to be ap-
proved of, yet as it will be carried on whether we will or not, I should
think myself highly favored if I could purchase a good number of them
in order to make their lives comfortable, and lay a foundation for breed-
ing up their posterity in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I had
no hand in bringing them into Georgia, though my judgment was for it.
... It rejoiced my soul to hear that one of my poor negroes in Carolina
was made a brother in Christ."
Q SLAVERY AT THE NORTH [On. I.
of his time. He conformed to the practice of the best peo-
ple and held slaves.1
Farther northward, slavery appeared stripped of some of
its evils. The treatment of the negroes was more humane,
and legislation secured them a greater degree of personal
protection. In the colonies that afterwards became the
Middle States they were rarely worked as field hands, and
though sometimes employed in the iron furnaces and forges
of Pennsylvania,2 their chief use was as domestic servants.
In New York it was deemed a mitigation of punishment
that refractory slaves, instead of being whipped, were sold
for the "West Indian market. In New England slavery was
not a prominent feature except in Rhode Island, where New-
port was largely engaged in the slave-trade ; and at the out-
break of the Eevolution, when one in fifty of the popula-
tion of New England were slaves, the general tendency of
public opinion was against the institution. The laws in
regard to the slaves were mild, and limited their punish-
ment; they were invariably employed as house-servants,
and were taught to read the Bible.3
In the colonies where moral feeling was not stifled by
golden returns from the culture of rice and tobacco by
slave labor, and where slaves were rather a domestic conven-
ience than a planter's necessity, the notion that the practice
was an evil began to make itself manifest. The legislators
of the Providence Colony, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, enacted that no negro should be held to perpetual
service, but that all slaves should be set free at the end of
ten years ; yet the law was not enforced, for it was far in
advance of public sentiment.4 William Penn made earnest
though unavailing eiforts to improve the mental and moral
condition of the negroes and to secure a decent respect for
1 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Lecky, vol. ii. p. 17.
2 Iron in all Ages, Swank, p. 143.
8 Lodge, p. 442 ; Hildreth, vol. ii. p. 419.
* Bancroft, vol. i. p. 293.
CH. I] ENGLISH OPINION OF SLAVERY 7
their family relations ; in his last will he directed that his
o\vn slaves should be given their freedom. In 1688 a so-
ciety of German Friends, who had left the country of the
Ehine to enjoy the freedom of their religion under the
Quaker law-giver, passed a solemn resolution declaring
that it was not lawful for Christians to buy or hold negro
slaves.1
Yet these did little to stem the current of opinion that,
sustained by official and royal favor, rated the negro
simply at his money- value as merchandise. "William III.,
though establishing religious liberty and a constitutional
government in England, was not in advance of his age in
his views of the slave-trade. One of the early royal instruc-
tions issued in the name of William and Mary enjoined the
colonial governors to keep open the market for salable ne-
groes, and in the same reign an act of Parliament declared
that " the trade is highly beneficial and advantageous to the
kingdom and colonies." 2 Before and during the war of the
Spanish Succession, with which the eighteenth century be-
gins, the English government did its best for the protection
of the negro traffic ; it issued mandates to the Governor of
New York and other governors to provide " a constant and
sufficient supply of merchantable negroes." 3 Of the utmost
significance was the treaty of Utrecht (1713), made at the
close of this war. By compact with Spain, it provided that
England should have the monopoly of supplying negro slaves
to the Spanish- American provinces. The company formed
to carry out the contract promised such enormous profits
that Queen Anne reserved for herself one-quarter of the
common stock ; and it is noteworthy that almost the only
feature of the treaty that gave general satisfaction in Eng-
land was the article that encouraged the "kidnapping of
tens of thousands of negroes, and their consignment to the
most miserable slavery." 4 But all of the best minds of Eng-
1 Bancroft, vol. i. p. 572. a Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 77, 278.
3 Ibid., p. 209. * Lecky's England, vol. i. p. 138.
8 ATTITUDE OF VIRGINIA [Cn. I.
land were not of this way of thinking. Baxter, the Chris-
tian patriot, had in the previous century reminded the slave-
holder that the slave " was of as good a kind as himself,
born to as much liberty, by nature his equal ;" and it is a
grateful remembrance to lovers of English literature that
Addison and Steele protested against the inhumanity of
holding in bondage the African.1
Virginia for many years took a creditable attitude tow-
ards the question of slavery, although it is probable that
before the Kevolution negro labor was for her an instru-
ment of wealth. By the middle of the eighteenth century
a large number in this colony favored the prohibition of the
slave-trade;2 and this opinion, which with some undoubt-
edly had a moral prompting, was fostered by alarm at the
growing number of blacks, especially excited during the
French and Indian War. " The negro slaves have been very
audacious on the news of the defeat on the Ohio," wrote
Governor Dinwiddie to the home administration after Brad-
dock's defeat in 1755. " These poor creatures imagine the
French will give them their freedom. We. have too many
here."3 Six years later the Virginia Assembly imposed a
high duty on imported slaves, which it was hoped would be
prohibitory, but this act was vetoed by England;4 and in
17YO King George III. instructed the Governor of Virginia,
" upon the pain of the highest displeasure, to assent to no
law by which the importation of slaves should be in any
respect prohibited or obstructed."5 At this time Virginia,
Maryland, and the Northern colonies favored strongly put-
ting a stop to the foreign slave-trade ; and this feeling showed
itself in Virginia by a strong and respectful remonstrance
against the royal instructions, in which she had the sympa-
1 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 277.
1 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 394.
8 Montcalm and Wolfe, Parkman, vol. i. p. 229.
4 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 550; see Hildreth, vol. ii. p. 494.
5 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 410; Order in council of Dec. 9th, 1770.
Ce. L] LORD MANSFIELD'S DECISION 9
thy of almost all of her sister colonies.1 But while the peo-
ple of the Old Dominion were willing to prohibit the traffic
in human beings from Africa, to give their own negroes free-
dom was a different matter, and, while assenting without
dispute to the doctrine that slavery in the abstract was
wrong, they held that any question of its abolition should
be postponed to a more convenient season. By no one is
this contradiction between speculation and practice more
frankly and clearly stated than by Patrick Henry in the
oft-quoted letter written two years before his memorable
oration.2
When the question of freedom and slavery was at issue,
the English judiciary had early been on the side of freedom.
Chief Justice Holt had, in 1697, affirmed that " as soon as a
negro comes into England he is free ;" and, in 1702, that " in
England there is no such thing as a slave."3 But public
sentiment lagged behind the law, and later received the seal
of an extra-judicial opinion, which in practice permitted
American planters to bring their negroes to England and
hold them there as slaves.4 The Sommersett case, in which
the question of such a right was involved, came before the
Court of King's Bench in 1772, and Lord Mansfield delivered
the opinion. He declared that slavery was of such a nature
that it could only be presumed to exist in a country where it
took its rise from positive law, and consequently it was a
state contrary to law in England.5 This decision, crystal-
1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 410 ; Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1770-1772,
p. 600.
2 See Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 412; Life of Henry Clay, Sclmrz, vol. i. p.
39 ; Hildreth, vol. iii. p. 393.
3 Holt's Reports, 495 ; Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. ii.
pp. 138, 139; see also Hildreth, vol. ii. pp. 125, 214.
4 Hildreth, vol. ii. p. 426.
5 Constitutional History of England, May, vol. ii. p. 273. He remarks:
"It was a righteous judgment; but scarcely worthy of the extravagant
commendation bestowed upon it at that time and since. This boasted
law, as declared by Lord Mansfield, was already recognized in France,
10 JEFFERSON AND WASHINGTON [On. I.
lizing a sentiment of humanity, was destined always to re-
main an honor to the great judge and his country's juris-
prudence. It was a decision of prime importance to the
English-speaking communities, who are more influenced by
the dicta of high courts than by the assertion, however
eloquent, of general ideas of abstract justice. There had
been incomplete and unenforced legislation favoring the
slave and judicial decisions unrespected, but no authority of
such weight as Chief Justice Mansfield and his court had
pronounced in terms which could not be misunderstood that
henceforward, in one country governed by English law, free-
dom should be the invariable rule.
While Whitefield was conducting his Georgia plantation
in the fashion of the time, John "Wesley, having pondered
deeply on the cruelty of slavery as he had seen it in Amer-
ica, characterized the slave-trade as " that execrable sum of
all villainies ;" and in his " Thoughts on Slavery " denounced
the practice in unmeasured terms. At-jhe same time., Jef-
fejs^n^oiitm^Trpffiiofis-that would have made him an abo-
Jitjormt ha,d he. lijredjii 1860, gay^e^r^sI0jOi£therarin his
draft of instructions for Virginia's delegates to the first Con-
gress of the Colonies, which was called to meet at Philadel-
phia in 1774. The abolition of slavery, he wrote, is the great
object of desire in the colonies. " But previous to the en-
franchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude
any further importations from Africa." To that end the
repeated endeavors of Virginia had been directed ; but every
such law had been vetoed by the king himself, who thus pre-
ferred the advantage of " a few British corsairs to the lasting
interest of the American States and to the rights of human
nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice." ' Wash-
ington_shared the ideas of Jefferson. He presided atTlie
Fairfax County Convention, and took part in framing the
Holland, and some other European countries; and as yet England had
shown no symptoms of compassion for the negro beyond her own shores."
1 Life of Jefferson, Parton, p. 138; Jefferson's Works, vol. i. p. 135.
CH. I] FRANKLIN— DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE n
resolves then adopted, one of which declared " that no slaves
ought to be imported into any of the British colonies," and
expressed " the most earnest wishes to see an entire stop
forever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural tr,ade." '
Franklin, as wise as he was humane, boldly argued in the
C9ngress of 17Y6 that " slaves rather weaken than strength-
en tEe^aTeT^^^ancl that memorable body resolved " that no
slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies." 3
The evil was appreciated, and the large majority of delegates
felt that slavery ought to be restricted. It is estimated that
already there had been brought into the colonies 300,000
slaves, and the blacks constituted one-fifth of the total pop-
ulation,4 a larger proportion than has obtained at any sub-
sequent period.5 Yet these figures do not measure the ex-
tent of the slave-trade. For the century previous to_17Y8
Enlish anjLf rrlminl flii hrul f>nrriH t- th- W-*4ft4f
the English contipfinta.1 ^nlr>T|ipg ngjirly three million
Ajgimrter^of a million more had been bought in Africa, had
died of cruel treatment during the passage, and had been
thrown into the Atlantic.6
Burke boldly stated in the House of Commons that the
refusal of America to deal any more in the inhuman traffic
of negro slaves was one of the causes of her quarrel with
Great Britain.7 In the original draft of the Declaration of
Independence, Jefferson gave expression to the same idea.
One of his articles of indictment against George III. was :
" He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, vio-
1 Life and Writings of Washington, Sparks, vol. ii. p. 494.
2 Life of Franklin, Parton, vol. ii. p. 130. 3 Bancroft, vol. iv. p. 338.
* Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 274, 390. See also Burke's Speech on Conciliation
with America.
5 This is based on the figures of 1770; see Bancroft; also F. A. Walk-
er's article in The Forum for July, 1891.
6 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 277.
7 Cited in Hodgson's North America, vol. i. p. 57. Burke's Speech on
Conciliation with America. Burke's Works, London edition of 1815, vol.
iii. pp. 67, 68.
12 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE [On. I.
lating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the per-
sons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating
and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to
incur miserable death in the transportation thither. . . . De-
termined to keep open a market where men should be bought
and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execra-
ble commerce." This passage, however, was struck out,
Jefferson explained, " in compliance to South Carolina and
Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importa-
tion of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to con-
tinue it. Our Northern brethren also. I believe, felt a little
tender under these censures ; for though their people had
very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty con-
siderable carriers of them to others." '
" We hold," said the Congress of 1776, in the Declaration
of Independence, " these truths to be self-evident : that all
men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Cre-
ator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This clause-cre-
ated as much^discussion during all tfrft yptara of_tbjijj?1.a.vftry
_^[i-been_4iajdL_iif our organic law. The
abolitionists, and afterwards the Republicans, asserted that
it proved the solemn and deliberate belief of our Revolution-
ary fathers to be that all men were entitled to their free-
dom ; while, on the other hand, the apologists for slavery
maintained that, in the minds of the illustrious author and his
colleagues, the words " all men " certainly did not include the
African race ; and a very clever argument to this effect was
made by Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision.2
The affirmation by slaveholders of the equality of man
is an inconsistency which cannot be denied.3 But as Jef-
1 Jefferson's Autobiography. Works, vol. i. p. 19.
2 Infra, Chap. IX.
3 " The grotesque absurdity of slave-owners signing a Declaration of
Independence, which asserted the inalienable right of every man to lib-
erty and equality."— Lecky's England, vol. vi. p. 282.
CH. I.] THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR 13
ferson and the Southerners who endorsed his words were in
speculation far in advance of the social practice of their time,
as they believed that their prohibition of the slave-trade
would so curtail slavery that it would eventually die out, and
as they little dreamed of the economical and political condi-
tions that were destined to fasten it upon the South, the in-
consistency was not so glaring as it appears to posterity.1
During the Kevolutionary War, the slavery question is
almost lost sight of in the struggle for independent nation-
ality. Free negroes took part in the battle of Bunker Hill;
and although a little later it was decided that colored men
would not be accepted as enlisted soldiers, Washington re-
versed this decision, and they served in the American army
at every subsequent period of the war.2 The royal Gov-
ernor of Virginia tried to excite the slaves to revolt against
their masters by promising them their freedom, but had
little success. Their Northern brethren desired liberty more
ardently, as, during the victorious progress of Howe's army
through Pennsylvania, the slaves prayed for his success,
believing that he would set them free.3 A scheme for the
general enfranchisement of the slaves, with a view to di-
minish the aristocratic spirit of the Virginian and Southern
colonists, was the subject of discussion in Parliament ; but
Burke reminded his Tory hearers that this was a game two
could play at, and the American master might " arm servile
hands in defence of freedom." 4 The great statesman spoke
wisely. In Khode Island the slaves were emancipated by
law on the condition of their enlistment in the army for
the war, and this project had the full approval of Wash-
ington.6 At a later day, the question of arming the blacks
1 See Justice Curtis on this, infra, Chap. IX., and Lincoln, Chap. IX.
8 Bancroft, vol. iv. pp. 223, 322; Sparks, vol. iii. p. 218.
s Bancroft, vol. v. p. 180.
* Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Works, Bonn's edi-
tion, vol. i. p. 475.
6 Bancroft, vol. v. p, 219,
14 VERMONT, PENNSYLVANIA, MASSACHUSETTS [On. I.
in Carolina was seriously discussed, and the policy was
warmly recommended to Congress by Hamilton ; but as a
matter of policy it was disapproved of by Washington.
He argued : " Should we begin to form battalions of them,
I have not the smallest doubt " the British would " follow
us in it, and justify the measure upon our own ground. The
contest then must be, who can arm fastest. And where
are our arms ?" 1
The year following the Declaration of Independence, Ver-
mont separated from New York and framed a State con-
stitution, in which slavery was forbidden forever; but of
the original thirteen colonies, Pennsylvania was the first
to take steps to abolish the system, the Assembly voting
in 1Y80 a scheme of gradual emancipation.2 In the same
year Massachusetts adopted a new constitution, and in the
declaration of rights it was asserted : " All men are born
free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and in-
alienable rights." When the convention came to discuss
how many of the old laws should remain in force, it was
seen that any statutes that maintained or protected property
in negroes were inconsistent with this clause; and it was
therefore considered that its adoption abolished slavery.
The common notion soon had the seal of judicial approval.
The Supreme Court had occasion to pass upon the ques-
tion, and decided that by virtue of this article slavery
ceased to exist in Massachusetts. The colored inhabitants
became citizens, and were allowed to vote if they had the
requisite qualifications of age, property, and residence. At
about the same time the Methodists of the United States,
in solemn and regular conference, resolved that " slave-
keeping was hurtful to society, and contrary to the laws
of God, man, and nature." 3
1 Bancroft, vol. v. p. 370.
a Act of March 1st, 1780. Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsyl-
vania from Oct. 14th, 1700, to April 6th, 1802, vol. ii, p. 246.
3 Bancroft, vol. v. pp. 416-422,
Cn. I.] JEFFERSON ORDINANCE OF 1784 15
With the end of the war and the ratification of the peace
with Great Britain, it became the duty of Congress to es-
tablish a government for a large extent of the ceded terri-
tory not comprised within the boundaries of any of the
thirteen States. In 1784, Jefferson reported an ordinance
that provided for the prohibition of slavery after the year
1800 in all the western country above the parallel of 31°
north latitude. This proposed interdiction applied to what af- .
ter wards became the States of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennes- '
see, and Kentucky, as well as to the Northwestern Territory.1
To his sorrow and lasting regret, this anti-slavery clause
was lost by one vote. " The voice of a single individual,"
Jefferson wrote two years later, " would have prevented
this abominable crime. Heaven will not always be silent ;
the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end
prevail." a In truth, the friends of human rights gained an
important victory in the enactment of the Ordinance of
1787, which was a substitute for the Jefferson Act of 1784, I
differing from it, however, in that slavery was immediately
prohibited, and in that it only applied to the Northwestern
Territory, which later became the States of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota.
Coupled with this stipulation was a clause providing for
the rendition of fugitive slaves. The Ordinance partook
of a compromise, and had the votes of all the members
present but one ; four of the Southern States were repre-
sented. ' Every one of their delegates gave his voice for
the anti-slavery article, and its adoption was not considered
an anti-slavery triumph. In view of all the circumstances,
it may be regarded as a wise adjustment of opposing in-
terests, and its practically unanimous adoption was gained
through the operation on individual minds of various and
even conflicting motives,
1 See the plan in Jefferson's handwriting in the State Department
archives.
9 Jefferson's Works, vo], ix, p. §76 ; Bancroft, vol. vi. p, U8«
16 ORDINANCE OF 1787 [Cn. I.
In contriving the passage of this Ordinance, the friends
of freedom builded on a more magnificent scale than they
dreamed. A bulwark against the encroachments of slavery
was needed for the Northwest, as Indiana Territory (it then
included Illinois) afterwards petitioned many times for the
suspension of the anti-slavery article of the Ordinance, but
Congress refused the prayer. It is probable that had it
not been for the prohibitory clause, slavery would have
gained such a foothold in Indiana and Illinois that the two
would have been organized as slave-holding States. The
tribute paid by Webster contains the truth of history, and
is pregnant with philosophy. "We are accustomed," he
said, " to praise the law-givers of antiquity ; we help to
perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus ; but I doubt
whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern,
has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting
character than the Ordinance of 1787. . . . It Jixed for-
the vast regions
excluding from them involuntary
servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, while yet a wil-
derness, an incapacity to sustain any other than freemen.
It laid the interdict against personal servitude, in original
compact, not only deeper than all local law, but deeper
also than all local constitutions." '
Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Franklin did not
assist at the Congress that enacted the Ordinance of 1787 ;
they were at the federal convention in Philadelphia, en-
gaged in framing the Constitution, that an eminent English
statesman has called " the most wonderful work ever struck
off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." 2 To
1 First speech on Foot's resolution, 1830, Webster's Works, vol. iii.
p. 263. On the Ordinance of 1787, see Bancroft, vol. vi. p. 287 et seg. ;
Benton's Thirty Years' View, vol. i. p. 133 ; Hinsdale's Old Northwest,
chaps, xv. and xviii. ; Dunn's Indiana, chaps, v. and vi. ; Poole's article,
North American Review, April, 1876 ; Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787,
Barrett.
* Gladstone,
CH. I.] SLAVERY AND THE CONSTITUTION 17
the effort to form a more perfect union of the States, slavery
was a constant obstacle. It was the subject of two com-
promises, although the words " slave," " slavery," and "slave-
trade " do not occur in the Constitution ; for an adroit
circumlocution was employed to avoid offending dele-
gates who objected to the use of those terms.1
The first compromise referred to the apportionment for
representatives in Congress. What rule should be applied
to the half million or more of slaves in the five Southern
States ? Were the negroes persons or property ? The article
of the Constitution, pro^e^cInTg^oTrthe theory that they were
neither absolutely the one nor the other, but that they par-
took of both of these qualities, provided that in the appor-
tionment for representatives, and for direct taxation as well,
five slaves should count as three freemen ; as the expounder
of this compromise said, the slave was regarded " as divested
of two fifths of the man." 2 In the mention of who shall
or shall not be included in the enumeration, the provision
closes with, " and three fifths of all other persons." 3 The
meaning is plain, but the word "slave" is avoided. This
proportional adjustment was not new ; it had been adopted
four years previously by the Confederation as a measure of
the direct contributions of the States.
The second compromise related to the slave-trade. Under
the Articles of Confederation the power to regulate this
traffic and all species of commerce was left with the States.
All the States but North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia had interdicted the slave-trade. These three
positively would not accept the Constitution if this traffic
was immediately and unconditionally prohibited.4 At the
same time, the Northern States desired that Congress should
1 History of the Constitution, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 305.
a The Federalist, No. 54. Only New Jersey and Delaware voted against
this scheme, but Massachusetts and South Carolina were divided. Curtis,
vol. ii. p. 164.
3 Art. I., section 2.
4 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 301 ; Bancroft, vol. vi. p. 320.
I.-2
18 SLAVERY AND THE CONSTITUTION [Cte. I.
have power to pass navigation laws by a simple majority,
an action which the South contended ought to require two
thirds of both branches of the Legislature. Finally mutual
concessions were made. The North was given what it de-
sired, and a provision was incorporated in the Constitution
to the effect that the slave-trade should not be prohibited
until the year 1808.1 In due time, acts to enforce the un-
derstanding that was expressed in this article of organic
law were passed, and the inhuman traffic was virtually
brought to an end in the year named in the Constitution.
The existence of slavery dictated the provision for the
rendition of persons who, " held to service or labor in one
State," escape into another. It was by authority of this clause
that the two Fugitive Slave laws were enacted. It is unques-
tionable that this stipulation was necessary for the adoption
and acceptance of the Constitution ; 2 and there were two
precedents for it, one in the "New England Confederacy of
1643,3 and the other in the Ordinance of 1787. This clause
was the subject of but little debate and passed unanimously.4
A defence of the work of our constitutional fathers, in-
cluding the slavery compromises, is hardly necessary. Their
choice lay between achieving a union of the States with
those provisions, and failing to accomplish any union at all.
It is a tendency of the Anglo-Saxon race to take__the ex-
pedient in politics when the absolute^ right cannot be had,
andin folio wing it the delegates -acted wisely.
Yet, could our fathers have known what was known to
the abolitionists of 1833 and 1860, how different the course
of history would have been ! In 1787 it was supposed, and
with apparent reason, that slavery would die out in all of
1 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 303.
9 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 451 ; Benton's Thirty Years' View, vol. ii. p. 773 ;
The War between the States, Alex. Stephens, vol. i. p. 202; Alex.
Johnston went over the ground thoroughly, and came to the same con-
clusion, New Princeton Review, vol, iv. p. 183.
? Bancroft, vol. i. p. 293 ; Curtis, vol, ii. p, 453,
4 Elliot's Debates, vol, v. pp. 487, 492 ; Curtis, vol. ii. p. 456.
XSTITU
CH. I.] SLAVERY AND THE CONSTITUTION 19
the States. Seven had already abolished it, or were pre-
paring to do so ; and he would not have been called a rash
man who predicted that he would see in his own lifetime
Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia free States. Indeed, in the
First Congress a majority of the representatives from Mary-
land and Virginia inclined to anti-slavery views ; l and while
public sentiment in the three most southern States lagged
behind, a representative from Georgia stated in the House,
without contradiction, that not a man lived in Georgia who
did not wish there were no slaves, and everybody believed
that they were a curse to the country.2 But when the
Constitution was framed the cotton-gin had not been in-
vented. Eli Whitney's machine made possible the culture
of cotton on a large scale, and created a demand for negro
labor that could not have been foreseen. The founders of
our government met to devise a more perfect union, to give
to a central authority enough power to create a nation, and
to make it respected and respectable in the eyes of the world.
To attain this supreme end, jarring interests and conflicting
ideas had to be reconciled, and it was indeed unfortunate
that slavery was one of those interests to mar an otherwise
perfect work.
The extraordinary political ability shown in that conven-
tion has led some European writers to judge its members
by ethical standards higher than those of the time; in other
words, to try the actors of the eighteenth century at the bar
of the nineteenth instead, and to criticise them, because,
having done what they did, they did not do more and set
operations in train whose result would have been the abo-
lition of slavery.3 But this was what the majority of the
convention actually thought that they had done. They be-
lieved, and not without apparent reason, that if the slave-
1 History of the United States, Hiklreth, vol. iv. p. 204.
2 McMaster's United States, vol. ii. p. 359.
3 " Europeans have a useful knack of forgetting their own shortcomings
when contemplating those of their neighbors." — American Common-
wealth, Bryce, vol. ii. p. 121.
20 * SERVITUDE IN EUROPE [On. I.
trade could be prohibited, the extinction of slavery would
soon follow.
In its attitude towards this moral question, the convention
was in advance of the world, as it confessedly was in pro-
gressive political ideas. No European country had at that
time abolished the African slave-trade. Its maintenance
was, as we have seen, an object of English commercial policy.
Some of the ablest and purest men in Parliament worked
earnestly to put a stop to it ; yet, in 1791, a motion of Wilber-
force for leave to bring in a bill to prevent the further im-
portation of negroes into the West Indies, though supported
by Pitt, Fox, and Burke, was defeated in the House of Com-
mons by a vote of nearly two to one. J While ten of our
States had prohibited the slave-trade and seven were abol-
ishing slavery, serfdom and many feudal obligations still
existed in Germany and France, and were only brought to
an end by the French Revolution. 2 In England a species
of white slavery was in force, almost as horrible in practice,
if not in ethical theory, as the negro servitude in America.3
If we ask the question, Conld a better organic instrument
than our present Constitution be framed and adopted in the
United States of 'to-day? we may not refuse to answer that
it is "perhaps the most remarkable monument of political
wisdom known to history." * If " human progress rarely
1 Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. vi. p. 293.
2 Lecky's England, vol. v. p. 317. " Slavery or villeinage in France
was only destroyed in that great revolution."— History of Civilization,
Buckle, vol. i. p. 455.
3 " It was one of the effects of the immense development of the cotton
manufacture, that negro slavery in America, which at the time of Wash-
ington seemed likely to be extinguished by an easy and natural process,
at once assumed gigantic dimensions. It was hardly more horrible,
however, than the white slavery which for years after the establishment
of the factory system prevailed both in England and on the Continent."—
Lecky's England, vol. vi. p. 225.
* James R. Lowell in 1888, Political Essays, p. 311. " The framers of
the Constitution" were " wiser than Justinian before them or Napoleon
after them."— American Commonwealth, Bryce, vol. i. p. 364.
CH. I.] WASHINGTON, HAMILTON, AND MADISON 21
means more than a surplus of advantages over evils," l what
amazing leaps in political affairs were made in America from
1776 to 1787 !
If the convention was in advance of the world on this
question, its leaders occupied a higher moral position than
the body of which they in a great measure shaped the ends.
Washington, although a slave-holder, was averse to buying
or selling slaves, and on his plantation the family relation
among the negroes was respected.2 He repeatedly urged
upon the Legislature of his State the necessity of taking
measures which would result in the gradual extinction of
slavery.3 The notion increased with his years and official
experience, for while President, in a private letter, he em-
phatically expressed the opinion that at a period not far
remote the system must be abolished in Virginia and Mary-
land ; 4 and by his last will he emancipated his own slaves.5
Hamilton took the position of secretary of the New York
Abolition Society, and was requested by Lafayette to propose
him as a fellow-member of the same society.6 Madison, in
the constitutional convention, earnestly opposed the section
which delayed the prohibition of the slave-trade until 1808,
saying, " Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can
be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long
a term will be more dishonorable to the American character
than to say nothing about it in the Constitution ;" 7 and in
the Federalist his warm advocacy of the Constitution did
1 Lecky's England, vol. vi. p. 220.
2 " It was once reported in tlie army that certain captured despatches
from the General were found upon the person of a runaway slave belong-
ing to him. Somebody mustered courage to ask Washington if this was
true. ' Sir,' said the Chief, coldly, ' I never had a slave rim away from
me.' "—Century Magazine, vol. xxxvii. p. 850; infra, Chap. III. p. 267.
3 Bancroft, vol. vi. p. 179 ; Sparks, vol. ix. pp. 159, 164.
* Sparks, vol. xii. p. 326.
5 Bancroft, vol. vi. p. 180 ; Sparks, vol. i. pp. 569, 570.
' Letter of Lafayette to Hamilton, quoted by Greeley, American Con-
flict, vol. i. p. 51.
1 Life and Times of Madison, Rives, vol. ii. p. 449.
22 SLAVERY QUESTION IN THE FIRST CONGRESS [Cn. I.
not forbid his saying that it would have been better to suffer
the prohibition of the slave-trade to go into immediate opera-
tion. ' Franklin was President of the Pennsylvania Aboli-
tion Society, organized for promoting the abolition of slavery.
Jefferson and John Adams had no part in framing the Con-
stitution, for both were then serving their country at foreign
courts; but, although soon to represent opposing political
parties, they were at one on the question of negro servitude.
Jefferson, in a letter written at about this time, expressing
his ardent desire to see not only the slave-trade but also
slavery abolished, laments that those whom he represents
have not been able to give their voice against the practice.3
John Adams, through his whole life, had held slavery in such
abhorrence that he had never owned a slave, though he had
lived for many years in times when the practice was not
disgraceful, and when the best men in his vicinity thought
it not inconsistent with their character.3
In 1790, during the second session of the First Congress,
petitions from the Quakers of several States were presented,
praying against the continuance of the slave-trade. The
Pennsylvania Abolition Society, through its President,
Franklin, earnestly entreated the serious attention of Con-
gress to the subject of slavery ; and further prayed " that
you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty
to those unhappy men, who are degraded into perpetual
bondage . . . and that you will step to the very verge
of the power vested in you for discouraging every species
of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men." 4 These petitions
gave rise in the House of representatives to a warm and at
times excited discussion on the question whether the memo-
rials should be received and referred to a committee. The
burden of the argument against their reception was borne
by members from South Carolina and Georgia, and was to
1 Federalist, No. 42.
3 Jefferson's Works, vol. ii. p. 357.
8 Adams's Works, quoted by Greeley, American Conflict, vol. i. p. 52.
* Benton's Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, vol. i. p. 208.
CH. I.] SLAVERY QUESTION IN THE FIRST CONGRESS 23
the effect that slavery, being commended by the Bible, could
not be wrong ; that the Southern States would not have en-
tered into the Confederation unless their property had been
guaranteed to them, and any action of the general gov-
ernment looking to the emancipation of the slaves' would
not be submitted to. South Carolina and Georgia, it was
asserted, could only be cultivated by slaves, for the climate,
the nature of the soil, and ancient habits forbade the whites
from performing the labor; if the slaves were emancipated
they would not remain in those States, and the whole of the
low country, all the fertile rice and indigo swamps, must be
deserted, and they would become a wilderness ; furthermore,
the prohibition of the slave-trade is at present unconstitu-
tional.
After several days' debate, in which the opinions of the
North and those of South Carolina and Georgia clashed,
Madison poured oil upon the troubled waters, saying : " The
debate has taken a serious turn, and it will be owing to this
alone if an alarm is created. ... If there was the slightest
tendency by the commitment to break in upon the Constitu-
tion, he would object to it. The petition prayed in general
terms for the interference of Congress so far as they were
constitutionally authorized. . . . He admitted that Congress
is restricted by the Constitution from taking measures to
abolish the slave-trade. Yet there are a variety of ways by
which it could countenance the abolition ; and regulations
might be made in relation to the introduction of them into
the new States to be formed out of the Western territory." '
The memorials went through the usual legislative forms.
It was finally resolved by the House that Congress could not
prohibit the slave-trade until 1808, ana that Congress had no
authority to interfere in the emancipation of the slaves or in
the treatment of them within any of the States.2 This last
resolution is of great historic importance. While it had not
the binding force of law, it has always been considered as
1 Annals of Congress, vol. i. p. 1246. * Ibid., vol. ii. p. 1523.
24 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW [Cn. I.
an authoritative and just interpretation of the Constitution.
The same principle was more than once afterwards reaffirmed
by Congress, and no political party ever questioned the doc-
trine. The debate and resolution settled this point.1 In all the
slavery agitation, this principle stood out with the force of a
fundamental truth ; and in our consideration of the subsequent
history, it can never too often be called to mind that the polit-
ical parties of the Northern States, and their senators and rep-
resentatives in Congress, scrupulously respected the constitu-
tional protection given to the peculiar institution of the South,
until, by her own action, secession dissolved the bonds of union.
In 1793 the first Fugitive Slave law was passed. The cir-
cumstance that led to its enactment deserves notice. Three
white men had kidnapped a free negro in Pennsylvania and
taken him to Virginia. The governor of Pennsylvania asked
the rendition of the kidnappers, which Virginia refused on
the ground that there was no law carrying into effect the
constitutional provision for the surrender of fugitives from
justice. The governor of Pennsylvania then submitted the
facts to President Washington, who brought them before
Congress. The result was the passage of the act known as
the Fugitive Slave law of 1793, the two first sections of
which related to the surrender of fugitives from justice, and
the two last to the rendition of fugitive slaves. As the pro-
ceedings of the Senate were secret, neither the nature of the
discussion nor the difference of opinion elicited in that body
during the consideration of the bill is known. It passed the
House, however, without debate : seven votes only are record-
ed against it, and two of these were from the slave States.3
1 " The introduction of the Quaker memorial respecting slavery was,
to be sure, not only ill-timed, but occasioned a great waste of time. The
final decision thereon, however, was as favorable as the proprietors of
this species of property could well have expected, considering the light
in which slavery is viewed by a large part of the Union.1'— Washington
to David Stuart, June, 1790, Sparks, vol. x. p. 98.
3 See Fay House monograph, Fugitive Slaves, by Marion G. McDou-
gall, and the authorities cited, especially State Papers, Annals of Congress,
OH.!.] THE COTTON-GIN 25
The invention of the cotton-gin, in the year 1793, was of
far greater importance to the landed proprietor of negroes
than the statutory provision for the recovery of fugitive
slaves. As already noted, it was destined to develop South-
ern industry and foster slave labor more effectually than ex-
treme'pro-slavery legislation could have done, and to a wider
extent than the most earnest abolitionist could have feared.
The cotton plant was indigenous to America, and the climate
of the Southern States was peculiarly adapted to its culture.
But the great obstacle in the way of cotton-production was
the excessive labor necessary to clear the cotton fibres from
the seed. The complete separation of a pound of fibre was
an average day's work ; hence the great cost of preparing
it for the market limited the growth of cotton to coun-
tries like India, where labor is very cheap. Whitney's in-
vention wholly changed these conditions. By the use of his
gin, one man was able to separate fifty pounds of cotton
from the seed in a day, and in this way the development of
a great agricultural industry was made possible.1 As cotton-
cultivation depended more on climate than soil, a large por-
tion of the land between 36° north latitude and the Gulf of
Mexico was well adapted to it. Whitney's invention came
into use at an opportune time, for complaints had been made
that rice and indigo, the staple products of South Carolina
and Georgia, were hardly worth growing, on account of
their extremely low price.2 Curiously enough, in this same
year (1793) a protective duty of three cents per pound was
placed upon cotton, the framers of the tariff little dreaming
that this article was soon to become and long to remain our
greatest article of export. Yet this is not more remarkable
and Senate journals; Benton's Abridgment of Debates, vol. i. p. 417.
Hildretli says: This act "at the time of its passage and for many years
after attracted little attention.1" At a later period the provisions were
denounced as " exceedingly harsh and peremptory," vol. iv. p. 406.
1 Whitney to Jefferson, Nov. 24th, 1793, Memoir of Eli Whitney, Olm-
sted. For an interesting account of Whitney and his invention, see
Grceley's American Conflict, and McMaster's United States.
3 Hildreth, vol. iv. p. 71.
26 THE COTTON-GIN [On. I.
than the seizure of eight bags of it in England, a few years
before, on the ground that so great a quantity could not be
supplied from the United States ; and when Jay negotiated
the treaty of 1794 with Great Britain, cotton was of so little
significance that he did not know it was an article of export
from his country.1 The production of cotton from 1791 to
1860 increased more than a thousandfold,2 and more than
one half of the negro slaves were engaged in its culture.3
What, asked Webster, created the new feeling in favor of
slavery in the- South, so that it became an institution — a cher-
ished institution — " no evil, no scourge, but a great religious,
social, and moral blessing ? I suppose this is owing to the
rapid growth and sudden extension of the cotton plantations
of the South. It was the cotton interest that gave a new
desire to promote slavery, to spread it, and to use its labor." 4
Among the Fathers were men who had a correct notion
of the possible future growth of the country, but no one
could have dreamed that one of the very first of those splen-
did mechanical inventions, which are justly our boast and
pride, would have the effect of riveting more strongly than
ever the fetters of the slave. No one could have imagined
that economic conditions were destined to prevail that
would bring to naught the moral and humane expectations
of the wisest statesmen of the time. It is more than prob-
able that the invention of the coUon-giji_preYented the
iuL abolition of slavery. Rice, sugar, and cotton were,
apparently, the only products for which slave labor was nec-
essary ; and, compared with cotton, sugar and rice were in-
1 Hildreth, vol. iv. p. 545 ; Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 338.
2 Production, 1791, 2,000,000 pounds; 1860, 2,154,820,800 pounds.
3 In 1850, according to De Bow, 1,800,000 of the 3,204,051 slaves were
engaged in the cultivation of cotton. Compendium of Census, 1850;
Olmsted's Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 17. I have never seen any estimate
for 1860, but the ratio, if changed, must have been greater, as the cotton
crop of 1860 was more than double that of 1850: 1850, 2,445,793 bales;
1860, 5,387,052 bales.
4 7th of March, 1850, speech, Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 338.
Cii.L] PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA 27
significant products.1 Tobacco and grain could be cultivated
with greater economy by freemen. Had it not been for
the new cotton-planters' demand for negroes, which made
slave-breeding a profitable industry for the border States,
Maryland, Yirginia, and Kentucky would have been re-
claimed from slavery, and Missouri would not have been
admitted as a slave State. The moral and political force of
so much free territory would have confined slavery below
the latitude of 36° 30', and the well-founded hopes of the
framers of the Constitution might have been realized.
Cotton fostered slavery ; slavery was the cause of the war If
between the States. That slavery is a blessing, and cotton is
king, were associated ideas with which the Southern mind
was imbued in the decade before the war. On the floor of
the Senate it was declared that cotton had vanquished all
powers, and that its supremacy could no longer be doubted.
The leaders of the secession were confident that the influ-
ence of the great Southern staple would compel, if not ac-
quiescence on the part of the North, at least recognition
and open assistance from England.
The closing years of the eighteenth century need not de-
tain us, although several warm debates on the slavery ques-
tion took place in Congress, growing out of petitions that
in different ways brought the national evil to the attention
of Congress and the country.
In the beginning of the new century, President Jefferson
effected the transfer of Louisiana.2 The possession of the
mouth of the Mississippi River was a commercial necessity,
and Jefferson showed wisdom in promptly seizing the op-
portunity presented by a fortunate combination of circum-
1 In 1860, value of cotton production, $244,256.368; of rice, $7,242,324;
of sugar, $20,761,485.
2 Louisiana comprised what is now the States of Louisiana, Arkansas,
Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota and Colorado, nearly all of
Kansas and Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, part of Idaho, and the
Indian Territory.
28 SLAVERY [On. I.
stances to secure the purchase of this magnificent domain
from the French government/ During the negotiations and
the ratification of the treaty, the question of slavery did not
arise. The notion that this territory would be an accession
of strength to the slave-power seemed not to occur to Jef-
ferson, to his advisers, or to the ardent advocates of South-
ern institutions; and although opposition to the purchase
was made by the Federalists, it was not on the ground that
it would lead to the extension of slavery. Nor was this
surprising. By this time all the States but South Carolina
had prohibited the slave-trade.1 The year after the pur-
chase of Louisiana (in 1804), New Jersey abolished slavery ;
she was the seventh and last of the original thirteen States
to dedicate her soil to freedom. A conviction prevailed
that the power of slavrery was rapidly diminishing. Even
John Adams, while President, had shared this belief.2 It
might now have been possible to set apart to freedom, by
solemn legislative act, the whole of the new territory, ex-
cepting that portion which afterwards became the State of
Louisiana, where slavery existed and was .protected by the
treaty of cession. The Quakers petitioned that Congress
would take measures to prevent the introduction of slavery
into any of the territories of the United States, but the op-
portune moment for legislation to that end was not seized.
The virtual understanding at the time the Constitution
was framed, in regard to the prohibition of the slave-trade,
was carried out. President Jefferson, in his annual message
to Congress, December, 1806, said : " I congratulate you, fel-
low-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you
may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw
the citizens of the United States from all further participa-
tion in those violations of human rights which have been
so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa,
1 South Carolina had passed, a law prohibiting the slave-trade, but
afterwards repealed the act.
3 History of the United States, Schouler, vol. ii. p. 58.
CH. I.] THE FOREIGN SLAVE-TRADE— MISSOURI 29
and which the morality, the reputation, and the best inter-
ests of our country have long been eager to proscribe."1
Congress took prompt action. A bill to prohibit the impor-
tation of slaves after January 1st, 1808, was passed by the
Senate, and, although its different provisions were the sub-
ject of considerable debate in the House, it was finally
passed with only five dissenting voices. This was practi-
cal unanimity, as the senators who voted against the bill
were from both free and slave States, and their objections
were not to the principle of the act, but to matters of detail.
In bringing about this devoutly wished-for consummation,
the abolition societies, which existed in all of the States as
far south as Virginia, played an important part. Their
meetings, their annual conventions, their memorials to Con-
gress, their addresses to the country, were active agencies
to foster right thinking and to encourage effective action
respecting the slave-traffic. The first annual convention of
these societies had proclaimed that " freedom and slavery
cannot long exist together;" and, in the years that followed,
their influence did much to effect the abolition of slavery
in the States north of Mason and Dixon's line. With the
prohibition of the slave-trade, however, it seemed as if their
occupation was gone. The national conventions ceased,
meetings were no longer, or rarely, held, and most of the so-
cieties died out. The first anti-slavery movement in the
United States was no more. Virginia had by this time
(1807) given up any immediate hope of becoming a free
State; her interests, her sentiments, her social conditions,
were gradually drawing her into unison and sympathy with
her sister States farther south.
The question of the admission of Missouri made evident
to the country the influence that the profitable cultivation
of cotton had exercised on Southern opinion, and served as
a measure of the radically divergent ideas of the North and
Jefferson's Works, vol. viii. p. 67.
30 MISSOURI [CH. I.
the South. The opinion of the North on slavery was the same
as at the adoption of the Constitution ; that of the South
had retrograded. Missouri was a part of the Louisiana pur-
chase, and, having now a population of 56,000 freemen and
10,000 slaves, she desired recognition as a State of the Union.
The usual form of bill was prepared ; but when, during the
winter session of 1819, it came to be considered in the House,
Tallmadge, of New York, offered an amendment providing
that the further introduction of slavery should be prohibit-
ed, and that all children born in the State after its admission
into the Union should be free at the age of twenty-five.
Since the organization of the government new States had
. been admitted from time to time, and by tacit agreement
j had entered in pairs, a free State and a slave State coming
in at about the same time. Thus, Yermont and Kentucky,
Tennessee and Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana, Mississippi and
Illinois, had each been an offset to the other. Alabama was
on the point of admission as a slave State, and the usage
would require that another free State should be coincidently
added to the Union. The North had been growing more
rapidly than the South ; in 1790 the two sections were near-
ly equal in population, but in 1820, in a total of less than
ten millions, there was a difference of nearly 700,000 in favor
of the North. Although the contest over Missouri took place
in a House of Representatives based on the apportionment
of the census of 1810, yet the Northern States, including
Delaware, had a clear majority of twenty-nine members.1
Missouri had slavery, and was determined to keep it ; and
the supporters of the slave interest in Congress would not
for one moment consent to a restriction which should create
bars to the further increase of slaves within her borders.
Tallmadge's proposed amendment, therefore, caused an ex-
citing debate. Among the first to speak, vehemently op-
posing the restriction, was Henry Clay, Speaker of the
1 There were 106 from the North, 3 of these from Delaware ; and 77
from the South,
CH. I] MISSOURI 31
House, whose influence and power in the direction of affairs
was great. None of his speeches on this subject have been
reported ; but from references made to them by his oppo-
nents we know that he denied the constitutional power of
Congress to impose conditions on newly organized States in
any way limiting their sovereign rights ; that he contemptu-
ously asserted that the anti-slavery men were troubled with
negrophobia, and argued that by spreading slavery its evils
might be cured, or at any rate palliated.1 One historian re-
lates that Clay, almost with tears in his eyes, pressed the
argument that the restriction of slavery would be cruel to
the slaves. While it would not lessen their numbers, it
would expose them, crowded together " in the old, exhausted
States, to destitution, and even to lean and haggard starva-
tion, instead of allowing them to share the fat plenty of the
new West." a This reasoning of Clay is the gist of the most
weighty arguments relied upon by the opponents of the
amendment ; but they also urged that it was in violation
of the treaty ceding Louisiana,3 and the territorial delegate
from Missouri protested against the restriction as a shame-
ful discrimination against Missouri, which \vould eventually
endanger the Union.
The Northern members in favor of the restriction met
the constitutional objection by pointing to the fact that the
restriction imposed by the Ordinance of 1787 was a condi-
tion made by Congress precedent to the admission of Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois ; denied that the amendment in any way
violated the treaty with France ; averred that slavery was a
moral and political evil, and directly opposed to the asser-
tion of our Declaration of Independence that all men are
1 See Life of Clay, Schur2j, vol. i. p. 179 ; Taylor's and Fuller's Speech'
es, Benton's Abridgment of Debates, vol. vi.
3 Ilildreth, vol. vi. p. 664.
' This argument, which reappears in 1850-60, is with force refuted by
Justice Curtis in his opinion in the Dred Scott case. Life and Writings
of B. R. Curtis, vol. ii. p. 300,
32 MISSOURI [On. I.
created equal, while it had only through necessity been tol-
erated by the Constitution. Tallmadge, who closed the de-
bate, met the assertion of a Georgia member, that if the
North persisted in the restriction the Union would be dis-
solved, by a fierce note of defiance ; ' and he proceeded to
delineate the evil of slavery with impassioned eloquence,
calling it "this monstrous scourge of the human race,"
fraught with " dire calamities to us as individuals and to
our nation." The speech produced a sensation, and under
its influence the vote was taken. The Tallmadge amend-
ment was passed by a vote of 87 to 76. The bill for the
admission of Missouri as amended went to the Senate, which
rejected the slavery restriction by the entire Southern vote,
assisted by one senator from Massachusetts, one from Penn-
sylvania, two from Illinois, and two from Delaware.2 If all
the senators from the free States had voted for the amend-
ment, it would have been carried. Each House held tena-
ciously to its own ideas; and when adjournment came,
March 4th, 1819, no agreement had been reached.
Then began a discussion which engrossed the press of the
country, and prompted many public meetings. The legis-
latures of Northern States adopted resolutions protesting
against the admission of Missouri unless the further intro-
duction of slavery should be prohibited. Illinois and New
England were alone officially silent, but public meetings
were held all over New England — Boston being impressed
by the eloquence of Webster — and they proclaimed in strong
language the same sentiment. Virginia and Kentucky were
equally zealous for slavery ; Maryland agreed with Virginia,
but a meeting of citizens in Baltimore, over which the
mayor presided, petitioned Congress against the further
extension of slavery. The legislature of the slave State of
Delaware was on the side of freedom, but her senators and
1 A portion of this speech is given by Hiklreth, vol. vi. p. 665.
2 The vote was 22 against slavery-restriction, and 16 for it.
Cu. I.] GROWING IMPORTANCE OF THE SENATE 33
representatives did not by their votes give expression to
the public will.
In January, 1820, the Senate resumed the consideration of
the Missouri question, and for the first time in the history of
the country its proceedings awakened more interest than
those of the House. Hitherto it had been the debates of
the representatives Avhich had excited attention and edu-
cated public opinion. Indeed, during the first years of the
government all the debates of the Senate were secret, and,
though they had long since been open, sparkling contests
did not take place in that dignified body, nor was that col-
lision of mind with mind seen which is necessary to provoke
general interest in legislative procedure. Madison never
served in the Senate ; he was an efficient worker in putting
in motion the legislative machine of the new government,
but his wise counsel and calm reasoning were heard in the
House. In the House occurred the great debate on the Jay
treaty, when Gallatin first appeared as a leader, and when
Fisher Ames made the pathetic appeal in its favor that
ranks among the remarkable efforts of American eloquence.
John Randolph was in the House when he breathed out
those invectives and gave free course to those sarcasms
which have entitled him to a singular place in congressional
history. Clay had been a senator for a portion of two terms,
but he deemed it a welcome change to be elected to the
House, and it was there that up to this time his public rep-
utation had been made. Webster and Calhoun had been
representatives, but it was after 1820 that Webster, Clay,
and Calhoun were to make themselves and their Senate
forever renowned. JSTor was it surprising that the House
should be the better arena for government by discussion.
That body was not as large and unwieldy as it has since
become, and its hall had not the vast proportions of the
present chamber. The Senate had too small a number of
members to be the almost ideal body of debate that it after-
wards became ; for at the organization of the government
only twenty-two senators convened, and their deliberations
I.— 3
34 WILLIAM PIXKNEY [Cn. I.
savored rather of the cabinet than of the legislative body.1
But in the Senate of 1820, consisting of forty-four members,
began that series of parliamentary efforts which in elo-
quence have never been surpassed.
The oration of William Pinkney, of Maryland, was the
masterpiece of the session. He had served his country
abroad with ability and honor, but had won his greatest
renown at the bar.2 When Daniel Webster came to Wash-
ington to practise in the Supreme Court, Pinkney was the
acknowledged leader of American lawyers, and this surpass-
ing eminence he held to the day of his death, although his
position began to be. shaken after the Boston lawyer had
made the great argument in the Dartmouth College case.
Perhaps a perception of Webster's growing power and fut-
ure rank led Pinkney to say to his friend and biographer
that he " did not desire to live a moment after the standing
he. had acquired at the bar was lost, or even brought into
doubt or question." s This great lawyer was as vain of a
handsome face, accomplished manners, and an elegant dress
as he was proud of his legal acumen. Clad in the extreme
of fashion, he preferred to be regarded an idle and polished
man of society rather than to be looked upon as what he
really was, an unwearied student.4 Always preparing his
speeches with the utmost care, writing out the showy pas-
sages and learning them by heart, rehearsing in private the
1 North Carolina and Rhode Island were not represented at the first
session of the first Congress.
3 " America never sent an abler representative to the Court of London."
—History of the United States, Henry Adams, vol. vi. p. 21. Chief Jus-
tice Marshall remarked shortly after the death of Pinkney that Pinkney
"was the greatest man he had ever seen in a court of justice." Tyler's
Taney, p. 141.
3 Life of Pinkney, Wheaton, p. 179.
* " William Pinkney, a large, handsome man and remarkable for his
somewhat foppish dress, wearing, when I saw him, a white waistcoat and
white top-boots."— Recollections of a Lifetime, S. G. Goodrich, vol. ii.
p. 399,
CH. I.] WILLIAM PINKNEY 35
appropriate gestures and rhetorical points, he sought to con-
vey the notion that he spoke on the spur of the moment.
The speech of Pinkney, a labor of many weeks, was a re-
ply to arguments that had been urged during the last ses-
sion in favor of slavery restriction by the veteran- Eufus
King. King was not only the head of the anti-slavery par-
ty in the Senate, but the leader in the agitation that had
spread throughout the country. He had made two speeches
at the previous session, neither of which had been reported,
but abstracts of them were published by the New York
committee, and widely circulated as campaign documents.
They had been potent agencies in arousing and educating
Northern sentiment. Pinkney 's speech was never printed,1
but from contemporary accounts we know that it was re-
garded as the most remarkable oration of this Congress, and
by all odds the most effective reasoning on the Southern
side. Benton speaks of it as a magnificent exhibition, the
most gorgeous speech ever delivered in the Senate and the
most applauded, and Clay thought it " a display of astonish-
ing eloquence." 2 It was the master effort of Pinkney 's life.
All of his auditors were impressed with a fine amplification
of a passage in Burke's speech on " Conciliation with Amer-
ica," which afforded the orator an opportunity to make an
adroit application of the warning of the English commoner,
that the spirit of liberty was more high and haughty in the
slave-holding colonies than in those to the northward. Pinkney
made two speeches against imposing the restriction of slavery
on Missouri as a condition for admission ; the second speech,
made also in reply to King, has been reported, and it gives
us an idea of his florid eloquence and power of reasoning.
1 For the first thirty-five years of the government, the debates of Con-
gress were not reported verbatim, as they have been since. Pinkney
preferred to rest his reputation on the sensation produced by the de-
livery of the oration, and did not prepare it for publication. Benton's
Thirty Years' View, vol. i. p. 20.
2 Thirty Years' View, vol. i. p. 20 ; Private Correspondence of H. Clay,
Colton, p. 61.
36 THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE [Cn. I.
Having a fine command of language, acquired by the pro-
found study of the accurate use of words, his oration is re-
plete with classical and historical allusions, and the thought
and language of it bear witness to hours spent with Milton.
With much force, Pinkney urged the Southern argument.
, States are sovereign, he maintained. If Missouri comes in
with the restriction, it comes in shorn of its beams — crip-
pled and disparaged beyond the original States — it is not
into the original union that it comes. The original union
was a union among equals ; this would be a union between
giants and a dwarf, between power and feebleness, between
full - proportioned sovereignties and a miserable image of
power. Under the Constitution you have a right to refuse
to admit a State ; but if you admit it, you must do so on full
and complete equality with the other sovereign States of
the union ; you must receive it into the actual union and
recognize it as a parcener in the common inheritance, with-
out any other shackles than the rest have, by the Constitu-
tion, submitted to bear.
Meanwhile the question had assumed a new phase. Maine,
recently separated from Massachusetts, had applied for ad-
mission as a State. Senator Thomas, of Illinois, had intro-
duced a proviso which prohibited slavery in that part of
the Louisiana purchase which lay north of the latitude of
36° 30', except the portion included within the limits of the
proposed State. This line was the southern boundary of
Missouri, and the arrangement involved the admission of
Missouri as a slave State. This was the famous Missouri
Compromise. It was also understood that Maine should be
admitted without opposition ; and the parties to the bargain
carried it through the Senate exactly as planned. Greater
difficulty was encountered in getting the project through
the House. But by the aid of eighteen Northern members,
the slavery restriction was finally defeated ; fifteen of them
voted openly against it, while three absented themselves.1
History of the United States, Schouler, vol. iii. p. 165.
Ce. L] THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 37
The amendment prohibiting the introduction of slaves into
Missouri was struck out by a majority of three,1 and after
this action it became easy to pass the compromise, although
thirty-seven extreme Southerners, under the leadership of
John Eandolph, did not give the scheme their votes.2 /This
epigrammatic statesman denounced the compromise as a
" dirty bargain," and called the eighteen Northern members
" dough-faces," a term abiding in our political vocabulary
as long as the slavery question remained in politics/*"
Yet the compromise did not settle the Missouri question.
The constitution adopted in June, 1820, by the convention
of Missouri forbade her legislature to interfere with slavery,
and required it to enact laws "prohibiting the immigration of
free colored persons into the State. The House refused to
admit her with these provisions in her constitution ; but in
the end the matter was compromised through the efforts of
Clay, and Missouri became a State August 10th, 1S21.4
Thirty-three years later, the provision of this act that
prohibited slavery in the territory north of 36° 30' was re-
pealed; and the history of the Missouri Compromise was
then so falsely related and its historical meaning so pervert-
ed by the advocates of the repeal that two facts need to be
distinctly and emphatically stated.
First, the Missouri Compromise was a Southern measure.
Its passage was considered at the time as in the interest of
the South, for it gained immediately a slave State in Mis-
souri, and by implication another in Arkansas, while the
settlement of the northern portion of the territory was
looked upon as remote. The North regarded the Missouri
Compromise as a surrender, and of the fifteen representatives
1 The vote was 90 to 87.
a Schouler, vol. iii. p. 165.
3 Besides authorities already quoted, I have consulted Curtis's Life of
Webster, Harvey's Reminiscences, and Carr's Missouri.
* For a full account of this third Missouri controversy, see Schouler,
vol. iii. p. 180; Life of Clay, Schnrz, vol. i. p. 183; Benton's Thirty
Years1 View, vol. i. p. 8.
38 • THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE [On. I.
who voted against slavery-restriction, only three were re-
turned to Congress.1
But the most important bearing of this controversy is
that a very large majority of Congress, made up of Southern
as well as Northern senators and representatives, went on
record as averring that, by a true interpretation of the Con-
stitution, Congress had power to prohibit slavery in the ter-
ritories. Of greater significance even was the discussion of
the question by the President and his cabinet. Monroe, a
Virginian, before approving the act, asked his advisers
"whether Congress had a constitutional right to prohibit
slavery in a territory." John Quincy Adams, Crawford of
Georgia, John C. Calhoun, Thompson of New York, Mc-
Lean of Ohio, and William Wirt of Maryland, who com-
posed the President's cabinet, " unanimously agreed that
Congress have the power to prohibit slavery in the territo-
ries." 2 We have seen that one of the first interpretations
of the Constitution which had the seal of the House of Eep-
resentatives was that Congress had no power to interfere
with slavery in the States, and it was remarked that this
principle had the respect of the North until the outbreak of
the civil war. The historian would write a grateful page
could he add that the doctrine of 1820, solemnly agreed to
by representative men of both sections, had received equal
respect from the South.
Impartial historians have aifirmed, with satisfying rea-
sons, that the Missouri Compromise was a political neces-
sity in order to preserve the fraternal relations that should
1 The debate in Congress and analyses of the votes fully support
these statements; see also Benton's Thirty Years' View, vol. i. pp. 5, 8.
Benton's Abridgment of Debates, vol. vi., notes on pp. 333, 453 ; Hilclreth,
vol. vi. p. 694. A writer in the North American Review for April, 1820,
said that the passing of the compromise was the first just cause of re-
proach on America for the toleration of slavery.
3 Diary of John Q. Adams, Memoirs, vol. v. p. 5; Benton's Thirty
Years' View, vol. ii. p. 141 ; Schouler, vol. iii. p. 167. On the action of
Congress, see Benton's Abridgment, vol. vi., note on p. 367.
CH. I.] THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 39
subsist between the members of a federal union.1 That
harmony between the two sections was liable to be dis-
turbed unless mutual concessions were made, cannot be de-
nied. "This momentous question," wrote Jefferson from
Monticello, "like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and
filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell
of the Union." a " The words civil war and disunion," wrote
Clay, " are uttered almost without emotion ;" 3 and Benton
says, " Compromise views prevailed, and enabled the Union
to be saved." 4
A philosopher, admitting the compromise to be a political
necessity, might nevertheless have feared, if he looked into
the seeds of time, that this controversy began an irrepressi-
ble conflict. He must have noted that, since the adoption
of the Constitution, slavery had gained in power through
the development of the cotton-culture, the settlement of the
Gulf States, and the pecuniary interest which Virginia and
Maryland, having become slave-breeding States, now had in
the spread of slavery. The changed conditions in Virginia
had affected the opinions of the author of the Declaration
1 Hildreth, vol. vi. p. 693 ; Schouler, vol. iii. p. 171 ; Life of H. Clay,
Schurz, vol. i. p. 199.
2 Jefferson's Works, vol. vii. p. 159.
3 Clay's Private Correspondence, p. 61.
4 See also Senator Butler's remarks, Feb. 24th, 1854. " History tells us,
I know not how truly, that the Union reeled under the vehemence of
that great debate."— Seward, Feb., I860. Niles, however, though earnestly
in favor of the compromise, " did not fear the dreadful things which
some silly folks talked of," Niles's Register, vol. xix. p. 265 ; see also
p. 371. Seward said, in September, 1860 : " History says that the compro-
mise of 1820 was necessary to save the Union from disruption. I do not
dispute history nor debate the settled moral questions of the past. I only
lament that it was necessary, if indeed it was so. History tells us that
the course then adopted was wise. I do not controvert it. I only
mourn the occurrence of even one case, most certainly the only one that
ever did happen, in which the way of wisdom has failed to be also the
way of pleasantness and the path of peace." — Se ward's Works, vol. iv.
p. 311.
40 NULLIFICATION [Cn. I.
of Independence, for he eagerly grasped at Clay's theory
that the extension of slavery was far-seeing humanity.
Spreading the slaves, he wrote, " over a larger surface will
dilute the evil everywhere and facilitate the means of get-
ting finally rid of it." ' N or could Madison resist the entic-
ing logic of the rising statesman ; beginning now to admire,
he came to revere Clay as the hope of the country.2 He
wrote to Monroe "that an uncontrolled dispersion of the
slaves now in the United States was not only best for the
nation, but most favorable for the slaves also." 3 Ij, is wor-
thy of observation that Clay and Pinkney, who began their
political lite with earnest efforts towards the agoEtion of
slavery_jn their respective States, now_jed_.the_pj3ppsition to
tficTrestriction of slavery ; and that not a senator or South-
efiTm ember of Congress had dared to vote on the side of
freedom^—
The nullification trouble of 1832-33, although caused by
the enactment of a high protective tariff, must claim our
attention, for the reason that, in this controversy, two con-
stitutional theories were developed, one of which was hugged
to delusion by the South, while the other became the justifi-
cation and incentive of the North to draw the sword. The
obnoxious tariff, the "tariff of abominations," as its oppo-
nents called it, was enacted in 1828, and established a greater
degree of protection to manufactures than had any previous
revenue bill. Calhoun and the people of his State had for-
merly been in favor of the protective principle. But by this
time the belief had become fixed that, as England was the
largest purchaser of cotton, it was for the best interest of
South Carolina to have English goods brought in free ; or,
if that were impracticable, to have duties imposed upon
1 Letter of Jefferson to Lafayette, Dec. 26th, 1820, Works, vol. vii. p. 193.
* See article of George Bancroft on Henry Clay, Century Magazine, vol.
viii. p. 479.
3 Writings of James Madison, vol. iii. p. 169.
* Hildreth, vol. vi. p. 697.
CH. I] JOHN C. CALHOUN 41
them for the sake of revenue only. The Palmetto State had
no manufactures, nor could she expect to build up any with
her system of labor. Her interest being to buy manufact-
ured articles as cheaply as possible, she could have no sym-
pathy with legislation that had for its purpose the fostering
of home industries. The favorite idea was to exchange cot-
ton for English goods, with no restrictions whatever on this
reciprocal trade. For the production of cotton slave labor
was then thought to be necessary ; and free trade and negro f
slavery, therefore, became associate and fundamental tenets
in the South Carolina political catechism.
The enactment of the tariff of 1828 created great excite-
ment in South Carolina, and public meetings were held all
over the State, denouncing the law in unmeasured terms.1
Nullification was threatened, and, while the majority did
not seem ready to take that step, the sentiment in favor of
nullification simply needed a leader to give it shape and di-
rection ; and a leader was at hand in the person of the Vice-
President, John C. Calhoun. His opinions marked him out
for the guide of his native State. He had hitherto been in-
tensely national in his feelings, and in favor of giving a lib-
eral construction to the Constitution. " He is," wrote John
Quincy Adams in his diary, " above all sectional and factious
prejudices, more than any other statesman of this Union with
whom I have ever acted." He was then " a man of fair and
candid mind, of enlarged philosophical views, and of ardent
patriotism."2 But, according to the same keen observer,
that was when Calhoun felt sanguine as to his prospects for
the presidency;3 and this hope had a reasonable basis, for
the Northern States in 1824 voted almost in a body for him
for Yice-President. Even Webster at one time was strongly
inclined to support him for the highest office in the country.
In 1828 Calhoun had by no means renounced this ambition.
1 See Niles's Register, vols. xxxiv. and xxxv.
8 Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vol. v. p. 361.
3 Ibid., vol. vi. p. 7.
42 JOHN C. CALHOUN . [On. I.
He was candidate for Yice-President on the same ticket with
General Jackson ; and for another term he hoped to have the
influence of the great popular hero in favor of his own ele-
vation to the higher place. He was now drawn in two di-
rections— in one by the sentiment of his own State, in the
other by his feeling of nationality and restless craving for
the presidency. He would retain his support at the North,
and yet he wished to lead the public sentiment of South
Carolina. He was equal to the occasion. He did nothing
until after election, when he had a handsome majority of
the electoral votes for Yice-President ; but in December the
legislature printed a paper which he had prepared under the
title of " The South Carolina Exposition and Protest on the
Subject of the Tariff." This was a mild document, and
merely a plain argument to show the great injury of a pro-
tective tariff to the " staple States ;" and while the right of
interposing the veto of the State is asserted, no threat is
made, but, on the contrary, it is deemed advisable to allow
time for further consideration and reflection, in the hope of
a returning sense of justice on the part of the majority.1
After this deliverance the excitement in South Carolina
subsided.
The next act of the drama took place in the national
theatre. Desiring to know how the country would receive
the bare doctrine of nullification, Senator Hayne was put
forward to deliver the prologue, but Calhoun was the
prompter behind the scenes. Hayne asserted that, in case
of a palpable violation of the Constitution by the general
government, a State may interpose its veto ; that this inter-
position is constitutional, and the State is to be the sole
judge when the federal government transcends its consti-
tutional limit. The senator's speeches were not remarka-
ble, and would never have been remembered, had not his
most labored effort given Webster the occasion for one of
those rare bursts of eloquence that astonish and delight the
1 For a good abstract of this document, see Von Hoist's Calhoun, p. 76.
CH. I.J WEBSTER AND CALHOUN 43
world. On the morning of the day1 when this masterpiece
of American oratory was delivered, a fellow-senator said to
Webster : " It is a critical moment, and it is time, it is high
time, that the people of this country should know what this
Constitution is." " Then," answered Webster, " by the bless-
ing of Heaven, they shall learn this day before the sun goes
down what I understand it to be."2 An abstract of this
speech, which, as a literary production, has been compared
to the oration of Demosthenes on the Crown, need not de-
tain us. Webster's oration itself is familiar to students of
American history, to lovers of English literature, and to all
those whose admiration is kindled by eloquence in any
tongues. Its famous peroration was soon declaimed from
every college and school platform, and it still retains its
place among such pieces of oratory by virtue of its earnest
feeling and classic style. A large audience heard the speech,
but the interest in the question was so great that the brill-
iant crowd that gathered in the Senate chamber was but a
fraction of the people over whom his words were to have
lasting power. He spoke to the whole country, and to the
American people of future ages. The principles he laid
down are fundamental truths. It took a long war to estab-
lish them ; but now, sealed in blood, they are questioned by
none save Southerners of the past generation.
That the argument crushed nullification was public opin-
ion in the Northern, Western, and many of the Southern
States.3 It settled the question for the moment, and proba-
bly would have done so for a generation had not there oc-
curred about this time a complete change in the political
fortunes of Calhoun. General Jackson quarrelled with him,4
and this blasted his hopes for the presidency. Adams
called him " a drowning man." He no longer needed to
halt between two opinions. He could abandon his national
1 Jan. 26th, 1830. 2 Life of Webster, Lodge, p. 178.
3 Life of Webster, Curtis, vol. i. p. 366.
4 Life of Jackson, Parton, vol. iii. chap. xxv.
44 CALHOUN AND NULLIFICATION [CH. I.
ideas and devote himself to the seeming interests of his
native State. His talents were well adapted to the work.
The South had special interests based upon her peculiar
system of labor. The North was growing much faster than
the South, and the large immigration from Europe, just be-
ginning, was being directed entirely to the free States. The
South attracted none of this, for the reason that freemen
would not work with slaves. The stubborn fact came home
to every Southern politician that she was losing political
power. A theory of the Constitution was therefore needed
which should give the minority an absolute check on the
majority. Calhoun was by nature and education as well
fitted to construct a narrow and sectional hypothesis as
Webster was adapted to elaborate a broad national one.
After 1830, we look in vain to Calhoun for any exhibition
of that perva'sive patriotism that was so distinguishing a
feature in the characters of Webster, Clay, and Jackson.
Calhoun now- bent all his energies to the task, and worked
out the fine-spun theory of nullification. He elaborated it
in subtle language, and supported it by ingenious, metaphys-
ical reasoning. Brave in the closet when developing his
theories, on the stage of action he shrank from putting
them in practice. He became a man of one idea ; he lacked
that commerce with the world which would have modified
the opinions he elaborated in the study. " Calhoun is mind
through and through," said Lieber ; ' and Harriet Martineau
was struck by his " utter intellectual solitude," by his ha-
rangues at the fireside as if he were in the Senate, and, ob-
serving that he was full of his nullification doctrine, wrote,
" I never saw any one who so completely gave me the idea
of possession."2 An impracticable theorist, he neglected
the obvious application of his country's Constitution, of the
constitutions of the different States, and of the English Con-
1 Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 123.
2 This was in 1836. Retrospect of Western Travel, quoted by Sumner,
Life of Jackson, p. 284.
CH.I.] CALHOUN AND NULLIFICATION 45
stitution. In lieu thereof, he became such a student of Ro-
man history and precedents that they became unconsciously
in his mind examples for us; and he had the Utopian notion
that the divided powers of the Roman Republic might be
ingrafted on our own system. One of his admirers deplores
that he was not a sounder constitutional lawyer.1
In 1832, Congress revised the tariff. The revision, in the
opinion of Calhoun, caused " a small reduction in the amount
of duties, but a reduction of such a character that while it
diminished the amount of burden, it distributed that burden
more unequally than even the obnoxious act of 1828." 2 This
was the year of the presidential election ; but the contest
between Jackson and Clay excited little interest in South
Carolina, for there the controversy turned on nullification,
and the struggle- was for the control of the legislature. As
it was conceded that the nullifiers would get a majority,
the efforts of the Union men were directed to prevent their
gaining two thirds of the legislature, which was necessary
to authorize the calling of a convention. All agreed that
the legislature could not declare a law of the United States
unconstitutional and void ; but this imposing act needed a
convention with a fresh mandate from the people. Calhoun
contributed powerfully to 'the success of the nullifiers, and
the election resulted in their favor.3 A convention was
called, and met in November. In it the aristocracy of the
State was well represented ; no abler body of men ever came
together in South Carolina for a political purpose.4 The
convention adopted the famous nullification ordinance,
which declared that the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were
" null, void, no law," and not binding on the officers or citi-
zens of this State ; and that no duties enjoined by those acts
should be paid or permitted to be paid in the State of South
1 Memoir of R. B. Taney, Tyler, pp. 185, 186.
3 Speech of Calhoun in the Senate, Feb. loth, 1833.
3 Life of Calhoun, Jenkins, p. 243.
4 Life of Jackson, Parton, vol. iii. p. 457,
46 THE NULLIFICATION ORDINANCE [Cn. I.
Carolina after the first day of February, 1833. This action
was immensely popular in the state. The nullifiers were
blatant and aggressive, and the respectable minority of
Unionists were silent. Warlike preparations began to be
made, medals were struck bearing the impress "John C.
I Calhoun, first President of the Southern Confederacy." l
Here was a great opportunity for President Jackson, and
he comprehended it fully. His honest and wise action in
this trouble is his best title to fame, and it overshadows his
arbitrary acts and injudicious measures. Apprehending
nullification proceedings, he had already sent secret orders
to the collector at Charleston, that in case there should be
a refusal to pay any duties, the cargo in question should be
seized forthwith, and sold to pay the duty charges. He
had also ordered General Scott to Charleston. The Presi-
dent's answer to the nullification ordinance was a procla-
mation, in which were blended appeal, argument, and warn-
ing ; in all respects it was a dignified state paper, worthy
of the country, whose good fortune it was to have a fit ex-
ecutive at so important a crisis. The proclamation began
by refuting the right to annul, and the right to secede as
claimed by the nullifiers ; any such rights were inconsistent
with the main object of the Constitution, which was " to
form a more perfect union." It was admitted that the tariff
act complained of did act unequally ; but so did every reve-
nue law that ever had been or ever could be passed. " To
say that any state may at pleasure secede from the Union,
is to say that the United States are not a nation." In con-
clusion the people of South Carolina were plainly warned
that in case any forcible resistance to the laws was tried by
them, the attempt would meet the united power of the
other states.2 Every important idea in this proclamation
may be found in Webster's reply to Hayne,3 which shows
1 Life of Jackson, Parton, vol. iii. p. 459. 2 Ibid., p. 468.
8 Everett^ Memoir of Webster, prefixed to Webster's Works, p. cv.
CH.L] TIIE NULLIFICATION ORDINANCE 47
what deep hold on General Jackson's mind this vigorous
exposition of nationality had taken.
The North received the action of the President with
great enthusiasm, and party lines were forgotten in the
patriotic sentiment which it aroused. Even in all 'of the
Southern States except three, his determination to resist any
overt act was generally approved. But in South Carolina
the proclamation caused great irritation. The Charleston
Mercury called it " a declaration of war made by Andrew
Jackson against the state of South Carolina." He was com-
pared as a usurper to Ca3sar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte. The
editor hastened to add he had none of their genius. " If
the Republic," says the fiery writer, " has found a master,
let us not live his subjects." The proclamation was received
by the legislature in session at Columbia with scorn and de-
fiance. One member said, " the principles thus avowed . . .
were not less new and startling than was the mode of an-
nouncing them. Who and whose are we ? Are we Russian
serfs or slaves of a divan ?" Another member believed that
"the contest would end in blood. The document of the
President was none less than the edict of a tyrant." * These
expressions were heard with undisguised approval, and the
legislature asked the governor8 to issue a counter -procla-
mation. He immediately complied with the request and
published a pugnacious manifesto,3 ending with the exhor-
tation to resist at all hazards the employment of military
force by the President. The governor, moreover, called
out twelve thousand volunteers.4
Meanwhile Calhoun had been elected senator, had re-
signed the vice - presidency, and was on his way to Wash-
ington. His journey thither, says one of his biographers,
" was like that of Luther to attend the diet at Worms.
' Niles's Register, vol. xliii.
8 The governor was Hayne, the apologist of South Carolina in the
celebrated debate with "Webster.
3 Parton, vol. iii. p. 470, * Life of Calhoun? Jenkins, p. 345.
48 THE NULLIFICATION ORDINANCE [On. I.
Out of South Carolina public opinion was certainly against
him ; and only here and there did he find a good Freunds-
berg to whisper in his ear, ' If you are sincere and sure of
your cause, go on in God's name, and fear nothing.' " ' Cal-
houn was in his seat in the Senate and heard the message
from the President asking additional powers for the en-
forcement of the laws made necessary by the action of
South Carolina and her governor. A bill, called by its
enemies the Force bill, giving the President the authority
he wished, was reported without delay. The action of the
President thoroughly frightened Calhoun.2 As "Webster
said of him, he had not seemed " conscious of the direction
or the rapidity of his own course. The current of his opin-
ion sweeps him along he knows not whither. To begin
with nullification with the avowed intent, nevertheless, not
to proceed to secession, dismemberment, and general rev-
olution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara
and cry out that he would stop half-way down." 3 It was
brought to the knowledge of Calhoun that General Jack-
son had determined to take at once a decided course with
him, and that the matter of his arrest for high treason was
under serious consideration.4 If the logic of his closet
found no place for compromise, the logic of events demand-
ed one very imperatively. By whom could it be brought
about ? There was one man whose wide influence, winning
address, and skill in party management might effect a
compromise ; that man was Henry Clay. To him, therefore,
although they had not been on speaking terms, Calhoun
repaired.5 The result of one or more conferences and of
mediation by mutual friends was a compromise tariff bill
1 Life of Callioim, Jenkins, p. 246.
8 Parton, vol. iii. p. 474 ; Benton, vol. i. p. 843 ; Curtis's Webster, vol. i.
p. 443.
8 Speech, Feb. 16th, 1833. Works, vol. iii. p. 460.
* Benton, vol. i. p. 343; Parton, vol. iii. p. 474.
6 Curtis, vol. i. p, 444 ; also see Benton, vol. i. p. 343.
CH.L] THE COMPROMISE TARIFF 49
which gradually reduced the tariff until, after a lapse of nine
years, all duties should be diminished to the uniform rate of
twenty per cent.1 Clay's action is comprehensible. The next
Congress, most of which had already been elected^ would
certainly be in favor of radical revenue reform, yet its ac-
tion might now be forestalled by a moderate decrease. To
our generation this argument is not unfamiliar, as it has
served a like purpose. To Clay, moreover, occurred the ob-
vious consideration that in nine years a Congress devoted
to protection might be elected which could alter the tariff
at will.2 Besides, actuated by patriotic motives, he thought
he was serving his country well in pouring oil into the in-
flamed wounds ; his disposition to lead was mastering, and
his animosity to Jackson was such that he did not wish the
President to gain glory by the settlement of the trouble.
Calhoun's course was a curious piece of inconsistency. The
previous fall elections had decided that a better measure for
South Carolina would pass at the next session, if the tariff
were now left untouched. He had asserted in the strongest
terms that a tariff for protection was unconstitutional and
an inveterate and dangerous evil ; yet Clay said of the com-
promise act, in open Senate, to Calhoun's face : " The main
object of the bill is not revenue, but protection." s Calhoun
and the nullifiers nevertheless voted for the bill in all its
stages,4 and before the close of the session it became a law.
The reason for their action is apparent. Calhoun, his fol-
lowers, and his State were in a predicament. Unless some-
thing should pass this Congress, they must retreat from their
1 Tariff Plistory of United States, Taussig, p. 110. The tariff of 1828
was equivalent to a 45 per cent, ad valorem tariff on dutiable articles,
see Senate Report No. 2130, 51st Cong., 2d Sess., p. 306.
2 See Taussig, note p. 112.
3 Benton, vol. i. p. 321.
* " If this course does not prove that Calhoun was a ' coward and a
conspirator,' it does prove, I think, that he was not a person of that ex-
alted and Rornan-toga cast which he set up to be, and which he enacted
lor some years with considerable applause." — Parton, vol. iii. p. 477.
1—4
50 WEBSTER AND CALHOUN [Cii. I
position ignominiously or come into collision with the fed-
eral power, for it was quite plain the country would sus-
tain the President. They were therefore ready to grasp at
anything having the semblance of compromise, and Clay's
project was now the best they could get.1
In the meantime the 1st of February had come, and the
South Carolina people had decided to defer practical nulli-
fication until, at any rate, after the adjournment of Con-
gress.
Webster would have nothing to do with the compromise.
Clay had broached the matter to him, but he refused his
support. " It would," he said, " be yielding great princi-
ples to faction ; the time has come to test the strength of
the Constitution and the government." 2
A few days after the compromise tariff was introduced
occurred the debate on the Force bill in the Senate between
Calhoun and Webster, in which the opposite theories of the
nature of our government were maintained by their re-
spective champions. " The people of Carolina," said Cal-
houn, " believe that the Union is a union of States and not
of individuals ; that it was formed by the States, and that
the citizens of the several States were bound to it through
the acts of their several States ; that each State ratified the
Constitution for itself, and that it was only by such ratifica-
tion of a State that any obligation was imposed upon its
citizens. . . . On this principle the people of the State
(South Carolina) . . . have declared by the ordinance that
the acts of Congress which imposed duties under the au-
thority to lay imposts were acts not for revenue, or< *ntend-
ed by the Constitution, but for protection, and therefore null
and void." " The terms union, federal, united, all imply a
combination of sovereignties, a confederation of States. . . ,
The sovereignty is in the several States, and our system is
a union of twenty-four sovereign powers, under a constitu-
1 Benton, vol. i. p. 342.
8 For the secret history of this compromise, see Benton, vol. i. p. 342.
C1J.I.J WEBSTER AND CALHOUN 51
tional compact, and not of a divided sovereignty between
the States severally and the United States."
Webster's answer was a piece of close and powerful rea-
soning,1 but not a magnificent flight of eloquence like the
reply to Hayne. The speech contains hardly a classical al-
lusion or historical illustration. Plain facts are dealt with,
and, while the argument is clear enough to commend itself
to an ordinary understanding, the chain of logic delights
the profound student of constitutional law. " His very state-
ment was argument ; his inference seemed demonstration." 2
He begins this speech of February 16th, 1833, by saying
that he will endeavor to maintain the Constitution in its
plain sense and meaning against opinions and notions which
in his judgment threaten its subversion. " I admit, of
course," he said, " that the people may, if they choose, over-
throw the government. But then that is revolution. The
doctrine now contended for is, that, by nullification or seces-
sion, the obligations and authority of the government may
be set aside or rejected without revolution. But that is
what I deny. . . . The Constitution does not provide for
events that must be preceded by its own destruction. Se-
cession, therefore, since it must bring these consequences
with it, is revolutionary, and nullification is equally revolu-
tionary. ... I maintain —
" 1. That the Constitution of the United States is not a
league, confederacy, or compact between the people of the
several States in their sovereign capacities, but a government
proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and creating
direct relations between itself and individuals.
" 2. That no state authority has power to dissolve these
relations ; that nothing can dissolve them but revolution ;
and that consequently there can be no such thing as seces-
sion without revolution. . . .
' See Curtis, vol. i. p. 451.
* Webster's remark of a noted New England lawyer, in his reply to
Hayne.
52 WEBSTER AND CALHOUN [Ca I.
" The truth is, and no ingenuity of argument, no subtlety
of distinction, can evade it, that as to certain purposes the
people of the United States are one people. . . . Sir, how
can any man get over the words of the Constitution itself ?
— 'We, the people of the United States, do ordain and es-
tablish this Constitution.' . . . Who is to construe finally
the Constitution of the United States? ... I think it is
clear that the Constitution, by express provision, by definite
and unequivocal words, as well as by necessary implication,
has constituted the Supreme Court of the United States the
appellate tribunal in all cases of a constitutional nature
which assume the shape of a suit in law or equity." '
These citations only give Webster's bare positions, but the
proofs are irrefragable. The detailed arguments are no
longer necessary to carry conviction ; the statements them-
selves command unquestioned assent ; but it was not so
when Webster made this speech. He had the majority of
the South against him, and not every one at the North was
prepared to adopt his strong national opinions.2 But the
greatest authority living, James Madison, in a letter con-
gratulating Webster for his speech, agreed with the view he
had taken of the nature of the government established by
the Constitution.3
The justification alleged by the South for her secession in
1861 was based on the principles enunciated by Calhoun;
the cause was slavery. Had there been no slavery. *he
Calhoun theory of the Constitution would never have been
propounded, or, had it been, it would have been crushed be-
yond resurrection by Webster's speeches of 1830 and 1833,
1 Webster's Works, vol. iii., speech entitled " The Constitution not a
Compact between Sovereign States."
3 See for example Memoirs of John Q. Adams, vol. viii. p. 526 ; North
American Review, July, 1833. For comment on this debate from the
Southern point of view, see War between the States, A. H. Stephens, vol.
i. p. 387.
8 Memoir of Webster by Edw. Everett, prefixed to Works, vol. i. p.
cvii.
CH. I.] WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 53
and by the prompt action of President Jackson.1 The South
could not in 1861 justify her right to revolution, for there
was no oppression, no invalidation of rights. She could not,
however, proclaim, to the civilized world what was true, that
she went to war to extend slavery. Her defence, therefore,
is that she made the contest for her constitutional rights,
and this attempted vindication is founded on the Calhoun
theory. On the other hand, the ideas of Webster waxed
strong with the years ; and the Northern people, thoroughly
imbued with these sentiments, and holding them as sacred
truths, could not do otherwise than resist the dismember-
ment of the Union.
A few words will complete this notice of the nullification
trouble. Clay's tariff act and the Force bill were passed
almost simultaneously; they were actually signed by the
President on the same day, and thus the compromise of 1833
was complete. The nullification ordinance of South Caro-
lina was repealed by the convention in less than a fortnight
after the adjournment of Congress in March.8
While this controversy was going on, William Lloyd Gar-
rison began the abolitionist movement by the establishment
of the Liberator at Boston, January 1st, 1831.3 Although
1 March 21st, 1833, Jackson wrote a private letter to Buchanan, who was
representing this country at St. Petersburg, in which he said : The public
" saw that although the tariff was made the ostensible object, a separa- j
tion of the Confederacy was the real purpose of its originators and sup-
porters. The expression of public opinion elicited by the proclamation
from Maine to Louisiana has so firmly repudiated the absurd doctrine of
nullification and secession, that it is not probable that we shall be troubled
with them again shortly." Life of Buchanan, Curtis, vol. i. p. 185.
8 The repeal is dated March 15th. Statutes of South Carolina, edited,
under the authority of the legislature, by Thomas Cooper,M.D.,LL.D.,vol. i.
3 Benjamin Lundy had been an apostle of abolition some years previ-
ous to this, and his influence was powerful in the conversion of Garrison
to the cause. There was, however, a lack of coherence in Lundy's ef-
forts, so that for practical purposes the abolitionist movement may be
said to date from the establishment of the Liberator.
5-1 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON [Cfl. I.
he had for several years been advocating anti-slavery ideas,
his denunciations of slavery had attracted as little attention
at the national capital as Paul's preaching excited in the
palace of the Ca?sars. At this time, in the slave States, the
opinion prevailed that slavery in the abstract was an evil.
Miss Martineau conversed with many hundreds of persons
in the South on the subject, but she met only one person
who altogether defended the institution. Everybody justi-
fied its present existence, but did so on the ground of the
impossibility of its abolition, ' although forecasts were some-
times given of the position the South would in the future be
forced to take. Senator Hayne, in the celebrated debate,
argued that slavery in the abstract was no evil ; but, in the
course of the same discussion, Benton had addressed himself
to the people of the North and with truthful emphasis as-
sured them that " slavery in the abstract had but few advo-
cates or defenders in the slave-holding states." 2 The senti-
ment at the North was well portrayed by Webster in his
reply to Hayne. " The slavery of the South," he said, " has
always been regarded as a matter of domestic policy left''
with the States themselves, and with which the federal gov-
ernment had nothing to do. ... I regard domestic slavery
as one of the greatest evils, both moral and political. But
whether it be a malady and whether it be curable, and if so,
by what means ; or, on the other hand, whether it be the
vulnus immedicabile of the social system, I leave it to those
whose right and duty it is to inquire and decide. And this
I believe is, and uniformly has been, the sentiment of the
North."3
More than forty years had now passed since the establish-
ment of the government. The hopes of its founders had not
been realized, for the number of slaves was fast increasing ;
slavery had waxed strong and had become a source of great
1 Society in America, Harriet Martineau, vol. i. p. 349. Miss Martineau
was in the South in 1835.
8 Thirty Years' View, vol. i. p. 136. 3 Works, vol. iii. p. 279.
OH. I.] WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 55
political and social power. While optimists, looking for a
sign from heaven and a miracle, hoped that, by some occult
process, the slaves would be freed voluntarily by the next
generation, the abolitionists believed that reform from with-
in the system could not be expected, but that its destruction
must come from influences from the outside. The vital
point was to bring home to the Northern people that negro
i slavery was a concern of theirs ; that as long as it existed in
the country without protest on their part, they were part-
ners in the evil ; and although debarred from legislative in-
terference with the system, that was no reason why thej
should not think right on the subject, and bear testimony
without ceasing against its hateful character? L—
The apostle who had especial fitness for the work, and
who now came forward to embody this feeling and rouse the
national conscience from the stupor of great material pros-
perity, was Garrison. Adopting the Stoic maxim, " My
country is the world," he added its corollary, " My country;
men are all mankind," and with the change of my to our he
made it the motto of the Liberator' In his salutatory ad-
dress he said : " I shall strenuously contend for the immedi-
ate enfranchisement of our slave population. . . . I will be
as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. ... I
am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I
will not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard." 3 In
one of the succeeding issues he said : " Everybody is op-
posed to slavery, O, yes ! there is an abundance of philan-
thropy among us. ... I take it for granted slavery is a
crime — a damning crime ; therefore, my efforts shall be di-
rected to the exposure of those who practise it." 3 Soon the
Liberator appeared with a pictorial heading that displayed
1 Garrison claimed originality for the motto. See Life of W. L. Garri-
son, vol. i. p. 219. Seneca had said, "I know that my country is the
world;" and Marcus Aurelius had written, "An Antonine, my country is
Rome ; as a man, it is the world." Quoted in Lecky's History of Morals,
vol. i. p. 241.
2 Life of W. L. Garrison, vol. i. p. 225. 3 Ibid., p. 227.
56 NAT TURNER [On. I.
the national capitol, floating from whose dome was a flag
inscribed "Liberty;" in the foreground is seen a negro,
flogged at a whipping-post, and the misery of a slave auc-
tion.1 This journal began in poverty ; but in the course of
the first year the subscription list reached five hundred.2
Garrison wrote the leading articles and then assisted to set
them up in type and did other work of the printer.
In August of this year (1831) occurred the Nat Turner in-
surrection in Virginia, which seemed to many Southerners a
legitimate fruit of the bold teaching of Garrison, although
there was indeed between the two events no real connec-
tion. But this negro rising struck terror through the South
and destroyed calm reason. The leader, Nat Turner, a
genuine African of exceptional capacity, knowing the Bible
by heart, prayed and preached to his fellow-slaves. He told
them of the voices he heard in the air, of the visions he saw,
and of his communion with the Holy Spirit. An eclipse of
the sun was a sign that they must rise and slay their enemies
who had deprived them of freedom. The massacre began
at night and continued for forty-eight hours ; women and
children were not spared, and before the bloody work was
checked sixty-one whites were victims of negro ferocity.
The retribution was terrible. Negroes were shot, hanged,
tortured, and burned to death, and all on whom suspicion
lighted met a cruel fate. In Southampton County, the
scene of the insurrection, there was a reign of terror, and
alarm spread throughout the slave States.3
This event, and the thought that it might be the precur-
sor of others of the same kind, account for much of the
Southern rage directed against Garrison and his crusade.
Nor, when we reflect on the sparsely settled country, the
1 Life of W. L. Garrison, vol. i. p. 232. 2 Ibid., p. 430.
3 An interesting account of the massacre, by T. W. Higginson, may be
found in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. viii. p. 173. This article has been
reprinted in the volume entitled " Travellers and Outlaws," by T. W.
Higginson. See also History of the Negro Race in America, Williams,
vol. ii. p. 88.
OH.!.] SOUTHERN EXCITEMENT 57
wide distance between plantations — conditions that made a
negro insurrection possible — and when we consider what it
was for planters to have hanging over their heads the hor-
rors of a servile war, will it seem surprising that judicial
poise of temper was impossible when Southerners discussed
the work of Garrison. They regarded it as an incitement
for their slaves to revolt. But they did injustice to Garri-
son, for Nat Turner had never seen a copy of the Liberator,
and the paper had not a single subscriber south of the Poto-
mac.1 Nor did Garrison ever send a pamphlet or paper to
any slave, nor advocate the right of physical resistance on
the part of the oppressed.2 He was a non-resistant, and did
not believe that force should be used to overturn legal au-
thority, even when unjustly and oppressively exercised.
The assertion that slavery is a damning crime is one thing ;
the actual incitement of slaves to insurrection is another.
The distinction between the two was not appreciated at the
South. Stringent laws were made against the circulation
of the Liberator, and vigilance committees sent their warn-
ings to any who were supposed to have a part in spreading
its doctrines. In North Carolina Garrison was indicted for
a felony, and the legislature of Georgia offered a reward
of five thousand dollars for the arrest and conviction of the
editor or publisher.3 One voice went abroad from public
officials, popular meetings, and from the press of the South,
demanding that the governor of Massachusetts or the
mayor of Boston should suppress the " infernal Liberator"
The people of Virginia had often struggled to free them-
selves from the coils of slavery, and the Nat Turner insur-
rection furnished the occasion for another attempt. At the
following session of the Legislature a proposition was made
to inquire into the expediency of some plan of gradual eman-
cipation. In the debate that took place on the subject, the
evil of slavery was characterized in terms as strong as an
1 Life of Garrison, vol. i. pp. 239, 251. 3 Ibid., p. 489.
3 Ibid., pp. 241, 247.
58 SOUTHERN EXCITEMENT [Cn. I.
abolitionist could have used. The alarm excited all over
the South by the negro rising in Southampton County was
not, one member explained, from the fear of Nat Turner,
but it was on account of " the suspicion eternally attached
to the slave himself — a suspicion that a Nat Turner might
be in every family, that the same bloody deed might be
acted over at any time, and in any place ; that the materials
for it were spread through the land, and were always ready
for a like explosion." l
But a majority of the House of Kepresentatives, in which
the project was discussed, could not be had for ordering an
inquiry, and the further consideration of the subject was in-
definitely postponed. It has sometimes been asserted that
had not the abolitionist agitation begun, this Virginia move-
ment would have resulted in the gradual emancipation of
slaves in that state ; but there is, in truth, no reason for
thinking that anything more would have come of it than
from previous abortive attempts in the same direction. On
many pages of Virginia history may one read of noble ef-
forts by noble men towards freeing their State from slavery.
But the story of the end is a repeated tale ; the seeds sown
fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked
them.
Meanwhile Garrison and his little band continued the up-
hill work of proselyting at the North, and especially in Bos-
ton. Merchants, manufacturers, and capitalists were against
the movement, for trade with the South was important, and
they regarded the propagation of abolition sentiments as in-
jurious to the commercial interests of Boston. Good society
turned the back upon the abolitionists. Garrison had no
college education to recommend him to an aristocracy based
partly upon wealth and partly upon culture.2 The churches
were bitterly opposed to the movement. Oliver Johnson,
1 For an abstract of this debate, see Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,
Wilson, vol. i. chap. xiv.
2 Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 515.
Cn.L] AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY 59
one of the early disciples of Garrison, relates that several
times his efforts were in vain to persuade some one among
a dozen white clergymen of Boston to open an anti-slavery
meeting with prayer, and he was in each case forced at last to
accept the services of a negro preacher from " Negro Hill." *
The positionofjbhe church was well expressed by a noted
clergymlmrvvKQ^^1^11^^ the sin of slavery to fl pa«t gftr|-
eration, and assigned the duty of emancipation to future
^generationsTHThe abolitionists, however, gradually gained
ground. The year 1833 was for them one of grateful mem-
ory. Then, at Philadelphia, the American Anti-slavery So-
ciety was organized by delegates who made up in enthu-
siasm what they lacked in numbers.3 The Declaration of
Sentiments, drawn up by Garrison, was a paper worthy of
the earnest and intelligent people who were its signers. It
referred to the immortal Declaration adopted in the same
city fifty-seven years before, and, as the strongest abolition
argument that could be made, quoted the phrase " that all
men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Cre-
ator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It denounced
slavery in vigorous terms, yet conceded that Congress had
no right to interfere with it in the States ; and while con-
demning the employment of material force in any way to
promote abolition, the signers pledged themselves to use
moral means, so far as lay in their power, to overthrow the
execrable system of slavery. This was not an inflammatory
and seditious appeal ; the delegates were men of good char-
acter, pure morals, and were law-abiding citizens ; yet it was
necessary for the police to guard the convention hall against
threatened mob violence. The meeting was regarded by all
Southern people, and by nearly all at the North, in much
1 Garrison and his Times, Johnson, p. 71.
9 Ibid., p. 109.
3 The number was between fifty and sixty, mostly young men. Life of
Garrison, vol. i. p. 397.
60 SOUTHERN SENTIMENT [Cn. I.
the same way as we should now look upon an assemblage
of anarchists.1
This year (1833) is also noteworthy as furnishing a fresh
argument for the abolitionists. The British Parliament,
influenced by a long course of agitation, emancipated the
negro slaves in the West Indian colonies, so that hencefor-
ward freedom was the rule in all the vast colonial posses-
sions of England, as it had been for years in the parent
state.
At the same time, ambitious Southern politicians began
to turn to their own advantage the anti-slavery agitation
at the North. This did not escape the keen observation of
Madison, who, though well stricken in years, was able to de-
tect, from his country retreat, the reason of various moves
in the political sphere of his native state, which had for
their aim to make a unit of Southern opinion on the slavery
question. " It is painful," wrote Madison to Clay in June,
1833, " to observe the unceasing efforts to alarm the South
by imputations against the North of unconstitutional de-
signs on the subject of the slaves."2 In a letter written
more than a year later, he said that one could see from the
Virginia newspapers and the proceedings of public meet-
ings that aspiring popular leaders were inculcating the " im-
pression of a permanent incompatibility of interests between
the South and the North." 3
Excitement about the abolition movement characterized
the year 1835. Numerous public meetings and the press of
the South demanded almost with one voice that the aboli-
tionists must be put down or they would destroy the Union.
A suspension of commercial intercourse with the North was
1 A similar comparison suggested itself to Ampere in 1851 : '"Les fitats
& esclaves," he writes, " dependent avec passion, avec fureur, ce qui est a
leurs yeux le droit de propriety : les abolitionistes sont pour eux ce que
sont les communistes pour les proprietaires fran9ais."— Promenade en
Amerique, vol. i. p. 48.
8 Madison's Works, vol. iv. p. 301. * Ibid., p. 358.
OH. I.] MOB VIOLENCE 61
even suggested.1' The Charleston post-office was forcibly
entered and a large number of tracts and papers sent there
by the American Anti-slavery Society were seized ; the next
night these papers and effigies of Garrison and other aboli-
tionists were burned in the presence of a large number of
spectators." On a false alarm of a projected slave rising in
Mississippi, several white men and negroes were hanged by
vigilance committees.3 The wrath of the Southern people
against the abolitionists was reflected at the North, and the
feeling grew that the imputation of abolition ideas to the
whole Northern community must be repelled. As the Lib-
erator could not be suppressed, nor anti-slavery meetings
prohibited by law, recourse was had to mob violence. At-
tacks upon abolitionists had previously been common, and
this sort of warfare culminated in the year 1835. A fero-
cious anti-negro riot took place at Philadelphia.4 Kev. Sam-
uel May, a devoted abolitionist and adherent of Garrison,
was mobbed at Haverhill, Mass., the home of Whittier, and
five times afterwards at different places in Vermont.5 A
disgraceful anti-slavery riot occurred at Utica, N. Y. In
Boston, on the same day, a mob, variously estimated at
from two thousand to five thousand, including many gentle-
men of property and influence,6 broke up a meeting of the
Boston Female Anti-slavery Society. Garrison, one of the
men against whom the mob directed its fury,7 had escaped
from the hall in which the ladies were assembled, but he
was seized and dragged bareheaded through the streets,
Niles's Register, vol. xlix. pp. 73, 77.
Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 485 ; Niles's Register, vol. xlviii. p. 403.
Niles, vol. xlix. p. 118.
Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 485.
Recollections of the Anti-slavery Conflict, May, p. 152.
Life of Garrison, vol. ii. p. 11. It was one of the surprises of Harriet
Martineau to learn that the mob was composed of gentlemen dressed in
fine broadcloth. Society in America, vol. i. p. 129.
7 One great incitement to the mob was the supposed presence of George
Thompson, a zealous and imprudent anti-slavery agitator from England.
62 THE INFLUENCE OF GARRISON [Cn. I.
subjected to indignity and insult, and his life was threatened.
The mayor and police finally rescued him. from the hands
of the rioters, and put him in jail as a protection against
further violence. /
Yet the work of converting and creating Northern se^ti-
ment went on. In spite of misrepresentation, obloquy, f id
derision, the abolitionists continued to apply moral id as
and Christian principles to the institution of slavery. The
teachings of Christ and the Apostles actuated this crusade,1
and its latent power was great. If one looks for its results
merely to the numbers of congressmen chosen by the aboli-
tionists, to the vote received by their distinctively presiden-
tial candidates, or even to the number of members enrolled
in the anti-slavery societies, only a faint idea of the force of
the movement will be had. The influence of the Liberator
cannot be measured by its subscribers, any more than the
French revolutionists of 1789 can be reckoned as of no
greater number than the readers of " The Social Contract."
If Rousseau had never lived, said Napoleon, there would
have been no French Eevolution. It would be historical
dogmatism to say that if Garrison had not lived, the Kepub-
licans would not have succeeded in 1860. But if we wish to
estimate correctly the influence of Garrison and his disciples,
we must not stop with the enumeration of their avowed ad-
herents. We must bear in mind the impelling power of
their positive dogmas, and of their never-ceasing inculcation
on those who were already voters and on thinking youths
who were to become voters, and who, in their turn, pre-
vailed upon others. We must picture to ourselves this proc-
ess of argument, of discussion, of persuasion, going on for
twenty-five years, with an ever-increasing momentum, and
we cannot resist the conviction that this anti-slavery agita-
tion had its part, and a great part too, in the first election
1 The anti-slavery agitation is " probably the last great reform that the
world is likely to see based upon the Bible and carried out with a millen-
nial fervor," — Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. xitt,
a. I.] THE INFLUENCE OF GARRISON 63
f Lincoln. It was due to Garrison and his associates that
iavery became a topic of discussion at every Northern fire-
de. Those who had heard the new doctrine gladly tried
} convince their family and their friends ; those who were
••it half convinced wished to vanquish their doubts or have
t to rest the rising suspicion that they were partners in a
eat wrong; those who stubbornly refused to listen could
ot fail to feel that a new force had made its appearance,
rith which a reckoning must be made. Slavery could not
ear examination. To describe it was to condemn it. There
was a certain fitness, therefore, in the demand of the South-
erners that the discussion of slavery in any shape should be
no longer permitted at the North.
But in what a state of turpitude the North would have
been if it had not bred abolitionists ! If the abolitionists
had not prepared the way, how would the political rising of
1854-60 against the slave power have been possible? It is
true that many ardent Kepublicans who voted for Lincoln
would have repudiated the notion that they were in any
way influenced by the arguments of Garrison and his asso-
ciates. And it is equally true that in 1835 the average
Northern man satisfied himself by thinking slavery in the
abstract a great evil, but that, as it existed in the South, it
was none of his concern ; he thought that " God hath made
of one blood all nations of men " a good doctrine to be
preached on Sunday, and " all men are created equal " a fit
principle to be proclaimed on the Fourth of July ; but he
did not believe that these sentiments should be applied to
the social condition of the South. But that was exactly the
ground on which the abolitionists planted themselves, and,
by stirring the national conscience, they made possible the
formation of a political party whose cardinal principle was
opposition to the extension of slavery, and whose reason for
existence lay in the belief of its adherents that slavery in
the South was wrong.
A shining example of the change that was beginning to
be wrought in Northern sentiment is seen in Dr. Changing,
64 CHANNING- ON SLAVERY [Cn. I.
In 1828 he wrote to Webster deprecating any agitation of
the question. Our Southern brethren, he said, would " inter-
pret every word from this region on the subject of slavery
as an expression of hostility." 1 He feared the agitation
might harm the Union, and he loved the Union as Webster
loved it. In 1835 he published a book on " Slavery," which,
with the exception of the Liberator, is the most remarkable
contribution of this decade to the cause of the abolitionists.
The appearance of Dr. Channing in this arena Avas for him
a notable sacrifice. The effective work of his life had been
done. He had led to triumph a liberal religious movement,
and he had a right to seek repose and shrink from another
contest. He was now the pastor of a devoted and cultured
society in Boston, and the most eminent preacher in Ameri-
ca.2 Emerson wrote that his sermons were sublime,3 and
James Freeman Clarke says that Channing spoke " with the
tongues of men and of angels."* He was one of the few
Americans who had a literary reputation in Europe ; and,
while not as extensive as that of Washington Irving, it was,
in the opinion of Ticknor, " almost as much so, and deserv-
edly higher." 5 A scholar and a student, he had projected
a work on " Man," for which he had been gathering mate-
rials many years. The purpose of the book was an exposi-
tion of religion and philosophy, which he thought the world
needed, and he expected it would be his literary monument.
1 Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 360.
2 John Quin cy Adams, on the death of Channing, wrote in his diary :
" Dr. Channing never flinched or quailed before the enemy. But he was
deserted by many of his followers, and lost so many of his parishioners
that he had yielded to his colleague, E. S. Gannett, the whole care of his
pastoral office, giving up all claim to salary and reserving only the privi-
lege of occasionally preaching to them at his convenience. The loss of
Dr. Channing to the anti-slavery cause is irreparable." — Memoirs of J, Q>
Adams, vol. xi. p. 258.
3 Memoir of R. W. Emerson, Cabot, vol. i. p. 105.
4 Memorial and Biographical Sketches, p. 159.
6 Life of George Ticknor, vol. i. p. 479.
j uHANNING ON SLAVERY 65
Tie scholar who puts aside his cherished investigation to
engage in a practical work of duty that is foreign to his
taste is an unobtrusive martyr ; he deserves a place among
those who have given up their dearest hopes for the real or
fancied good of humanity. Dr. Channing made such a sacri-
fice when he gave the services and the high influence of his
pen to the anti-slavery cause.
With a disposition to look upon the bright side of hu-
man nature, he was loath to admit to himself the grave-
ness of the evil that afflicted the country he loved so well.
His conversion was slow, but a winter spent in the West
Indies revived his youthful antipathy to slavery. The
influence of the Liberator, although the harsh manner of
Garrison was a shock to his delicate nature, completed
the change in his ideas that his own observations had be-
gun. The final bent was given by a conversation with
the Rev. Samuel J. May, a Garrison abolitionist and a Uni-
tarian minister, who looked up to Channing as his spiritual
leader.1
Dr. Channing's work on "Slavery" attracted wide atten-
tion, and might be found on many a parlor-table from which
the Liberator was excluded with scorn. Many Southerners
and nearly every prominent man in public life read it. A
slave-holder in Congress declared that the slaves in the South
knew that Dr. Channing had written a book on their behalf,
and it was not long before the Southern aristocracy and
their ' Northern partisans considered Channing a more dan-
gerous man than even Garrison.
The justification of this little book of one hundred and
fifty-nine pages may be summed up in the averment that
" Slavery ought to be discussed. We ought to think, feel,
speak, and write about it. But whatever we do in regard
to it should be done with a deep feeling of responsibility,
and so done as not to put in jeopardy the peace of the slave-
1 For this conversation, see Anti-slavery Conflict, May, p. 173; Life of
Channing, p. 529.
L— 5
66 CHANNING ON SLAVERY [Cu. I
holding states." The argument is an elaboration of the
thesis : No " right of man in man can exist. A human be-
ing cannot be justly owned;" and the duty then incumbent
upon Northern people is thus formulated : " Our proper and
only means of action is to spread the truth on the subject
of slavery."
If slavery were wrong, the only valid objection to dis-
cussing it lay in the possibility that the agitation might ex-
cite servile insurrection. This argument appears and reap-
pears in Congress, in the press and the pulpit of the time.
Dr. Charming addressed himself with success to the refuta-
tion of this reasoning, and the course of events proved that
his position was weir taken. From Nat Turner's to John
Brown's, a period of twenty-eight years, no slave insurrection
gathered to a head ; and both of these were, in their imme-
diate physical results, insignificant. The first revolt was, as
we have seen, contemporaneous with the inception of the
abolition movement. The John Brown invasion, in no way a
rising of slaves, occurred after the moral agitation had ac-
complished its work, and when the cause had been consigned
to a political party that brought to a successful issue the
movement begun by the moral sentiment of the country. A
potent influence of Dr. Channing's book lay in the fact that
he had little sympathy with Garrison's methods, and repre-
sented a different range of sentiment ; and he was appar-
ently not aware how much he had been influenced by the
abolitionist agitation. Channing, like Emerson, would never
have initiated a movement of this kind. They were apostles
of an advanced religion and philosophy, but they loved the
tranquillity of culture, and could not play the part of vio-
lent iconoclasts. They were optimists ; they were not ag-
gressive natures ; thpy warn, not the .sort, of men to whom
would come, as a call from on high, the burning conviction
that the times we_re_oul nf jnintj and they musTgoTcTwork
andset them right. Emerson, with the abolitionists in his
mind, said that " the professed philanthropists are an alto-
gether odious set of people3 whom one would shun as the
CH. L] THE ABOLITIONISTS AND CONGRESS 67
worst of bores and canters." ' But his respect for Garrison
grew with his knowledge, and he wittily said of this chief
agitator and of the men who threw themselves unhesitat-
ingly into the contest, that " they might be wrong-headed,
but they were wrong-headed in the right direction."2
We must now turn our eyes towards the national cap-
ital. There the abolitionists had made themselves felt.
Since the settlement of the Missouri controversy the sub-
ject of slavery had hardly been alluded to in Congress, but
in 1835 it was brought before that body by the first refer-
ence made in a President's message to abolitionism. Gen-
eral Jackson called attention to the transmission through
the mails of " inflammatory appeals addressed to the pas- \
sions of the slaves, in prints and in various sorts of publi-
cations, calculated to stimulate them to insurrection, and
to produce all the horrors of a servile war ;" and he sug-
gested the propriety of passing such a law as would pro-
hibit, under severe penalties, this practice. The result of
the consideration of this part of the message was a bill,
reported by Calhoun from a special committee of which
he had been made the chairman, subjecting to penalties
any postmaster who should knowingly receive and put
into the mail any publication or picture touching the sub-
ject of slavery, to go into a state or territory in which the
circulation of such documents should be forbidden by the
state or territorial laws. Benton, in a speech in the Senate,
described a print that had been sent to him, and which was
a sample of what were in circulation. It represented " a
large and spreading tree of liberty, beneath whose ample
shade a slave-owner was at one time luxuriously reposing,
with slaves fanning him ; at another, carried forth in a
palanquin, to view the half -naked laborers in the cotton-
field, whom drivers with whips were scourging to the
task." 3 Calhoun supported his bill by the argument that
1 Memoir of R. W. Emerson, Cabot, vol. ii. p. 427.
2 Ibid., p. 430. ' Thirty Years' View, Bentoo, vol. i. p. 577.
68 SOUTHERN SENTIMENT [Cu. I.
had now become usual with him : If Congress would not
do what it lawfully could to stop the work of the aboli-
tionists, the Union would be in danger, and the South
would have recourse to nullification, which, he asserted,
had been carried into practice successfully on a recent oc-
casion by the gallant state he had the honor to represent.
Clay opposed the bill, and Webster made a strong argu-
ment against it, taking the broad ground that it would
conflict with the liberty of the press. After three tie
votes in different parliamentary stages of the bill, it was
defeated by a majority of six.
The important consideration now to be observed is the
great change in Southern sentiment regarding slavery.
Silent and unseen forces had been at work revolutionizing
public opinion,1 and their result was now manifest. Gov-
ernor McDuffie, in his message to the South Carolina leg-
islature, said, " Domestic slavery is the corner-stone of our
republican edifice;" and Calhoun, two years later, averred
in open Senate that slavery is a good, a positive good.2
William Gilmore Simms, the poet and novelist, whom the
Southern people delighted to read and honor, could not in
1852 felicitate himself too highly that he had fifteen years
previously been one of the first to advocate that slavery was
" a great good and blessing." 3 At the birth of the nation,
as we have seen, the difference of opinion on the subject
between the North and the South was not great, but opin-
ions had moved on divergent lines. If we seek to appor-
tion the blame for this increasing irritation, we have an
impartial witness, Senator Thomas Benton, of Missouri.
A student of books, but pedantic, ostentatious, and inapt
in the use of learning, Benton was still a profound observer
of men, an honest man, and a loyal citizen. He loved the
1 See Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vol. v. p. 10 et seq.
2 Calhoun's Works, vol. ii. p. 631.
3 Pro-slavery Argument, Charleston, Walker, Richards & Co., 1852, p.
178.
Cn. I] JOHN QUINCT ADAMS 69
Union, he hated nullifiers and abolitionists. He approved
of the Northern mobs that had " silenced the gabbling
tongues of female dupes and dispersed the assemblages,
whether fanatical, visionary, or incendiary." l He was
withal a slave-holder, and represented a slave -holding
state. '''From the beginning of the Missouri controversy
up to the year 1835," he writes, " the author of this view
looked to the North as the point of danger from the
slavery agitation ; since that time he has looked to the
South for that danger, as Mr. Madison did two years ear-
lier."2
Meanwhile, a champion for the abolition cause appeared
in the House of Kepresentatives in one who had gained
reputation in the field of diplomacy, whose many years as
Secretary of State had caused to shine more brightly the
lustre he had acquired abroad, who had served with honor
one term as President, but to whose destiny it fell to win
his greatest renown and to render the country his greatest
service in the popular branch of Congress. This was John
Quincy Adams. He had from time to time presented peti-
tions for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the
District of Columbia, and they had gone through the usual
parliamentary forms without remark. But they were com-
ing too thick and fast for Southern sentiments, and in Jan-
uary, 1836, when Adams presented a petition in the usual
language, a member from Georgia moved that it be not
received. A heated discussion of some days followed, and
months were spent in the concoction of a scheme by which
these abolition ideas might be excluded from the halls of
Congress. The result was the adoption of the famous gag
rule. This provided that whereas the agitation of the sub-
ject was disquieting and objectionable, " all petitions, me-
morials, resolutions, or papers relating in any way, or to any
extent whatsoever, to the subject of slavery or the abolition
of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred,
Thirty Years' View, vol. i. p. 579. » Ibid., vol. i. p. 623.
70 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS [Cii. I.
be laid upon the table, and that no further action whatever
shall be had thereon." '
This, for the Southern leaders, was the beginning of the
madness that the gods send upon men whom they wish to
destroy ; f or, instead of making the fight on the merits of
the question, they shifted the ground. Had they simply
resisted the abolition of slavery in the District, the vast pre-
ponderance of Northern sentiment would have been with
them ; but, with a fatuitous lack of foresight, they put
Adams in a position where his efforts in the anti- slavery
cause were completely overshadowed in his contest for the
right of petition. At each session of Congress, "the old
man eloquent," a for he had gained this name, presented pe-
tition after petition for the abolition of slavery and the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and each time they
were disposed of under the gag rule.3 The anti-slavery peo-
ple of the country, fully alive to the fact that a representa-
tive had appeared who would present such prayers, busied
themselves in getting up and forwarding to him petitions,
and those he presented must be numbered by thousands,
and they were signed by 300,000 petitioners.4 Never had
there been such a contest on the floors of Congress. One
man, with no followers and no adherents, was pitted against
all the representatives from the South. It was a contest
that set people to thinking. The question could not fail to
be asked, If the slave power now demands that the right of
petition must be sacrificed, what will be the next sacred re-
publican principle that must be given up in obedience to its
behests? Yet the merchants and manufacturers of Boston
had no sympathy with the efforts of Adams ; they did not
approve of his stirring up the question. But the district
1 Life of John Quincy Adams, Morse, p. 251.
5 "That grand old man," W. H. Seward called him. Life of Seward,
vol. i. p. 713.
8 This rule was not repealed until Dec. 3d, 1844.
4 Schouler, vol. iv. p. 302.
CH. I] JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 71
he represented was the Plymouth, and, true to the sacred
memories of freedom its name suggests, its voters sent him
for eight successive terms to the House, and he died there
with the harness on his back.1
Adams was a master of sarcasm and invective,- and his
use of these weapons of argument was unsparing and ef-
fective. A man without friends, his enemies were many.
While not an orator in the highest sense of the term, he
was ever ready to speak, and kept a cool head in the midst
of the heat and excitement that his efforts always aroused.
His is a character on whom the historian would fain linger.
His honesty of purpose and fearless bearing atone manifold
for his cold heart and repellent exterior. It is not given to
us to see many public men as we see John Quincy Adams.
In his famous diary he jots down his impressions of men
and events, and discloses his inmost thoughts and feelings.
His record is a crucial test of character. No one can rise
from a perusal of that diary without an increased feeling
of admiration for the man. We may discern foibles we
had not looked for, but we see with greater force the virt-
ues. The honesty, the sincerity and strength of character
give us a feeling of pride that such a man was an American.
While Adams appeared with a bold front in public, he
was in reality torn by conflicting emotions. He confides
to his diary : " The abolitionists generally are constantly
urging me to indiscreet movements which would ruin me,
and weaken and not strengthen their cause. My own fam-
ily, on the other hand, exercise all the influence they pos-
sess to restrain and divert me from all connection with the
abolitionists and their cause. Between these adverse im-
pulses my mind is agitated almost to distraction. The pub-
lic mind in my own district and State is convulsed between
the slavery and abolition questions, and I walk on the edge
of a precipice in every step that I take." 2 Another entry
1 An interesting account of this work of Adams may be found in chap.
iii. of Life of J. Q. Adams, by Morse, which I have freely used.
5 Entry in diary, Sept. 1st, 1837, Memoirs, vol. ix. p. 365.
72 WEBSTER ON SLAVERY [Ci-i. I.
made in the diary in the same year is a faithful represen-
tation of the state of public opinion on what had now be-
come the all-absorbing question. " It is also to be con-
sidered," he wrote, " that at this time the most dangerous
of all the subjects for public contention is the slavery ques-
tion. In the South it is a perpetual agony ol conscious
guilt and terror, attempting to disguise itself under sophis-
tical argumentation and 'braggart menaces. In the North
the people favor the whites and fear the blacks of the
South. The politicians court the South because they want
their votes. The abolitionists are gathering themselves
into societies, increasing their numbers, and in zeal they
kindle the opposition against themselves into a flame ; and
the passions of the populace are all engaged against them." '
In 1837, Webster, in a speech at New York, described
the anti-slavery sentiment of the country in felicitous words.
" The subject" (of slavery), said he, "has not only attracted
attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far
deeper-toned chord. It has arrested the religious feeling
of the country ; it has taken strong hold on the consciences
of men. He is a rash man indeed, and little conversant
with human nature, and especially has he a very erroneous
estimate of the character of the people of this country, who
supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or
despised."2 It no longer required the martyr spirit to be
an abolitionist in the eastern part of the country, and yet
there were few accessions from the influential part of the
community. It was an affair of great moment, when "Wen-
dell Phillips and Edmund Quincy, representatives of the
wealth, culture, and highest social position of Boston, joined
the anti-slavery society. Wendell Phillips became an abo-
litionist from seeing Garrison dragged through the streets
of Boston by a mob ; and Quincy's action was decided by
the martyrdom of Lovejoy, who persisted in publishing an
1 Entry, April 19th, 1837, Memoirs, vol. ix. p. 349.
2 Life of Webster, Curtis, vol. i. p. 560.
CH.I.] GROWTH OF ABOLITION SENTIMENT 73
anti-slavery paper at Alton, 111., and was shot down by a
pro-slavery mob.
In 1838, Calhoun averred that the abolition " spirit was
growing, and the rising generation was becoming more
strongly imbued with it." ' His colleague, Senator Preston,
alarmed at the increasing power of the movement, declared
from his seat in the Senate that if they could catch an
abolitionist in South Carolina, they would try him and
hang him.2 Yet the road to political preferment was not
through sympathy with the abolitionists. Clay, anxious
for the presidential nomination of 1840, took occasion to
place upon record his opinion of these agitators.3 He abused
them roundly, denounced their methods, and said that a
single idea had taken possession of their minds, which they
pursued, " reckless and regardless of all consequences."
They were ready to hurry us down " that dreadful preci-
pice" to "civil war, a dissolution of the Union, and the
overthrow of a government in which are concentrated the
fondest hopes of the civilized world."4 When Clay had
finished, Calhoun rose and commended highly the Ken-
tucky senator for his change of opinion on slavery. A
biographer of Clay considers it probable that this speech
was carefully prepared, and submitted before delivery to
Senator Preston for approval, and it was in reference to the
thoughts he therein formulated that Clay gave utterance
to the well-known saying, " I trust the sentiments and
opinions are correct ; I bad rather_ba-dght than bo Presi-
jentT"
" The most angry and portentous debate which had yet
taken place in Congress" on slavery occurred in 1839, in
the House of ^Representatives.6 Tho slavery question could
1 Thirty Years' View, Benton, vol. ii. p. 135.
2 Life of Garrison, vol. ii. p. 247.
3 In the Senate, Feb., 1839.
4 Thirty Years' View, Benton, vol. ii. p. 155.
5 Life of Clay, Schurz, vol. ii. p. 169 et ante.
6 Thirty Years' View, Benton, vol. ii. p. 150.
74 GROWTH OF ABOLITION SENTIMENT [Cn. I.
no longer be shut out from the halls of the national legis-
lature. The abolitionists had now begun to take political
action ; this was the reason why Clay spoke with such ve-
hemence against them, and it tended to intensify the ex-
citement each time that the subject was broached in either
the House or the Senate. For more than a year they had
adopted the system of putting questions to candidates, con-
gressional and local, demanding an expression of opinion
on the vital question ; and, guided by these declarations of
sentiments, the abolitionist vote was beginning to have in
some states an important influence on the result of elec-
tions. In 1840 a division in the ranks of the abolitionists
took place, arising out of a difference of opinion regarding
political action. Many of them thought they should take
a part in active political life, and even form a political party,
while others, headed by Garrison and Phillips, held that the
movement ought to remain purely moral, and they should
only use moral means for the accomplishment of their ends.
Garrison never voted but once, and Wendell Phillips never
voted.1 The separation into two factions is a proof of the
growing power of the abolitionists, for as long as all hands
were raised against them, perfect harmony existed in their
ranks. Dissension, or rather division, came with prosperity ;
there were now two thousand anti-slavery societies with a
membership of 200,000.2 This Avas the acme of the moral
movement. The Liberator, indeed, continued to appear
weekly, but its denunciations of the slave power were ac-
companied by criticisms of the opposing faction. In the
next decade the Garrison abolitionists suffered loss of in-
fluence by advocating disunion as a remedy. Failing to
appreciate the love for the Union and reverence for the
Constitution that prevailed among the mass of the Northern
people, they adopted the motto, " No union with slave-
holders," and proclaimed the Constitution " a covenant with
1 Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 455 ; Life of Wendell Phillips, Austin, p. 5.
2 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Wilson, vol. i. p. 186.
Cii.L] THE TEXAS QUESTION 75
death and agreement with hell." ' Many years afterwards
Garrison virtually admitted his mistake, saying that " when
he pledged himself to fight against the covenant with death
and agreement with hell, he did not think that he should
live to see death and hell secede from the Union." a -
The muse of history has done full justice to the abolition-
ists. Among them were literary men, who have known
how to present their cause with power, and the noble spirit
of truthfulness pervades the abolition literature. One may
search in vain for intentional misrepresentation. Abuse of
opponents and criticism of motives are common enough,
but the historians of the abolition movement have endeav-
ored to relate a plain, honest tale ; and the country has
accepted them and their work at their true value. More-
over, a cause and its promoters that have been celebrated
in the vigorous lines of Lowell, and sung in the impassioned
verse of Whittier, will be of perennial memory. Lowell's
tribute to Garrison, as the " poor, unlearned young man,"
toiling over his types, "friendless and unseen,'' while yet
through his efforts "the freedom of a race began," fixes
his place in history. Whittier repels the charge against
Garrison that he is "rash and vain," "a searcher after
fame;" the poet has known the agitator well, has read
" his mighty purpose long," and nothing can " dim the sun-
shine of my faith and earnest trust in thee." Praise like
this is more than mere poetry for the moment ; it is tho
deep, earnest conviction of men of high character.3
The story of the annexation of Texas and the conquest of
New Mexico and California is not a fair page in our history.
The extension of our boundary to the Kio Grande, and the
rounding of our Pacific possessions by the acquisition of
California, gave symmetrical proportions to our territory, and
1 Garrison and his Times, Johnson, pp. 340-342. 2 Ibid., p. 347.
3 " Garrison was the courageous and single-minded apostle of the no-
ble body of abolitionists." — Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, p. 268.
76 THE TEXAS QUESTION [€H. I.
this consideration has induced many writers to justify the
winning of this domain.1 But in pondering the plain narra-
tive of these events, more reason for humiliation than pride
will be found.
Texas, a part of the Mexican republic, was settled by
hardy adventurers from our southwestern States, who, des-
pite the fact that Mexico had abolished slavery by presi-
dential decree, took with them to the new country their
slaves. The Americans, after their arrival, paid no attention
to the prohibition of slavery, and the Mexican government,
in the interest of peace, allowed an interpretation of the
edict that excluded Texas from its operation. But there
were no sympathetic relations between the Texans and Mex-
icans. The difference between the Spanish and English
nationalities, between Continental and English institutions,
between the Catholic and Protestant religions, was too great
for the hope that any union could exist between the two
peoples. Texas had with the province of Coahuila been
constituted one state by the Mexican Constitution of 1827.
This was not satisfactory to the Texans, who demanded
autonomy. This demand caused constant friction between
them and the central government, and finally resulted in
an attempt of the President, Santa Anna, to enforce obedi-
ence by military authority, and Texas rebelled. The Texans
were victorious in the decisive battle of San Jacinto in 1836,
and gave the world evidence that they wrere able to estab-
lish a government de facto? The independence of Texas
1 Emerson had remarkable foresight. In 1844 he wrote in his diary:
"The question of the annexation of Texas is one of those which look
very differently to the centuries and to the years. It is very certain that
the strong British race, which have now overrun so much of this conti-
nent, must also overrun that tract and Mexico and Oregon also ; and it will
in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions and
methods it was done." — Memoir of R. W. Emerson, Cabot, vol. ii. p.
576.
2 President Jackson had tried to buy Texas, and, failing in that, had,
according to John Q. Adams, engaged in a plot with his friend Houston
CH.I.] WEBSTER ON TEXAS ANNEXATION 77
was recognized by the United States in 11337, and soon after
by England, France, and Belgium. In the Senate debate
on the subject, Calhoun avowed that he was not only in
favor of the recognition of the ndw republic as an indepen-
dent nation, but he desired the admission of Texas into the
Union. This project soon came to have warm advocates,
and attracted so much attention that Webster deemed it in-
cumbent on him to express an opinion on the matter in a
set speech delivered in New York City. " Texas," said he,
" is likely to be a slave-holding country, and I frankly avow
my- entire unwillingness to do anything that shall extend
the slavery of the African race on this continent or add
other slave-holding states to the Union. When I say I re-
gard slavery in itself as a great moral, social, and political
evil, I only use language which has been adopted by distin-
guished men, themselves citizens of slave-holding states. I
shall do nothing, therefore, to favor or encourage its further
extension. . . . In my opinion, the people of the United
States will not consent to bring into the Union a new, vastly
extensive, slave-holding country. ... In my opinion, they
ought not to consent to it." '
This was the general feeling at the North. Webster was
an exponent of the principles of the Whig party, and the ac-
tion of President Van Buren later in the same year makes
it apparent that the Northern Democrats were opposed to
annexation. The Texan envoy at Washington broached the
project' to the President, but after careful consideration he
declined the proffer, giving for an ostensible reason that as
Mexico and Texas were at war, the incorporation of Texas
into the Union would imply a disposition on our part to es-
pouse her quarrel with Mexico. In the next year, the Senate
was applied to, but that body, by a decisive majority, re-
fused to take any step towards annexation.
for the revolt of Texas and for bringing her into the Union. See Schou-
ler, vol. iv. p. 251.
1 Speech at Niblo's Saloon, New York City, March, 1837, Webster's
Works, vol. i. p. 356.
78 PRESIDENT TYLER AND TEXAS [Cn. I.
Owing to these rebuffs, the question slept until 1843.
Meanwhile Harrison had been elected President, had died,
and had been succeeded by John Tyler, who, though former-
ly a Democrat, had become a Whig and was chosen Vice-
President. He had not been long in the presidential chair
when it was evident that he leaned towards the party of his
first love ; and when he came into conflict with the Whig
party, where its fundamental principles were involved, all
the members of the original cabinet resigned except Webster,
who retained the portfolio of State for the reason that he
was engaged in the negotiation of an important treaty with
England. He remained in the cabinet until he and Lord
Ashburton had agreed upon the treaty of Washington ; and
he still lingered until it had been ratified by both govern-
ments, and Congress had passed laws carrying it into effect.1
The position, however, became distasteful to him, owing to
the quarrel between the President and the Whigs, and in
the spring of 1843 he resigned. By this time Tyler had be-
come committed to Texas annexation, and, as he knew Web-
ster was opposed to it, he gladly accepted the resignation.8
A short time afterwards Upshur, of Virginia, who was ardent-
ly in favor of the Texas project, became Secretary of State.
In the summer of 1843 the intrigue began. Congress was
not in session. The President, Upshur, and the Southern
. schemers could pursue their machinations almost unnoticed.
On the assembling of Congress, in December, 1843, the
scheme began to develop. As Benton had strong national
sentiments, as he had been opposed to the retrocession of
Texas,3 and was a true embodiment of the boundless spirit
1 Life of Webster, Lodge, p. 259 ; Life of Crittenden, Coleman, vol. i. p.
205.
a The President had broached the subject tentatively to Webster in a
letter dated Oct. llth, 1841. Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. p.
126. I do not know what reply, if any, was made to this communication.
See Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vol. xi. p. 847 ; also Schouler, vol. iv. pp.
437, 447, note.
3 Tesas had generally been considered as included in the Louisiana
Cri.L] PRESIDENT TYLER AND TEXAS 79
of the West, the project was opened to him. But the in-
triguers had not reckoned wisely on the man, for Benton
told them he believed their scheme was, on the part of some,
a presidential intrigue against Van Buren and a plot to dis-
solve the Union, and on the part of others a Texas scrip and
Tand speculation, and he was against it.1 These motives
had their share, but the consideration above all others that
prompted the Southern faction was the desire to restore, by
an accession of slave territory, the balance of power lost by
the gain in population at the North. If four slave states
could be carved out of Texas, the South might retain her
control of the Senate, although she had lost the House.
In this same winter, "Webster, though not at that time in
public life, got an inkling, while at Washington attending
the Supreme Court, of the negotiations the administration
were carrying on with Texas. "I was astounded," he
said, " at the boldness of the government." 2 Tyler was a
liberally educated gentleman, of good birth, fine breeding,
and graceful manners, but of moderate capacity and narrow
ideas ; yet he had a certain dogged persistence and audacity
that sometimes take the place of ability. The President
did not advocate the annexation of Texas, however, for the
reason that it would augment the slave power. He thought
that he took a broad national view of the subject, and not a
narrow sectional one. " The monopoly of the cotton plant,"
he afterwards wrote, " was the great and important con-
cern ;" arid he said that Calhoun could only see the exten-
sion of slavery in connection with the Texas project, " That
idea," he wrote, " seemed to possess him and llpshur as a
single idea." 3
On February 28th, 1844, occurred a distressing accident,
purchase, but in the treaty with Spain for the acquisition of Florida it
had been ceded to Mexico, then belonging to Spain, by the administra-
tion of Monroe.
1 Thirty Years' View, vol. ii. p. 588.
- Curtis, vol. ii. p. 232.
3 Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. p. 483. See also p. 136,
80 CALHOUN AND TEXAS [On. I.
the results of which were to hasten the execution of the an-
nexation treaty with Texas that had already been prepared.1
The President, a party of officials, and friends were assisting
as spectators at the trial of a new piece of ordnance on
board of the man-of-war Princeton, when the bursting of
the big gun "Peacemaker" killed several persons, among
whom was Upshur, the Secretary of State. Passing the
night after the accident in deep reflection, Henry A. Wise,
of Virginia, a confidential friend of the President, whose
eagerness for the annexation of Texas went beyond bounds,
came to the conclusion that the man of all others to drive
the project forward was Calhoun. Repairing to the White
House in the early morning, and while the President was
still a prey to the painful emotions excited by the previous
day's occurrence, Wise actually browbeat Tyler into the
appointment of Calhoun as Secretary of State.2 Calhoun
became the master spirit of the cabinet. The man of one
idea, and that idea the extension of slavery, had a large
share of executive direction. The annexation project no
longer lagged ; it galloped towards consummation. Calhoun
was appointed and confirmed March 6th (1844). On April
llth, although Mexico was at peace with us, he complied with
a request, made some months previously, and promised to lend
our army and navy to the President of Texas to be used in
her war against Mexico. On the following day, the treaty
of annexation of Texas to the United States was signed.
What Texas had vainly sought, and what the extreme
Southern party had ardently desired for eight years, was ac-
complished, so far as it lay in the power of the executive de-
partment of the government.
Ten days went by before the treaty was sent to the Sen-
ate,3 for Calhoun wished to submit with it his reply to a
1 " The treaty as signed was the work of Abel P. Upslmr." — Letters and
Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. p. 297.
2 See Seven Decades of the Union, Henry A. Wise, chap. xi. ; Letters and
Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. p. 294.
8 " The treaty for the annexation of Texas to this Union was this day
CH. I.] CALHOUN AND TEXAS ^ 81
letter of Lord Aberdeen, the British Minister of Foreign Af-
fairs, which he esteemed a powerful argument in favor of
annexation. A despatch of Aberdeen had been communi-
cated to Upshur in the usual diplomatic manner, in which
was expressed the desire to see slavery abolished in Texas,
for Great Britain exerted herself to procure the abolition of
slavery everywhere ; but any thought of acting directly or
indirectly on the United States through Texas was plainly
disclaimed, and the minister avowed for his government that
nothing but open and honest efforts would be made. Cal-
houn asserted that this policy of Great Britain made it nec-
essary for the United States to annex Texas as a measure of
self-defence.1 This letter that he sent to the Senate with
the treaty began with a false assumption2 and unfair rea-
soning, and ended with the humiliating argument showing
the wisdom and humanity of African slavery by a statisti-
cal contrast of the comfort, intelligence, and morals of slaves
as compared with the free colored people in the United
States.3
But the letter failed to convince the Senate, and it refused
to ratify the treaty by a vote of 35 to 16.4 The President
and his Secretary were grievously disappointed. In addi-
tion to the chagrin at the failure of a cherished state plan,
Calhoun felt keenly the loss of opportunity further to air
(April 22d) sent in to the Senate ; and with it went the freedom of the hu-
man race."— Diary of J. Q.Adams, Memoirs, vol. xii. p. 13.
1 Life of Calhoun, Von Hoist, p. 231.
3 " However flexible political morality may be, a lie is a lie, and Cal-
houn knew that there was not one particle of truth in these assertions."—
Life of Calhoun, Von Hoist, p. 233.
s This letter was published in Niles's Register, vol. Ixvi. p. 172 ; see de-
fence of Calhoun, Life by Jenkins, p. 403.
* " During the whole continuance of these debates in the Senate, the
lobbies of the chamber were crowded with speculators in Texas scrip
and lands, and with holders of Mexican claims — all working for the rat-
ification of the treaty, which would bring with it an increase of value to
their property." — Thirty Years' View, Benton, vol. ii. p. 623.
I.— 6
82 CALHOUN AND TEXAS [On. i.
his closet dialectics. A letter of his written at this time '
shows that in the event of annexation he expected a reply
from Aberdeen, to which he hoped to return a crushing re-
joinder. Happily the country was spared the humiliation
of maintaining the affirmative in a diplomatic controversy
on the question, Is slavery right ? Calhoun was disappoint-
ed not to have the occasion to lecture England again on
the advantage of slavery. But he astonished the humane
King Louis Philippe by a despatch, forwarded by the Amer-
ican minister at Paris, in which he attempted to make clear
the community of interest between France and the United
States in maintaining slavery on the American continent.3
Although signally defeated in the Senate, the administra-
tion by no means abandoned its project. The President ap-
pealed from the Senate to the House of Kepresentatives.
He sent all the documents to the House, with an explana-
tory message suggesting that Congress had the power to
acquire Texas in another way than by the formal ratifica-
tion of the treaty. This was an obvious hint for annexa-
tion by joint resolution of Congress.
Meanwhile the friends of the Texas scheme did not con-
fine themselves to the advocacy of it before Congress. They
proposed to submit the question to the people in the presi-
dential election taking place this year (1844). Clay received
by acclamation the nomination from the enthusiastic Whigs.
The adroit management of the annexationists was shown
in the manipulation of the Democratic convention, which
met some weeks later. A majority of the convention was
in favor of the nomination of Van Buren, and his choice
would have given satisfaction to Northern Democrats, but
his opposition to immediate annexation caused his defeat.
The old rule requiring two-thirds of the convention to nom-
inate was adopted, and this resulted in the choice, on the
1 It was not published until sixteen years later, see Life of Calhoun,
Von Hoist, p. 241.
a This letter may be found in Greeley's American Conflict, vol i. p. 169.
CH.L] CLAY AND FOLK 83
ninth ballot, of James K. Polk. Had ability constituted the
test, Polk would not have been selected, nor had a long ser-
vice in the House of Representatives given him a claim to
distinction ;' but he had written, " I am in favor of the imme-
diate re-annexation of Texas to the territory and govern-
ment of the United States," a and this was the reason of his
nomination.
The election of Polk was due to a clever letter written
by himself and to foolish letters by Clay. Polk satisfied
the Pennsylvania protectionists, and the campaign in that
state was successfully conducted with the watchword "Polk,
Dallas, and the tariff of 1842." Texas annexation was the
rock on which Clay made shipwreck. In April, before his
nomination, he wrote a letter against annexation. Then it
was represented that the close Southern States were in
danger, and in July came from his pen the expression of
a wish to see Texas added to the Union " upon just and fair
terms," and the opinion that " the subject of slavery ought
not to affect the question one way or the other."3 But
now his anti-slavery supporters made clamor, and in Sep-
tember Clay declared against immediate annexation. This
expression, however, did not counteract the mischief done
by the July letter, and was inadequate to retain him the
favor of many strong anti-slavery men. The Liberty party,
made up of abolitionists who had separated from the anti-
slavery society of Garrison, had nominated for the presi-
dency James G. Birney. Birney, of Southern birth but
1 The question " Who is Polk ?" was frequent during the campaign.
* On the use of the word re-annexation, see Niles's Register, vol. Ixvi.
p. 250. " General Cass has proved, out of Fraser*8 Magazine, that the
United States should never buy nor sell out the word re-annexation. Ill-
natured people there are, who will call this a violent occupation of for-
eign domain-. But they have a humor of giving ill names to everything.
We should regard it no more than Ancient Pistol the word steal: ' Con-
vey, the wise it call. Steal ? foh ! a fico for the phrase !' " Cited from
the Newark Daily Advertiser.
3 Niles's Register, vol. Ixvi. p. 439.
84 CLAY AND POLK [Cn. L
Northern education, was a gentleman of high character and
a practical abolitionist, for, becoming convinced of the
wrong of slavery, he had emancipated his own slaves and
thenceforward devoted himself to the anti-slavery cause.
He had gained note by a tract he had written entitled
" The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slav-
ery." He had been the candidate of the Liberty party four
years previously, but in the whole country had only received
seven thousand votes. His candidacy in 1844 would prob-
ably have been of no greater moment had it not been for
the unfortunate July letter of Clay, which alienated enough
Whigs to lose him the State of New York, and therefore
the election. Polk carried New York State by a plurality
of little more than five thousand, while Birney polled in the
same state nearly sixteen thousand votes. The feeling against
the annexation of Texas gave Birney this important support,
and, while well-meaning, it was ill-considered action. Polk or
Clay was certain to be elected President. The success of Polk
would register the desire of the country to have Texas, regard-
less of consequences, while the election of Clay would certain-
ly postpone, and might defeat, the project of annexation ; and
a vote for Birney was indirectly a vote for Polk. Thus ar-
gued Adams, Seward, Greeley, and Giddings, all strong anti-
slavery men. But the abolitionists rejoiced at the defeat
of Clay ; their high-toned exultation mingled with the bois-
terous demonstrations of the New York Democrats ; 1 while
never before or since has the defeat of any man in this coun-
try brought forth such an exhibition of heart-felt grief from
the educated and respectable classes of society as did this
defeat of Clay. Men were frequently heard to say that they
now " had no more interest in politics." '
The real meaning of the election of Polk was proclaimed
by President Tyler in his annual message. A controlling
' Life of Seward, p. 731.
» Ibid., p. 732; Life of Lincoln, Herndon, p. 270; Life of Wade, Rid-
dle, p. 192.
OH.!.] ANNEXATION OF TEXAS 85
majority of the people, he said, and a large majority of the
states have declared in favor of immediate annexation. The
House of Representatives now entered into the plan with
zeal, and near the close of January, 1845, passed a resolution
providing for the admission of Texas, and, with her consent,
the formation of four additional states out of the territory ;
in states formed north of the line of 36° 30' north latitude,
slavery was prohibited. The Senate did not incline so fa-
vorably to the project. Several Democratic senators were
opposed to accomplishing the object in this manner, and
Benton tells how their support was gained. In the Senate,
the House resolution was amended by giving the President
the option of negotiating another treaty of annexation or
of submitting the joint resolution to Texas for her accept-
ance of its prescribed conditions. Benton and his fellow-
senators, who were of like mind, had assurances directly
and indirectly from the President-elect that he would take
the option of treaty negotiation ; 1 and they had the asser-
tion in open Senate of McDuffie, the close friend of Cal-
houn, that the actual administration would take no steps in
the matter in its few remaining days of power. The bill,
as amended, passed the Senate by a majority of two votes ;
it went through the House on the last day of February,
1845, and twenty-four hours later it received the signature
of the President. No sooner was the bill signed than Tyler
and Calhoun, although they had but three days more of
office, despatched a special agent to Texas to offer the terms
of annexation as provided in the joint resolution. It is true
that the instructions to their envoy were courteously sub-
mitted to Polk, who, however, declined any interference in
the matter.2 Texas accepted the terms, and at the next ses-
sion of Congress was formally admitted as one of the states
of the Union.3
1 Thirty Years' View, Benton, vol. ii. pp. 636-638. This is denied in
Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. pp. 405, 409.
2 Letters and Times of the Tylers; vol. ii. p. 363.
8 A few years afterwards a controversy between Calhoun and Tyler
86 THE OREGON QUESTION [On. I.
Although now a foregone conclusion, Webster, who had
been sent again to the Senate, gave voice to his opposition
to the scheme. He objected to the admission of Texas be-
cause it was newly acquired slave territory, and he had,
moreover, another reason, which he put into words of wis-
dom. " It is," said he, " of very dangerous tendency and
doubtful consequences to enlarge the boundaries of this
country. . . . There must be some limit to the extent of
our territory, if we would make our institutions permanent.
... I have always wished that this country should exhibit
to the nations of the earth the example of a great, rich,
powerful republic which is not possessed by a spirit of ag-
grandizement. It is an example, I think, due from us to the
world in favor of the character of republican government." *
The diplomacy of the Polk administration, though not as
secret as that of Tyler, was fully as tortuous. Polk, in his
inaugural address, declared that our title to the whole of
Oregon was clear and unquestionable,2 and that he intended
to maintain that title. The whole of Oregon then meant
as far north as 54° 40' north latitude, now the southern
boundary of Alaska. The northwestern boundary had long
been in dispute between Great Britain and the United States ;
but the assertion of the President was extravagant, and
savored rather of party pressure than of wise diplomacy, for
the claim had not a good foundation. Both Webster and
Calhoun, whose experience in the State department gave
weight to their judgment, were of the opinion that to adopt
the parallel of 49° would be a fair settlement of the dispute.
After a certain amount of diplomatic fencing between the
arose as to who should have the credit of the annexation. See BentonT3
Thirty Years' View, and Letters and Times of the Tylers.
1 Speech in the Senate, Dec., 1845, Works, vol. v. p. 56. President
Tyler said, in one of his messages advocating annexation, that no civil-
ized government on earth would reject the offer of such a rich and fertile
domain as Texas. Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. p. 300.
2 This was resolved by the Democratic convention which nominated
Polk.
CH.L] THE MEXICAN WAR 87
two countries, the Senate, on request, by a large majority,
advised the President to conclude a treaty on that basis.
Very differently did the administration act regarding the
disputed boundary question with Mexico. Although that
unfortunate country had officially notified the United States
that the annexation of Texas would be treated as a cause of
war, so constant were the internal quarrels in Mexico that
open hostilities would have been avoided had the conduct of
the administration been honorable. That was the opinion
of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, and Tyler. But as the
satirist expressed it, the Southerners were after " bigger
pens to cram with slaves." ' Having acquired Texas, they
longed for New Mexico and California. A dispute arose
whether the southwestern boundary was the river Nueces
or the Rio Grande. Negotiation in the same spirit as that
had with Great Britain would undoubtedly have settled the
difficulty, but the President arrogated the right of deciding
the question. Mexico was actually goaded on to the war.
The principle of the manifest destiny of this country was
invoked as a reason for the attempt to add to our territory
at the expense of Mexico.2 General Taylor, who had com-
mand of the United States troops in Mexico, was ordered to
advance to the Rio Grande. " Why not," Benton had thun-
dered, " march up to fifty-four forty as courageously as we
march upon the Rio Grande ? Because Great Britain is
powerful and Mexico weak." 3 On General Taylor's arrival
at the Rio Grande, he planted a battery which commanded
the public square of Matamoras, a Mexican town on the op-
posite side of the river, and blockaded the river in order to
cut off supplies from the town. The Mexican general main-
1 Biglow Papers.
* " Parson Wilbur sez
thet all this big talk of our destinies
Is half on it ig'rance an' t'other half rum."
— Biglow Papers.
8 Thirty Years' View, vol. ii. p. 610.
88 THE MEXICAN WAR [On. I.
tained that this began hostilities ; he crossed over to the
east bank of the Rio Grande, and had a skirmish with a
smaller American force, in which sixteen of our dragoons
were killed.
When this news arrived in Washington, early in May,
1846, the President sent a message to both houses of Con-
gress, stating that American blood had been spilled on Amer-
ican soil, and asked that the existence of the war might be
recognized, and energetic measures taken for its prosecution.
Congress, with only two dissenting voices in the Senate and
fourteen in the House, immediately declared war. This una-
nimity of feeling is not remarkable ; for as long as love of
country shall remain a cardinal virtue, the effort will be made
to avenge an attack on one's countrymen. The national feel-
ing had such root that the doctrine " Our country, right or
wrong," was proclaimed to justify the sympathies of those
who believed the war in its inception to have been an out-
rage. The Mexicans thought that the war was the result of
a deliberately calculated scheme of robbery on the part of
the superior power.1 As Birdofredom Sawin, a private in
the Mexican war, was told, " Our nation's bigger 'n theirn,
an' so its rights air bigger."3 While some quiet opposition
at the North existed,3 the war in the main was very popular.
It needed no draft to fill the army ; more volunteers offered
than could be used. The war lasted nearly two years,4 and
was an unbroken series of victories. Our people would have
1 H. H. Bancroft, cited in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vol.
vii. p. 356. u For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure [the an-
nexation of Texas], and to this day regard the war which resulted as one
of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation." —
General Grant, Personal Memoirs, vol. i. p. 53.
3 Biglow Papers.
1 " I met with no one person in society who defended the aggression
on Mexican territory." The dissatisfaction of many with the war "is
unbounded."— Sir Charles Lyell, 1846, Second Visit, vol. H. p. 256.
*It virtually ended, however, in Sept., 1847, having begun in May,
1846.
CH.I.J THE MEXICAN WAR 89
been more than human had they not exulted over our suc-
cesses, due, as they were, to the genius of our generals and
bravery of our troops. The Polk administration was de-
servedly unpopular ; it declined in public estimation for the
reason that the victories in the field were won by two Whig
generals whom Polk and his cabinet fettered, but did not
dare to displace.1 The war gave Taylor his military reputa-
tion and made him President ; it added to Scott's fame and
made him a presidential candidate.
This administration, said Benton, "wanted a small war
just large enough to require a treaty of peace, and not large
enough to make military reputations dangerous for the pres-
idency."2 It waged war with the sword in one hand and
the olive branch in the other ; but the olive branch was to
be backed with money. In August of this year (1846), and
after liberal appropriations had been made for the vigorous
prosecution of the war, the President, in addition, asked
Congress for two million dollars for the purpose of settling
our difficulties with Mexico. It was no secret that this
money would be used to aid negotiations that had in view
the cession of considerable territory to this country, but
now the discussion took an unforeseen course, and one far
from welcome to the administration. David Wilmot, a
Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, was selected
to propose a vital condition to this appropriation of money.
He had advocated Texas annexation. He now asserted the
necessity of the war, and avowed himself in favor of the
acquisition of New Mexico and California; but he offered
an amendment to the two-million bill, which provided that
slavery should be forever prohibited in all the territory to
1 " Mr. Folk's mode of viewing the case seems to have been this : Scott
is a Whig; therefore the Democracy is not bound to observe good faith
with him. Scott is a Whig, therefore his successes may be turned to the
prejudice of the Democratic party." — Autobiography of Lieut.-General
Scott, p. 400.
3 Thirty Years' View, vol. ii. p. 680.
90 THE WILMOT PROVISO [Cn. L
be acquired from Mexico. This was the famous Wilmot
proviso ; it received a majority of nineteen in the House,
but failed in the Senate, as did likewise the original bill. It
\vas charged at the time, but probably with injustice, that
the defeat of the proviso was due to the loquacity of one of
its strong supporters, " honest John Davis," senator from
Massachusetts.1
At the next session of Congress, in the following Febru-
ary (1847), the Wilmot proviso again came up. The Presi-
dent asked for an appropriation of three million dollars,
secret service money, to be employed at his discretion in
negotiating a treaty with Mexico. A bill was brought into
the House with the desired stipulation, and to it was tacked
the anti-slavery proviso, but only by a majority of nine.
The Senate struck out the amendment, and passed the
three-million bill, pure and simple, in accordance with the
wish of the administration. The matter now went back to
the House, and, by a majority of five, it receded from the
Wilmot proviso. The House then passed the bill as it came
from the Senate. All of the Whigs and many of the Dem-
ocrats from the free States voted for the anti-slavery amend-
ment, but every member from the slave States, except the
one from Delaware, voted against it. Popular sentiment at
the South was very strongly aroused in opposition to the
Wilmot proviso, while the North was equally zealous in its
favor.
During the year 1847 the vigorous prosecution of the war
went on. From March to September Scott gained marvel-
lous victories;2 at last he took the city of Mexico, and dis-
1 See defence of Davis, Senate speech, March, 1847 ; speech of Wilmot,
Feb., 1847; Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 17;
per contra, see Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 287 ; Congressional Globe, vol. xxviii.
p. 1251 ; Life and Speeches of A. Lincoln, Bartlett, p. 64. Davis was one
of the two senators who voted against the declaration of war against
Mexico.
a u if < Waverley ' and 'Guy Mannering' had made the name of Scott
immortal on one side of the Atlantic, Cerro Gordo and Churubusco had
CH.L] THE MEXICAN WAR 91
persed the Mexican army. Meanwhile, we had obtained
possession by military power of the territories of New
Mexico and California. The new House of Eepresentatives
that met in December differed widely in sentiment from the
preceding House towards the administration. Then there
had been a Democratic majority of sixty; in the present
House the Democrats were in a minority of eight. This
showed a strange revulsion of political feeling, for the elec-
tions took place while the country was resounding with the
victories of Taylor and Scott. It is amazing that an admin-
istration should have been condemned by the voice of the
people when the operations in the field had been so signally
successful ; but this was due to the deep-seated conviction
that the war had been unjustly begun, and that the para-
mount object of Polk and his advisers was to add more
slave territory to the Union.
This feeling soon found expression in a House resolution
that the war with Mexico was " unnecessarily and uncon-
stitutionally begun by the President of the United States,"
and this opinion was heartily endorsed by "Webster in a
Senate speech. " I concur in that sentiment," he said ; " I
hold that to be the most recent and authentic expression of
the will and opinion of the majority of the people of the
United States." l This speech set forth ably and with much
feeling the dangers that were liable to accrue from an ac-
cession of new territory. It was an amplification of his
remarks at the preceding session when he stated : " We
want no extension of territory. "We want no accession of
new States. The country is already large enough." 2 With
a premonition of the evils in store for his beloved country,
and with perhaps a dim presage of how his own great rep-
equally immortalized it on the other. If the novelist had given the
garb of truth to fiction, had not the warrior given to truth the air of
romance ?"— Sir Henry Bulwer at New York, 1850, Scott's Autobiog-
raphy, p. 539.
1 Speech, March 23d, 1848, Works, vol. v. p. 274.
9 Remarks in the Senate, Feb., 1847, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 305.
92 THE MEXICAN WAR [Cu. I.
utation was to suffer in the effort to grapple with them, he
had said: "I pretend to see but little of the future, and
that little affords no gratification. All I can scan is con-
tention, strife, and agitation." '
The opinion of an unimportant member of the House has
an interest for us inspired by his after-career. Abraham
Lincoln, serving his first and only term in Congress, eager
for - distinction and stimulated by the expectations of his
Illinois comrades, was an industrious member, ready in
speech and prompt in action.2 He voted for the House
resolution to which reference has been made, and delivered
a set speech on the Mexican war, which had the merit of
using plain words to express opinions shared by many of
his fellow-Whigs, though not by the constituents of his
prairie district. His course on this question is best de-
scribed in his own words of some years later. " I was an
old Whig," said he, " and whenever the Democratic party
tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously
begun by the President, I would not do it. But when they
asked money or land warrants, or anything to pay the sol-
diers, I gave the same vote that Douglas did." 3
In the early part of February, 1848, a treaty of peace
was negotiated by a United States Commissioner in Mex-
ico, and this afterwards received the ratification of the
President and the Senate. By its provisions, New Mexico
and Upper California4 were ceded to the United States, and
the lower Rio Grande, from its mouth to El Paso, was taken
as the boundary of Texas. In consideration of these ac-
1 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 307.
8 Life of Lincoln, Lamon, p. 280.
1 Lincoln-Douglas debates, Life of Lincoln, Arnold, p. 78.
* New Mexico included part of the present territory of the same name,
all of Arizona except the southern part (which was purchased in 1853),
practically all of Utah and Nevada, and part of Colorado. Upper Cali-
fornia was substantially the present State of California. See Narrative and
Critical History of North America, Winsor, vol. vii. p. 552, for map show-
ing exactly the territory acquired.
CH. I.] PEACE WITH MEXICO 93
ions, we agreed to pay Mexico fifteei
iadeJ-.hn^ we obtain ed Lnnisi-
ana for the same amount of mon^-ftttd-rrttbout a war.
(fcfr incident in the~negotiation of the treaty displayed
whither was our drift in obedience to the behest of the
slave power. The reader will remember that slavery did
not exist under Mexican law, and that New Mexico and
California were free territory. During the progress of the
negotiations, Mexico begged for the insertion of an article
providing that slavery should not be permitted in any of
the territories ceded. Our commissioner replied that the
bare mention of the subject in a treaty was an utter im-
possibility; that if the territory shoulij be increased ten-
fold in value, and, besides, covered all over a foot thick with
pure gold, on the single condition that slavery should be
excluded therefrom, he could not then even entertain the
proposition, nor think for a moment of communicating it
to the President.1 The "invincible Anglo-Saxon race"
could not listen to the prayer of " superstitious Catholicism,
goaded on by a miserable priesthood,"3 even though the
prayer was on the side of justice, progress, and humanity.
New Mexico and California were ours, and some measure
of government for them must be devised ; Oregon likewise
demanded attention ; and it would all have been a simple
matter had not the question of slavery existed. Early in
the year 1848, Douglas brought into the Senate a bill pro-
viding a territorial government for Oregon.3 It excited no
discussion until May, when John P. Hale, of New Hamp-
shire, a Free-soil Democrat, offered an amendment, of which
1 Letter of N. P. Trist to James Buchanan, Secretary of State, quoted
by Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 334 ; see also Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,
Wilson, vol. ii. p. 26.
2 These expressions were used by Senator Preston in an enthusiastic
speech made in 1836 on the news of the Texan victory at San Jacinto.
Thirty Years' View, vol. i. p. 665.
3 The Territory of Oregon comprised the present States of Oregon and
Washington.
94 THE CALHOUN THEORY [On. L
the intent was that slavery should be prohibited in Oregon.
This gave rise to a long and earnest debate, in which
the amendment was opposed with great pertinacity. The
slavery extensionists, however, had no idea of introducing
their system of labor into Oregon, and the discussion did
not so much hinge on the actual project as on the principle
involved and its application to New Mexico and California ;
for they determined to have the territory which had been
acquired from Mexico dedicated to slavery. But at the
threshold of their desire they found an inherent obstacle.
California and New Mexico were free ; and, as was pointed
out during the senatorial debate, " by the laws of nations,
the laws of all conquered countries remain until changed
by the conqueror. There is an express law containing the
prohibition of slavery [in California and New Mexico] and
this will continue until we shall change it." l Yet the closet
theorist, Calhoun, was equal to the emergency, and he had
a political doctrine to fit the occasion. Benton called it
the new dogma " of the transmigratory function of the
Constitution, and the instantaneous transportation of itself
in its slavery attributes into all acquired territories." Cal-
houn denied that the laws of Mexico could keep slavery
out of New Mexico and California. " As soon as the treaty
between the two countries is ratified," said he, "the sover-
eignty and authority of Mexico in the territory acquired by
it become extinct, and that of the United States is substi-
tuted in its place, carrying with it the Constitution, with
its overriding control over all the laws and institutions of
Mexico inconsistent with it."2 The Constitution by impli-
cation recognized slavery ; therefore it permitted slave-own-
ers to take their slaves into this ne\v territory, or, in other
words, it legalised slavery.3 As a necessary deduction, the
1 Senator Phelps, of Vermont.
2 Niles's Register, vol. Ixxiv. p. 61 ; Thirty Years' View, vol. ii. p. 713.
? "It is useless to prove what indeed is known to every one who has
bestowed the slightest attention to it, namely, that slavery is considered
OH. I.] SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 95
senator asserted that neither Congress, nor the inhabitants
of the^territories, nor the territorial legislature have the
fight toexclude slavery from the territories. This doc-
trine was completely refuted by Webster at the next ses-
sion of Congress. For the present he contented himself with
a passing allusion; "I am not going into metaphysics,"
said he, " for therein I should encounter the honorable sen-
ator from South Carolina, and we should find ' no end, in
wand'ring mazes lost.' "
It is indeed wondrous pitiful to contemplate Calhoun,
who had fine ability and sterling morality in private life,
thus held 'captive by one idea, and that idea totally at vari-
ance with the moral sentiment of the nineteenth century.2
In other service he would have been a useful statesman, but
he must be judged by the fruits of his two favorite dogmas,
the extreme states-rights theory of 1832, and the slavery-
extension doctrine of 1848. The two, thoroughly dissem-
inated throughout the South, became prime elements of
political faith. Their working forced her onward to seces-
sion, and induced a proud, high-spirited people to battle
for an idea utterly condemned at the tribunal of modern
civilization.
The debate went on in the Senate for sojne-W€Bksv-an4 as
the prospect of jy?ajasfa£tory conclusion seamed remote, the
whole matter was referred to a special committee^ They
a bill through_iheir ohairman, Clayton, of
Delaware, which provided^rritQJial-governm^iits for Ore-
gon, New Mexico, and California. The legitimate result of
the bill would be the prohibition of slavery in Oregon, but
emphatically and exclusively a municipal institution by all countries and
jurists, as well as publicists, European and American, Northern and
Southern ; a truth — I add it in sorrow and deep concern — which you are
the first that has ever denied." — Letter of Francis Lieber to Calhoun,
Life and Letters of Lieber, p. 232.
1 Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 308.
8 So confessed by his eulogist, La,mar, in an address at Charleston,
April, 1887,
96 SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES [Cn. I.
the question whether the Constitution permitted slavery in
New Mexico and California was to be referred to the terri-
torial courts, with the right of appeal to the United States
Supreme Court. As Thomas Corwin, in a caustic speech
opposing the measure, said, " It does not enact a law ; it
only enacts a lawsuit." l The bill passed the Senate, but
was immediately laid upon the table in the House.
Meanwhile the House had been at work on a plan for
Oregon. In the early part of August, its bill providing a
territorial government for Oregon, with the prohibition of
slavery, passed. In the Senate, an amendment was tacked
to it, extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific
Ocean.2 It must be called to mind that the Missouri Com-
promise, which prohibited slavery north of 36° 30' north lat-
itude and permitted it south of that line, only applied to the
Louisiana purchase, of which Oregon was not a part. The
purpose in view Webster well expressed : " The truth is,"
said he, "that it is an amendment by which the Senate
wishes to have now a public legal declaration, not respect-
ing Oregon, but respecting the newly acquired territories of
California and New Mexico. It wishes now to make a line
of slavery which shall include those new territories." 3 On
a previous day he had stated that " his objection to slavery
was irrespective of lines and points of latitude ; it took in
the whole country and the whole question. He was op-
posed to it in every shape and every qualification ; and was
against any compromise of the question." 4 The bill with
the amendment passed the Senate ; the amendment was dis-
agreed to by the House ; finally, on the last day of the ses-
sion, the Senate receded from its amendment and enacted
the measure establishing a territorial government for Oregon,
with the express prohibition of slavery.
1 Speeches, p. 439.
2 This would have permitted slavery in what is now New Mexico and
Arizona, and in almost the southern half of California.
3 Works, vol. v. p. 303.
* Congressional Globe, 1st Sess., 30th Cong., p. 1060.
CH.I.J SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 97
While Congress was wrangling over the question, the two
great political parties made their nominations for President ;
but their conventions completely ignored the vital issue of
the day. The Democratic party chose General Cass as its
candidate, and adopted a long series of resolutions, touching
upon every conceivable subject save only the question of
slavery in the territories. The Whig convention nominated
General Taylor, but adopted no resolutions and issued no
address. The candidate was the platform. Later, a con-
vention was held at Buffalo, composed of those dissatisfied
with the action of both of the great parties and who were
opposed to the extension of slavery. Van Buren was nom-
inated for President. The resolutions declared it to be the
duty of the federal government to abolish slavery wherever
it had the constitutional power ; and that the true and only
safe means of preventing the existence of slavery in terri-
tory still free was by congressional action. The selection of
Martin Yan Buren to head an anti-slavery movement par-
took of the grotesque. The enthusiasm with which sincere
anti-slavery men rallied to his support was singular, when
we call to mind that some years previously he had been de-
nounced as a " Korthern man with Southern principles."
Yan Buren's candidature did the Democrats more harm
than the Whigs, and particularly in the State of New York.
That state decided the election, as it had done four years
previously. Yan Buren polled more votes than Cass, and
the two together sixteen thousand more than Taylor. Tay-
lor had, however, the electoral vote of the state by a hand-
some plurality, and was chosen President.
On the assembling of Congress in December of this year
(1848), President Polk strongly urged the necessity of provid-
ing territorial governments for New Mexico and California.
He favored as a fair settlement the extension of the Missouri
Compromise line to the Pacific. More than one attempt
was made by Congress to dispose of the matter, but the only
measure which passed the Senate was an amendment to the
general appropriation bill providing for the extension of the
I.— 7
98 SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES [CH. L
Constitution to the territories. The consideration of this
amendment gave rise to an important debate in which Web-
ster and Calhoun were prominent.1 Calhoun elaborated and
explained the theory he had set forth at the previous session ;
but Webster, by a few trenchant questions and the assertion
of some patent truths, showed plainly that the idea was im-
practicable, and completely at variance with our legislative
precedents and judicial decisions. The House would not
agree with the Senate ; and as the amendment was tacked
to the general appropriation bill, scenes of great excitement
were common during the closing days of the session. Hor-
ace Mann, then a representative, wrote that blows were ex-
changed in the Senate, and two fist-fights took place in the
House, in one of which blood flowed freely ; and he expressed
the opinion that " had the North been as ferocious as the
South, it is probable there would have been a general
melee."3 Finally, however, the Senate receded from its
amendment and passed the appropriation bill. The session
came to an end, but nothing had been done towards the or-
ganization of governments for the territories. This and the
allied question of slavery were left as a legacy to the new
Congress. The necessary executive measures meanwhile
devolved upon the new President, a man who came to the
highest office of the state unversed in civil affairs, and untried
in their orderly administration.
1 This debate may be found in Curtis, vol. ii. p. 364.
8 Quoted by Von Hoist, yol. iii. p. 454.
CHAPTER II
ZACHARY TAYLOR was inaugurated March 5th, 1849. He
was sincerely honest, a man of good judgment, pure morals,
great energy, of independent and manly character, and pos-
sessed rare moral as well as physical courage. He had little
education and many prejudices. But he was in every sense
of the word a patriot and nothing of a partisan. Doubt had
for a time, indeed, prevailed regarding his political opinions,
for he had never voted. The party managers induced him
to say, finally, that he was a Whig ; but General Taylor at
the same time insisted that if elected " he would not be the
President of a party, but the President of the whole people."
He was, as we have seen, nominated by the regular Whig
convention ; but while the campaign was in progress he had
discomfited his Northern adherents by accepting the nomina-
tion of a Democratic meeting at Charleston, which preferred
him to Cass, as he was deemed safer on the slavery question.
Taylor was from Louisiana, and owned a large sugar plan-
tation there, with several hundred slaves. As the Whig con-
vention had adopted no declaration of principles, what course
the newly-elected President would take on the question of
slavery in the territories was problematical. It had, how-
ever, been asserted with confidence at the North during the
campaign that he would not veto any anti-slavery legisla-
tion which should receive the assent of Congress. While
the President, in his inaugural address, did not touch upon
the question which had distracted the legislature of the coun-
try, nevertheless its guarded expressions seemed to indicate
that his Northern supporters had fairly outlined his policy.
100 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
But his cabinet appointments were favorable to the Southern
section of his party ; four of them were from the slave and
three from the free States. The prominent members were
John M. Clayton, of Delaware, Secretary of State ; Thomas
E wing, of Ohio, Secretary of the Interior ; Reverdy Johnson,
of Maryland, Attorney-General ; and Jacob Collamer, of Ver-
mont, Postmaster-General. Collamer was the only man of
marked anti-slavery sentiments.1
The problem which the country had to solve called for
its wisest statesmanship. It demanded the full measure of
the time and ability of the President and his advisers, but
they were not able to devote their attention immediately
to the exigency of the State. The executive power had
passed from one political party to the other ; the Demo-
crats, therefore, must be turned out of the offices to make
room for the faithful Whigs. " To the victors belong the
spoils" was a doctrine first put in practice by the Demo-
cratic party. But the Whigs were apt pupils, and as there
were about fifty thousand places in the civil service,2 a horde
of hungry office-seekers flocked to Washington. General
Taylor was a man of business habits. His long service in
the army, and his experience in the management of a large
plantation, had taught him that merit and fitness were the
proper and only tests that should be required of subordi-
nates, and his mind was still filled with this notion when
he delivered his inaugural address. He said : " I shall
make honesty, capacity, and fidelity indispensable prerequi-
sites to the bestowal of office."3 Although the President
had good business ideas, he was ignorant of party manage-
ment, and soon allowed himself to be guided by those who
had all their lives wrought in the sphere of practical poli-
1 The other members of the cabinet were Meredith of Pennsylvania,
Secretary of the Treasury ; Crawford of Georgia, Secretary of War ; and
Preston of Virginia, Secretary of the Navy.
3 New York Tribune, April, 1849.
8 Niles, vol. Ixxv. p. 150.
CH. II.] "TO TliE VICTORS BELONG THE SPOILS" 101
tics. General Taylor had a high respect for the Vice-
president, Millard Fillmore, of New York, and, until unde-
ceived a short time before his arrival at Washington, he
thought that the Yice-President could be ex officio a member
of his cabinet.1 He was nevertheless disposed to rely upon
the experience of Fillmore in all important matters, and
nothing at first seemed so important as the New York pat-
ronage. But in this State there were two divisions of the
Whig party, one headed by Fillmore and the other by Will-
iam H. Seward, who had recently been elected to the Sen-
ate ; and, to forestall differences that might naturally arise,
Thurlow Weed, a common friend, had them both dine with
him at Albany when they were on their way to Washing-
ton. " Here," as Weed himself relates, " everything was
pleasantly arranged. The Vice-President and the Senator
were to consult from time to time, as should become nec-
essary, and agree upon the important appointments to be
made in our State." 2 Fillmore, however, seems to have had
the better of the arrangement ; for the first knowledge that
came to Seward of the New York custom-house appoint-
ments was when their names were read in executive session
of the Senate.3
The President also appointed anti-Seward Whigs to other
lucrative offices in the State. Seward, as Lincoln afterwards
said, " was a man without gall," 4 and did not openly resent
the infraction of the agreement. He did not retire to his
tent, but patiently bided his time. He voted for the con-
firmation of his adversaries, and then went to work with
serenity to supplant his rival in the favor of the President.5
1 Thurlow Weed's Autobiography, p. 586.
a Ibid., p. 586.
8 Ibid., p. 587 ; see also letters of Seward to Weed, March 1st and 10th,
Life of Seward, F. W. Seward, vol. ii. pp. 101, 107.
* Life, by Nicolay and Hay, Century Magazine, vol. xxxii. p. 562.
5 See letter of Seward to Weed, March 24th, Life of Seward, F. W. Sew-
ard, vol. ii. p. 107.
102 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
In this he was much assisted by his friend "Weed, who had
great influence, for he was one of the first to look to Gen-
eral Taylor as a presidential candidate. Their efforts were
successful, and soon Seward became the directing spirit of
the administration.
Thurlow Weed relates with great satisfaction that the
President "became convinced that the significance of a
zealous and patriotic movement of the people, which over-
threw Democratic supremacy, meant something more than
the election of a Whig President and the appointment of
a Whig cabinet." " I did not think it wise or just," the
President himself remarked, " to kick away the ladder by
which I ascended to the presidency ; colonels, majors, cap-
tains, lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals are just as neces-
sary to success in politics as they are to the discipline and
efficiency of an army." On another occasion the President
inquired of the Secretary of the Treasury u whether you
think our friends are getting their share of the offices."
The Secretary answered that he " had not thought of the
matter in that light." " Nor," rejoined the President,
" have I until recently. But if the country is to be bene-
fited by our services, it seems to me that you and I ought
to remember those to whose zeal, activity, and influence
we are indebted for our places. There are plenty of Whigs,
just as capable and honest, and quite as deserving of office,
as the Democrats who have held them through two or three
presidential terms. Rotation in office, provided good men
are appointed, is sound Republican doctrine."1
The Democratic newspapers of the day are full of derisive
taunts at the wholesale removals from office. The Whigs
either defended them as the work of reform,2 or else retorted
by recriminations. Yet many of the leading Whigs were
far from being satisfied. Clay complained that the good
positions went to those who had been instrumental in bring-
1 Life of Thurlow Weed, vol. ii. pp. 175, 176.
3 This is the expression of the New York Tribune, April 17th, 1849.
OH.!!.] TAYLOR'S IDEAS OF THE CIVIL SERVICE 103
ing about the nomination of General Taylor,1 and "Webster
grieved bitterly over the refusal of the administration to
grant his request for an office of " small pecuniary considera-
tion" for his only son.2 Abraham Lincoln was an urgent
applicant for the office of Commissioner of the General Land
Office. He solicited support from his late friends in Con-
gress, and endeavored to have his claim advocated in the
party newspapers, but his efforts were without fruit.3 The
Postmaster-General Collamer, in a letter to his friend John
J. Crittenden, laments not having been able to carry out
Crittenden's wishes in reference to the appointment of the
local mail agent at Louisville. But the President had taken
the matter out of his hands, and as he was " but a subal-
tern," he had to obey.4 The Secretary of State found fault
with Collamer, and wrote : " Our friend Collamer is behind ;
he is a glorious fellow, but too tender for progress. He has
been often, indeed, at his wits' end, frightened about re-
movals and appointments, but I cry courage to them all,
and they will go ahead all, by and by ! Taylor has all the
moral as well as physical courage needed for the emer-
gency."5 Yet the President, whose knowledge of litera-
ture went not " much beyond good old Dilworth's spelling-
book," 6 unwittingly did the cause of letters a great service
in the removal of Nathaniel Hawthorne from the survey-
orship of the Salem custom-house, for on the afternoon
of the day on which the gifted author was deprived of his
1 Clay's Private Correspondence, p. 587. " It is undeniable that the
public patronage has been too exclusively confined to the original sup-
porters of General Taylor, without sufficient regard to the merits and
just claims of the great body of the Whig party.1'
2 Harvey's Reminiscences, p. 178. The President later gave Webster's
son, " though after delay and hesitation," " a lucrative office," Schouler.
vol. v. p. 150.
3 Lamon, p. 333.
4 Life of Crittenden, Coleman, vol. i. p. 346.
5 Ibid., p. 344.
6 Autobiography of Lieutenant-General Scott, vol. ii. p. 383.
104 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
place he began to write " The Scarlet Letter." ! He lost
his salary of twelve hundred dollars a year, but he gave to
his country its greatest romance.2
While Congress was still in session Calhoun was busy in
working up a sentiment that should tire the Southern heart
with zeal to defend the rights which were in supposed jeop-
ardy. A convention of Southern members of Congress is-
sued an address drawn up by Calhoun. In this declaration
they complained of the difficulties in recovering fugitive
slaves ; they found fault with the systematic agitation of
1 Hawthorne and his Wife, Julian Hawthorne, vol. i. p. 340.
2 Hawthorne describes the enormous specimen of the American eagle
" which hovers over the entrance of the custom-house," and which " ap-
pears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general tendency of
her attitude, to threaten mischief to the uuoffensive community." " Nev-
ertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking, at this very mo-
ment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the Federal eagle; imagin-
ing, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an
eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best
of moods, and, sooner or later — oftener soon than lute — is apt to fling off
her nestlings, with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rank-
ling wound from her barbed arrows. . . . But now, should you go thither
to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco surveyor. The
besom of reform has swept him out of office ; and a worthier successor
wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments. ... A remarkable event
of the third year of my surveyorship was the election of General Taylor
to the presidency. It is essential, in order to a complete estimate of the
advantages of official life, to view the incumbent at the incoming of a
hostile administration. His position is then one of the most singularly
irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal
can possibly occupy ; with seldom an alternative of good on either hand,
although what presents itself to him as the worst event may very prob-
ably be the best." Hawthorne wrote more truly than he then knew. He
felt his removal from office keenly. The letter pleading for Hillard's in-
fluence in favor of the retention of his office, his lamentation at being
turned out, his appeal for re-appointment, with the assignment of cate-
gorical reasons why he should not have been proscribed by the Whig
administration, are pathetic, and make an exquisitely phrased condemna-
tion of the spoils system. See letters to Hillard, Life of Hawthorne,
Conway, p. 111.
Cull.] SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 105
the slavery question by the abolitionists; they demanded
the right of emigrating into the territories with their slaves ;
and they inveighed bitterly against the House for its ac-
tion in regard to New Mexico and California. More than
eighty members participated in the meeting when this ad-
dress was adopted, but only about half of that number
affixed their signatures to the instrument. It was pub-
lished throughout the South with a flourish of trumpets ;
and soon it was hailed by its authors as the second declara-
tion of independence.1 Except in South Carolina, how-
ever, the address did not make a deep impression.2 For
the moment Calhoun seemed to have lost influence. His
intellectual vagaries had become tiresome, and his over-
refinement of phrase proved tedious even to those whose
sympathy was ardent with the Southern cause.
Of greater moment were the resolutions of the Virginia
legislature. They affirmed that " the adoption and at-
tempted enforcement of the Wilmot proviso" would pre-
sent two alternatives to the people of Virginia ; one of " ab-
ject submission to aggression and outrage," and the other
" of determined resistance at all hazards and to the last ex-
tremity." 3 The sovereign people of Virginia, as they valued
their rights of property and dearest privileges, could have
no difficulty in making a choice between the two alterna-
tives. It was likewise resolved that the abolition of slavery
or of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia would be
a direct attack upon the institution of the Southern States.
These resolutions were carried by a large majority; and
this official utterance of the most powerful State in the
South was an incitement to Southern feeling and a guide to
the way of evincing it. The resolutions were approved at
many public meetings held all over the South ; they were
endorsed by several Democratic state conventions ; and they
1 Benton's Thirty Years' View, vol. ii. p. 734.
8 New-Englander, Aug., 1849.
3 Niles, vol. Ixxv, p. 73.
106 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
formed the basis of similar expressions from other legisla-
tures.
The excitement was especially great in Missouri. The
legislature of this State had passed resolutions protesting
against the principle of the "Wilraot proviso, and instructing
her senators and representatives to act in hearty co-opera-
tion with the members from the slave-holding States.1 This
was a shaft aimed at Senator Benton, who was opposed to
the extension of slavery. He accepted the challenge, re-
paired to Missouri when the Senate adjourned, and made a
noble fight against the slavery extensionists. He spoke at
meeting after meeting, defending his own course and mak-
ing an aggressive warfare on Calhoun and his Missouri dis-
ciples.
The feeling was at fever heat in Tennessee. The address
of the Democratic State Central Committee to the voters
said, " The encroachments of our Northern brethren have
reached a point where forbearance on our part ceases to be
a virtue." 2 In Kentucky, Clay had written a letter intended
to influence the constitutional convention about to assem-
ble, in which he favored a plan of gradual emancipation of
the slaves in his State. A people's meeting held in Trimble
County, Ky., requested him to resign his place as sen-
ator in consequence of the sentiments avouched in this let-
ter.3 The question of freeing the slaves was made an issue
and discussed in every county of the State, but not one
avowed emancipationist was elected to the convention. The
convention itself not only failed to adopt any plan of grad-
ual emancipation, but, on the contrary, the new constitution
asserted, in the strongest terms, the right of property in
slaves and their increase.
In the cotton States the feeling was more intense than in
the border States. The Virginia resolutions were every-
where endorsed. The prevailing sentiment of South Caro-
lina was shown at a dinner to Senator Butler, when " Slav-
1 Niles, vol. Ixxv. p. 270. 2 Ibid., p. 373. 3 Ibid., p. 384.
CH.H.] NORTHERN SENTIMENT 107
ery," " Our territorial acquisitions from Mexico," and " A
Southern Confederacy" were toasted amid great enthusi-
asm.1 The Democrats were more outspoken than the Whigs,
but party lines were beginning to be merged and swallowed
up in the community of sectional interest. Yet the North-
ern Whigs tried to think that they and the Southern mem-
bers of their party could meet on common ground. The
New York Tribune maintained that "the Southern Whigs
want the great question settled in such a manner as shall
not humble and exasperate the South ; the Southern Loco-
focos [i. e. Democrats] want it so settled as to conduce to
the extension of the power and influence of slavery." 2 But,
in truth, when a question of practical legislation arose, the
interest of section was stronger than the hold of party.
The feeling in the North was as deeply stirred as in the
South. The conflict of sentiment was well shown in the
reception given to the letter of Clay which favored the grad-
ual emancipation of the slaves in Kentucky. In the North
it was universally approved ; in the South, outside of his
own State, it was just as emphatically condemned. Every
one of the legislatures of the free States, except Iowa,3
passed resolutions to the effect that Congress had the power,
and that it was its duty, to prohibit slavery in the territories.4
Many States also requested their senators and representa-
tives to use their utmost influence to abolish slavery and
the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. Party lines
were not considered ; they had no influence upon this action.
Some of the legislatures were strongly Whig ; in others the
Democrats were greatly in the ascendant. But the parties
seemed to vie with each other in taking advanced anti-slav-
1 New York Tribune, April 25th, 1849.
3 Ibid., Oct. 24th, 1849.
3 In Iowa instructions to her senators and representatives to vote for
the Wilmot proviso passed the State Senate, but were laid upon the table
in the House. — Niles, vol. Ixxv. p. 113.
4 New York Tribune, July 23d, 1849.
108 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
ery ground, and in some of the legislatures the resolutions
were passed by a nearly unanimous vote.1 As a body, the
Whigs were more pronounced in their views than were the
regular Democrats. Greeley maintained that the Whigs of
New York State recognized " the restriction of slavery with-
in its present limits as one of the cardinal principles of our
political faith;" 2 but the Free-soilers, comprising for the most
part those who had supported Yan Buren the previous year,
were strenuous in their demands that the general govern-
ment should forbid slavery where it had the power. Charles
Sumner came to the front in a Free-soil convention at Wor-
cester, Mass., and wrote the vigorous address which pro-
claimed " opposition to slavery wherever we are responsible
for it," demanded its prohibition in the new territories, and
its abolition in the District of Columbia.3 The Democrats
of Ohio felt very powerfully the impulse of the anti-slavery
movement, and in February the legislature, by a combina-
tion of two Free-soilers, who held the balance of power, with
the Democrats, elected Salmon P. Chase to the United States
Senate. He was a strong opposer of slavery ; was of par-
tially Democratic antecedents, and had presided over the
Free-soil convention which nominated Yan Buren for the
presidency. At Cleveland an enthusiastic convention of
Free-soilers was held on the 13th of July to celebrate the
passage of the Ordinance of 1787. Clay was invited to
be present, but declined on account of other engagements ;
he seemed to think, however, that the commemoration was
ill-timed as being liable " to increase the prevailing excite-
ment."4
General Cass tried to stem the current of popular opinion
in the West. He held that Congress had no right to legis-
late upon slavery in the territories ; and, while the legislat-
1 Niles, vol. Ixxv. pp. 190, 239, 399.
2 New York Tribune, Oct. 3d, 1849.
3 Life and Public Services of Charles Sumner, Lester, p. 67.
4 Washington National Intelligencer, July 21st, 1849.
CH. II.] NORTHERN SENTIMENT 109
ure of Michigan elected him to the Senate — for they could
not forget the part he had played in the material develop-
ment and civil organization of their State — yet the same
body of men resolved that Congress ought to prohibit slav-
ery in New Mexico and California. The Cleveland Plain
Dealer, which had loyally supported Cass for President, ex-
pressed the opinion of the majority of Ohio Democrats
when it declared that " the institution of slavery is bound
to be the death of Democracy in this country, unless the
Democratic party as a body eschew its requirements." *
The position which President Taylor was gradually tak-
ing proved a source of gratification to the anti-slavery peo-
ple. When he came to Washington his Southern sympa-
thies were strong, and he had the notion that the Northern-
ers were encroaching on the rights of the South. A short
experience in the executive office served to convince him
that the encroachment was from the opposite direction, and
he had the manliness to act contrary to the supposed inter-
ests of his own section. The influence of Seward, moreover,
was a potent factor in the President's actual envisagement
of the situation. Complaint had been made at the South
that a majority of the cabinet were in favor of the princi-
ple of the Wilmot proviso ; and this notion was heightened
by a speech of the President at Mercer, Pa., in August,
when he said : " The people of the North need have no ap-
prehension of the further extension of slavery ; the neces-
sity of a third party organization on this score would soon
be obviated." a State and congressional elections took place
during the spring, summer, and fall, but they afforded no
guide to the direction of popular sentiment. On the whole,
the Whigs lost some advantages as compared with the Pres-
idential election. Party divisions were rigidly observed,
but the slavery question was nowhere at issue in any of the
States at the North. The Yan Buren and the Cass Denao-
1 Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 16th, 1849.
9 New York Tribune, Sept, 10th, 1849.
HO TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
crats had generally united on the State tickets — in some
States on an anti-slavery platform, in others by ignoring the
national question. The New York Tribune, however, ex-
plained that the result of the elections in Tennessee and
Kentucky was due to the fact that the Whigs " were cried
down in those States as an anti-slavery party." ' It is indubi-
table that the Northern sentiment was wholesome and thor-
oughly imbued with the desire to check the extension of
slavery.
Towards the latter part of the year speculations as to the
action of Congress began to be made ; the opinion prevailed
that at the next session the question would be settled, and
there was little doubt of its settlement in a manner that
would satisfy Northern sentiment. It seemed as if this feel-
ing needed only discretion in its guidance, and nerve in the
assertion of its claims, to become embodied in legislative acts
that should fix the vital principle at issue.
Meanwhile, from action which was taking place in Cal-
ifornia, one bone of contention seemed liable to be removed.
After this territory had been taken possession of by the
Americans, it was placed under a quasi-military government,
and this was continued after the treaty of peace was pro-
claimed.3 Before his inauguration General Taylor had
been anxious that Congress should settle on some plan of
government for California ; he said that " he desired to sub-
stitute the rule of law and order there for the bowie-knife
and revolvers." 3 A month after his inauguration he sent T.
Butler King, a Whig congressman from Georgia, to Califor-
nia, as a confidential agent of the administration, to assist the
growing movement towards the formation of a State govern-
ment, and to work in conjunction with the military governor.
California, which, when acquired, had been deemed an in-
significant province, had now become the El Dorado of the
1 New York Tribune, Sept., 1849.
a History of the Pacific States, H. H. Bancroft, vol. xviii. p. 263,
8 Seward's Works, vol. iii. p. 444,
Cn. II.] CALIFORNIA 111
world. Nine days before the treaty of peace between the
United States and Mexico was signed/ gold was discovered
in the foot-hills of the Sierras. Only a few persons in Cal-
ifornia were aware of the find, and none in the United States
or Mexico knew of it when the treaty was ratified. " The
accursed thirst of gold" was to work out the destiny of this
territory; but it was not until well into May, 1848, that
scepticism in San Francisco gave way to faith in this dis-
covery. By the middle of the summer the news was be-
lieved everywhere, and from all parts people flocked to
the gold diggings. When it became known at Monterey,
Colton relates that every one began to make preparations to
go to the mines. Blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, farmers,
bakers, tapsters, boarding-house keepers, soldiers, and do-
mestics— all left their occupations. That writer, who was
the alcalde of Monterey, reports that he only had a com-
munity of women left, a gang of prisoners, and a few sol-
diers.2 So it was everywhere in the territory. The coun-
try was in a state of frenzy. The hunger of wealth had
taken hold of the whole population. Laborers demanded
ten dollars a day and carpenters sixteen dollars.3 Privates
from the army and sailors from the naval ships deserted and
repaired to the gold diggings. A private could make more
money in the mines in a day than he received in the service
in a month.4
At that time it required about forty days for the trans-
mission of the mails from San Francisco to New York. The
fabulous stories were at first doubted in the eastern part of
the country, but were soon accepted with fervid belief. The
news had soon reached all parts of the civilized world, and
1 Jan. 24th, 1848.
9 Three years in California, Colton, p, 347. " A general of the U. S.
Army, the commander of a man-of-war, and Alcalde of Monterey, in a
smoking kitchen, grinding coffee, toasting a herring, and peeling onions !"
—Ibid., p. 248.
8 Memoirs of General W. T, Sherman, pp. 58, 78,
* Ibid., p. 72,
112 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
then began an emigration to California for which nowhere
could there be found a likeness save in a tale of legendary
Greece. The thirsters after gold, the seekers of El Dorado,
were Argonauts in search of the golden fleece. Yet the re-
semblance fails when we come to consider the character of
the California emigrants. While they numbered many good
men, especially from the "Western States,1 there were many
outlaws and criminals among them. From all parts of the
world outcasts and vagrants swelled the crowd that under-
took the hardships of the dangerous journey for the sake of
bettering their condition and their fortunes. In truth, the
journey was one that only the hardy could endure. If the
emigrant chose to go by sailing vessel from New York
around Cape Horn, he had to brave the perils and discom-
forts of the most dangerous of ocean voyages. He could,
indeed, go by the Isthmus of Panama, but, as the railroad
was not then built, the crossing of the isthmus was attend-
ed with great hazard. Arriving at Panama, on the Pacific
side, the travellers had to wait for days, and even weeks, in
an atmosphere whose every breath was laden with pestilen-
tial spores. On more than one occasion, when the steam-
ship arrived which was to take them to the Golden Gate, it
was found that the expectant passengers largely exceeded
the capacity of the boat, and men scrambled and fought to
get on board to secure their paid-for passage.
There was still left the overland route. This was a wag-
on journey of more than two thousand miles, through a coun-
try of great variety in its physical features. Warm, pleasant
valleys were succeeded by bleak and almost impassable moun-
tains; thence the route proceeded down into miasmatic
swamps, then across forbidding alkali wastes and salt flats,
baked and cracked by the sun. The travellers were stifled
with heat and dust, yet were likewise sure to encounter
drenching rains. It was often necessary to cross flooded
lowlands and sweeping river currents ; as if the misery were
1 H. T. Davis, Solitary Places Made Glad, p. 47.
CALIFORNIA 113
not complete, they met with occasional chilling blasts and
suffocating simoons. They were not only subject to these
changes of climate and altitude, but they were in constant
fear of the savages.1 Whether by starvation, disease, or
violence, many of the overland emigrants perished on the
way. Nevertheless, in spite of all these obstacles, there ar-
rived in California, in the year 1849, 39,000 souls by sea and
42,000 overland.5 These were the " inflowing Argonauts,"
known to this day as " forty-niners," from the year in which
they made their journey. Discouraging and conflicting re-
ports came home from the emigrants, but the rush continued ;
and some years later, in England, the telling pen of De Quin-
cey was enlisted to decry California. " She," said the brill-
iant Englishman, " is going ahead at a rate that beats Sind-
bad and Gulliver." Its story reads " to the exchanges of
Europe like a page from the ' Arabian Nights.' " 3
What was the government of this community ? How was
law administered ? There was the military governor, who had
no authority save such as he might choose to assume ; and
there were the alcaldes, a survival of the Mexican officials,
with duties that were partly judicial and partly executive ;
their business was to maintain order, punish crime, and re-
dress injuries.4 Some of the old Mexican alcaldes still held
their sway, and others were chosen by the communities over
which they presided. Walter Colton was appointed alcalde
1 This description of the overland route is partly quoted and partly
paraphrased from H. H. Bancroft, vol. xviii. p. 148.
5 Ibid., p. 159.
3 De Quincey's Essay on California. The romantic side of the Califor-
nia fever did not escape the notice of George Ticknor. He writes to Sir
Charles Lyell, in 1849, that it is evidence that there is " in our Anglo-
Saxon blood more of a spirit of adventure and romance than belongs to
the age." — Life of George Ticknor, vol. ii. p. 241. Only three years pre-
viously American fellow-travellers of Lyell had told him in their journey
from New York to Boston that they hoped to see in their lifetime a pop-
ulation of fifteen thousand souls in California and Oregon. Sir Charles
Lyell's Second Visit, vol. ii. p. 265.
4 Colton, p. 19.
I.-8
114 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
of Monterey by the commodore of the naval ship which was
stationed at that port.1 But on the whole the territory was
bordering on a state of anarchy. There were no land laws ;
mining titles were disputed and sometimes fought over.2 A
deserted wife at San Francisco complained that there was
no power to give her a legal divorce. The habit of carrying
weapons was universal ; drunken brawls were common ; the
Indians made raids on the settled communities and stole
horses and cattle ; the vine}7ards and orchards of San Jose
and Santa Clara were destroyed by immigrants ; it was com-
plained that San Luis Obispo had become " a complete sink
of drunkenness and debauchery ;" ruffians united themselves
in bands to rob, and the convoys from the mines were their
especial prey ; murders were common, and lynch law was put
into execution not infrequently ; yet murder was deemed
a lesser crime than theft ; and when law-breakers were put
in prison, the alcalde was in constant fear that a mob would
break in and release the prisoners.3 The cry that went out
of Macedonia for help was no louder than that which went
from the majority of Californians to Congress to give them
a territorial government. Yet, if Congress would not help
them, they determined to help themselves. The first immi-
gration was largely from Mexico, Peru, Chili, China, and the
Hawaiian Islands,4 and the food-supply of the miners came
in considerable portion from this group.5 But as the Amer-
ican population increased, and as men of better antecedents
joined the fortune-seekers, that knack at political organiza-
tion which is so prominent a trait of our national character,
1 Colton, p. 17.
9 California Inter Pocula, H. H. Bancroft, chap. ix.
8 H. H. Bancroft, vol. xviii. pp. 229, 268. Bayard Taylor's account is
different, but there is no question as to which authority should be fol-
lowed. Bret Harte has exquisitely given us the flavor of those rough
times in "Tales of the Argonauts," " Luck - of Roaring Camp," "Outcasts
of Poker Flat," etc.
4 Eldorado, Taylor, p. 100 ; also Bancroft.
8 Alexander's History of the Hawaiian Islands, p. 273.
On. 1 1.] CALIFORNIA 115
appeared, and it was determined to establish a civil govern-
ment.1 Meetings were held at many places in the territory,
and a convention to frame a government was called to meet
May 6th, 1849 ; so that in case Congress adjourned March
4th without making any provision for them, they could go
ahead and institute a government of their own. They were
assisted in this movement by the military governor and the
confidential agent of the administration. Forty-eight mem-
bers were chosen for the convention, of whom twenty-two
were from the Northern States, fifteen from the slave States,
seven were native Californians, and four foreign - born.2
Party or sectional opinions had not entered into the choice
of the delegates, but it was supposed that their action would
be controlled by Southern men." The meeting of the con-
vention was postponed from time to time ; but at last it met
at Monterey on the 3d of September, with the object of
forming a State. The convention was by no means desti-
tute of ability, although an assemblage of young men.
Scarcely a gray head could be seen.4 There were fourteen
lawyers, twelve farmers, seven merchants ; the remainder
were engineers, bankers, physicians, and printers.5 The idea
of forming an original constitution did not enter into their
heads. There were men from various states who were fa-
miliar with the provisions of their own organic law; but
the Constitution was largely modelled after those of New
York and Iowa. To the astonishment of Northern men, no
objection whatever was made to the clause in the bill of
rights which forever prohibited slavery in the state.8 The
1 " The Americans surpass all other nations in their power of making
the best out of bad conditions, getting the largest results out of scanty
materials or rough methods." — American Commonwealth, Bryce, vol. i.
p. 169.
Bancroft, vol. xviii. p. 282.
Ibid., p. 286.
There were three members over fifty, and but ten over forty.
Bancroft, vol. xviii. p. 288.
Bancroft, vol. xviii. p. 290. At first sight this unanimity may seem
116 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
members of the convention worked diligently day and night ;
on the 13th of October their labors were at an end and they
affixed their signatures to the Constitution.1 One month
later it was adopted by the vote of the people. The legisla-
ture which it constituted met in December, and, by a com-
promise arrangement, elected John C. Fremont and William
M. Gwin senators ; Fremont held anti-slavery and Gwin
pro-slavery opinions.
When Congress met on the first Monday of December,
1849, the vastly preponderating sentiment in the free States
was that California and New Mexico should remain free
territory. On the other hand, the sentiment was equally
strong in the South against any congressional legislation that
should interfere with their supposed right of taking their
slaves into the new territories. In other words, a popula-
tion of thirteen millions demanded that the common pos-
session should be dedicated to freedom ; a population of
eight millions demanded the privilege of devoting it to
slavery.3 C/alifcni^j ^Y t3Mv-Trrra,Tn'm7mfl..vote of a^cmwmi-
tion regularly chosen, whose action was ratified by an honest
voteof EeT peole, had cast her lot on lhtrside__of thefree
~
Congress met December 3d. The House was made up
strange, as where labor was scarce and high and gold plenty it might
seem desirable to have slaves. But I think the gist of the whole matter
is contained in the following statement of a voting citizen : " One of the
prominent questions in the election was an expression as to whether
slavery shall be allowed in California ; the candidate, though a Louisian-
ian, was opposed out and out to the* introduction of slavery here, and so
we all voted for him. For myself, I was of the opinion of an old moun-
taineer, who, leaning against the tent-pole, harangued the crowd, that in
a country where every white man made a slave of himself there was no
use in keeping niggers." — Correspondence of the Boston Times, copied into
the New York Tribune of Oct. 22d, 1849.
1 " The most magnificent illustration of the wonderful capacity of this
people for self-government." — Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 463.
2 These figures are simply round numbers, as shown by the census of
1850; three-fifths of the slaves are included in the slave-State population.
CH.II.J COBB ELECTED SPEAKER 117
of 112 Democrats, 105 Whigs, and 13 Free-soilers,1 and its
organization first demanded attention. The candidate of
the Whigs for speaker was Winthrop, of Boston, an able
and honorable gentleman, of fine birth and breeding, who
had been speaker of the previous Congress. Eight of the
Free-soilers, however, under the lead of Joshua R. Giddings,
refused their support on the ground that he had not during
his term as speaker recognized the anti-slavery sentiment in
the appointment of the committees, nor would he pledge
himself to do so should he be chosen at this session. Gid-
dings represented a district of northeastern Ohio composed
of several of the counties of the Western Reserve ; with the
exception of the Plymouth, it was the most liberty-loving
district in the country. He had served many terms in the
House, and had distinguished himself, battling by the side
of John Quincy Adams for the right of petition and for the
anti-slavery cause. Although not a man of great ability,
he had great zeal ; and as he felt himself untrammelled by
the shackles of party, he served his district to its full satis-
faction, and made an enviable record as an advocate of free-
dom. Yet eleven years of legislative experience had failed
to teach him that, while it is true there are now and then
political principles that must not be bated a jot, even though
the heavens fall, it is equally true that for the most part in
public life one should sacrifice his ideal good for the best at-
tainable. It was so in this case. If Giddings and his asso-
ciates had voted for Winthrop, he would have been chosen
speaker. They did not choose to do so, and finally Howell
Cobb, of Georgia, was elected. His devotion to slavery and
Southern interests was the distinguishing feature of his char-
acter, and he made up the committees in a way extremely
1 I follow the classification of the Congressional Globe. Giddings
states the number of Free-soilers as eight (History of the Rebellion, p.
300) ; while Julian, who was one of them, says they were nine (Political
Recollections, p. 73). Giddings and Julian classify them according to the
vote for speaker, while the Globe ranges them with regard to their vital
principles.
118 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
favorable to the South and the slave interest.1 "He loves
slavery," said Horace Mann ; " it is his politics, his political
economy, and his religion." 2 Horace Mann had gained a
wide and well-deserved reputation as an educator ; but on
the death of John Quincy Adams he was prevailed upon to
fill the vacant place of representative of the Plymouth dis-
trict. He was wiser than his Ohio colleague, for he voted
steadily for Winthrop " as the best man we could possibly
elect." 3 The acme of logical adherence to a fixed idea, in
spite of surrounding circumstances, was reached when Gid-
dings and his followers voted for Brown, of Indiana, for
speaker, a Democrat of the straitest sect, because he agreed
to make the constitution of certain committees satisfactory
to them ; and that, too, while, as Giddings himself said,
" Neither the moral nor political character of Mr. Brown
recommended him to the favor of just and honorable men."4
The balloting for speaker lasted nearly three weeks, and the
excitement occasioned by the protracted organization of the
House boded no good for the Northern cause. Between the
ballots animated discussions sometimes took place, and the
Southern bluster was loud and menacing. Disunion was
emphatically threatened in case the principle of the Wilmot
proviso was insisted upon, or if the attempt were made to
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Kobert Toombs
and Alexander Stephens, both Whigs from Georgia, were
the most vehement in their threats to the North and their
1 "Although the Whigs and Free-soilers are a majority, yet only one
from their number is a chairman of any one of the thirty-seven commit-
tees. Of the other thirty-six chairmen, nineteen are Locos from the slave
States, and seventeen Locos from the free States. Texas, Alabama, and
South Carolina afford five chairmen ; the three millions of New York only
oue.'' — New York Tribune, Jan. 23d.
3 Life of Horace Mann, p. 283.
3 Ibid., p. 285.
* History of the Rebellion, p. 302. Julian, of Indiana, was not con-
cerned in this intrigue. He was ill, and was not at Washington at this
time. Root, of Ohio, likewise would not vote for Brown.
Cu. II.] THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE 119
appeals to the South. Contemptuous epithets were bandied
to and fro ; at one time the lie was given, and only the inter-
ference of the sergeant-at-arms with his mace of office pre-
vented a fist-fight on the floor of the House.1
As soon as the House was organized, the President sent
his message to Congress. He touched briefly on the impor-
tant question, but his words were carefully weighed. The
latest advices from California gave him reason to believe
that she had framed a Constitution, established a state gov-
ernment, and would shortly apply for admission into the
Union. This application was recommended to the favorable
consideration of Congress. It was likewise believed that at
a time not far distant the people of ISTew Mexico would pre-
sent themselves for admission into the Union. He coun-
selled Congress to await their action, for that would avert
all causes of uneasiness, and good feeling would be pre-
served. It was his opinion, moreover, that " we should
abstain from the introduction of those exciting topics of
'sectional character which have hitherto produced painful
apprehensions in the public mind."
The great intellectual contest was to take place in the
Senate. There "Webster, Clay, and Calhoun appeared to-
gether for the last time. They were all of them born dur-
ing the Eevolutionary "War,2 and were of that school of
statesmen who had the privilege of learning their lessons in
constitutional law from the lips of many of the fathers of
the government themselves. It was the last scene they
were to play upon the political stage ; but before they made
their exit they saw the entrance of the rising class of states-
men whose mission was to proclaim that slavery was sec-
tional, that freedom was national, and who were more im-
bued with the sacred notions of liberty that the founders
of the republic at first maintained than were Webster and
Clay, whose contact had been actual with Jefferson and
1 Public Men and Events, Sargent, vol. ii. p. 851.
3 Clay in 1777, Webster and Calhoun in 1782.
120 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1849
Adams, with Madison and Marshall. Seward and Chase
now appeared in the Senate for the first time, while Hale
entered upon his third year of service.
It is now time to describe Clay more fully. He was a
man of large natural ability, but he lacked the training of
a systematic education. He learned early to appreciate his
heaven-born endowments, and to rely upon them for suc-
cess in his chosen career. Of sanguine temperament, quick
perception, irresistible energy, and enthusiastic disposition,
he was well fitted to be a party advocate, and was the
greatest parliamentary leader in our history.1 He was, how-
ever, inclined to "crack the whip" over those of his sup-
porters who exhibited a desire to hang back and question
whither his impetuous lead would tend.2 He knew men well,
but he had no knowledge of books. The gaming-table had
for him allurements that he could not find in the library.
According to the manners of his time, he drank to excess.
His warm heart made him a, multitude of friends ; his im-
pulsive action and positive bearing raised up enemies ; yet
at his death he left not an enemy behind him.3 He was
withal a man of inflexible integrity. Straitened in pecuniary
circumstances during a large part of his Congressional ca-
reer, he nevertheless held himself aloof from all corruption.
Other Americans have been intellectually greater, others
have been more painstaking, others still have been greater
benefactors to their country ; yet no man has been loved as.
the people of the United States loved Henry Clay.
In his declining years his thoughts took on a serious cast,
and he embraced the Christian religion. It is noteworthy
that he began his speech on the compromise resolutions
with words not only solemn, but tinctured with religious
fervor. He had not been consistent on the slavery ques-
tion ; yet when we consider that he was a slave-holder and
that he represented a slave State, his impulsive outbursts
1 See Elaine's Eulogy of Garfield.
3 George Bancroft, Century Magazine, vol. viii. p. 479. * Ibid.
Call.] HENRY CLAY ]21
for the cause of freedom are more to be admired than his
occasional truckling to the slave power is to be condemned.
At this time, he was keenly alive to his own importance.
His forty years of public life, in which his name had been
identified with measures of the utmost significance, im-
pelled him to think that no legislative act of far-reaching
moment would be complete unless he had a hand in its
frameAVork. Nearly eight years of retirement had only
made him more anxious to act a leading part when he
came again upon the scene of action. Before going to
Washington, he had been flattered by hearing indirectly
that the administration was counting much on his exer-
tions at the approaching session.1 On his arrival at the
capital he was unquestionably disappointed that President
Taylor did not receive him with open arms and ask and
take his advice regarding the policy of the administration.
" My relations," writes Clay, " to the President are civil and
amicable, but they do not extend to any confidential con-
sultations in regard to public measures."2 It is possible
that had General Taylor put himself under the guidance
of Clay he might have adopted the President's plan with
some elaboration and extension,3 but it was contrary to his
nature and to the whole course of his life to give unre-
served adherence to the scheme of another. He could lead,
but he could not follow. Especially was it impossible for
him to follow the President, whose political ability he de-
spised ; nor could he rid his inmost heart of the notion that
Taylor occupied the place which rightfully belonged to him-
self.4 A feeling of pique influenced him as he went to work
to concoct his scheme; but as he became more deeply en-
gaged in the labor, the overmastering sentiment of his mind
1 Clay's Private Correspondence, p. 590.
9 Letter of Jan. 24th, 1850, Private Correspondence, p. 600.
3 See his speech in the Senate of May 13th, 1850.
* See letter on p. 615, Private Correspondence.
122 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
was certainly that of sincere patriotism. He believed that
the Union was in danger. Such was the constitution of his
mind that, while he was blind to the merits of the plan of
another, the benefits of his own dazzled him to the sight of
all objections. He honestly felt that he was the man of all
others to devise a scheme which should save the Union. It
is true that his talents as a constructive statesman were of
high rank. His hope was that this compromise would give
peace to the country for thirty years, even as the Missouri
Compromise had done.1 The plan was perfected by the last
of January, and on the 29th Clay introduced it into the
Senate in the form of a series of resolutions which were in-
tended to be a basis of compromise, and whose object was
to secure " the peace, concord, and harmony of the Union."
Their provisions were as follows :
1. The admission of California Avith her free Constitution.
2. As slavery does not exist by law and is not likely to
be introduced into any of the territory acquired from Mex-
ico, territorial governments should be established by Con-
gress without any restriction as to slavery.
3. The boundary between Texas and New Mexico, which
was in dispute, was determined.
4. Directs the payment of the bonafide public debt of Texas
contracted prior to the annexation, for which the duties on
foreign imports were pledged, upon the condition that Texas
relinquish her claim to any part of New Mexico.
5. Declares that it is inexpedient to abolish slavery in.
the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland,
of the people of the district, and without just compensation
to the owners of slaves.
6. Declares for the prohibition of the slave-trade in the
District of Columbia.
7. More effectual provision should be made for the rendi-
tion of fugitive slaves.
1 Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis, vol. i.
p. 17. See also Clay's speech of Feb. 6th, 1850.
Cn.IL] CLAY'S SPEECH 123
8. Declares that Congress has no power to interfere with
the slave-trade between the States.
Several days after the introduction of the resolutions,
Clay obtained the floor of the Senate and made a set
speech in their favor. He was a persuasive speaker, his
magnetism was great ; the impassioned utterance and the
action suited to the word aroused the enthusiasm of the mo-
ment, and carried everything resistlessly before him, whether
he addressed the tumultuous mass-meeting or his cultured
audience of the Senate. Yet he can hardly be ranked as
among the half-dozen great orators of the world. It is
true that his speeches in print convey no idea of the effect
of their delivery, and, in the reading, one loses the whole
force of his fine physical presence, and fails to appreciate
the strength derived from his supremely nervous tempera-
ment. He began in an egotistical vein, referring in the
most natural way to his long absence from the Senate, ex-
plained that his return was simply " in obedience to a stern
sense of duty," ' and disclaimed any higher object of per-
sonal ambition than the position he now occupied. None
could doubt his sincerity. He had given up all hope of at- I
taining the presidency, which he had so long and so ardent-
ly desired. Age 2 and ill-health, for his body was racked by
a cruel cough, served to remind him that the sands of his
earthly career were almost run. On this day that he was
to speak for the cause of the Union, he was so weak that
he could not mount the steps of the Capitol without leaning
on the arm of his companion and stopping to rest.3 Al-
though the floor of the Senate was crowded and the gal-
leries were filled with a brilliant audience of grace, beauty,
and intelligence,4 his expression of opinion was as honest
1 Speech of Henry Clay, Feb. 5th, 1850.
8 He was now in his seventy-third year.
3 Last Seven Years of Henry Clay, Colton, p. 131.
* " Mr. Clay's unrivalled popularity has again secured him an audience
such as no other statesman, no matter however able and respected, has
124 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
and frank as if he were talking to a confidential friend. He
was thoroughly impressed with the dangers that beset the
country. He speaks of never before having been " so ap-
palled and so anxious ;" he calls his theme " the awful sub-
ject." As an evidence of the intense party feeling, he allud-
ed to the fact that the House had spent one whole week in
the vain attempt to elect a doorkeeper because the point
at issue was " whether the doorkeeper entertained opinions
upon certain national measures coincident with this or that
side of the House." He thus described the manifestations
of the excitement prevalent in the country : " At this mo-
ment we have in the legislative bodies of this capitol and
in the States twenty odd furnaces in full blast, emitting
heat and passion and intemperance, and diffusing them
throughout the whole extent of this broad land." His en-
deavor had been to "form such a scheme of accommoda-
tion " as would obviate " the sacrifice of any great princi-
ple " by either section of the country, and he believed that
the series of resolutions which he presented accomplished
the object. Concession by each side was necessary, "not
of principle, but of feeling, of opinion in relation to mat-
ters in controversy between them." The admission of Cal-
ifornia as a State would, under the circumstances, be simply
the recognition of a time-honored precedent of the govern-
ment. The North insisted on the application of the Wil-
mot proviso to the rest of the territory acquired from Mex-
ico ; yet slavery did not exist there by law, and the orator
in a few pregnant questions stated the case in the most
powerful manner : " What do you want who reside in the
free States? You want that there shall be no slavery in-
troduced into the territories acquired from Mexico. Well,
have you not got it in California already, if admitted as a
State ? Have you not got it in New Mexico, in all human
probability, also? What more do you want? You have
ever before obtained here. To get within hearing of his voice I found
to be impossible." — Washington correspondence of New York Tribune.
CH. II. J CLAY'S SPEECH 125
got what is worth a thousand Wilmot provisos. You have
got nature itself on your side. You have the fact itself on
your side." It was, however, necessary to institute a terri-
torial government for New Mexico. It was not right to
allow matters to run along without interference from Con-
gress, to establish a regular system. The orator referred to
the fact that in the previous September the people of New
Mexico had held a convention, had chosen a delegate to Con-
gress, and had instructed him to represent to that body that
their actual government was " temporary, doubtful, uncer-
tain, and inefficient in character and operation," that they
were " surrounded and despoiled by barbarous foes, and ruin
appears inevitably before us, unless speedy and effectual pro-
tection be extended to us by the United States."
Of only one other item of the compromise resolutions is
it necessary to speak in detail. The settlement of the Texas
boundary may be regarded as an eminently proper one, al-
though the payment of the Texan debt was open to objec-
tion as being a measure not free from corruption. As there
" was money in it," that feature might be looked upon as in-
tending to win support for the entire project. In the pro-
visions regarding the District of Columbia, a concession was
made to the demands of each side.
There remained, then, the declaration in favor of a pro-
vision for the more effectual rendition of fugitive slaves.
Until he reached this point, Clay's leaning had evidently
been more to the Northern than to the Southern side of the
controversy, although he tried to hold the balance level be-
tween them, and endeavored to blend appeal and argument
equally to each section. But on this point he took extreme
Southern ground. The Fugitive Slave law, passed in the first
years of the government,1 required the aid and countenance
of the State magistrates as well as judges of the United
States for its execution ; but, as the sentiment on the slavery
question diverged more widely between the two sections.
1 See p. 24.
126 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
there arose a strong feeling in the Northern States against
lending their assistance to restore fugitive slaves. The leg-
islature of Massachusetts enacted a law, making it penal for
her officers to perform any duties under the act of Congress
of 1793 for their surrender. Pennsylvania passed an act for-
bidding her judicial authorities to take cognizance of an y
fugitive- slave case.1 The border States especially complained
,of the difficulties encountered in reclaiming their runaway
negroes. And as it had been decided by the United States
Supreme Court that the Constitution had conferred on Con-
gress an exclusive power to legislate concerning their ex-
tradition, it was demanded by those Southerners who were
willing to compromise the matters in dispute that a more
effectual law for the recovery of fugitive slaves should be a
part of the arrangement. So much explanation is necessary
to understand Clay's very positive expressions. " Upon this
subject," he said, " I do think that we have just and serious
cause of complaint against the free States. ... It is our
duty to make the law more effective ; and I shall go with
the senator from the South who goes furthest in making
penal laws and imposing the heaviest sanctions for the re-
covery of fugitive slaves and the restoration of them to their
owners."
After touching upon each one of his resolutions in order,
Clay offered some general considerations : " There have
been, unhappily, mutual causes of agitation furnished by
one class of the States as well as by the other, though, I ad-
mit, not in the same degree by the slave States as by the free
States." Yet he had " an earnest and anxious desire to pre-
sent the olive branch to both parts of this distracted and at
the present moment unhappy country." He made an ap-
peal to both sides to do something to quiet the clamors of
the nation ; depicting, in lively colors, the vast extent of the
1 Thirty Years' View, BentoD, vol. ii. p. 774 ; Massachusetts, Acts and
Resolves, 1843-45, chap, xlix. ; Laws of Pennsylvania, Session of 1847,
p. 207, Act No, 159,
CH.II.] CALHOUN'S SPEECH 127
country, its present prosperity and wealth, the success of
the government, as having proceeded from the Union. If
these great blessings were worth conserving, mutual conces-
sions should certainly be made to save the Union from dis-
solution. " War and dissolution of the Union are identical,"
he exclaimed. The orator closed with a prophecy that
events have completely falsified. Should the Union be dis-
solved and war follow, he declared, it would be a war more
ferocious and bloody, more implacable and exterminating,
than were the wars of Greece, the wars of the Commoners
of England, or the revolutions of France. And after a war
— " not of two or three years' duration, but a war of inter-
minable duration . . . some Philip or Alexander, some Cae-
sar or Napoleon, would arise and cut the Gordian knot and
solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-govern-
ment, and crush the liberties of both the severed portions
of this common empire." l
The floor of the Senate was assigned to Calhpun for
the 4th of March, to speak on the compromise resolutions.
Long battle with disease had wasted his frame, but, swathed
in flannels, he crawled to the Senate chamber to utter his
last words of warning to the North, and to make his last
appeal for what he considered justice to his own beloved
South. He was too weak to deliver his carefully written
speech. At his request, it was read by Senator Mason. Cal-
houn sat, with head erect and eyes partly closed, immovable
in front of the reader ; and he did not betray a sense of the
deep interest with which his friends and followers listened
to the well -matured words of their leader and political
guide.3 This was Calhoun's last formal speech ; before the
end of the month he had passed away from the scene of
earthly contention. The speech is mainly interesting as
stating with precision the numerical preponderance of the
1 The quotations are from Clay's speech made Feb. 5th and 6th, 1850,
and taken from Last Seven Years of Henry Clay, Calvin Colton.
8 C. A, Dana, Washington correspondent of New York Tribune,
128 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
North, the reasons of Southern discontent, and the fore-
bodings of his prophetic soul in reference to the future. He
admitted that universal discontent pervaded the South. Its
"great and primary cause is that the equilibrium between
the two sections has been destroyed." It was the old story
that the North had grown faster in population than the
South. Every one knows that it was slavery which kept
back the South in the race ; but this Calhoun could not see,
and he sought the cause in remote and unsubstantial reasons.
"When Calhoun said the South, he meant the slave power,
and the South had not held pace with the North because,
first, in his opinion, the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri
Compromise had excluded her from territory that should
have been left " open to the emigration of masters with their
slaves ;" second, the tariff and internal-improvements system
had worked decidedly against her interests ; and, third, the
gradual yet steady assumption of greater powers by the
federal government at the expense of the rights of the States
had proved an inestimable injury to the South. " The cords
that bind the States together," said the senator, " are not
only many, but various in character. Some are spiritual or
ecclesiastical ; some political, others social." The strongest
are those of a religious nature, but they have begun to
snap. The great Methodist Episcopal Church has divided ;
there is a Methodist Church North and a Methodist Church
South, and they are hostile. The Protestant organization
next in size, the Baptist Church, has likewise fallen asunder.
The cord which binds the Presbyterian Church " is not en-
tirely snapped, but some of its strands have given way.
That of the Episcopal Church is the only one of the four
great Protestant denominations which remains unbroken
and entire. ... If the agitation goes on, the same force,
acting with increased intensity, will finally snap every cord "
—political and social as well as ecclesiastical — " when noth-
ing will be left to hold the States together except force." It
is undeniable that the Union is in danger. How can it be
saved ? Neither the plan of the distinguished senator of
Call.] CALIIOUN'S SPEECH 129
Kentucky nor that of the administration will save the Union.
It rests with the North, the stronger party, whether or not (
she will take the course which will effect this devoutly to
be -wished -for consummation. The North must give us
equal rights in the acquired territory ; she must- return
our fugitive slaves ; she must cease the agitation of the
slave question ; and she must consent to an amendment
to the Constitution " which will restore to the South, in
substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself
before the equilibrium between the two sections was de-
stroyed by the action of this government." The admis-
sion of California will be the test question. If you admit
her, it will be notice to us that you propose to use your
present strength and to add to it "with the intention of
destroying irretrievably the equilibrium between the two
sections." '
The latter part of Calhoun's speech is important solely
because it defines the position of the extreme Southern par-
ty. The mildness of his language, and the almost pathetic
appeal to Northern senators, did not veil the arrogance of
his demands. He did not now explain the nature of the
constitutional amendment which in his judgment was re-
quired, but in a posthumous essay,2 which was designed as
his political testament, he entered upon the matter fully.
The amendment was to provide for the election of two (
Presidents, one from the free States and one from the slave
States ;' either was to have a veto on all congressional legis-
lation. He held until the end to the fanciful Eoman anal-
ogy.3 He saw in his mind's eye the Southern tribune check-
ing the power of the Northern consul and of Congress ; and
while he remembered that the tribunes of Kome became as
1 For the whole speech of Calhoun see Congressional Glol>e, vol. xxi.
part i. p. 451. A very good abridgment may be found in American Ora-
tions, vol. ii. p. 46.
2 Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States.
8 See p. 44.
I.— 9
13Q TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
despots with absolute power, this did not lessen his wish for
a like authority as a safeguard of Southern interests. In-
tellectual vagary can go to no extremer length in politics
than to propound a scheme which is alike impossible of
adoption, and would be utterly impracticable in operation.
The constitutional amendment suggested by Calhoun was
generally regarded at the South as a Utopian scheme ; yet
he had a following of something like fifty members 1 of Con-
gress, who, even if they did not subscribe to his vague ideas
in the science of government, were willing to follow him to
the extreme length of secession from the Union, if the dis-
pute could not be settled to their liking. These members
represented fairly the feeling of their slave-holding constit-
uents.
Before proceeding to the further consideration of the
debate on the compromise resolutions, we should satisfy
?' ourselves whether the Union was indeed in danger. The
proceedings of Congress had certainly intensified the ex-
citement. The contest for speaker, the clashes between the
representatives of the opposing views, the threats on one
side and defiance on the other, had added to the gravity of
a situation already grave. " Two months ago," said Clay,
" all was calm in comparison to the present moment. All
now is uproar, confusion, and menace to the existence of the
Union and to the happiness and safety of the people."3
Yet Clay had great difficulty in making up his mind as to
how much of the danger was real, and how much only ap-
parent. He writes, " My hopes and fears alternate." 3 Cal-
houn's speech was as sincere as a death-bed utterance, and
• leaves no doubt that he believed the country on the eve of
disunion. Webster was as much perplexed as Clay. In
1 Nine senators and forty representatives, according to the New York
Tribune of March 5th.
1 Speech of Henry Clay, Feb. 5th.
3 Letter to T. B. Stevenson, Jan, 26th, Last Seven Years of Henry Clay,
p. 497,
Cfl.II.] WAS THE UNION IN DANGER? 131
the middle of February he did not fear dissolution of the
Union or the breaking-up of the government.1 He writes :
" I think that the clamor about disunion rather abates. I
trust that if on our side we keep cool, things* will come to
no dangerous pass. California will probably be admitted
just as she presents herself."2 Three weeks later he had
materially modified his opinion. Still, there was not so
much change in the actual situation as in one's apprehen-
sion of it. For it was a time of seething commotion ; the
political atmosphere was highly charged ; one's settled
opinions of to-day were liable to be disturbed by violent col-
lision of opposing notions to-morrow ; and the impetuous
speech of some Southern Hotspur might shake the reso-
lution of timorous Northern men.3 Yet the fears were not
all confined to the national capital. Scott, the general
of the army, who was stationed at New York, thought
that "our country was on the eve of a terrible civil war."4
Senator Benton, however, ridiculed the idea of danger.5
Seward thought the threats of disunion " too trivial for >
serious notice."6 Chase was not in the least alarmed at
1 Letter to P. Harvey, Feb. 14th, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 398.
2 Letter to Edward Everett, Feb. 16th, Private Correspondence, vol. ii.
p. 355.
3 " It is undeniable that there exists no small degree of violent feeling
among a small portion of the Southern members. And so peculiar is the
state of society in the South, so morbid is the sensitiveness caused by the
influence of slavery, that it is only at the utmost peril that a Southern
man can allow any other man to outstrip him in apparent zeal and vio-
lence for the defence of that institution. When one roars, therefore all
must roar ; when one whines, all must whine. Hence there is an appar-
ent combustibleness on all occasions, which superficial observers are apt
to take for a deep-seated and durable determination to break from the
Union." — Washington correspondence, New York Independent, Feb. 23d,
1850.
* Remark made to General Sherman, Memoirs of General Sherman,
vol. i. p. 82.
6 Thirty Years' View, vol. ii. p. 749.
6 Life of Seward, Baker, p. 145 ; Seward's Works, vol. i. p. 81.
132 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
"the stale cry of disunion."1 Giddings thought the "cry
of dissolution was gasconade. ... It has been the dernier
ressort of Southern men for fifty years whenever they desired
to frighten dough-faces into a compliance with their meas-
ures.3 In general, the Northern anti-slavery men treated the
Southern threats as bravado and as hardly worth serious
notice.3 Yet there was one notable exception to this uni-
versal opinion. Horace Mann believed that if the North
insisted upon passing the Wilmot proviso for the territories,
some of the Southern States would rebel.4 Still, there was
an earnest feeling at the North, and especially in New Eng-
land, that if there were a risk in insisting that slavery should
go no further, it was a risk well worth taking.5
1 Senate speech, March 27th.
2 Gicldings's Speeches, p. 409.
3 " Our Northern friends are blind, absolutely blind, to the real dangers
by which we are surrounded." — Letter of C. S. Morehead, Whig represen-
tative from Kentucky, to John J. Crittenden, March 30th, Life of Critten-
den, vol. i. p. 363. The opinion at that time of the extreme abolitionist
was well stated by Theodore Parker in a sermon delivered in 1852. He
combated strenuously the idea that there was any danger of dissolution
of the Union in 1850. "We have," he said, "the most delicate test of
public opinion— the state of the public funds, the barometer which indi-
cates any change in the political weather;" but during all this discussion
" the funds of the United States did not go down one mill." " The South-
ern men know well that if the Union were dissolved their riches would
take to itself legs and run away — or firebrands, and make a St. Domingo
out of South Carolina ! They cast off the North ! They set up for them-
selves ! Tush ! tush ! Fear boys with bugs !"
* " I really think if we insist upon passing the Wilmot proviso for the
territories that the South — a part of them — will rebel ; but I would pass
it, rebellion or not. I consider no evil so great as that of the extension
of slavery."— Letter of Horace Mann, Feb. 6th, Life, p. 288.
5 "Rather than consent voluntarily to the extension of the slave insti-
tution to one foot of free territory — rather than surrender their principles
— they [the Northern people] would submit to have the Union severed.
This, we believe, is the true feeling of the North." — Springfield Repub-
lican, Feb., 1850, cited by the Liberator. See also Life of Samuel
Bowles, vol. i. p. 77. " Let the Union be a thousand times shivered rather
CH.II.] WAS THE UNION IN DANGER? 133
Carefully weighing the contemporary evidence, and look-
ing on it in the light of subsequent history, I think that
little danger of an overt act of secession existed while Gen-
eral Taylor was in the presidential chair. The power of a
determined executive to resist the initial steps towards cast-
ing off allegiance to the general government was great.
"While diverse constitutional interpretations and different
views as to the force of various precedents might puzzle the
President, he was certain to discern betimes any move tow-
ards rebellion ; and that he was resolved to put down with
all the force at his command.1
An incident occurring at this time shows to what stern
determination General Taylor had come. The extreme
pro-slavery "Whigs from the Southern States took the posi-
tion that they were willing to admit California, provided
that in the rest of the territory in question the government
would protect and recognize property in slaves, even as
other property was protected and recognized. But until
this point was formally acknowledged they were utterly
opposed to the admission of California with her free con-
stitution, and, with the assistance of the Southern Demo-
crats, they prevented by filibustering the consideration of
a bill in the House which had that for its object. While
this obstruction was in progress, Alexander H. Stephens
and Robert Toombs, both Southern "Whig representatives,
called to see the President to discuss his policy and to de-
mand-that he, as their party's chief, should use his influence
and power to favor the end which they had in view. The
President plainly informed them that he would sign any
constitutional law which Congress might pass. The direct
intimation was that he would sign a bill which provided
than we should aid you [the South] to plant slavery on free soil." — New
York Tribune, Feb. 20th.
1 " The malcontents of the South mean to be factious ; and they expect
to compel compromise. I think the President as willing to try conclu-
sions with them as General Jackson was with the nullifiers." — Seward to
Weed, Nov. 30th, 1849, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 112.
134 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
unconditionally for the admission of California ; and they
were indirectly given to understand that he would approve
the application of the Wilmot proviso to the territories.1
As a reply to this outline of future action, the Southern
congressmen threatened dissolution of the Union, when
the President got angry and said that, if it were necessary,
he would take the field himself to enforce the laws of his
country; and if these gentlemen were taken in rebellion
against the Union, he would hang them with as little mercy
as he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.2
In the midst of the mutual recrimination accompanying
this inevitable sectional controversy, there can be no better
evidence as to whence came the aggression than the com-
plete change that had taken place in the sentiments of Gen-
eral Taylor since he had occupied the executive office. Be-
fore he was nominated for President, he had written an
1 See letter of R. Toombs to J. J. Crittenden, Life of Crittenclen, Cole-
man, vol. i. p. 365. Toombs wrote, April 25th : " I saw General Taylor
and talked fully with him, and, while he stated he had given and would
give no pledges either way about the proviso, lie gave me clearly to un-
derstand that if it was passed he would sign it. My course became in-
stantly fixed. I would not hesitate to oppose the proviso, even to the
extent of a dissolution of the Union."
3 Memoir of Thurlow Weed, p. 177; see also New York Tribune of
Feb. 23d ; Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 259. Han-
nibal Hamlin wrote me, Aug. 23d, 1889 : " In answer to your inquiry, I can
inform you that the statement made by Mr. Wilson to which you refer is
correct and accurate. You will find a corroboration of it in the Life or
Memoirs of Thurlow Weed." Wilson said in the Senate, July 9th, 1856 :
" It is said that the Senator from Georgia [Toombs] and others talked very
plain to General Taylor in 1850 about a dissolution of the Union, and that
General Taylor intimated to them pretty distinctly that the Union was to
be preserved and the laws of the country executed." Toombs was present
and made an immediate reply to a portion of Wilson's speech, but did not
in any wray contradict this statement. Congressional Globe, vol. xxxiii. p.
857. Stephens and Toombs, in letters to the New York Herald in 1876,
denied this story. See New York Herald, June 13th and Aug. 8th, 1876.
In this connection see letter of Stephens written directly after the death
of General Taylor, Life of Stephens, Johnston and Browne, p. 258.
CH. II.] THE REAL DANGER* 135
emphatic letter to his son-in-law, Jefferson Davis, in which
he had maintained that the South must resist boldly and
decisively the encroachments of the North ; and the South-
erners had counted much on his assistance. He now, how-
ever, looked upon several Southern members as conspirators,
and Jefferson Davis as their chief.1 If we lay aside the
speeches in Congress as merely threats of irate Southerners,
and get at Southern sentiment from legislative resolutions,
from expressions of the press, and from public meetings, it
is undeniable that had the Wilmot proviso passed Congress,
or had slavery been abolished in the District of Columbia,
the Southern convention for which arrangements were
making would have been a very different affair from the
one that actually did assemble at Nashville. Steps would
undoubtedly have been taken towards disunion ; and while
resolute action of the President was certain to arouse the
dormant Union feeling in the South, his task would have
been more difficult than was that of General Jackson, for
he would have to contend with more States than South
Carolina.
A change in Southern sentiment is, however, noticeable
shortly after the introduction of Clay's compromise resolu-
tions. This was assisted by a vote in the House of Kepre-
sentatives, laying on the table a resolution which provided
for the application of the Wilmot proviso to the territory
east of California.1 Clay's speech influenced powerfully the
opinion of Southern Whigs. From the beginning of Febru-
ary, it is easy to trace the growth of a Southern sentiment
favorable to the admission of California, if only the Wilmot
1 Memoir of Thurlow Weed, p. 177. " We firmly believe that there are
sixty members of Congress who this day desire a dissolution of the Union,
and are plotting to effect it." — New York Tribune, editorial, Feb. 23d.
a The resolution was that of Root, of Ohio. The vote to table was 105
yeas, 75 nays. Thirty-two Northern members voted to defeat the Wilmot
proviso, eighteen of whom were Democrats and fourteen Whigs. There
were twenty-seven absentees from the free States. Wilson, Rise and Fall
of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 222.
136 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
proviso were not insisted upon for New Mexico, and slavery
were allowed to remain in the District of Columbia. This
by no means pleased the knot of Southern disunionists, who
desired nothing better than the passage by Congress of the
Wilmot proviso.1 In that event they had well-grounded
hopes that they could unite the South in their views ; then
they would give their ultimatum, and, if it were rejected,
they would dissolve the Union. Efforts, indeed, were made
by the extreme Southern Democrats to check the slowly
rising Union sentiment. Their aim was to resist the admis-
sion of California, and to make the resistance a sectional
shibboleth in place of opposition to the Wilmot proviso.2
While, thus, the fear of a formal secession from the Union,
/ such as took place eleven years later, had not at this time
sufficient foundation, there was danger in the adjournment
of Congress without provision for the matters in dispute.3
The war of legislative declarations, of resolutions, of public
meetings, would continue, and inflammatory writing in the
press would not cease. Northern legislative action, support-
ed by public sentiment, would not only make it difficult, but
impossible, to recover a fugitive slave. On the other hand,
it was probable that most of the Southern states as retalia-
tory legislation would pass laws to prevent the sale of North-
ern products by retail in their limits.4 The governor of
Virginia, John B. Floyd, proposed to his legislature a sys-
1 New York Tribune, Feb. 4t1i. See also Benton's Thirty Years1 View.
" I am pained to say that I fear that there are some Southern men who do
not wish a settlement." — Letter of C. S. Morehead, M.C. from Kentucky,
to J. J. Crittenden, Life of Crittenden, Coleman, vol. i. p. 362.
2 See New York Tribune, Feb. 25th and March 13th ; also the Mobile
Advertiser, the Richmond Enquirer, Columbia (S. C.) Telegraph, Charles-
ton (S. C.) Courier, Richmond Whig, for February.
3 " In the Senate there are eight Southern senators and in the House
thirty members from the same section who are organized as disunionists
and are opposed to any compromise whatever looking to the perpetuity
of the Union." — Washington correspondence New York Tribune,~Feb. 2d.
4 Life of Crittenden, Coleman, vol. i. p. 363.
CH.II.] DANIEL WEBSTER 137
tern of taxation of the products of those states which would
not deliver up fugitive slaves.1 A suspension of intercourse
between the two sections would follow, and the situation
would be strained to the utmost. If, indeed, armed con-
flicts at various points did not result from the excited feel-
ing, it was certain that the harmony which should subsist
between the parts of a federal Union would be utterly de-
stroyed ; and after months or even years of such a state of
mutual repulsion, it could only end in compromise, peace-
able separation, or war.2
Two of the great senatorial triumvirate had spoken ; the
Senate and the country had yet to hear the greatest of them
all. Daniel Webster spoke on the compromise resolutions
the 7th of March. In the course of this work, whenever
possible, his precise words have been used, in narration and
illustration; for in intellectual endowment Webster sur-
passed all of our public men. No one understood the fun-
damental principles of our polity better ; no one approached
his wonderful power of expression. It seemed that the lan-
guage of the constitutional lawyer who laid down principles
of law that the profound legal mind of Marshall fixed in an
immutable judicial decision, and who, at the same time,
could make clear abstruse points and carry conviction to the
understanding of men who were untrained in logic or in law,
was best fitted to guide us through the maze of constitu-
tional interpretation in which our history abounds. Indeed,
the political history of the country for twenty-seven years
preceding 1850 might be written as well and fully from the
speeches, state papers, and letters of Webster as the story of
1 The Liberator, April.
2 "I am not one of those who, either at the commencement of the ses-
sion or at any time daring its progress, have believed that there was
present any actual danger to the existence of the Union. But I am one
of those who believe that, if this agitation is continued for one or two
years longer, no man can foresee the dreadful consequences." — Clay, Sen-
ate, May 21st.
138 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1860
the latter days of the Roman republic from the like material
of Cicero which has come down to us.1
As an orator, Webster has been compared in simplicity to
Demosthenes and in profundity to Burke.3 This is the high-
est praise. The wonderful effect of his oratory is strikingly
told by George Ticknor, who, fresh from a long intercourse
with the most distinguished men in England and on the
Continent, went to hear Webster delhrer his Plymouth ora-
tion. Ticknor writes : " I was never so excited by public
speaking before in my life. Three or four times I thought
my temples would burst with the gush of blood ;" and, though
from his youth an intimate friend of Webster's, he was so
impressed that " when I came out I was almost afraid to
come near him. It seemed to me as if he was like the mount
that might not be touched, and that burned with fire."3
Thomas Marshall, of Kentucky, heard the reply to Hayne,
and when Webster came to the peroration he " listened as
to one inspired, and finally thought he could see a halo
around the orator's head like what one sees in the old pict-
ures of saints and martyrs." 4
The diction of Webster was formed by a grateful study of
Shakespeare and Milton ; through his communion with these
masters, his whole soul was thoroughly attuned to the high-
1 "His ideas, his thoughts [are] spread over ever}7 page of your annals
for near half a century. His ideas, his thoughts [are] impressed upon
and inseparable from the mind of his country and the spirit of the age."
—Senate speech of W. H. Seward, Aug. 14th, 1852. " Whoever in after-
times shall write the history of the United States for the last forty
years will write the life of Daniel Webster." — Edward Everett, Oct. 27th,
1852.
2 John Adams, who was present at the trial of Warren Hastings, and
had heard Pitt and Fox, Burke and Sheridan, wrote to Webster, after
reading his Plymouth oration : " Mr. Burke is no longer entitled to the
praise— the most consummate orator of modern times." Lodge, p. 123.
3 Letter of Ticknor from Plymouth, Dec. 21st, 1820, Life of Ticknor,
vol.i. p. 330.
* William Schouler, Personal and Political Recollections, Boston
Journal, Dec. 10th, 1870.
CH.H.] DANIEL WEBSTER 139
est thinking and purest harmonies of our literature. He is
one of the few orators whose speeches are read as literature.
He was our greatest lawyer,1 yet in a bad cause he was
not a good advocate, for he had not the flexibility of mind
which made the worse appear the better reason ; but in cases
apparently hopeless, with the right on his side, he won impos-
ing triumphs.2 He was our greatest Secretary of State. He
had, said Sumner, u by the successful and masterly negotia-
tion of the treaty of Washington" earned the title of " De-
fender of Peace." 3
The Graces presided at his birth. His growth developed
the strong physical constitution with which nature had en-
dowed him equally with a massive brain. His was a sound
mind in a sound body. His physical structure was magnif-
icent, his face handsome ; he had the front of Jove him-
self/ " He is," said Carlyle, " a magnificent specimen. . . .
As a logic-fencer, or parliamentary Hercules, one would in-
cline to back him at first sight against all the extant world."5
" Webster," said Henry Hallam, " approaches as nearly to
the beau ideal of a republican senator as any man that I
have ever seen in the course of my life." 6 Josiah Quincy
speaks of him as a "figure cast in heroic mould, and
which represented the ideal of American manhood."7 He
was well described by the bard he loved so well : " How
noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and
moving, how express and admirable ! in action, how like
an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!" On the
basis of this extraordinary natural ability was built the
1 " Whatever else concerning him has been controverted by anybody,
the fifty thousand lawyers of the United States conceded to him an un-
approachable supremacy at the bar." — Seward's eulogy in the Senate.
'2 This is remarked by the Westminster Review, Jan., 1853.
3 Speech before the Whig Convention at Boston, Sept., 1846, Rise and
Fall of the Slave Power, Wilson, vol. ii. p. 119.
• See Lodge, p. 195. s Curtis, vol. ii. p. 21.
6 Ibid., p. 27. 7 Figures of the Past, p. 267.
140 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
superstructure of a systematic education. His devoted fa-
ther mortgaged the New Hampshire farm to send him to
college, and three years of laborious study of law followed
the regular course at Dartmouth. Years afterwards he re-
paid his Alma Mater for her gifts when he pleaded, and
not in vain, for her chartered rights in invincible logic be-
fore the most solemn tribunal of the country. Intellectually,
"Webster was a man of slow growth. The zenith of his
power was not reached until he made the celebrated reply to
Hayne, and he was then forty-eight years old.
In union with this grand intellect were social qualities of
a high order. His manners were charming, his nature was
genial, and he had a quick sense of seemly humor. Carlyle
speaks of him as " a dignified, perfectly bred man." ' Har-
riet Martineau says "he would illuminate an evening by
telling stories, cracking jokes, or smoothly discoursing to
the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's constitution." a
Ticknor, who was so impressed with the majestic delivery of
the orator, speaks of his being " as gay and playful as a
kitten." s The social intercourse between Webster and Lord
Ashburton, while they were at work on the Washington
treaty, is one of those international amenities that grace the
history of diplomacy. This treaty, by which we gained
substantial advantages and England made honorable conces-
sions, was not negotiated through stately protocols, but was
concluded through a friendly correspondence and during the
interchange of refined social civilities. During this transac-
tion Ashburton was impressed with " the upright and hon-
orable character" of Webster.4 As late as 1845 there might
be seen engravings which were an indication of the popular
notion that honesty was his cardinal virtue.5
Curtis, vol. ii. p. 21.
Retrospect of American Travel, vol. i. p. 147.
Letter, Dec. 23d, 1820, Life of Ticknor, vol. i. pp. 331 and 379.
Memoir of Everett, Webster's Works, vol. i. p. cxxiv.
Sir Charles Lyell saw ua most formidable likeness of Daniel Web-
CH. II.] DANIEL WEBSTER 141
He had strong domestic feelings. He honored his father,
loved his brother, and was devoted to his wife and children ;
his affection for his many friends was pure and disinterested.
He had during his life a large share of domestic affliction,
and his deep and sincere grief shows that he had a large
heart as well as a great head. He had a constant belief in
revealed as well as natural religion.1
His healthy disposition was displayed even in his recrea-
tions. He was a true disciple of Izaak Walton, and he also
delighted in the chase. Few men have loved nature more.
Those grand periods that will never cease to delight lovers
of oratory were many of them conned at his Marshfield re-
treat, where he worshipped the sea and did reverence to the
rising sun. After a winter of severe work in his declining
years, he gets to Marshfield in May, and writes : " I grow
strong every hour. The giants grew strong again by touch-
ing the earth ; the same effect is produced on me by touch-
ing the salt sea-shore." 3
The distinctive virtue of Webster was his patriotism. He
loved his country as few men have loved it ; he had a pro-
found reverence for the Constitution and its makers. He
spoke truly when he said : " I am an American, and I know
no locality but America; that is my country;"3 and he was
deeply in earnest when he gave utterance to the sentiment,
" I was bred, indeed I might almost say I was born, in ad-
miration of our political institutions."4 Webster's great
work was to inspire the country with a strong and enduring
ster, being an engraving published in Connecticut. Leaning over the
portrait of the great statesman is represented an aged man holding a lan-
tern in his hand, and, lest the meaning of so classical an allusion should
be lost, we read below :
" ' Diogenes his lantern needs no more —
An honest man is found, the search is o'er.' "
Second Visit to United States, vol. i. p. 55.
i Curtis, vol. H. p. 333. 2 Ibid., p. 377.
3 Ibid., p. 448. « Ibid., p. 513.
142 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
national feeling ; and he impressed upon the people every-
where, except in the cotton States, a sacred love for the
Union. How well his life-work was done was seen, less than
nine years after he died, in the zealous appeal to arms for
the defence of the nation. In the sleepless nights before his
death, no sight was so welcome to his eyes as the lantern he
saw through the windows placed at the mast-head of the
little shallop, in order that he might discern, fluttering at
the mast, the national flag, the emblem of that Union to
which he had consecrated the best thoughts and purest ef-
forts of his life.
During the last twenty years of his career Webster had a
great desire to be President. Three times he was exceed-
ingly anxious for the Whig nomination, and thought his
chances were good for getting it ; but the nomination even
never came to him. Indeed, he always overrated the prob-
abilities of his success. He was of that class of statesmen
who were stronger before the country than before the polit-
ical convention. Had he ever been named as his party's
choice, he would unquestionably have been a strong candi-
date ; but he never had the knack of arousing the enthusiasm
of the party, which Clay possessed in so eminent degree.
Nor did his frequent action independent of political consid-
erations commend him to the men who shaped the action of
the party convention. George Ticknor said, in 1831, Web-
ster " belongs to no party ; but he has uniformly contended
for the great and essential principles of our government on
all occasions ; " l and this was to a large extent true of him
during his whole life. His tendency to break away from
party trammels was shown more than once during his long
career. In 1833, as we have seen,2 he supported with enthu-
siasm the Democratic President, and would not assent to
the compromise devised by the leader of his party. But the
crowning act of independence was when he remained in the
1 Life of George Ticknor, vol. i. p. 393, * See p. 50.
CH.II.] DANIEL WEBSTER 143
cabinet of President Tyler, when all his colleagues resigned.
The motive for this action was the desire to complete the
negotiation of the Ashburton treaty, for "Webster felt that
he of all men was best fitted for that work ; and his heart
was earnestly enlisted in the effort to remove the difficulties
in the way of a peaceful settlement, and to avert a war be-
tween England and the United States. His course, although
eminently patriotic, was certain to interfere with his politi-
cal advancement. For he resisted the imperious dictation
of Clay, he breasted the popular clamor of his party, and
he pursued his own ideas of right despite the fact that he
had to encounter the tyranny of public opinion which De
Tocqueville has so well described.
The French, who make excuses for men of genius as the
Athenians were wont to do, have a proverb, " It belongs to
great men to have great defects." Webster exemplified this
maxim. He was fond of wine and brandy, and at times
drank deep ; he was not scrupulous in observing the seventh
commandment. Though born and reared in poverty, he
had little idea of the value of money and of the sacredness
of money obligations. He had no conception of the duty of
living within his means, and he was habitually careless in
regard to the payment of his debts. His friends more than
once discharged his obligations ; besides such assistance, he
accepted from them at other times presents of money, but
he would have rejected their bounty with scorn had there
gone with it an expectation of influencing his public action.
This failing was the cause of serious charges being preferred
against him. He was accused of being in the pay of the
United States Bank, but this was not true;1 and he was
charged with a corrupt misuse of the secret service fund
while Secretary of State under Tyler, but from this accusa-
tion he was fully and fairly exonerated.2
1 Curtis, vol. i. p. 498.
2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 267 ; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. xii. pp. 266,
263 ; Life of Jefferson Davis by Ms Wife, vol. i. pp. 248 and 634,
144 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
Considering that it was only by strenuous effort that the
son of the New Hampshire farmer obtained the highest rank
in political and social life,1 it is hard to believe that he was
constitutionally indolent, as one of his biographers states.
When sixty-seven years old it was his practice to study from
five to eleven in the morning ; he was in the Supreme Court
from eleven to three, and the rest of the day in the Senate
until ten in the evening. When he had the time to devote
himself to his legal practice, his professional income was
large.
Such, in the main, if Daniel Webster had died on the
morning of the seventh day of March, 1850, would have
been the estimate of his character that would have come
down to this generation. But his speech in the Senate on
that day placed a wide gulf between him and most of the
men who were best fitted to transmit his name to posterity.
Partisan malignity has magnified his vices, depreciated his
virtues, and distorted his motives.
It is now time to consider this speech, which the orator
himself thought the most important effort of his life.2 The
most important event in the long session of Congress we
are at present considering, it was almost as momentous in
the history of the country as it was in the life of Webster.
It is the only speech in our history which is named by the
date of its delivery, and the general acquiescence in this
designation goes to show that it was a turning-point in the
action of Congress, in popular sentiment, and in the history
of the country.
Webster began : " I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massa-
chusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American.
... It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of
strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable
dangers to our institutions and government. The imprisoned
winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy
1 E. P. Whipple, North American Review, July, 1844.
8 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 539,
CH.II.] WEBSTER'S SEVENTH-OF-MARCH SPEECH
South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to
toss its billows to the skies, and disclose its profoundest
depths. ... I speak to-day for the preservation of the
Union. < Hear me for my cause.' " He spoke of the Mexi-
can war as having been " prosecuted for the purpose of the
acquisition of territory. ... As the acquisition was to be
south of the line of the United States, in warm climates and
countries, it was naturally, I suppose, expected by the South
that whatever acquisitions were made in that region would
be added to the slave-holding portion of the United States.
Very little of accurate information was possessed of the real
physical character either of California or New Mexico, and
events have not turned out as was expected. Both Cali-
fornia and New Mexico are likely to come in as free States,
and therefore some degree of disappointment and surprise
has resulted. ... It is ... the prohibition of slavery which
has contributed to raise . . . the dispute as to the propriety
of the admission of California into the Union under this
Constitution."
The orator then proceeded to discuss slavery from a gen-
eral historical standpoint, Avhence an allusion followed nat-
urally to the different view taken of the institution at the
North and at the South. It is too long to quote, but it is a
fair, dispassionate statement, and rises to the level of a judg-
ment by a philosophical historian.1 He regrets the sepa-
ration of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Speaking with
the utmost feeling on the subject, he expresses the opinion
that the schism might have been prevented ; and he then
comments upon the matter in words pregnant with wis-
dom that not only applied with force to the slavery ques-
tion in 1850, but have a meaning for all controversies to all
time.
At the time the Constitution was adopted, there was, he
said, " no diversity of opinion between the North and the
South upon the subject of slavery. It will be found that
1 See Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 330.
I.— 10
!46 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
both parts of the country held it equally an evil, a moral
and political evil. . . . The eminent men, the most eminent
men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South
held the same sentiments — that slavery was an evil, a blight,
a scourge, and a curse. . . . There was, if not an entire una-
nimity, a general concurrence of sentiment running through
the whole community, and especially entertained by the
eminent men of all parts of the country. But soon a change
began at the North and the South, and a difference of opin-
ion showed itself ; the North growing much more warm and
strong against slavery, and the South growing much more
warm and strong in its support." The reason that the South
ceased to think it an evil and a scourge, but, on the other
hand, maintained that it was " a great religious, social, and
moral blessing," was " owing to the rapid growth and sud-
den extension of the cotton plantations of the South." l
In reply to Calhoun's statement that " there has been a
majority all along in favor of the North," Webster averred
that " no man acquainted with the history of the Union can
deny that the general lead in the politics of the country, for
three-fourths of the period that has elapsed since the adop-
tion of the Constitution, has been a Southern lead." He di-
rected attention to the events that brought about the an-
nexation of Texas, referred at length to the joint resolution
which allowed four more States to be formed out of her ter-
ritory ; and laid great stress upon the stipulation that the
States which would be created south of the line of 36° 30'—
and this embraced nearly the whole of Texas— were permit-
ted to have slavery, and would without question be slave
States. To that " this government is solemnly pledged by
law and contract . . . and I for one mean to fulfil it, be-
cause I will not violate the faith of the government. , . . Now
as to California and New Mexico, I hold slavery to be ex-
cluded from those territories by a law even superior to that
which admits and sanctions it in Texas. I mean the law of
1 See p. 36.
Cn. II.] WEBSTER'S SEVENTH-OF- MARCH SPEECH 147
nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of
the earth. That law settles forever, with a strength beyond
all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in
California or New Mexico. . . . What is there in New Mex-
ico that could by any possibility induce anybody to go there
with slaves ? There are some narrow strips of tillable land
on the borders of the rivers ; but the rivers themselves dry
up before midsummer is gone. . . . And who expects to see
a hundred black men cultivating tobacco, corn, cotton, rice,
or anything else, on lands in New Mexico, made fertile only
by irrigation ?" Considering that " both California and New
Mexico are destined to be free, ... I would not take pains'
uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to re-enact
the will of God. I would put in no Wilmot proviso for the
mere purpose of a taunt or reproach. . . . Wherever there
is a substantive good to be done, wherever there is a foot
of land to be prevented from becoming slave territory, I am
ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery. I
am pledged to it from the year 1837 ; I have been pledged j
to it again and again ; and I will perform those pledges ;
but I will not do a thing unnecessarily that wounds the feel-
ings of others, or that does discredit to my own under-
standing."
As regards the non-rendition of fugitive slaves, Webster
thought that the complaints of the South were just, and that
the North had lacked in her duty ; and he proposed, with
some -amendments, to support the fugitive slave bill which j
had been drawn up and introduced by Senator Mason of
Virginia. He referred to the abolition societies at the North,
and did not " think them useful. I think their operations for
the last twenty years have produced nothing good or valua-
ble. . . . The violence of the Northern press is complained
of." But " the press is violent everywhere. There are out-
rageous reproaches in the North against the South, and there f
are reproaches as vehement in the South against the North."
There is, however, " no solid grievance presented by the South
within the redress of the government ... but the want of
\
148 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
a proper regard to the injunction of the Constitution for the
delivery of fugitive slaves."
It is near the close of this speech that occurs the fine pas-
sage depicting the utter impossibility of peaceable secession.
" Sir, he who sees these States, now revolving in harmon}^
around a common centre, and expects them to quit their
places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next
hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and
jostle against each other in the realms of space, without
causing the wreck of the universe;" And in his peroration,
which in eloquence almost equals that of his reply to Hayne,
he adjured the Senate and the country, " instead of speaking
of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling
in those caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those
ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come
out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh air of lib-
erty and union. Never did there devolve on any genera-
tion of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us for the
preservation of this Constitution, and the harmony and peace
of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our
generation one of the strongest and brightest links in that
golden chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple
the people of all the States to this Constitution for ages to
come." '
This speech of Webster had been long and anxiously
awaited. The desire was great to know what position he
would take ; the curiosity was intense to know whether he
would support the compromise or would join the anti-slav-
ery Whigs and approve the plan of the President. It had
been rumored that he, in connection with some Southern sen-
ators, was intending to prepare a scheme of adjustment ;2 on
1 The quotations are taken from the speech as printed in vol. v. of Web-
ster's Works. The whole speech is well worth reading.
2 National Era, March 7th, 1850; Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,
vol. ii. p. 149; New York Herald and New York Journal of Commerce,
Feb. 28th; New York Tribune, March 1st; Correspondence of C. A.
Dana, New York Tribune, March 4th.
CH.H.] WEBSTER'S SEVENTH-OF-MARCH SPEECH 149
the other hand, Giddings and other Free-soilers thought that
he would sustain their doctrines.1 Horace Mann did not
believe that Webster would compromise the great question.2
All this conjecture was idle. More than six weeks before
he made the declaration in public, he had given CJay to un-
derstand that he would support substantially the Kentucky
senator's scheme of compromise.3 Before concurring in all
the details, he desired to give the subject careful considera-
tion; and between the time of his interview with Clay on
January 21st and the delivery of his speech he consulted
with men of diverse views.4 He heard every side advocated;
he saw the subject in all its bearings. As the result of his
mature and carefully considered judgment, he determined
to follow his own first impressions, and devote himself to
the advocacy of Clay's plan, " no matter what might befall
himself at the North." 5
The speech produced a wonderful sensation ; none other
in our annals had an immediate effect so mighty and strik-
ing. The reply to Hayne and the reply to Calhoun have
more permanent value, and their influence has been last-
ing ; the 7th of March speech dealt with slavery, and when
the slavery question ceased to be an issue the discourse of
Webster lost all but the historical interest. A careful read-
ing of the speech now fails to disclose the whole reason of
its harsh reception at the North. It is probable that the
matured historical view will be that Webster's position as
to the application of the Wilmot proviso to New Mexico
was statesmanship of the highest order. In 1846, 1847, and
1848, the formal prohibition of slavery in the territory to
be acquired, or which was acquired from Mexico, seemed a
vital and practical question. The latitude of the territory
1 History of the Rebellion, p. 323. Giddings's statement that Web-
ster had made promises to anti-slavery men is probably a mistake. See
Curtis, vol. ii. p. 402.
2 March 4th, Life, p. 293. 3 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 397.
4 Lodge, p. 322. s Curtis, vol. ii. p. 397.
15Q TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
in dispute gave reason to suppose that its products would be
those of the cotton States, and that it would naturally grav-
itate towards slave institutions. While many believed that
the Mexican law sufficed to preserve freedom in California
and New Mexico, it nevertheless was good policy to make
extraordinary appropriations for the war only on condition
of an express understanding that the territory acquired
should be free. But in 1850 the question had changed.
California had decided for herself ; and the more important
half of the controversy was cut oif by the action of the peo-
ple interested. There remained New Mexico.1 The very
fact that California had forbidden slavery was an excellent
reason for believing that New Mexico would do likewise. It
had now become known that while the latitude of New
Mexico assigned her to the domain of slavery, the altitude
of the country gave her a different climate from that of the
slave States, and subjected her to different economical con-
ditions. It was understood that neither cotton, tobacco,
rice, nor sugar could be raised, and no one in 1850 main-
tained that slave labor was profitable save in the cultivation
of .those products. The correspondence between Webster
and the delegate to Congress from New Mexico shows that
no one conversant with the facts had the slightest notion
that slavery had any chance of being established in that ter-
ritory.2 The people themselves proved that no Wilmot pro-
1 New Mexico then comprised the westerly portions of New Mexico as
at present bounded, and Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, most of Arizona,
and the southwesterly part of Wyoming. Narrative and Critical History
of America, Justin Winsor, vol. vii. p. 552.
* This correspondence was published in many of the newspapers of the
day, and may be found in Webster's Works, vol. vi. p. 548. Hugh N.
Smith, the delegate from New Mexico, under date of April 9th, wrote:
" New Mexico is an exceedingly mountainous country, Santa F6 itself
being twice as high as the highest point of the Alleghanies, and nearly
all the land capable of cultivation is of equal height, though some of the
valleys have less altitude above the sea. The country is cold. Its gen-
eral agricultural products are wheat and corn, and such vegetables as
CH.II.] WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF-M ARCH SPEECH 151
viso was needed, for in convention assembled in May they
formed a State government, and declared for the absolute
prohibition of slavery. It seems that Webster had studied
this territorial question more deeply, knew the facts better,
and saw clearer than his detractors.1 It certainly is no lack
of consistency in a public man to change his action in con-
formity with the change in circumstances. The end desired
was to have California and New Mexico free ; and if that
could be gained by the action of these communities, it was
surely as well as to have it determined by a formal act of
Congress. To insist upon a rigid principle when it is no
longer applicable or necessary is not good politics ; yet great
blame has been attached to Webster because he did not now
insist on the Wilmot proviso. Anti-slavery writers have
grow in the Northern States of this Union. It is entirely unsuitecl for
slave labor. Labor is exceedingly abundant and cheap. It may be hired
for three or four dollars a month, in quantity quite sufficient for carrying
on all the agriculture of the territory. There is no cultivation except
by irrigation, and there is not a sufficiency of water to irrigate all the
land.
" As to the existence at present of slavery in New Mexico, it is the gen-
eral understanding that it has been altogether abolished by the laws of
Mexico ; but we have no established tribunals which have pronounced as
yet what the law of the land in this respect is. It is universally consid-
ered, however, that the territory is altogether a free territory. I know
of no persons in the country who are treated as slaves, except such as
may be servants to gentlemen visiting or passing through the country.
I may add that the strongest feeling against slavery universally prevails
throughout the whole territory, and I suppose it quite impossible to con-
vey it there, and maintain it by any means whatever."
1 Senator Hale, who opposed the compromise, and at this time criti-
cised severely Webster's course, said in the Senate, July 9th, 1856 : u Wise
or unwise," the compromise measures of 1850 "had succeeded in an
eminent degree in restoring peace to the country." And when Con-
gress assembled, Dec., 1853, "it was literally true, I believe, at the time,
... as Mr. Webster said, that there was not a single foot of territory on
the continent where this great question was not settled by what I think
Mr. Webster termed an irrepealable law." — Congressional Globe, vol. xxxiii
p. 846.
152 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
pointed to the legislative establishment of slavery in New
Mexico in 1859 as proof that Webster made in 1850 a fatal
error of judgment. But the practice never actually existed
in that territory, and the act of 1859 was the work of a
coterie, passed for political effect.1
The historian whose sympathies are with the anti-slavery
cause of 1850— and it seems clear that he can most truly
write the story — can by no means commend the whole of
the Tth-of-March speech. The orator dwelt upon the con-
ditions of the annexation of Texas at too great a length,
for the bad bargain and the manner in which it was made
were not a pleasant recollection to the North. It was not
necessary to lay great stress upon the fact that more slave
States could be created out of Texas, for, while it is obvious
that the intention was to remind the South how well they
had fared in the Union, the orator's mode of treating the
subject was of a nature to irritate the North ; and all the
more, because his argument could not legally be impugned.
Webster's reference to the abolition societies and their work
brought a storm of indignation upon his head from people
who were not used to suppress their voice or mince their
meaning. Webster was wrong in his estimate of the aboli-
tionists. Yet similar judgments were common ; and for ten
years more we find the same pleas against the agitating of
slavery. The complete answer to this deprecation was given
by Lowell for once and all : " To be told that we ought not
to agitate the question of slavery, when it is that which
is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever
and ague on him to stop shaking, and he will be cured." 5
But what grieved the old supporters of Webster the most
was his severe censure of the North for their action in re-
gard to fugitive slaves. The bill of Mason, which, with
some amendments, he proposed to support, was a stringent
1 See Chap. X.
8 Political Essays, p. 31. This essay was published in the Atlantic
Monthly for Oct., 1860.
CH.II.] WEBSTER'S SEVENTH-OF-MARCH SPEECH 153
measure ; and while Webster's own idea was that the fugi-
tive ought to have a jury trial in case he denied owing ser-
vice to the claimant,' there is no doubt that he would have
voted for the Mason bill pure and simple, or, had he been
in the Senate at the time, for the actual Fugitive Slave law
passed in September, rather than that the compromise
should fail. It was thus that the country regarded, and
rightly, his position. Webster's remarks on this subject
are those of an advocate bound to the letter of the law,
fettered by technicality and overborne by precedent. He
does not take a broad, statesmanlike view, drawn indeed
from the written law, but adapted to changing sentiments
and keeping pace with the progress of the century ; he who
had taught us to seize the essential and eternal principles
underlying the record is not true to the standard which he
himself erected. Webster could see " an ordinance of Nat-
ure," and the "will of God" written on the mountains and
plateaus of New Mexico, but he failed to see an ordinance
of Nature and the will of God implanted in the hearts of
men that led them to refuse their assistance in reducing to
bondage their fellows, whose only crime had been desire
for liberty and escape from slavery. These feelings in the
minds of men of Massachusetts were, in Webster's opinion,
"local prejudices" founded on "unreal ghostly abstrac-
tions."2 He could detect the "taunt and reproach" to
the South in the Wilmot proviso, but could not discover
that a rigorous fugitive slave act was equally a taunt and
reproach to the North.
1 See Fugitive Slave bill introduced by Webster, June 3d, 1850, Works,
vol. v. p. 373. See his letter of Nov. llth, 1850, where he states that if he
had been in the Senate when the present Fugitive Slave law passed, he
"should have moved, as a substitute for it, the bill proposed by myself."
Private Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 402.
2 Remarks in Boston, April 29th, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 438. These expres-
sions are cited from the celebrated Revere House speech, which may be
found in full in Life of B. R. Curtis, vol. i. p. 117. The argument as to
the duty of Massachusetts is strong.
154 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
Other points in this discourse occasioned much comment
at the time, but the principal ones, and all that are necessary
to a comprehension of what will follow, have been touched
upon. It now remains to relate how the country received
this speech.
The Massachusetts Legislature was in session discussing
the national question, but dropped the subject in its general
aspect to consider their great senator's relation to it. One
member said that Webster was " a recreant son of Massa-
chusetts who misrepresented her in the Senate." Henry
Wilson " declared that Webster in his speech had simply,
but hardly, stated the Northern and national side of the
question, while he had earnestly advocated the Southern
and sectional side ; that his speech was Southern altogether
in its tone, argument, aim and end."1 The anti-slavery
Whigs and Free-soil members were anxious to instruct Web-
ster formally to support the Wilmot proviso and vote against
Mason's Fugitive Slave bill ; and a resolution with that
purport was introduced by Wilson, but they had not the
strength to carry it through the legislature. The speech
was received in a like manner by the majority of the North-
ern representatives in Congress. No one of the New Eng-
land Whig members agreed with him.2 Horace Mann es-
pecially was bitter. He writes : " Webster is a fallen star !
Lucifer descending from heaven !" " There is a very strong
feeling here [at Washington] that Mr. Webster has played
false to the North." " He has not a favorable response
from any Northern man of any influence." 3 Giddings rep-
resented the anti-slavery sentiment of Ohio when he says,
" By this speech a blow was struck at freedom and the
constitutional rights of the free States which no Southern
arm could have given." 4
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 254.
2 Curtis, vol. ii. pp. 428, 447 ; Boston Atlas, April 6th.
8 Letters of March 8th, 10th, 14th, Life, pp. 293, 294.
4 History of the Rebellion, p. 324.
CH. II.] WEBSTER'S SEVENTH-OF-MARCH SPEECH 155
A public meeting in Faneuil Hall condemned the action
of Webster. Theodore Parker, who was one of the prin-
cipal speakers, said : " I know no deed in American history
done by a son of New England to which I can compare
this but the act of Benedict Arnold. . . . The only reason-
able way in which we can estimate this speech is as a bid
for the presidency."1 In the main, the Northern Whig
press condemned the salient points of the speech. The New
York Tribune was especially outspoken, and doubted whether
Webster would carry with him a Northern Whig vote.2 A
large proportion of the Whig newspapers of New England 3
felt obliged to dissent from the opinion of him whose ar-
guments they had heretofore received with avidity and
spread with zeal. It was regarded as an indication of great
weight when the Boston Atlas, whose editor was a warm
personal friend of Webster, combated unreservedly the im-
portant positions of the 7th-of-March speech ; and although
this respectful criticism was expressed in emphatic terms,
the editor spoke more in sorrow than in anger.4 Those
of the Whig journals who, after the flush of surprise, came
to their leader's support could only advocate his principles
in a lukewarm manner ; and it was evident that devotion
to Webster, and not to the cause he had made his own, was
the spring of their action.5 Nearly all the religious papers
of the North vented their disapproval.6 Whittier, in a song
of plaintive vehemence called " Ichabod," mourned for the
"fallen" statesman whose faith was lost, and whose honor
was dead.
Curtis and Theodore Parker, wrho agree in nothing else,
are of the same mind about public sentiment. "This
1 Speech of March 25th.
2 March 9th and llth.
3 Nine-tenths of them, according to the Boston Atlas,
* See the editorial of April 6th.
6 Notably the Boston Advertiser, the Boston Traveller, and the Spring-
field Republican. See for the latter, Life of Bowles, vol. i. p. 78.
6 See a list of them in the Liberator of April 12th.
156 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
speech," writes Curtis, " was received by probably a great
majority of Mr. Webster's constituents,' if not by a majority
of the whole North, with disfavor and disapprobation." :
" I think," said Parker, " not a hundred prominent men in
all New England acceded to the speech."2
This was the instant outburst of opinion ; but friends for
Webster and his cause came with more deliberate reflections.
Some prominent Democratic journals approved from the
first his position,3 and there were many Whigs in New
England, and especially in Boston, who were sure to follow
Webster whithersoever he led. The majority, indeed, would
have preferred that he had spoken differently, but their
personal devotion induced them to espouse his side.4 His
moral and intellectual influence in the free States was greater
than that of any man living, for the people had confidence
that his gigantic intellect would discover the right, and that
his intellectual honesty would impel him to follow it. The
country has listened to but two men on whose words they
have hung with greater reverence than on those of Web-
ster. The intellectual force and moral greatness of Wash-
ington and of Lincoln were augmented by their high office
and the gravity of the existing crises. AVhen the first excite-
ment had subsided, the friends of Webster bestirred them-
selves, and soon testimonials poured in, approving the posi-
tion which he had taken. The most significant of them
was the one from eight hundred solid men of Boston, who
thanked him for "recalling us to our duties under the
Constitution," and for his "broad, national, and patriotic
views." 5 The tone of many of the Whig papers changed,
1 Vol. ii. p. 410. 2 Sermon, Oct. 31st, 1852.
3 Notably the New York Herald and the New York Journal of Com-
merce.
* For example, George Ashmun, M. 0. from the Springfield, Mass., dis-
trict. Life of Samuel Bowles, vol. i. p. 41.
5 Among the signers were George Ticknor, George T. Curtis, Benjamin
R. Curtis, Rufus Choate, Moses Stuart, W. H. Prescott, and Jared Sparks.
The communication was dated March 25th.
CH.II.J DANIEL WEBSTER 157
some to positive support, others to more qualified censure.
The whole political literature of the time is full of the dis-
cussion of this speech and its relation to the compromise.
It is frequently said that a speech in Congress does not alter
opinions ; that the minds of men are determined by ,set po-
litical bias or sectional considerations. This was certainly
not the case in 1850. Webster's influence was of the great-
est weight in the passage of the compromise measures, and
he is as closely associated with them as is their author.
Clay's adroit parliamentary management was necessary to
carry them through the various and tedious steps of legis-
lation. But it was Webster who raised up for them a pow-
erful and much-needed support from Northern public sen-
timent.
At the South the speech was cordially received ; the larger
portion of the press commended it with undisguised admira-
tion.1 Calhoun complimented Webster for many of his dec-
larations. Senator Foote, of Mississippi, was warm in his
praise ; while Jeiferson Davis afterwards said that it con-
tained so little for the South that he " never could see why
it was republished in the Southern States." 3
It now remains for us to consider the justice of the altered
verdict on the character of Webster, which dates from the
7th of March. I have already spoken of him at length;
but his vigorous personality fills such a vast space of his
time that in dwelling upon his attitude towards the question
which distracted the country, and the attitude of the country
towards him, we are studying in the best manner the his-
tory of the period. Tradition has even been unkinder to
him than history. It is generally believed that in his later
years he was daily flustered with brandy, and that he trod
the path of the gross libertine. The truth on this delicate
1 See many extracts from Southern papers in the Liberator of April 5th,
May 3d and 10th ; also Webster's reference thereto in the Senate, March
25th, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 420.
9 Jan. 26th, 1860, Congressional Globe, p, 599.
158 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
subject has already been stated.1 But it is the delight of
story-tellers to make Webster the hero of exaggerated or
wholly apocryphal anecdotes that tickle the ears of listeners
by a tale of his rank excess. When it affects great men, the
"taint of vice whose strong corruptions inhabit our frail
blood" becomes an especially toothsome morsel of gossip
for those who gladly believe that intellectual greatness is
prone to the indulgence of the passions.
It was a common opinion that Webster's intense desire
for the presidency caused him to sacrifice his principles, but
those who are most vehement in their charge refute them-
selves. Giddings says that Webster thought " his only path-
way to the presidential chair lay through the regions of
slavery;" but on the next page the anti-slavery apostle
writes that the reaction from the speech "prostrated in
political death the giant who seemed to have directed his
deadly aim at the heart of liberty." 2 Horace Mann said the
speech was a " bid for the presidency." 3 This, however, was
an after-thought ; for on the 8th of March he records the
opinion that Webster " will lose two friends at the North
where he will gain one at the South." 4 Theodore Parker
said that Webster " was a bankrupt politician in desperate
political circumstances, gaming for the presidency ;" yet, ac-
cording to the same authority, the speech did not commend
itself to " a hundred prominent men in all New England." 5
If one believes that Webster surrendered principle for the
sake of winning the favor of the South, it must be on the
ground that this man of large public experience did not un-
derstand the sentiment of the North ; or that, with unex-
ampled fatuity, he hoped his position on the sectional ques-
tion would gain him the support of the South and yet not
1 See p. 143.
2 History of the Rebellion, pp. 323, 324.
8 This was written April 6th, Life, p. 299.
4 Ibid., p. 293.
5 Discourse, April 12th, 1852, and Sermon, Oct. 31st, 1852.
Gn.ll] .VEBSTER AND BURKE COMPARED 161
our great conservative. Until the closing years of our cen-
tury, a dispassionate judgment could not be made of Web-
ster; but we see now that, in the war of the secession, his
principles were mightier than those of Garrison.1 It was
not " No Union with slave-holders," but it was " Liberty and
Union" that won. Lincoln called the joint names his watch-
word,'' and it was not the liberty or abolitionist, but the Union
party that conducted the war.
Burke likewise suffered calumny in his private life. He
received large gifts of money from a rich and noble lord,
even as Webster had contributions from the merchants of
State Street, and Burke was also accused of getting money
in discreditable ways.3
In thinking of the intellectual greatness of Webster, we
are reminded of an American whose grasp w^as wide, who
stamped his print upon his time, and yet not until our gen-
eration has historic justice been done to his memory. When
Webster eulogized Alexander Hamilton with that graphic
and familiar comparison that has now become an estimate
of his work which no one disputes, it was considered a brave
and noble act to speak so warmly of a man whom few cared
to honor.4
1 Webster's "great argument was behind every bayonet, and was car-
ried home with every cannon-shot in the war which saved the Union." —
George F. Hoar, at Plymouth, Aug. 1st, 1889. " The great rebellion of 1861
went down hardly more before the cannons of Grant and Farragut than the
thunder of Webster's reply to Hayne."— Gov. J, D. Long, Jan. 15th, 1882.
2 History of Nicolay and Hay, Century Magazine, vol. xxxviii. p. 41 3.
8 It was said that at the time Burke changed his political opinions he
was " overwhelmed with pecuniary embarrassments from which there
seemed no outlet in opposition." — History of England, Lecky, vol. v. p.
4GO. But Lecky has no doubt of the sincerity of Burke's convictions.
4 "He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams
of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the public credit,
and it sprang upon its feet." — Webster's Works, vol. i. p. 200. " I admire
your gallantry (and good conduct, too) in vindicating and eulogizing the
fame and character of Hamilton. Few men at this day are magnanimous
to dare it."— Letter of Joseph Gales to Webster, March 27th, 1831, Curtis,
vol. i. p. 399.
I.— 11
162 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
On the llth of March, Seward spoke. Although this was
his first term in the Senate, and indeed in Congress, for he
had never been a member of the House, he was by no means
an unknown man. Achieving local reputation by service in
the legislature, he had twice held the office of governor.
The executive of New York had always been a prominent
office, owing to the importance of the State and the power
vested in it by the Constitution ; but it was unusually so
in the case of Governor Seward, for he had to do with affairs
that gave him fame beyond the confines of his own State.
Indeed, so inseparably was his name connected with this
office that after years of renowned service in the Senate his
title still remained Governor Seward. He was a good law-
yer, and had a large practice in the United States courts.
Fond of study, having an especial liking for historjr and
philosophy, he loved the classics, and he read many of the
English poets with delight; but. he detested mathematics.
An active Whig, always supporting the candidate of his
party, he leaned decidedly to anti-slavery views. He was a
friend of John Quincy Adams, whom he regarded with re-
spect and veneration, and who had a marked influence on
his turn of thought. Adams, who brooded constantly dur-
ing the last years of his life over the slavery question, said
to Seward the year before he died, " I shall be here but a
little while. I look to you to do a great deal." He had
been elected senator by a large majority of the legislature,
and it was well understood at home and abroad that he
was a strenuous opponent of the extension of slavery. His
speech at Cleveland in 1848 had produced a profound sensa-
tion. " Slavery can be limited to its present bounds," he
had said ; " it can be ameliorated ; it can and must be abol-
ished, and you and I can and must do it." !
Beginning with an unanswerable argument in favor of
the admission of California, he mentions the demand that
1 See Life by F. W, Seward, vols, i, and H., and Memoir prefixed to vol.
1. of Works,
CH.IL] SE WARD'S SPEECH 163
there shall be a compromise of the questions which have
arisen out of slavery before California shall be allowed to
become a State ; and emphatically declares : " I am opposed
to any such compromise, in any and all the forms in which
it has been proposed ;" for what do we of the North " re-
ceive in this compromise ? Freedom in California." But as
" an independent, a paramount question," California " ought
to come in, and must come in, at all events. . . . Under the
circumstances of her conquest, her compact, her abandon-
ment, her justifiable and necessary establishment of a Con-
stitution, and the inevitable dismemberment of the empire
consequent upon her rejection, I should have voted for her
admission even if she had come as a slave State."
In regard to the fugitive slave question, " I say to the
slave States, you are entitled to no more stringent laws;
and that such laws would be useless. The cause of the inef-
ficiency of the present statute is not at all the leniency of its
provisions ;" it is the public sentiment at the North, which
will not support the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave
act. " Has any government ever succeeded in changing the
moral convictions of its subjects by force ? But these con-
victions imply no disloyalty. We reverence the Constitu-
tion, although we perceive this defect, just as we acknowl-
edge the splendor and the power of the sun, although its
surface is tarnished with here and there an opaque spot.
Your Constitution and laws convert hospitality to the refu-
gee from the most degrading oppression on earth into a
crime; but all mankind except you esteem that hospitality
a virtue. ... If you will have this law executed, you must
alleviate, not increase, its rigors."
When Seward came to the territorial question, his words
created a sensation. " We hold," he said, " no arbitrary au-
thority over anything, whether acquired lawfully or seized
by usurpation. The Constitution regulates our stewardship ;
the Constitution devotes the domain (i. e. the territories not
formed into States) to union, to justice, to defence, to wel-
fare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Con-
164 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
stitiition,1 which, regulates our authority over the domain,
and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory
is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage
of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the uni-
verse. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust
as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happi-
ness." This remark about "a higher law" while far infe-
rior in rhetorical force to Webster's " I would not take pains
uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of Nature, nor to re-enact
the will of God," was destined to have transcendent moral
influence. A speech which can be condensed into an apho-
rism is sure to shape convictions. These, then, are the two
maxims of this debate ; the application of them shows the
essential points of the controversy.
Seward then proceeds at some length to rebut Webster's
argument based on the proposition that climate and soil
would prevent the introduction of slavery into New Mex-
ico. He refers "to the great and all-absorbing argument
that the Union is in danger of being dissolved, and that it
can only be saved by compromise." He had received " with
no inconsiderable distrust " the warnings that had been ut-
tered with impassioned solemnity in his hearing every day
for nearly three months, "because they are uttered under
the influence of a controlling interest to be secured, a para-
mount object to be gained ; and that is an equilibrium of
power in the republic. . . . The question of dissolving the
Union is a complex question : it embraces the fearful issue
whether the Union shall stand, and slavery, under the
steady, peaceful action of moral, social, and political causes,
be removed by gradual voluntary effort, and with compen-
sation; or whether the Union shall be dissolved and civil
war ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate
emancipation. We are now arrived at that stage of our
national progress when that crisis can be foreseen, when
we must foresee it. ... I feel assured that slavery must give
The emphasis is mine.
CH.H.J SEWARD'S SPEECH 165
way ; . . . that emancipation is inevitable, and is near ; that
it may be hastened or hindered ; and that whether it shall
be peaceful or violent depends upon the question whether
it be hastened or hindered ; that all measures which fortify
slavery, or extend it, tend to the consummation of violence ;
all that check its extension and abate its strength tend to
its peaceful extirpation. But I will adopt none but lawful,
constitutional, and peaceful means to secure even that end ;
and none such can I or will I forego. . . . There is no rea-
sonable limit to which I am not willing to go in applying
the national treasures to effect the peaceful, voluntary re-
moval of slavery itself. ... But you reply that, neverthe-
less, you must have guarantees ; and the first one is for the
surrender of fugitives from labor. That guarantee you can-
not have . . . because you cannot roll back the tide of social '
progress. You must be content with what you have." Nev-
ertheless, " there will be no disunion and no secession." Sen-
ator Seward closed with an appeal for the maintenance of
the Union ; he pictured the invocation of countless genera-
tions that would be the future inhabitants of this region,
demanding sure and complete freedom over the territory
for which they were now legislating.1
In a portion of the discourse there are many glittering
generalities, and pedantic references to Bacon, Montesquieu,
and Burke, which add little to the power of the reasoning.
Nor are the transitions naturally made. In classic style,
it is far inferior to Webster's oration ; in terse and severe
precision of language he does not equal Calhoun, and he
fails to stick to the question in hand as closely as Clay.
The first part of the speech, the argument in favor of the
admission of California, is divided into categorical propo-
sitions, which again are subdivided into points after the
manner of an old-fashioned sermon. This is not a pleasing
form for an oration calculated to gain the attention of the
1 This speech of Senator Seward may be found in vol. i. of his Works,
p. 51.
166 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
hearers. A prominent journalist, whose sympathies were
with the side that Seward advocated, thought the speech
"very dull, heavy, and prosy," and he did not stay it out,1
for more than three hours were occupied in its delivery. It
was too long by a third. But the last two-thirds make it a
great speech, and it is from that portion that nearly all the
foregoing citations are made. Seward was listened to with
close and earnest attention by Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Ben-
ton, Cass, Hale, and Cor win,2 not from personal sympathy
with him in his maiden effort, but because he represented
faithfully the sentiment of the Empire State, and was, more-
over, regarded as the mouthpiece of the President. The
latter supposition was a mistake. Nor did Seward propose
at any time to speak for General Taylor in the Senate ; on
the contrary, he had refused a place on any important com-
mittee, lest their intimate personal relations might create
the suspicion that he acted authoritatively for the Presi-
dent.3 Indeed, the Washington organ of the President as-
sailed Seward for the sentiments expressed, and it was ac-
cordingly given out that he had lost all influence with the
administration. Webster sneered at the speech.4 Clay wrote
that the speech had eradicated the respect of almost all men
for Seward.5 But one voice came from the South, and that
was the voice of censure ; in this the Northern Democratic
1 Brewer, of the Boston Atlas.
8 Washington correspondence New York Tribune, March llth.
8 Memoir prefixed to vol. i. of Works, p. Ixxxiv. Seward had, however,
consulted the Secretary of the Interior. On the day that he spoke, before
going to the Capitol, he wrote his wife : "I showed my notes confiden-
tially to Mr. Ewing, and he is satisfied." — Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 125.
* "I perceive that my friend Weed laments that it did not happen to
me to make such a great and glorious speech as Governor Seward's. I
thank him sincerely for his condolence, but Omnia non possumus omnes"
Webster to Blatchford, July, 1850, Memoir of Thurlow Weed, p. 183.
But Weed did not entirely approve of the speech. See letters of Seward
to him, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 129.
6 Private Correspondence, p. 604.
CH. II.] SEWARD'S SPEECH 167
press for the most part coincided. The New York Tribune,
however, said that the speech represented the feeling of the
great State of New York ; and this was true of the majori-
ty of the Whigs, for later in the year, in State convention
assembled, they commended by formal resolution the course
of their senator.1
Seward's reasoning on the fugitive slave question was in-
capable of refutation ; later events plainly demonstrated the
force of his position. His unerring foresight as to what
would happen to slavery in case the Union were dissolved is
an unfolding of the idea planted in his mind by his political
exemplar, John Quincy Adams.2 But his confident assertion
that " there will be no disunion and no secession " is a reve-
lation of that serene optimism that was a characteristic of
Seward throughout his whole career. The burning assertion
that " there is a higher law than the Constitution " would in
ordinary times have simply been the averment of a noble
abstraction as old as Koman law, and, although it was ap-
plied to the territorial question by the senator, the relig-
ious and philanthropic people of the country soon seized
upon it as justifying resistance to the Fugitive Slave law.
The remark undoubtedly received a far wider application
than its author purposed. Of all the an ti- slavery parti-
sans in Congress, Seward was perhaps the last man one
would have suspected of soaring to such a moral height and
laying down a principle that should warrant opposition to
the law. At any rate, the expression would have seemed
more natural in the mouth of Chase or Hale, in that of Gid-
dings or Horace Mann. For Seward did not disdain the arts
of the machine politician. He believed that a shrewd dis-
tribution of the patronage was a great assistance even to a
party of moral ideas. His influence with the administration
was great enough to control the dealing-out of the offices
of the North, and he made an efficient member of the
1 New York Tribune, March 12th and Oct. 3d.
2 See especially Life of Seward, F. W. Seward, vol. i. p. 672.
168 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
New York "Whig regency whose sphere was practical poli-
tics. That the higher-law doctrine should be carried to its
legitimate result was far from his desire ; but we shall see
how this maxim became a distinction of the radicals, who
accordingly looked to Seward as their leader.
These four speeches are but a fraction of the congressional
utterances on the question superseding all others ; but they
present the case in its different aspects forcibly and plainly.
The four bulky volumes of the Congressional Globe contain-
ing the records of the session are for the most part a report
of speeches on the subject of slavery, and an account of the
various parliamentary procedures which took place before
arriving at the settlement. We have heard from four men
— a Southern Whig and a Northern Whig in favor of the
compromise, a Southern Democrat and an anti-slavery Whig
opposed to it. The Southerners, however, who afterwards
were proud to own themselves Calhoun's disciples, had no
idea of resting their case on his demand for a constitutional
amendment that should maintain an equilibrium. Jeffer-
son Davis, who aspired to succeed Calhoun as a leader, gave
an exposition of what they actually desired; Out of respect
for Calhoun, he admitted that the amendment might event-
ually become necessary ; but, in common with nearly every
one of his fellow-extremists, he knew that it was a chimer-
ical idea and an impossible demand. . It was a good enough
argument to keep in the background ; it had a possibility
of future value, for it might serve as one of the pre-
texts for secession. But now it must make place for a tan-
gible claim, and one that the average Southern mind could
comprehend. Davis was quite ready to state what would
satisfy the South. What he preferred, before all, was non-
intervention— " that is, an equal right to go into all territo-
ries—all property being alike protected ;" but, in default of
this, "I will agree to the drawing of the line of 36° 30'
through the territories acquired from Mexico, with the con-
dition that in the same degree as slavery is prohibited north
of that line, it shall be permitted to enter south of the line ;
CH.IL] BENTON AND FOOTE 169
and that the States which may be admitted into the Union
shall come in under such constitutions as they think proper
to form." ' This was his ultimatum. The speeches of Clay,
Calhoun, Webster, Seward, and the demand of Davis, being
a corollary to the complaint of Calhoun, show the three
sides of the controversy. The other speeches are restate-
ments or amplifications of the cogent arguments used by
these leaders of the debate.
The discussion went on, not unattended with excitement.
Between Benton and Senator Foote a noticeable altercation
took place ; for some time there had been a bitter personal
feeling between the two men.2 The Southerners looked on
Benton as a renegade, for, although a slave-holder from a
slave-holding State, he was bitterly opposed to their object,
and the senator from Mississippi was tacitly selected to
taunt Benton whenever opportunity offered.3 In the latter
part of March he had a spirited controversy with Foote as
to what measure should have legislative preference. The
senator from Mississippi moved that the territorial bills
should be made a special order. Benton objected to this,
demanding, with considerable asperity, that the admission
of California should first have consideration. This nettled
Foote, who was of an excitable temperament, and he replied
in words of bitter sarcasm. " The senator," he said, " need
not think of frightening anybody by a blustering and dog-
matic demeanor. We have rights here, as well as the sen-
ator from Missouri, and we mean to maintain them at all
hazards and to the last extremity. . . . The honorable sen-
ator now says, 'I am the friend of California. ... I an-
nounce— I, sir — I announce — that I will from this day hence-
forward insist — I, the Caesar, the Napoleon of the Senate —
I announce that I have now come into the war with sword
1 Remarks of Jefferson Davis in the Senate, March 13th and 14th.
3 Casket of Reminiscences, H. S. Foote, p. 331.
8 I am indebted to James W. Bradbury, then a senator from Maine, for
the statement in the last clause.
170 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
and buckler.' " Foote continued in an exasperating manner,
ridiculed the notion of Benton posing as " the special friend
of California," and insinuated that his zeal for the State was
not from " high public reasons," but from " certain personal
and domestic considerations." 1 Benton retorted that he be-
lieved personalities were forbidden by the laws of the Sen-
ate. " And now, sir," he said, " I will tell you what I know.
I know that the attacks made upon my motives to-day, and
heretofore in this chamber, are false and cowardly." The
rejoinder of Foote was not less cutting than his former re-
marks. It greatly irritated Benton, who exclaimed, " I pro-
nounce it cowardly to give insults where they cannot be
chastised. Can I take a cudgel to him here ?" Calls to or-
der by the vice-president and several senators, with mollify-
ing remarks by others, terminated the incident for the day.2
On the morrow, Benton, in a personal explanation, declared
his determination, if the Senate did not protect him from
insult, thereafter to redress the wrong himself, cost what it
might. For some time afterwards the rancor between the
two gentlemen did not have a public manifestation. But on
the 17th of April, when Foote was pressing his motion for
the reference of Clay's resolutions and other cognate mat-
ter to a select committee of thirteen, the pent-up enmity
broke forth. Benton made the charge that the whole ex-
citement under which the country had labored was due to
the address of the Southern members of Congress,3 and that
"there has been a cry of wolf when there was no'wolf ; that
the country has been alarmed without reason and against
reason." Foote, in reply, defended the signers of the South-
ern address, said their action was " worthy of the highest
laudation," and that they would be held in " veneration when
their calumniators, no matter who they may be, will be ob-
jects of general loathing and contempt." When the word
1 Fremont, one of the senators-elect from California, was the son-in-law
of Benton.
2 This was March 26th. 8 See p. 104.
CH. II.] THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTEEN 171
"calumniators" was uttered, Benton rose from his seat,
pushed his chair violently from him, and, without remark or
gesture, but with great wrath in his face, quickly strode tow-
ards the seat of Foote, which was about twenty feet distant
from his own. Benton had no weapon of any kind in his
hands or about his person. Foote, seeing at once the move-
ment of Benton, left his place on the floor and ran towards
the secretary's table, all the while looking over his shoulder ;
at the same time he drew a five-chambered revolver, fully
loaded, and cocked it ; then took a position in front of the
secretary's table. Meanwhile Senator Dodge followed Ben-
ton, overtook him and grasped him by the arm, when he
said, " Don't stop me, Dodge !" to which the reply came,
" Don't compromise yourself or the Senate." He was then
on the point of going back to his seat when he happened to
see the pistol in Foote's hands, at which he became greatly
excited. He struggled with the senators who were hold-
ing him, with the apparent intention of approaching Foote,
and, dramatically throwing open his coat, exclaimed, " I am
not armed ; I have no pistols ; I disdain to carry arms. Let
him fire. Stand out of the way and let the assassin fire."
In the meantime, Foote was disarmed and Benton was led
back to his seat. Senators considered the scene an outrage
to the dignity of the Senate, and a committee was appoint-
ed to investigate the affair and take proper action. Three
months and a half later they reported, reciting fully the facts,
but forbore to recommend any action to the "Senate. They
made one statement of historical interest ; namely, that they
had " searched the precedents, and find that no similar scene
has ever been witnessed in the Senate of the United States." '
On the 18th of April the resolutions of Clay and others
of similar purport were referred to a select committee of
thirteen. Clay was chosen its chairman, and it was further
made up by the election of senators Webster, Phelps, Cooper,
Whigs, and Cass, Dickinson, Bright, Democrats, from the
Report of Committee, July 30th.
172 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
free States ; King, Mason, Downs, Democrats, and Mangum,
Bell, and Berrien, Whigs, from the slave States. Nothing
demonstrated more clearly that the question was not a par-
tisan one than the constitution of this committee. There
were thirty-four Democrats and twenty-four Whigs in the
Senate, yet the Whigs were given a majority of this com-
mittee. The division was not on party, but on sectional
lines. It had been tacitly understood that there should be
six members from the free and six from the slave States, and
it was eminently proper that the thirteenth man should be
the Nestor of the Senate, as Clay was called. The senators
chosen were able, experienced, and moderate men ; among
them there was only one advocate of the Wilmot proviso,
Phelps, of Yermont, and but one Southern extremist, Ma-
son, of Virginia. The committee reported on the 8th of
May ; their recommendations and views were thus recapitu-
lated :
1. The admission of any new State or States formed out
of Texas to be postponed until they shall hereafter present
themselves to be received into the Union, when it will be the
duty of Congress fairly and faithfully to execute the com-
pact with Texas by admitting such new State or States.
2. The admission forthwith of California into the Union,
with the boundaries she had proposed.
3. The establishment of territorial governments, without
the Wilmot proviso, for New Mexico and Utah ; embracing
all the territory recently acquired by the United States from
Mexico not contained in the boundaries of California.
4. The combination of these two last-mentioned measures
in the same bill.
5. The establishment of the western and northern bound-
ary of Texas, and the exclusion from her jurisdiction of all
New Mexico, with the grant to Texas of a pecuniary equiva-
lent ; and the section for that purpose to be incorporated
in the bill admitting California and establishing territorial
governments for Utah and New Mexico.
6. More effectual enactment of law to secure the prompt
CH.H.] THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTEEN 173
delivery of persons bound to service or labor in one State,
under the laws thereof, who escape into another State.
Y. In the District of Columbia the slave-trade, but not
slavery, was to be prohibited under a heavy penalty.
No minority report was made ; but Phelps, Cooper,'Mason,
Downs, and Berrien dissented from some of the views of the
majority, and made statements to that effect in open Senate.
The committee, however, were unanimously agreed on the
first proposition, relating to the formation of more States
from Texas. It will be seen that the practical bearing of
these recommendations was the same as that of Clay's reso-
lutions introduced in January ; l bills to carry them out had
been prepared, and were offered in connection with the re-
port. The discussion on these measures in various shapes
continued for nearly five months, and nearly every senator
spoke. Among the supporters of the compromise scheme
in the Senate were Clay, Webster, Cass, Douglas, and Foote.
It was opposed by Seward, Chase, Hale, John Davis, of Mas-
sachusetts, and Dayton — all of them anti-slavery Whigs or
Free-soilers ; by Benton, an independent Democrat ; and by
Jefferson Davis and a following of Southern extremists.2
Every one was astonished at the fire and vigor of Clay. He
was the especial champion of the plan, and right nobly did
he advocate it in spite of his age and infirmity. Greeley, a
looker-on at Washington, was amazed at his energy, and
wrote the Tribune : " He is ... an overmatch in the engi-
neering'of a bill by sharp corners and devious passages for
any man in the Senate. Webster is more massive and pon-
derous in a set debate, but does not compare in winning
support to a measure."3
Meanwhile, the Nashville convention met. From the first /
1 See p. 122.
8 "All the Union men, North and South, "Whigs and Democrats, for
the period of six months were assembled in caucus every day, with Clay
in the chair, Cass upon his right hand, Webster upon his left hand, and
the Whigs and Democrats arranged on either side." — Douglas, speech at
Cincinnati, Sept. 9th, 1859. 8 Letter of June 9th.
174 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [I860
the Whigs in the South were either opposed to it, or were
silent on the subject. The supporters of the project were
mainly Democrats ; but in many of the States, after the in-
troduction of the compromise resolutions, they joined in the
opposition. It was patent, however, from Webster's allusion
to it in his 7th-of-March speech, that the proposed con-
vention attracted attention at Washington as a disunion
I move. He intimated that if any persons should meet at
Nashville " for the purpose of concerting measures for the
overthrow of this Union over the bones of Andrew Jack-
son," the old hero " would turn in his coffin." By the latter
part of March the feeling in favor of the convention had
largely subsided, as shown by the fact that, out of sixty
newspapers published in ten slave-holding States, from Ma-
ryland to Louisiana, there were not more than fifteen that
gave it a decided support.1 In fact, there was little enthu-
siasm for it outside of South Carolina and Mississippi. The
convention met on the 3d of June ; nine States were rep-
resented. There were six delegates from Virginia, seven-
teen from South Carolina, twelve from Georgia, twenty-one
from Alabama, eleven from Mississippi, one from Texas, two
from Arkansas, six from Florida, and a large number from
Tennessee;2 but the credentials of the delegates from most
of the States were not of a character to give great weight to
the proceedings of the convention. The important proposi-
tion in its address was the demand for a division of the ter-
ritory acquired from Mexico by the parallel of 36° 30', with
i a right to carry slaves below that line. This was called "an
extreme concession on the part of the South ;" and if the
convention represented the Southern people, it was virtually
their ultimatum. But this assemblage was not a wave, but
only a ripple, of Southern sentiment. It deserves a men-
tion here more from the hopes and fears it had excited than
from its active or enduring effects.
1 Wilmington, N. C., Chronicle. Cited in Boston Advertiser, March 23d.
Intelligencer, June 8th,
OH. II.] ILLNESS OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR 175
The influence of the administration was exerted against
the plan of the committee of thirteen. The second, third,
and fifth recommendations 1 were combined in one measure,
which the President himself in derision had called the omni-
bus bill,2 and he warmly encouraged Hannibal Hamlin, Sen-
ator from Maine, to oppose it.3 A few days after the re-
port of the committee, Clay, in a speech, held out the olive
branch to the administration. It was not accepted ; on the
contrary, " war, open war, undisguised war, was made by the
administration and its partisans against the plan of the com-
mittee." 4 This the senator thought was unfair. What he
deemed he had a right to expect was well stated in his witty
retort to John Bell, a Whig senator from Tennessee, who
defended the President. Bell said : " The President an-
nounced that he still adhered to the plan he had proposed ;
and the old question is presented whether Mahomet will go
to the mountain, or the mountain come to Mahomet. I do
not undertake to say which is Mahomet or which the moun-
tain." The reply from Clay came quickly : " I beg pardon,
but I only wanted the mountain to let me alone." He said,
moreover, that with the concurrence, or even the forbear-
ance, of the administration the measure would have passed
both Houses without difficulty.
These remarks of Clay were made on the 3d of July, and
it was the last time that he had occasion to criticise the
course of the President. Personal and sectional passion
were stilled by the entrance of grim death into the White
House. General Taylor on Thursday morning, the Fourth
of July, was apparently in robust health. He attended the
exercises in commemoration of the day at the Washington
Monument, and listened to the oration of Senator Foote.
The heat was of unusual intensity ; he was for a long time
1 See p. 172.
2 Statement of Clay in the Senate, July 8d.
1 Life of Clay, Schurz, vol. ii. p. 351 ; Life of Tlmrlow Weed, vol. ii. p.
178. * Remarks of Clay, July 3d,
176 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
exposed to the sun, and to quench his raging thirst drank a
large quantity of iced water. Keturning to the house, he
ate freely of cherries and wild fruits, and took copious
draughts of iced milk. An hour after dinner he was seized
with cramps, which took the form of violent cholera morbus.
The usual remedies were applied, but the illness increased,
until by midnight serious results were threatened. The pa-
tient continued in this condition until Saturday, the 6th,
when it was deemed best to call in counsel ; two other phy-
sicians were sent for, and Dr. Wood, his son-in-law, was sum-
moned from Baltimore. By Monday the skill of his doctors
had checked the visible stages of cholera morbus, but typhoid
fever set in, and there were signs of mental distress. He
said to his medical attendant : " I should not be surprised if
this were to terminate in my death. I did not expect to en-
counter what has beset me since my elevation to the presi-
dency. God knows that I have endeavored to fulfil what I
conceived to be my honest duty. But I have been mistaken.
My motives have been misconstrued, and my feelings most
grossly outraged." He was undoubtedly .brooding over an
interview between himself and Stephens and Toombs, which
occurred on the second day of his illness.1 It was reported
that they had called upon, him as representatives of a cabal
of ultra Southern Whigs to protest against his course on the
slavery question, and it was said that they warned him, un-
less his policy were changed, they would vote a resolution
of censure on his conduct in the Galphin business.2 This day,
Monday, the 8th, the physicians and family became much
alarmed ; by evening hope was abandoned. That night and
the next morning all was gloom at the executive mansion ;
bulletins were issued every hour, which crowds anxiously
awaited with tearful sympathy for the illustrious hero in his
last fight. At ten o'clock Tuesday morning a rumor w^as
started that the President had rallied ; at one in the after-
1 See Life of John A. Quitman, Claiborne, vol. ii. p. 32.
8 What the Galphin business was will be later on explained.
CH.II.] DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR 177
noon, that he was dead ; but the official bulletin of 3.30 P.M.
stated that the crisis had been passed, and he was beyond
immediate danger. The city ran wild with joy. Bells were
rung and bonfires were built to show the relieved anxiety of
the people. Crowds of officials and many of the diplomatic
body repaired to the White House to offer their congratula-
tions. But the exultation was short-lived. By seven o'clock
it was known that the physicians had refused to give more
medicine, saying their patient was in the hands of God ; and
the bulletin announced that the President was dying. In
response to his earnest inquiry, his doctor and friend told
him he had not many hours to live. The general knew it
too well, but he met death like a hero. He prayed with his
spiritual adviser ; he bade farewell to his wife and children,
who were overcome with grief ; and he uttered his last
words with emphatic distinctness : " I have always done my
duty : I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends
I leave behind me."
There was deep and sincere sorrow all through the North-
ern States at the death of the President. One correspond-
ent on his journey from Boston to Washington saw every-
where signs of mourning; he had never known anything
like the depth of feeling which pervaded the masses. " It
seemed, indeed," he wrote, "as if our journey lay through
the dark valley and shadow of death." ' " I never saw grief,"
Seward wrote, " public grief, so universal and so profound." 2
The wide-felt sorrow was a testimony to the sterling hon-
esty and patriotism of General Taylor. It extended to the
border States, where he had a powerful hold on the Whigs,
while but little regret for his death was shown in the cotton
States outside of his own Louisiana, The grief of the Free-
soilers and anti-slavery Whigs was especially great, for they
had given their adherence to the President's plan, and they
felt that now its strongest prop was gone : they soon had
1 Correspondent of Boston Atlas, July 14th.
3 Seward to his wife, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 144.
I.— 12
178 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
reason to feel that the succession of Fillmore boded ill to
their scheme.1
Millard Fillmore was a self-educated, self-made man, and
a safe thouglTnot brilliant lawyer. He early entered into
politics, became a sturdy Whig, and served several terms in
the House of Kepresentatives, where he was marked for his
industry, his anti- slavery views, and his support of John
Quincy Adams in the fight for the right of petition. When
he took the oath of office as Vice-President, the difference
between him and Seward was apparently not one of prin-
ciple, but one centring on the disposition of the offices.
There was a lack of harmony between the two divisions of
the party, beginning soon after the inauguration of General
Taylor, but Seward acquired the ascendant, and his influence
with the administration, as we have seen, became powerful.2
Fillmore was distinguished for his suavity of manners. He
had presided over the Senate during the heated debates on
the compromise measures with impartiality and dignity.
His idea of the decorum proper for the presiding officer of
the Senate was so high that he had confided to only one
person his own view of the question which agitated Con-
gress. The debate had stirred the conservative feelings of
his nature, and he had told the President privately that in
case there should be a tie in the Senate, and it should de-
volve upon him to give the casting vote, his decision would
be in favor of the scheme devised by Clay. While there was
uncertainty about the policy of the new President,3 Webster
felt confident that it would promote the scheme of the com-
mittee of thirteen. He writes : " I believe Mr. Fillmore fa-
vors the compromise, and there is no doubt that recent
1 This account of the illness and death of President Taylor is made up
from detailed reports at the time to the Philadelphia Bulletin and New
York Independent ; from references to the illness in Congress; from allu-
sions to his death by President Fillmore, and in the eulogies delivered in
the Senate and the House.
* gee p. 102. 8 Life of Horace Mann, p. 307.
Call.] MILLARD FILLMORE 179
events have increased the probability of the passage of that
measure."1 Clay confides to his daughter his opinion that
the death of General Taylor " will favor the passage of the
compromise bill,"a while Seward lamented that " Providence
has at last led the man of hesitation and double opinions
to the crisis where decision and singleness are indispensa-
ble."3
The announcement of the cabinet set at rest all doubts.
President Fillmore, on receiving the resignation of the old
cabinet, had at once determined to offer the office of Secre-
tary of State to Clay or-Webster ; Clay, however, called upon
him and recommended Webster. Thereupon he tendered
the office to Webster, who after some deliberation, but with
a great deal of reluctance, accepted it and advised the Presi-
dent regarding the other selections.4 Thomas Corwin, of
Ohio, received the Treasury portfolio ; Charles M. Conrad, of
Louisiana, became Secretary of War; William A. Graham, of
North Carolina, had the Navy Department ; A. H. H. Stuart,
of Virginia, was Secretary of the Interior ; Nathan K. Hall,
of New York, Postmaster-General, and John J. Crittenden,
of Kentucky, was Attorney-General.
Four of the members came from the slave-holding States,
but they were men of moderate views. It was a cabinet fa-
vorable to the compromise ; and Webster, who dominated
the new administration, used its whole influence and power
in favor of the scheme for which he had contended in the
Senate. . The President, moreover, knew well the use of offi-
cial patronage, and before long the cr}^ went out that when-
1 Letter of July llth, Webster's Private Correspondence, vol. ii. p.
376.
a Letter, July 13th, Private Correspondence, p. 611.
3 Letter of Seward to his wife, July 12th, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p.
145.
4 See letter of Fillmore to G. T. Curtis, Life of Webster, vol. ii. p. 465;
also Webster's letter to Haven, ibid.; and his letters to Harvey and Blatch-
ford, July 21st, Webster's Private Correspondence, vol.ii. p. 378,
180 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
ever practicable Seward men were removed and their places
filled with conservative Whigs.
In the meantime, a few men at Santa Fe, with an eye to
their own advantage, had taken steps towards the formation
of a State government for New Mexico. This move was sug-
gested by the acting military governor of the territory, be-
ing in accordance with advice from General Taylor's Secre-
tary of War. The governor called a convention, which as-
sembled May 15th, and in ten days framed a constitution for
the State of New Mexico. This constitution prohibited slav-
ery ; it was adopted by the people in June, the vote being
8371 for and 39 against ratification. A governor, legisla-
ture and a congressman were chosen, and in July the Legis-
lature assembled and elected senators. Before the question
of the admission of New Mexico as a State could be formally
brought before Congress, a territorial government had been
established, and the matter of conferring statehood on her
was not considered. The project could not have received
warm support, for the population was of far different char-
acter from that of California. While there were one hun-
dred thousand souls in the territory, two-fifths were Indians,
three or four thousand were proud to call themselves Castil-
ians; fifteen hundred were emigrants from the United States,
and the remainder were Mexicans — that is, of the Spanish-In-
dian mixed race.1 To the sprinkling of Americans was due
the political organization. " Their superior intelligence and
energy," said John Bell in the Senate, " will exercise a con-
trolling influence over the more passive and tractable Mexi-
cans and Indians." They had, indeed, formed a carpet-bag-
ger government on a magnificent scale ; and, as Clay said
when it was foreshadowed that New Mexico might apply
for admission as a State, " It would be ridiculous, it would
be farcical [to admit her] ; it would bring into contempt the
grave matter of forming commonwealths as sovereign mem-
1 The population of the territory, exclusive of Indians, according to the
census of 1850, was : white, 61,525 ; free colored, 22 ; slaves, none.
CH. II.] THE COMPROMISE MEASURES 181
bers of this glorious Union." On the death of President
Taylor the project fell to the ground and made no figure in
the adjustment of the controversy.!
After General Taylor's funeral and the customary eulo-
gies, the discussion in the Senate continued on the so-called
omnibus bill until the 31st of July, when the bill was order-
ed to be engrossed for a third reading ; but it had been so
cut down by the amendments that nothing remained of the
original measure but the part which provided a territorial
government for Utah without the interdiction of slavery;
in that shape, it was passed. From the debate and the vote
on the various amendments, however, it seemed highly prob-
able that every recommendation of the committee of thirteen
could be made law, provided each article, standing as an
independent measure, were considered separately. Senator
Douglas, chairman of the committee on territories, im-
mediately introduced a bill for the admission of California.
After this had been discussed for a few days, a bill was
brought in which devised the settlement of the Texas boun-
dary, and proposed to pay Texas ten million dollars for the
relinquishment of her claims on New Mexico. The debate
on these two measures went on side by side, a part of each
sitting being devoted to California and a part to the Texas
boundary. A vote on the latter question was first reached ;
it was taken August 9th, and the bill passed by 30 to 20.
There were twelve votes against the Texas boundary meas-
ure from the slave and eight from the free States; in
the main they were those of extremists from the South
and anti-slavery Whigs and Free-soilers from the North.
Benton, whom it is difficult to classify, joined Seward and
Jefferson Davis, Chase and Atchison, Hale and Mason, in
opposing the measure. The division on the California bill
was had August 13th ; there were 34 yeas and 18 nays.
The yeas were fifteen Northern Democrats, eleven North-
1 Arizona and New Mexico, II. H. Bancroft, pp. 342, 440 et seq. ; Speech
of Clay, May 31st, and of John Bell, July 5th, in the Senate.
132 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
ern Whigs, four Southern Whigs, and Chase, Hale, Ben-
ton, and Houston of Texas. The nays were all from the
slave States, and all Democrats but three. The next day
ten Southern senators, among whom were Jefferson Davis,
Atchison, and Mason, presented a solemn protest against the
action of the Senate in admitting California.1 On the 15th
, of August the measure establishing a territorial government,
i without the Wilmot proviso, for New Mexico was passed.
The vote was a light one, 27 to 10 ; the nays were all from
the North. On August 23d the Fugitive Slave law was
ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, which was
equivalent to its passage, by a vote of 27 to 12. The nays
were eight Northern Whigs, among them Winthrop (the
successor of Webster), three Northern Democrats, and Chase ;
there were fifteen Northern senators who did not vote. The
last of the series of the compromise measures, the abolition
of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, passed Sep-
tember 16th by 33 to 19 ; the nays were thirteen Southern
Democrats and six Southern Whigs.
The different acts embraced in the compromise were dis-
posed of more summarily in the House. The Texas Boun-
dary bill, to which was added the New Mexico Territorial bill,
was passed September 6th by 108 to 97. The division was on
practically the same lines as in the Senate on the Texan act ;
as, for example, every member from South Carolina and
Mississippi, all Democrats, voted against it ; and on the same
Bide were Gid dings, Horace Mann, Julian, and Thaddeus
Stevens. The California Admission bill went through the
next day by 150 to 56. All the nays w^re from the slave
States, and among them were two prominent Whigs, Cling-
man and Toombs, who had, however, but seven party asso-
ciates. Two days later the House agreed to the Senate
Utah bill. On September 12th, the Fugitive Slave law was
1 This was signed by the two Senators from Virginia, South Carolina,
and Florida, and by one each from Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Missouri — nine Democrats and one Whig.
CH.II.] THE COMPROMISE COMPLETED 183
carried through the House, under the operation of the pre-
vious question, by 109 to 76 ; thirty-one Northern members
voted for it, among them three Whigs. Thirty-three repre-
sentatives from the North were either absent or paired or
dodged the vote. There were enough of the latter ^to give
force to the dry remark of Thaddeus Stevens : " I suggest
that the Speaker should send a page to notify the members
on our side of the House that the Fugitive Slave bill has been
disposed of, and that they may now come back into the
hall." The House some days afterwards concurred in the
Senate bill for the abolition of the slave-trade in the Dis-
trict of Columbia, and the series of measures received the
approval of the President.
The compromise was now complete. It accorded sub-
stantially with the scheme outlined by Clay in January.1 I
have made the analysis of the vote on the different articles
with prolix detail, because it shows clearly how the com-
promise was carried in parts when it was impossible to enact
it as a whole. Indeed, there were only four senators who
voted for every one of the measures which made up the
plan.2 Clay's name is recorded only on the bill for the aboli-
tion of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia; for,
worn out with his indefatigable exertions, he had sought the
air of the sea to regain his strength, and was at Newport
pending the determination of the other matters. Of course,
had he been in the Senate, he would have supported evrery
one of the acts. Douglas favored them all, but was un-
avoidably absent when the Fugitive Slave law was considered.
Had he been in Washington at the time, he would have given
his voice for the act.' Dickinson, of New York, was a friend
to each one of the series of measures, and his name is not re-
corded for the New Mexico bill and the Fugitive Slave law,
1 See p. 122.
2 Houston, of Texas; Dodge, of Iowa; Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania, Dem-
ocrats ; and Wales, of Delaware, Whig.
3 Life of Douglas, Sheahan, p. 160.
184 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1860
as he had paired with his colleague Seward, whose state
of health had made an absence from Washington neces-
sary.
The influence of the administration was powerfully felt in
bringing about the result. " Here," writes Horace Mann, " are
twenty, perhaps thirty, men from the North in this House,
who, before General Taylor's death, would have sworn, like
St. Paul, not to eat nor drink until they had voted the pro-
viso, who now, in the face of the world, turn about, defy the
instructions of their States, take back their own declarations,
a thousand times uttered, and vote against it." v Webster
was as active in his support of the compromise as when in
the Senate, and his private letters at this time testify how
much his heart was bound up in the success of the scheme
he had advocated at so great a cost. When the affair was
practically concluded, he writes : " I confess I feel relieved.
Since the 7th of March, there has not been an hour in which
I have not felt a 'crushing' weight of anxiety and respon-
sibility. ... It is over. My part is acted, and I am satis-
fied."'
The success of the compromise measures was due to their
"almost unvarying support by the Northern Democrats and
Southern Whigs, although in the House many Northern
Whigs, owing to the influence of Webster, gave strong aid
to all the articles except the Fugitive Slave law. In the
Senate, while the conservative Northern Whigs supported
the Texas Boundary bill, they did not vote for the territorial
acts and the Fugitive Slave bill. The whole strength of the
North was exerted for the admission of California and the
abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia ; that
of the South in favor of the more effectual act for the rendi-
tion of runaway slaves. The Southern ultras, with the ex-
ception of Jefferson Davis, voted for the territorial bills.
The vote on the compromise measures portended a disso-
1 Letter of Sept. Gtli, Life of Horace Mann, p. 322.
8 Private Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 385, Letter to Harvey, Sept. 10th.
Cn.IL] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 185
lution of the existing political parties. One might then have
conjectured that each would equally suffer; but the actual
tendency was towards breaking up the Whig and cementing
the Democratic party.
The reader who peruses the foregoing pages will ,under-
stand sufficiently the scope of each of the acts of the com-
promise except the Fugitive Slave law. That deserves a
fuller notice, for its effect on the North was greater than
any of the others, and it was, moreover, one of the most ob-
jectionable laws ever passed by the Congress of the United
States. Under the provisions of the act, ex-parte evidence
determined the identity of the negro who was claimed. Even
the affidavit of the owner was not necessary ; that of his
agent or attorney would suffice. The testimony of the alleged
fugitive was expressly denied. These cases were ordinarily
to be determined by commissioners appointed by the United
States circuit courts, and these courts were enjoined to in-
crease the number of commissioners from time to time, " with
a view to afford reasonable facilities to reclaim fugitives
from labor." It was the duty of a commissioner (or of a
court or judge) " to hear and determine the case of a claim-
ant in a summary manner." "When the negro was adjudged
to the claimant, the latter had authority " to use such rea-
sonable force and restraint as may be necessary" to remove
the fugitive to the State from which he escaped. No proc-
ess could be issued " by any court, judge, or magistrate, or
other person whomsoever" for the "molestation" of the
slave-owner, his agent, or attorney, after the ownership of
the negro was determined in the manner recited in the act.
The United States marshals and their deputies were obliged
to make unusual exertions to execute the law under penalty
of a heavy fine. In case the slave escaped, they were liable
to a civil suit for his value. In the event of an attempt be-
ing made to prevent the arrest or to rescue the alleged fugi-
tive, the commissioners, or persons appointed by them, were
empowered " to summon and call to their aid the bystanders
or posse comitatus of the proper county ; . . . and all good
186 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
citizens are hereby commanded to aid and assist in the
prompt and efficient execution of this law, whenever their
services may be required, as aforesaid, for that purpose."
If any person shall " willingly hinder or prevent " the claim-
ant from arresting the fugitive, or " shall rescue or attempt
to rescue, ... or shall harbor or conceal " the fugitive, such
person is " subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dol-
lars or imprisonment not exceeding six months ; . . . and shall,
moreover, forfeit and pay by way of civil damages to the
party injured by such illegal conduct the sum of one thou-
sand dollars for each fugitive so lost." In case the commis-
sioner determined that the service of the negro was due the
claimant, his fee was ten dollars, and one-half of that amount
if the alleged fugitive was discharged.
The mere statement of the provisions of this law is its
condemnation. It was a maxim among Roman lawyers that
if a question arose about the civil status of an individual, he
was presumed to be free until proved to be a slave.1 The
burden of proof lay on the master, the benefit of the doubt
was on the side of the weaker party. Under this act of
ours, the negro had no chance : the meshes of the law were
artfully contrived to aid the master and entrap the slave.
It seems amazing that recent legislation in Christian Amer-
ica on this vital point went backward from pagan Rome,
and it is almost impossible to portray the spirit of the time
in a manner that shall enable us to make allowance for the
men who passed this act. The Northern men who support-
ed the law or dodged the vote went counter to public senti-
ment at the North, which was decidedly against such a
measure. Nor was it indispensable to prevent disunion.
The cotton States might rally for an overt act of secession in
case the Wilmot proviso were passed, or if slavery were abol-
ished in the district ; but they would not on the fugitive
slave question. Indeed, when the law passed the Senate it
1 Lecky's History of Morals, vol. i. p. 313; Webster's Works, vol. v.
p. 309.
CH.II.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 187
was generally supposed that it would undergo amendment
in the House in a manner to soften its requirements.1
The cotton States were not the great sufferers from the
loss of negroes. There were more fugitives from the four
border States of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri
than from all the rest of the slave States,2 and most of the
congressmen from the border States would have been satis-
fied with a less stringent measure than the actual one. It
was apparent to every one who knew anything of the senti-
ments of the North that this law could not be executed to
any extent. Seward had truly said that if the South wished
their runaway negroes returned they must alleviate, not in-
crease, the rigors of the law of 1793 ;3 and to give the alleged
fugitive a jury trial, as Webster proposed, was the only possi-
ble way to effect the desired purpose.
If we look below the surface we shall find a strong im-
pelling motive of the Southern clamor for this harsh enact-
ment other than the natural desire to recover lost property.
Early in the session it took air that a part of the game of
the disunionists was to press a stringent fugitive slave law,
for which no Northern man could vote ; and when it was
defeated, the North would be charged with refusing to car-
ry out a stipulation of the Constitution.4 Douglas stated in
the Senate that while there was some ground for complaint
on the subject of surrender of fugitives from service, it had
been greatly exaggerated. The excitement and virulence
were not along the line bordering on the free and slave
States, but bet ween Vermont and South Carolina, New Hamp-
shire and Alabama, Connecticut and Louisiana.5 Clay gave
vent to his astonishment that Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia,
1 Remarks of Douglas in the Senate, Dec., 1851, Life, by Sheahan, p. 161.
3 The number of slaves escaped for the year ending June 1st, 1850,
from Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, and Missouri, was 540; from all other
States, 470. Compiled for New York Tribune from census returns. Trib-
une, Aug. 28th, 1851. 3 See p. 163.
* New York Tribune, Feb. 3d. 5 Speech, March 13th.
188 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
and South Carolina, States which very rarely lost a slave,
demanded a stricter law than Kentucky, which lost many.1
After the act was passed Senator Butler, of South Carolina,
said : " I would just as soon have the law of 1793 as the
present law, for any purpose, so far as regards the reclama-
tion of fugitive slaves ;" and another Southern ultra never
thought it would be productive of much good to his sec-
tion.2 Six months after the passage of the law, Seward ex-
presses the matured opinion "that political ends — merely
pglitical ends — and not real evils, resulting from the escape
of slaves, constituted the prevailing motives to the enact-
ment." 3 The admission of California was a bitter pill for
the Southern ultras, but they were forced to take it. The
Fugitive Slave law was a taunt and reproach to that part
of the North where the anti- slavery sentiment ruled su-
premely, and was deemed a partial compensation.
President Fillmore's notoriety of later years came for the
most part from his writing "Approved Sept. 18th, 1850,"
under the Fugitive Slave law. This infamous act has blight-
ed the reputation of every one who had any connection
with it, and he has suffered Avith the rest ; yet it appears
to me unjustly. It would have been a rash move on the
part of the President to unsettle by his veto a question
which had so long distracted the country, and which Con-
gress had apparently composed, unless he could do so on
constitutional grounds. Before signing the law, he request-
ed the opinion of his Attorney-General on its constitution-
ality : this Crittenden affirmed in positive terms.4 Webster,
his Secretary of State, and the ablest lawyer in the country,
likewise believed the law constitutional.5 It is, therefore,
1 Remarks in Senate, May 13th and 21st,
2 In Senate, Feb. 22d, 1851. " We have no faith in this Fugitive Slave
bill."— De Bow's Review, Nov., 1850.
3 Letter to a Massachusetts convention opposed to the Fugitive Slave
law, April 5th, 1851, Works, vol. iii. p. 446.
4 For this opinion, see Life of Crittenden, Coleman, vol. i. p. 377.
5 Private Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 402.
OH. II.] THE COMPROMISE 189
difficult to see how the President could do otherwise than
give his approval to the compromise which had the seal of
Congress.
A few considerations on the compromise as a whole may
be proper before proceeding to relate how the country re-
ceived the action of its representatives. It has sometimes
been set forth as an abject surrender to the South,1 but this
is an unwarranted judgment. If we might eliminate the
insulting provisions of the Fugitive Slave act, it would be
safe to say that it was an eminently fair settlement for the
North.2 The essential and permanent advantage gained in
the whole series of measures was the admission of California
as a free State. The territorial question has been already
considered.3 Giddings made an impassioned appeal against
the Texas Boundary bill. He said ; " Sir, the payment of
this ten million of dollars constituted the most objectionable
feature of the ' omnibus bill.' It is designed to raise Texas
scrip from fifteen cents upon the dollar to par value ; to
make every dollar of Texas scrip worth six and a half ; to
make many splendid fortunes in a short time ; to rob the
people, the laboring men of the nation, of this vast sum, and
place it in the hands of stock-jobbers and gamblers in Texas
scrip." 4 Yet it is undeniable that Texas had a claim on the
United States for a portion of her debt,5 and this bill caused
little dissatisfaction at the North. The only plan besides the
compromise which had Northern friends was that of Presi-
1 Jefferson Davis, in a speech made at Jackson, Miss., July 6th, 1859,
spoke of 1850 as "that dark period for Southern rights," and said,
"Though defeated on that occasion, Southern rights gained much by
the discussion."— New York Tribune, Aug. 31st, 1859.
8 " I think, regarding the thing as a compromise, Mr. Clay has done very
well."— Letter of Horace Mann, Feb. 14th, Life, p. 289.
3 See p. 149 et seq.
4 Speech in the House, Aug. 12th.
5 H. H. Bancroft, in New Mexico and Arizona, p. 457, states that about
one-half of the $10,000,000 was bonus, the intimation being that the other
half was a just payment. See also New York Tribune, June 18th.
190 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
dent Taylor, and this left the Texas boundar}^ question un-
settled. In case Texas should endeavor to assert her claim
by force of arms, General Taylor determined to resist with
Federal troops any invasion into New Mexico, and he doubt-
ed not that he would be successful. His military confidence
was, indeed, well founded ; but danger existed that in case
blood were shed, the South would take sides with Texas.
" The cause of Texas in such a conflict will be the cause
of the entire South," wrote Alexander H. Stephens,1 and
he expressed the almost unanimous feeling of the cotton
States.
Overt secession, immediate disunion, were not the dangers
' that Clay and Webster most feared. Both of them pro-
claimed where they would be found in any such event.
Clay said in the Senate : " I should deplore, as much as any
man living or dead, that arms should be raised against the
authority of the Union either by individuals or by States.
But ... if any one State, or the portion of the people of any
State, choose to place themselves in military array against
the government of the Union, I am for trying the strength
of the government. I am for ascertaining whether we have
got a government or not. . . . ISTor, sir, am I to be alarmed
or dissuaded from any such course by intimations of the
spilling of blood."2 The cabinet circular, written by Web-
ster in October, which he wanted sent to every official of
the United States, shows clearly that he was ready to resist
writh the Avhole power of the government any overt act on
the part of the South ; 3 and the following June he said to
a Virginian audience : " But one thing, gentlemen, be as-
sured of, the first step taken in the programme of seces-
1 To the editor of the National Intelligencer, July 4th.
2 Remarks in the Senate, Aug. 1st.
8 This paper was objected to by the cabinet, for political reasons, and
was not used. It was not printed till 1882. Lodge, p. 331 ; Webster Cen-
tennial volume, Oct. 12th, 1882, I am indebted for this latter reference
to Mr, Lodge,
CH. II.] CLAY AND WEBSTER 191
sion, which shall be an actual infringement of the Constitu-
tion or the laws, will be promptly met." '
But the key to the course of Webster and Clay is not
found in a desire to preserve merely an external Union.
They strove for a union of hearts as well as a union of
law. They hoped to see exist between the two sections,
as Webster said, " the sense of fraternal affection, patriotic
love, and mutual regard ;" 2 or, as Clay put it, " dissolution
of the Union . . . may not in form take place ; but next to
that is a dissolution of those fraternal and kindred ties that
bind us together as one free, Christian, and commercial peo-
ple. In my opinion, the body politic cannot be preserved un-
less this agitation, this distraction, this exasperation, Avhich
is going on between the two sections of the country, shall
cease."3 That their work came to naught was not their
fault. Clay did not think the present crisis more serious
than that of 1820.4 The Missouri Compromise had, in his
view, prevented disturbance thirty years, and from his point
of view the hope was reasonable that the present settlement
might endure as long.
When Congress met, it was admitted on all hands that
legislative action was necessary. Clay and Webster were
the foremost men in Congress ; the responsibility of carry-
ing a scheme devolved upon them. The plan which they
should adopt must be one that could win a majority of both
Houses, even if they had to sacrifice some personal predilec-
tions. It was apparent at the outset that while the Wilmot
proviso might obtain a majority of the House, it could not
carry the Senate, and it was therefore excluded. And while
an undoubted majority of both Houses favored the admis-
sion of California, it seemed impossible to bring that ques-
tion fairly before the House. Fifty members could block
legislation, and more than that number were ready to op-
1 Speech at Capon Springs, June, 1851. 2 7th-of-March speech,
8 Speech in Senate, May 31st. * Ibid,
192 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
pose by any means an attempt to force through the Cali-
fornia bill without a settlement of the other matters in
dispute ; and the leaders trumped up plausible reasons for
those who needed them. Unless I greatly deceive myself,
these two considerations, with what has been previously
urged, are sufficient to justify the compromise devised by
Clay and supported by Webster.1 No one can read care-
fully the debates in which these two men took part, at the
same time illuminating their public utterances by the light
of their private letters, without arriving at the conclusion
that the mainspring of their action was unselfish devotion
to what they believed the good of their country. But their
course brought censure on them both, for, in the opinion
I of their respective sections, Clay yielded too much to the
'' North, and Webster too much to the South. The senator
from Kentucky was abused by the South, the senator from
Massachusetts condemned by the North. Clay, being a con-
summate party leader, finally rallied to his support most of
the Southern Whigs ; Webster, lacking that art, and having
to deal with a greater independence of sentiment, never won
the thinkers and persuaders of the Northern Whig party to
his side.
In awarding this praise to the two great Unionists, does
it follow that the muse of history must condemn the anti-
/ slavery Whigs and Free-soilers who opposed the compro-
' mise ? By no means. It is true that had these men co-ope-
rated with the compromisers, the scheme as finally enacted
might have been more favorable to the North, and it is
certain that the Fugitive Slave law could have been modi-
fied or defeated. The parting of the ways was at the Wil-
mot proviso. The same . information which Webster and
Clay had in regard to the territories was open to Seward,
Chase, and their coadjutors. They must have known that
1 Clay is not responsible for the actual Fugitive Slave law. The bill
reported from the committee of thirteen was a milder measure. As I
have before stated, he was not in the Senate when the law was passed.
CH.II.] SEWARD AND CHASE 193
the probabilities were against the introduction of slavery
into New Mexico and Utah.1 But they felt that a stand
must be made on the principle of permitting no more slav-
ery in the national domain, and, while the Southern ultras
were dreaming and talking of the conquest of Mexico and
Cuba, they determined it should be known that there was
a band of men totally opposed to the conquest of more ter-
ritory, unless it were expressly understood that it should be
dedicated to freedom. Hale urged, also, that if the Wilmot
proviso were conceded, it would only satisfy the South for
a little while, when they would make new demands.2 It
was, moreover, obvious to an astute politician like Seward,
and probably to others, that a dissolution of political parties •
was imminent; that, to oppose the extension of slavery, |
the different anti-slavery elements must be fused into an
organized whole ; it might be called Whig or some other
name, but it would be based on the principle of the Wil- 1
mot proviso. All through Seward's speeches and letters
one may discover his confident belief, not only in the ul-
timate triumph of this principle, but in the success of the
party organization that should make it a platform. The
impartial years, therefore, have vindicated as right the
course of Seward, Chase, Hale in the Senate, and that of
Giddings, Mann, and Thaddeus Stevens in the House. Yet
even the opposers of the compromise must, in after-life,
have admitted to themselves that it was exceedingly fortu-
nate that- Clay's scheme was adopted. Looked on merely,
as a truce between the two sections, what a victory for the
North it turned out to be ! Not only was the North rela-
tively more powerful when the trial came, but the North-
west, which in 1850 was as closely connected commercially
with the South by the Mississippi River as it was with the
East by the lakes, had become joined to New York and
New England by iron bands that brought closer mercantile
1 For example, see letter of Horace Mann, Life, p. 294.
2 Remarks of Hale, Senate, May 28th.
I.— 13
194 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION f!850
ties and more intimate social and political intercourse. The
Northwest was in sentiment as well as in population a far
stronger tower in 1860 than it would have been ten years
earlier.1 The Northwestern States in 1850 were Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa ; their ten senators,
and all their representatives in Congress but four, were
Democrats. Considering that the slavery question in 1850
was not a party one, this is not a fact of the greatest mo-
ment, but from the subsequent political leaning of these
States it is one of interest.
The response of the North to the action of Congress was
on the whole favorable. The question had been a disquiet
ing one for two years, and the settlement caused a marked
feeling of relief. In the United States an accomplished
fact, a decision of the majority, has wonderful power ; and
many who objected to the compromise before its enactment
became its firm friends after it was engrossed in the statute-
book. Business interests and men had, in the main, favored
the proposed adjustment, and were well satisfied with the
conclusion of the matter, for trade loves political repose.
The iron manufacturers of Pennsylvania, the cotton and
woollen manufacturers of New England, had an additional
reason of satisfaction. They were especially glad to see
the slavery question disposed of, for now they thought Con-
gress could turn its attention to raising the duties fixed by
the tariff of 1846. They had no hope of accomplishing
anything at this session, for it had already continued longer
than any previous sitting ; but they thought the field was
clear for action when Congress should next assemble.
The people testified in the usual way their sanction of
the work of their representatives. Boston seemed espe-
cially enthusiastic. A national salute of one hundred guns
was fired on the Common " as a testimonial of joy on the
part of the citizens of Boston, of both political parties, at
1 This idea was suggested to me by James W. Bradbury, a senator
from Maine in 1850, and an influential supporter of the compromise.
CH.II.] NORTHERN SENTIMENT 195
the adoption of the late measures of Congress." ' Ten
thousand names signed the call for a Union meeting at
New York City.2 It was large and enthusiastic; it cor-
dially approved the compromise, declared the Fugitive Slave
law constitutional, promised to support the execution of it,
and deprecated the further agitation of slavery. At Phila-
delphia there was a meeting of six or seven thousand;3
the resolutions were similar to those of New York, but, in
addition, they demanded the repeal of the Pennsylvania
statute which conflicted with the execution of the Fugitive
Slave law. A Union meeting at Concord, N". H.,4 which
was addressed by Franklin Pierce, approved the compro-
mise, opposed the higher-law doctrine, and gave a mild
approbation to the measure for the recovery of runaway
negroes. An enthusiastic assemblage at Dayton, O.,6 urged
thereto by the eloquence of Clement L. Yallandigham,
declared that the settlement was the "best attainable,"
and that " the Union, the Constitution, and the laws must
and shall be maintained." A Union meeting in Cincinnati "
adopted similar resolutions, and condemned further agita- •»
tion of the slave question. Finally, Faneuil Hall resounded
with the eloquence of Rufus Choate and Benjamin K. Cur-
tis,7 the great lawyers of Boston. Their hearers resolved
that the adjustment " ought to be carried out in good faith,"
and that " every form of resistance to the execution of a
law, except legal process, is subversive and tends to anarchy."
1 Boston 'Advertiser, Sept. 21st.
* Oct. 30tb. New York Tribune; but this journal thinks that, " con-
sidering the threats held out of publishing the names of all traders
who refused to sign as men to be avoided by Southern purchasers
in our market, it is rather surprising that they were not able to sweep
clean the mercantile streets." Perkins, "Warren & Co. published a card
in the National Intelligencer of Dec. 17th denying that they were abolition
merchants, a report which had got into circulation in the South.
3 Nov. 21st, New York Tribune. * Nov. 20th, Boston Advertiser.
5 Oct. 26th, National Intelligencer. 6 Nov. 14th, ibid.
7 Nov. 26th, Boston Advertiser.
196 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
When it was known that the compromise would certain-
ly be adopted, the National Intelligencer remarked that it
could fill a double sheet of forty-eight columns with ex-
tracts full of joy and gratulation from the Southern and
Western papers alone at the success of the measure.1 The
States of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri were
thoroughly satisfied. The Georgia convention was held in
December. It was a representative body ; over 71,000, or
three-quarters of the voters of the State, had taken part in
the election of delegates.2 While it did not wholly approve
of the compromise, it would abide by it as a "permanent
adjustment of the sectional controversy." The fifth reso-
lution stated, " That it is the deliberate opinion of this con-
vention that upon the faithful execution of the Fugitive
Slave bill by the proper authorities depends the preserva-
tion of our much-loved Union."3 New Orleans held an
enthusiastic Union meeting. In fact, the people of the
South, outside of South Carolina and Mississippi, were gen-
erally satisfied with the result, and even in Mississippi a
strong Union feeling existed. An adjourned meeting of the
Nashville Convention was held in November; the attend-
ance was small, and the proceedings attracted little atten-
tion. The convention complained of the failure to extend
the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, of the admis-
sion of California, of the organization of the territories
without protection to property of the South, of the dismem-
berment of Texas, and of the abolition of the slave-trade
in the District of Columbia ; it asserted the right of seces-
sion,4 but these declarations had little responsive echo
beyond South Carolina and Mississippi.
A large number of active and influential people at the
North, however, totally condemned the Fugitive Slave law.
An immense Free-soil meeting at Lowell, Mass., a gathering
of all parties in Syracuse, N. Y., an indignation meeting at
1 Sept. 17th. s National Intelligencer, Dec. 14th.
3 Boston Atlas, Dec. 17th. * National Intelligencer, Nov. 26th.
CH.II.] NORTHERN SENTIMENT 197
Springfield, Mass., denounced the enactment.1 On October
14th several thousand people filled Faneuil Hall with a like
purpose ; they were presided over by Charles Francis Adams ;
a sympathetic letter from the veteran Josiah Quincy was
read, and the burning eloquence of Wendell Phillips and
Theodore Parker animated the people. They resolved that
the law was against the golden rule and God's own com-
mand ; that it was contradictory of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence and inconsistent with the Constitution.3 In the
latter part of the same month the common council of Chi-
cago declared that the act for the recovery of fugitive slaves
violated the Constitution of the United States and the laws
of God; that senators and representatives from the free
States who voted for the bill, or " basely sneaked away from
their seats and thereby evaded the question, . . . are fit only
to be ranked with the traitors Benedict Arnold and Judas
Iscariot." One of the resolutions requested citizens, officers,
and police of the city to abstain from all interference in the
capture of any fugitive. But while one meeting of citizens
sustained the resolutions of the city council, a larger one,
succeeding the first, though mainly composed of the same
people, was over-persuaded by the vigorous oratory of Sena-
tor Douglas, and resolved that all laws of Congress ought
to be faithfully executed. Douglas afterwards boasted in
the Senate that this speech of his was the first public one
" ever made in a free State in defence of the Fugitive law,
and the -Chicago meeting was the first public assemblage in
any free State that determined to support and sustain it." 3
Charles Sumner addressed a Faneuil Hall meeting early in
November. He did not believe that the Fugitive Slave law
would be executed in Massachusetts, but he continued : " I
counsel no violence. There is another power, stronger than
1 These meetings took place in October. Rise and Fall of the Slave
Power, vol. ii. pp. 305 and 306 ; Boston Advertiser, Oct. 2d.
3 Boston Atlas, Oct. 15th.
8 Life of Douglas, Sheahan, p. 162 et seq.
198 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
any individual arm, which I invoke ; I mean that irresistible
public opinion inspired by love of God and man, which, with-
out violence or noise, gently as the operations of nature,
makes and unmakes laws. Let this public opinion be felt
in its might, and the Fugitive Slave bill will become everv-
where among us a dead letter." '
A very potent influence on political sentiment now began
to be exerted on the anti-slavery side. Preachers in their
pulpits, in meetings, in conference, in synod, pronounced
against the Fugitive Slave act as being in conflict with the
law of God.3 The great majority of the Protestant clergy
of the North unquestionably sympathized with this senti-
ment. The working of this act was in one respect especially
iniquitous. Applied to fugitive slaves, no matter when they
had escaped, it was an ex post facto law : it thus brought un-
der its provisions negroes who had been living in peace and
quiet for many years at the North. There was no statute
of limitations for the escaped bondman. All over the North,
immediately on the passage of the act, these negroes took
alarm, and thousands fled to Canada, abandoning their homes
and forsaking situations which gave them a livelihood.3
There was so much excitement among the negro population
of Boston that the Faneuil Hall meeting before referred to
pledged their colored citizens their help, advised them to
stay, and to have no fear of being taken back to bondage.
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 308.
a Ibid., p. 310.
3 Life of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iii. p. 302,
CHAPTER III
FOR the sake of riveting the attention of the reader on the
compromise measures, certain events have been passed over
which, before leaving the year 1850, should receive mention.
The most important diplomatic achievement of the Taylor
administration was the negotiation of the Clayton -Bui wer
treaty. A ship-canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific was
dreamed of as early as 1826, and is referred to by Clay in
one of his diplomatic instructions. Should such a canal be
constructed, " the benefits of it," he wrote, " ought not to be
exclusively appropriated to any one nation, but should be
extended to all parts of the globe." Nine years later the
Senate and President Jackson assented to the same princi-
ple; and President Polk carried the idea into execution in
the treaty with New Granada, by which the United States
agreed to guarantee the neutrality of the Isthmus of Pana-
ma so that a canal or railroad might be constructed between
the two seas, and the Panama route be " open to all nations
on the same terms." l There were three passes from ocean
to ocean — the Panama, the Nicaragua, and the Telman tepee ;
and it was deemed practicable to build a railroad or canal
by any one of them.
When Clayton entered upon the duties of the State De-
partment, he found the Nicaragua route demanding imme-
diate attention. Two companies of capitalists — one British,
one American, the latter headed by Commodore Vanderbilt—
1 Message of President Polk in transmitting the treaty, Congressional
Globe, vol. xxvii, p, 253,
200 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION- [1850
were each endeavoring to get a grant from the government
of Nicaragua for the purpose of constructing a ship-canal,
the American company seeking the aid of their own govern-
ment. The commercial question was complicated by a dif-
ference between Nicaragua and the British government.
Long before our Kevolution, England had a settlement at
Balize, in the Bay of Honduras, and assumed a protectorate
over the Mosquito Indians who occupied a strip of the coast
along the Caribbean Sea. It was claimed by England that
the port of San Juan fell within the limits of this protec-
torate, but this was denied by Nicaragua. In January,
1848, two British ships of war entered the San Juan Kiver,
stormed the fort, and gained possession of the town.
At this time, owing to the efforts which were made by the
rival American and English companies, a jealous feeling ex-
isted on the part of both of " these great maritime powers,"
each being " desirous of obtaining some exclusive advantage
to itself in reference to the opening of this route of inter-
oceanic communication." ' It was absolutely necessary that
there should be an understanding between the United States
and Great Britain, and a treaty was concluded April 19th be-
tween Clayton and Henry Lytton Bulwer, the British Min-
ister.
The purpose of the convention was stated to be " for fa-
cilitating and protecting the construction of a ship-canal be-
tween the Atlantic and Pacific oceans" by the Nicaragua
route. Both governments pledged themselves never to ob-
tain exclusive control over said canal ; never to erect fortifi-
cations commanding the same ; and not to colonize, or as-
sume or exercise any dominion over, Nicaragua, Costa Kica,
the Mosquito coast or any part of Central America. They
agree to protect the company that shall undertake the work,
and they will exert the influence which they possess with
the Central American governments to facilitate its construc-
tion. The United States and Great Britain will guarantee
1 The words of Edward Everett, Senate, March 21st, 1853.
CH.HI.] THE CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY 201
the neutrality and security of the canal when completed,
so long as no unfair discriminations are made or unreason-
able tolls exacted ; and they invite all friendly States to
enter into similar stipulations with them, as the great de-
sign of this convention was the construction and mainte-
nance of a ship-communication between the two oceans
" for the benefit of mankind on equal terms to all." By the
eighth article of the treaty, the governments of the United
States and Great Britain expressed the desire not only " to
accomplish a particular object, but to establish a general
principle, and they agree to extend their protection by treaty
stipulations " to a canal or railway that may be constructed
by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama.
Before the ratifications of the treaty were exchanged, Bul-
wer notified Clayton that he was instructed to insist on an
explanatory declaration that the stipulations as to the neu-
tral territory did not apply to Balize, or, as it was more fre-
quently called, British Honduras. Before replying, the Sec-
retary of State asked William R. King, who was chairman
of the Committee on Foreign Relations, what was the un-
derstanding of the Senate when the treaty was confirmed.
King wrote that " the Senate perfectly understood that the
treaty did not include British Honduras." 1 Clayton then an-
swered Bulwer to that effect.
The treaty was ratified in the Senate by a vote of 42 to
10. In the affirmative may be found the names of Webster,
Clay, Seward, and Cass, each of whom, at some portion of
his life, occupied the State department, and three of whom
are renowned for their diplomatic achievements. Seward
and Edward Everett, another Secretary of State and ac-
complished diplomat, afterwards defended the treaty in the
Senate.2
The treaty was favorable to unrestricted commercial inter-
course, and was in line with our traditional policy. Yet it
has given rise to many disputed questions, for the United
Seward's Works, vol. i. p. 385. • Jan. 10th and March 21st, 1853,
202 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
States and England drew a different meaning from several
of the articles. Less than three years after its conclusion
its provisions were severely criticised in the Senate; and
under the Pierce and Buchanan administrations it became a
subject of controversy with England. Although, after this,
the question slept for a long time, it was revived by the dis-
cussion which grew out of the undertaking of the French
company to construct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama,
and the policy of our government in making such a treaty
was then much questioned.1
The Galphin affair has been referred to,2 and it is now
time to give an account of it. The Galphin claim dated back
to a time before the Revolutionary War, and was originally
on the colony and State of Georgia. George W. Crawford,
the Secretary of War under President Taylor, became in 1835
attorney for the claimants, with a contingent fee of one-half
of the claim, and he urged it before the Georgia legislature
without success. It afterwards appears as a claim on the
United States. On what ground it was turned over to the
general government is irrelevant to my narrative; but in
the hot August days towards the end of the Congressional
session of 1848 it was carried through the House during an
1 Treaties and Conventions, Haswell, p. 440; International Law Digest,
Wharton, §150 f. See the debate in the Senate, Jan. and March, 1853,
especially the speeches of Seward, Clayton, and Everett, defending the
treaty; the speech of Douglas, criticising it; and the remarks of Cass,
censuring Clayton severely for his " unprecedented error " in coming to
an understanding with Bulwer, which changed the construction and
"vital point" of the treaty without the knowledge of the Senate. Con*
gressional Globe, vols, xxvi. and xxvii.; Se ward's Works, vol. i. p. 376. See
also article " British Honduras," Encyclopaedia Britannica. For the am-
biguity in the construction of the treaty, see Curtis's Life of Webster, vol.
ii., and Life of Buchanan, by same author; see Buchanan's message, Dec.
3d, 1860. Appendix to Congressional 6rfofo, p. 4; also article "Treaties,"
in Lalor's Cyclopaedia of Political Science, by J. Bancroft Davis ; and
diplomatic correspondence between Secretary Elaine and Lord Granville
in 1881, and between Secretary Frelinghuysen and Granville in 1882 and
1883, 2 See p. 176.
CH.III.] THE GALPHIN CLAIM 203
exhausting night sitting, unnoticed and without a word of
discussion. This order, which became a law, directed the
Secretary of the Treasury " to examine and adjust the claim
of the late George Galphin, . . . and to pay the amount which
may be found due." In the closing days of the Polk admin-
istration, Crawford received $43,518.97, this being the prin-
cipal of the claim ; but no interest was allowed, although the
demand for it had been made. After Crawford became Sec-
retary of War, his client requested him to prosecute the
claim for interest. Crawford's name now disappears from
the record as attorney, but the affair was pressed with such
vigor that the demand for back interest was submitted by
the Secretary of the Treasury to the comptroller, a man of
large business experience and sound judgment, by whom it
was disallowed. The question was then put to the Attor-
ney-General whether the law of 1848 did not require the
payment of interest. The answer w^as yes ; whereupon, al-
though Congress was in session, the Secretary of the Treas-
ury paid the claimant interest from May 2d, 1775, amounting
to $191,352.89, of which the attorney of record received
$3000, and George "W. Crawford one half the remainder, or
$94,176.44.
"When this fact became known there was severe comment
on it by the press, in which the New York Tribune, a Whig
and administration journal, joined.1 This prompted Craw-
ford to demand an investigation from the House, and a com-
mittee-was appointed, who reported that the payment of in-
terest was not "in conformity with law and precedent."
From the evidence it appeared that Crawford had made a par-
tial statement of the matter to the President, who saw noth-
1 u Thoughtlessness has brought the administration into a strait from
which they cannot escape with honor and safety without the resignation
of at least the Secretary of War and the Attorney-General, if not also of
the Secretary of the Treasury; $192,000 of interest allowed contrary to
settled custom, and nearly half of it going into the hands of the Secretary
of War, makes a startling case !" — Seward to Weed, April 1st, 1850, Life
of Se ward, vol. ii. p. 130,
204 TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
ing inconsistent between his cabinet position and his share
in the claim. Crawford testified that he had never told the
Secretary of the Treasury or the Attorney-General of his
connection with the business, but that he had urged them to
make a prompt disposition of the case. Meredith and John-
son l denied that they had any knowledge of Crawford's
interest, which demonstrates that their examination of the
papers on file was cursory, since these plainly showed that
he was acting in the affair. Even from such a brief relation,
it will be seen that this was an administration scandal of no
mean proportions. It would have attracted much greater
attention had the slavery question not so absorbed Congress,
but, nevertheless, the relation of the cabinet ministers to the
affair was a subject of severe animadversion in the House.
On the day of General Taylor's death this body was con-
sidering a resolution which disapproved of and dissented
from the opinion of the Attorney-General and the action of
the Secretary of the Treasury, reflected severely on the re-
lation of the Secretary of War to the matter as being an
improper and dangerous precedent, and implied a censure
of the President for the opinion he had given Crawford ;
but during the discussion the House received the news that
the condition of the President was so critical that he could
not survive an hour, and it therefore adjourned. After his
death and the appointment of a new cabinet, the subject
ceased to attract attention. The affair, however, was the
greatest trouble General Taylor had during his short term
of office. It was charged in the House that Crawford had
plundered the public treasury, and that the President and
other members of the cabinet had "connived at and sanc-
tioned the enormous allowance." General Taylor, in money
affairs, was strictly honest;2 in fact, he was very sensitive
on that point, and it is not to be wondered at that his death-
bed was disturbed by reflections on the indiscretion or dis-
1 The Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney-General.
2 Scott's Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 390.
CH.IIL] THE HULSEMANN LETTER 205
honesty of his chosen advisers.1 General Taylor did not
understand the matter fully : he either supposed that the
claim for interest would come before Congress, or he was
too confiding to suspect that Crawford suppressed a part of
the story to obtain his approval. But before his death he
comprehended the situation, and was on the point of mat
ing those changes in his cabinet which the affair impera-
tively demanded.3
The diplomatic history of this year would not be com-
plete without a notice of the Hiilsemann letter, the most
striking of any of Webster's state papers while he was con-
nected with the Fillmore administration. During the prog-
ress of the Hungarian revolution, under the leading of Louis
Kossuth, President Taylor sent a special agent to Europe to
watch and report upon the progress of events, with a possi-
ble vie" w to the recognition of Hungary. This, coming to the
knowledge of the Austrian government, caused offence, and
there ensued between the two countries a correspondence
which was still pending when Webster became Secretary
of State. In September, Hiilsemann, the Austrian charge*
d'affaires sent a haughty and dictatorial letter. The re-
ception of such a missive proved a lucky chance for an
American Secretary of State gifted with rare command of
language ; it paved the way for a declaration of sentiments
that have ever a zealous response from the American heart.
Webster's reasoning was a complete refutation of the posi-
tion Hiilsemann had taken. He earnestly defended our right
to view with great interest "the extraordinary events"
which have occurred not only in Austria, but "in many
other parts of Europe since February, 1848." But the Sec-
retary goes further, " and freely admits that in proportion
as these extraordinary events appeared to have their origin
1 See p. 176.
2 Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 589. I have made up this ac-
count from the three reports of the House committee, and the debate on
them in the House.
206 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1850
in those great ideas of responsible and popular governments
on which the American constitutions themselves are wholly
founded, they could not but command the warm sympathy
of the people of this country. . . . The power of this repub-
lic, at the present moment, is spread over a region, one of
the richest and most fertile on the globe, and of an extent
in comparison with which the possessions of the House of
Hapsburg are but as a patch on the earth's surface." Then
follow well-chosen words depicting our present and increas-
ing population, our navigation and commerce, our protec-
tion to life, liberty, property, and personal rights. " Never-
theless, the United States have abstained, at all times, from
acts of interference with the political changes of Europe.
They cannot, however, fail to cherish always a lively inter-
est in the fortunes of nations struggling for institutions like
their own." The style, while not of the "spread-eagle"
character, approaches it as closely as dignity and good taste
would allow. Webster himself thought the letter " boastful
and rough," but one of his excuses was that he wished to
"touch the national pride and make a man feel sheepish
and look silly who should speak of disunion." ' The letter
was received with great enthusiasm in the Senate, the sen-
timents being cordially endorsed by both parties; and al-
though hardly more than a stump-speech under diplomatic
guise, it received commendation among liberal circles in
England.2
The President, in his message to Congress on their re-
assembling in December, praised highly the compromise. It
was, however, true that the beneficent purpose of this series
of measures had not yet been wholly realized. " It would be
strange," he said, " if they had been received with immedi-
ate approbation by people and States prejudiced and heated
by the exciting controversies of their representatives. I be-
lieve those measures to have been required by the circum-
stances and condition of the country. . . . They were adopted
Curtis, vol. ii. p. 537. 2 Westminster Review, Jan., 1853.
CH. III.] THE FINALITY OF THE COMPROMISE 207
in the spirit of conciliation and for the purpose of concil-
iation. I believe that a great majority of our fellow-citi-
zens sympathize in that spirit and purpose, and in the main
approve, and are prepared, in all respects, to sustain, these
enactments."
In January, 1851, a pledge was signed by several mem-
bers of Congress which declared that they would not sup-
port for any office whatever any man " who is not known
to be opposed to the disturbance of the settlement, and to
the renewal, in any form, of agitation upon the subject of
slavery." This had ten signatures from the free States
and thirty-four from the slave States; among the latter were
the names of Clay, Howell Cobb, the speaker of the House,
Alexander IT. Stephens, and Robert Toombs. The Presi-
dent in his message made a fair and intelligent statement
of the public sentiment on the compromise prevailing at
the North in the early months of the new year. The
Northern Democrats, with the exception of a diminishing
number of Free-soilers, unreservedly accepted the adjust-
ment, and so did the Webster and Fillmore Whigs. The
Seward Whigs took the position that these measures were
the law of the land ; that whatever in them was irrepeala-
ble no one would be mad enough " to attempt to repeal ;" J
and that the Fugitive Slave law demanded obedience, but
that it ought to be abrogated. The abolitionists, who may
be denned as those who determined to agitate the question
not only until the extension of slavery should be restricted,
but until it was abolished in the States, did not accept the
compromise, and sympathized with resistance to the Fugitive
Slave law. The Concord philosopher, who was esteemed a
moderate abolitionist, plainly expressed the sentiment of
these people: "The act of Congress of September 18th,
1850, is a law which every one of you will break on the
earliest occasion — a law which no man can obey, or abet the
obeying, without loss of self-respect and forfeiture of the
Letter of Seward, Works, vol. iii. p. 448.
208 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
name of a gentleman." ' Nothing better illustrates the dif-
ference between the position of the anti-slavery statesman
and the agitator than certain corrections made by Sumner
in an article on slavery written by Theodore Parker for the
use of a Massachusetts legislative committee. The additions
of Sumner are the words in brackets. " We regard the
Fugitive Slave law as morally [not legally, but morally] in-
valid and void; and [though binding on the conduct] no
more binding on the conscience of any man than a law
would be which should command the people to enslave all
the tall men or all the short men, and deliver them up on
claims to be held in bondage forever." 2
The Fugitive Slave law did not work as smoothly as its
supporters wished ; and while Clay maintained that it had
been executed in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, in New York
City, and, in fact, everywhere except in Boston, other sena-
tors from the South declared that its operation left much to
be desired. Not only had two runaway negroes been spirited
away from Boston to England, but Mason, of Virginia, told
of what happened to a neighbor who had pursued two slaves
to Harrisburg, Pa., where he had had them arrested. The
owner finally recovered his property. But it was only after
a tedious delay of two months, during which time he and his
1 Life of Emerson, Cabot, p. 578, Emerson's address at Concord, May
3d, 1851. " Cette loi [the Fugitive Slave law] est en ce moment la pierre
d'achoppement centre laquelle le compromis est toujours pres de se
briser." — Promenade en Amgrique, Ampere, tome i. p. 408.
2 The book referred to, containing this essay, was Parker's own, and is
in the Boston Public Library. In Parker's own pencil handwriting on
the margin I find : " these in [ ] added by Sumner." The article was
written March, 1851. I take this opportunity of saying that in the prep-
aration of this work I have used freely the Boston Public Library, the
Athenaeum, the College Library of Harvard University, the Astor Library
of New York, the Congressional Library of Washington, the Case and
Public Libraries and the library of the Historical Society of Cleveland.
I desire to recognize the intelligent aid of Mr. Brett, the librarian of the
Public Library of Cleveland, and to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr.
Frederic Bancroft, the librarian of the Department of State.
Cu.ni.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 209
companions were put in prison and subjected to a trial for
riot. The expenses of the Virginian in this affair were four-
teen hundred and fifty dollars, and when he carried his
slaves home he sold the two for fifteen hundred dollars.1
Only after litigation of ten days or a fortnight had a fugi-
tive been reclaimed in New York City ; the slave was car-
ried home and sold, but the proceeds of the sale barely met
the expenses, although Mason had heard it stated that a
committee of citizens in New York had actually contributed
five hundred dollars to the owner.2 In Ohio, the Senator
had heard of one case where the fugitive was easily recov-
ered, but that Avas a woman who confessed to being a slave,
and of course had been sent back. In Detroit, Mich., a
runaway negro was reclaimed, but a mob had gathered, and
only after the military were called out had the undertaking
been successful. Although, according to trustworthy esti-
mates, there were fifteen thousand fugitives in the free
States, another Southern senator complained that only four
or five had been recaptured under the law of September,
1.850.
This interesting discussion in the Senate was prompted by
a noteworthy affair which had just taken place in Boston.
On the 15th of February a negro by the name of Sha-
drach, employed in the Cornhill coffee-house, was arrested
on the charge of having escaped the previous May. On
being brought before the commissioner, George Ticknor
Curtis, he, finding the fugitive unprepared with, counsel, ad-
journed the proceedings to the next day. Under the law of
Massachusetts her jails could not be used for the imprison-
ment of fugitive slaves, and as Shadrach had been remanded
1 Clay mentioned to Mason that the comptroller had just passed an
account in which twelve hundred or thirteen hundred dollars were al-
lowed to the marshal for carrying back the fugitive slaves in that case.
2 Senator Dickinson, of New York, assured Mason that the expenses of
the claimant in this case were entirely paid by the citizens of New York
City.
I— 14
210 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
to the custody of the deputy marshal, he was detained in
the United States court-room in the court-house, situated
in the heart of the city. A mob of colored men broke into
the room, took off the alleged fugitive, who soon got to
Canada, beyond the clutches of the United States laAv, and,
owing to the time-honored decision of Lord Mansfield, be-
came a freeman. When Theodore Parker heard of the
arrest he went immediately down to Court Square, intend-
ing to help in the rescue, but the act had been accomplished
before he arrived. He writes in his journal : " This Shadrach
is delivered out of his burning, fiery furnace without the
smell of fire on his garments. ... I think it is the most
noble deed done in Boston since the "destruction of the tea
in 1Y73." This rescue created a great deal of excitement,
and nowhere more than among the law-givers at Washing-
ton. The President immediately issued a proclamation
I which appealed in the usual terms to all good citizens, com-
' manding all civil and military officers to assist in putting
down any combinations whose purpose was to resist the law,
and to aid in the arrest of those who had set the law at de-
fiance. No practical result came from the energetic action
of the administration. Five of the rescuers were indicted
and tried, but, as the jury could not agree, they were not con-
victed. The incident demonstrated that in Massachusetts the
Fugitive Slave law would only be enforced with difficulty.
Undoubtedly the vast majority of the citizens of Boston had
a passive, if not an active, sympathy with the officers of the
government ; but every one well understood that back of
this negro mob which rescued Shadrach was a vigilance
committee composed of men of influence and good position.
This committee had an efficient organization, and aimed to
prevent the arrest of fugitives, or, when they were seized, to
give them legal aid and interpose every lawful obstacle to
their rendition.1
1 Tins account I have made up from the debate in the Senate on the
subject in Feb., 1851 ; from the Life of Webster, by Curtis ; Rise and Fall of
CH.IH.] THE ARREST OF THOMAS SIMS 211
Yet law in Boston was clothed with majesty, and the
majority of the citizens felt that even an unjust law were
better executed than resisted. The common council, with
praiseworthy motives, i directed that the mayor and city
marshal should use the police force most energetically in
support of the law and maintenance of the public peace. On
the 3d of April the city police, on a warrant issued by com-
missioner Curtis, arrested Thomas Sims, a slave who had
escaped from a Georgia owner, and confined him in the
court-house. Fearing an attempt at rescue, a strong guard
was set and the court-house surrounded with heavy chains.
The fugitive had good volunteer counsel, but the case was
plain. He was adjudged to the claimant, and the Shadrach
affair had so excited apprehension that he was taken from
his place of imprisonment at five o'clock in the morning,
escorted by three hundred police disposed in hollow square
around him. The militia were under arms in Faneuil Hall,
but they were not needed, as the police met not the slightest
resistance. The negro was safely put on board a vessel which
took him to Savannah.1
Since the Revolutionary War not a slave had been sent j
back from Boston by legal process,2 and this rendition caused
intense feeling. On the day of the arrest a meeting was
held on the Common, where Wendell Phillips spoke ; in the
evening Theodore Parker addressed a gathering at Tremont
Temple. Five da}rs later, a convention met at the latter
place, presided over by Horace Mann, who alluded in scath-
ing words to the fact that Faneuil Hall had been denied
the Slave Power, Wilson; and Life and. Correspondence of Theodore
Parker, Weiss. Parker and Phillips were members of this vigilance com-
mittee. For other members, and an account of it, see Life of Parker,
Frothingham, p. 401.
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. ; Life of Theodore Parker,
vol. ii. The placard given on following page, which was posted at all
corners by the vigilance committee, is an illustration of their manner of
work. See Life of Parker, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 104.
2 Life of Parker, vol. ii. p. 107.
212 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
them. " But then there is a melancholy propriety in this,"
he said; "when the court-house is in chains, Faneuil Hall
may well be dumb." Among the speakers were Henry Wil-
son and Thomas "W. Higginson, and William Lloyd Garrison
addressed another assemblage. The burden of all these
meetings was a protest against the Fugitive Slave law and
severe denunciation of all who were concerned in the arrest
PROCLAMATION!!
TO ALL
THE GOOD PEOPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS!
Be it known that there are now
THREE SLAVE-HUNTERS OR KIDNAPPERS
IN BOSTON
Looking for their prey. One of them is called
"DAVIS."
He is an unusually ill-looking fellow, about five feet eight inches high,
wide-shouldered. He has a big mouth, black hair, and a good deal
of dirty bushy hair on the lower part of his face. He has a Roman
nose ; one of his eyes has been knocked out. He looks like a Pirate,
and knows how to be a Stealer of Men.
The next is called
EDWARD BARRETT.
He is about five feet six inches high, thin and lank, is apparently
about thirty years old. His nose turns up a little. He has a long
mouth, long thin ears, and dark eyes. His hair is dark, and he has a
bunch of fur on his chin. He had on a blue frock-coat, with a velvet
collar, mixed pants, and a figured vest. He wears his shirt collar
turned clown, and has a black string — not of hemp — about his neck.
The third ruffian is named
ROBERT M. BACON, alias JOHN D. BACON.
He is about fifty years old, five feet and a half high. He has a red,
intemperate-looking face, and a retreating forehead. His hair is dark,
and a little gray. He wears a black coat, mixed pants, and a purplish
vest. He looks sleepy, and yet malicious.
Given at Boston, this 4th day of April, in the year of our Lord, 1851,
and of the Independence of the United States the fifty-fourth.
God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!
CH.HI.] ALLEN'S ATTACK ON WEBSTER 213
and surrender of Sims. On the day that the fugitive was
delivered over to his claimant funeral bells were tolled.
But Faneuil Hall was not closed only against the aboli-
tionists. In this same month of April, the board of alder-
men refused the use of it to many Whig and Democratic
citizens of Boston who wished to unite in a public reception
to Webster, then at Marshfield. The excuse made was that
since the hall had been denied to Wendell Phillips and his
associates, it could not consistently be opened for a meeting
on the other side which purposed approval of the compro-
mise measures ; but every one understood the action to be a
reflection on Webster's course for the past year. This awoke
a storm of indignation that was not lessened by the dignified
and manly way in which the Secretary of State met the oc-
casion. Afterwards the city council offered him the use of
Faneuil Hall, but this he declined in a courteous manner, add-
ing that he should not " enter Faneuil Hall till its gates shall
be thrown open, wide open, ' not with impetuous recoil, grat-
ing harsh thunder,' but with * harmonious sound on golden
hinges moving,' to let in freely and to overflowing ... all
men of all parties who are true to the Union as well as to
liberty."
Webster's path for the last year had indeed been among
the thorns of the world. In February a brutal attack
was made in the House upon his private character by Al-
len, a Free-soil member from the Worcester, Mass., dis-
trict. While the slander was at bottom prompted by par-
tisan motives, yet the bit of truth in it stung Webster to the
very depth of his honest soul. The point under discussion
was the appropriation of the money for the last instalment
of the indemnity due Mexico under the treaty of 1848,
amounting to more than $3,000,000, due in May, 1852. The
Secretary of State had contracted with a syndicate of bank-
ers of Boston, New York, and Washington for the payment
and transfer of this, as well as the previous instalment, to
Mexico. These bankers paid three and one half per cent,
premium for the privilege. It was shown during the discus-
214 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
sion that four per cent, premium might have been obtained
from the Rothschilds, so that the government had not done
as well by about $30,000 as it might have done. This gave
Allen an opportunity to object decidedly to the Secretary of
State having anything to do with the pecuniary concerns of
the government, because he held his place " less as a servant
and stipendiary of the government than a servant and sti-
pendiary of bankers and brokers." Allen said there was
undoubted authority for the statement that when the Presi-
dent offered Webster the position of Secretary of State he
wrote to Boston to know what would be done for him in a
financial way. An arrangement had then been made with
the bankers and brokers of Boston and New York by which
$25,000 should be raised for him in each city as a compensa-
tion for taking the position in the cabinet ; that the amount
was collected in New York, but that it fell somewhat short
in Boston, for " gentlemen in Boston had bled so freely on
former occasions of a similar character that it was difficult
to raise the full amount." In fact, Allen continued, our Sec-
retary of State was the pensioner of Wall Street and State
Street, and this lucrative contract with these bankers gave
them a chance to recoup themselves at the government's
cost. This charge was baseless, and it was felt on all sides
of the House to be a shameful one. Although neither Web-
ster himself nor his friends interposed any obstacle to a full
inquiry into the matter, the House, by the overwhelming
vote of 119 to 35, refused to consider a resolution providing
for the appointment of a committee of investigation, and
passed the appropriation, which, however, for want of time,
failed in the Senate. At the next session all amendments
putting any limitations on the administration as to the man-
ner of payment were rejected, and the appropriation pure
and simple passed both Houses. This completely vindicated
Webster. The bit of truth in the scandal was the fact that,
some weeks after he had taken the position of Secretary of
State, a gift of money for the extraordinary expenses of his
table was presented him by some men from Boston; but
CH.IH.] REDUCTION OF RATES OF POSTAGE 215
most of those who joined in the subscription were gentlemen
retired from affairs, only two of them being bankers, and
Webster did not know the name or position of any one of
the subscribers. Allen's charge, however, was so positive
and direct that it lived in brass, while the denial was written
in water.1 Any one who understood Webster knew 'that he
was incapable of making a sordid bargain with his moneyed
friends for accepting a cabinet position. In fact, lack of
thrift and no knack at bargaining brought him into this and
other trouble. This charge has here been baldly stated, for
one who takes up the cudgels for Webster need not suppress
any fact. Unquestionably many people will consider it a
surprising naivete of judgment to assert that Webster was
honest at heart. But if we can only view his failing with
the same charity which we every day employ in judging our
acquaintances and our friends, we shall have a complete key
to his conduct in affairs. Do we not all know men — and
men in the noblest professions — who, morally sound, yet
lack thrift, and who are continually in trouble on this ac-
count? But we make excuses for them; knowing them
through and through, we do not say that their hearts are
rotten. If we judge Webster with like charity, we shall ar-
rive at a similar conclusion.
In the history of the decade between 1850 and 1860 the
overpowering question is slavery, and to that must our
attention chiefly be directed. Yet it is a gratification for
the historian to record that though the public mind was
so fully engrossed with this one idea, legislators still found
time to enact measures that were in the line of true progress.
There has been so much descant on the commercial, social,
and intellectual benefits of cheap postage that in civilized
1 For the charge of Allen, see Congressional Globe, vol. xxiii. pp. 686,
696, vol. xxiv. p. 371 et seq. For the defence, see Ashmun's remarks, vol.
xxiii. pp. 687, 697 ; Davis's remarks, vol. xxiv. p. 373 ; Frauklih Haven's
letter to Boston Transcript of May 17th, 1851, ibid., p. 375; Curtis, voL
ii. p. 492 et seq. The salary of the Secretary of State was then $6000.
216 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
countries it has become a governmental axiom that the in-
crease in the revenue of the post-office department and the
decline of rates of postage is a true mark of growth in civ-
ilization. The Congress which adjourned March 3d, 1851,
took a step in this direction. The rates of postage at the
organization of the post-office department were, for a single
letter (that is, a single piece of paper), from eight to twenty-
five cents, according to the distance, with a minimum distance
of forty miles and a maximum of five hundred. These charges
had been twice reduced, and on the opening of this session of
Congress the postage for a letter not exceeding one-half ounce
in weight was five cents under three hundred miles ; over three
hundred miles, ten cents ; and to the Pacific territories, via
Panama, forty cents. The revenues of the Postmaster-Gen-
eral's department exceeding the expenditures, he therefore
recommended a reduction in the inland letter postage to
three cents. The President concurred in this recommenda-
tion, and the subject was soon taken up by Congress. That
body appreciated that the rapid extension of steam trans-
portation for the past two years, with the abundant prom-
ise of further progress in that direction, was certain to result
in a great reduction in the cost of the service. It was stated
during the discussion that, while ten cents was the postage
on a letter from Detroit to Buffalo, a barrel of flour was
carried between the two cities on the same conveyance for
the same money.1 The bill which passed Congress made
the rate for a prepaid letter, not weighing over half an ounce,
three cents for under three thousand miles ; six cents for over
that distance.
The most exciting event of the summer was the expedi-
tion to Cuba under the lead of Lopez. This adventurer had
engaged in two unsuccessful attempts to give freedom to
his adopted country, and with dauntless spirit was ready
to head another enterprise. He fell in with a clique of
1 That is, by steamboat. There was then no railroad between Buffalo
and Detroit.
CH. III.] THE LOPEZ EXPEDITION 217
speculators at New Orleans, who cherished wild dreams of
magnificence and wealth which the expected easy conquest
of Cuba would realize. These men were willing to risk
their money, though not their lives, and in Lopez they found
a ready instrument. He, in fact, was only too glad to meet
persons who would back with money his visionary schemes.
Cuban bonds were issued, signed by General Narciso Lopez,
" chief of the patriotic junta for the promotion of the po-
litical interests of Cuba, and the contemplated head of the
provisional government, and commander-in-chief of the revo-
lutionary movement about to be now undertaken through
my agency and permissive authority for the liberation of
Cuba." Everybody knew that the payment of the bonds
was based on the success of the revolution, but those who
invested large amounts of money in them at from three to
twenty cents on the dollar thought the speculation one of
great promise. Lopez and the schemers deluded them-
selves ; it was easy for them to dupe others. The ways
and means being provided, a man of ability and influence
was desired as leader of the expedition. Lopez offered the
command to Jefferson Davis, then a United States senator,
who, deeming it inconsistent with his duty, declined it, at
the same time recommending Robert E. Lee. Lee was then
invited to take the leadership of the expedition, but, be-
lieving that his position in the United States army should
prevent him from giving heed to such a proposal, he re-
fused it.1 General Lopez was therefore left in sole com-
mand ; but it was not difficult to get more followers than
he could use, for the undertaking was called an easy one,
and unusual inducements Avere held out to those who would
enlist. It was said that not only were the Creoles anxious
to rebel against Spain, but they had decided upon that step,
and a well-planned revolution was already in progress. The
Spanish army had been tampered with and would frater-
: Memoir of Jefferson Davis, by his Wife, vol. i. p. 412 ; Life of Robert
E. Lee, Long, p. 72.
218 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
nize with the invaders ; all the officers of the Spanish navy
in the West Indies were favorable to the patriotic cause.
The landing of General Lopez and his followers would be
the signal for a general uprising ; an easy victory was as-
sured ; it would only remain for the Congress to dictate
terms. Those who were so fortunate as to share in this
expedition as officers would receive confiscated sugar-plan-
tations, well furnished with slaves ; even the common sol-
diers were each to get the sum of five thousand dollars.
Sympathy for the acquisition of Cuba was very strong at
the South, and the promoters played upon this feeling. It
was thought by the least sanguine of them that if a fairly
successful demonstration were made, public sentiment would
be so aroused that the United States would lend their as-
sistance, or at any rate would not interfere with additional
expeditions ; for the object of the patriots was to establish
a republic, or annex Cuba to our country on favorable terms.
The Secretary of State, however, appreciated fully what
honest neutrality meant ; and, as he had stated in the Sen-
ate the year previous,1 Spain had well-grounded reasons to
count on our friendship, for we had at different times given
her assurances that if she would abstain from the voluntary
surrender of Cuba to a European power, " she might be
assured of the good offices and the good-will of the United
States ... to maintain her in possession of the island." Nor
did the President shrink from his duty. The invaders first
purposed to start from Savannah, but this was prevented
by the energetic action of the government. That the ship-
load of adventurers finally got away from New Orleans
was not due to negligence at Washington, but to the dere-
liction in duty of the collector of the port from whence they
set sail. On the early morning of August 3d, the steamer
Pampero left New Orleans, with Lopez and nearly five
hundred men ; they were mostly ill-informed youths, and
the majority of them were American citizens. When the
May 21st, 1850.
CH. III.] THE LOPEZ EXPEDITION 219
steamer arrived off the coast of Cuba, she was badly piloted
and ran aground, so that the invaders were forced to land
at a place not of their choosing. They went ashore on the
night between the llth and 12th of August, at a spot
about sixty miles from Havana. The force was divided,
the main body proceeding into the interior under Lopez,
while two hundred men, commanded by Colonel Crittenden,
remained to guard the stores until transportation could be
obtained. On the 13th, when marching to join Lopez,
Crittenden was attacked by a superior force. The officers
displayed bravery, but the men were dispirited from the
first hours on shore. Instead of finding the whole island
in revolution and fourteen towns in the hands of patriots,
as they had been led to believe, they saw no evidence what-
ever of an uprising ; instead of being received as friends,
they found themselves in a hostile country. To fight dis-
ciplined troops with the odds against them was peril enough,
yet, to add to the misery of the invaders, they had no artil-
lery and no rifles; their arms were' condemned muskets.
Such a contest could only be of short duration. Colonel
Crittenden and his men soon retreated to the place of dis-
embarkation ; about fifty of them took boat and were mak-
ing for the United States, when they were captured by a
Spanish ship of war which was cruising on the coast. They
were carried to Havana, tried and sentenced by a military
court, and were publicly shot. The men under Lopez were
attacked at the same time as was Crittenden's detachment ;
many of them were killed or wounded, and they were forced
to retreat ; they went into the interior and sought refuge
in the mountains, but they were pursued by the troops and,
after two skirmishes, were dispersed on the 24th of Au-
gust. Those who had not been killed, or who had not
died of hunger or fatigue, were made prisoners. Some
days afterwards Lopez was taken and garroted in the pub-
lic square opposite the prison in Havana. Some of his fol-
lowers were pardoned, and the rest, one hundred and sixty-
two in number, most of them American citizens, were sent
220 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
to Spain, where it was understood they would be put to
work in the mines.1
In the meantime a crowd of adventurers had come to New
Orleans and were anxiously awaiting news from Lopez ; if
the intelligence were favorable, another expedition would
be fitted out, and this they intended to join. The Cuban
question was the sole topic of discussion on the streets, in
the cafes and bar-rooms, of this excitable Southern city, then
at the zenith of its importance. Spurious despatches giving
accounts of victories by Lopez appeared in the New Orleans
Delta, whose editor was the chief promoter of the enterprise,
and whose faith and money were alike engaged. There
was enough opposition to the prevailing opinion to increase
the earnestness with which the side of the filibusters was
advocated. The newspaper La Union espoused with vigor
the Spanish cause, and vehemently denounced the Ameri-
cans. The excitement had risen to fever heat when the
news arrived, on August 21st, of the shooting of Colonel
Crittenden and fifty of his companions. It was at the same
time learned that many of the unhappy victims had written
letters to their friends, leaving them in the care of the Cap-
tain-General, who had forwarded them by the secretary of
the Spanish consul at New Orleans. The letters arrived
on the same steamer that brought the woful intelligence ;
and it was reported that they were detained and had not
been given up when asked for. This stirred up a mob to
1 My authorities, in addition to what have been cited, for this account
are two letters of Colonel Crittenden — one to Dr. Lucien Hensley, the other
to his uncle, the Attorney-General — both of them written just before he
was shot; a letter from Philip Van Vechten, a lieutenant under Lopez,
who was pardoned ; the personal narrative of C. N. Howell, who accom-
panied the expedition ; Commander C. T. Platt's official despatch to the
Navy Department from Havana, dated Sept. 1st; Memorias sobre el
Estado Politico, Gobierno y Administracion de la Isla de Cuba, por el
Teniente-General Don Jose de la Concha, Madrid, 1853 ; Annual Message
of President Fillrnore, Dec. 2cl, 1851 ; Cincinnati Commercial, cited by
National Intelligencer of Oct. 4th ; Life of Webster, Curtis.
CU.III.] WEBSTER AND SPAIN 221
gut the office of La Union and sack the cigar-store called
Lei Coring whose proprietor had been insulting in his talk
about Americans. The rioters broke into the office of the
Spanish consul ; the portraits of the Queen of Spain and of
the Captain -General of Cuba were defaced, and the Spanish
flag was torn to pieces. Other buildings were attacked and
more property was destroyed. At different times the riot-
ers were addressed by the mayor, sheriff, and district at-
torney; finally, having wreaked their vengeance on the
chief offenders, the violence of the mob came to an end ;
no one was killed and only one man was injured.
This occurrence gave rise to a nice diplomatic question.
The Spanish minister at Washington demanded redress for
the insult to the flag and pecuniary indemnity for the per-
sonal losses. After a certain amount of correspondence, in
which the provocation was duly pointed out as showing
that the outrage " was committed in the heat of blood, and
not in pursuance of any premeditated plan or purpose of
injury or insult," the Secretary of State frankly acknowl-
edged the wrong, expressed regret in the most handsome
terms, and said that when a Spanish consul was again sent
to New Orleans, instructions would be given to salute the
flag of his ship " as a demonstration of respect, such as may
signify to him and his government the sense entertained by
the government of the United States of the gross injustice
done to his predecessor by a lawless mob, as well as the
indignity and insult, offered by it to a foreign State with
which the United States are, and wish ever to remain, on
terms of the most respectful and pacific intercourse." The
satisfactory manner in which Webster concluded the matter
deserves much higher praise than the vigorous outburst of
nationality in the Hiilsemann letter. In our country, where
every citizen holds pronounced opinions on the most deli-
cate questions of diplomacy, the Secretary of State who
desires political advancement is tempted to court an oppor-
tunity such as Hiilsemann gave Webster, and to shun an
occasion like the matter in hand. That he treated the Span-
222 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
iard as justly as he did the Austrian added to the laurels
he had already won in the State department. Enthusiastic
meetings of sympathy with Cuban independence and the
cause of the filibusters had been held in Nashville, Cincinnati,
Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York City;
the cotton States did not need to express their feeling, for
every one knew that they were decidedly for Cuba. When
the historian reflects that our State department has some-
times been influenced against its better judgment by strong
popular sentiment, he writes a grateful page in recording
that the astute and experienced Lord Palmerston unreserved-
ly praised the note addressed by Webster to the Spanish
Minister. He called it " highly creditable to the good faith
and sense of justice of the United States government," and
said that the Secretary " more rightly consulted the true
dignity of the country by so handsome a communication
than if the acknowledgment of wrong and the expression
of regret had been made in more niggardly terms." When
Congress met, an appropriation was made, on the recom-
mendation of the President, to indemnify the Spanish con-
sul and other Spanish subjects at New Orleans for their per-
sonal loss.1
In the autumn of this year there were two important
illustrations of the working of the Fugitive Slave law.
Gorsuch, a resident of Maryland, with his son, several
friends, and a United States officer, all well armed and
bearing the warrant of the commissioner at Philadelphia,
went to Christiana, Lancaster County, Pa., in search of two
fugitives who had escaped three years previously. Arriv-
ing at a house about two miles from the village where they
supposed the negroes were secreted, they demanded their
1 Report of account of the riot by the District Attorney and Mayor of
New Orleans to the State Department, Senate documents, 1st Sess., 32d
Cong., vol. i. ; debate on the subject in Congress, Congressional Globe, vol.
xxiv. ; New Orleans Bee, cited by the New York Tribune, Sept. 1st; Life
of Webster, Curtis, vol. ii,
CH.HI.] THE WORKING OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 223
property, and broke into the lower part of the house. The
colored inmates kept possession of the upper story, the fugi-
tives saying they would rather die than go back to slavery,
and their associates decisively refusing to give them up.
Meanwhile, a horn was blown as a signal to the negroes
in the neighborhood, with the result of bringing together
from fifty to one hundred men armed with guns, axes, corn-
cutters, and clubs. The slave-hunters having left the house,
an angry parley ensued, which was at length interrupted
by the arrival of Castner Hanaway and another gentleman,
both Quakers living in the neighborhood. The deputy mar-
shal summoned them to aid him in making the arrest of the
fugitives, which they indignantly refused to do ; but they
endeavored to calm the wrath of the negroes, and at the
same time warned Gorsuch and his companions that it
would be madness to persist, saying, " The sooner you leave
the better, if you would prevent bloodshed." Gorsuch em-
phatically refused to quit his ground; words of irritation
led to firing, and a general fight resulted. The slave-owner
and his son fell — the one dead and the other wounded,
while none of the negroes received more than slight wounds.
This affair caused great excitement throughout the whole
country. The anti-slavery people did not defend the vio-
lence of the negro mob ; but the moral which they drew
from the affair was : " But for slavery such things would
not be ; but for the Fugitive Slave law, they would not be
in the free States." ' The United States marshal, district
attorney, and commissioner from Philadelphia, with forty-
five United States marines from the navy-yard, repaired im-
mediately, by the orders of the President, to the scene of the
trouble. A posse of about forty of the city marshal's police,
with the assistance of a large body of special constables,
scoured the country, and made arrests of those who were
supposed to have been engaged in the fight ; the fugitive
slaves, however, had escaped. Castner Hanaway and his
New York Tribune.
224 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
associate, hearing that warrants were issued for them, vol-
untarily surrendered themselves. The prisoners were taken
to Philadelphia and indicted for treason. Castner Hana-
way was first tried; prominent among his counsel was Thad-
deus Stevens, and Justice Grier, of the United States Su-
preme Court, presided. His charge was so clearly in favor
of the prisoner that the jury speedily agreed upon a verdict
of not guilty. One of the negroes was tried, but not con-
victed ; the rest were not brought to trial.1
The other case is that of the " Jerry rescue," which took
place at Syracuse, N. Y. On the first day of October, Jerry
McIIenry, an athletic mulatto and industrious mechanic,
who had been living in that city for several years, was
claimed as a fugitive slave by a man from Missouri. Jerry
had made one ineffectual attempt to escape, and the cour-
age which he displayed, together with the one-sided charac-
ter of the proceedings incident to a claim made under the
Fugitive Slave law, aroused active sympathy for the negro
from the citizens and sojourners of Syracuse. The city was
full of people, for on that day were held a meeting of the
county agricultural society and the Liberty party's annual
convention. Jerry was imprisoned overnight in the police-
office to await the conclusion of the examination on the
morrow. He had, unknown to himself, many ardent friends,
among whom were the Eev. Samuel J. May and Gerrit Smith.
May,2 who had charge of the Unitarian Society of Syracuse,
was a rare combination of perfect courage and gentleness
of spirit. Gerrit Smith, a great-hearted man, and a deep
1 The Underground Railroad, William Still, particularly the account
cited from the Pennsylvania Freeman, a local newspaper, edited by a
Quaker, p. 349. The New York Independent, Sept. 18th and 25th ; not-
ably a letter from Rev. Mr. Gorsuch, a son of the man who was killed,
which purports to be a reliable narrative of the bloody affray; also Rise
and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 327. The fight took place Sept.
llth.
2 See p. 65.
CH.IU.] THE "JERRY RESCUE" 225
thinker on moral and religious subjects, had early espoused
the cause of the slave. Shrewd in his investments, he had
accumulated large wealth, which he devoted to the good of
his kind ; and later, as a noted worker in the Liberty party,
he was elected to Congress as its candidate from one of the
northern districts of New York.
Under the lead of these two gentlemen, twenty or thirty
resolute men determined to rescue the negro. Early in the
evening they made an attack upon the police-office, and beat
down the prison door with a battering-ram ; they encoun-
tered little resistance, and easily overpowered the police,
without, however, inflicting any personal injury. They then
led Jerry out, put him in a buggy drawn by a swift pair of
horses, and took him to a place of refuge in the city, where
he remained concealed for several days, being finally sent
safely through to Canada. The anti-slavery people exulted
greatly over this affair, and their elation was increased by
the failure to convict any of the eighteen rescuers who were
indicted. Several were tried, but the United States district
attorney did not venture to bring to trial the leaders in the
affair, although they defied him to do so ; Samuel J. May,
Gerrit Smith, and another gentleman, uniting in a pub-
lished acknowledgment to the effect that they had clone
all they could in the rescue of Jerry ; that they were ready
for trial, and would give the court no trouble as to the fact,
but would rest their defence upon the unconstitutionally
and extreme wickedness of the Fugitive Slave law.1
Since the passage of this law one year had now elapsed.
The fact was patent that in most Northern communities it
could not be enforced without more trouble and expense
than were worth the taking. This law violated the funda-
mental principle of democratic government, — that laws are
futile unless upheld by public sentiment. It was a curious
commentary on a statute that gentlemen of the very high-
1 Recollections of Anti-slavery Conflict, Samuel J. May, p. 373 et
Life of Gerrit Smith, Frothingham, p. 117.
L— 15
226 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
est character, like Samuel J. May and Gerrit Smith, should
lead a mob of earnest, unarmed men to resist the execution
of it. Most of the anti-slavery men would not advise resist-
ance to the law ; the law-abiding sentiment of the North was
strong, and did not sympathize with forcible opposition to
those invested with public authority ; but to fair-minded men
it was clear that the attempt to carry into effect the Fugi-
tive Slave act in many parts of the North would simply be
kicking against the pricks.
During the year the South had gained in union feeling.
The compromise measures, as we have seen, were generally
satisfactory outside of South Carolina and Mississippi. In
May a convention of Southern Rights associations of South
Carolina, held at Charleston, resolved in favor of secession,
with or without the co-operation of other Southern States.1
This feeling was then apparently strong throughout the
State, since of thirty newspapers, only two were opposed to
secession.2 The election in October showed that the South-
ern Rights convention and the newspapers had not repre-
sented the sentiment of the people, or else that between May
and October a great change had taken place in public opin-
ion. The issue was made in the election of delegates to a
State convention. One set of delegates opposed action by
South Carolina alone ; the other set were unconditionally in
favor of secession. Two-thirds of the delegates chosen be-
longed to the former party, and in the country at large this
was regarded as a Unionist victory ; and well it might be, for
to vote co-operation with the other Southern States meant
to abide by the Union.3
In Mississippi a very exciting and significant canvass took
place between Jefferson Davis and Senator Foote. One had
been a strong opponent, and the other an ardent supporter,
of the compromise measures in the Senate, and they now
1 National Intelligencer, May 13th.
5 Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 34.
8 Tribune Almanac, 1852, p. 43 ; New York Independent, Oct. 23d, 1851.
CH.III.] CHARLES SUMNER AND BENJAMIN F. WADE 227
went before the people of their State for vindication. Davis
was the candidate for governor of the States-rights party,
which believed in the right of secession and favored a South-
ern convention for action, while Foote was the candidate of
the Unionists. The question was thoroughly discussed on
the stump by both men, and the contest was exceedingly
close, Foote having but 1009 majority over his competitor.1
The majority would have been larger had it not been for
the personal popularity of Davis, who was stronger than his
party. The State convention which had been elected pre-
vious to the gubernatorial contest declared that the people
of Mississippi would abide by the compromise measures, and
that the right of secession was utterly unsanctioned by the
Federal Constitution.2
The Thirty-second Congress met on December 1st. There
was little change in the relative strength of the political
parties in the Senate; the Democrats had made a slight
gain. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, and Benjamin F.
Wade, of Ohio, took their seats in the Senate ; they re-
sembled each other in nothing but personal courage and ha-
tred of slavery. Sumner was a graduate of Harvard, a repre-
sentative of the culture of Boston, and the intimate friend of
nearly every one of that brilliant set of scholars, poets, and
literati to whose performances during the twenty years be-
fore the civil war we may point with a just feeling of pride.
Himself a ripe scholar, he loved the classics ; he was a pro-
found student of history, delving into the past so earnestly
that his desire to visit the old countries grew into a passion.
He went abroad furnished with letters from the wise and
influential of America to the men of distinction across the
sea ; he returned with a mind broadened by contact with the
thinkers, writers, and politicians of Europe. He had charm-
ing manners and rare social accomplishments; he and Chase
1 Tribune Almanac, 1852, p. 44; Rise and Fall of the Confederate Gov-
ernment, vol. i. p. 20. The election took place in November.
s Congressional Globe, vol. xxiv. p. 35.
228 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
were considered the handsomest men in the Senate. A fa-
vorite child of fortune, kind friends ever stood ready to give
their help ; opportunities were made for him. Sumner was
not a great lawyer ; the bent of his mind was towards poli-
tics rather than law. Possessed of strong moral feelings,
politics especially attracted him on account of the moral
element that now entered into public questions. From an
early day he had hated slavery ; the Liberator was the first
paper he had ever subscribed for, having read it since 1835,
yet he was opposed to Garrison's doctrines on the Constitu-
tion and the Union. A Whig until 1848, he then became
a Free-soiler, and by a well-managed coalition of the Free-
soilers and Democrats he was this year elected senator.1
Benjamin F. Wade, also a son of New England, was in
character of the rugged heroic type. Born of poor parents,
he worked on the western Massachusetts farm in the sum-
mer, and had only the common schooling of two or three
months in the winter. His religious education was wholly
under the guidance of his pious mother ; he read the Bible
with diligence, and knew the Westminster Catechism by
heart. When twenty-one, he went to Ohio and took up his
home on the Western Reserve. The problem then with him
was how to get a living in this new rough country. He
worked as a droveV and as a common laborer; but finally
deciding to adopt law as a profession, he studied in a law-
yer's office, was admitted to the bar, and was fortunate in
forming a partnership with Joshua R. Giddings, a leading
lawyer in northeastern Ohio. Only by a strong effort of
the will was Wade able to overcome his constitutional diffi-
dence in public speaking, which at the outset threatened to
defeat his intention of becoming an advocate ; but he grew
to be a vigorous speaker.
1 For a detailed account of this coalition, see relation of Henry Wilson,
•who was one of the prime movers, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,
chap, xxvii. This estimate of Sumner I have mainly derived from Edw. L.
Pierce's Memoir and Letters of Charles Suuiner.
CH. III.] THE THIRTY-SECOND CONGRESS 229
His second legal associate, Rufus P. Ranney, became the
best lawyer and soundest judge of Ohio, taking rank with
the most carefully trained legal minds of the country. The
bar of the Western Reserve was an able body of men ; they
had but few law-books, and those they mastered; their lit-
erature was the Bible and Shakespeare, and their forensic
contests were apt displays of logic, invective, and wit. In
that community influence went for nothing ; if a man rose
to the top it was through ability and industry. In those
days the best lawyers went to the legislature and sat on the
bench. There they took great interest in the enactment of
necessary measures, and were careful that the phraseology
should be simple and exact, considering the deliberate yet
positive expounding of the law a grave and solemn duty.
It was an honor to be a member of the legislature, and an
honor to be a judge.
Wade had been a State circuit judge, had served in the
legislature, and was this year elected to the Senate as a
Whig of well-known anti-slavery principles. He was thor-
oughly honest ; his manners were rough, and his style of ad-
dress was abrupt.1
There were now five men in the Senate who, though dif-
fering in party antecedents, were ready to work together in
opposing the extension of slavery : Seward, of 'New York ;
Chase and Wade, of Ohio ; Sumner, of Massachusetts ; and
Hale, of New Hampshire. Their ages were respectively fifty,
forty-three, fifty-one, forty, and forty-five. The absence of
Benton from this Senate was conspicuous; after thirty years
of eminent service he had failed to secure a re-election be-
cause he would not abate his principles one jot at the dicta-
tion of the pro-slavery Democrats of Missouri.2
The members of the House of Representatives who as-
sembled December 1st had all been elected since the passage
1 I have drawn this characterization of Wade largely from his biogra-
phy, by A. G. Riddle.
3 Life of Benton, Roosevelt, p. 341.
230 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
of the compromise measures, and their political classifica-
tion in contrast with that of the last Congress affords a good
idea of public sentiment at the time. There were in this
House one hundred and forty Democrats, eighty -eight
Whigs, and five Free-soilers.1 There was almost no change
in the delegation from the slave States ; the Democrats had
lost two seats, which the Whigs had gained. But at the
North, the Whigs had lost twenty-four, while -the Democrats
had gained twenty-six members." Two causes had contrib-
uted to effect this result. In some districts the Democrats
Avon because they were more earnest than the Whigs in the
advocacy of the compromise ; in other districts Whigs lost
their seats because they had supported the compromise or had
failed to vote against the Fugitive Slave law. Of twenty-
eight Northern Democrats who had voted for that act, fif-
teen were candidates for re-election, of whom twelve were
returned. Only three Northern Whigs had voted for the
bill ; one of them was a member of the present House.
On the first day of the session a debate took place in the
House as to which party was the more faithful to the com-
promise. The Democratic caucus had laid on the table a
resolution endorsing those measures, while the Whig caucus,
in a formal declaration, had approved them. Neither ac-
tion had any significance; it was simply clever political
fencing. To this complexion had it, however, come : every
article of the compromise was regarded as a finality at the
North except the Fugitive Slave law, while the touchstone
of fidelity to the settlement of 1850 was opposition to the
repeal of the Fugitive Slave act and willingness to support
the strict execution of it.
The President, in his annual message, reflected fairly
the tendency of public opinion. " The agitation," said he,
1 This is the classification of the New York Tribune; that of the Con-
gressional Globe is 142 Democrats, 91 Whigs. For the classification of
the Thirty-first Congress, see p. 116 et seq.
2 The Democrats had gained the two members from California.
CH. III.] KOSSUTH 231
" which for a time threatened to disturb the fraternal rela-
tions which make us one people, is fast subsiding ;" and u I
congratulate you and the country upon the general acqui-
escence in these measures of peace which has been exhibit-
ed in all parts of the republic."
The concern about the general acceptance of the compro-
mise and the execution of the Fugitive Slave law Avas now
overshadowed, by the interest taken in the visit of Kossuth.
The Hungarian revolution had failed ; this was owing large-
ly to the fact that Russia came to the assistance of Austria.
Kossuth fled to Turkey, and had been there some time un-
der detention, when the President was directed by Congress
to offer one of the ships of our Mediterranean squadron to
convey him and his associates to the United States. Aus-
tria pressed Turkey very vigorously not to release the ref-
ugees without her consent ; but, through the exertions of the
American minister and of the English and Sardinian repre-
sentatives at the Porte, the government of Turkey was in-
duced to consent to their departure, and they left in the
summer of this year on the frigate Mississippi. Kossuth
turned aside to visit England, in order to arouse enthusiasm
for his cause and get help for down-trodden Hungary. He
then came to America, arriving at New York quarantine on
Friday, December 5th, at one o'clock in the morning. A
salute of twenty-one guns, an address of welcome by the
health officer, a hearty greeting on shore from people who
had gathered at this unseasonable hour, showed that the
country would receive the refugee as a conquering hero.
When day came, the citizens of Staten Island turned out to
congratulate Kossuth that he had set foot in the land of
liberty. The morning was given up to callers ; among
those who paid their respects were Foresti, an Italian exile,
and an Indian chief, who referred to himself as being also
" one of the unfortunate." At noon there was a general
procession, and a formal address of welcome, to which Kos-
suth made an appropriate reply. This was but the prologue ;
the play was on the morrow. On this Saturday, nature
232 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATIOX [1851
vied with the people. The deep-blue sky, the clear, brilliant
atmosphere, the crisp yet mild air of the December day,
seemed to set off fitly the enthusiasm of the multitude. Kos-
suth and his party left Staten Island at eleven o'clock on
the steamer Vanderbill, which had come for him in the
charge of the reception committee of the New York Com-
mon Council. As the boat steamed by, Governor's Island
fired a salute of thirty-one guns, New Jersey one hundred
and twenty, and then guns were fired on every side. As
the VanderbiU passed the navy-yard, the war-ships North
Carolina and Ohio saluted, and all the ferry-boats whistled.
On nearly all the vessels — steamers and smaller craft — in the
bay, Hungarian and United States flags floated together.
New York had never seen a finer sight. One hundred thou-
sand people were waiting on the Battery ; Castle Garden
was full to overflowing. When Kossuth could be seen, a
tumultuous roar broke forth ; when he landed, it seemed,
said one reporter, as if the shout would raise the vast roof
of the reception hall ; the cheer continued uninterruptedly
for fifteen minutes. The mayor, who was primed with, a
speech, in vain besought silence. At last, from sheer ex-
haustion of the crowd, the uproar ceased; the address of
welcome was made ; but when Kossuth rose to reply, the en-
thusiasm again burst out. Only those near him could hear a
word, yet he went through the form of speaking, and writ-
ten copies of this carefully prepared declaration of his self-
imposed errand were furnished the reporters. The speech
over, Kossuth, mounted on Black Warrior, a war-horse which
had been in many battles of the Florida and Mexican wars,
reviewed the troops that had turned out to escort him.
Then the procession began to move. Besides the military
display there was a large number of civic bodies, and it took
an hour to pass a given point. When Kossuth's carriage
entered Broadway, an inspiring sight met his eyes. All the
shops and houses were decorated, many of them with mot-
toes of sympathy for Hungary and welcome for her gov-
ernor, as everybody called him. The street was jammed
CH. III.] KOSSUTH 233
with people ; every window was alive with human beings.
There was, says the reporter, " a continuous roar of cheers
like waves on the shore." Every one agreed that, since the
landing of Lafayette, no such enthusiasm had been seen in
New York ; and it is certain that no foreigner except that
gallant Frenchman ever received a similar ovation'. The
greatest of Koman generals might have been proud of such
a triumph.
This splendid testimonial was not so much to the man as
to the principle of which he was the incarnation. The dif-
ferent manifestations of the revolutionary spirit which began
in Europe in 1848 had been followed with deep interest in
America. The readers of newspapers were fully informed
of the progress of the events. Though European news came
slower then than now, it was more trustworthy. The Amer-
ican correspondents abroad were almost always men of edu-
cation and culture ; many of them had attainments which
gave them access to the best society of the countries to
which they were sent. They knew what was taking place ;
they knew how to discriminate the true from the false, and
they had time before mail-day to sift the rumors from the
facts and to give an orderly arrangement to their narrative.
Our countrymen, therefore, of this time had correct knowl-
edge of contemporary events in Europe. These revolution-
ary movements seemed to them due to American example ;
the contemplation of the free, united, and happy country
created, a yearning, they thought, for the like, and this
yearning stirred up the people on the European continent
to rebel against their tyrants. Never had there been a
more unquestioned faith in our institutions, a greater desire
to propagate the principles underlying them, or a more sub-
lime confidence in their virtue. This feeling found an offi-
cial expression in the Hiilsemann letter,1 and a popular ex-
pression in the triumph to Kossuth. The blows struck for
Hungarian liberty had indeed been in vain ; but the hero of
See p. 205.
234 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
the revolution was here to tell us that the mighty movement
had been riot crushed, but only delayed. In his speech he
frankly avowed his object. " I come here," he said, " to in-
voke the aid of the great American republic to protect my
people, peaceably, if they may, by the moral influence of
their declarations, but forcibly if they must, by the physi-
cal power of their arm — to prevent any foreign interference
in the struggle about to be renewed for the liberties of my
country." He explained why it was that he had such hopes
of the United States. " Your generous act of my libera-
tion is taken by the world for the revelation of the fact that
the United States are resolved not to allow the despots of
the world to trample on oppressed humanity." It was soon
well understood that he expected the United States and Eng-
land would combine to prevent the interference of Russia
in Austro-Hungarian affairs, and that he wanted to raise in
this country one million dollars on Hungarian bonds, payable
when the independence of the country should be achieved.
It is quite certain that if, in these December days, a popular
vote of New York City could have decided the foreign policy
of the nation, it would have been in favor of intermeddling in
European affairs, for the metropolitan people had seemingly
lost their heads. On the evening of Kossuth's arrival, there
was a torchlight procession in his honor ; some of the ban-
ners had legends proposing intervention by the United States
in behalf of oppressed liberty in Europe ; others denoted re-
gret for neglect in the past, and bore the inscription, " May
our future atone for the past !"
On the Monday morning following his arrival the New
York Tribune maintained that while non-intervention in
European affairs was the correct principle, there might be
circumstances when our own interests, as well as our duty in
the family of States, would command us to step beyond the
straight line of this policy. Most of the New York press
were favorable to Kossuth, and the editor of the journal
which was the most active in exposing the folly of the craze
was denounced as " a mercenary and time-serving political
CH. III.] KOSSUTH 235
parasite," and " the exorbitant and unblushing eulogist of
the bloody house of Hapsburg." The friends of Kossuth
delighted to compare him with Lafayette ; his enemies said
he rather called to mind another Frenchman, Genet, who, at
first received with great enthusiasm, finally became a stench
in the nostrils of the public. One extravagant journalist,
wrought up to a high pitch of feeling by one of Kossuth's
speeches, declared that the Washington of the eighteenth
century was interpreted by the Washington of the nine-
teenth. Steady people in other parts of the country thought
New York had run mad ; they were amazed at the wild in-
fatuation, and called it the folly of the day.
Kossuth showed wonderful tact in steering clear of any-
thing that should excite partisan or sectional feeling. A
delegation of the American and Foreign Anti-slavery So-
ciety called upon him and made an address. He replied :
" I know you are just and generous, and will not endeavor
to entangle me with questions of a party character while I
am with you. I must attend to one straight course and not
be found to connect myself with any principle but the one
great principle of my country's liberation." A party of
several thousand men who called themselves the European
Democracy, composed of foreigners from Italy, Germany,
Poland, Austria, and France, marched to his hotel and de-
livered an address revealing that they were socialists. Kos-
suth replied discreetly ; he was not a socialist, and, indeed,
that question was not the one at issue in Hungary. He re-
ceived successively deputations from colored men, the pres-
bytery of Brooklyn, the faculty and alumni of Columbia
College, Cuban exiles, the students of Yale College, and the
Whig Central Committee, to all of whom he made appro-
priate remarks. The city of New York gave him a banquet
at the Irving House; four hundred guests sat down at table,
and among them was George Bancroft. At the Astor House
there was an editorial banquet in his honor, presided over by
the poet-editor William Cullen Bryant, which every one con-
sidered it a high privilege to attend. The reading of a let-
236 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1851
ter from Webster, coldly declining to attend on account of
public duties, was received with hisses and groans. Toasts
were responded to by Bancroft, Henry J. Raymond, Parke
Godwin, Henry Ward Beecher, and Charles A. Dana. Two
days after this banquet, the New York Democratic Central
Committee presented Kossuth the resolutions wThich they had
adopted. They declared that the time for American neutral-
ity had ceased, and promised that " at the tap of the drum one
hundred thousand armed men will rally around the American
standard to be unfurled on the field when the issue between
freedom and despotism is to be decided." A large meeting
in Plymouth Church raised twelve thousand dollars for the
Hungarian cause, and a dramatic benefit was given at Niblo's
Garden for the fund. An imposing reception by the bar of
New York, and an afternoon entertainment by the ladies at
the Metropolitan Opera House were a fitting close of the
honors which had been showered on the Hungarian hero
in this hospitable city.
It was, indeed, a curious spectacle to see the descendants
of sober-blooded Englishmen and phlegmatic Dutchmen
roused to such a pitch of enthusiasm over a man who was
not the benefactor of their own country, and whose only
title to fame was that he had fought bravely and acted
wisely in an unsuccessful revolution.
It is evident that we were even then an excitable people.1
1 J. J. Ampere, Promenade en AmSrique, speaks of the reception of
Kossuth at New York : " Je vois que clans cette ivresse de New York
entrait pour beaucoup ce besoin d'excitation, de manifestations brnyantes,
qui est le seul amusement vif de la multitude dans un pays oil Ton ne
s'amuse guere. Ce vacarme est sans consequence et sans danger; tout
cela se borne, comme me le disait un homme d'esprit, a" lacher la vapeur
('let out the steam'), ce qui, comme on sait, ne cause point les explosions
de la machine, mais les previent." — Tome ii. p. 53. " The American is
shrewd and keen ; his passion seldom obscures his reason ; he keeps his
head in moments when a Frenchman, or an Italian, or even a German,
would lose it. Yet he is also of an excitable temper, with emotions capa-
ble of being quickly and strongly stirred. . . . Moreover, the Americans
CH. III.] KOSSUTH 237
Yet if we had gained vivacity in this electric air of ours,
what was occurring at Washington demonstrated that we
had not lost the habit of deliberating wisely before taking a
resolve. On the first day of the session a resolution was in-
troduced into the Senate providing a welcome from Con-
gress to Kossuth on his arrival, and tendering, in the name
of the whole American people, the hospitalities of the me-
tropolis of the Union. But objection was made to taking
action of any official character, and this gave rise to consid-
erable discussion. Before a vote was reached Kossuth ar-
rived at New York. The project of greeting him when he
first set foot on our shores was then suspended by a propo-
sition to welcome him at the capital of the country. Even
this simple resolution provoked a four days' debate, for by
this time the Senate had the report of his first speech. The
notion that the fixed foreign policy of this government, ex-
acting non-interference in European affairs, could, under any
circumstances, be altered was entertained by only a few sen-
ators. Yet there was no lack of enthusiasm. " There has
been but one Washington and there is but one Kossuth,"
Foote declared in eager tones. "The great Hungarian
leader will live in the brightest pages of history," said Cass.
The occasion prompted Sumner to make his maiden speech.
Kossuth deserves our welcome, he exclaimed, " as the early,
constant, and incorruptible champion of the liberal cause
in Hungary." He is "a living Wallace — a living Tell—
I had almost said a living Washington." Seward spoke
of him as " the representative of the uprising liberties of
Europe." Yet several senators were opposed to offering
Kossuth the hospitalities of Congress, unless it should be ex-
pressly declared in the resolution that we did not intend to
depart from the settled policy of our government. The dis-
cussion generated so much heat that one senator did not
hesitate to say " that there have been more unpleasant and
like excitement. They like it for its own sake, and go wherever they
can find it." — American Commonwealth, Bryce, vol. ii. p. 191.
238 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1862
hard things said of Kossuth in this Senate than have been
said of him in all Europe, except by the bribed and hireling
prints of some of the despots of the Old World." It was,
however, resolved to give him a cordial welcome to the cap-
ital. There was anxiety in the State department in regard
to his reception. " It requires great caution," wrote "Web-
ster, " so to conduct things here when Mr. Kossuth shall ar-
rive as to keep clear both of Scylla and Charybdis ;" ' and
" his presence here will be quite embarrassing. ... I hope
I may steer clear of trouble on both sides."2 Kossuth, after
an enthusiastic reception at Philadelphia and Baltimore, ar-
rived at Washington on the 30th of December ; he was met
at the station by Seward and Shields, of the Senate commit-
tee. A large crowd awaited his arrival and greeted him
with demonstrations of respect. At noon the Secretary of
State called upon him. Webster wrote that Kossuth was a
gentleman " in appearance and demeanor ; ... he is hand-
some enough in person, evidently intellectual and dignified,
amiable and graceful in his manners. I shall treat him with
all personal and individual respect ; but if he should speak to
me of the policy of * intervention,' I shall * have ears more
deaf than adders.' " 3 The next day Kossuth was presented
to the President, and later in the week he dined at the White
House.4
1 Letter to Haven, Dec. 23d, Private Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 497.
2 Letter to Paige, Dec. 25th, ibid., p. 499.
3 Letter to Blatchforcl, Dec. 30th, ibid., p. 501.
4 Ampere assisted at this dinner, and writes : " La~, j'ai e*t6 tgmoin
d'une nouvelle scene de ce drame de la venue de Kossuth en Amerique,
dont j'avais vu a" New York, il y a quelques semaines, 1'exposition si
brillante et en apparence si pleine de promesses ; . . . ni avant, ni pen-
dant, iii apres le diner, il n'a et6 fait, si ma connaissance, aucune allusion &
la cause de la Hongrie. Je n'ai vu que de la politesse pour riiomme,
mais iiulle expression a haute voix de sympathie pour sa cause. . . .
Kossuth, qui a le tort d'aimer les costumes de fantaisie, portait line ISvite
de velours noir, et m'a soluble* beaucoup moins imposant clans cette tenue
que quand il haranguiat, appuyg sur son grand sabre, dans la salle de
Castle Garden, si New York." — Promenade en AmSrique, tome ii. p. 98.
CH. III.] KOSSUTH 239
Four days of the new year had gone by before the much-
canvassed reception of the Senate took place. The ceremony
was the same as that which twenty-seven years before gov-
erned the welcome to Lafayette. At one o'clock on the 5th
of January the doors were opened, and Governor Kossuth,
escorted by the committee — Shields, Seward, and Cass — en-
tered and advanced within the bar, all the senators at the
same time rising. The suite of the honored guest, in mili-
tary uniforms, stood below the bar. Shields said : " Mr.
President, we have the honor to introduce Louis Kossuth to
the Senate of the United States." The presiding officer ad-
dressed him : " Louis Kossuth, I welcome you to the Senate
of the United States. The committee will conduct you to
the seat which I have caused to be prepared for you." He
was then conducted to a chair in front of the President's
desk ; the Senate, in order to give the senators an opportu-
nity of paying their respects to their guest, adjourned, and
they were individually presented. General Houston attract-
ed special notice. The presence of the hero of San Jacinto
in the chief council of the nation could not fail to suggest to
the Hungarian how much happier than his own lot had been
that of the Texas liberator. Senator Houston said, in his
rough, hearty way, " Sir, you are welcome to the Senate of
the United States ;" to which Kossuth replied, " I can only
wish I had been as successful as you, sir." Houston with
ready sympathy rejoined, "God grant that you may yet
be so!" .
Two days after this reception, a banquet was given to
Kossuth by members of Congress of both parties, at which
Webster made a noteworthy speech. His allusion to Eng-
land was exceedingly felicitous, being possibly a delicate
reference to remarks that had been made in the Senate,
which seemed to assume that all the political virtue of the
world was centred in the United States. "On the western
coast of Europe," he said, " political light exists. There is
a sun in the political firmament, and that sun sheds his light
on those who are able to enjoy it." In the course of his
240 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
speech he made a strong argument for the independence of
Hungary, based on her distinctive nationality and the home-
rule principle.
The House had passed without debate the joint resolution
to welcome Kossuth ; but when a motion was made for the
appointment of a committee to introduce him to the House,
the different feelings in regard to the Hungarian hero were
strikingly manifest. By the many instrumentalities which
the rules of the House put in their power, members tried to
prevent the consideration of the resolution, and it was not
until the day of Kossuth's arrival at Washington that the
subject was fairly brought before this body. Then for many
days the representatives strove and wrangled over the ques-
tion ; amendments were offered, counter-motions were made,
until finally, when the 5th of January had come, and it was
stated that the Hungarian purposed leaving on the ninth,
the majority rose in their might, suspended the rules and
adopted the resolution. The form of reception was the
same as in the Senate, and it took place without incident.
Soon after Kossuth left for the West, and visited several
cities, where there was great curiosity to see the lion of the
day ; crowds turned out to greet him and showed some en-
thusiasm, but it was patent before he left Washington that
his mission had failed. Indeed, from the moment that he
avowed his expectations, it was apparent everywhere, ex-
cept in New York City, that his hope for a pronunciamento
in favor of intervention, should Russia take a hand here-
after in the affairs of Hungary, was utterly vain ; and a
very short time after his departure sufficed to bring the citi-
zens of the metropolis around to the opinion of the rest of
the country. By the middle of January a correspondent
wrote that the excitement had 'wholly died down, and the
name of Kossuth was rarely heard in New York. One vote
taken in the House of Representatives had decided signifi-
cance. An amendment to the resolution of welcome had
been offered, providing that the committee on the reception
of Kossuth should be instructed to inform him that the
Cii. III.] KOSSUTH 241
United States would not look with indifference on the inter-
vention of Kussia against Hungary in any struggle for lib-
erty she might hereafter have with the despotic power of
Austria. The mover of this amendment, seeing that it met
with no favor, desired to withdraw it, but this was not per-
mitted. A division was therefore taken, but the proposition
received only seven votes.
Nor was Kossuth much more successful in his quest for
sinews of war. At Pittsburgh he complained bitterly that
while one hundred and sixty thousand dollars had been
raised, only thirty thousand dollars remained for the pur-
chase of muskets ; the rest had been wasted in costly ban-
quets and foolish parades. He appealed no longer for in-
tervention, but for money, and urged that the salt-mines of
Hungary would be ample security for the loan. Although
he remained in the country until July, it is certain that the
net amount of the contributions to his cause was less than
one hundred thousand dollars.
The reason of the interest taken in Kossuth's visit is now
plain enough to be seen, but at the time it was stated that
the excitement had been worked up by politicians with an
eye to the German vote in the approaching presidential
election. This view was not correct. The movement was
spontaneous, and the politicians took hold of it so as to keep
in the popular current. In the honor done to this repre-
sentative of European revolution there was the exultation
of the young republic which rejoiced in the strength of a
lusty giant. Two years previously the arrival of Kossuth
would have stirred up but little enthusiasm, for then the
unhappy sectional controversy which had threatened dis-
aster engrossed the attention of the people ; now, however,
it was felt that the country was united and harmonious.
With sweet forgetfulness the memory of past danger faded
away, and a serene optimism would not anticipate evil.
From the debate it was apparent that members of Congress
generally thought we were quite a match for Austria and
Russia combined, although at the present moment there
I.-16
242 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
was no desire to put forth our strength. But there was
grim truth in the rebuke by Clemens, of Alabama, when he
reminded certain senators who were willing to fight, if neces-
sary, for liberty in Europe that " but recently a bitter sec-
tional conflict was raging in our midst, which threatened at
one time to shatter our Confederacy into atoms; that the
embers of that strife were still unquenched, and that it was
the part of wisdom to secure internal peace before we en-
gaged in external war."
Horace Mann and others of his persuasion were mainly
wrong when they attributed to the influence of the slave
power the opposition to Kossuth which came from the
South.1 No one was a more enthusiastic champion of the
Hungarian than Senator Foote, a devoted supporter of
Southern institutions. It was he who exclaimed : " At such
a moment, does it behoove the American people to join the
side of despotism, or to stand by the cause of freedom ? We
must do one or the other. We cannot avoid the solemn
alternative presented. . . . Those who are not for freedom
are for slavery." 2 Hale tried to drag the slavery question
into the debate, but his political friends frowned upon his
endeavor ; for Seward and Cass, Sumner and Shields, went
hand in hand in the affair. In the House, a member from
North Carolina charged that the abolitionists had taken the
lead in the matter, and, while this accusation added some-
what to the heat of the debate, there is no doubt that most
of those who objected to conferring the proposed honor on
Kossuth did so because he had assailed the non-intervention
doctrine of Washington.
The heroic play which began in ISTew York changed into
a farce when Congress came to audit the hotel bill of the
Hungarian governor and his suite. The bill, amounting to
nearly four thousand six hundred dollars, was considered
by the Senate enormous in its magnitude. The senators
1 Life of Horace Mann, p. 356.
* Remarks in Senate, Dec. 3d, 1851.
CH. III.] THE FINALITY OF THE COMPROMISE 243
did not pry into the items ; but the House had no such re-
serve, and before passing it they examined narrowly the
itemized statement ; whence it appeared that the apartments
had been large and luxurious, and that champagne, madeira,
and sherry had flowed freely. Kossuth was defended from
all participation in debauchery, it being asserted that he
was abstemious in all his habits except smoking, and that,
while he sometimes drank claret at dinner, he was moderate
in the pleasures of the table.1
Early in the session a resolution was introduced into the
Senate by Foote which declared that the compromise meas-
ures were a definite adjustment of the distracting questions
growing out of slavery. This occasioned a rambling dis-
cussion, but the proposition was never brought to a vote.
On the 5th day of April a division in the House was at-
tained on a resolution similar in purport. One hundred and
three members voted that the compromise should be regard-
ed as a permanent settlement, and seventy-four voted against
such a declaration. The nays were made up of twenty-six
Northern Democrats,2 twenty-eight Northern Whigs, nine-
teen Southern Democrats, and one Southern "Whig, viz.,
Clingman. It was noticeable that, while every representa-
tive present from South Carolina voted against the resolu-
tion, every representative from Mississippi but one voted
for it ; the delegation from both States were all Democrats.
Twenty Southern and only seven Northern Whigs voted in
the affirmative. Many of the latter were absent.
It is now my intention to narrate the proceedings of the
national conventions of the Democratic and Whig parties,
1 My authorities for this relation are the New York Tribune and the
National Intelligencer. Both of these newspapers give copious extracts
from contemporary journals ; the debates in the Senate and House, vol.
xxiv., Congressional Globe; Life of Webster, Curtis, vol. ii.; Webster's
Private Correspondence, vol. ii. See also Promenade en Am6rique, Am-
pere, tome i. p. 370. The curious may find the itemized bill in Congres-
sional Globe, vol. xxiv. p. 1692.
8 In these are included Rantoul and Durkee, Free-soilers.
244 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
two bodies which assembled with a fresher mandate from
the people than had the representatives in Congress. The
Democratic convention was held on June 1st at Baltimore,
and the prominent candidates were Cass, Douglas, Buchan-
an, and Marcy. Cass was now nearly seventy years old, but
temperate habits and a regular life had preserved his native
vigor. A son of New England, his education had been main-
ly acquired in the academy of Exeter, N. H.,his native place.
In early life he came West, and as governor of Michigan ter-
ritory from 1813 to 1831 his administration of affairs was
marked with intelligence and energy.1 His experience dur-
ing this term of office with the British stationed in Canada,
who constantly incited the Indians to wage war on the set-
tlers of the Northwest, caused him to imbibe a hatred of Eng-
land which never left him, and whose influence is traceable
throughout his public career. He held the war portfolio
under Jackson, later was Minister to France, and had now
for several years represented Michigan in the Senate. His
anglophobia and his readiness to assert vigorous principles
of American nationality made him popular in the North-
west. He tried a solution of the slavery question in the
Nicholson letter, written a few months before he was select-
ed as the candidate of the Democratic party in 1848. In
this letter he invented the doctrine which afterwards became
widely known as the doctrine of popular sovereignty. He
maintained that Congress should let the people of the terri-
tories regulate their internal concerns in their own way ;
and that in regard to slavery the territories should be put
upon the same basis as the States.
Douglas was only thirty -nine years old, being remarkably
young to aspire to the highest office in the State. Clay had
reached the age of forty-seven when he became a candidate
for the presidency, and Webster was forty-eight when he
1 See a paper read by Prof. A. C. McLaughlin before the American His-
torical Association, Dec., 1888, "The Influence of Governor Cass on the
Development of the Northwest ;" see also his Life of Cass.
CH.HI.] STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 245
began to dream that it might be his lot to reach the desired
goal. Douglas was a son of New England, and, like many
New England boys, worked on a farm in the summer and
attended school in the winter. By the time he was twenty,
he had wrought for two years at a trade, had completed the
classical course at an academy, and had begun the study of
law. He then went to Illinois, and before he had attained
his majority was admitted to the bar ; he became a member
of the legislature at twenty - three, a Supreme judge at
twenty-eight, a representative in Congress at thirty, and a
senator at thirty -three.
Douglas's first political speech gained him the title of
the " Little Giant ;" the name was intended to imply the
union of small physical with great intellectual stature. Yet
he was not a student of books, although a close observer of
men. He lacked refinement of manner ; was careless of his
personal appearance, and had none of the art and grace that
go to make up the cultivated orator. John Quincy Adams
was shocked at his appearance in the House when, as the
celebrated diary records, in making a speech he raved, roar-
ed, and lashed himself into a heat with convulsed face and
frantic gesticulation. " In the midst of his roaring, to save
himself from choking, he stripped off and cast away his cra-
vat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had the air and aspect of
a half-naked pugilist." l But Douglas took on quickly the
character of his surroundings, and in Washington society he
soon learned the ease of a gentleman and acquired the bear-
ing of a man of the world. He was a great friend to the
material development of the West, and especially of his
own State, having broad views of the future growth of his
section of country.8 He vied with Cass in his dislike of
1 Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vol. xi. p. 510.
a " M. Douglas est un des homines dans le congres dont le discours et
1'aspect m'ont le plus frappe. Petit, noir, trapu, sa parole est pleine de
nerf, son action simple et forte. ... II me parait un des homines de ce
pays qui ont le plus d'avenir ; il pourra arriver au pouvoir quand 1'Ouest,
246 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
England. He believed in the manifest destiny of the United
States. He thought that conditions might arise under which
it would become our bounden duty to acquire Cuba, Mexico,
and Central America. He was called the representative of
young America, and his supporters antagonized Cass as the
candidate of old-fogyism. His adherents were aggressive,
and for months had made a vigorous canvass on his behalf.
A Whig journal ventured to remind Douglas that vaulting
ambition overleaps itself, but added, " Perhaps the little
judge never read Shakespeare, and does not think of this." '
James Buchanan was born in Pennsylvania in 1791. He
had a fair school and college education, studied law, soon ac-
quired a taste for politics, was sent to the legislature, served
as representative in Congress ten years, and was elected
three times senator. In the Senate he distinguished him-
self as an ardent supporter of President Jackson. He was
Secretary of State under Polk, but since the close of that
administration had remained in private life. He was a gen-
tleman of refinement and of courtly manners.2
Marcy was a shrewd New York politician, the author of
the phrase "To the victors belong the spoils."3 He had
been judge, United States senator, and three times govern-
or. He held the war portfolio under Polk, but the con-
duct of this office had not added to his reputation, for it
had galled the administration to have the signal victories
of the Mexican war won by Whig generals, and it was cur-
rently believed that the War Minister had shared in the
qui n'y a pas encore e"te represente, voudra & son tour avoir son president.
L'esprit de M. Douglas me semble, comme sa parole, vigoureux, ardent,
ce qui en fait un reprgsentant tres-fidele des populations energiques qui
grand issent entre la forgt et la prairie." — Promenade en Ame'rique, J. J.
Ampere, tome ii. p. 56.
1 Pike, in New York Tribune, cited by Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 165. In
this characterization of Douglas I have used the Lives of Douglas by
Sheahan and by H. M. Flint. 2 See Life of Buchanan, Curtis.
3 For the speech in which Marcy used this expression, see The Lives
of the Governors of New York, p. 564.
CH. III.] DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 247
endeavor to thwart some of the plans of Scott and Taylor.
Always an honored citizen of New York, it has seemed fit-
ting that the highest mountain-peak in the State by bearing
his name should serve as a monument to his memory.
The hall in which the convention met at Baltimore was
one of the largest in the country; it could accommodate
five thousand people. There was then nothing like the out-
side pressure on the delegates which is seen now at every
one of these national conventions when the nomination is
contested ; but the city thronged with people, and it was
apparent that the friends of Douglas had mustered in full
force. On the evening of the first day an immense meet-
ing took place in Monument Square, where an enthusiastic
crowd listened to eloquent speakers. The first two days of
the convention were occupied in organization and in confir-
mation of the two-thirds rule. It was decided to make the
nomination before the adoption of the platform. This action
did not by any means portend differences in agreeing upon a
declaration of principles, but rather showed the desire of del-
egates to settle the important affair first. Owing to the
confident feeling that this year's nomination was equivalent
to an election, the contest became exceedingly animated.
A year previous Clay had serious doubts of the success
of his own party, and, regarding it as nearly certain that a
Democrat would be elected in 1852, he hoped that the nom-
ination would fall to Cass, whom he considered quite as able
and much more honest and sincere than Buchanan.1
On the first ballot Cass had 116, Buchanan 93, Marcy
27, Douglas 20, and all the other candidates 25 votes. The
number necessary to a choice was 188. Cass had 75 from
the free, and 41 from the slave, States ; Buchanan, 32 from
the free, and 61 from the slave, States ; while Douglas had
only two votes from the South. The interest centred in
these three candidates. Their names and the announce-
ment of their votes never failed to bring prolonged ap-
1 Private Correspondence, p. 619.
248 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
plause. The voting began on the third day of the conven-
tion, and seventeen ballots were that day taken. Douglas
gained considerably at the expense of Cass, but it looked
improbable that any of the three favorites could secure the
nomination, which seemed likely to go to a dark horse.
The merits of several others were canvassed, and among
them Franklin Pierce. On the fourth day Douglas stead-
ily increased until the twenty-ninth ballot, when the votes
were : for Cass, 27 ; for Buchanan, 93 ; for Douglas, 91 ; and
no other candidate had more than 26. On the morning of
the fifth day, on the call of the States for the thirty-fourth
ballot, the Virginia delegation retired for consultation, and
coming back cast the fifteen votes of their State for Daniel
S. Dickinson, of New York. This was received with favor.
Dickinson was a delegate ; he immediately took the floor
and said : " I came here not with instructions, but with ex-
pectations stronger than instructions, that I would vote for
and endeavor to procure the nomination of that distinguish-
ed citizen and statesman, General Lewis Cass." After say-
ing he highly appreciated the compliment paid him by "the
land of Presidents, the Ancient Dominion," he declared, em-
phatically : " I could not consent to a nomination here with-
out incurring the imputation of unfaithfully executing the
trust committed to me by my constituents — without turning
my back on an old and valued friend. Nothing that could
be offered me — not even the highest position in the govern-
ment, the office of President of the United States — could
compensate me for such a desertion of my trust." '
On the next ballot, Virginia cast her fifteen votes for
Franklin Pierce, and then Cass reached his greatest strength,
receiving 131. As the weary round of balloting continued,
Pierce gained slowly, until, on the forty-eighth trial, he re-
ceived 55, while Cass had 73, Buchanan 28, Douglas 33, and
Marcy 90. On the forty-ninth ballot there was a stam-
pede to Pierce, and he received 282 votes to 6 for all oth-
Letters and Speeches, Dickinson, vol. i. p. 370.
CH. III.] DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM 249
ers. The convention nominated William R. King, of Ala-
bama, for Vice - President, and then adopted a platform.
Its vital declarations were : " The Democratic party of the
Union . . . will abide by, and adhere to, a faithful exe-
cution of the acts known as the compromise measures
settled by the last Congress — the act for reclaiming fugi-
tives from service or labor included ; which act, being
designed to carry out an express provision of the Con-
stitution, cannot with fidelity thereto be repealed, nor so
changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency. The Dem-
ocratic party will resist all attempts at renewing in Con-
gress, or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question,
under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."
The platform was adopted with but few dissenting voices.
When the resolution endorsing the compromise measures
was read, applause resounded from all sides ; many dele-
gates demanded its repetition ; it was read over again, and
a wild outburst of enthusiasm followed. There was no
question that while the delegates had differed widely in
regard to men, they were at one in desiring this resolution,
a vital and popular article of Democratic faith.1
Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, was now in his forty-
eighth year. He had in his boyhood drunk in patriotic
principles from his father, an old Revolutionary soldier, at
whose hearthstone the fellow-veterans were always wel-
come, and whose greatest joy was mutually to revive the
sentiments which had animated them in 1776. Pierce was
graduated from Bowdoin College, Maine, and afterwards
became a lawyer. The prominent position which his father
occupied in the Democratic party in the State was a help
to the son's political advancement. He served in the legis-
lature four years, when twenty -nine he went to Congress as
representative, and became United States senator at thirty-
three, being the youngest man in the Senate. He resigned
1 New York Tribune; Presidential Elections, Stanwood; Life of Pierce,
Hawthorne ; Life of Pierce, Bartlett
250 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
before the expiration of his term, and, coming home, de-
voted himself with diligence to the practice of his profes-
sion. He was a good lawyer and a persuasive advocate
before a jury. He declined the position of Attorney-Gen-
eral offered him by Polk, the appointment of United States
senator, and the nomination for governor by his own polit-
ical party. He enlisted as a private soon after the out-
break of the Mexican war, but, before he went to Mexico,
was commissioned as brigadier-general, and served under
Scott with bravery and credit. He was a strong supporter
of the compromise measures. An eloquent political speaker,
graceful and attractive in manner, his integrity was above
suspicion, and he was also deeply religious. He had not the
knack of making money, and the fact received favorable
mention that while long in public life, and later enjoying
a good income from his profession, he had not accumulated
ten thousand dollars.
Such was the man who had been chosen by the reunited
Democratic party to lead it on to assured victory. It could
only be said that he was a respectable lawyer, politician,
and general, for he had tried all three callings, and in none
of them had he reached distinction. There can be no bet-
ter commentary on the fact that he was not a man of mark
than the campaign biography written by his life-long friend,
Nathaniel Hawthorne. The gifted author, who had woven
entrancing tales out of airy nothings, failed, when he had his
bosom friend and a future President for a subject, to make
an interesting narrative. The most graceful pen in Amer-
ica, inspired by the truest friendship, labored painfully in
the vain endeavor to show that his hero had a title to great-
ness ; and the author, conscious that his book was not valu-
able, never consented to have the " Life of Pierce " included
in a collected edition of his works.1
Yet the book, in truthfulness and sincerity, was a model for
a campaign life. Hawthorne would not set down one word
* See the New York Critic, Sept. 28th and Nov. 23d, 1889.
CH. III.] CHARACTER OF PIERCE 251
that he did not believe absolutely true. Pierce evidently
wished to appear before the public in his real character, for
otherwise, knowing this quality of honesty in his friend, he
would not have requested Hawthorne to write the biog-
raphy, but would have been content with the fulsome pane-
gyric that had already appeared. The author in his preface
apologizes for coming before the public in a new occupa-
tion ; but " when a friend, dear to him almost from boyish
days, stands up before his country, misrepresented by indis-
criminate abuse on the one hand, and by aimless praise on
the other," it is quite proper " that he should be sketched
by one who has had opportunities of knowing him well, and
who is certainly inclined to tell the truth." The idea one
gets of Pierce from the little book of one hundred and forty
pages is that he was a gentleman of truth and honor, and
warmly loved his family, his State, and his country. Having
the inward feelings of a gentleman, he lacked not the ex-
ternal accomplishments ; his fine physical appearance was
graced by charming manners.1 It is quite certain that
Pierce did not desire the nomination ; even if his sincerity
in his letter of January 12th be doubted, the statement of
Hawthorne is conclusive. It is possible he shrank from
public life on account of an unfortunate weakness, or that
he did not wish to expose the feeble health of his wife to
the social demands entailed by the position.3
The nomination of Pierce was a complete surprise to the
country. . With the mass of the Democratic party, astonish-
ment was mixed with indignation that the leaders who had
borne the brunt of partisan conflict should be passed over
for one whose history must be attentively studied, in order
to know what he had done to merit the great honor. Yet
the nomination was not the spontaneous affair which it
1 See Life of Pierce, Hawthorne ; Hawthorne and his Wife, Julian Haw-
thorne, vol. i. ; Life of Pierce, Bartlett; Memoir of J. Q. Adams, vol. ix.
p. 103; Memoir of Jefferson Davis, by his Wife, vol. i. p. 541.
8 See Memories of Many Men, M. B. Field, p. 158.
252 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
seemed, for the candidature of Pierce had been carefully
nursed and his interests were in competent hands. The
idea of putting him forward originated early in the year
among the New England Democrats, who deemed it quite
likely that Cass, Douglas, and Buchanan would fail to se-
cure the coveted prize. The favorite son of New Hamp-
shire was eligible, as the State had been steadfastly Demo-
cratic, and Pierce was undoubtedly the most available man
in New England. Several conferences were held to decide
upon a plan of action, and it was determined that New
Hampshire should not present his name nor vote for him
until some other State had started the movement.1 Pierce
was privy to much of this negotiation, and it is said that
the delicate matter of his excessive conviviality was talked
over with him, and that he promised to walk circumspectly
should he become President. At all events, a letter written
by him a few days before the convention shows a change
of feeling from his expression of January in regard to the
nomination ;a and if his personal objections still remained,
they were overruled in the interest of the New Hampshire
and New England Democracy. Pierce promptly accepted
the nomination, '"upon the platform adopted by the Con-
vention, not because this is expected of me as a candidate,
but because the principles it embraces command the appro-
bation of my judgment, and with them I believe I can safely
say there has been no word nor act of my life in conflict." *
The "Whig convention met at Baltimore June 16th, in
the same building that the Democrats had used, and it was
noticed that greater taste had presided over the decoration
of the hall than two weeks before. Among the delegates
1 Account of Edmund Burke, one of the editors of the Washington
Union, of the events that led to the nomination of Pierce, cited by the
New York Tribune of Nov. 28th, 1853, from the National Era. The Bos-
ton Atlas said, June 7th, 1852, that, while Pierce's nomination would sur-
prise the country, it was not wholly a surprise to many in the secrets of
the Democratic party ; also conversation with J. W. Bradbury.
» Life of Pierce, Bartlett, p. 247. s Ibid., p. 258.
III.] THE WHIG NATIONAL CONVENTION
were many able and earnest men. Choate and Ashmun, of
Massachusetts, Dayton, of New Jersey, and Clayton, of
Delaware, were well known; and among those who after-
wards gained distinction were Fessenden, of Maine, Dawes,
of Massachusetts, Evarts, of New York, Sherman, of Ohio,
and Baker, of Illinois.
The candidates for the presidential nomination were Web-
ster, Fillmore, and General Scott ; but the delegates differed
in regard to the platform as well as in their preferences for
men, and whether the Fugitive Slave law should be de-
clared a finality was almost as important a question as who
should be the nominee. There were more strangers in the
city than at the time of the Democratic convention, and
the outside pressure in favor of Webster was strong ; but
it was apparent to cool observers that the chances of suc-
cess were for 'Scott. Fillmore had a large number of dele-
gates pledged to him, for his friends had used unsparingly
in his favor the patronage of the government, yet had ef-
fected little at the North ; his supporters were almost en-
tirely from the South, where he was, moreover, popular on
account of his vigorous execution of the Fugitive Slave act.
Clay, likewise, had declared for Fillmore.1 Constant de-
monstrations in favor of each of the three candidates were
made in the form of processions headed by noisy bands,
and evening meetings addressed by eulogistic orators. The
leaders of the party and managers of the respective candi-
dates were constantly in conference, seeking to win outside
support for their man.
The platform which was submitted on Friday, the third
day of the convention, had the approval of the delegates
from the South, of Webster's friends, and of Webster him-
self.' The important resolution declared that the com-
promise acts, " the act known as the Fugitive Slave law in-
cluded, are received and acquiesced in by the Whig party of
1 Private Correspondence, p. 628.
• See War between the States, A. H, Stephens, vol. ii. p. 237.
254 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
the United States as a settlement in principle and substance
of the dangerous and exciting questions which they em-
brace. . . . We insist upon their strict enforcement . . . and
we deprecate all further agitation of the question thus set-
tled." Eufus Choate rose to advocate this resolution. His
appearance was striking ; tall, thin, of a rich olive complex-
ion, his face was rather that of an Oriental than an Ameri-
can. Kaven locks hanging over a broad forehead, and pierc-
ing dark eyes, complete the picture. He had represented
Massachusetts in the Senate, but his greatest triumphs had
been won in the forum. His speech this day was the first
example of that brilliant convention-oratory which animates
and excites the hearers, and its beauty and power may still
be felt when the issue that inspired this impassioned oration
is dead. He said : " Why should we not engage ourselves
to the finality of the entire series of measures of compro-
mise ? . . . The American people know, by every kind and de-
gree of evidence by which such a truth ever can be known,
that these measures, in the crisis of their time, saved this
nation. I thank God for the civil courage which, at the
hazard of all things dearest in life, dared to pass and defend
them, and ' has taken no step backward.' I rejoice that the
healthy morality of the country, with an instructed con-
science, void of offence towards God and man, has accepted
them. Extremists denounce all compromises ever. Alas !
do they remember such is the condition of humanity that
the noblest politics are but a compromise, an approximation
— a type — a shadow of good things — the buying of great
blessings at great prices ? Do they forget that the Union
is a compromise, the Constitution — social life — that the har-
mony of the universe is but the music of compromise, by
which the antagonisms of the infinite Nature are composed
and reconciled? Let him who doubts — if such there be —
whether it were wise to pass these measures, look back
and recall with what instantaneous and mighty charm they
calmed the madness and anxiety of the hour ! How every
countenance, everywhere, brightened and elevated itself!
Cn.ni.] CHOATE'S SPEECH 255
How, in a moment, the interrupted and parted currents of
fraternal feeling reunited ! Sir, the people came together
again as when, in the old Koman history, the tribes de-
scended from the mount of Secession — the great compro-
mise of that Constitution achieved — and flowed together be-
hind the eagle into one mighty host of reconciled races for
the conquest of the world. Well, if it were necessary to
adopt these measures, is it not necessary to continue them ?
. . . Why not, then, declare the doctrine of their permanence ?
In the language of Daniel Webster, < Why delay the declar-
ation ? Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I am
for it.'"1
Few Americans have surpassed Choate in burning elo-
quence. He was a scholar, a student of words, and a mas-
ter of language. The exuberance of his vocabulary was
poured out through an organ of marvellous richness ; dra-
matic gestures gave a point to his words, and he swayed
that great audience as a reed is shaken with the wind.
The enthusiastic and excited demonstrations of delight as
Choate sat down displeased Botts, of Virginia, who was
for Scott, and he took the orator to task for the attempt
to excite enthusiasm for a particular candidate, when the
ostensible object was to advocate the platform. This gave
Choate the opportunity to name his candidate in a most
felicitous way : " Ah, sir," he said, " what a reputation that
must be, what a patriotism that must be, what a long and
brilliant series of public services that must be, when you
cannot mention a measure of utility like this but every eye
spontaneously turns to, and every voice spontaneously ut-
ters, that great name of Daniel Webster !" 3 If a vivid arid
appropriate speech could have changed the tide of that con-
vention, Choate would have been rewarded by the success
of the man whom he venerated and loved. A delegate
from Ohio objected to the crucial resolution, and he spoke
for an influential body of delegates, but the platform as a
1 Memoir of Rufus Choate, Brown, p. 270. ' Ibid., p. 27V.
256 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
whole was adopted by a vote of 227 to 66. The nays were
all from the North, and all were supporters of Scott.
The convention was now ready to ballot. Fillmore and
Webster were of course in full sympathy with the platform,
and it now became an important question — was Scott satis-
fied with the Fugitive Slave law ? He was the candidate of
the Seward Whigs, and many strong anti-slavery men were
enthusiastic in his favor ; yet to be nominated he must have
Southern votes, and carry Southern States to be elected.
Goaded to it by an insinuation of Choate, Botts, before the
vote on the platform was taken, produced a letter from Scott
which could be interpreted to mean that he was a strong-
friend of the compromise measures.
On the first ballot Fillmore had 133, Scott 131, and Web-
ster 29 votes. Webster had votes from all the New Eng-
land States except Maine, and five votes outside of New
England ; but from the South, none.1 Fillmore received all
the votes from the South except one given to Scott by John
Minor Botts, of Virginia. Scott had all the votes from the
North except those given to Webster and sixteen to Fill-
more.3 For fifty ballots there was no material change;
thirty-two votes were the highest number Webster reached.
On the fiftieth ballot, Southern votes began to go to Scott,
and on the fifty-third he had enough of them to secure the
nomination, the ballot standing : Scott, 159 ; Fillmore, 112 ;
Webster, 21.9 In the Whig convention a majority nominated.
It is apparent that the conservative Whigs might have
controlled the nomination, for the strength of Fillmore and
Webster united on either one was sufficient. Fillmore was
the second choice of Webster's friends, and, in the opinion
1 New Hampshire four, Vermont three, Massachusetts eleven, Rhode
Island two, Connecticut three, New York two, Wisconsin three, Califor-
nia one.
' Twenty Years of Congress, Elaine, vol. i. p. 101.
1 On the last ballot Virginia gave Scott eight, Tennessee and Missour,
each three votes.
CH. III.] THE WHIG CONVENTION 257
of most of the Fillmore delegates, Webster was preferable
to Scott. Considering the cordial relations existing between
the President and Secretary of State, the fact that they were
both in Washington, and that a Sunday intervened between
the days of balloting, it may seem surprising that their
friends did not get together and decide to concentrate their
votes. The President had written a letter withdrawing his
name from the consideration of the convention. This had
been confided in secrecy to the delegate from Buffalo, N. Y.,
with instructions to present it whenever he should deem
proper, but it was never laid before the convention.1 But,
in truth, it was impossible to deliver over the whole Fill-
more strength to Webster. A determined effort was made
to nominate the Massachusetts statesman, and his chances
were greater than the number of his votes would seem to
indicate. He had strong supporters at the South, among
whom were Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens.3
Nearly all the Southern delegates, however, were instructed
to vote for Fillmore, and this they felt bound to do, until it
should be apparent that he could not be nominated. This
point was seemingly reached on Saturday. The Southern
friends of Webster made a careful canvass and found that of
the one hundred and twenty-eight votes for Fillmore, which
was his average number, twenty-two of them would probably
go to Scott when the break came, but that one hundred and
six could be relied upon for Webster. This number they
promised if Webster would come to the line of Maryland
forty strong, which would make one hundred and forty-six ;
he was always sure, in addition, of one vote from California,
and one hundred and forty-seven was the number necessary
for a choice. The Northern managers worked industriously
to bring this about. They endeavored to win over enough
from the New York delegation, but that was controlled by
1 The Republic, Ireland, vol. xiii. p. 314.
1 See The War between the States, A. H. Stephens, vol. i. p. 336 ; vol.
ii, p. 239.
L— 17
258 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
Seward and would not quit Scott. They plied the Maine
delegates, who coldly refused their aid to the greatest son
of New England, for the defeat of Webster was a consum-
mation as devoutly wished for as the success of Scott.
Powerful and almost tearful appeals were made to Dawes
and Lee to give their votes for Webster, if only for one bal-
lot, in order that the Massachusetts delegation might be
unanimous ; but they absolutely declined to do so, and voted
for Scott to the end. It was then impossible to secure the
requisite number of Northern votes, and the Southern dele-
gates, unless they could be assured that their accession would
nominate Webster, would not leave Fillmore.1
Either before the convention met or immediately on its
assembling, a tacit bargain had been made between the
Northern managers for Scott and some Southern delegates.
It is evident from the debates in Congress that Scott had
influential supporters at the South, many of whom did not
scruple to declare their preference,2 and while the congres-
sional politicians might have been willing to take him with-
out platform or personal pledges, they knew it was idle to
think of carrying a Southern State for him unless the con-
vention should declare the Fugitive Slave law a finality. It
was therefore arranged that in case the Scott men should
1 See an article entitled " Doings of the Convention " in the Boston
Courier, June 25th, of which the editor said this article was "furnished
by a gentleman whose character and standing in this community are a
guarantee for its fidelity and fairness." This article was attributed to
Choate and to a Mr. Swan, but it was probably written by William Hay-
den, a delegate, and a former editor of the Boston Atlas. The Spring-
field Republican of June 28th copied the article entire, and said : "We are
assured by another Massachusetts delegate that, so far as it goes, its
statements are strictly true." See also Life of Choate, Brown, p. 279, and
Reminiscences, Peter Harvey, p. 239. " It was stated by the chairman of the
Mississippi delegation that nine-tenths of the Southern delegates were
willing to leave Fillmore and go for Webster, although they were deterred
from doing so for fear that when their phalanx was broken, enough del-
egates would go to Scott to nominate him."— Boston Daily Advertiser.
9 See Congressional Globe, vol. xxiv. p. 1077 ct seq.,&lso p. 1159.
CH. III.] THE WHIG C01
support the declaration of principles agreeable to the South,
the Southern delegates, on the breaking-up of the Fillmore
vote, would go to Scott in numbers sufficient to nominate
him. The vote at that time against the platform was by
no means a representation of the entire Northern opposi-
tion, for many delegates sacrificed their cherished opinions
in order to make sure the nomination of their candidate.
The New York Tribune spoke for a large number of faith-
ful Whigs when it said that while there was no probability
that the Fugitive Slave law would be altered by Congress
during the present generation, to declare it a finality was
irritating and useless. Agitation will not be stopped by
resolution, the editor argued, but if the hunting of fugitive
slaves at the North should cease, it might be checked.1
Scott was a Virginian by birth, a gentleman of honor-
able character and conservative principles, but his claim
to the nomination was solely on account of his brilliant
campaign in the Mexican war. As one of his enthusiastic
advocates said in the Senate, he was " greater than Cortez
in his triumphant, glorious, and almost miraculous inarch
from Yera Cruz to the old city of the Aztecs." 2 It would
be unfair to judge the man from his autobiography, for it
was written in a garrulous old age, and is the most egotis-
tical of memoirs.3 At this time he was inflated with vanity
and puft'ed up with his own importance. It should be the
prayer of his friends that he may be estimated by his ac-
tions rather than by his words, for to his adversary it was
a delight that he had written a book. Many of the Whig
politicians had a superstition that only a general could lead
them to victory, for they had never been successful except
under Harrison and Taylor. If it were military glory which
1 The Tribune, June 22d. In addition to the authorities already cited
I have used in this account of the Whig convention the New York Trib-
une ; History of Presidential Elections, Stanwood; Memories of Rufus
Choate, Neilson ; Life of Webster, Curtis, vol. ii.
2 Mangum, of North Carolina, April 15th.
3 The autobiography of Lieutenant-General Scott was written in 1863.
260 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
won the populace, why was not Scott, a greater general than
either, an eminently strong candidate ?
Fillmore took his defeat with equanimity, but to Webster
the action of the convention was the eclipse of the bright
hopes with which he had long deluded himself. The ac-
count given by his Boswell1 of the great man's interview
with Choate immediately after the convention is inexpressi-
bly sad. The deep grief exhibited on that handsome face,
the studied avoidance of the subject of which his mind was
too full for utterance, at the silent meal of which the three
partook, and then the hour's private conversation, made the
scene linger long afterwards in the memory of Choate as the
most mournful experience of his life.2 The words of the
Preacher, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," must have come
to the great statesman with a force felt only by deep and
strong natures. Had he served the law or literature3 with
half the zeal with which he served the public, he would not
in his age have been left naked to his enemies. What a
comment it is on the disappointments that hedge about po-
litical life that the author of the reply to Hayne and of the
Bunker Hill and Plymouth orations should sigh in vain for
the position to which so many mediocre men have been
called ! It is easy to censure ambition like Webster's, yet
we know that unless, in a democracy, the best statesmen de-
sire the highest office in the State, political dry rot has set
in — a fact which it is our fashion to ignore when we moral-
ize on the desire for the presidency that lays such strong
hold of our public men. Many writers who believe that
Webster sold himself to the South gloat over the fact that
1 Peter Harvey, Lodge so calls him, p. 95. 2 Harvey, p. 195.
s "I make no progress towards accomplishing an object which has en-
gaged my contemplations for many years, A History of the Constitution
of the United States and President Washington's Administration. This
project has long had existence as an idea ; and as an idea I fear it is
likely to die."— Webster to Edward Everett, Nov. 28th, 1848, Private
Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 289.
CH. III.] DEATH OF CLAY 261
he did not receive a single Southern vote in the convention,
and, with reckless disregard of his physical condition, aver
that the disappointment at not receiving the nomination
actually killed him.1
The usual noisy rejoicings over the result of the conven-
tion disturbed the founder of the "Whig party, Clay, as he
lay upon his death-bed in the National Hotel at Washing-
ton. He had come to the capital at the opening of Con-
gress, but had only been able to go once to the Senate. His
disease was consumption, and death had now stared him in
the face many months. He had a sincere Christian faith,
and, retaining his mental faculties to the last, awaited with
composure the inevitable summons which came on the 29th
day of June. As he had been loved, so was he mourned by
the people of the nation. The funeral progress was made
through many cities on the way to Lexington. New York
testified its grief by a most imposing demonstration. The
city was draped in mourning, and appropriate inscriptions
were everywhere displayed; the favorite one, "the man
who would rather be right than President," seemed to sum
up best the life of Clay. Minute-guns were fired from the
forts in the bay, and bells tolled, as the long procession ac-
companied the funeral-car through the streets, marching to
the dirge and the mournful measure of the muffled drums.
Never had the city seen such a general manifestation of
popular grief. Political differences were forgotten. A great
countryman was dead, and he was mourned not as a Whig,
but as an American.8 Everywhere those who had loved and
admired him, those who had been swayed by his voice and
influenced by his words, paid a last respectful tribute to his
remains. The lament of the nation was loud and sincere, and
Kentucky mourned for him as a mother sorrows for a son.3
1 " It was the fashion in certain quarters to declare that it killed him ;
but this was manifestly absurd." — Life of Webster, Lodge, p. 340; see
what follows. 9 New York Herald, July 21st.
3 For an account of the obsequies, see Last Years of Henry Clay, Colton,
p. 438 et ante.
262 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
Scott's letter of acceptance was published a few days after
the adjournment of the convention. " I accept," he wrote,
" the nomination with the resolutions annexed." 1 The ac-
tion of the convention was coldly received by the Whigs.
Those who liked the platform did not like the candidate^
and those who were warm for the candidate objected de-
cidedly to the platform.2 Many thought : the voice is Ja-
cob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. Seward
was the political juggler, or Mephistopheles, as some called
him, and the result was regarded as his triumph. The no-
tion prevailed that Scott, if he became President, would be
controlled by Seward, and this was certain to hurt the can-
didate at the South. Seward therefore, five days after the
nomination, took the unusual course of writing a public let-
ter, in which he said he would not ask or accept " any pub-
lic station or preferment whatever at the hands of the Pres-
ident of the United States, whether that President were
Winfield Scott or any other man." 3
Some of the prominent Whig newspapers of Georgia de-
clined to sustain Scott, because his election would mean Free-
soilism and Sewardism.4 An address was issued on the 3d
of July by Alexander H. Stephens, Kobert Toombs, and five
other Whig representatives, in which they flatly refused to
support Scott because he was " the favorite candidate of the
Free-soil wing of the Whig party," and he had not clearly
said that he regarded the compromise measures as a final-
ity.6 The business men of New York city disliked the nom-
1 The letter was published in the National Intelligencer of June 29th.
It is dated June 24th. He received his official notification the 22d.
2 The phrase " "We accept the candidate, but spit upon the platform,"
became very common among Northern "Whigs.
8 Se ward's Works, vol. iii. p. 416. The letter is dated June 26th.
* The Augusta Chronicle and the Savannah Republican. The Savannah
News disliked the nomination exceedingly.
s Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 208; McCluskey's Political Text-book, p. 682.
Three of the signers were from Georgia, two from Alabama, one each from
Mississippi and Virginia.
CH.HI.] WEBSTER AT BOSTON 263
ination, as they were afraid of Seward's influence. There
was no enthusiasm in Boston and Massachusetts ; the State
was Whig to the core, but the active people and most of the
newspapers were disaffected because Webster had not been
nominated. In other places, also, there was discontent at
the turn affairs had taken.1
A Union convention of Georgia and a Native American
convention, held at Trenton, N. J., nominated Webster for
President ; later, a Webster electoral ticket was put into the
field in Massachusetts ; but he neither accepted nor declined
any of these nominations. The happiest day of this, the
last year of Webster's life, was the 9th of July, when he re-
ceived an enthusiastic reception and heart-felt greeting from
the citizens of Boston. It was the fashion then to compare
all demonstrations with the one made in honor of Lafayette
in l&M,2 and those who took part in both declared Webster's
reception much more imposing than that given to the gal-
lant Frenchman.3 The estrangement between Massachusetts
and her favorite son, which had existed since the speech of
the Yth of March, had passed away. Webster's address was
in exquisite taste. He did not touch the political questions
of the day, but he paid an eloquent tribute to Boston and
to Massachusetts, for he was as proud of Massachusetts as
was she of her great statesman.4
1 " The dissatisfaction in the early part of the summer took a somewhat
active form in the States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia. Tennes-
see, North Carolina, and Massachusetts." — Life of Webster, Curtis, vol. ii.
p. 650.
2 Those who are interested in these matters will find an entertaining
account of this in Josiah Quincy's Figures of the Past.
3 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 628.
4 In Theodore Parker's Scrap-Book, in the Boston Public Library, is an
account of this reception to Webster, taken from the Boston Atlas of
July 10th. Among the men who rode in the carriages was George T-
Curtis. Parker underscores his name, and writes in lead pencil : UN. B.
That Nemesis is never asleep. Webster must be attended with the Kid-
napper. The Sims brigade ought also to have been on parade. The
court-house should have been festooned with chains."
264 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
"While the candidacy of Scott repelled the most conserva-
tive Whigs, the platform made it impossible for the Free-
soilers to come to his support. They held a convention in
August and nominated Hale for President and Julian for
Vice-President. They epigrammatized their principles in the
words " Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men."
The drift of anti-slavery opinion, as well as its varying
shades, is illustrated by the fact that Henry Wilson, Charles
F. Adams, of Massachusetts, and Giddings supported Hale,
while Wade, Seward, and Greeley advocated the election of
Scott. All of these men were of Whig antecedents.
The Democrats soon recovered from the surprise of
Pierce's nomination, and began to feel a genuine enthusiasm
for their candidate, and for their declaration of principles.
They were joyful to have the party reunited; they were
certain that the platform represented the prevailing senti-
ment ; and when they had read up about Pierce, they were
satisfied that he was not a vulnerable candidate. The men
who were prominent before the Baltimore convention did
not delay the announcement that they would give Pierce
their cordial support. The New York Evening Post, which
upheld powerfully the Free -soil movement of 1848, and
whose editor had strong anti- slavery views, now advo-
cated Pierce, and was followed by other journals which got
their cue from the metropolitan organ.1 The argument
of the Post, that the Democratic candidate and platform
were really more favorable to liberty than the Whig, was
somewhat strained ; the editor failed to look the situation
squarely in the face.2 He was, however, acting in perfect
harmony with the prominent New York Democrats who
had, four years previously, bolted the regular nomination.
Van Buren himself had announced that he should vote for
Pierce.8 Yet it was perfectly evident that anti-slavery men
1 Life of William Cullen Bryant, Godwin, vol. ii. pp. 43, 62.
2 See especially an article cited in National Intelligencer of July 15th,
3 Letter of July 1st, Life of Pierce, Bartlett, p. 295.
CH. III.] SUMNER AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 265
had more to hope from the success of the Whigs than of the
Democrats.1 Chase, although still a Democrat, would not
support Pierce, but gave his adherence to the Free-soil nom-
inations, and tried hard, though in vain, to bring to their
support his former New York associates.2
Although the session of Congress lasted until August 31st,
1852, its proceedings are devoid of interest, as is apt to be
the case in the year devoted to the making of a new Presi-
dent. "A politician," writes Horace Mann from Washing-
ton, " does not sneeze without reference to the next Presi-
dency. All things are carried to that tribunal for decision."
"Congress does little else but intrigue for the respective
candidates." " Our debates lately are mostly on the presi-
dential question." "Our political caldron is beginning to
seethe vehemently." *
But there was one senator who felt that he owed alle-
giance to neither political party, and who, with an entire
disregard of the effect his words might have on the fortune
of either candidate, was determined to have his say. In May,
Sumner presented a memorial from the representatives of
the Society of Friends in New England, asking the repeal
of the Fugitive Slave law. In introducing it he made a few
remarks, laying down this aphorism : " Freedom, and not
slavery, is national; while slavery, and not freedom, is sec-
tional." This sententious truth proclaimed by the inde-
pendent senator was destined to be of greater worth, even
as a party shibboleth, than the verbose declarations of the
Democratic and Whig conventions. In July, Sumner wanted
leave to introduce a resolution instructing the judiciary com-
mittee to consider the expediency of reporting a bill for the
immediate repeal of the Fugitive Slave act ; but permission
was refused, only ten senators voting for it. The short de-
1 This is well stated by Horace Mann, Letter of June 24th, Life, p. 370.
2 Life of Chase, Schuckers, p. 130.
3 Letters of Feb. 3d, March 27th, April 24th, May 8th, Life, pp. 358,
362, 363.
266 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1S52
bate on the subject is interesting from the fact of one of the
senators from Mississippi1 stating that a convention of his
State had solemnly declared that the repeal of this law
would be regarded as sufficient ground for the dissolution
of the Union. This, he said, was no idle threat. While it
was true that his people did not think this act of any essen-
tial benefit, as slaves from Mississippi seldom escaped, and
when they did the cost and trouble of recapturing them
amounted to more than their value, yet the repeal " would
be an act of bad faith," and show that the North would not
live up to any bargain. One of the senators from Georgia2
followed in a similar strain. His State stood pledged to dis-
solve the ties which bound her to the Union the moment the
Fugitive Slave law was repealed, and this interdependence
he pointed impressively by quoting the prophetic saying of
the pilgrims :
" While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall."
Although Sumner failed to get a hearing this day, he was
resolved to speak before the session came to an end. Five
days before the final adjournment an amendment to one of
the appropriation bills was under consideration, which pro-
vided for the payment of extraordinary expenses incurred
in executing the laws of the United States. It was plain
that the intent was to have the general government bear the
cost of capturing runaway negroes. Sumner moved that
the Fugitive Slave act be excepted from the operation of this
amendment, and that the act itself be repealed. This gave
him the opportunity to speak on the question, which, in his
view, far transcended the importance of President-making.
" I could not," he said, " allow this session to reach its
close, without making or seizing an opportunity to declare
myself openly against the usurpation, injustice, and cruelty
of the late enactment by Congress for the recovery of fugi-
Brooke. 8 Charlton.
CH. III.] SUMNER AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 267
tive slaves." He made an elaborate argument in favor of
his thesis that slavery was sectional, not national. He
showed that this was true from a legal point of view ; it
was historically confirmed ; the statesmen who made the
nation bore witness to its truth ; the church and the col-
leges supported the statesmen; the literature of the land
condemned slavery ; and it was abhorred by the "outspoken,
unequivocal heart of the country " at the time the Constitu-
tion was adopted.
He examined the history of the fugitive slave clause of
the Constitution, and pointed out that it was not one of the
compromises; he averred that the Fugitive Slave act of
1793 " was not originally suggested by any difficulty or
anxiety touching fugitives from labor." He argued that
the act of 1850 was unconstitutional, dissecting it with se-
verity, and exposing its merciless provisions in terse state-
ments. Congress had no power to pass such a law, he
maintained ; but if it had, it was bound by a provision of the
Constitution to give the fugitive a jury trial. " Even if this
act could claim any validity or apology under the Constitu-
tion, which it cannot, it lacks that essential support in the
public conscience of the States where it is to he enforced, which
is the life of all law, and without which any law must become
a dead letter"
As pertinent to the subject, he introduced an original his-
torical document in the shape of a letter from Washington,
which had never before seen the light. One of Washington's
slaves had fled to New Hampshire. In a letter to the col-
lector at Portsmouth, after describing the fugitive and ex-
pressing the desire of her mistress, Mrs. Washington, for her
return, he says : " I do not mean, however, by this request
that violent measures should be used, as would excite a mob
or riot — ivhich might he the case if she has adherents — or even
uneasy sensations in the minds of well-disposed citizens.
Kather than either of these should happen, I would forego
her services altogether ; and the example also, which is of
infinite more importance."
268 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
The orator impressively added : " Sir, the existing slave
act cannot be enforced without violating the precept of
Washington. Not merely uneasy sensations among well-
disposed persons, but rage, tumult, commotion, mob, riot,
violence, death, gush from its fatal, overflowing fountains.
Not a case occurs without endangering the public peace."
He closed with an application of the higher-law doctrine
to the subject. " The slave act violates the Constitution
and shocks the public conscience. With modesty, and yet
with firmness, let me add, sir, it offends against the divine
law. No such enactment can be entitled to support. As
the throne of God is above every earthly throne, so are his
laws and statutes above all the laws and statutes of man." '
This was Sumner's first elaborate oration in the Senate.
He spoke for four hours in an elegant and finished manner.2
It was the speech of a lawyer, a scholar, an historian, and a
moralist, for he had the equipment of them all. To intel-
lectual strength and moral feeling was joined the physical
courage that dared anything. Here was a new and danger-
ous foe of slavery. Clemens, of Alabama, with a levity cer-
tainly not shown by his Southern associates, thought the
speech unworthy of notice; "the ravings of a maniac," he
said, "may sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a
puppy never did any harm." Hale complimented the ora-
tor ; he had placed himself " side by side with the first ora-
tors of antiquity, and as far ahead of any living American
orator as freedom is ahead of slavery." Chase declared that
the speech " will be received as an emphatic protest against
the slavish doctrine of finality in legislation which two of
the political conventions recently held have joined in forc-
ing upon the country ;" this speech " will mark an era in
American history." Horace Mann wrote home : " The 26th
of August, 1852, redeemed the 7th of March, 1850." 3
For Sumner's amendment there were only four votes, viz. :
1 These quotations are from vol. xxv. Congressional Globe.
2 Life of Horace Maun, p. 381. 3 Ibid., p. 381.
CH. III.] SUMNER AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 269
Chase, Hale, Sumner, and Wade. It was noted as signifi-
cant that Seward was not present during this debate, but
there was nothing inconsistent in his not caring at this time
to make a record upon a question of no practical value, for
it was clearly impossible to repeal the Fugitive Slave law,
and in a political campaign, where report spoke of him as
the exponent of the Whig candidate, it would have been
impolitic for him to enter upon this question. He knew
well enough that the anti-slavery cause had more to hope
from Scott than from Pierce, and, in his view, it was a duty
of anti-slavery men to work and vote for the success of the
Whig party. William Cullen Bryant, a keen observer and,
though supporting Pierce, a strong opponent of slavery,
thought this effort of Sumner useless. Bryant undoubtedly
expressed the best political wisdom of the time when he
wrote : " I see not the least chance of a repeal or change of
the Fugitive Slave law. Its fate is to fall into disuse. All
political organizations to procure its repeal are attempts at
an impracticability. We must make it odious, and prevent
it from being enforced." '
No presidential campaign is so hopeless that the weaker
candidate and his friends do not at some time during its
progress sincerely entertain anticipations of success.3 In a
few weeks after the nomination of Scott, the bitter disap-
pointment of Webster's and Fillmore's friends had, in some
degree, subsided, and the faithful party-men began to rally
to the support of the regular nominee. The Scott managers
tried to work up enthusiasm for their candidate in the man-
ner that had been so successful in 1840. Scott was a greater
general than Harrison. It seemed possible that Lundy's
Lane and Mexico might .arouse as great enthusiasm as had
been inspired by the watchword of Tippecanoe. As a be-
ginning, a mass-meeting was held on the anniversary of the
1 Life of Bryant, Godwin, vol. ii. p. 63.
1 Rufus Choate, as late as Sept. 26th, " thought Scott's chances of an
election were very good." See Reminiscences by Parker, p. 259.
270 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
battle as near as possible to the classic spot of Lundy's Lane.
The gathering hosts could not assemble on the,, battle-field
where Scott had so gallantly and successfully; fought, for
that was in Canada ; they therefore came together at Ni-
agara Falls. Delegations arrived from many States. Two
hundred and twenty officers and soldiers of the war of 1812
were present, and some of them had also taken part in the
battle which they were now glad to celebrate. The meet-
ing lasted two days ; the number present varied decidedly,
according as the count was Democratic or Whig, but no
doubt remains that it was an imposing assemblage. Thos.
Ewing, of Ohio, acted as president of the day, and among
the speakers were Henry Winter Davis, Greeley, and Will-
iam Schouler. The New York Tribune judged that it sur-
passed the most enthusiastic of the Harrison meetings of
1840.'
Nevertheless, this was a quiet campaign. There was no
principle at stake. The New York Tribune, which could
not accept the Whig platform, and yet in deference to its
position as a party organ kept its anti-slavery views in the
background, dragged into the canvass the tariff question.
Elaborate articles constantly appeared in its columns, advo-
cating the principle of protection, and endeavoring to prove
that the economic interests of the people would be better
cared for by the Whigs than by the Democrats. The Trib-
une quoted the approval of Pierce by the London Times,
" as a valuable practical ally to the commercial policy " of
England,2 and added, let Americans "choose between the
British and American candidate." In another issue, with an
eye to an important part of the foreign vote, the editor asks :
1 July 29th. The meeting was July 27th and 28th.
2 Tribune, July 21st. " We greatly prefer General Pierce to either Gen-
eral Cass, Mr. Douglas, or Mr. Buchanan; ... to descend to minor par-
ticulars in his political creed, he is at once a man of New England and
yet a decided champion of free trade." — London Times, June 24th, cited
in New York Herald, July 9th.
CH. III.] THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 271
" Will Irishmen support British policy ?" ' The New York
Evening Post took up the gauntlet, arguing gravely that the
cause of freedom, of trade was a vital one, and that it de-
manded the election of Pierce. Yet everybody knew that
Greeley and Bryant were stifling their honest convictions ;
that instead of combating one another's economic notions,
they ought to have joined in denunciation of the Fugitive
Slave law and of the platform that declared it a finality.
The discussion of the tariff attracted no interest, and had
no appreciable effect upon the result.2
The campaign soon became characterized by apathy.
After the Lundy's Lane celebration, the Whig mass-meet-
ings were small and lacked enthusiasm, while those of the
Democrats were not much, if any, better.3 Evening meet-
ings were held, and idle crowds were attracted by torchlight
processions and amused by transparencies which paraded
the virtues of one or set forth the failings of the other can-
didate. But the heart of the people was not in it. The
cynical chronicler of the times wrote : " It is all a contest
between the politicians for the spoils."4
As there could be no sober discussion of principles, the
campaign degenerated into one where personal detraction
of the candidates became the feature. Pierce was called a
drunkard ; he was said to be a coward ; the story ran that
on the field of Churubusco fear overcame him and he fainted.
It did not matter that the charge of cowardice was effectu-
ally disproved by the official report of General Scott ;5 the
partisan journals would not retract the slander, and a favor-
ite doggerel ditty had for its burden the contrast between
the bravery of Scott and the cowardice of Pierce.6 At the
1 Sept. 9th. 2 See New York Herald, Aug. 21st.
3 Ibid., Sept. 19th. 4 Ibid., Aug. 21st.
5 See New York Herald, July 22d ; Autobiography of General Scott,
p. 494 ; Life of Pierce, Hawthorne, p. 102.
6 " Two generals are in the field,
Frank Pierce and Winfield Scott,
272 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
South, strangely enough, Pierce was charged with being an
abolitionist, though garbled extracts from an imperfect re-
port of a speech were all that could give color to this impu-
tation. He was also accused of being opposed to religious
liberty. There had been until recently a provision in the
New Hampshire constitution that certain State offices should
be held only by Protestants. It was said that Pierce did
not desire the removal of this religious test, while, in truth,
he had made continued efforts for that very object.1 His
utterances in general had not been of the kind to attract
large attention, but it was evident from his public letter of
May 27th that he was inclined to side with the South rather
than with the North on the sectional question ;2 and it is a
perfect indication of public sentiment at the North that this
most serious objection to Pierce was little used.
The charge against Scott which had the greatest influence
on the result has been already alluded to : he was the Sew-
ard candidate and tinctured with Free-soilism. Accused of
Nativism, the basis for the charge was a letter more than
ten years old to the American party men of Philadelphia.
" I now hesitate," the general had written, " between ex-
Some think that Frank's a fighting man,
And some think he is not.
'Tis said that when in Mexico,
While leading on his force,
He took a sudden fainting fit,
And tumbled off his horse.
"But gallant Scott has made his mark
On many a bloody plain,
And patriot hearts beat high to greet
The Chief of Lundy's Lane.
And Chippewa is classic ground,
Our British neighbors know,
And if you'd hear of later deeds,
Go ask in Mexico."
-From Theodore Parker's Scrap-book, Boston Public Library.
1 Life of Pierce, Hawthorne, p. 123. 2 Life of Pierce, Bartlett, p. 245.
CH. III.] THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 273
tending the period of residence before naturalization and a
total repeal of all acts of Congress on the subject : my mind
inclines to the latter." ' The large Irish and German immi-
gration of the past few years had given the foreign vote an
importance never before attached to it, and this is the first
presidential campaign in which we light upon those now fa-
miliar efforts to cajole the German and Irish citizens. It is
apparent that Scott's opinion was a dangerous expression
for a presidential candidate.
Scott's vanity and egotism became a familiar subject of
ridicule, and the nickname of " Fuss and Feathers," given him
in the army, was circulated gleefully by the Democrats.
An example of the inclination of Americans to look on the
humorous side of things was shown in this campaign. At
the beginning of the Mexican war, when Scott, the general
of the army, was, as he relates, in the habit of spending fif-
teen to eighteen hours a day in his office, he happened one
day to be absent at the moment when the Secretary of War
called. In explanation, Scott wrote that regular meals be-
ing out of the question, he had only stepped out to take u a
hasty plate of soup." On another occasion, when it was
proposed to send him to the Eio Grande, he, appreciating
the Democratic jealousy of Whig generals, represented to
the administration that unless he could have their steady
support for his plans, it would be useless to go, " for soldiers
had a far greater dread of a fire upon the rear than of the
most formidable enemy in front." 2 It is not easy to per-
ceive why "a hasty plate of soup" and "a fire upon the
rear" should have seemed so ridiculous; but these words
of the stately general had, nevertheless, their place among
the materials of the canvass, and wero the cause of great
merriment to the Democrats.
It is pleasant to record some of the amenities of this cani-
1 Boston Post, June 30th ; New York Herald, July 15th. The date of
the letter was Nov. 10th, 1841.
2 Autobiography of Lieutenant-General Scott, p. 385.
I.— 18
274 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
paign. A scurrilous letter from Concord, charging Pierce
with gross intemperance, having appeared in the New York
Tribune, the editor the next day apologized for its insertion,
and said that had he known its character, it would not have
been printed ; he added that while General Pierce was not
" a temperance man in our sense of the term, we know noth-
ing with regard to his habits that should subject him to pub-
lic reprehension." J Martin Van Buren wrote : " The "Whig
nominee, in that chivalrous spirit which belongs to his char-
acter, has commenced his first political campaign with a
frank admission of the private worth and claims to public
confidence of his opponent — a concession which I am very
sure General Pierce will be at all times ready to recipro-
cate." 2 Hawthorne, in his campaign life of Pierce, spoke
of Scott as " an illustrious soldier, indeed, a patriot, and one
indelibly stamped into the history of the past." 3 The New
York Herald, which supported Pierce, said : " For the pri-
vate reputation of General Scott, as well as for his military
character, we have always had the highest regard and deep-
est veneration. He is a hero — the pink of chivalry in his
profession ; and as a gentleman in social life, he is without
stain or blemish." *
The elation of the Whigs at the success of their big
Lundy's Lane meeting was of short duration, for the August
State elections were favorable to the Democrats. The Free-
soil convention followed hard upon and its nominations
augured ill for the Whigs. While this party called itself
the Free - soil Democracy, it was patent that it would this
year draw away more Whigs than Democrats in the doubt-
ful States of New York and Ohio. The September elec-
tions afforded the Whigs no comfort. They cast about how
the tide of public sentiment might be turned, and it was de-
termined that General Scott should make a tour of the coun-
try and show himself to the people, in the hope that his mag-
1 New York Tribune, June llth. 8 Life of Pierce, Bartlett, p. 294.
8 Life of Pierce, Hawthorne, p. 137. 4 Sept. 26th.
OH. III.] THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 275
nificent martial presence might kindle enthusiasm. Although
Harrison had made several speeches in 1840, it was con-
sidered beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate to
take the stump; but a pretext was found for this proposed
journey. An act of Congress had made the general of the
army one of a board to examine Blue Lick Springs, Ky.
with a view to locate there the Western military asylum
for sick and disabled soldiers ; and, as Scott took with him
two associates, this was the avowed object of his leaving
the headquarters at Washington.1 His first important stop
was at Pittsburgh, where he made an off-hand speech, ex-
pressing his love for Pennsylvania on account of the patriot-
ism and many great virtues of the people.
In 1852, the only rail route from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati,
which were necessary points of the journey, was via Cleve-
land, and this fitted well the object of the political mana-
gers, for it gave their candidate the opportunity to traverse
the State of Ohio, which the Free-soil nominations had put in
the doubtful column. Scott was received at Cleveland in a
drenching rain by crowds of people. " I was pained," he
said in his harangue, " that while I was comfortably shel-
tered in a covered carriage, you should have been exposed
to rain and mud." A voice in the crowd, bidding him wel-
come, with pronounced Hibernian accent, suggested the pro-
priety of explaining that he had changed his notions about
Nativism, upon which Scott warmly exclaimed : " I hear that
rich brogue — I love to hear it ; it makes me remember noble
deeds of Irishmen, many of whom I have led to battle and to
victory."
The country between Cleveland and Columbus was thick-
ly settled, and crowds turned out at every station to greet
the candidate and general. He repeated at Shelby what he
had many times said : " I have not come to solicit your votes.
I go on a mission of public charity." At Columbus he made
1 See the indignant article in the New York Tribune of Sept. 27th, deny-
ing that Scott had taken the stump.
276 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
a spirited and manly speech to a deputation of Germans,
denying that he had hanged fifteen of their countrymen in
Mexico.
In all of his many addresses> Scott steered clear of politi-
cal questions ; he thanked the people for their hearty greet-
ings ; he praised their cities and their States. Ohio was
" the Empire State of the West ;" Kentucky was " famous
for the valor of her troops and for the beauty of her daugh-
ters ;" Indiana was " one of the great Northwestern States —
one of the States most devoted to the Union — one of its
main props and supports." At Madison, Ind., he again had
compliments for our adopted as well as our native-born
citizens. " I have," he said, " heard several times since I
landed on your shores the rich brogue of the Irish and the
foreign accent of the German. They are welcome to my ear,
for they remind me of many a well-fought and hard-won
field on which I have been nobly supported by the sons of
Germany and of Ireland." Remaining over Sunday in this
city, he showed his liberality by attending mass at the Cath-
olic church in the morning, and the service of the Episco-
pal church in the evening.
Scott left Ohio on his return trip just before the October
State election. Pennsylvania and Indiana voted on the same
day for State officers. All three went Democratic, and this
indicated beyond doubt that Pierce would carry them in
November, which would make his election certain. The
Whig cause was not helped by the stumping tour of their
candidate. Scott was far from happy in his off-hand ad-
dresses ; all but one were commonplace and some afforded
fit subjects for ridicule. The New York Herald published
them as a Democratic campaign document under the title of
" The Modern Epic. Fifty-two Speeches by Major-General
Win field Scott, embracing a Narrative of a Trip to the Blue
Licks and back to Washington in Search of a Site for a Mil-
itary Hospital. The Iliad of the Nineteenth Century." '
1 In this relation of the tour of General Scott, I have carefully compared
CH. III.] ELECTION OF PIERCE 277
Instead of travelling around to be stared at by gaping
crowds, Pierce spent the period of his candidacy in dignified
retreat at his Concord home, varied only by a short visit to
the Isles of Shoals, where he enjoyed the companionship and
unrestrained talk of his intimate friend Hawthorne.1 He
had occasion to write a few letters and make a few" short
speeches. His most important effort was when the news of
Webster's death came : he paid a feeling tribute to the per-
sonal friend, the son of New Hampshire, and the American
citizen.
That Pierce was elected in November surprised few;
that his victory should be so overwhelming astounded Dem-
ocrats as well as Whigs. Scott carried only four States —
Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Pierce
had 254 electoral votes and Scott 42. It was the largest
majority since the era of good feeling when every elector
but one cast his vote for Monroe; and the majority in the
popular vote of Pierce over Scott was more than 200,000 —
a larger majority than had been received since record was
made of the popular vote. The Free-soil following showed
a marked falling-off as compared with 1848.2
The reason of Democratic success was because that party
unreservedly endorsed the compromise, and in its approval
neither platform nor candidate halted. Other causes con-
tributed to increase the majorities of Pierce, but the greater
fidelity of the Democratic party to the settlement of 1850
was in itself sufficient for his election. The country was
tired of slavery agitation. The people were convinced that
the status of every foot of territory in the United States, as
regards slavery, was fixed ; that it had ceased to be a polit-
the accounts and reports of speeches in the New York Tribune and New
York Herald.
1 See Hawthorne and his Wife, vol. i. p. 466 ; Hawthorne's American
Note-books, vol. ii.
* History of Presidential Elections, Stanwood. Free-soil vote, 1848,
291,263; 1852,155,825.
278 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
ical question. It is true that a part of this settlement was
a slave-catching bill, obnoxious to the North ; but as it was a
part of the bargain, it must be enforced in good faith. The
benefit in politics, thought the majority, seldom comes un-
mixed. With the great good of forever settling the slavery
question, it is surely only a small ill that the constitutional
provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves shall be carried
out. Thus thought, after the election, nearly everybody who
voted for Pierce ; and the majority of voters for Scott did
not differ widely from this opinion.
The business interests of the country were on the side of
the Democrats. The Tribune complained that the mercan-
tile Whigs of New York City either kept away from the
polls or voted for Pierce, because they would not endorse
the Seward candidate.1 Trade was good, the country was
very prosperous, and this state of affairs would likely con-
tinue under settled political conditions, of which there ap-
peared to the commercial interests greater promise under
Democratic than Whig rule.
The Democratic party seemed to have a noble mission
confided to it. It had control of the Senate and the House,
and the country had now given into its charge the execu-
tive department. It had gained the confidence of the peo-
ple because it professed to be the party essentially opposed
to the agitation of slavery ; because it was the party of pac-
ification ; and because it insisted upon observing sacredly the
compromises of the Constitution, and all other compromises.
For a proper understanding of our history, the events of
the decade between 1850 and 1860 must be considered in their
bearing on the success of the Republican party in the latter
year. One of the most important causes that led to this re-
sult was the publication of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Of the
literary forces that aided in bringing about the immense
revolution in public sentiment between 1852 and 1860, we
1 New York Tribune, Nov. 8th.
CH. III.] "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 279
may affirm with confidence that by far the most weighty
was the influence spread abroad by this book.
This story, when published as a serial in the National
Era, an anti-slavery newspaper at Washington, attracted
little attention, but after it was given to the world in book
form in March, 1852, it proved the most successful novel
ever written. The author felt deeply that the Fugitive
Slave law was unjust, and that there was cruelty in its ex-
ecution ; this inspired her to pour out her soul in a protest
against slavery. She thought that if she could only make
the world see slavery as she saw it,1 her object would be ac-
complished ; she would then have induced people to think
right on the subject.
The book was composed under the most disheartening
circumstances. Worn out with the care of many young
children ; overstrained by the domestic trials of a large
household ; worried because her husband's small income did
not meet their frugal needs ; eking out the poor professor's
salary by her literary work in a house too small to afford a
study for the author — under such conditions there came the
inspiration of her life. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was an out-
burst of passion against the wrong done to a race, and it
was written with an intensity of feeling that left no room
for care in the artistic construction of the story. The style
is commonplace, the language is often trite and inelegant,
sometimes degenerating into slang, and the humor is
strained. Yet Macaulay, a severe critic and lover of liter-
ary form, was so impressed by the powerful book that he
considered it on the whole "the most valuable addition that
America has made to English literature ;" a and Lowell felt
"that the secret of Mrs. Stowe's power lay in that same
genius by which the great successes in creative literature
have always been achieved." 3
1 Mrs. Stowe lived in Cincinnati from 1832 to 1850.
2 Macaulay's Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 271.
3 Life of H. B. Stowe, by C. E. Stowe, p. 328.
280 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
The author had been satisfied to gain four hundred dol-
lars a year by her pen, but she had now written a book of
which there were sold three thousand copies on the first day
of publication, and in this country over three hundred thou-
sand within a year. England received the story with like
favor — the sale went on in the mother country and her col-
onies until it reached the number of one and a half million
copies.1 The book was soon translated into twenty different
languages.2 The author was now the most famous woman
in America ; she had gained a competence and secured un-
dying glory.
The effect produced by the book was immense. Whittier
offered up " thanks for the Fugitive Slave law ; for it gave
occasion for i Uncle Tom's Cabin.' " Longfellow thought it
was one of the greatest triumphs in literary history, but its
moral effect was a higher triumph still. Lowell described
the impression which the book made as a " whirl of excite-
ment."3 Choate is reported to have said : " That book will
make two millions of abolitionists."4 Garrison wrote the
author : " All the defenders of slavery have let me alone and
are abusing you." 5 Sumner said in the Senate : " A woman,
inspired by Christian genius, enters the lists, like another
Joan of Arc, and with marvellous powers sweeps the chords
of the popular heart. Now melting to tears, and now in-
spiring to rage, her work everywhere touches the conscience,
and makes the slave-hunter more hateful." 6
1 Life of II. B. Stowe, pp. 160 and 190. It is not known what has been
the total sale in the United States since its publication. See Life -Work
of the Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, McCray, p. 120. " An immense edi-
tion of Uncle Tom, prepared for Sunday-schools, has been published in
England." — Lieber to Hillard, April, 1853, Life and Letters of Lieber, p.
261. 2 Life of H. B. Stowe, p. 195. a Ibid., p. 327.
* New York Independent, Aug. 26th, 1852.
6 Life of H. B. Stowe, p. 161.
6 Speech on the Fugitive Slave law, Aug. 26th, 1852, Congressional
Globe, vol. xxv. p. 1112. Emerson said, in 1858: "We have seen an
American woman write a novel, of which a million copies were sold, in
CH.HI.] "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 281
The story appealed particularly to the emotional nature
of women. Tales are told of their sitting up all night ab-
sorbed in the work, touched to the heart at the recital of the
death of little Eva, and weeping bitter tears at the cruel
murder of Uncle Tom. One woman wrote that she could
no more leave the story than she could have left a -dying
child. A cool-headed London printer took the book home
at night to read, with the view of deciding whether it would
be a paying publication. He was so affected, first by laugh-
ter and then by tears, that he ended with a distrust of his
literary judgment, thinking that his emotion came from
physical weakness; so he tried the story on his wife, a
strong-minded woman, and got her approval before he
deemed it wise to print the book.1
The novel was published as a serial in three daily news-
papers of Paris ; and one journal, noted for its excellent lit-
erary criticism, said that the intense interest awakened by
" Uncle Tom " surpassed that which had been excited by the
publication of " The Three Guardsmen " of Alexander Du-
mas, or Eugene Sue's " Mysteries of Paris." 2 In Italy the
all languages, and which had one merit, of speaking to the universal
heart, and was read with equal interest to three audiences — namely, in the
parlor, in the kitchen, and in the nursery of every house." — Lecture on
Success.
* Life of H. B. Stowe, pp. 161 and 191.
2 Le Temps. Life -Work of the Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, McCray,
p. 110.
" Our most prominent and extraordinary representative abroad is really
Uncle Torn. . . . Creameries, dry-goods and eating shops are named after
his humble abode. . . . Four or five children's books are published in
cheap form by societies of religious instruction, extracted from or built
upon Mrs. Stowe's masterpiece, and bearing its title as their best recom-
mendation. You have not forgotten George Sand's generous homage of
admiration paid to Mrs. Stowe and her book; now we have Heinrich
Heine, the greatest living wit of Europe, taking lessons in reading the
Scriptures from the American slave, introducing him with honor and by
name among the first creators and creatures of European literature." —
Paris correspondence New York Tribune, Sept. 28th, 1854. "Everybody
282 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
book was received with such fervor that the pope felt
obliged to prohibit its circulation in his dominions.1
Never but once before had a novel produced such an ex-
citement. One cannot fail to be struck with the likeness
between the impression occasioned by Kousseau's story and
that made by " Uncle Tom." Kant became so engrossed in
the perusal of the "Nouvelle HeloYse" that he failed, for the
only time in his life, to take his accustomed afternoon walk ;3
and Lord Palmerston, who had not read a novel for thirty
years, read " Uncle Tom's Cabin " three times, and, instead 'of
making a flippant criticism, which one might have expected
from a statesman who shocked grave men by his levity, he
admired the book, " not only for the story but for the states-
manship of it." 3
The " Nouvelle Helo'ise" spoke for the liberty and dignity
of the peasant, implying that he as well as the king was a
man ; while " Uncle Tom " pleaded for the liberty of the slave.
The one had its part in the social revolution of 1789, and
the other had an influence on the political revolution of
1860.
The dramatic strength of the story was not lost upon the
theatrical managers. It soon appeared on the stage in Bos-
ton, and the first time that Mrs. Stowe, then a woman of
forty- one, ever went to the theatre was when she saw a
dramatization of her own immortal work. She was sensi-
bly moved at the exquisite interpretation of Topsy by Mrs.
Howard, and by the acting of little Cordelia Howard, who
struck the audience with wonder, and drew tears from the
most callous by a lifelike impersonation of little Eva.4 In
New York the play proved the theatrical success of the sea-
in Germany has read Uncle Tom's Cabin." — Letter of Motley, Dec 23d,
1852, Motley's Letters, vol. i. p. 148.
1 American Almanac, 1854, p. 348 ; New York Herald, May 31st, 1853.
9 Life of Rousseau, John Morley, vol. ii. p. 33.
3 Life -Work of the Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, McCray, p. 109.
* Ibid., p. 121.
CH. III.] "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 283
son. The effect it produced on the frequenters of the Chat-
ham Street and Bowery theatres — at both of which places
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " remained long on the boards — was a
most curious study. The men and boys who sought their
amusement at those theatres belonged to the mobs that
hooted and insulted abolitionists, and broke up anti-slavery
conventions. But when they saw " abolition dramatized,"
as the play was cleverly called, they went wild at the es-
cape of Eliza across the river; they were heartily in sym-
pathy with the forcible resistance to the Fugitive Slave law
made by George Harris and his friends ; they applauded
vociferously the allusions to human rights ; they were dis-
gusted with the professional tone of the auctioneer and the
business-like action of the negro-buyers in the slave-market
scene ; and they wept sincerely at the death of Uncle Tom.1
Men and boys who never read a book were impressed and
swayed by this dramatic performance. In the day when
the fashion of even the metropolitan theatres was a night-
ly change of programme, the run of " Uncle Tom's Cabin "
was counted by more than a hundred performances ;8 and
when little Cordelia Howard had a benefit on her three
hundred and twenty-fifth consecutive impersonation of Eva,
it was spoken of as being without a parallel in the history
of the stage.3 In every city north of Mason and Dixon's
line where there was a theatre, the managers found it prof-
itable, and even necessary, to comply with the popular de-
mand for a representation of this powerful play.
It was, perhaps, not surprising that " Uncle Tom's Cabin "
should be given at two theatres in London, for the philan-
thropic mind of England was exercised on the subject of
slavery in America; but it was remarkable that the gay
Parisians should have filled two theatres nightly to laugh
1 New York Tribune, Aug. 8th and Sept. 19th, 1853.
2 Life -Work of the Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, McCray, p. 132.
3 New York Tribune, May 13th, 1854.
284 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
at Topsy and weep at the hard fate of Uncle Tom.1 Cer-
tainly the inhabitants of this brilliant city knew less and
cared less for the oppressed black than did their neighbors
across the Channel, and the interest which they took in this
portrayal of life among the lowly is an earnest tribute to
the dramatic character of the work.2
Some writers have depreciated the political effect of " Un-
cle Tom's Cabin " because the results were not immediate.
"It deepens the horror of servitude," wrote George Tick-
nor, " but it does not affect a single vote." 3 In reviewing
the election of 1852 one could not then have written other-
wise.4 It is probably true that the seed sown by works
of fiction germinates slowly. The " Nouvelle Heloise " and
"I£rnile" were published nearly a generation before the
French Revolution began. Because many people of France
applauded the democratic sentiment implied by the words
in the "Nouvelle Heloise" — "I would rather be the wife
of a charcoal-burner than the mistress of a king" —they
did not hurl Pompadour from her seat of power ; and al-
though "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was directed against the Fu-
gitive Slave law, it did not effect its repeal.
The great influence of Mrs. Stowe's book, however, was
shown in bringing home to the hearts of the people the
conviction that slavery is an injustice ; and, indeed, the im-
pression it made upon bearded men was not so powerful
as its appeal to women and boys. The mother's opinion
was a potent educator in politics between 1852 and 1860,
and boys in their teens in the one year were voters in the
1 Life of H. B. Stowe, p. 192 ; Bibliographical Account of Uncle Tom's
Cabin, prefaced to edition of 1887, p. xlvi.
2 The hold it still has (in 1890) on the American stage is similar evi-
dence. It is one of those plays that each generation must see. The book
is still widely read, as every bookseller and librarian knows. In 1888 and
1889 it headed the list in fiction in greatest demand at the New York free
circulating library. The Critic, vol. xii. p. 156 ; The Nation, vol. 1. p. 222,.
3 Dec. 20th, 1852. Life of George Ticknor, vol. i. p. 286.
4 See p. 278.
CH. III.] "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 285
other. It is often remarked that previous to the war the
Republican party attracted the great majority of school-
boys, and that the first voters were an important factor in
its final success. The bright boys of France, who in their
youth read the "Nouvelle Heloi'se" andv" Smile" became
revolutionists in 1789, and the youth of America whose first
ideas on slavery were formed by reading "Uncle Tom's
Cabin " were ready to vote with the party whose existence
was based on opposition to an extension of the great evil.
It is quite true that the moral and literary causes which
aided in bringing about the abolition of slavery needed po-
litical events to give them force and to shape their action.
Had it not been for the fatuity of the one party and the
wisdom of the other in forcing an issue that was broad
enough to include many shades of opinion, " Uncle Tom's
Cabin" and other anti-slavery literature might have made
many abolitionists, but would not have made enough Re-
publicans to elect Lincoln in 1860. The Republican party,
however, could not have succeeded without the backing of
a multitude of men and women who were Republicans be-
cause they believed slavery to be a cruel wrong, opposed to
the law of God and to the best interests of humanity.
The election of 1852 gave the death-blow to the Whig
party ; it never entered another presidential contest.1 Web-
ster, as well as Clay, died before his party received this
crushing, defeat, which, indeed, he had predicted.2 His phys-
ical frame worn out, he went early in September home to
Marshfield to die. The story of his last days, as told with
loving detail by his friend and biographer, is of intense in-
terest to the hero- worshipper, and has likewise pointed the
moral of many a Christian sermon. The conversations of
great minds that, unimpaired, deliver themselves at the ap-
proach of death to introspection are, like the most famous
j That is, with an independent nomination. See Chap. VIII.
* New York Herald, Nov. 3d ; Harvey's Reminiscences, p. 199.
286 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
of all, the discourse of Socrates in the Phsedo, a boon to
humankind. The mind of Webster was perfectly clear, and
when all earthly striving was over, his true nature shone out
in the expression of thoughts that filled his soul. Speaking
of the love of nature growing stronger with time, he said :
"The man who has not abandoned himself to sensuality
feels, as years advance and old age comes on, a greater love
of mother Earth, a greater willingness and even desire to
return to her bosom and mingle again with this universal
frame of things from which he sprang."1 Two weeks be-
fore he died, he wrote what he wished inscribed on his mon-
ument : " Philosophical argument, especially that drawn from
the vastness of the universe in comparison with the appar-
ent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my
reason for the faith that is within me ; but my heart has
assured and reassured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ
must be a divine reality." The day before his death, he
said with perfect calmness to his physician : " Doctor, you
have carried me through the night, I think you will get me
through to-day ; I shall die to-night." The doctor honestly
replied : " You are right, sir."2
His family, friends, and servants, having assembled in his
room, he spoke to them " in a strong, full voice, and with
his usual modulation and emphasis : ' No man who is not a
brute can say that he is not afraid of death. No man can
come back from that bourn ; no man can comprehend the
will or works of God. That there is a God, all must ac-
knowledge. I see him in all these wondrous works, him-
self how wondrous !' " 3
Eloquent in life, Webster was sublime in death. He took
leave of his household one by one, addressing to each fitting
words of consolation. He wanted to know the gradual steps
towards dissolution, and calmly discussed them with his phy-
sician. At one time, awaking from a partial stupor which
preceded death, he heard repeated the words of the psalm
1 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 668. a Ibid., p. 696. • Ibid., p. 697.
CH. III.] DEATH OF WEBSTER 287
which has smoothed the death-pillow of many a Christian :
" Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me ; thy rod
and thy staff, they comfort me." The dying statesman ex-
claimed : " i Yes, thy rod — thy staff — but the fact, the fact I
want,' . . . for he was not certain whether the words that had
been repeated to him were intended as an intimation that he
was already in the dark valley." l Waking up again past
midnight, and conscious that he was living, he uttered the
well-known words, " I still live." Later he said something
about poetry, and his son repeated one of the verses of Gray's
Elegy. He heard it and smiled. In the early morning Web-
ster's soul went out with the tide.3
It was a beautiful Sunday morning of an Indian summer's
day when the sad tidings reached Boston, which came home
to nearly all of her citizens as a personal sorrow. In all the
cities of the land mourning emblems were displayed and
minute-guns were fired. New York City and Washington
grieved for him as for a friend. During the week there
were the usual manifestations of mourning by the govern-
ment at Washington ; the various departments were closed,
and the public buildings were draped with emblems of woe.
Festal scenes and celebrations were postponed, and on the
day of his funeral business was suspended in nearly all the
cities during the hours when he was borne to his last resting-
place. "From east to west," said Edward Everett, "and
from north to south, a voice of lamentation has already gone
forth, such as has not echoed through the land since the
death of him who was first in war, first in peace, and first in
the hearts of his countrymen." 3
By Webster's own request, he had a modest country fu-
neral. The services were conducted in his Marshfield home.
1 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 700.
a Ibid., p. 701. Webster died Oct. 24th ; he was in his seventy-first year.
1 Speech at Faueuil Hall, Oct. 27th, Works, vol. iii. p. 158. See also
diary of R. H. Dana, Life, by C. F. Adams, vol. i. p. 222.
288 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
The coffin was borne to the tomb by six of the neighboring
farmers, and the multitude followed slowly and reverently.
To the Marshfield farmers and Green Harbor fishermen
Webster was a companion and a friend ; by them he was
mourned sincerely as one of their own fellowship. It could
not be said of him that a prophet is not without honor save
in his own country. One man in a plain and rustic garb
paid the most eloquent of all tributes to the mighty dead :
" Daniel Webster, the world without you will seem lone-
some." 1 A Massachusetts orator of our day has truly said :
" Massachusetts smote and broke the heart of Webster, her
idol, and then broke her own above his grave."2
On Sunday, the 31st of October, one week after his death,
nearly all the preachers of the North delivered sermons on
the life and death of Daniel Webster.3 In the main, they
were highly eulogistic. If, indeed, a preacher permitted
himself to speak of the failings of the great man, it was in
such a manner as one might in all gentleness speak of the
frailty of a dear departed friend. To this there was one
notable exception — the sermon of Theodore Parker, delivered
in the Boston Melodeon. The preacher appeared to want
the good which Webster did interred with his bones and the
evil to live after him. Even had the discourse been true, it
was, considering the occasion, indecent. But in it there was
much of error. The current gossip of Boston and the pun-
gent tales of Washington correspondents were crystallized
into a serious utterance and given the stamp of a scholar.
1 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 704. "As for thinking of America without "Web-
ster, it seems like thinking of her without Niagara, or the Mississippi, or
any other of the magnificent natural features which had belonged to her
since I grew up, and seemed likely to endure forever." — Letter of J. L.
Motley, from Dresden, Dec. 23d, 1852, Motley's Correspondence, vol. i. p.
149.
a J. D. Long, Webster Centennial, vol. i. p. 165.
8 There were more than one hundred and fifty sermons on the death
of Webster printed in pamphlet form. Memorandum of Theo. Parker
on bound collection of them in Boston Public Library.
CH. III.] THEODORE PARKER 289
He, who felt competent to separate the fable from the truth
in the Old and New Testaments, showed great credulity in
estimating the history of his own day. Apparently Parker
had misgivings about his facts, for a few months later we
find him writing Sumner and Giddings in the endeavor to
get evidence concerning Webster's recreancy to the anti-
slavery cause and acceptance of money gifts.1 A teacher
of young men, for it was to them that this discourse was ad-
dressed, should have made sure of his facts before he gave
vent to such vituperative and vindictive words.2
Yet we may not utterly condemn Parker. He was sin-
cere, and meant to be truthful ; but he had that mental con-
stitution which could only see his side of any question, and
he thought himself a second Luther, commissioned to rebuke
sin in high places.3 He was, however, a scholar ; he knew
many languages ; his books were his friends and compan-
ions." While not so profound a student of philosophy and
theology as his German contemporaries, he illuminated
transcendentalism by a practical knowledge of man ; and
had he not enlisted in the anti-slavery cause he would un-
doubtedly have left behind him a theological work of merit,
for he was the exponent of radical Unitarianism. " Sup-
pose," he writes in his diary, " I could have given all the at-
tention to theology that I have been forced to pay to poli-
tics and slavery, how much I might have done! I was
meant for a philosopher, and the times call for a stump
orator" 5
1 Sec letters from Giddings and Sumner of Jan., 1853, to Parker, fur-
nished by F. B. Sanborn to the Springfield Republican, copied into the Bos-
ton Transcript, Jan. 25th, 1882. I ain indebted to Mr. Lodge for this refer-
ence. See also Parker's preface to this sermon, written March 7th, 1853.
3 The important statements in this sermon are carefully examined, and
many of them refuted, by George T. Curtis in his monologue on Last
Days of Daniel Webster, written in 1877. Frothingham says the sermon
was prepared with care. Life of Parker, pp. 339, 420.
8 Recollections and Impressions, O. B. Frothingham, p. 54.
* His library of 13,000 volumes was left the Boston Public Library.
6 Life and Correspondence of Theo. Parker, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 115.
I.— 19
290 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
Parker was, said Emerson, " a man of study fit for a man
of the world." l Though sympathizing for many years with
the abolitionists, it was not until after the passage of the
Fugitive Slave law that he devoted himself heartily to their
work. He was the pastor, the especial friend and counsel,
of runaway negroes. His efforts in their behalf were untir-
ing. At the time of the Shadrach rescue he wrote in his
diary : " These are sad times to live in, but I should be sorry
not to have lived in them. It will seem a little strange one
or two hundred years hence that a plain humble scholar of
Boston was continually interrupted in his studies, and could
not write his book, for stopping to look after fugitive slaves
— his own parishioners!"2 Parker was bitter and harsh
towards his opponents, for years of religious contention
fitted him for the part of the political iconoclastic reformer.
Deeming Webster responsible for the Fugitive Slave law, he
could not do otherwise than magnify the vices and belittle
the virtues of this great statesman.
Parker spoke every Sunday to two or three thousand
people in the Melodeon or the Music Hall, and exercised
great influence. He lacked many graces of oratory ; it was
the pregnant matter of his discourse that held his large audi-
ence captive. His sermon on Webster moulded many opin-
ions. Of all indictments it is the most severe. It would,
indeed, be deplorable if it presented the true character of
the man who had received so much honor from his country-
men, and it is gratifying that fewer men now believe the
charges than when the sermon was delivered ; that instead
of acknowledging " its analytical justice, its fidelity," 3 it is
regarded as the raving of an honest fanatic.
Parker and Wendell Phillips may be said to be the ex-
ponents of abolitionism in the decade of 1850-60. They do
1 Life of Parker, Frothingham, p. 549.
* Feb. 21st, 1851, Life and Correspondence oftheo. Parker, Weiss, vol.
ii. p. 105.
3 Expressions of the Neio Hampshire Independent (Dem.), 1852.
CH. III.] EDWARD EVERETT 291
not fill the period as Garrison did that of 1830-40 ; for the
reformer who begins the agitation has the hardest work and
receives the greatest honor. It had now become respectable
to be an abolitionist ; his political power was not to be de-
spised. The abolitionists shed no tears over the defeat of
Scott ; they had no more regard for the Whig than for the
Democratic party.1 Most of them were dismayed at the
falling-off of the Free-soil vote ; but Garrison, who did not
believe in political action, had even for this no regret.3
The President graced his administration by the appoint-
ment of Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, as Secretary of
State to succeed Webster. Everett graduated from Harvard
at the age of seventeen, taking the first college honors of
his class ; two years later he became a Unitarian preacher,
and then gave promise of that eloquence for which in after-
years he was so famed. When twenty-one, he was appointed
professor of Greek literature at Harvard College, and to fit
himself for the place he went abroad and studied four years,
two of which were passed at the University of Gottingen.
Victor Cousin, the philosopher and the translator of Plato,
who met Everett in Germany, said he was one of the best
of Greek scholars. In 1820, when twenty-six, he preached
a sermon in the hall of the House of Representatives at
Washington on the text, " Brethren, the time is short," de-
lighting the orators, the jurists, and the men of state who
went to hear him. Justice Story wrote : " The sermon was
truly splendid, and was heard with breathless silence." Rufus
King, much affected, said that he " had never heard a dis-
course so full of unction, eloquence, and good taste." 3 John
Quincy Adams, who was nothing if not critical, confided to
his diary that " it was without comparison the most splendid
1 See Life of Garrison, vol. iii. p. 370 ; also letter of Theo. Parker to
Sumner, Dec. 20th, 1852. "In the Senate of the United States there is
but one party ; it is the party of slavery. It has two divisions — the cote
droit and the cote gauche, the Democrat and the Whig." — Life and Cor-
respondence, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 216. * Life of Garrison, vol. iii. p. 371.
8 Life and Letters of Joseph Story, vol. i. p. 382.
292 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
composition as a sermon that I ever heard delivered." 1 In
this same year Everett became editor of the North Amer-
ican Review ; he was then and afterwards a frequent con-
tributor, and shared with many other gifted minds the honor
of making this quarterly a monument of American scholar-
ship and fair-minded criticism. He was elected representa-
tive and served ten years in Congress. He made a diligent
and conscientious member, for he knew thoroughly what it
was his business to know ; his name is connected with many
important measures, but his service was rather useful than
brilliant. Afterwards the people chose him governor of his
commonwealth for three terms, and for a fourth he was only
defeated by one vote. He did not grieve, however, at quit-
ting active politics, for he had again the yearning of a
scholar for Europe. Webster, writing to him in Italy, spoke
of the enjoyment " that Italy tenders to the taste of the cul-
tivated," and especially " to you, so full and fresh with his-
tory and the classics."2 This same year Webster became
Secretary of State, and was able to secure for his friend the
appointment of minister to England.
No American ever divined or appreciated Europe better
than Everett, yet he was as intensely national in feeling and
expression as were those Western politicians who paraded
their contempt of Europe on the stump and in Congress.
His friend Hillard even criticised his orations for their
vaunting strain in regard to our country and institutions.
Knowing thoroughly many tongues, this true patriot still
could say : " The sound of my native language beyond the
sea is a music to my ear beyond the richest strains of Tus-
can softness or Castilian majesty."
Everett returned to the United States in 1845, and one
year later was chosen president of Harvard College. He
retained the position three years, until obliged to resign it on
account of ill-health.
1 Memoir of John Quincy Adams, vol. iv. p. 5&.
* Private Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 101.
CH.ni] EDWARD EVERETT 293
In this hurrying country and this hurrying age of ours,
what a delight there is in the review of the life of such a
ripe scholar, accomplished diplomat, and finished orator!
As we view the constant strife for wealth and political
power and reflect that Everett might well have aspired to
either, how impressive is his choice of the better 'part —
that of laboring his whole life for accurate learning and
aiming at the highest eloquence ! In a time when so much
superficial work is done, how worthy of admiration are the
consummate art and the painstaking care, in the study and
on the platform, of Everett, whose very stuff of conscience
would not let him do aught but perfect work! His ora-
tions, wrote Hillard, are " nearly faultless as literary pro-
ductions. He is as careful to select the right word as a
workman in mosaic is to pick out the exact shade of color
which he requires."
The unalloyed friendship that existed between Webster
and Everett is a beautiful trait, ennobling them both. Jeal-
ousy did not exist on the part of the one, nor envy on the
part of the other. " When I entered public life," Everett
said, "it was with his encouragement."1 Webster wrote
Everett : "I feel that you are among the foremost of those
who, in the course of the last thirty years, have helped me
along, by favor, by good advice, and by large contributions
to my stock of knowledge." Everett, by the choice of his
friend, edited Webster's works, and wrote the chaste and
temperate biographical memoir prefixed to the first volume.
Three months before his death, Webster penned to Everett
these words of deep feeling : " We now and then see, stretch-
ing across the heavens, a long streak of clear, blue, cerulean
sky, without cloud or mist or haze. And such appears to
me our acquaintance, from the time when I heard you for a
week recite your lessons in the little school-house in Short
Street to the date hereof."2
1 Speech on the death of Daniel Webster, Oct. 27th, 1852.
2 Letter of July 21st, 1852. In addition to authorities already cited, I
294 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
While Everett's greatest triumphs were gained on the
platform before the cultivated people who naturally assem-
bled to hear him, and with whom he felt in perfect accord,
yet when called to more active duty he acquitted himself
with credit. Entering upon his brief service in the State
department, he was immediately obliged to take up the
Cuban question and give an answer to official notes from
England and France. These two nations had proposed a
tripartite convention with the United States, by virtue of
which the three powers should guarantee the possession of
Cuba to Spain and jointly and severally disclaim, now and
forever, all intention to obtain possession of that island. In
his reply Everett's endeavor was, " to assert a line of princi-
ple and of policy which would be generally approved by the
country ; which would show that it was possible to reconcile
the progressive spirit and tendency of the country and of
the age with the preservation of the public faith, with the
sanctity of the public honor, and with the dictates of an en-
lightened and liberal conservatism." '
Never had the success of a Secretary of State been more
complete; and yet the Cuban question was an extremely
delicate one to handle. The South had for years been anx-
ious to acquire Cuba, and this desire was now increased by
the disappointment at the outcome of the Mexican conquests,
for slavery, on both economical and political grounds, needed
expansion. On the other hand, the majority of the North-
ern people were opposed to the acquisition of more slave
have, in this characterization of Everett, drawn from Everett's Works,
vol. i. and iii. ; article by George S. Hillard, North American Review, Jan.,
1837 ; article by C. C. Felton, North American Review, Oct., 1850 ; article
on Edward Everett, in Appletons' Cyclopaedia of Biography, by S. A. Alli-
bone; article in Encyclopedia Britannica, by Rev. E. E. Hale ; Forney's
Anecdotes of Public Men, vol. ii. " A ceux qui douteraicnt qu'on pfit
rencontrer anx fitats-Unis le type parfait du scholar et du gentleman, je
citerais M. Ed. Everett, qui vit a" Cambridge." — Promenade en Am6-
rique, Ampere, tome i. p. 45.
1 Statement by Everett, speech in the Senate, March 21st, 1853.
CH. Ill] EVERETT ON CUBA 295
territory, although a portion of the Democratic party, of
which Cass and Douglas were the exponents, had heartily
embraced the doctrine of manifest destiny, which meant
that this government, when it honorably could, should ac-
quire territory by conquest and purchase, ignoring the fact
whether it was slave or free soil.
The Secretary respectfully declined the proposition of
England and France. One strong objection to the proposed
agreement was, " Among the oldest traditions of the federal
government is an aversion to political alliances with Euro-
pean powers." This was a policy counselled by Washington
and by Jefferson. There is, moreover, a great difference be-
tween the interest, in regard to Cuba, of France and England
on the one side and the United States on the other. " Cuba
lies at our doors. It commands the approach to the Gulf of
Mexico, which washes the shores of five of our States. It
bars the entrance to that great river which drains half the
North American continent."
To understand our position, England and France must
suppose an island like Cuba, a Spanish possession, guarding
the entrance of the Thames or the Seine, and consider what,
in that case, their answer would be should we propose to
them a similar tripartite convention.
" Territorially and commercially, Cuba would, in our
hands, be an extremely valuable possession. Under certain
contingencies, it might be almost essential to our safety.
Still, for -domestic reasons the President thinks that the in-
corporation of the island into the Union at the present time,
although effected with the consent of Spain, would be a
hazardous measure; and he would consider its acquisition
by force, except in a just war with Spain (should an event
so greatly to be deprecated take place), as a disgrace to the
civilization of the age."
Before closing, the Secretary went into a history of our
territorial acquisitions, defending them all, although he limp-
ed when attempting to justify the annexation of Texas. He
then vindicated the doctrine of manifest destiny as applied
296 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
to the past, calling it " the undoubted operation of the law
of our political existence," as being a name less harsh than
the other to European ears ; and then, in a burst of national
enthusiasm, he said : " Every addition to the territory of the
American Union has given homes to European destitution,
and gardens to European want." 1
The commendation of this letter was general, and from
both parties.2 Cass said in the Senate : " It is marked by a
lofty, patriotic, American feeling. I have seldom seen a doc-
ument more conclusive in its argument, or more beautiful in
its style or illustrations ;" 3 and Douglas testified that it was
" applauded by the almost unanimous voice of the American
people." 4
When Fillmore, in his last message, said that he had dis-
charged the arduous duties of his high trust " with a single
eye to the public good," he was believed by everybody ex-
cept by some of the Seward Whigs and the abolitionists.
The slavery question and the sectional differences weighed
heavily on his mind, and he felt that it was a duty of his
high office to attempt their solution. He proposed in his
last message to Congress a scheme of negro colonization,
and advocated its adoption ; he believed that there was the
path in which might be solved the difficulties which were
raised by slavery and the antagonism of race. This part of
his message was suppressed by the advice of his cabinet ;
but even had this not been done, there is no reason to sup-
pose that the plan would have been adopted by Congress.
1 Everett to the Comte de Sartiges, Dec. 1st, 1852, Senate Documents,
2d Sess., 32d Cong., Doc. 13.
a " Mr. Everett's letter has been received by Congress and the country
as a very able exposition of the American sentiment in regard to Cuba."
— Harper's Magazine, Feb., 1853. See also New York Herald, Jan. 7th,
1853.
8 Jan. 15th, 1853. The letter was written Dec. 1st, 1852, but was not
given to Congress and the public till Jan. 5th, 1853.
4 Senate, March 16th, 1853.
CH. III.] FiLLMORE'S APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 297
Yet in after-life it was a satisfaction to Fillmore that he
had thought out a plan which might have produced satis-
factory results.1
Fillmore was a man of imposing physical presence; he
looked like a ruler, and graced the White House.3 , He was
strictly temperate, industrious, orderly, and his integrity was
above suspicion.
Besides the charge against Webster, already mentioned,3
there were two attempts to implicate members of the cab-
inet in unworthy transactions. One was the affair of the Lo-
bos Islands, in which the Secretary of State was concerned.
Webster had, indeed, acted with precipitancy in this matter,
but there is no evidence of corrupt motive or action.4
The other charge was against the Secretary of the Treas-
1 See Address of James Grant Wilson on Fillmore before the Buffalo
Historical Society, Jan. 7th, 1878. I am indebted to Mr. Barnum, cor-
responding secretary of that society, for the portion of the address which
referred to the colonization plan. General Wilson informs me that the
suppressed portion of the message never appeared in print, but that ex-
President Fillmore once permitted him to peruse the proof-slip, which at
the time was submitted to the cabinet. " Previous to his retirement
from office, some friends of President Fillmore contributed one thousand
dollars to make him a life member of the Colonization Society. In his
letter of acknowledgment, he took occasion to express his decided ap-
proval of the objects of the society, and to say that it appeared to him to
have pointed out the only rational mode of ameliorating the condition
of the colored race in this country." — Harper's Magazine, April, 1853.
2 "M. Fillmore avait un cachet de simplicite digne et bienveillante, qui
me semble faire de lui le type de ce que doit §tre un president Ameri-
cain." — J. J. Ampere, Promenade en Arne'rique, tome ii. p. 100.
3 See p. 213.
4 See Curtis, vol. ii. The President's Message, Dec. 6th, 1852; Boston
Courier and New York Tribune, Aug. 13th and 20th; New York Tribune,
Nov. 8th. Per contra, see editorials in New York Evening Post, Nov. 9th
and 12th ; for the correspondence, see Senate Document 109, 32d Cong.,
1st Sess. The letter of Webster to Captain Jewett, authorizing him
to take guano from the Lobos Islands, has written on the last sheet
of the letter " Appd. June 5th. M. F." See MSS. State department
archives.
298 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
ury. While a senator, Corwin had become attorney for Dr.
Gardiner, who had a claim against Mexico. It was one of
those claims that, by the treaty of 1848, were to be adjudi-
cated and paid by the United States. Less than a year after
being employed as attorney, Corwin, in conjunction with his
brother, bought an interest in the claim for which they ac-
tually gave $22,000. On the accession of Fillmore he was
offered the Secretaryship of the Treasury, but he would not
accept it until he had disposed of his interest in this and
other claims. He therefore made in good faith an uncon-
ditional transfer of his share. The matter would probably
have never been noticed had not the Gardiner claim turned
out to be " a naked fraud upon the treasury of the United
States," 1 and had not Corwin realized for his share in the
transaction a handsome profit. A personal and political
enemy charged that the transfer of this interest was a blind,
and the inference followed that Corwin had used his influ-
ence as Secretary of the Treasury with the board of commis-
sioners, which had the adjustment of these claims, to have
passed a fraudulent claim in which he was directly inter-
ested. The matter attracted considerable attention in Con-
gress and in the country. Committees of investigation were
appointed both by the Senate and the House. The House
committee, a majority of whom were Democrats, reported
that there was no evidence to show that Corwin knew that
the claim was fraudulent ; they virtually said that his trans-
fer was unconditional and made in good faith. The subject
gave rise to an animated debate in the House, in which the
defenders of the Secretary of the Treasury had altogether
the better of the argument.2 The reputation which Corwin
1 Report of the House Committee of Investigation.
2 See especially speeches of Andrew Johnson and Olds of Ohio at-
tacking Corwin, and those of Barrere of Ohio, Chapman of Connecti-
cut, and A. H. Stephens in his defence, vol. xxvii. Congressional Globe,
Jan., 1853; for the report of the House committee and a large amount
of testimony, see Reports of Committees, 2d Sess. 32d Cong., Rep.
No. 1.
CH.HI.] THOMAS CORWIN 299
had always borne as an honest man was an efficient factor
towards causing the explanation of his friends to be accept-
ed as true, and in making up public sentiment in his favor.1
Indeed, in his own home he was not less esteemed for his
moral purity than he was celebrated for his wit and elo-
quence.
It would have been an ungrateful task to write down Cor-
win as having prostituted his high office to the purpose of
private gain, for he is one of the characteristic men of the
ante-bellum period. A son of Western soil, his speeches have
a flavor of the wild surroundings of his youth. He was a
born orator, exactly fitted for the rollicking campaign of
1840, when he made the reputation of being the best stump-
orator of Ohio, and that before audiences who were wont
to listen attentively to public speakers and weigh carefully
their merits.
People went to hear Corwin to be entertained as well
as instructed. His fine head, sparkling hazel eyes, cheery,
pleasing manners, together with the facial expression of a
wonderful actor, set off his abundant humor, his knack at
telling stories, and his skill at repartee.
The survivors of the generation who listened to Corwin
were never weary of telling of his marvellous eloquence, apt
replies, and fitting anecdotes ;J though it is true that his wit
1 For a view of the case, criticising Corwin, see editorials in the New
York Evening Post, March 4th and 6th, 1854.
2 Corwin's complexion was very dark. He was on several occasions
supposed to be of African descent, and he was fond of relating these
ludicrous mistakes. One of his keen retorts was made when address-
ing a Whig mass-meeting at Marietta, O. He had then great anxiety
not to offend the abolitionists, who were beginning to cast a large
vote. A sharp-witted opponent, to draw him out, asked : " Shouldn't
niggers be permitted to sit at the .table with white folks, on steamboats
and at hotels?" "Fellow -citizens," exclaimed Corwin, his swarthy
features beaming with suppressed fun, " I asK you whether it is proper
to ask such a question of a gentleman of my color ?" The crowd cheered,
and the questioner was silenced. Ben : Perley Poore's Reminiscences, vol.
i. p. 209.
300 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1852
sometimes degenerated into coarseness. He was the best-
known man in Ohio ; everybody called him Tom. A for-
mal resolution of a Whig State convention proclaimed him
" a man of the people, and a champion of their rights," and
declared, amid the enthusiastic acclaim of the multitude, "we
esteem him, and we love him."
But Corwin was more than a witty stump-speaker. He
was a good lawyer, who thought deeply on the principles
of government and political questions. His friends had
hopes that he might even reach the presidency; but he
destroyed his political prospects by an indiscreet though
brave speech in the Senate in February, 1847, on the Mex-
ican war.1
It was a scathing arraignment of the policy of conquest,
a severe invective against the "destiny doctrine," and a
fierce retort to the statement of Cass, " We want room."
" If I were a Mexican," said Corwin, " I would tell you,
' Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead
men ? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody
hands and welcome you to hospitable graves.' " 3 It is incon-
sistent, but it is the inconsistency of a vigorous nationality, to
condemn this utterance of Corwin as an unpatriotic expres-
sion to utter during a war in which his country was en-
gaged, while we praise the parallel saying of Chatham dur-
ing our Revolution, and print it in every schoolboy's book
of oratory.3
Corwin's position on the compromise of 1850 was the
same as that of Clay and "Webster, and he suffered, as did
1 Corwin "is a truly kind, benevolent, and gifted man. He seems to
forego all hope of the presidency, just now at least." — Seward to his wife,
from Washington, Jan. 23d, 1848, Life of Seward, F. W. Seward, vol. ii.
p. 62.
2 See Corwin's Speeches; also memoir prefixed to them; Public Men
and Events, Sargent ; Reminiscences, Ben : Perley Poore.
8 " If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop
•was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms — never —
never — never !"
CH.IIL] PRESIDENT FILLMORE 301
the Massachusetts statesman, from the alienation of friends
who thought that his opposition to slavery had weakened.
I did agree that Mr. Fillmore should approve" the Fugi-
tive Slave law, he said in 1859, " though I did not like it ; I
thought it was constitutional, and that Congress were the
best judges of its policy." '
The President, influenced by the attempt to bring home
the charge of corruption to his administration, suggested in
his last message new legislation to protect the government
against mischief and corruption, although he bore testimony
to the efficiency and integrity with which the several exec-
utive departments were conducted.
In the debate in Congress on the Gardiner claim, few
found fault with Corwin for being, while a senator, the at-
torney of the claimant, since there were many precedents
to justify such a position ; but it was nevertheless felt that
it ought to be made improper for a senator, a representa-
tive, or any officer of the United States to act as attorney
for a claim against the country, or to be interested in any
way in the prosecution of it. This feeling found expres-
sion in a law passed at this session of Congress;2 the of-
fence was made a misdemeanor, punishable with fine and
imprisonment.
When Fillmore withdrew from the presidential office, the
general sentiment proclaimed that he had filled the place
with ability and honor.3 The country abounded with pros-
perity ; the administration was identified with the compro-
mise, and the compromise had now become very popular.
If Northern people did not approve the Fugitive Slave law,
they at least looked upon it with toleration. It is quite
true, however, that after-opinion has been unkind to Fill-
1 House of Representatives, Dec: 8th, 1859.
3 Approved Feb. 26th, 1853.
3 Public Men and Events, Sargent, vol. ii. p. 394. " There was at that
time but one voice heard from one end of the country to the other — that
of ' Well done, good and faithful servant.' "
302 FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
more. The judgment on him was made up at a time when
the Fugitive Slave law had become detestable, and he was
remembered only for his signature and vigorous execution
of it. After Johnson had been President, it was asserted,
with the taste for generalization that obtains in politics,
that all of our Yice-Presidents who succeeded to the presi-
dential office turned out badly. This was maintained until
the wise administration of President Arthur became con-
fessedly an exception to the rule ; yet the plaudits for Ar-
thur were not more general than were those for Fillmore at
the close of his administration. Fillmore retained as strong
a hold on his party as did the other ; both were candidates
for renomination, and showed great strength in their party
conventions.
In a just estimate, therefore, of our Yice-Presidents who
have become Presidents, we should class Fillmore with Ar-
thur, and not with Tyler and Johnson.
CHAPTER IV
IT will be well, at this point of my narrative, to examine
the institution of negro slavery as it existed in the South.
So forcibly has the word slavery come in the closing years
of our century to signify a practice utterly abhorrent, that
we find it difficult to realize how recently it was defended
and even extolled. It is my wish to describe the institution
as it may have appeared before the war to a fair-minded
man. In such an inquiry it is quite easy for one of Northern
birth and breeding to extenuate nothing ; more care must be
taken to set down naught in malice. Nevertheless, this chap-
ter can only be a commentary on the sententious expres
sion of Clay: " Slavery is a curse to the master and a wrong
to the slave."
It was the cultivation of the semi-tropical products, cot-
ton, sugar, and rice, that strengthened the hold of slavery on
the South. No one was able to contend, with any success,
that grain and tobacco could be as well cultivated by slave
as by free labor. After a very careful investigation into
the agricultural system of Virginia, Olmsted, who worked
a farm in New York, arrived at the conclusion that one hand
in New York did as much labor as two slave hands in Vir-
ginia.1 Yet taking as a basis the price paid for slaves when
1 Cotton Kingdom, Frederick Law Olmsted, vol. i. p. 134. This was a
low estimate. A New Jersey farmer, who had the superintendence of
very large agricultural operations in Virginia, conducted with slave labor,
thought four Virginia slaves did not accomplish as much as one ordinary
free farm laborer in New Jersey. This statement was confirmed by sev-
eral who had a similar experience. I shall have frequent occasion to
304 SLAVERY [On. IV.
they were hired out — a common custom in Eastern Virginia
— he was well satisfied that the wages for common laborers
were twenty-five per cent, higher in Virginia than in New
York.1 What was true of Virginia was substantially true
of the other border slave States. It should have been clear
that, in the portion of the South where the climate was un-
suitable for cotton-raising, slavery was an economical failure;
and before the war, as at present, this conclusion necessarily
followed the inquiries of an impartial observer. If there
had been any justification for slavery it must have been
found in the cotton, rice, or sugar regions.
refer to OlmstecT's books, The Seaboard Slave States, Texas Journey,
A Journey in the Back Country, and The Cotton Kingdom, the last based
on the three others. This gentleman made several journeys through
the slave States between 1850 and 1857, travelling over a large part of
country on horseback, which gave him unusual facilities for seeing the
life of the people. His aim was to see things as they were and describe
them truthfully. He has admirably succeeded, and his books are in-
valuable to one making a study of this subject.
In reviewing A Journey in the Back Country, James R. Lowell wrote
in the Atlantic Monthly for Nov., 1860: "No more -important contribu-
tions to contemporary American history have been made than in this
volume and the two that preceded it. We know of no book that offers
a parallel to them except Arthur Young's Travels in France. To discuss
the question of slavery without passion or even sentiment seemed an
impossibility; yet Mr. Olmsted has shown that it can be done, and, hav-
ing no theory to bolster, has contrived to tell us what he saw, and not
what he went to see— the rarest achievement among travellers." This
was a happy comparison of the reviewer, for there was a great resem-
blance between Young and Olmsted in tastes, manner of observing, and
impartiality of judgment. But the most important resemblance Lowell
could not know in 1860. Both wrote on the eve of a great convulsion.
One was the greatest historical event of the eighteenth century, and the
other will probably be adjudged the greatest of the nineteenth century.
George Win. Curtis, in the Atlantic Monthly for Aug., 1863, makes the
statement that first of all the literature on the subject of slavery are, "in
spirit and comprehension, the masterly, careful, copious, and patient works
of Mr. Olmsted." The epithet of " that wise and honest traveller," which
John Morley applied to Young, may likewise be said of Olmsted.
1 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 118.
IV.]
:EEPING SLAVES
305
What was there in mitigation of the wrong done the
slave ? It used to be said that the slaves were better fed,
better clothed, and better lodged than laborers in the cities
and manufacturing districts at the North. Yet no state-
ment more completely false was ever made. A report to
the Secretary of the Treasury from forty-six sugar-planters
of Louisiana stated that the cost of feeding and clothing an
able-bodied slave was thirty dollars per year. Olmsted
estimates that the clothing would amount to ten dollars,
which would leave twenty dollars for the food, or five and
one half cents per day.1 " Does the food of a first-rate la-
borer," he asks, " anywhere in the free world cost less ?"
This was a fair example of the cost of supporting the negroes
on the large sugar and cotton plantations of the Southwest.
Corn-meal was the invariable article of food furnished the
slaves ; bacon and molasses were regularly provided on some
plantations, while on others they were only occasional lux-
uries. Fanny Kemble, the accomplished actress, who spent
a winter on her husband's rice and cotton plantations in
Georgia, says that animal food was only given to men who
were engaged in the hardest kind of work, such as ditching,
and to them it was given only occasionally and in moderate
quantities. Her description of the little negroes begging her
piteously for meat is as pathetic as the incident of the hungry
demand of Oliver Twist.2 This rude fare was generally given
the slave in sufficient quantity ; the instances are rare in which
one finds the negroes did not have enough to eat. Freder-
ick Douglass, however, tells us that, when a child, although
belonging to a wealthy and large landed proprietor of Mary-
land, he was often pinched with hunger, and used to dispute
1 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 238.
* Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39, Frances
Anne Kemble, p. 134 ; see also p. 65. This was not published until 1863.
In the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1863, George Wm. Curtis says : " This
book is a permanent and most valuable chapter in our history ; for it is
the first ample, lucid, faithful, detailed account from the actual head-
quarters of a slave plantation in this country."
L— 20
306 COST OF KEEPING SLAVES [Cn. IV.
with the dogs the crumbs which fell from the kitchen table.1
In comparison with slaves who had plenty, the prison con-
victs of the North had a greater variety of food, and it was
not so coarse.3 " Ninety-nine in a hundred of our free labor-
ers," wrote Olmsted, " from choice and not from necessity,
live, in respect to food, at least four times as well as the
average of the hardest-worked slaves on the Louisiana sug-
ar plantations."3 The negroes on the large cotton planta-
tions of the Southwest fared no better. A Louisiana cotton-
planter furnished De Bow an itemized estimate of the cost of
raising cotton, in which the expense of feeding one hundred
slaves, furnishing the hospital, overseer's table, etc., was put
down at $750 for the year. This was $7.50 for each one, or,
in other words, the cost of food for the slave was less than
2^ cents per day.4 The overseers everywhere endeavored
to bring the keeping of the slaves down to the lowest pos-
sible figure. This was a large item in the cost of cotton
production ; and on the large plantations, where in some
cases as many as five hundred slaves were worked, economy
in feeding these human cattle was studied with almost sci-
entific precision. The supply of food to the slaves was
made a subject of legislation. Louisiana required that meat
should be furnished, but this law became a dead letter.
North Carolina fixed the daily allowance of corn ; in the
other States the law was not specific, but directed in gen-
eral terms that the provisions should be sufficient for the
health of the slave.
It was in the line of plantation parsimony that the clothes
furnished the field hands should be of the cheapest material
and as scant as was consistent with a slight regard for de-
1 Life of Frederick Douglass, by himself, p. 22; see also pp. 45, 61,
108.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 241.
3 Ibid., p. 239; Despotism in America, Hildreth, pp. 58, 60; Slave States
of America, Buckingham, vol. i. pp. 87, 134.
4 De Bow's Resources of the South and West, vol. i. p. 150.
CH. IV.] OVERSEERS 307
cency and health. All observers agree that the slaves who
labored on the cotton and sugar plantations presented a
ragged, unkempt, and dirty appearance.1
Comfortable houses were in many places built for the
negroes;2 but, owing to their indolent and filthy habits,
which were aggravated by their condition of servitude, neat-
ness and the appearance of comfort soon disappeared from
their quarters. The testimony is almost universal that the
negro cabins were foul and wretched.3
In the cotton, sugar, and rice districts the negroes were
hard worked. The legal limit of a day's work in South
Carolina was fifteen hours ; on cotton plantations, during
the picking season, the slaves labored sixteen hours, while
on sugar plantations at grinding time eighteen hours' work
wTas exacted.4 Many of the large owners of land and of
negroes in the Southwest were absentees, whose authority
was delegated to their overseers. Indeed, in all cases where
the agricultural operations were on a large scale, the over-
seer was the power. Patrick Henry described the overseers
as " the most abject, degraded, unprincipled race." 5 Years
had not improved them, and on the lonely plantations of
the Southwest they were hardly amenable to public opinion
or subject to the law's control. They were generally igno-
1 The Louisiana cotton-planter before referred to said the cost of cloth-
ing one hundred slaves, shoeing them, furnishing bedding, sacks for
gathering cotton, etc., was $750 per annum.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 320.
3 I quote observations of Frances Kemble on several Georgia planta-
tions. " I found there [at St. Annie's] the wretchedest huts, and most
miserably squalid, filthy, and forlorn creatures I had yet seen here," p.
187. "The negro huts on several of the plantations that we passed
through were the most miserable human habitations I ever beheld," p.
242. "Miserable negro huts" which "were not fit to shelter cattle," p.
248. See also Slave States of America, Buckingham, vol. i. p. 134.
4 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 328 ; vol. ii. p. 180.
6 Life of Patrick Henry, Wirt, cited in Stroud's Slave Laws, p. 74 ; see
also Mrs. Davis's remarks on overseers, Memoir of Jefferson Davis, voL
i. p. 477.
308 THE NEGRO AS PROPERTY [On. IV.
rant, frequently intemperate, always despotic and brutal.
Their value was rated according to the bigness of the cotton
crop they made, and, with that end in view, they spared not
the slave. The slaves always worked under the lash. " It
is true," said Chancellor Harper, in his defence of slavery,
" that the slave is driven to labor by stripes." 1 With each
gang went a stout negro driver whose qualification for the
position depended upon his unusual cruelty ; he followed the
working slaves, urging them in their task by a loud voice
and the cracking of his long whip. That the negroes were
overtasked to the extent of being often permanently in-
jured, was evident from the complaints made by the South-
ern agricultural journals against the bad policy of thus wast-
ing human property. An Alabama tradesman told Olmsted
that if the overseers make " plenty of cotton, the owners
never ask how many niggers they kill ;" 2 and he gave the
further information that a determined and perfectly relent-
less overseer could get almost any wages he demanded, for
when it became known that such a man had made so many
bales to the hand, everybody would try to. get him.3
In the rich cotton-planting districts the negro was univer-
sally regarded as property. When the newspapers men-
tioned the sudden death of one of them, it was the loss of
money that was bewailed, and not of the light which no
Promethean heat can relume. Olmsted found that " negro
life and negro vigor were generally much less carefully
economized than I had always before imagined them to
be."4 Louisiana sugar-planters did not hesitate to avow
openly that, on the whole, they found it the best economy
to work off their stock of negroes about once in seven
years, and then buy an entire set of new hands.5 An over-
1 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 34.
2 The same man, however, expressed the opinion that " niggers is gen-
erally pretty well treated, considerin'." Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 184.
3 Ibid., p. 186. *Ibid., p. 191.
5 Frances Kemble's Journal, p. 28 ; Society in America, H. Martineau,
CH.IV.] THE NEGRO AS PROPERTY 3Q9
seer once said to Olrasted : " Why, sir, I wouldn't mind kill-
ing a nigger more than I would a dog." ' The restraint of
the law did not operate powerfully to prevent the killing of
these unfortunates. While the wilful, malicious, and pre-
meditated murder of a slave was a capital offence, in all the
slave-holding States, it was provided in most of them that
any person killing a slave in the act of resistance to his
lawful owner was guilty of no offence, nor was there
ground for an indictment in the case where a slave died
while receiving moderate correction.2 But what protected
the overseers on plantations remote from settlements and
neighbors was the universal rule of slave law, that the testi-
mony of a colored person could not be received against a
white.3 This gave complete immunity to the despotic over-
seer. On but few plantations were there more than two
white men, and they were always interested parties, being
owner, manager, or overseer. As a matter of fact, only re-
fractory slaves, or negroes attempting to run away, were
killed, and these murders were not frequent. Except in
rare instances the slaves had no incentive to work, save the
fear of a whipping.4 " If you don't work faster," or " if you
don't work better, I will have you flogged," were words
often heard.6 No one can wonder that it was a painful
sight to see negroes at work. The besotted and generally
repulsive expression of the field hands; their brute -like
countenances, on which were painted stupidity, indolence,
duplicity, and sensuality; their listlessness ; their dogged
action ; the stupid, plodding, machine-like, manner in which
they labored, made a sorrowful picture of man's inhumanity
vol. i. p. 308 ; Weld's Slavery as It Is, cited in Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,
p. 41.
1 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 203. See account of the murder of a slave
in Life of Frederick Douglass, p. 57.
a Stroud's Slave Laws, pp. 56 and 61. s Ibid., p. 41.
* Life of Frederick Douglass, by himself, p. 117.
6 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 203.
giO WOMEN UNDER SLAVERY [Cn. IV.
to man.1 General Sherman, who was for a time stationed
at New Orleans and later lived more than a year in Louisi-
ana, states that the field slaves were treated like animals.2
Fanny Kemble noticed that those who had some intelli-
gence, who were beyond the brutish level, wore a pathetic
expression — a mixture of sadness and fear.3 Frederick
Douglass, himself a slave and the only negro in his neigh-
borhood who could read, relates the effect of unceasing and
habitual toil on one in whom there was a gleam of knowl-
edge : " My natural elasticity was crushed ; my intellect
languished ; the disposition to read departed ; the cheerful
spark that lingered about my eye died out ; the dark night
of slavery closed in upon me, and behold a man transformed
to a brute."4 An observer who visited an average rice
plantation near Savannah was impressed with the fate of
the field hands : " Their lot was one of continued toil from
morning to night, uncheered even by the hope of any
change or prospect of improvement in condition." 5 Harriet
Martineau wrote : " A walk through a lunatic asylum is far
less painful than a visit to the slave quarter of an estate." 6
This state of affairs is perfectly comprehensible ; it was an
accessory of the system. It was Olmsted's judgment that a
certain degree of cruelty was necessary to make slave labor
generally profitable.7
The institution bore harder on the women than on the
men. Slave-breeding formed an important part of planta-
tion economy, being encouraged as was the breeding of ani-
mals. " Their lives are, for the most part, those of mere
animals ;" wrote Fanny Kemble, " their increase is literally
mere animal breeding, to which every encouragement is
See Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. pp. 142, 245 ; vol. ii. p. 202.
North American Review, Oct., 1888.
Frances Kemble's Journal, p. 98.
Life of Frederick Douglass, p. 119.
Slave States of America, Buckingham, vol. i. p. 133.
Society in America, vol. i. p. 224.
Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 354.
CH. IV.] COTTON AND SLAVERY 311
given, for it adds to the master's live-stock and the value of
his estate." ' The women worked in the fields as did the
men. When it became known that they were pregnant,
their task was lightened, yet, if necessary, they were
whipped when with child, and, in some cases, were put to
work again as early as three weeks after their confinement,
although generally the time of rest allowed was one month.
Fanny Kemble's woman heart bled at the tales of suffering
she heard, of the rapid child-bearing, the gross disregard of
nature's laws of maternity, and the consequent wide preva-
lence of diseases peculiar to the sex ; her daily record of
what she saw and heard is as pitiful as it is true.2
The money return for this degradation of humankind
came mainly from the growth of cotton. Of the 3,177,000
slaves in 1850, De Bow estimated that 1,800,000 of them
were engaged in the cotton-culture.3 The value of this crop
amounted to much more than that of the combined produc-
tion of sugar and rice.4 Cotton was then, as now, not only
the most important article of commerce of the South, but
was by far the greatest export from the whole country.5
It formed the basis of the material prosperity of the South,
1 Frances Kemble's Journal, p. 122. "A woman thinks . . . that the
more frequently she adds to the number of her master's live-stock by
bringing new slaves into the world, the more claims she will have upon
his consideration and good-will. This was perfectly evident to me from
the meritorious air with which the women always made haste to inform
me of the number of children they had borne, and the frequent occasions
on which the older slaves would direct my attention to their children,
exclaiming, ' Look, missis ! little niggers for you and massa; plenty little
niggers for you and little missis!' " — Frances Kemble's Journal, p. 60.
2 See Frances Kemble's Journal, pp. 60, 200, 251.
3 De Bow's Resources of the South and West, vol. iii. p. 419; Cotton
Kingdom, vol. i. p. 17.
* Value of crops in 1850: cotton, $105,600,000; sugar, $12,396,150;
rice, $3,000,000. De Bow's Resources, vol. iii. p. 40.
5 The total domestic exports for the year ending June 30th, 1850, were
$136,946,912, of which cotton furnished $71,984,616, and bread-stuffs and
provisions, £,26,051, 373. De Bow's Resources, vol. iii. pp. 388, 391, 392.
312 COTTON AND SLAVERY [Ca IV.
and there was economic foundation for the statement, so
arrogantly made, that " Cotton is king."
The profits of cotton-growing in a new country were very
large. Harriet Martineau, who visited Alabama in 1835,
was told that the profits were thirty-five per cent. One
planter Avhom she knew had two years previously invested
$15,000 in land, which he could then sell for $65,000 ; but
he expected at this time to make fifty or sixty thousand dol-
lars out of his growing crop.1 Land was so plenty that no
one took any pains to prevent its exhaustion, and when a
good yield of cotton could no longer be had, the land was
abandoned, and more virgin soil was purchased. When
Olmsted visited the South, Mississippi and Louisiana were
the States which offered the largest returns. He visited
one Mississippi plantation where five hundred negroes were
worked, the profit in a single year being $100,000.2 The
rich country tributary to Natchez, as well as that along the
Yazoo Eiver, was all owned by large proprietors, none of
whom were worth less than $100,000, and the property of
some was popularly estimated by millions. The ignorant
newly-rich seemed to be as large an element of society in
Mississippi as they were in New York.3 A Southern law-
yer truly describes a phase of the cotton industry. Wealth
was rapidly acquired by planters who began with limited
means, and whose success was due to their industry, econ-
omy, and self-denial. They devoted most of their profits
to the increase of their capital, with the result that in a few
years, as if by magic, large estates were accumulated. " The
fortunate proprietors then build fine houses, and surround
themselves with comforts and luxuries to which they were
strangers in their earlier years of care and toil." 4
An unwise and wasteful conduct of the business, however,
1 Society in America, vol. i. p. 228.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 83. * Ibid., pp. 158, 159.
* Letter to Harper's Weekly, Feb., 1859, quoted in Cotton Kingdom,
vol. ii. p. 158.
CH.IV.] COTTON AND SLAVERY 313
accompanied this prosperity. The profits were laid out in
more land and negroes ; the prospect of enlarged gains and
greater social consideration were alike an incentive to increase
these holdings. Frequently the coming crop was mortgaged
for money at high rates of interest, and the plantation sup-
plies were furnished by factors at extravagant prices. No sys-
tem could be more ruinous ; yet the demand for the world's
great staple continued to be so active, and the profit of rais-
ing cotton so enormous, that the cotton regions of the South-
west were, in the decade before the war, very prosperous.
This prosperity was the boast of the Southerner, and the
notion widely prevailed that in material well-being the South
went ahead of the North.1 The acme of this idea was at-
tained when Senator Hammond taunted the North with the
results of the financial panic of 1857. " When the abuse of
credit," said he, "had destroyed credit and annihilated con-
fidence ; when thousands of the strongest commercial houses
in the world were coming down, and hundreds of millions of
dollars of supposed property evaporating in thin air ; when
you came to a dead-lock, and revolutions were threatened,
what brought you up? Fortunately for you, it was the
commencement of the cotton season, and we have poured
upon you one million six hundred thousand bales of cotton
just at the crisis to save you from destruction." 2 Every one
knows that those were bragging words ; nevertheless, the
prosperity of the cotton States was real. Nowhere else ex-
isted such a union of soil and climate adapted to the growth
1 See various articles in De Bow's Resources; De Bow's Review ; South-
ern Wealth and Northern Profits, by T. P. Kettell, New York, 1861 ; also
speech of Hammond, of South Carolina, In the United States Senate,
March 4th, 1858. But in 1890 the leading senator of South Carolina
saw the matter in a different light. " I assert, what I believe is not de-
nied, that the institution of slavery retarded and hindered the material
development of those States where it existed ; certainly so as compared
with their sister free States." — Butler, in the Senate, Jan. 16th, 1890.
2 In the Senate, March 4th, 1858, Speeches and Letters of J. H. Ham-
mond, p. 317.
314 COTTON AND SLAVERY [Cn. IV.
of the staple, which was always in brisk and increasing de-
mand. The Southerners maintained that their wealth was
due to their peculiar institution ; that without slavery there
could not be a liberal cotton supply.1 This assertion has
been effectually disproved by the results since emancipation,
while even in the decade before the war it could with good
and sufficient reason be questioned. It was apparent to the
economist that the rich gifts of nature, the concentration of
capital and the combination of laborers accounted for the
fruitful returns of cotton-planting. It was patent that with
free white labor better results could be obtained.2 It is
quite true, however, that the practical question did not lie
between slave labor and free white labor, but between the
negro bondman and the negro freeman. Northern and Eng-
lish observers, for the most part, staggered when confronted
with the horns of the dilemma ; yet they certainly amassed
sufficient facts to venture the assertion that if the slaves were
freed, cotton-planting would be as remunerative to the mas-
ter as before, and that the physical condition of the laborer
would be improved. The demand for cotton and negroes
went hand in hand ; a high price of the staple made a high
value for the human cattle. A traveller going through the
South would hear hardly more than two subjects dis-
cussed in public places — the price of cotton and the price of
slaves.3
This kind of property was very high in the decade before
1 " The first and most obvious effect [of abolition of slavery] would be
to put an end to the cultivation of our great Southern staple." — Chancel-
lor Harper, Pro-slavery Argument, 1852, p. 86. " The average annual yield
[of cotton] during the twenty years previous to 1861 was 1,335,000,000
pounds; during the twenty-three years from 1865 to 1886 it was 2,207,-
000,000 pounds, an increase of 65.3 per cent." — The United States, Whit-
ney, p. 383. The crop of 1850 was 2,233,718 bales, value $105,600,000.
The crop of 1880 was 5,757,397 bales, value $275,000,000.
2 This subject is thoroughly discussed in A Journey in the Back Coun-
try, Olmsted, p. 296, and iii his Texas Journey, p. xiii. See also Cotton
Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 202. 3 See Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 51.
CH. IV.] THE VALUE OF SLAVES 315
the war, a good field hand being worth from one thousand
to fifteen hundred dollars. Since the adoption of the Con-
stitution the price of slaves had increased manifold, and
after 1835 the advance was especially marked.1 The need
of slaves in the cotton region kept slavery alive in, the bor-
der States ; for the Southwest was a ready purchaser of ne-
groes, and Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, which States
could employ slave labor to little advantage, always had a
surplus for sale. The salubrious climate of these States pro-
duced a hardy laborer who was in great request in the cot-
ton and sugar districts. The negroes of Virginia and Ken-
tucky considered it a cruel doom to be sold to go South, as it
was well understood that harder work and poorer fare would
be their lot. The annual waste of life on the sugar planta-
tions of Louisiana wras two and one-half per cent, over and
above the natural increase.2 On the cotton estates the in-
crease, if any, was slight. On one of the best-managed
estates in Mississippi, Olmsted learned that the net increase
amounted to four per cent. ; on Virginia farms, however, it
was frequently twenty per cent. Nevertheless, between
1830 and 1850 the slave population of Maryland decreased
and that of Virginia remained stationary, while Louisiana
more than doubled, Alabama nearly trebled, and Mississippi
almost quintupled their number of slaves. These facts dis-
close the internal slave-trade and the most wretched aspect
of the institution — that of breeding slaves for market.
Even so methodical and frugal a planter as Washington
found that if negroes were kept on the same land, and they
and all their increase supported upon it, " their owner would
gradually become more and more embarrassed or impover-
1 The Slave-trade, Carey, p. 112 ; Southern Wealth and Northern Prof-
its, Kettell, pp. 130 and 135 ; Thirty Years' View, Benton, vol. ii. p. 782;
A Journey in the Back Country, Olmsted, pp. 326 and 374.
1 Report of the Agricultural Society of Baton Rouge, La. ; letter of
Johnson, M. C. from Louisiana, to the Secretary of the Treasury, cited
on p. 174, Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stearns (1853). The author was
an Episcopal clergyman of Maryland, and the book a defence of slavery.
316 SLAVE-BREEDING [Cu. IV.
ished." Yet the financial remedy was not adopted by Wash-
ington ; he made a rule neither to buy nor sell slaves.1 Jef-
ferson, although in easy circumstances when he retired from
the presidency, could not make both ends meet on his Mon-
ticello estate, and died largely in debt.2 Madison sold some
of his best land to feed the increasing number of his negroes,
but he confessed to Harriet Martineau that the week before
she visited him he had been obliged to sell a dozen of his
slaves.3 We may be certain it was with great reluctance
that the gentlemen of Virginia came to the point of breed-
ing negroes to make money ; but it was the easiest way to
maintain their ancient state, so they eventually overcame
their scruples. Even before Madison died, the professor of
history and metaphysics in the college at which Jefferson
was educated wrote in a formal paper : " The slaves in Vir-
ginia multiply more rapidly than in most of the Southern
States ; the Virginians can raise cheaper than they can buy ;
in fact, it is one of their greatest sources of profit ;" and the
writer seemed to exult over the fact that they were now
" exporting slaves " very rapidly.4 He wrote his defence of
slavery in 1832, and then thought that Virginia was annu-
ally sending six thousand negroes to the Southern market.6
For the ten years preceding 1860 the average annual impor-
tation of slaves into seven Southern States from the slave-
breeding States was not far from twenty-five thousand.6 In
Virginia the number of women exceeded that of men, and
1 Bancroft, vol. vi. p. 179. See also letter of Washington, printed in the
Athenaeum, July llth, and cited by the New York Nation, July 30th, 1891.
2 Life of Jefferson, Morse, p. 335.
8 Retrospect of Western Travel, vol. i. p. 192.
4 Prof. Dew, Pro-slavery Argument, pp. 362, 370. He afterwards be-
came President of William and Mary College.
5 Ibid., p. 378.
6 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 58, note. See Slavery and Secession,
Thos. Ellison, p. 223. The slave - exporting States were Maryland, Vir-
ginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri ; see also Pike's
First Blows of the Civil War, pp. 386, 392.
CH. IV.]
SLAVE-BREEDING
317
were regarded in much the same way as are brood-mares.1
A Virginia gentleman, in conversation with Olmsted, con-
gratulated himself " because his women were uncommonly
good breeders ; he did not suppose there was a lot of women
anywhere that bred faster than his ; he never heard Of babies
coining so fast as they did on his plantation ; . . . and every
one of them, in his estimation, was worth two hundred dollars,
as negroes were selling now, the moment it drew breath." a
Frederick Douglass had a master, professedly a Christian,
opening and closing the day with family prayer, who boast-
ed that he bought a woman slave simply "as a breeder."8
When James Freeman Clarke visited Baltimore, a friend
who had been to a party one night said there was pointed
out to him a lady richly and fashionably dressed, and ap-
parently one moving in the best society, who derived her
income from the sale of the children of a half-dozen negro
women she owned, although their husbands belonged to
other masters.4 Sometimes a negro woman would be ad-
vertised for sale as being " very prolific in her generating
qualities." 5
The law in none of the States recognized slave marriages ;6
in all of them the Koman principle, that the child followed
the condition of its mother, was the recognized rule. Ex-
cept in Louisiana, there was no law to prevent the violent
separation of husbands from wives, or children from their
parents.7 The church conformed its practice to the law.
The question was put to the Savannah Eiver Baptist Asso-
ciation, whether in the case that slaves were separated, they
1 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 57. See debate in Virginia legislature,
1831-32.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 59. s Life of Douglass, p. 118.
* Anti-slavery Days, James Freeman Clarke, p. 32.
5 Goodell's American Slave Code, p. 84.
• There was a faint recognition by statute in Maryland, and by judicial
decision in Louisiana ; but neither was of practical value. They did not
prevent the separation by sale of husband from wife. Notes on Uncle
Tom's Cabin, Stearns, p. 38. 7 Stroud's Slave Laws, p. 82.
318 SLAVES WERE CHATTELS [Cm. IV.
should be allowed to marry again. The answer was in the
affirmative, because the separation was civilly equivalent to
death, and the ministers believed " that in the sight of God
it would be so viewed." It would not be right, therefore,
to forbid second marriages. It was proper that the slaves
should act in obedience to their masters and raise up for
them progeny.1 The negro women lacked in chastity ; it is
true this was a natural inclination of the African race, but
that this tendency should be fostered was an inevitable re-
sult of slavery. " Licentiousness and almost indiscriminate
sexual connection among the young," said Olmsted, " are
very general."2
Slaves were chattels.3 They could be transferred by a
simple bill of sale as horses or cattle ; they could even be
sold or given away by their masters without a writing.4
The cruelty of separating families, involved by the business
of selling slaves who were raised expressly for market, or
by the division of negroes among the heirs of a decedent, or
their forced sale occasioned by the bankruptcy of an owner,
appealed very forcibly to the North. It especially awak-
ened the sympathy of Northern Avomen, who counted for
much in educating and influencing voters in a way that
finally brought about the abolition of slavery. These sep-
arations were not infrequent, although they were not the
general rule. There was a disposition, on the score of self-
interest, to avoid the tearing asunder of family ties, for the
reason that if slaves pined on account of parting from those
to whom they had become attached, they labored less obedi-
ently and were more troublesome. Humane masters would,
whenever possible, avoid selling the husband apart from the
1 Goodell's American Slave Code, p. 109; Memorials of a Southern
Planter, Smedes, p. 77.
2 Seaboard Slave States, Olmsted, p. 132.
8 In Louisiana and Kentucky they were in some cases considered real
estate, but they did not partake enough of the quality of real property to
prevent their being sold off from an estate. See Goodell, pp. 24, 25, 71, 75.
* De Bow's Review^ vol. viii. p. 69.
CH.IV.] SLAVE AUCTIONS 319
wife, or young children away from the mother. The best
public sentiment of the South frowned upon an unnecessary
separation of families. It was not unusual to find men
making a money sacrifice to prevent a rending of family at-
tachments, or generous people contributing a sum to avert
such an evil.1 The prominence given in their arguments by
the abolitionists to this feature of the system undoubtedly
influenced the South to abate this cruelty. The apologists
of slavery never defended the separation of families ; it was
admitted to be a necessary evil, and pains were taken to give
Northern and foreign visitors the impression that such cases
were of rare occurrence.
It is very probable that a good deal of the Northern sym-
pathy on this subject was misplaced. Heart-rending scenes
at slave auctions certainly took place, and the many inci-
dents recounted in the abolition literature are perhaps all of
them trustworthy relations,2 yet they as surely represent
1 Lyell, Second Visit to the United States, vol. i. p. 209; Notes on Uncle
Tom's Cabin, p. 40; Pro-slavery Argument, p. 132. For the subject dis-
cussed thoroughly, from the abolitionist standpoint, see Key to Uncle
Tom's Cabin, p. 133. The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin is mainly a collec-
tion of pieces jmtificatives. For confirmation of statements in the text,
see p. 137. Memorials of a Southern Planter, Smedes, p. 48. The result
of Edmund Yates's observations was that separations were frequent. "At
Richmond and New Orleans I was present at slave auctions, and did not1
see one instance of a married pair being sold together; but, without ex-
ception, so far as I was able to learn from the negroes sold by the auc-
tioneers, every grown-up man left a wife, and every grown-up woman a
husband." — Letter to the Women of England, cited in Greeley's American
Conflict, p. 70.
2 See the account of the editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, Dec. 25th,
1846, of a sale at Petersburg, Va., cited in Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,
p. 137. When the negroes found out that they were to be sold "the
effect was indescribably agonizing." A mother cried " in frantic grief"
when her boy was sold. " During the sale, the quarters resounded with
cries and lamentations that made my heart ache."
Edmund Yates writes : " I saw Mr. Pulliam [of Richmond] sell to dif-
ferent buyers two daughters away from their mother, who was also to be
sold. This unfortunate woman was a quadroon ; and I shall not soon
320 SLAVE AUCTIONS [Cn.IV.
only a phase and not the universal rule. The detailed, mi-
nute, and celebrated account of a slave auction at Richmond
by William Chambers, the publisher, of Edinburgh, is un-
doubtedly a fair example of what many times occurred. At
one establishment there were ten negroes offered for sale.
The intending purchasers examined the slaves by feeling
the arms of all and the ankles of the women ; they looked
into their mouths and examined carefully their hands and
fingers. One of the lots was a full-blooded negro woman
with three children. " Her children were all girls, one of
them a baby at the breast, three months old, and the others
two and three years of age. . . . There was not a tear or an
emotion visible in the whole party. Everything seemed to
be considered a matter of course ; and the change of owners
was possibly looked forward to with as much indifference as
ordinary hired servants anticipate a removal from one em-
ployer to another." Chambers took an offered opportunity
to converse with the woman, who told him she had been
parted from her husband two days, and that her heart was
almost broken at the thought of the lasting separation.
The writer continues : " I have said that there was an entire
absence of emotion in the party of men, women, and chil-
dren thus seated, preparatory to being sold. This does not
correspond with the ordinary accounts of slave sales, which
are represented as tearful and harrowing. My belief is that
none of the parties felt deeply on the subject, or at least
that any distress they experienced was but momentary —
forget the large tears that started to her eyes as she saw her two children
sold away from her."
" Who was the greatest orator you ever heard ?" asked Josiah Quincy
of John Randolph. " The greatest orator I ever heard," replied Ran-
dolph, " was a woman. She was a slave. She was a mother, and her
rostrum was the auction-block." — Figures of the Past, p. 212.
See account of Lewis Hayden, Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 155 ; Anti-
slavery Manual (1837), p. 109; Slave States of America, Buckingham,
vol. i. p. 183; also Retrospect of Western Travel, Martineau, vol. i. p.
235.
CH.IV.] SLAVE AUCTIONS 321
soon passed away and was forgotten. One of my reasons
for this opinion rests on a trifling incident which occurred.
While waiting for the commencement of the sale, one of the
gentlemen present amused himself with a pointer-dog which,
at command, stood on its hind-legs and took pieces of bread
from his pocket. These tricks greatly entertained the row
of negroes, old and young ; and the poor woman whose heart
three minutes before was almost broken now laughed as
heartily as any one." 1 Chambers spent a forenoon in visit-
ing different establishments where slaves were sold at auc-
1 Things in America, W. Chambers, pp. 279, 280. The whole account
is worth reading. A similar account of a slave auction, which took place
at Savannah, may be found in the New York Tribune of April 28th, 1860,
translated from Das Ausland; see also Promenade en Amerique, J. J.
Ampere, tome ii. p. 113. See also account of the "great auction sale of
slaves at Savannah, March 2d and 3d, 1859," by a correspondent of the
New York Tribune, published in the New York Tribune, and in pamphlet
in 1863.
When Seward visited Virginia, in 1846, there were on the steamboat on
which he travelled seventy-five slaves who were on the way to New Or-
leans to be sold. As they arrived at a port of entry where the ship lay
at anchor which was to take them south, Seward watched them with in-
tense interest as they filed from the steamboat to the ship, which had
already one hundred and twenty-five fellow negroes doomed to the same
destiny. He writes : " As I stood looking at this strange scene a gentle-
man stepped up to my side and said, 'You see the curse that our fore-
fathers bequeathed to us.'
" I replied, ' Yes,' and turned away, to conceal manifestations of sym-
pathy I might not express.
"'Oh,' said my friend, 'they don't mind it; they are cheerful; they
enjoy the transportation and travel as much as you do.'
" ' I am glad they do,' said I, 'poor wretches !'
" The lengthened file at last had all reached the deck of the slaver, and
we cut loose. The captain of our boat, seeing me intensely interested,
turned to me and said : ' Oh ! sir, do not be concerned about them ; they
are the happiest people in the world.' I looked, and there they were —
slaves, ill protected from the cold, fed capriciously on the commonest food
— going from all that was dear to all that was terrible, and still they wept
not. I thanked God that he had made them insensible. And these were
'the happiest people in the world !' " — Life of Seward, vol.i. p. 778.
I. -21
322 JEFFERSON ON THE NEGROES [On. IV.
tion. His blood boiled with indignation to see a human
being, though with a black skin, sold "just like a horse at
TattersalPs ;" yet he closed his narrative with : " It would
not have been difficult to speak strongly on a subject which
appeals so greatly to the feelings ; but I have preferred tell-
ing the simple truth."
Jefferson, who hated slavery and who studied negroes
with the eye of the planter and philosopher, thus compared
them with the whites : " They are more ardent after their
female ; but love seems with them to be more an eager de-
sire than a tender, delicate mixture of sentiment and sensa-
tion. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflic-
tions which render it doubtful whether heaven has given
life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt and sooner for-
gotten with them." ' A careful study of the slaves of the
generation before the civil war must lead to the same con-
clusion.2 The earnest and educated women of the North un-
consciously invested the negroes with their own fine feelings,
and estimated the African's grief at separation from her
family by what would be their own at a like fate. The sell-
ing of a wife away from her husband, or a mother away
from her children, appeared to their emotional natures sim-
ply horrible. It seemed a cruel act, for which there could
be no excuse or mitigation. It was a vulnerable part of the
system; the abolitionists, attacking it with impetuosity,
gained the sympathy of the larger portion of thinking
Northern women. This earnestness was not simulated, for
the injustice likewise appealed strongly to the emotional
temperaments of the abolitionists. Garrison identified him-
self so closely with the negroes, whose cause he had made
1 Notes on Virginia, Jefferson's Works, vol. viii. p. 882.
2 See account of a slave auction at Richmond in Travels of Arforedson,
Anti-slavery Manual, p. 114 ; also Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 152 ; Olm-
sted's Seaboard Slave States, p. 556 ; Promenade en Amerique, J. J.
Ampere, vol. ii. p. 115. "The negro [in Africa] knows not love., affec-
tion, or jealousy." — Cited by Herbert Spencer, Sociology, vol. i. p. 663.
" The negro race do not understand kissing."— Ibid., vol. ii. p. 17.
Cu. IV.] THE DOMESTIC SLAVE-TRADE 323
his own, that in addressing a body of them he said that he
was ashamed of his own color.1
It could not be denied that an extensive traffic in slaves
existed all through the South. " Cash for Negroes," " Ne-
groes for Sale," and "Negroes Wanted," were as common
advertisements in the Southern papers as notices of proposed
sales of horses and mules. Indeed, the two kinds of prop-
erty were frequently advertised and sold together. An ad-
ministrator offers " horses, mules, cattle, hogs, sheep, and
several likely young negroes ;" a sheriff announces the sale
of " ten head of cattle, twenty-five head of hogs, and seven
negroes ;" an auctioneer bespeaks attendance at the court-
house in Columbia, S. C., for an opportunity such as seldom
occurs, for he will offer one hundred valuable negroes, among
whom are " twenty-five prime young men, forty of the most
likely young women, and as fine a set of children as can be
shown." A dealer at Memphis offers the highest cash price
for slaves, and one at Baltimore wants to buy five thousand
negroes and announces that families are " never separated."
A firm at Natchez, Miss., advertises "fresh arrivals weekly
of slaves," and promises to keep constantly " a large and
well-selected stock." A competitor in the same city offers
" ninety negroes just arrived from Richmond, consisting of
field hands, house - servants, carriage - drivers, several fine
cooks, and some excellent mules, and one very fine riding-
horse ;" and he advises his patrons that he has " made ar-
rangements in Richmond to have regular shipments every
month, and intends to keep a good stock on hand of every
description of servants." An auctioneer in New Orleans
announces for sale three splendid paintings, " The Circassian
Slave," "The Lion Fight," and "The Crucifixion;" also,
" Delia, aged seventeen, a first-rate cook ; Susan, aged six-
teen, a mulatress, a good house-girl ; Ben, aged fourteen,
and Peyton, aged sixteen, smart house-boys ;" and adds, " The
above slaves are fully guaranteed and sold for no fault." A
1 Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 158.
324 THE DOMESTIC SLAVE-TRADE [Cn. IV.
storekeeper of ~New Orleans, who was likewise a colonel, at
the request and for the amusement of his many acquaint-
ances got up a raffle, and the prizes were a dark-bay horse,
warranted sound, with a trotting buggy and harness, and
"the stout mulatto girl Sarah, aged about twenty -nine
years, general house-servant, valued at nine hundred dollars
and guaranteed." l There might be seen now and then in
the New Orleans papers an advertisement of a lot of pious
negroes.2 A curious notice appeared in the Religious Her-
ald, a Baptist journal published in Eichmond : " Who wants
thirty -five thousand dollars in property ? I am desirous to
spend the balance of my life as a missionary, if the Lord
permit, and therefore offer for sale my farm — the vineyard
adjacent to Williamsburg . . . and also about forty ser-
vants, mostly young and likely, and . rapidly increasing in
numbers and value." 3 By actual count made from the ad-
vertisements in sixty-four newspapers published in eight
slave States during the* last two weeks of November, 1852,
there were offered for sale four thousand one hundred ne-
groes.4 The good society of the South looked upon slave
dealers and auctioneers with contempt. Their occupation
was regarded as base, and they were treated by gentlemen
as the publicans were by the Pharisees. The opening scene
of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was criticised as inaccurate, for it
showed a Kentucky gentleman entertaining at table a vul-
gar slave-dealer." The utter scorn with which such men
1 New Orleans True Delta, Jan. llth, 1853, cited in Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin, p. 182 ; New Orleans Picayune, Jan., 1844 ; Second Visit to Amer-
ica, Lycll, vol. ii. p. 126 ; Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 134 et seq., where
copies of large numbers of similar advertisements may be found. See
description and illustration of an auction in the rotunda of the St. Louis
Hotel, New Orleans, of estates, pictures, and slaves. Slave States of
America, Buckingham, vol. i. p. 334.
• Retrospect of Western Travel, Martineau, vol. i. p. 250.
8 New York Independent, March 21st, 1850.
* Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 142.
6 Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stearns, p. 145.
CH. IV.] THE FLOGGING OF SLAVES 325
were regarded was a condemnation of slavery in the house
of its friends.1
A feature of the institution that aroused much indigna-
tion at the North was its cruelty, as evidenced by the rigor
with which the lash was used. We have seen that -flogging
necessarily accompanied this system of labor.2 The master
and the overseer held the theory that the negroes were but
children and should be chastised on the principle of the an-
cient schoolmaster who carried out the injunctions of Solo-
mon. This was also in the main the practice, but wanton
cruelty did not rule.3 At times, however, a fit of drunkenness,
an access of ill-temper, or a burst of passion would incite the
man who had unrestrained power to use it like a brute.4
Abolition literature is full of such instances, well attested.
Slaves were sometimes whipped to death.5 The murder-
ers were occasionally tried, and once in a while convicted.
1 "You [i.e. the Southern people] have among you a sneaking indi-
vidual of the class of native tyrants known as the slave-dealer. He
watches your necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave at a specu-
lating price. If you cannot help it, you sell to him ; but if you can help
it. you drive him from your door. You despise him utterly. You do not
recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man. Your children must
not play with his ; they may rollick freely with the little negroes, but
not with the slave-dealer's children. If you are obliged to deal with
him, you try to get through the job without so much as touching him.
It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet; but with
the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremony^-instinctively shrinking from
the snaky contact. . . . Now, why is this ? You do not so treat the man
who deals in corn, cattle, or tobacco." — Lincoln at Peoria, Oct. 16th, 1854.
Life by Howells, p. 276.
2 See pp. 308 and 309.
3 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 354 ; Kemble, p. 229. " The slave-owners,
as a body, are not cruel, and many of them treat their slaves with paternal
and patriarchal kindness." — Life and Liberty in America, Chas. Mackay,
vol. i. p. 314.
4 Olmsted's Seaboard Slave States, p. 485 ; Kemble, p. 175; Life of Fred.
Douglass, pp. 38, 111. See also the graphic account of the whipping of
a woman which Olmsted witnessed, Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 205.
5 See Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, pp. 60-80, 92 et seq.
326 THE FLOGGING OF SLAVES [On. IV.
but they were never hanged ; more frequently, however, as
the violent act was usually witnessed only by negroes, no
proof could be obtained,1 and the perpetrator was not even
arrested. When negroes themselves committed a capital
crime, there were instances of burning them to death at the
stake.2
One finds, however, notice of plantations on which the
slaves were never whipped. Ampere, who had no sympathy
with slavery, visited a German who owned a plantation near
Charleston, and who, having no cruelty or tyranny in his
nature, appeared to be literally oppressed by his blacks. He
was so humane that he would not whip his slaves. The
slaves showed him little gratitude, and labored sluggishly
and with great carelessness. When he went into a cabin
where the negresses were at work cleaning cotton, he con-
fined himself to showing them how badly their task was
done and explaining to them the considerable damage which
their negligence caused him. His observations were re-
ceived with grumbling and sullenness. Ampere saw in this
case an excellent argument against slavery. Had the gen-
tleman hired his laborers he would have dismissed them if
they did not work to his liking ; but under the Southern
system his choice lay simply between whipping them or be-
coming a victim to their idleness.3 Masters like this were
1 Seep. 309.
8 See Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. pp. 348, 354. "That slaves have ever
been burned alive has been indignantly denied. The late Judge Jay told
me that he had evidence in his possession of negro burnings every year in
the last twenty." See also New York Weekly Tribune, Oct. 3d, 1857 ; Anti-
slavery History of the John Brown Year, p. 205 ; Debate in the House of
Representatives, March 8th, 1860 ; New York Tribune, March 12th, 20th,
and Aug. 24th, 1860. The grave historian Richard Hildreth so abhorred
slavery that, before writing his serious work, Despotism in America, he
gave to the press anonymously a novel, The White Slave, in which he
describes with fidelity the burning of a negro at the stake, who was a
fugitive and a murderer, see chap. xlv.
1 Promenade en Amerique, J. J. Ampere, tome i. p. 114.
Cn. IV.] LEGISLATION AGAINST TEACHING SLAVES 327
certainly rare in the cotton region, but as one travelled
northward, slavery appeared under milder features. A
New England girl became a governess upon a Tennessee
plantation where no slave had been whipped for seven
years ; she became reconciled to slavery, and did not find in
reality the " revolting horrors " in it for which a Northern
education had prepared her.1 In Virginia, Olmsted saw no
whipping of slaves except of wild, lazy children as they
were being broken in to work ; and he heard of but little
harshness or cruelty.2
In our time, when the desire for education is common to
all, and the need of it universally acknowledged, it is interest-
ing to inquire how this matter was dealt with by the slave-
holders. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
and Louisiana forbade, under penalties, the teaching of slaves
to read or w.rite. In Virginia the owners, but no one else,
might instruct their negroes, and in North Carolina the slaves,
might be taught arithmetic. Some of these enactments-
were on the statute-books before 1831, but everywhere after.-
that date the laws were made more stringent and were more-
effectually enforced.3 This year was memorable for the Nat-
Turner insurrection and for the beginning of a systematic-
abolition agitation by Garrison in the Liberator. The usual
apology at the South for these laws was their alleged neces-
sity to prevent the negroes from reading the abolition docu-
ments sent to the slave States, which were incitements to
insurrection. The course which legislation took after 1831
has led many Northern writers to infer that the anti-slavery
agitation was the cause of slaves being treated more inhu-
manly than before. In so far as the withholding of priv-
ileges of education and association was a cruelty they are
right ; but they are wrong when they have assumed that
1 The Sunny South, Ingraham, pp. 59, 143.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. pp. 94 and 131.
3 Stroud's Slave Laws, p. 138 et seq. ; Goodell's American Slave Code,
p. 20.
328 SOUTHERN SENTIMENT ON TEACHING THE SLAVES [Cii. IV.
more positive brutality prevailed. A careful examination
of the slavery literature will hardly fail to lead to the con-
clusion that the flood of light which the abolitionists threw
upon the practice influenced the slave-owners to mitigate
its most cruel features.1 The thesis that slavery is a posi-
tive good began to be maintained after 1831, but no amount
of arrogant assertion could prevent the advocates of slavery
from being put on the defensive. Their earnest endeavors
to convince Northern and foreign visitors of jthe benefits of
the system show their appreciation of the fact that it was
under the ban of the civilized world ; and this very necessity
of justifying their peculiar institution made them desirous of
suppressing, as far as possible, what they themselves admit-
ted to be its evils.
The ideas about the education of negroes were not every-
where alike, and there were other defences of their being
kept in ignorance than the one which I have mentioned. A
Georgia rice and cotton planter said that " the very slight-
est amount of education, merely teaching them to read, im-
pairs their value as slaves, for it instantly destroys their con-
tentedness ; and since you do not contemplate changing their
condition, it is surely doing them an ill service to destroy
their acquiescence in it." 2 The Georgia gentleman was only
partly right. A mass of advertisements of slaves for sale
shows that knowledge made them more valuable, although it
1 See, for example, Baltimore American, quoted iu Slavery and Color,
W. Chambers, p. 173. Seward made a visit to Culpepper Court-house and
wrote his wife, Dec. 14th, 1857: "It is quite manifest that the long de-
bate about slavery has made a deep impression on the minds and hearts
of the more refined and generous portion of the families in Virginia.
The word 'slaves' is seldom used. They are 'servants,' 'hands.' They
are treated with kindness, and they appear clean, tidy, and comfortable.
I happened to fall in upon a husking frolic on Mr. Peudleton's planta-
tion, and it was indeed a merry and noisy scene. My visit was very
pleasant. Mrs. Pendleton is a lady you would respect and love. She is
sad with cares and responsibilities which she has too much conscien-
tiousness to cast off." — Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 331.
8 Kemble, p. 9.
CH.IV.] RELIGIOUS TEACHING 329
is also true that it made them more dangerous.1 The prob-
lem of the master was to impart sufficient knowledge to
make the slave useful without making him restless.2
Chancellor Harper, in defending the law of South Caro-
lina, reasoned that the slaves had to work during the day
with their hands, and in their intervals of leisure few cared
to read for amusement or instruction. " Of the many slaves,"
he writes, " whom I have known capable of reading, I have
never known one to read anything but the Bible, and this
task they impose on themselves as matter of duty ;" but this
is an inefficient method of religious instruction, for " their
comprehension is defective, and the employment is to them
an unusual and laborious one."3 Another South Carolina
judge, of equal prominence, took an entirely different view.
He advocated the repeal of the law which forbade the in-
struction of the slaves. " When we reflect as Christians,"
he writes, "how can we justify it that a slave is not to be
permitted to read the Bible ? It is in vain to say there is
danger in it. The best slaves in the State are those who
can and do read tihe Scriptures. Again, who is it that teach
your slaves to read ? It generally is done by the children
of the owners. Who would tolerate an indictment against
his son or daughter for teaching a favorite slave to read ?
Such laws look to me as rather cowardly." 4 In spite of the
law, then, house-servants were frequently taught to read.5
Field hands, on the contrary, remained in gross ignorance,
even where there were no prohibitory statutes. In Mary-
land the teaching of slaves was not forbidden by law,6 yet
an apologist of slavery admits that as a general thing they
were not taught to read in that State.7 Frederick Douglass
1 See Despotism in America, Richard Hildreth,p. 63 ; also Cotton King-
dom, vol. ii. p. 82.
See Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 61. 3 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 36.
Judge J. B. O'Neall, De Bow's Resources, vol. ii. p. 269.
See, for example, Memorials of a Southern Planter, Smedes, p. 79.
The Negro in Maryland, Brackett, p. 197.
Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stearns, p. 86.
330 FREDERICK DOUGLASS [Cn. IV.
relates that he had to teach his fellow-slaves on the planta-
tion by stealth, and that when the secret was discovered his
school was broken up; he was told, moreover, that if he
were striving to be another Nat Turner he would very speed-
ily meet that negro's fate.1 Douglass himself had been taught
to read while a boy by his Baltimore mistress, whose house-
servant he was ; but he relates that, though eager to learn,
and though the teacher was proud of the rapid progress of
the pupil, when the master came to hear of this instruction,
further progress was peremptorily forbidden, because it was
thought learning would spoil the best negro in the world by
making him disconsolate and unhappy."
And there were exceptions even to the crass ignorance of
field hands. Olmsted visited a Mississippi plantation where
all the negroes knew how to read : they had been taught by
one of their number, and with the permission of the owner.
They were well fed, and did good, honest work. The master
was growing rich from the fruits of their labor, and, though
illiterate himself, was proud of his instructed and religious
slaves.3
Closely allied with the subject of education is that of re-
ligious nurture. It must be borne in mind that the South-
ern people were very pious, and held strictly to the ortho-
dox faith. Liberal religious movements made no headway
among them. If anything were needed to make the names
of Garrison and Parker more opprobrious in the South, it
1 Life of Fred. Douglass, p. 105.
3 Ibid., p. 70. Sarah Grimke received a severe rebuke for teaching
her little negro rnaid to read. The Sisters Grimke, Birney, p. 12.
" Slavery and knowledge cannot live together. To enlighten the slave
is to break his chain. . . . He cannot be left to read in an enlight-
ened age without endangering his master; for what can he read which
will not give at least some hint of his wrongs? Should his eye chance
to fall on the Declaration of Independence, how would the truth glare on
him 'that all men are born free and equal?'" — Channing on Slavery, p.
75.
3 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 70.
CH.IV.] RELIGIOUS TEACHING 331
was that they were reproached with being infidels.1 The
practice of giving religious instruction to the slaves varied
greatly, according to the temper of the master. Bishop
Polk, of Louisiana, who owned four hundred slaves, was
very careful about their religious training. They were
baptized and taught the catechism ; at a proper age many
of them were confirmed ; marriages were solemnized ac-
cording to the ritual of the Episcopal Church. The influ-
ence of the bishop among the church people of his diocese
was beneficial.2 Other masters, from indolence, paid little
attention to the matter, while still others discouraged relig-
ious instruction from a belief of its danger.. Keligious ex-
ercises among the slaves, however, were rarely forbidden.3
It was the opinion of Fanny Kemble that the systematic
preaching to the negroes, common in her neighborhood, was
largely due to the exposure in the abolition literature of
former neglect. Sometimes the slaves of an estate were
preached to by one of their own number, or by one from
a neighboring plantation. After the day of Nat Turner, it
was customary at these meetings to have white men pres-
ent, and in some States this was required by law. There
were also legal restrictions in regard to negroes assembling
at night for worship. Free blacks, who were itinerant
preachers, were everywhere frowned upon, and frequently
prevented from pursuing their calling.
There was a strong feeling that the religious instruction
should be given by white preachers. Many of these moved
in the same sphere of society as the slave-holders, and prac-
tically all of them had the feelings of the dominant class.
" Servants, obey in all things your masters," was their fa-
vorite text, and the slaves were solemnly enjoined to be sat-
isfied with their lot on earth ; though the conditions were
1 In regard to Garrison, see. his Life, vol. iii. p. 374.
3 See note, p. 213, vol. ii. Cotton Kingdom.
3 Ibid., p. 222 ; see also Promenade en Arne"rique, Ampere, tome ii.
p. 144.
332 CONDITION OF THE SLAVES [Cn. IV.
often hard, they were assured that if they remained faith-
ful and steadfast, their reward hereafter would be exceed-
ing great.1 Following the teaching of the fathers of the
church, they took pains to impress upon the slaves that
while they suffered from the fall of Adam, they labored
likewise under the curse of Canaan ; that to this were due
their black skin and hard hands ; that these were manifes-
tations of God's displeasure, and pointed them out as proper
subjects of slavery.2
The slaves were fond of religious exercises. Even the
arid discourses of the white clergymen were a relief from
their monotonous daily toil, while to attend upon the ex-
hortations of one of their own color gave unalloyed de-
light. Yet there did not seem to be in the minds of the
slaves any necessary connection between religion and mo-
rality. An entire lack of chastity among the women, and
an entire lack of honesty among the men, did not prevent
their joining the church and becoming, in the estimation of
their fellow-slaves, exemplary Christians. It is obvious that
if the white preachers inculcated these virtues, such preach-
ing, when accompanied with the averment that slavery was
a necessary relation between the blacks and the whites, must
be without effect; for to the slaves an absolute condition
of the system seemed to be that the labor of the man and
the person of the woman belonged to the master. ~No mor-
alist would undertake to preach honesty to men who did not
1 A ragged old negro whom Olmsted met in Mississippi showed that
such preaching had taken root by discoursing thus : " Rough fare's good
enough for dis world. . . . Dis world ain't nothin' ; dis is hell, dis is hell
to what's a-comin' arter. ... I reckon de Lord has 'cepted of me, and I
'specs I shall be saved, dough I don't look much like it. ... De Lord am
my rock, and he shall not perwail over me ; I will lie down in green past-
ures and take up my bed in hell, yet will not his mercy circumwent me."
— Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 90.
2 Kemble, p. 57 ; Life of Frederick Douglass, p. 155. A curious yet
characteristic catechism for slaves was published in the Southern Episco-
palian, and cited in the New York Weekly Tribune, June 10th, 1854.
CH.IV.] THE HOUSE -SERVANTS 333
own their labor, nor chastity to women who did not own
their bodies. This was appreciated by Southern reasoners.
Chancellor Harper argued that unchastity among female
slaves was not a vice or a crime, but only a weakness ; and
that theft by a negro was not a crime, but only a vice.1
It is easy to sum up the intellectual and moral condition
of the vast proportion of the slaves ; they were in a state
of dismal ignorance and moral darkness.2 If some travel-
lers and novelists have represented slavery in a different
light from that in which it is here presented, it is because
they have dwelt upon it as seen in the least painful aspect.
The household servants were different in all respects from
the field hands. They were naturally brighter, and effort
was made to train them ; they were better fed and clothed,
and their close contact with white people, owing to the imi-
tative faculty of the race, was an education in itself. A com-
mon picture in literature is the joyful welcome given the
master and mistress on their return from a journey by the
troops of house-servants, and that such scenes were of fre-
quent occurrence is undoubted. That a breach in the custom
was unwelcome is well illustrated by a master who gave his
servants a cruel beating because on coming home he was
not met by demonstrations of joy and professions of attach-
ment.3 Olmsted saw some of these welcomes that came from
the heart ; they were greetings from the house-slaves ; the
field hands, however, seemed indifferent ; " barely touched
their tattered hats and grinned." * " The slaves in a fami-
ly," said Henry Clay, "are treated with all the kindness that
the children of the family receive ;"5 and it is General Sher-
1 Pro-slavery Argument, pp. 39 and 43. See instance related by Lyell,
Second Visit, vol. i. p. 272.
2 " The field-hand negro is, on an. average, a very poor and very bad
creature. ... He seems to be but an imperfect man, incapable of taking
care of himself in a civilized manner." — Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 339.
3 Slavery as It Is, Thos. D. Weld, p. 129.
4 A Journey in the Back Country, Olmsted, p. 286.
6 Speech on Compromise Measures, Feb. 6th, 1850.
334 THE HOUSE - SERVANTS [On. IV.
man's recollection that " the family servants were treated as
well as the average hired servants of to-day." 1 That these
remarks were in a measure true of some houses in the South
cannot be denied, but there is abundant testimony to show
that these statements by no means represent the average
condition of household slaves.2 This is what we should ex-
pect, for the relation described by Clay was an inherent im-
possibility, and the assertion of General Sherman is refuted
by the fact that the servant of to-day has a check upon the
master in his privilege of quitting the service.
For the sake, however, of putting this aspect of slavery
in its fairest light, I am glad to refer to the observations of
two English travellers. Buckingham thought that the con-
dition of the " slaves of the household was quite as com-
fortable as that of servants in the middle ranks of life in
England. They are generally well-fed, well-dressed, atten-
tive, orderly, respectful, and easy to be governed, but more
by kindness than by severity."3 Sir Charles Lyell was of
the opinion that the house-slaves had many advantages
" over the white race in the same rank of life in Europe." *
A witty English novelist, struck with the fact that, under
the system, a good cook or an honest butler could not be
tempted away by an offer of higher wages, said that negro
slavery in America was a charming domestic institution.
The existence of mulattoes, quadroons, and of slaves fairer
still than these, calls attention to the fact of the mixture
of the white and negro races. This union was between
the white man and the negress.5 The giving birth to a
colored child by a white woman was almost unknown ; the
1 North American Review, Oct., 1888.
2 See A Journey in the Back Country, Olmstecl, p. 288.
3 The Slave States of America, Buckingham, vol. i. p. 131.
4 Second Visit, Sir Charles Lyell, vol. i. p. 263 ; see also Homes of the
New World, F. Bremer, vol. i. p. 277.
5 " The tell-tale faces of children, glowing with their master's blood,
but doomed for their mother's skin to slavery." — Sumner's speech on the
Barbarism of Slavery.
CH. IV.] AMALGAMATION 335
bringing into the world of children fairer than herself by
the female slave was a common thing, and was evidence that
the ownership of her person by her master was not mere-
ly a theoretical right. While the Southerners frequently
charged that amalgamation of the two races was tjie aim
of the Northern abolitionists, to an impartial judge it was
apparent that where the negro was free, no danger existed
of a mixture of blood. The reason for this did not escape
the keen observation of De Tocqueville. " Among the
Americans of the Southern States," he writes, " nature,
sometimes, reasserting her rights, re-establishes for a mo-
ment equality between the whites and the blacks. At the
North, pride restrains the most imperious of human pas-
sions. The Northern man would perhaps consent to make
the negress the transient companion of his pleasure if the
legislators had declared that she could never aspire to share
legitimately his bed ; but as she may legally become his
wife, he shrinks from her with a kind of horror." '
The lack of chaste sentiment among the female slaves is
exemplified by their yielding without objection, except in
isolated cases, to the passion of their master. Indeed, the
idea of the superiority of the white race was so universally
admitted that the negress felt only pride at bearing off-
spring that had an admixture of the blood of the ruling
class. Such children, on account of their greater capacity,
and because in many cases the master would look after his
own progeny, were frequently destined for house-servants ;
thus their lot might be easier than their mothers' had been.
So loose was the tie of marriage among the slaves, that the
negro husband felt little or no displeasure when the fancy
of the master chanced to light upon his wife. One finds
instances, however, scattered through the abolition litera-
ture, of the black resenting .these intrusions upon his fara-
1 De la Democratic en Amerique, De Tocqueville, vol. ii. p. 308. It is
a certain fact that since the negroes^have become free, amalgamation has
nearly ceased at the South.
336 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY [Cn. IV.
ily by killing the offending white, but such cases are rare.
If, indeed, the desire to revenge the injury had been common,
the negro's feelings would have been held in check by the
certainty of punishment ; for Avhen such murders were com-
mitted, execution was prompt, generally according to lynch
law, and the offender was occasionally burned at the stake.
The practice of gentlemen seeking illicit pleasure among
the slaves of their households and estates introduced into
the best society of the South a discordant element which
one cannot contemplate without feeling profound pity for
the suffering of many noble and refined women whose lot
was cast in a country where such a system prevailed. A
planter's wife is only "the chief slave of a harem," declared,
in the bitterness of her heart, the wife of a lordly slave-
holder.1 " We Southern ladies are complimented with the
name of wives," said a sister of President Madison, " but
we are only the mistresses of seraglios." 2 Harriet Marti-
neau wrote that in the Southwestern States "most heart-
rending disclosures were made to me by the ladies, heads
of families, of the state of society, and of their own intolera-
ble sufferings in it." 3 Madison avowed to her that there
was great licentiousness on the Virginia plantations, "and
that it was understood that the female slaves were to be-
come mothers at fifteen."4 It had become a proverb and
a byword that " the noblest blood of Virginia runs in the
veins of slaves." 6 Fanny Kemble writes that almost every
Southern planter admitted one or several of his female
slaves to the close intimacy of his bed, and had a " family
more or less numerous of illegitimate colored children."6
A planter told Olmsted : " There is not a likely -looking
black girl in this State that is not the concubine of a white
man. There is not an old plantation in which the grand-
1 Society in America, Martineau, vol. ii. p. 118.
2 Goodell's American Slave Code, p. 111.
3 Society in America, vol. i. p. 304. * Ibid., vol. ii. p. 118.
5 Goodell, p. 84. 6 Kemble, pp. 15 and 23 ; see also p. 140.
CH. IV.] THE MORALS OF SLAVERY 337
children of the owner are not whipped in the field by his
overseer." '
That attractiveness of form and feature which arose from
the mixture of bloods increased in a marked degree the
selling value of female slaves. A number of cases are cited
in the anti-slavery books where comely mulattoes and beau-
tiful quadroons were sold for mistresses; and while un-
founded suspicions might sometimes be asserted as positive
facts, no one, knowing the system of slavery and under-
standing human nature, can doubt that many such trans-
actions must have taken place. " I have," Avrites General
Sherman, " attended the auction sales of slaves in the ro-
tunda of the St. Louis Hotel [New Orleans]. ... I have
seen young girls in new calico dresses, inspected by men-
buyers as critically as would be a horse by a purchaser —
eyes, hair, teeth, limbs and muscles — and have seen spirited
bidding for a wench of handsome form and figure by men
of respectable standing." 2 A letter of slave-dealers, which
was widely circulated in anti-slavery publications, was a bald
admission of this feature of the traffic. A free negro wom-
an in New York interested some humane people in the fate
of her daughter, a beautiful young quadroon girl who was
held for sale by a firm in Alexandria, Ya. With a view of
raising the money for the purchase of this slave, they asked
what was her price. The slave-dealers replied, " We cannot
afford to sell the girl Emily for less than eighteen hundred
dollars . . . We have two or three offers for Emily from
gentlemen from the South. She is said to be the finest-
looking woman in this country." 3 Harriet Martineau re-
ports a circumstance that exhibits this feature of slavery
in its baldest form. " A Southern lady, of fair reputation
1 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 308.
2 North American Review, Oct., 1888.
3 Letter of Bruin and Hill, cited in New York Independent from the
Cleveland Democrat, Jan., 1850. It may be found in Key to Uncle Toin's
Cabin, p. 169.
L— 22
338 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY [Cn. IV.
for refinement and cultivation, told a story of which a fa-
vorite slave, a very pretty mulatto girl, was the heroine.
A young man came to stay at her house and fell in love
with the girl. ' She came to me,' said the lady, ' for pro-
tection, which I gave her.' The young man went away,
but after some weeks he returned, saying he was so much
in love with the girl that he could not live without her.
' I pitied the young man,' concluded the lady, ' so I sold
the girl to him for fifteen hundred dollars.' " '
This phase of the morals of slavery may be best studied
at New Orleans. The occupation of this city by three dis-
tinct nationalities had given it a cosmopolitan air such as
was seen in no other city of the country before the war.
The graceful qualities of the Latin race were blended with
the manly virtues of the Anglo-Saxon stock. The city was
a centre of wealth, and the abode of refinement, elegance,
and luxury.2 The Spanish and French mixed their blood
freely with the negroes, and the result at New Orleans was
the production of beautiful quadroons and octoroons which
reached their highest type in the female sex. Such girls
were frequently sent to Paris to be educated. They were
generally healthy in appearance, and often very handsome ;
they were remarked for a graceful and elegant carriage,
and showed exquisite taste in dress; their manners were
refined; in short, they were accomplished young women
who would, perhaps, have been fitted for the highest society
in the land, had it not been for the taint of African blood.
They could not marry with a white man ; paying the uni-
versal homage to the superiority of the Caucasian race,
1 Society in America, vol. ii. p. 123.
2 " A la Nouvelle Orleans, nous avons retrouve" avec plaisir 1'opgra
fran9ais et la societe" fran9aise. Un bal chez M. Slidell est ce que j'ai vu
jusqu'ici de plus parisien en AmSrique. Dans trois salons se pressait un
monde fort brillant. Une certarne gr^ce Creole se remarquait chez plu-
sieurs des belles danseuses que j'admirais : le melange du sang fran9ais
et du sang anglo-saxon avait produit de tres-beaux re*sultats."— Prome-
nade en Aine"rique, J. J. Ampere, tome ii. p. 153.
CH. IV.] THE MORALS OF SLAVERY 339
they would not marry a man who had negro blood in his
veins. They became, therefore, the mistresses of the wealthy
curled darlings of New Orleans. Yet such relations were
not entered into blindly ; they were the result of system-
atic arrangement. The young man who fancied the young
woman must have the consent of her mother, who was a
free person, and who in youth had been placed in like man-
ner. He must have means to provide for the girl and her
children, and must agree to settle a certain amount on her
when he should leave her and take to himself a lawful
wife. All the conditions being satisfactory, the pair lived
together in an establishment as husband and wife. The
young man led a dual life, frequenting the quadroon society
with his mistress, and moving likewise in the best society
of New Orleans with his parents and friends. Such con-
nections lasted sometimes for life, but more frequently the
marriage of the gentlemen broke them off. The girls that
resulted from the union were sometimes sent permanently
abroad, where their color did not prevent them from lead-
ing reputable lives ; but as a general rule they continued in
the same rank of life as their mothers, and were destined
to a like fate.1
That the evil here referred to prevailed throughout the
South to any great extent was sometimes denied.2 The de-
fenders of Southern institutions could point to the observa-
tions of two unprejudiced travellers to bear them out in this
denial. De Tocqueville testified that mulattoes were far from
numerous in the United States ; 3 and it is true that the
proportion of them was much smaller than in French, Span-
ish, or Portuguese colonies where slavery had existed or still
continued in operation. Sir Charles Lyell was told that
mulattoes did not constitute more than two and one-half per
1 For a complete account of this peculiar state of society, see Cotton
Kingdom, vol. i. p. 302, and Society in America, vol. ii. p. 116.
2 See denial of Senator Hammond, Pro-slavery Argument, p. 118.
3 De la Democratie en Amerique, vol. ii. p. 331.
340 TIIE MULATTOES [Cn. IV.
cent, of the population, which he was quite ready to believe,
and from this he drew a conclusion very favorable to the
morals of the Southern States. He writes : " If the statis-
tics of the illegitimate children of the whites born here
could be compared with those in Great Britain, it might
lead to conclusions by no means favorable to the free coun-
try. Here (i. e., in the Southern States) there is no possi-
bility of concealment ; the color of the child stamps upon
him the mark of bastardy, and transmits it to great-grand-
children born in lawful wedlock ; whereas, if in Europe there
was some mark or indelible stain betraying all the delin-
quencies and frailties, not only of parents, but of ancestors
for three or four generations back, what unexpected dis-
closures should we not witness !" '
De Tocqueville and Lyell, however, wrote before any
count was taken of mulattoes in our decennial census.3
Such an enumeration was first made in 1850, and a compar-
ison of the figures of 1850 and 1860 shows that the mixture
of blood was greater than De Tocqueville and Lyell imag-
ined, while yet it did not reach the proportions that might
be supposed from many statements occurring in the aboli-
tion literature. It must be understood that, as the mulatto
is the product of a union between the white and the black,
the term, as used in the census reports, was intended to com-
prise those having a mixture of white blood from one-half
to seven-eighths, but not designed to cover the issue of con-
nections between mulattoes and blacks where there would
be a preponderance of African blood. In the slave States,
in 1850, ten per cent, of the colored people were mulattoes,
and the proportion was twelve per cent, in I860.3 The su-
1 Second Visit to the United States, vol. i. p. 271.
2 De Tocqueville travelled in this country in 1831-33, and Lyell made
his second visit in 1845-46.
Proportion.
1S50. 1860. 1S50. 1860.
3 Blacks 3,093,605 3,697,274 89.86 87.70
Mulattoes 348,895 518,360 10.14 12.30
Total colored population, 3,442,500 4,215,634
CH. IV.]
THE MULATTOES
341
perintendent of the census estimated, from certain figures
and a fair calculation, that the total births of mulattoes in
the whole country from 1850 to 1860 were 273,000. More
than six-sevenths of these must have been born in the South.
Of every hundred births of colored infants in the United
States, seventeen were mulattoes, of whom fifteen saw the
light in the slave States ; these must have been, for the most
part, the issue of white men and female slaves.1
Among the Southern apologists for slavery were men of
great candor, who admitted the evil which we have consid-
ered. Such were Chancellor Harper and "W. Gilmore Simms ;
and they excused it on the ground that, as irregular sexual
indulgence had contributed to the misery and degradation
of man in all nations, ages, and under all religions, its exist-
ence at the South was not due to slavery, but proceeded
from man's unbridled passion, whose effects were equally
baneful at the North and in Europe.2 When Seward was
1 The historian must be careful not to make any radical deductions
from these'census figures. The count of mulattoes was made in 1850,
1860, and 1870. The figures for 1870 show that in the old slave States
the number of mulattoes had decreased from 1860. As the war had in-
tervened, this is not satisfactory evidence that the mixing of races had
decreased with the emancipation of the slaves ; but that fact is so uni-
versally acknowledged that no statistics are needed to sustain it. Why
the count of the mulattoes was abandoned in 1880 is explained by a let-
ter of Francis A. Walker, President of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, who was superintendent of the census for 1870 and 1880.
He writes, Dec. 20th, 1889 : " The reason for the omission of the class
mulatto from the census of 1880 was found in the conviction that the re-
turns had always been inaccurate in this particular, and were becoming
increasingly so as each successive generation produced a larger admixt-
ure of blood. Not one person in ten makes the faintest discrimination
between three negroes who are respectively five-eighths, three-fourths,
and seven-eighths black. Most persons fail to make the distinction be-
tween the whole and the three-fourths of color. Every ten years the ad-
mixture becomes more complicated, while there is even less interest than
formerly in observing and preserving the distinctions resulting."
2 See Pro-slavery Argument, pp. 40 and 230. See also, in this connec-
tion, Lecky's History of Morals, vol. ii. p. 282.
342 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY [On. IV.
at Kichmond he had an interview with the governor of Vir-
ginia, in which the latter spoke of the danger of amal-
gamation at the North ; " and when," as Seward himself re-
ports the conversation, " I told him that commerce of the
races was less frequent there than in the South, he forgot
the question and extolled that commerce as freeing the
white race from habits of licentiousness." ' The discussion
of this defence is the part of the moralist, not of the histo-
rian. Our concern is simply with the facts. The most
scathing review of this practice may be found in Harriet
Martineau's chapter on the " Morals of Slavery," which oc-
curs in " Society in America." Some notion of this part of
her book may be had when I mention that all the refer-
ences but one which have been made to it in the present
consideration of the matter were drawn from this chapter.2
The treatise is admirably written. It is not that of a one-
sided agitator who searches only for' facts which will square
with his theory, but it is the work of a student of social
science who has gathered facts with care, and only drawn
legitimate deductions. It was this chapter that brought
down on the author that indiscriminate abuse in which the
critics vied with one another in making ungenerous allu-
sions to her infirmity of deafness, and insulting references
to her maidenhood ; for it was an offence to put the finger
upon the plague-spot.
One of the authoritative apologists of slavery admits that
Miss Martineau was correct. The chapter on " Morals of
Slavery," writes "W. Gilmore Simms, " is painful because it is
full of truth. ... It gives a collection of statements, which
are, no doubt, in too many cases founded upon facts, of the
illicit and foul conduct of some among us who make their
slaves the victims and the instruments alike of the most
licentious passions. . . . "We do not quarrel with Miss Mar-
1 Life of W. H. Seward, vol. i. p. 777.
2 The one on p. 336, to vol. i. ; this chapter occurs in vol. ii.
CH.IV.] TIIE MORALS OF SLAVERY 343
tineau for this chapter. The truth — though it is not all
truth — is quite enough to sustain her and it." '
The child is father of the man. What effect had the
institution of slavery on the bringing - up of children ?
One aspect is best described by Jefferson. "The whole
commerce between master and slave," he writes, " is a per-
petual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most
unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading sub-
missions on the other. Our children see this and learn to
imitate it. ... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches
the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle
of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions,
and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny,
cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."2
" Everybody in the South," wrote Fred. Douglass, "seemed
to want the privilege of whipping somebody else." 3
The close and habitual association of children with slaves
was objectionable on account of the lascivious imagination
and gross talk of the negroes. It was a companionship
mutually agreeable, but especially dangerous ; for, as chas-
tity was not a restraint upon the blacks, their conversation
lacked decency. A Southern merchant told Olmsted that
he begged his brother, who was a planter, to send his chil-
dren North to school, for " he might as well have them ed-
ucated in a brothel as in the way they were growing up." *
Fortunately, the custom prevailed for wealthy people at the
South to send their daughters and sons away to school and
to college, and they generally went to the North. Girls
seem to have gone through this corruption scatheless, but
boys suffered from the early contact with licentiousness,
both physically and morally.5
1 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 228.
2 -Notes on Virginia, Works, vol. viii. p. 403. a Life, p. 31.
: Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 230.
5 See ibid., vol. i. p. 222 ; vol. ii. p. 229 ; Martineau's chapter on Morals
of Slavery, p. 128.
344 THE POOR WHITES [Cn. IV.
I have spoken of the effect of slavery on the slaves and
slave-holders, but there was another large class in the South
that must be considered. The poor whites were free ; they
had the political privileges of the planters, but their physi-
cal condition was almost as bad, and their lack of education
almost as marked as that of the negroes. Yet they assert-
ed the aristocracy of color more arrogantly than did the
rich ; it was their one claim to superiority, and they hugged
closely the race distinction. Driven off the fertile lands by
the encroachments of the planter, or prevented from occu-
pying the virgin soil by the outbidding of the wealthy, they
farmed the worn-out lands and gained a miserable and pre-
carious subsistence. As compared with laborers on the
farms or in the workshops of the North, their physical situ-
ation was abject poverty, their intellectual state utter igno-
rance, and their moral condition grovelling baseness.1 Nor
did this proceed entirely from the fact that they were forced
to work the barren, unproductive lands. Olmsted drew an
instructive comparison between the poor whites of Georgia
and the inhabitants of Cape Cod. In all New England the
sterility of the soil of the cape was a proverb ; yet this care-
ful observer declared that " there is hardly a poor woman's
cow on the cape that is not better housed and more com-
fortably provided for than a majority of the white people
of Georgia." He has shrewdly appreciated the peculiar
character common to the people of Cape Cod and the " sand-
hillers " and " crackers " of Georgia. " In both," he writes,
" there is frankness, boldness, and simplicity ; but in the one
it is associated with intelligence, discretion, and an expansion
of the mind, resulting from considerable education ; in the
other, with ignorance, improvidence, laziness, and the preju-
dices of narrow minds." 2
1 For the contrast of illiteracy and common intelligence North and
South, see Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 331.
2 OlmstecVs Seaboard Slave States, p. 538. The difference is thoroughly
discussed, and the inducements to a seafaring and fishing life are considered.
CH.IV.] THE SOUTHERN OLIGARCHY 345
The poor whites of the South looked on the prosperity of
the slave-holding lord with rank envy and sullenness ; his
trappings contrasted painfully with their want of comforts,
yet he knew so well how to play upon their contempt for
the negro, and to make it appear that his and their inter-
ests were identical, that when election-day came the whites,
who were without money and without slaves, did the bid-
ding of the lord of the plantation. When Southern inter-
ests were in danger, it was the poor whites who voted for
their preservation. The slave-holders, and the members of
that society which clustered round them, took the offices.
It was extremely rare that a man who had ever labored
with his hands was sent to Congress from the South, or
chosen to one of the prominent positions in the State.
The political system of the South was an oligarchy under
the republican form. The slave-holders were in a very dis-
proportionate minority in every State.1 "Two hundred
thousand men with pure white skins in South Carolina," said
Broderick to the senators, "are now degraded and despised
by thirty thousand aristocratic slave-holders." 2 The govern-
or of South Carolina was in favor of doing something to
elevate their poor, but feared they were " hopelessly doomed
to ignorance, poverty, and crime."3 In 1850 there were
347,525 slave-holders,4 who with their families may have
numbered two millions.5 The total white population of the
slave States was 6,125,000, so that less than one-third of
the white people of the South could possibly have derived
any benefit from the institution of slavery. In other words,
this imperial domain, covering more square miles than there
were in the free States, was given up to two million people ;
1 Seward's "Works, vol. i. p. 74.
5 March 22d,1858, Congressional Globe, vol. xxxvii. p. 193.
3 Olmsted's Seaboard Slave States, p. 505.
4 Census Report for 1850. See Life of Garrison, vol. iii. p. 272.
5 The superintendent of the census; see Seward's speech, Oct., 1855,
"Works, vol. iv. p. 237; Henry Wilson's speech, July 2d, 1856, Congressional
Globe, vol. xxxiii. p. 793.
346 THE SOUTHERN OLIGARCHY [Cn. IV.
and more than seven millions, bond and free,1 labored for
them or were subservient to their interests. Yet these fig-
ures by no means represent the exclusive character of the
slave-holding oligarchy. In the enumeration of slave-hold-
ers were included many men from the laboring class who
by unusual industry or economy had become possessed of
one slave or perhaps more, but who politically and socially
belonged only to the class from which they had sprung.2
Of the large planters owning more than fifty slaves, whose
elegance, luxury, and hospitality are recited in tales of trav-
ellers, over whose estates and lives has shone the lustre of
romance and poetry, there were less than eight thousand.3
They were the true centre of the oligarchy. Around them
clustered the few educated people of the country, also the
high societies of the cities, composed of merchants, doctors,
lawyers, and politicians ; which society was seen to the best
advantage in New Orleans, Charleston, and Richmond. In-
cluding all these, the total number must have been small ; but
it was for them that slavery existed. What has been here
adduced is sufficient to show that slavery was certainly not
for the advantage of the negro. No one seriously main-
tained that there were any benefits in the system for the
poor whites ; since it degraded labor, and therefore degraded
the white man who had to work with his hands.4 It is one
of the striking facts of our history that these despised peo-
ple fought bravely and endured much for a cause adverse to
1 The total population of the slave States for 1850 was 9,569,540— com-
posed of whites, free colored, and slaves.
2 The holders of one slave were 68,820 ; of more than one and less
than five, 105,683— more than half of the whole number, which was
347,525.
8 De Bow's U. S. Census Report ; Olinsted's Cotton Kingdom, vol. i.
p. 20.
4 For a full account of the poor whites, see Olinsted's Seaboard Slave
States, pp. 505, 508, 514; Kemble, pp. 76 and 146 ; Cotton Kingdom, vol.
i. p. 22; Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 185; Helper's Impending Crisis,
passim.
CH.IV.] THE SOUTHERN ARISTOCRACY 347
their own interests, following Lee and Stonewall Jackson
with a devotion that called to mind the deeds of a more
heroic age.
It was then for a small aristocracy that slavery continued
to be, and it is among them that we must look for 'its ad-
vantages. An apologist of the institution, who was himself
one of the select few, maintained that by the existence of
slavery they had greater leisure for intellectual pursuits and
better means of attaining a liberal education. " It is better,"
he declares, " that a part [of the community] should be ful-
ly and highly cultivated, and the rest utterly ignorant." l
The South did, indeed, produce good lawyers and able
politicians. Their training was excellent. The sons of the
wealthy almost always went to college, and there they be-
gan to acquire the knack at public speaking which seemed
natural to the Southerner. The political life of their State
was early opened to them, and by the time the promising
young men were sent to Congress they had learned experi-
ence and adroitness in public affairs. If they made their
mark in the national House or the Senate, they were kept
there, and each year added to their usefulness and influ-
ence.2 The aspirants for political honors being almost
wholly from the small privileged class, it was not difficult
to provide places for those eminently fitted. Moreover, the
men who wielded the power were convinced that continu-
1 Chancellor Harper, Pro-slavery Argument, p. 35. "In all social sys-
tems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudg-
ery of life; that is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but
little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you
must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress,
civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society
and of political government ; and you might as well attempt to build a
house in the air as to build either the one or the other except on this
mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that
purpose to her hand/' — Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, Senate,
March 4th, 1858, Speeches and Letters, p. 318.
8 This custom is well described in Lowell's Political Essays, p. 135.
348 THE SOUTH IN POLITICS [Cu. IV.
ance in office was the proper reward of those who had
shown capacity and honesty. The absurd practice which
prevailed at the North, of rotating their representatives in
the lower house in order to make room for as many as pos-
sible of those who had political claims, never gained foot-
hold in the South. This was, indeed, one reason why the
South won advantages over the North, in spite of its infe-
rior numerical strength.1
It is not surprising that the Southerners shone in the
political sphere. Their intellect tended naturally to public
affairs ; they had the talent and leisure for politics which a
,landed aristocracy is apt to have under a representative
government; an(l when the slavery question assumed im-
portance at Washington, their concern for shaping the
course of national legislation became a passion, and seemed
necessary for the preservation of their order. But it was
only in law and politics that the South was eminent. She
did not give birth to a poet, nor to a philosopher after Jef-
ferson, and his philosophy she rejected. She could lay claim
only to an occasional scientist, but to no great historian ;
none of her novelists or essayists who wrote before the war
has the next generation cared to read.2 Whoever, thinking
of the opportunities for culture in the ancient world given
by the existence of slavery, seeks in the Southern com-
munity a trace even of that intellectual and artistic devel-
opment which was the glory of Athens, will look in vain.
Had the other causes existed, the sparse settlements of the
South, the lack of a compact social body,3 made utterly im-
1 This superiority is boastfully asserted in De Bow's Resources, vol. iii.
p. 63.
2 A partial exception must be made of W. Gilmore Simms. A new edi-
tion of his books was published in 1882, and his revolutionary tales are
still read by schoolboys, although to nothing like the extent that Coo-
per's novels are read. " The South has no literature," said Rufus Choate.
Recollections, Parker, p. 265.
3 In 1852, Mrs. Davis rejoiced in " our mail twice a week." Memoir of
Jefferson Davis, vol. i. p. 475.
CH.IV.] LACK OF COMFORT 349
possible such results as mark Grecian civilization. The
physical and economic conditions of the South presented
insuperable obstacles to any full development of uni-
versity education. While efforts were made to promote
the establishment of colleges, the higher fields of- scien-
tific and literary research were not cultivated with emi-
nent success; for the true scientific spirit could never
have free play in a community where one subject of in-
vestigation of all-pervading influence must remain a closed
book.
When one thinks of the varied forms under which the
intellect of New England displayed itself, and remembers
the brilliant achievements there in the mind's domain
which illumine the generation before the war, he cannot
but feel that the superiority of the South in politics, after
the great Virginia statesman had left the stage, was held
at too great cost, if it was maintained at the sacrifice
of a many-sided development such as took place at the
North.
The great majority of the slave-holders lacked even ordi-
nary culture. Nothing illustrates this better than the expe-
rience of Olmsted while on a horseback journey of three
months, from the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of
the James. In the rural districts of that country there
were no inns. The traveller's stopping-places for the night
were the houses of the farmers along his route, many of
whom made it a practice to accommodate strangers, and
were willing to accept in payment for their trouble the
price which would have been demanded by an inn -keeper.
A majority of Olmsted's hosts in this journey were slave-
holders, and a considerable proportion cotton-planters. He
observed that certain symbols of civilization were wanting.
"From the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of the
James," he writes, " I did not (that I remember) see, except
perhaps in one or two towns, a thermometer, nor a book of
Shakespeare, nor a piano-forte or sheet of music, nor the
light of a Carcel or other good centre-table or reading lamp,
350 LACK OF SCHOOLS [CH.IV.
nor an engraving or copy of any kind of a work of art of
the slightest merit."1
The lack of schools was painfully apparent. The defi-
ciency in the rudiments of education among the poor whites
and smaller slave-holders was recognized, and attracted at-
tention from the Southern newspapers, and occasionally from
those high in office. Much vain declamation resulted, but
no practical action. Indeed, the situation Avas one of diffi-
culty. To plant schools in a sparsely settled country, among
a people who have not the desire of learning and who do
not appreciate its value, requires energy, and this energy
was lacking. Nevertheless, there must have been among
the slave-holding lords a secret satisfaction that the poor
whites were content to remain in ignorance ; 2 for in the
decade before the war great objections were made to school-
books prepared and published at the North, and yet there
were no others. In the beginning of the abolitionist agi-
tation, Duff Green, perceiving that the benefits of slavery
1 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 285. This whole chapter, " The Condition
and Character of the Privileged Classes of the South," should be read
by every one who is interested in the social state of that section before
the war. See also Despotism in America, Hildreth, p. 147.
Lieber wrote from Columbia to Hillard, May, 1851: "Every son of a
fool here is a great statesman, meditating on the relations of State sov-
ereignty to the United States government; but as to roads, common
schools, glass in the windows, food besides salt meat, as to cheerily join-
ing in the general chorus of progress, what is that for Don Ranudo de
Colobrados, of South Carolina — out at elbows, to be sure ; but then, what
of that ?"— Life and Letters, p. 254.
3 " We imagine that the propriety of shooting a Yankee schoolmaster,
when caught tampering with our slaves, has never been questioned by
any intelligent Southern man. This we take to be the unwritten law of
the South. . . . Let all Yankee schoolmasters who purpose invading the
South, endowed with a strong nasal twang, a long Scriptural name, and
Webster's lexicographic book of abominations, seek some more congenial
land, where their lives will be more secure than in ' the vile and homi-
cidal slave States.' " — Richmond Examiner, 1854, cited in a pamphlet
entitled A Bake-pau for Doughfaces, published at Burlington, Vt., by C.
Goodrich.
Cn.IV.] CRITICISM OF NORTHERN SCHOOL-BOOKS 351
ought to be taught to the young, obtained a charter from
South Carolina for a Southern Literary Company, whose
object was to print school-books adapted to a slave-hold-
ing community ; ' but this company had apparently not
achieved its purpose, for in De Sow's Review, in 185-5, there
is a complaint that u our text-books are abolition books."
The chapter on slavery in Wayland's Moral Science " was
heretical and unscriptural." We are using " abolition
geographies, readers, and histories," which overrun " with
all sorts of slanders, caricatures, and blood-thirsty senti-
ments." " Appletons' Complete Guide of the World " is
"an elegant and comprehensive volume," but contains "hid-
den lessons of the most fiendish and murderous character
that enraged fanaticism could conceive or indite." " This
book and many other Northern school-books scattered over
the country come within the range of the statutes of this
State [Louisiana], which provide for the imprisonment for
life or the infliction of the penalty of death upon any per-
son who shall ' publish or distribute ' such works ; and were
I a citizen of New Orleans," adds the writer, " this work
should not escape the attention of the grand jury."2 A
year later, a writer in the same review 3 maintains that " our
school-books, especially, should be written, prepared, and
published by Southern men ;" and he inveighs against the
readers and speakers used in the schools, and gives a list of
those which are objectionable. One of them was the " Co-
^.umbian Orator," and it is interesting to know that this was
:he first book which the slave, Frederick Douglass, bought.
In it were speeches of Chatham, Sheridan, and Fox, and in
reading and pondering these speeches the light broke in
upon his mind, showing him that he was a victim of oppres-
sion, and that, if what they said about the rights of man
was true, he ought not to be a slave.4 The writer in the
1 Life of Garrison, vol. ii. p. 79. 2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 358.
3 De Bow's Review, vol. xx. p. 69, Jan., 1856.
* Life of Douglass, p. 75.
352 CRITICISM OF NORTHERN LITERATURE [On. IV.
Review complained that these books contained poems of
Cowper and speeches of Webster which Southern children
should not read, and he was certain that if parents knew
their whole contents " they would demand expurgated edi-
tions for the use of their children." All schoolboys know
that the kind of books complained of contain, for the most
part, the choice selections of English literature — works that
have survived owing to their elevation of thought and
beauty of expression. Such attacks were a condemnation
of literature itself, for from Homer down the master-spirits
of many ages have reprobated slavery.
History, as well as literature, needed expurgation before
it was adapted to the instruction of Southern youth. Peter
Parley's " Pictorial History of the United States " was com-
plained of, because the author, although a conservative
Whig and far from being an abolitionist, deemed it neces-
sary, in the course of his narrative, to mention slavery, the
attempts at colonization, and the zeal with which some peo-
ple labored "in behalf of immediate and universal emanci-
pation." 1
It was likewise necessary to prepare the historical reading
of adults with care. In an editorial notice in De Bow's
Review of the current number of Harpers Magazine, which
had a large circulation at the South, it was suggested that
the notice of the Life of Toussaint " had been better left
out, so far as the South is concerned." 2 To what absurdi-
ties did this people come on account of their peculiar insti-
tution! Toussaint, as a brilliant historian of our day has
told us, exercised on our history " an influence as decisive
as that of any European ruler."3 He was one of the im-
portant links in that chain of historical events of which
Napoleon and Jefferson were the others, that gave us
Louisiana and ISTew Orleans.
These comments which have been cited are not taken
1 See De Bow's Review, vol. xx. p. 74. 2 See ibid., vol. x. p. 492.
8 Henry Adams's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 378.
CH.IV.] HOME EDUCATION RECOMMENDED 353
from a periodical without influence and published in a cor-
ner. De Bow^s Review was devoted to economical and so-
cial matters; it was one of the ablest exponents of the
thinking people and best society of the South. Moreover,
it had received the endorsement of fifty-five Southern sena-
tors and representatives in Congress for the " ability and
accuracy of its exposition of the working of the system of
polity of the Southern States." De Bow was professor of
political economy in the University of Louisiana, and his
Review was published in the commercial metropolis of the
South. Indeed, the provision for education in harmony
with their institutions was a subject of grave consideration
by thinking men, and a thoroughly representative body —
the Southern commercial convention which was held at
Memphis in 1853 — paid it marked attention. The conven-
tion earnestly recommended to the citizens of the Southern
States : " The education of their youth at home, as far as
practicable; the employment of native teachers in their
schools and colleges ; the encouragement of a home press ;
and the publication of books adapted to the educational
wants and the social condition of these States."1
It is no wonder such recommendations were thought nec-
essary, for many delegates must have remembered the diffi-
culty which attended the publication of the works of Calhoun,
although South Carolina appropriated ten thousand dollars
for the purpose. A Charleston newspaper complained : " The
writings of Mr. Calhoun were edited in Virginia ; the stere-
otyped plates were cast in New York ; they were then sent
to Columbia, where the impressions were struck off; the
sheets were thence transferred to Charleston in order that
the books might be bound ; and now that they are bound,
there is really no publisher in the State to see to their circu-
lation." 2
1 De Bow's Review, vol. xv. p. 268.
2 Charleston News, cited in the New York Independent, Oct. 30th, 1851 ;
.see also estimate of the book-publishing business of 1856 in Recollections
of a Lifetime, S. G. Goodrich, vol. ii. p. 387, in which the business of the
I.— 23
354 -HE NORTH AND THE SOUTH [Cfl, IY.
If we contrast the North and the South in material prosper-
ity, the South will appear to no better advantage than it does
in respect of intellectual development. Yet the superiority
of the North in this regard was by no means admitted. The
thinking men of the South felt, if this were proved, a serious
drawback to their system would be manifest. We find,
therefore, in the Southern literature many arguments to
show that the contrary was true ; most of them take the
form of statistical demonstrations, in which the census fig-
ures are made to do strange and wondrous duty. Parson
Brownlow, of Tennessee, in a joint debate at Philadelphia,
where he maintained that American slavery ought to be per-
petuated, brought forward an array of figures which dem-
onstrated to his own satisfaction that the material prosper-
ity of the South was greater than that of the North ; at the
time he was speaking it seemed to him that his section was
smiling with good fortune, while the Northern industries
were crippled by the loss of Southern trade and by the finan-
cial panic of 1857.1 A favorite method of argument was
to make a comparison between two representative States.
Georgia and New York were contrasted in the light of the
census of 1850, with the result of convincing the Southern
mind that in social, political, and financial conditions Geor-
gia was far superior to New York.2 A paper was read be-
fore the Mercantile Society of Cincinnati to demonstrate
that, as between Maryland and Massachusetts, Virginia and
New York, Kentucky and Ohio, the slave States were the
more prosperous. " Virginia," says the author, " instead of
being poor and in need of the pity of the much poorer pop-
ulation of the North, is perhaps the richest community in
Southern and Southwestern States is given at $750,000, in a total of
$16,000,000; in the first-named figures are included Baltimore and Louis-
ville, which were by far the most important publishing cities in the South.
1 Debate between Brownlow and Pryne at Philadelphia, 1858, pp. 258
and 265.
2 De Bow's Industrial Resources, vol. iii. p. 122.
CH.IV.] T11E NORTH AND THE SOUTH 355
the world." After a comparison of the census figures, the
conclusion is that the free people of the slave-holding States
are much richer than those of the non-slave-holding States.
De Bo\v, in introducing this paper to his public, said that,
although it had been angrily assailed by the abolition press,
it had never been refuted or invalidated in any material
respect.1 Arguments, of which these are examples, are made
by men who go with preconceived ideas to the statistics, and
select therefrom what they deem will sustain their thesis.
Such reasoning does not proceed from earnest seekers after
truth. The speciousness of such deductions was shown over
and over again. Indeed, it needed no extensive marshalling
of statistics to prove that the welfare of the North was
greater than that of the South. Two simple facts, every-
where admitted, were of so far-reaching moment that they
amounted to irrefragable demonstration. The emigration
from the slave States to the free States was much larger
than the movement in the other direction ; and the South
repelled the industrious emigrants who came from Europe,
while the North attracted them. " Leave us in the peacea-
ble possession of our slaves," cried Parson Brownlow, " and
our Northern neighbors may have all the paupers and con-
victs that pour in upon us from European prisons." 3 This
remark found general sympathy, because the South ignored,
or wished to ignore, the fact that able-bodied men with
intelligence enough to wish to better their condition are
the most costly and valuable products on earth, and that
nothing can more redound to the advantage of a new
country than to get men without having been at the cost
of rearing them.3 This was occasionally appreciated at the
1 De Boiv's Review, vol. xxii. p. 623. The paper was read in 1848 and
based on the census of 1840. See al'so De Bow, vol. vii. p. 140.
2 Debate between Brownlow and Pryne, p. 263.
3 One of the imports of the United States, "that of adult and trained
immigrants, . . . would be in an economical analysis underestimated at
£100,000,000 a year."— Thorold Rogers, Lectures in 1888, Economic In-
terpretation of History, p. 407,
356 THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH [Cn. IV.
South,1 and sometimes the greater growth in wealth and
population of the North would break in upon the mind of
Southern thinkers with such force that they could not hold
their peace.2 Sometimes the truth would be owned, but its
dissemination was prevented, for fear that the admission of
it would furnish arguments to the abolitionists.8
Two of the most careful observers who ever considered
the differences between the South and the North are unim-
peachable witnesses to the greater prosperity of the latter.
Washington noted, in 1796, that the prices of land were
higher in Pennsylvania than in Virginia and Maryland,
" although they are not of superior quality." One of the
important reasons for the difference was that Pennsylvania
had passed laws for the gradual abolition of slavery, which
had not been done in the other two States ; but it was Wash-
ington's opinion that "nothing is more certain than that
they must, at a period not far remote," take steps in the
same direction.4
De Tocqueville was struck with the external contrast be-
tween the free and the slave States. " The traveller who
floats clown the current of the Ohio," he wrote, " to the
point where that river joins the Mississippi may be said to
sail between liberty and slavery ; and he only needs to look
around him in order to decide in an instant which is the
more favorable to humanity. On the Southern bank of the
river the population is thinly scattered ; from time to time
one descries a gang of slaves at work, going with indolent
air over the half -desert fields ; the primeval forest unceasing-
ly reappears ; one would think that the people were asleep ;
man seems to be idle, nature alone offers a picture of activ-
1 See a thoughtful article in the Augusta Chronicle, cited in Niles's
Register, April, 1849, vol. Ixxv. p. 271.
3 See citation from Richmond Enquirer, Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 365 ;
also Richmond Whig, cited in Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 252.
3 See proceedings in regard to an address to the farmers at a Virginia
agricultural convention, Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 366.
4 Sparks, vol. xii. p. 326.
CH. IV.] THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH 357
ity and life. From the Northern bank, on the contrar}^
there arises the busy hum of industry Avhich is heard afar
off; the fields abound with rich harvests ; comfortable homes
indicate the taste and care of the laborer ; prosperity is seen
on all sides ; man appears rich and content ; he Tabors." '
The difference was greater when De Tocqueville visited this
country than in Washington's day ; and it was greater in
1850 than when the philosophic Frenchman recorded his
observations in the book which is a classic in the science of
politics. The difference was of a nature that must become
intensified with the years.
What was the reason of the marked diversity between the
two sections of the country ? The only solution of the ques-
tion is that which presented itself to the mind of De Tocque-
ville. " Almost all the differences which may be remarked
between the Southerners and Northerners had their origin
in slavery ;" a for the settlers of both sections of the country
belonged " to the same European race, had the same cus-
toms, the same civilization, the same laws, and their shades
of difference were very slight."3 It is true that the Cava-
lier colonized Virginia, and the Puritan Massachusetts. Yet
after the Revolution of 1688 the Cavalier and Puritan in
England began coming nearer together, until, by the middle
of the nineteenth century, there was no longer a line of de-
marcation. After the American Revolution, however, the
difference between the Virginian and the man of Massachu-
setts increased so that it became the remark of travellers,
the theme of statesmen, and finally a subject for the arbitra-
ment of the sword. In that contest the Scotch-Irishman of
South Carolina fought on one side, and the Scotch-Irishman
of Pennsylvania fought on the other ; but in the seventeenth
century, on their native soil, they would have stood shoulder
to shoulder in a common cause.
1 De la Democratic en Amerique, vol. ii. p. 311. See also H. Martinean,
Society in America, vol. i. p. 304. 2 De Tocqueville, vol. ii. p. 316.
3 Ibid., p. 310 ; see also article of Prof. A. B. Hart, New England Maga-
ine, November, 1891, p. 376.
358 THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH [On. IV.
Nor will the diversity of climate account in any consider-
able degree for the difference between the South and the
North in material prosperity and intellectual development.
The climate of Virginia and Kentucky was like that of Penn-
sylvania and Ohio ; yet the contrast was seen in a marked
degree between those communities. The climate of the
slave States as a whole was not warmer than that of Italy
or Spain, and those countries have been the seat of an ener-
getic and intellectual people.1 An illustration showing that
the physical conditions of the South did not require slavery
was seen in the German colony settled in Texas. By 1857
the Germans made up nearly one-half of the white popula-
tion of Western Texas, and constituted a community apart.
They believed in the dignity of labor ; those who had not
land were willing to work for the proprietors, and those who
had capital would not purchase slaves. They were industri-
ous, thrifty, fairly prosperous, and contented. They brought
from their homes some of the flowers of civilization, and were
an oasis in the arid desert of slavery. Olmsted had a hap-
pier experience among these people than in his journey from
the Mississippi to the James, where he failed to see the com-
mon indications of comfort and culture.2 Among the Ger-
mans of Texas, he wrote, " you are welcomed by a figure in
blue flannel shirt and pendent beard," quoting Tacitus;
you see " Madonnas upon log walls ;" coffee is served you " in
tin cups upon Dresden saucers ;" and you hear a symphony
of Beethoven on a grand piano.3 These Germans loved mu-
sic and hated slavery. In 1854, after their annual musical
festival at San Antonio, they resolved themselves into a po-
1 " Contemplated in the mass, facts do not countenance the current idea
that great heat hinders progress." — Sociology, Herbert Spencer, vol. i.
p. 19. "High degrees of moral sentiment control the unfavorable influ-
ences of climate ; and some of our grandest examples of men and of races
come from the equatorial regions — as the genius of Egypt, of India, and
of Arabia." — Emerson's Lecture on Civilization.
2 See p. 349.
3 Olmsted's Texas Journey, p. 430.
CH. IV.] THE SOUTHERN ARISTOCRACY 359
litical convention, and declared that slavery was an evil
which ought eventually to be removed.1
In giving the South credit for producing able politicians,
we have not exhausted the subject of the virtues of her so-
cial system. The little aristocracy, whose nucleus was less
than eight thousand large slave-holders,2 had another excel-
lence that deserves high esteem. While in the North their
manners were often aggressive, in their own homes they
displayed good breeding, refined manners, and dignified de-
portment. And these were more than outside show ; the
Southern gentleman was to the manner born. In society
and conversation he appeared to the best advantage. He
had self-assurance, an easy bearing, and to women a chival-
rous courtesy ; he was " stately but condescending, haughty
but jovial." 3 Underneath all were physical courage, a habit
of command, a keen sense of honor, and a generous disposi-
tion. The Southerners were fast friends, and they dispensed
hospitality with an open hand. They fitted themselves for
society, and looked upon conversation as an art. They knew
how to draw out the best from their guests ; and, with all
their high self-appreciation, at home they did not often in-
dulge in distasteful egotism. They amused themselves with
literature, art, and science ; for such knowledge they deemed
indispensable for prolonging an interesting conversation.
They were cultured, educated men of the world, who would
meet their visitors on their own favorite ground.4
If we reckon by numbers, there were certainly more well-
bred people at the North than at the South ; but when w&
compare the cream of society in both sections, the palm
must be awarded to the slave-holding community. The testi-
1 OlmstecVs Texas Journey, p. 435 et ante. 2 See p. 346.
3 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 335. " We justly admire- the easy, grace-
ful politeness of our Southern brethren." — ToclcTs Student's Manual,
p. 235.
4 " The people [of the South] seem to be fine, open-hearted." — Lieber
to Sumner, 1835, Life and Letters of Lieber, p. 109.
360 THE SOUTHERN ARISTOCRACY [Ca IV.
mony of English gentlemen and ladies, few of whom have
any sympathy with slavery, is almost unanimous in this re-
spect. They bear witness to the aristocratic bearing of
their generous hosts. Between the titled English visitors
and the Southern gentlemen there was, indeed, a fellow-feel-
ing, which grew up between the two aristocracies separated
by the sea. There was the concord of sentiments. The
Southern lord, like his English prototype, believed that the
cultivation of the soil was the finest and noblest pursuit.1
But nearly all educated Englishmen, whether belonging to
the aristocracy or not, enjoyed their intercourse with South-
erners more than they did the contact with the best society
at the North, on account of the high value which they
placed on good manners. The men and women who com-
posed the Brook Farm community, and the choice spirits
whom they attracted, were certainly more interesting and
admirable than any set of people one could meet in Kich-
mond, Charleston, or New Orleans ;2 but society, properly
so called, is not made up of women with missions and men
who aim to reform the world. The little knot of literary
people who lived in Boston, Cambridge, and vicinity were a
fellowship by whom it was an honor to be received ; but
these were men of learning and wisdom ; they were " inac-
cessible, solitary, impatient of interruptions, fenced by eti-
quette ;" and few of them had the desire, leisure, or money
to take part in the festive entertainments which are a neces-
sary accompaniment of society.
When the foreign visitors who came here during the gen-
eration before the war compared Northern and Southern
1 " You know I am engaged entirely on my estates at present, and
solely occupied, thank God ! in the finest and noblest pursuit — the culti-
vation of the soil." — Letter of F. W. Pickens, of South Carolina, to James
Buchanan, Life of Buchanan, Curtis, vol. i. p. 608; see also Memorials of
a Southern Planter, Smedes, p. 115.
2 " Je ne trouve pas H la ISTouvelle Orleans la ing me vie intellectuelle,
le m£me mouvement scientifique qu'ii Boston, a New York, a Philadel-
phie." — J. J. Ampere, Promenade en Amerique, tome ii. p. 155.
CH. IV.] SOUTHERN SOCIETY 361
society, they had in their minds the people whom they met
at dinners, receptions, and balls ; the Northern men seemed
frequently overweighted with business cares, and, except on
the subjects of trade, politics, and the material growth of
the country, were not good talkers. The merchant or manu-
facturer of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia was a busy
man ; he had not the leisure of his Southern brother to cul-
tivate the amenities of life, and he lacked that abandon of
manners which Englishmen found so charming in the slave-
holding lords.
This superiority of the best Southern society undoubt-
edly grew out of the social system of which slavery was
the basis ; but there wrent with it two drawbacks. In these
circles where conversation was a delight, one subject must
be treated with the utmost delicacy. The Englishman
could argue with his Southern host that a monarchy wras
better than a republic, but he might not exult over the
emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies. The German
could deny the inspiration of the Bible, but he might not
question that their institution of slavery was divine. One
was made to feel in the most emphatic manner that his host
desired no expression on the subject other than an opinion
that the relation which existed between the whites and the
blacks at the South was the necessary one.
The high sense of personal worth, the habit of command,
the tyranny engendered by the submission of the prostrate
race, made the Southern gentleman jealous in honor, sudden
and quick in quarrel. While the duello was not an outgrowth
of slavery, its practice in the South was more sava,ge and
bloody than anywhere else in the civilized world. The cus-
tom of going about fully armed to be prepared for an enemy,
the readiness with which pistols were used on slight provo-
cation, the frequent occurrence of deadly street fights, were
an anomaly among a people so urbane and generous ; but
they were the result of slavery.
From youth the slave-holder was accustomed to have his
word regarded as law ; when he insisted, others yielded.
362 "UNCLE TOM'S CABIX" [CH. IV.
Accustomed to irresponsible power over his dependants, he
could not endure contradiction, he would not brook opposi-
tion. When one lord ran against another in controversy, if
the feelings were deep!}7 engaged the final argument was
the pistol. The smaller slave-holders, influenced partly by
the same reason and partly actuated by imitation of the
aristocracy, settled their disputes in like manner, but more
brutally, for they also used the bowie-knife in their encoun-
ters. The poor whites aped their betters. The consequence
was a condition of society hardly conceivable in a civilized,
Christian, Anglo-Saxon community. In the new States of
the Southwest, it was perhaps explainable as incident to the
life of the frontier ; but when met with in the old communi-
ties of Virginia and the Carolinas, it could admit but of one
inference — that it was primarily due to slavery.1 But slav-
ery itself and these attendant phenomena were survivals
in the South, more than in any other contemporary enlight-
ened community, of a passing militant civilization.2
I have endeavored to describe slavery and its effects as it
might have appeared to an honest inquirer in the decade
before the war. There was no difficulty in seeing the facts
as they have been stated, or in arriving at the conclusions
drawn. There was a correct picture of the essential features
1 My authorities for this description of the manners of the South are
OlmstecTs Cotton Kingdom and Seaboard Slave States; Kemble's Journal;
Martineau's Society in America; Buckingham's Slave States of America;
Mackay's Life and Liberty in America; De Bow's Resources; Basil Hall's
North America; America and the Americans, by Achille Murat; Pro-slav-
ery Argument; De Bow's Review; Promenade en Amerique, J. J. Ampere.
" L'influence de Fesclavage, combined avec le caractere anglais, ex-
plique les moeurs et l'6tat social du Sud."— De la Democratic en Ame"-
rique, vol. i. p. 46. See also Hurrygraphs, N. P. Willis, p. 302.
- For distinction between militant and industrial organizations, see
Herbert Spencer's Sociology, passim; also Data of Ethics, p. 185, where
Spencer writes : While militancy " is dominant, ownership of a slave is
honorable, and, in the slave, submission is praiseworthy ;" but as indus-
trialism " grows dominant, slave-owning becomes a crime, and servile obe-
dience excites contempt."
CH. IV.] "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 363
of slavery in " Uncle Tom's Cabin," the book which every-
body read. The author of it had " but one purpose, to show
the institution of slavery truly just as it existed." ' While
she had not the facts which a critical historian would have
collected — for the "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" was not
compiled until after the novel was written — she used with
the intuition of genius the materials gained through per-
sonal observation, and the result was what she desired. If
we bear in mind that the novelist, from the very nature of
the art, deals with characteristic and not with average per-
sons, the conclusion is resistless that Mrs. Stowe realized her
ideal. Fanny Kemble wrote to. the London Times that she
could bear witness to the truth and moderation of " Uncle
Tom's Cabin" as a representation of the slave system in the
United States, and added that her testimony was " the ex-
perience of an eye-witness, having been a resident in the
Southern States, and having opportunities of observation such
as no one who has not lived on a slave estate can have." 3 It
was certain, she proceeded, that the incident of Uncle Tom's
death was not only possible, but it was unfortunately a very
probable occurrence.3 Olmsted came to the conclusion that
cases like the Ked River episode were not extremely rare.4
The fidelity to truth of that portion of the novel was some-
times questioned in a curious way. Bishop Polk assured an
English clergyman that he " had been all over the country
on Red River, the scene of the fictitious sufferings of Uncle
Tom, and that he had found the temporal and spiritual welfare
of the negroes well cared for. He had confirmed thirty black
persons near the situation assigned to Legree's estate." 5
A Northern doctor of divinity who wrote a book in de-
fence of slavery based on a three months' sojourn at the
South, admitted that " some of the warmest advocates of
slavery [at the South] said that they could parallel most of
1 Introduction to new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 12.
8 Kemble's Journal, p. 300. 8 Ibid., p. 301.
4 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 356. 5 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 213.
364
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN"
[Cn. IV.
the abuses in slavery mentioned in the book out of their
own knowledge ; and on speaking of some bad master and
wishing to express his tyrannical character and barbarous
conduct, they would say, ' He is a real Legree ;' or, ' He is
worse than Legree.' " * A Southern Presbyterian preacher
who published a book of speeches and letters to maintain
that " slavery is of God," and ought " to continue for the
good of the slave, the good of the master, and the good of
the whole American people," said : " I have admitted, and
do again admit, without qualification, that every fact in
' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' has occurred in the South ;" and
again he speaks of it as "that book of genius, true in all
its facts, false in all its impressions." 2 The great desire of
the author to be impartial was evident from the portrayal
of slave-holders ; the humane and generous men were even
more prominent in the story than the inhuman ones. She
did justice to the prevailing and correct sentiment at the
South that Northerners were harder masters than Southern
men, by making Legree, whose name became a synonym for
a brutal slave-holder, a son of New England.
Mrs. Stowe was felicitous in her description of the negro
character. There was a fitness in the secondary title of the
book, " Life among the Lowly." It was the life she had
studied with rare human sympathy, and in its portrayal the
author's genius is seen to the best advantage. Some critics
objected that Uncle Tom was an impossible character, and
that the world, in weeping at the tale of his ill-treatment
and sufferings, exhibited a mawkish sentimentality. But
the author knew his prototype.3 Frederick Douglass also
describes a colored man whose resemblance to Uncle Tom
was "so perfect that he might have been the original of
Mrs. Stowe's Christian hero." 4 Rev. Noah Davis, who wrote
1 South-side View of Slavery, Nchemiah Adams, p. 158.
2 Slavery Ordained by God, Ross, pp. 5, 38, 53.
3 Preface to new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. vii.
4 Life of Douglass, p. 94.
CH.IV.] SOUTHERN DEFENCE OF SLAVERY 365
in a little book the narrative of his own life, certainly equalled
Uncle Tom in piety, self-denial, and industry.1
The author's most conspicuous failure as a portrayer of
manners is in the descriptions of the best society at the
South. Nor is this surprising. Her life was an -earnest
working one, and she had no conception of a society where
dinner-parties, receptions, and balls made up the lives of its
votaries. Her associates were ministers, devoted to their
calling, and hard-working college professors, who esteemed
learning above all ; their thoughts were so engrossed in their
serious occupations that the lighter graces of life seemed
like folly and idleness. It is, then, no wonder that the subtle
charm which exquisite manners spread over plantation life
and New Orleans society completely eluded the observation
of the author.
The Southern people desired to stand well at the great
tribunal of modern civilization.2 As their peculiar institu-
tion was under the ban of the most enlightened portion of
the world, they made repeated efforts to set themselves in
the right. As long as the argument followed the line of ad-
mitting the evil, while averring that for the present, at
least, slavery seemed the most advantageous relation be-
tween the two races at the South, the slave-holders had
much sympathy from the North and from England. It
was conceded that if the slaves were freed, civil rights
must eventually be accorded them. That condition stag-
gered many who hated slavery. In those Northern States
where the negro had the right to vote, that right was ex-
ercised only with great difficulty and some danger ; but the
blacks were few in number, and patiently submitted to a
practical annulling of their privilege. But the fact was ap-
1 A Narrative of the Life of Noah Davis, a colored man, written by
himself, published at Baltimore, 1859. I am informed by a colored man
who knew him well that Davis was truly a religious man, and had the
confidence and respect of all classes of citizens.
2 Webster's expression when speaking on slavery, Works, vol. v. p. 304.
366 SOUTHERN DEFENCE OF SLAVERY [Cn. IV.
predated that at the South, owing to the great number of
negroes, the problem would be a far different one. There
was, therefore, considerable sympathy with the opinion of
McDuffie, that if the slaves were freed and made voters, no
rational man could live in such a state of society.1 Basil
Hall, who travelled in this country in 1827 and 1828, believed
that the slave-holders were "a class of men who are really
entitled to a large share of our indulgence ;" that no men
were more ready than were most of the American planters
to grant " that slavery is an evil in itself and eminently an
evil in its consequences ;" but to do away with it seemed " so
completely beyond the reach of any human exertions that I
consider the abolition of slavery as one of the most profit-
less of all possible subjects of discussion." 2 The difficulty
did not escape the philosophic mind of De Tocqueville. " I
am obliged to confess," he wrote, "that I do not regard the
abolition of slavery as a means of putting off the struggle
between the two races in the Southern States. . . . God for-
bid that I should justify the principle of negro slavery, as
some American writers have done ; but I only observe that
all the countries which formerly adopted that execrable
principle are not equally able to abandon it at the present
time." 3
Owing, however, to the efforts which Southern statesmen
made for the extension of slavery, it became necessary to
maintain the proposition that slavery is a positive good.
The logic of the abolitionists likewise had influence in goad-
ing the Southern reasoners to this position. " Twenty years
ago," wrote W. Gilmore Simms, " few persons in the South
undertook to justify negro slavery, except on the score of
necessity. Now, very few persons in the same region ques-
tion their perfect right to the labor of their slaves ; and,
more, their moral obligation to keep them still subject as
1 Life of Garrison, vol. ii. p. 62.
2 Basil Hall's North America, vol. ii. p. 62.
3 De la Democratic en Am6rique, vol. ii. p. 338.
CH.IV.] SOUTHERN DEFENCE OF SLAVERY 367
slaves, and to compel their labor, so long as they remain the
inferior beings which we find them now, and which they
seem to have been from the beginning. This is a great
good, the fruit wholly of the hostile pressure." '
The book from which this passage is taken contains all
that can be said in favor of slavery. The jurist, the states-
man, the litterateur, and the educator — the most distin-
guished writers of the Southern States united in a publica-
tion of collected essays which they had written for South-
ern magazines, and gave them to the world under the title
of " The Pro-slavery Argument." As I have already had
occasion to refer many times to this work, an extended ab-
stract of it would be profitless. In the light of our day it is
melancholy reading. It is the waste of varied ability in a
doomed cause.
Chancellor Harper devotes the larger part of his essay
to arguing the good of slavery as an abstract question.
Governor (afterwards Senator) Hammond applies himself to
proving two texts : First, that the domestic slavery of these
States is " not only an inexorable necessity for the present,
but a moral and humane institution, productive of the great-
est political and social advantages ;" 2 and, " I endorse with-
out reserve the much-abused sentiment of Governor Mc-
DufSe, that ' slavery is the corner-stone of our republican
edifice ;' while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-
lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that
' all men are born equal.' " 3 Simms's contribution to this
volume, entitled "Morals of Slavery," was a criticism of
Harriet Martineau's description of the peculiar institution.
He felt that, as a candid man, he must make some damag-
ing admissions, and that ultimately he would be obliged to
resort to recrimination ; he therefore fortified his reasoning
in advance by demanding, " Why should we account to these
1 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 179. Published at Charleston by Walker,
Richards & Co., 1852.
2 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 100.
368 SOUTHERN DEFENCE OF SLAVERY [Cn. IV.
people ? What are they, that they should subject us to the
question ? . . . The Southern people form a nation, and, as
such, it derogates from their dignity that they should be
called to answer at the tribunal of any other nation. When
that call shall be definitely or imperatively made, they will
answer with their weapons, and in no other language than
that of war to the knife." '
Dew, the professor of history, metaphysics, and political
law at William and Mary College, Virginia, propounded two
questions : " Can these two distinct races of people, now liv-
ing together as master and servant, be ever separated ?" and
"will the day ever arrive when the black can be liberated
from his thraldom and mount upward in the scale of civil-
ization and rights, to an equality with the white?"2 He
answered both of these questions with a decided negative ;
his article, full of deductions from history and law, and
abounding in wealth of illustration, essayed to prove that
any such consummation was either undesirable or impossible.
He narrowed the question to Virginia; but the inference
was plain that what applied to Virginia could with greater
force be urged in reference to most of the other slave States.
The author arrived at this conclusion : " There is slave prop-
erty of the value of $100,000,000 in the State of Virginia,
and it matters but little how you destroy it, whether by the
slow process of the cautious practitioner, or with the fright-
ful despatch of the self-confident quack ; when it is gone, no
matter how, the deed will be done, and Virginia will be a
desert." 3
We can only regard with pity these arguments that were
retailed in the select circles of the South, and used to per-
1 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 184. 2 Ibid., p. 287.
3 Ibid., p. 384. This essay of Prof. Dew was a review of the debate
in the Virginia legislature, 1831-32 (see p. 57), attracted much attention,
and had great influence on public sentiment in Virginia at the time. The
argument was regarded as convincing, and worthy of publication in con-
nection with essays of a later date.
CH. IV.]
SOUTHERN DEFENCE OF SLAVERY
369
suade willing Northern and English visitors. When we
meet them in their balder form, we can only turn away
with disgust. A representative from Louisiana, during the
debate on the compromise of 1850, said in the House :
"A union is not worth a curse as long as distinction ex-
ists between negroes and horses." l " Niggers are prop-
erty, sir," an illiterate slave - holder told Olmsted, " the
same as horses and cattle ; and nobody has any more right
to help a negro that has run away than he has to steal a
horse." 2
A writer in De Bow's Review maintained that slavery
of the negro was no worse than slavery of the ass.
" God made the world," he tells us. " God gave thee
there thy place, -my hirsute brother; and, according to
all earthly probabilities and possibilities, it is thy des-
tiny therein to remain, bray as thou wilt. From the
same great power have our sable friends, Messrs. Sambo,
Cuffee & Co., received their position also. . . . Alas,
4 my poor black brother !' thou, like the hirsute, must do
thy braying in vain. Where God has placed thee, there
must thou stay."3 A unique book of several hundred
closely printed pages was published at Natchez in 1852,
entitled "Studies on Slavery, in Easy Lessons." A con-
siderable portion of it was devoted to combating the views
of Way land as found in his " Moral Science," and of Chan-
ning as elaborated in his treatise on " Slavery." The author
takes issue with Channing on the statement, " Now, I say,
a being having rights cannot justly be made property ; for
this claim over him virtually annuls all his rights." The
Southern apostle rejoins : " We see no force of argument
in this position. It is also true that all domestic animals
held as property have rights. ' The ox knoweth his owner,
and the ass his master's crib.' They all have < the right of
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Wilson, vol. ii. p. 286.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 92.
3 De Bow's Resources, vol.ii. p. 198.
L— 24
370 SOUTHERN- DEFENCE OF SLAVERY [Ce. IV.
petition,' and ask in their way for food; are they the less
property ?" '
So long as Southern reasoners maintained that the negro
race was inferior to the Caucasian, their basis was scientific
truth, although their inference that this fact justified slav-
ery was cruel as well as illogical. But the assertion that
the negro does not partake of the nature of mankind is as
repugnant to science as it is to common-sense. The chim-
panzee is not so near in intellect to the blackest Congo as
is this negro to Daniel Webster. The common possession
of language creates a wide gulf between man and the high-
est of the other animals.2
The chief argument in favor of slavery was drawn from
the Eible. The Mosaic law authorized the buying and hold-
ing of bondmen and bondmaids; it was therefore argued
that if God's chosen people were not only permitted but
enjoined to possess slaves, slavery must certainly be an in-
stitution of the Deity. Texts of approval from the New
Testament were more difficult to find. Although slavery
in the Roman empire was an obtrusive fact, Christ was
silent on the subject. The apologists of slavery made the
utmost of Paul's exhortation to servants to obey their mas-
ters ; yet of all the writings of the apostle of the Gentiles,
the one of chief value to these special pleaders was his
shortest epistle. It was used as a triumphant justification
of the Fugitive Slave law. Paul sent back the runaway
slave Onesimus to his master Philemon, the inclination to
retain him being outweighed by the justice of his owner's
claim.3
The most weighty scriptural argument, however, was that
1 Studies on Slavery, by John Fletcher, p. 183. This book had reached
the fifth thousand when the Independent noticed it, Aug. 26th, 1852.
2 "What is it that separates mind from nature — that gives human in-
telligence an existence of its own, distinguished from general existence ?
... Is it not language ?" — Religion of Philosophy, Pen-in, p. 246.
3 See an article in De Bow's Review, entitled Slavery and the Bible,
vol. ix. p. 281.
CH.IV.] SOUTHERN DEFENCE OF ^SLAVERY 371
based on the curse of Canaan. This reasoning had been
used by the fathers of the Christian church,1 but its force
was vastly greater as employed to justify negro slavery.
It seems amazing that a few verses of a chapter of Gen-
esis should be sincerely deemed sufficient warrant -for the
degradation of more than three million human beings.
The unscientific use of the Bible in the nineteenth century
to defend slavery finds a striking parallel in its use in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries2 to defend the belief
in witchcraft against the attacks of science. Jefferson
Davis, in the debate upon the compromise measures, as-
serted that slavery " was established by decree of Almighty
God" and that "through the portal of slavery alone has
the descendant of the graceless son of Noah ever entered
the temple of civilization."3 The persistence with which
such statements were urged, and the fact that they were
believed in good faith, gave the institution a rooted strength
which it could not have gained from reasoning based only
on human considerations. "When doubts of the right of
slavery would rise in the minds of religious men at the
South, they were checked by the thought that this was to
question the mysterious ways of an inscrutable Providence.
Noah had said, presumably with authority from on high :
1 See Lecky's Morals, vol. ii. p. 70, note.
2 This peculiar use of the biblical narrative was a characteristic of the
decade between 1850-60. Horace Mann, whose religious ideas were lib-
eral, said, in 1853, in his inaugural address at Antioch College, that it
was " morally impossible for God to have created in the beginning such
men and women as we find the human race now to be." He appealed to
the records of the book of Genesis, " which contains the earliest annals
of the human family." For the first 2369 years " not a single instance is
recorded of a child born blind, or deaf, or dumb, or idiotic, or malformed
in any way ! . . . Not one man or woman died of disease. . . . No chol-
era infantum, scarlatina, measles, small-pox — not even toothache! So
extraordinary a thing was it for a son to die before his father that an in-
stance of it is deemed worthy of special notice." — New York Nation, Aug.
6th, 1891.
3 Congressional Globe, vol. xxii. p. 153.
372 SOUTHERN DEFENCE OF SLAVERY [Ca IT.
" Cursed be Canaan [the son of Ham] ; a servant of ser-
vants shall he be unto his brethren." Blessed be Shem, and
blessed be Japheth, and Canaan shall be their servant.
Nor was the influence of this argument confined to the
South. It seemed to many Christians at the North that it
was flying in the face of Providence to wish a change in
the divinely ordered relation of master and slave between
the descendant of Japheth and the descendant of Ham.
Stranger yet does it seem to us, who are willing to accept
the conclusions about the origin of race which have been
arrived at by the patient and brilliant investigators of our
day, that Emerson, who was one to go beyond the letter
and grasp the spirit, should have been so profoundly swayed
by the Mosaic explanation of the blackness of the negro.
" The degradation of that black race," he said, " though
now lost in the starless spaces of the past, did not come
without sin." l
But the biblical argument in favor of slavery did not
remain unchallenged. Between 1850 and 1860, the anti-
slavery people received large accessions from Christian min-
isters and teachers, and with as firm faith in the inspira-
tion of the Bible as the Southern religionists, they took up
the gauntlet and joined issue on the chosen ground. Whether
the Bible and the Christian religion sanctioned slaverv, was
a prominent topic in the joint debates that were held in
Northern cities. The anti-slavery literature is full of such
discussions. From a logical point, there is no question that
the Northern reasoners had altogether the better of the
argument.2 The spirit of Christianity was certainly op-
posed to slavery ; under the Roman empire it had amelior-
ated the condition of the slaves, and during the middle ages
1 Memoir of Emerson, Cabot, p. 428.
3 See especially Debate between Brownlow and Pryne, and Blanchard
and Eice ; The Church and Slavery, by Albert Barnes. For the refuta-
tion of the Ham argument, from the Unitarian point of view, see Life of
Parker, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 81.
CH.IV.] EUROPEAN OPINIONS 373
it had been the chief influence in the abolition of slavery
in Europe.1
The fact that the slaves had their material wants supplied
and were without anxiety for the morrow was urged with-
out ceasing as one of the benefits of the system/ When
Seward visited Virginia he was told that they were the
"happiest people in the world."3 Frederika Bremer was
convinced that under a good master the slaves were " much
better provided for than the poor working people in many
parts of Europe."' 3 Lyell quotes the observations of a Scotch
weaver who had spent several weeks on cotton plantations
in Alabama and Georgia, and who asserted that he had not
there witnessed one fifth of the real suffering he had seen in
manufacturing establishments in Great Britain. This agreed
with Lyell's own experience.4 Lady Wortley was impressed
by the fact that the slaves " seemed thoroughly happy and
contented." 5 Mackay was convinced that the. slaves were
" better clad, fed, and cared for than the agricultural labor-
ers of Europe or the slop tailors and sempstresses of Lon-
don and Liverpool." 6 Achille Murat, who became a Florida
1 See Lecky's History of Morals, vol. i. pp. 70 and 76 ; Macaulay's His-
tory of England, chap. i. 3 Life of Seward, vol. i. p. 779.
3 Homes of the New World, vol. i. p. 296.
4 Second Visit, vol. ii. p. 78. " To one who arrives in Georgia direct
from Europe, with a vivid impression on his mind of the state of the
peasantry there in many populous regions, their ignorance, intemperance,
and improvidence, the difficulty of obtaining subsistence, and the small
chance they have of bettering their lot, the condition of the black labor-
ers on such a property as Hopeton will afford but small ground for lam-
entation or despondency." — Ibid., vol. i. p. 262.
The women "are always allowed a month's rest after their confine-
ment, an advantage rarely enjoyed by hard-working English peasants."
— Ibid., p. 264 ; see also Diary of a Southern Planter, Smedes, p. 78.
5 Travels in the United States, vol. i. p. 218.
6 Life and Liberty in America, vol. i. p. 311. " The general condition
of the Southern slave is one of comparative happiness and comfort, such
as many a free man in the United Kingdom might regard with envy."
— London Times, Sept. 1st, 1852, quoted in Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin,
374 EUROPEAN OPINIONS [On. IV.
planter, maintained that the slaves were happier than the
laborers in the large English manufacturing towns and
than European peasants in general ; but he likewise wrote
that slavery, when viewed from afar, has quite a different
physiognomy from that which presents itself when viewed
on the spot ; " that which appears rigorous by law becomes
lenient by custom." '
The opinions of these foreign travellers, with the excep-
tion of the Scotch weaver who supported himself by manual
labor and only saw the lower society, were greatly influ-
enced by the generous hospitality of Southern gentlemen.
Harriet Martineau had found that hospitality so remarkable
and grateful that she appreciated the lurking danger in it of
blinding many to the real evils of slavery. In those spacious
country-houses everything was so " gay and friendly," there
was " such a prevailing hilarity and kindness," that one for-
got the misery on which this open-handed way of living was
based.2 The liberality and heartiness of Southern enter-
tainments made a powerful impression on Lyell, who has
left a graceful testimony of " the perfect ease and politeness
with which a stranger is made to feel himself at home." 3
The character in which the slave-holding lord wished to
appear to the world is well illustrated by a fanciful account
in The Southern Literary Journal of a visit by a nineteenth-
century Addison to Sir Eoger de Coverley's plantation.
The Carolina de Coverley is described as having all the
virtues of the famous English knight, whose faithful old do-
mestics, grown gray-headed in the service, are paralleled by
p. 74. Ampere arrived at the conclusion that the lot of the slaves was
not very hard (see tome ii. p. 142), but he is severe on those who attempt
to justify slavery, see p. 148. Thackeray wrote from Richmond in 1853 :
" The negroes don't shock me, or excite my compassionate feelings at all ;
they are so grotesque and happy that I can't cry over them. The little
black imps are trotting and grinning about the streets; women, work-
men, waiters, all well fed and happy." — Letters, p. 168.
1 America and the Americans, pp. 67 and 77.
2 Society in America, vol. i. p. 229. 3 Second Visit, vol. i. p. 245.
CH.IV.] DENIAL OF FREE SPEECH AT THE SOUTH 375
"healthy, laughing, contented" negroes, who are "comfort-
ably provided for," whose " sleep is sweet," and who " care not
for the morrow." The devotion of the ancient servants to
the English Sir Eoger, their joyful welcome when he re-
turned from a journey, the mixture of the father and the
master of the family in his conduct to his dependants, is
likened to the "endearing relation" which exists between
the slaves and the Carolina lord.1 Yet in this imitation of
one of the most graceful sketches of English literature, one
trait is added which sets in a clear light the foul blot of slav-
ery on an otherwise charming picture of rural life. " Clean-
liness is indispensable to health," says Sir Roger de Coverley
of Carolina, " and makes the slave prolific. I have at this
time a hundred and fifty of these people ; and their annual
increase may be estimated as adding as much to my income
as arises from all other sources." 2 The love of art as well
as the love of liberty would have prevented Joseph Addison
from putting such words into the mouth of Sir Roger ; for
had he spoken thus, he would have been no longer the old-
fashioned country gentleman of high honor and rare benev-
olence that remains as one of the characteristic creations of
English literature.
A well-known result of slavery was the denial of free
speech at the South. While Southern advocates of the
rightfulness of slavery were heard willingly at the North in
joint debate, or from the lyceum platform, the life of Garri-
son and of Parker would have been forfeited had they gone
South and attempted to get a hearing. The circulation of
anti-slavery newspapers and books was suppressed as far as
possible. One book, however, and the most dangerous of
1 " In ' the days that are no more,' so confiding and affectionate was
the relation of the master and the slave, and we, who personally loved
many of them, cannot now easily become reconciled to the attitude of
alienation in which the negroes stand towards us." — Mrs. Davis in 1890,
Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. p. 311.
3 Slave States of America, Buckingham, vol. i. p. rO
376 FEA^ OF SLAVE RISINGS [Ce. IV.
all, found many readers. The desire to read " Uncle Tom's
Cabin" was too great to be crushed by the usual efforts at
repression.1
It must, however, be confessed that reason enough existed
for the denial of free speech and a free press. The first duty
of a society is self-preservation. Whether or not the danger
of slave insurrections was great, it is certain that the fear of
them was real and ever present. u I speak from facts," said
John Kandolph, " when I say that the night bell never tolls
for fire in Richmond, that the frightened mother does not
hug her infant the more closely to her bosom, not knowing
what may have happened. I have myself witnessed some
of the alarms in the capital of Virginia." 2 De Tocqueville
was struck by the inevitable danger of a struggle between
the blacks and whites in the slave States. While he found
the subject discussed freely at the North, it was ignored at
the South ; yet the tacit foreboding of servile insurrection
in that community seemed more dreadful than the expressed
fears of his Northern friends.3 Men in the slave States
were wont to deny the danger,4 but Fanny Kemble testified
that all Southern women to whom she had spoken about the
matter admitted that they lived in terror of their slaves.5
Never elsewhere had she known " anything like the pervad-
ing timidity of tone," and it was her belief that the slave-
1 See letter of Francis Lieber, Feb. 3d, 1853: "Apropos of slavery: Uncle
Tom's Cabin sells here [in Columbia, S. C.] rapidly. One bookseller tells
me that he cannot supply the demand with sufficient rapidity." — Life
and Letters, p. 257 ; see also Olmstcd's Cotton Kingdom.
2 House of Representatives, Dec., 1811.
3 " Dans les Etats du Sud, on se tait ; on ne parle point de 1'avenir aux
etrangers; on evite de s'en expliquer avec ses amis; chacun se le cache,
pour ainsi dire, a soi-me'me. Le silence du Sud a quelque chose de plus
effrayant que les craintes bruyantes du Nord." — De la Democratic en
Amerique, vol. ii. p. 334.
4 See Kemble, p. 295 ; Pro-slavery Argument, p. 74 ; Society in Amer-
ica, vol. ii. p. 120.
5 See Kemble, p. 295.
CH.IV.] DESIRE OF SLAVES FOR FREEDOM 377
holders lived in a " perpetual state of suspicion and appre-
hension." l Olmsted saw " more direct expression of tyran-
ny in a single day and night at Charleston than at Naples,
under Bomba, in a week."2 Mackay, who was favorably
disposed towards the South, was impressed with the surveil-
lance, strict as martial law, to which the negroes were sub-
jected at Charleston.3 Further evidence of this sort need
not be adduced. The legislation, the daily conduct of the
whites, the great alarms excited by slight provocation, go to
show that the Koman proverb, "As many enemies as slaves,"
acquired the same force in the South after Nat Turner as it
had in Rome after the revolt of Spartacus.4
Even had the material condition of the slaves been as
good as the apologists of slavery were in the habit of assert-
ing, the fact that nearly every negro was eager for liberty
was a grave indictment of the system. The evidence of
this is so overwhelming that the statement will not be dis-
puted. One of the finest touches in " Uncle Tom's Cabin"
is the joyful expression of Uncle Tom when told by his
good and indulgent master that he should be set free and
sent back to his old home in Kentucky. In attributing the
common desire of humanity to the negro, the author was as
true as she was effective.
1 Kemble, p. 268. " Ten years ago an eminent Southern statesman told
us that he never retired to rest on his plantation without carefully ex-
amining his pistols and rifle, which hung by his bedside, to make sure
that they were ready for instant use; and a mother of Virginia told us
years ago that if accidentally awakened at night by any noise in the
neighborhood, her first impulse was one of terror lest it should proceed
from a revolt of negroes." — New York Tribune, 1859.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 350.
3 Life and Liberty in America, vol. i. p. 310 ; see alst> Seaboard Slave
States, p. 404. Thackeray wrote from Richmond in 1853 : " Crowe has
just come out from what might have been and may be yet a dreadful
scrape. He went into a slave-market and began sketching ; and the peo-
ple rushed on him savagely and obliged him to quit." — Letters, p. 168.
4 See account of Henry S. Foote of excitement in Central Mississippi
in 1835, Casket of Reminiscences, p. 250 et seq.
378 FUGITIVE SLAVES [On. IV.
A good deal of currency was given to stories of slaves
who escaped and afterwards came to their old masters and
voluntarily surrendered themselves.1 Clay grew eloquent
when he told of a slave in his own family, who, having been
enticed away, " addressed her mistress, and begged and im-
plored of her the means of getting back from the state of
freedom, to which she had been seduced, to the state of slav-
ery, in which she was so much more happy." 2 There is no
doubt that similar instances occurred, but the very promi-
nence given to isolated cases shows that they were the ex-
ceptions and not the rule. The small number of fugitive
slaves was sometimes urged to show that the dissatisfaction
with the servile condition was not general. Only about one
thousand negroes escaped yearly into the free States, and
only about two thousand were annually manumitted.3 Yet
this argument was fallacious. The count of fugitives who
reached the North cannot be taken to measure the number
of negroes who escaped from their masters. In the cotton
States the chance of getting to the land of freedom was
small, yet slaves frequently ran away ; they were often
caught alive by the dogs, occasionally shot, and sometimes
they remained for months in the swamps, or in mountain-
ous regions kept secreted among the hills.4
The number of all sorts of fugitives, however, was small
compared with the negroes who yearned for freedom, but,
owing to insurmountable obstacles, were deterred from mak-
ing the attempt. Frederick Douglass, one of the brightest
and most intelligent of slaves, held notions of geography so
vague and indistinct that the eastern shore of Maryland,
1 See Retrospect of Western Travel, vol. i. p. 242.
0 Speech on the compromise resolutions, Last Years of Henry Clay,
p. 330.
3 The number of fugitives escaping into the free States in 1850 was
1011, or one in each 3165 held in bondage; in 1860, 803, or one to about
5000. Twenty thousand slaves were supposed to have been manumitted
between 1850 and 1860. United States Census Report.
4 See Cotton Kingdom, under "Runaway Slaves."
CH.IV.] THE SOUTHERN MEN 379
where he wrought as a bondman, seemed a vast distance
from Pennsylvania ; and his description of the difficulties
that lay in the way of eager fugitives is a sufficient explana-
tion of why their number was so small.1 The vilest and
most ignorant of slaves in the cotton States knew that free-
dom was in the direction of the north star ; the wisest of
them knew little more, except that the distance was great
and that the route lay through a country where everybody
kept on the watch, and where their color itself was a grave
object of suspicion.
What will the judgment of history be on the Southern
men ? Must not coming ages ratify the opinion of the mor-
alist and the philosopher who lived in slave times, who loved
liberty and yet were able to take a charitable view ? " Slav-
ery is the calamity of our Southern brethren, and not their
crime," wrote Channing.2 " The misfortune of the planter,"
said Emerson, " is at least as great as his sin." 3 Least of all
may the North or England cast a stone at the South, for
each had a hand in the establishing of negro slavery. Yet
it does not follow that the Southern men of the generation
before the war can plead innocence at the judgment bar of
history. They may be arraigned for taking steps backward
from the position held by the leaders of Southern opinion
when the Constitution was framed. Jefferson made an effort
to abolish slavery in his own State. It is true he might have
done more ; and he was subject to the influence of his environ-
ment to the extent that, in his later years, he found a palliation
of slavery which his pen would have refused to record in the
days when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Jefferson, and the great Virginians who were associated
with him, freed a country and established a nation. Is it
not asking too much that they should have solved the social
question and freed a race ? ' Yet that was the duty of the
generation which succeeded. Calhoun was the intellectual
1 Life of Douglass, p. 159.
2 Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 367. 3 Life of Emerson, Cabot, p. 426.
380 CALHOUN AND JEFFERSON DAVIS [On. IV.
heir of Jefferson,1 and if he had continued to hold the nation-
al views with which he started in public life, he might have
done much to shatter the system that he consecrated his
later years to uphold.2 The mantle of Calhoun fell on Jef-
ferson Davis, who translated into action the logic of his
master. The judgment of posterity is made up : it was an
unrighteous cause which the South defended by arms ; and
at the tribunal of modern civilization, Calhoun and Davis
must be held accountable for the misery which resulted
from this appeal to the sword.
It is true that had Calhoun espoused the cause of free-
dom, his influence would have been less ; he would not have
been idolized as the Southern hero and have received the af-
fectionate devotion of his aristocratic order.3 Calhoun and
Davis were leaders because in them the feelings of the South-
ern oligarchy found the ablest expression. It is therefore
fitting that the judgment which is meted out to the South-
ern leaders should be shared by their followers who failed
to grapple with the problem sincerely and boldly, and fore-
most of these were the slave-holding lords. The smaller
proprietors, who imitated their betters, were not guiltless;
but the most lenient judgment should fall upon the 'poor
whites, who were hoodwinked into fighting for a cause
which, though deemed holy, was in reality an instrument
in their own degradation. Yet, while making these reflec-
tions, the historian cannot forget that in the heat of the
conflict the great leader could say : " Both [the North and
1 This is pointed out by Henry Adams. "A radical democrat, less
liberal, less cultivated, and much less genial than Jefferson, Calhoim was
the true heir to his intellectual succession." — History of the United
States, vol. i. p. 154.
2 Harriet Martineau has an interesting passage on Calhoun, Retro-
spect, vol. i. p. 241 ; see also conversation between Calhoun and John
Quincy Adams, March, 1820, Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vol. v. p. 10.
3 " Calhoun sways South Carolina by pampering her vanity." — Francis
Lieber. Life and Letters, p. 171.
CH. IV.] REFLECTIONS 381
the South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just
God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of
other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not
judged." l Nor is it an impossible supposition, that if the
Puritan had settled Virginia and the Cavalier had settled
Massachusetts, while the question would have remained the
same, the Puritan might have fought for slavery and the
Cavalier for liberty.
Then, too, it may be that the peculiar institution was so
interwoven with the political and social life of the South,
that to inaugurate a movement there which should result in
the abolition of slavery might have required a genius by the
side of whom Calhoun and Davis would seem intellectual
pygmies. The mighty Caasar, the sovereign ruler, although
convinced of the evil of large slave estates, did not venture
to assail the practice of slavery in Rome. Our civilization
is certainly superior in the virtue of humanity to that of the
ancient world in the time of Caesar, and a man as able and
energetic as the Roman imperator might, under republican
forms, have worked out the salvation of the South.
But one is struck by the absence of any well-directed ef-
fort towards the abolition of slavery. Nor were the slave
States willing to entertain any plan involving emancipation
Avith compensation.2 No doubt whatever exists that the
moral sentiment of the North would have favored employ-
ing the treasure and credit of the general government to pay
for the slaves, had the Southern owners been willing to
emancipate them ;3 and while such a course was not without
practical and political difficulties, these were by no means
insuperable. Yet no such project was entertained; for
even had the North made such an offer, it would have been
spurned by the South. The Colonization Society, whose
object was to remove the negroes to Africa and colonize
1 From President Lincoln's second inaugural.
2 See Seward's Works, vol. i. p. 87.
3 See Emerson's speech, 1855, Cabot, p. 593.
382 REFLECTIONS [On. IV.
them at Liberia, undoubtedly proved a salve to the tender
consciences of many ; but as a means of putting an end to
the evil, its operations were a fit subject of ridicule. Garri-
son charged that seven times as many slaves were annually
smuggled into the South as had been transported to Africa
in fifteen years by the Colonization Society.1
The Southern lord would not make the sacrifice of his
ease to examine the question honestly. Lyell, who was in-
clined to be partial to the South, was of the opinion that
steps ought long ago to have been taken towards the grad-
ual emancipation of the slaves.2 Jefferson Davis and his
fellow-planters, who were fond of books and delighted in the
study of ancient history, might have read in the year 1857
an impressive lesson ; and had their minds been open to the
reception of the truth, the words of Mommsen would have
appeared to them the highest philosophy ; for he furnished
an example of a social system strikingly similar to that the
Southern lords extolled ; he drew the parallel and let the
consequence be seen. " Kiches and misery," wrote the his-
torian of Eome, " in close league drove the Italians out of
Italy, and filled the Peninsula partly with swarms of slaves,
partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not
one peculiar to Italy ; whenever the government of capital-
ists in a slave State has fully developed itself, it has deso-
lated God's fair world in the same way. . . . All the arrant
sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civil-
1 Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 295. " Mr. Madison, the president of the
colonization society, gave me his favorable views of it. Mr. Clay, the
vice-president, gave me his. So did almost every clergyman and other
member of society whom I met for some mouths. . . . But I am firmly
persuaded that any clear-headed man, shutting himself up in his closet
for a day's study of the question, . . . can come to no other conclusion
than that the scheme of transporting the colored population of the United
States to the coast of Africa is absolutely absurd ; and if it were not so,
would be absolutely pernicious." — H. Martineau, Society in America,
vol. i. p. 346. " It is a tub thrown to the whale."— Ibid., p. 349.
8 Lyell's Second Visit, vol. i. p. 208.
CH. IV.] REFLECTIONS 383
ization in the modern world remain as far inferior to the
abomination of the ancient capitalist States as the free man,
be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave ; and not
until the dragon-seed of North America ripens will the
world have again similar fruits to reap." 1
When the war ended with the abolition of slavery, the
general opinion at the North was that the negro question
was settled. This was an illusion ; yet no one fully conver-
sant with the literature of slavery in the decade of 1850-60,
and with the literature of the race question at the present
time, can doubt that the negro problem was a graver one
in 1850 than it is in 1892. This the historian may affirm
with confidence and yet feel the seriousness of the present
situation, which demands the wisdom of action on the part
of the South, and the wisdom of forbearance on the part of
the North. The North better than ever before appreciates
the feeling that induced Madison, in the closing years of his
useful life, to give vent to the ardent wish that he might be
able to work a miracle ; were that power given him, he would
make all the negroes white, for then he could in one day
abolish slavery.2
1 Vol. iv. p. 621.
2 See Society in America, Martineau, vol. i. p. 382. On tlie subject of
this chapter generally, see article in the Andover .Review, Aug., 1891, en-
titled " Slavery as Seen by a Northern Man in 1844," by A. P. Peabody.
I desire here to acknowledge my obligations to my friend Raymond S.
Perrin, who read with me a large portion of the manuscript of this work,
and to whom I am indebted for valuable suggestions. And I wish to
mention the assistance received from my friend Professor Bourne, of
Adalbert College, who read carefully the whole manuscript, and gave me
the benefit of his historical knowledge and literary criticism.
CHAPTER V
FKANKLIN PIERCE, the youngest man who up to this time
had taken the presidential oath, was inaugurated March 4th,
1853. The ceremony was more imposing than usual, and
was witnessed by the largest number of strangers who had
ever gathered in Washington to assist at the installation of a
new chief magistrate. When he took the oath he did not, as
is ordinary, use the word " swear," but accepted the consti-
tutional alternative which permitted him to affirm that he
would faithfully execute the office of President of the United
States. Nor did he kiss the book, as was the Southern fash-
ion, but laid his left hand upon the Bible and held his right
hand aloft, having previously bared his head to the falling
snow. He did not read the address, but spoke without man-
uscript or notes in a clear and distinct voice, with a graceful
manner. The inaugural was a well-turned literary composi-
tion, delivered by an effective speaker, and made a striking
impression upon the many auditors.1 He began : " My coun-
trymen ! It is a relief to feel that no heart but my own can
know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I
have been borne to a position so suitable for others rather
than desirable for myself." This was an allusion to the
sudden taking-away of his only living child, a bright boy of
thirteen, by a railroad accident which happened in the early
part of January. The boy, to whom Pierce was devotedly
attached, was travelling with his father and mother, when
his brains were dashed out before their eyes. Some Whig
journals criticised this allusion as being a trick of the orator
New York Herald, March 5th, 1853; National Intelligencer.
CH.V.] INAUGURATION OF PIERCE 385
to awaken personal interest before proceeding to unfold
his public policy; but the people who heard the words felt
only sympathy for the handsome young President who thus
frankly disclosed his private grief, knowing that he would
gladly resign the most glittering of earthly prizes' if only
his son might have been restored to him.
The President hinted strongly that during his term of
office it might be his part to add Cuba to the common coun-
try. " The policy of my administration," he said, " will not
be controlled by any timid forebodings of evil from expan-
sion. Indeed, it is not to be disguised that our attitude as
a nation, and our position on the globe, render the acquisi-
tion of certain possessions, not within our jurisdiction, emi-
nently important for our protection."
He affirmed the principle of the Monroe doctrine. He in-
timated that the Whigs should be turned out of the offices
to make room for Democrats. Yet he was not hampered
by promises made before nomination or election ; he had no
" implied engagements to ratify," so that in the disposal of
patronage he should not be subject to the dictation of the
politicians. " I acknowledge," he declared, " my obligations
to the masses of my countrymen, and to them alone."
He made a vigorous appeal for the Union, holding that
the compromise measures of 1850 were strictly constitu-
tional, and should be " unhesitatingly carried into effect."
While the Fugitive Slave act was not mentioned by name,
everybody knew that this expression meant that the Pres-
ident would vigorously enforce that law, as it was the only
part of the compromise on which executive action was now
needed.
The enthusiastic cheers and noise of the cannon which
greeted the President when he closed his address was typi-
cal of the joy of Democrats -all over the country on their
restoration to power. In truth, they had felt, ever since the
first election of Jackson, that the duty of administering the
government belonged rightfully to them, and that in their
hands only were the interests of the whole people properly
I.— 25
386 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
protected. Aristocratic cabals and money combinations cer-
tainly fared better at the hands of the Whigs, but a party
whose support was largely derived from those elements did
not, the Democrats thought, deserve popular success. The
Whigs had twice elected a President, but it was by means
of the trick of playing upon the universal fancy for mili-
tary prestige. It was now the general Democratic feeling
that the installation of Pierce into office was a restoration
simply of the power and patronage justly due the Demo-
crats.
The inaugural was well received ; it was generally satis-
factory to the business interests. The disposition always
exists on the part of the successful party to hail their new
chief as a paragon of wisdom or virtue ; nor, in the first days
of the administration, do the defeated party bear rancor,
but are willing to look on with charity, feeling that the new
President deserves a fair chance. Especially was this the
case when Franklin Pierce took the reins of government.
He was very popular on election day, and so overpowering
had been his success that he was still more popular on the
day of his inauguration. If the general acclaim augured
well for the prosperity of the new administration, few Pres-
idents have started with auspices so favorable. Yet the
anti-slavery Whigs, and a few anti-slavery Democrats whose
principles were stronger than their desire to see the old
party cemented, could not but tremble for their country
when they saw in this cautious exposition of principle and
announcement of programme that the President, whose hold
on the people was apparently so powerful, did not regard
human slavery as an evil, but was anxious to acquire more
slave territory. It did not allay their apprehensions when
he said that the new territory should be obtained " with a
view to obvious national interest and security, and in a man-
ner entirely consistent with the strictest observance of na-
tional faith ;" for the intrigue by which Texas was annexed
was too fresh in their minds. It was patent that the South-
ern men who composed the slavery propaganda, while strict-
CH.V.J FORMATION OF THE CABINET 387
ly honorable in private life, were ready to use any means to
extend the influence of their dear institution. It was a
prime article of Southern faith that Texas had been honor-
ably acquired ; and if one were a true Democrat, he must
believe the war with Mexico to have been just and holy.
A mere reading of the inaugural was sufficient to give
rise to a suspicion that in President Pierce the Southern
leaders had found a man who would do their bidding ; but
had one known what was going on in the inner coun-
cils of the party, the feeling would have been more than a
suspicion. In the month following the election, Pierce had
written a letter to Buchanan asking suggestions and advice,
to which the Pennsylvania statesman was glad to respond
fully and freely. He pointed out where lay the path of
glory. " The foreign affairs of the government," he wrote,
" and especially the question of Cuba, will occupy the most
conspicuous place in your administration. I believe that
Cuba can be acquired by cession upon honorable terms,
and I should not desire to acquire it in any other manner.
The President who shall accomplish this object will render
his name illustrious, and place it on the same level with
that of his great predecessor, who gave Louisiana to the
Union." '
Pierce, shortly after his election, sent a message to John
A. Dix, of New York, requesting a personal interview.
When Dix repaired to Concord he was offered, in the most
cordial manner, the position of Secretary of State under the
new administration, the President-elect assuring him that he
was the man of all others whose presence in the cabinet
would be especially desirable and gratifying. But when
this became known to the party leaders, the extreme South-
ern politicians and the pro-slavery New York Democrats
protested earnestly against the appointment, on account of
Dix's connection with the Free-soil party in 1848, when he
had been their candidate for governor. Thereupon a second
Life of Buchanan, G. T. Curtis, vol. ii. p. 72.
388 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
interview between Pierce and Dix took place, and as it was
quite evident that the President-elect desired to be relieved
from his obligation, Dix at once released him.1
Far different was the treatment of Jefferson Davis, who
early received an offer of the position of Secretary of War.
He at first declined the appointment,2 but Pierce was so
earnest in his solicitations that Davis came to Washington
the day after the inauguration, and was finally prevailed
upon to accept the position.3 This appointment, highly sat-
isfactory to the Southern states -rights men, and in the
main agreeable to the South, was decidedly objectionable to
the Union party in Mississippi.4 One frequently heard the
remark at the North that Davis was the only member of
the cabinet who had opposed the compromise measures of
1850. The difference in the treatment of Dix and of Davis,
both of whom had similar personal claims on Pierce, was
evidence that the extreme Southern faction of the party
would receive more consideration than the Northern Dem-
ocrats who were tinctured with Free-soilism.
The cabinet nominations were not sent to the Senate until
three days after the inauguration. The President appointed
William L. Marcy, of New York, Secretary of State ; James
Guthrie, of Kentucky, Secretary of the Treasury ; Jefferson
Davis, of Mississippi, Secretary of War ; James C. Dobbin,
of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy ; Robert McClel-
land, of Michigan, Secretary of the Interior ; James Camp-
bell, of Pennsylvania, Postmaster-General ; and Caleb Cush-
ing, of Massachusetts, Attorney-General.
The courteous action of Dix in permitting Pierce to re-
tract the offer of the State portfolio did not relieve him
from all embarrassment in regard to the leading position in
1 Life of J. A. Dix, by Morgan Dix, vol. i. p. 271.
2 Davis's wife urged him to decline the offer. Memoir of Jefferson Davis,
by his wife, vol. i. p. 476.
3 Life of Jefferson Davis, Alfriend, p. 89.
* Casket of Reminiscences, Foote, p. 90.
CH.V.] FORMATION OF THE CABINET 389
the cabinet. Desirous of giving this place to a New York
man, he was perplexed by the bitter factional contest among
the Democrats of that State. Although all differences had
been sunk during the Presidential canvass, the split which
began in 1848 broke out afresh as soon as the party gained
the signal victory, and, while no principle seemed to be at
stake, the fight was earnest for proper recognition in the
distribution of the offices. It is undeniable that a few
among those who were called Free-soilers remained true to
their former declarations ; but most of them were becoming
merged in the faction called " Softs," whose endeavor was
to unite the jarring elements of the party in order to con-
trol elections, and who after 1848 became the link of con-
.nection between the Free-soilers and the " Hunkers " or
"Hards," as the regular Democrats were called.1 Dix was
a " Soft," with Free-soil antecedents ; while Marcy, though
the chief of the " Softs," had been decidedly opposed to the
Free-soil movement. To satisfy the greatest number was
the aim of the President, to whom it became the subject of
serious thought and many councils ; and although the whole
cabinet, as finally announced, was published in the news-
papers one week before the inauguration,2 Pierce did not
really decide who should be his Secretary of State until he
had actually been one day in office, for up to the morning
of March 5th that portfolio had not been offered to Marcy.8
Marcy was the best-known man in the cabinet ; he was an
adroit politician ; his intellectual qualities were solid rather
than brilliant, but he had a strong mind and honest pur-
poses. Jefferson Davis and Caleb Gushing also brought to
the council board talents of a high order.
The first appearance of Davis in national public life was
1 The distinction is well described in Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,
vol. ii. p. 141 ; see also Dickinson's Letters and Speeches, vol. i. p. 394.
2 New York Herald, Feb. 25th.
3 See Letter of Marcy to Buchanan, "Washington, March 5th, 1853, Life
of Buchanan, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 75.
390 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
in the House of Representatives at the age of thirty-seven.
He was fortunate in having a liberal training that made him
well fitted for the political arena. A graduate of West
Point, he had served as lieutenant in the Blackhawk and
other Indian wars. He then resigned his commission and
for eight years, from the age of twenty-seven to thirty-five,
he lived in retirement on his cotton plantation, superintend-
ing the work in the manner common to the Southern plant-
er, but for the most part devoting himself to a systematic
course of reading and study, for which his taste amounted
to a passion. When he quitted the life of a recluse to en-
gage in the affairs of State he was a man of culture, well
read in the classical writers of England, and deeply versed in
political history and economy.
His maiden speech in the House of Representatives at-
tracted the attention of John Quincy Adams, who said :
" That young man is no ordinary man. He will make his
mark yet, mind me."
Davis served as colonel in the Mexican war. His admir-
ers asserted that his brilliant movement at Buena Yista car-
ried the day, and that his tactical conception was worthy of
a CaBsar or a Napoleon. He was afterwards United States
senator for four years, resigning the position in 1851 to
make the contest for governor of Mississippi as state-rights
candidate against Foote, who led the Union party.1 After
his defeat he remained in private life until called forth by
Pierce, with whom he held friendly personal relations. He
was now in his forty-fifth year, and one could see that he was
gradually reaching the position to which he aspired — a posi-
tion which by 1860 he attained — that of leader of the South-
ern people, and successor of John C. Calhoun.2
Gushing owed his appointment primarily to the fact that
1 See p. 226.
2 In this characterization of Davis I have used Life of Davis, by Alfriend ;
Life of Davis, by Pollard ; Our Living Representative Men, by John Sav-
age.
CH.V.] CALEB GUSHING 391
he was one of the New England politicians who had striven
to bring about the nomination of Pierce; moreover, the
President-elect, himself an educated man, was not unwilling
to make known to the country that all the scholars did not
belong to the Whig party. That steadfast Whig State, Mas-
sachusetts, furnished the scholar of the cabinet for Pierce, as
she had likewise done for Polk.
Gushing was one of those men who seem to have taken
all knowledge for their province. Scholar, author, lawyer,
statesman, diplomatist, general, and judge, in at least four
of these callings he achieved distinction. " I started from
the same point," he once wrote, " so far as regards educa-
tion, atmosphere, and mental culture, with Everett and Ban-
croft. Their lives have been of a more learned and medita-
tive cast than mine, and mine of a more adventurous and ac-
tive complexion than theirs." ' Born in 1800, he graduated
from Harvard when he was seventeen, became a tutor of
natural philosophy and mathematics at that college, then
studied law, and at twenty-five entered the legislature of his
State. In 1829 he went to Europe, remained there two
years, and, like many other Americans of culture, finding
Spain the most interesting of countries, stayed there long
enough to get the spirit and material for an interesting book
which he wrote upon his return. During a three years'
term in Congress he acquired the reputation of being a fas-
cinating public speaker ; his utterances smacked of the study,
for he quoted from the Iliad with the same facility as did
other members from the Bible. President Tyler sent him
as minister to China, where he was successful in negotiating
a treaty which for the first time opened up diplomatic rela-
tions with the celestial empire. He served as general in the
Mexican war, and, when appointed a member of the cabinet,
was Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.
Gushing was one of the most indefatigable of workers.
1 Private letter of Gushing to C. E. Lester, Feb. 19th, 1853, published in
the New York Times, Oct. 17tli, 1853.
392 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
While well versed in the ancient languages, he could also
speak fluently several modern tongues, and it was noted that
at diplomatic dinners, while the Secretary of State could
converse only in his own vernacular, the Attorney-general
carried on conversation with all the ambassadors in their
proper languages. Thoroughly acquainted with the best
English literature, he yet read every new book, and remem-
bered what he read.1 A writer of books and an honored
contributor to the stately North American Review, he wrote,
while Attorney - general, an editorial nearly every day for
the Washington Union, the organ of the administration.
His habits were temperate, his health robust, he had wealth
both inherited and earned, and he was altogether an agree-
able member of society.
It is, indeed, a pity to mar the portrait of such a man,
but it cannot be denied that he lacked moral sense. Ad-
mired by everybody for his learning and ability, he was
trusted by few. Nor was it due alone to his political incon-
sistency that he forfeited the confidence of his fellow-men.
Starting in public life a Whig, he apostatized with Tyler,
and remained a Democrat. Other men have changed their
politics, yet have retained their reputation for sincerity! But
it was the general opinion that personal interest and not
principle accounted for Cushing's political unsteadiness.
When he was a candidate for governor of Massachusetts,
James Russell Lowell struck the popular note in the follow-
ing verses :
"Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man1.
He's been on all sides that give places and pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,
He's been true to one party — and that is himself."2
1 When living at Newburyport, it was his custom to look over all
books that came to the bookseller before they were exposed for sale.
He was also known as the man who had read Webster's Dictionary
through twice. — Story told by the Boston Herald, cited by the New York
Tribune, Jan. 7th, 1879.
2 Biglow Papers. This was written in 1847.
CH. V.] CALEB GUSHING 393
Pierce, it was said, believed Cushing's fickleness to be intel-
lectual, not moral, and that he only needed the influence of
a man of stable judgment to keep him straight. His advice
was well esteemed by the President-elect, and it is more than
probable that he confirmed Pierce in the design, if he did
not originally make the suggestion, of offering a cabinet
position to Jefferson Davis.1
Next in importance to the cabinet appointments was the
selection of men for the principal diplomatic posts. " Should
you desire to acquire Cuba," Buchanan had written the Pres-
ident-elect, " the choice of suitable ministers to Spain, Na-
ples, England, and France will be very important."2 Bu-
chanan was appointed minister to England; which gave
notice to the country and to the European powers con-
cerned that a leading object of the administration would
be the acquisition of Cuba. While Secretary of State un-
der Polk, Buchanan had offered one hundred million dol-
lars for it. His political position, however, was so high,
and his diplomatic experience so useful, that no criticism
could be fairly made of his selection by Pierce.
1 In this characterization of Cashing, I have consulted Forney's Anec-
dotes of Public Men, vol. i. ; Our Living Representative Men, Savage;
the New York Herald, 1853; Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. ;
North American Review, vol. xxxvii. ; Public Men and Events, Sargent,
vol. ii. ; New York Nation, vol. xviii. ; Twenty Years in Congress, Elaine :
Casket of Reminiscences, Foote ; Men and Measures of Half a Century,
McCulloch; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. ix. ; Reminiscences by
Ben: Perley Poore; History of Journalism, Hudson. Thos. Benton's opin-
ion, expressed in a speech delivered in 1856, will be of interest : " Of all
these [the members of the cabinet] the Attorney-General is the master
spirit. He is a man of talent, of learning, of industry — unscrupulous,
double -sexed, double -gendered, and hermaphroditic in politics, with a
hinge in his knee, which he often crooks, that thrift may follow fawning.
He governs by subserviency; and to him is deferred the master's place
in Mr. Piercers cabinet. When I heard that he was to come into the
cabinet I set down Mr. Pierce for a doomed man, and foresaw the swift
and full destruction which was to fall upon him." — Quoted by Von Hoist,
vol. iv. p. 263, note.
8 Dec. llth, 1852, Life of James Buchanan, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 73.
394 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION f!853
The case was far otherwise in regard to the appointment
of Soule, of Louisiana, as minister to Spain. This could be
construed in no other way than that President Pierce meant
to carry out as well as he was able the desires of the South-
ern propaganda who were bent on getting Cuba by hook or
by crook. The opinion of Soule was no secret ; he had de-
clared it in open Senate in the January preceding his ap-
pointment. He took occasion then to speak enthusiastical-
ly of the followers of Lopez and Crittenden, who joined in
the expedition to Cuba. Their heroic devotion and " the
morality of their aspirations," he said, " deserve the praise
that is freely accorded to Lafayette and Kosciusko." Soule
was opposed to purchasing Cuba. It could be acquired in a
better way, he thought. It was useless for Spain to ignore
the fact that Cuba could not much longer remain a Spanish
dependency ; that she was certain to secure her indepen-
dence ; and if the Cuban people revolted against Spain, we
should sympathize with them, because the independence of
the island would be as desirable as its annexation to this
country. Cannot Southern senators see, he asked, that they
ought to long for the annexation of Cuba on account of
weighty domestic reasons, and cannot they understand that
the intrigues of England are directed towards the abolition
of slavery in that island ? As Lord Palmerston avows, " if
the negro population of Cuba were rendered free, that fact
would create a most powerful element of resistance to any
scheme for annexing Cuba to the United States, where slav-
ery exists." 1
If the object had been to bully Spain into giving up the
possession she held so dear, something might be said in favor
of this appointment ; but if the object were to gain the isl-
and by patient, careful, and wise negotiation, a more objec-
tionable appointment could not have been made. It gave
much annoyance to the Spanish court, and the government
1 This speech of Soule was made Jan. 25th, 1853. See Congressional
Globe, vol. xxvii. p. 118.
CH. V.] SOULE— DIX 395
organ contended in a carefully prepared article that Soule
ought not to be received. The London Times called it an
extraordinary choice, and it would have been no surprise
had the Spanish government absolutely refused to hold
relations with one who extolled rebellion against Spain,
diplomatic precedents being ample to warrant such a
course.1
On his way to Europe, Soule received a deputation of Cu-
ban exiles, to whom he made a speech, assuring them that
when a man became a minister abroad he did not cease to
be an American citizen; "and as such he has a right to
carry wherever he goes the throbbings of that people that
speak out such tremendous truths to the tyrants of the old
continent."2
The French mission was offered to Dix, but, though ac-
cepted, the appointment in form was never made. Southern
politicians objected strenuously on the ground that Dix was
an abolitionist. He was certainly no friend to the extension
of slavery; and although sufficiently affected by the mani-
fest destiny doctrine of his party not to oppose the honor-
able annexation of Cuba, he could not be depended upon to
play the part which was assigned to the minister at Paris in
the scheme already brewing.3
John Y. Mason, a Yirginian of the old school, received the
appointment. Hawthorne described him as " a fat-brained,
good-hearted, sensible old man." 4 He hated an abolitionist,
as is shown by the fact that when Sumner was in Paris,
seeking advice for the injury sustained by the assault of
Brooks in the Senate chamber, Mason declared emphatical-
ly that he would not treat the Massachusetts senator with
any politeness or consideration.5 There was no reason to
1 See New York Herald, May 30th and 31st, 1853.
2 Harper's Magazine, Oct., 1853, p. 693.
3 Life of John A. Dix, vol. i. p. 273, also vol. ii. p. 328.
* Hawthorne and his Wife, vol. ii. p. 174.
5 Memories of Many Men, Field, p. 63.
396 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
doubt that Mason would favor zealously the plan of the
Southern propaganda, or at least be as clay in the hands of
the astute Buchanan and the impetuous Soule.
Of the consular appointments, one deserves mention on
account of being at once a graceful bestowal by the Presi-
dent and an honor to the country. Nathaniel Hawthorne
was named for the lucrative position of consul at Liverpool.
He at first shrank from accepting office from his friend, as
it seemed too much like receiving pay for his campaign bi-
ography out of the public purse, and argument was needed
to vanquish his scruples.
It is agreeable to record an instance where the bonds
among the members of the republic of letters proved strong-
er than the alienation which might have arisen from politi-
cal differences. " ' Good ! good ! ' I exclaimed aloud on the
floor of the Senate as your nomination was announced,"
wrote Sumner to Hawthorne from the Senate chamber.
" ' Good ! good ! ' I now write you on its confirmation." l
Hawthorne was a man of such fine honor that he called
forth the truest attachments and noblest friendships. So
much has been published about him ; his daily life has
been presented to our view with detail so minute ; every
scrap which would show his mental processes being so
fully divulged, that it is given us to know Hawthorne
as he was known to his intimate friends and devoted fam-
ily. That with this knowledge our respect for him re-
mains undiminished is perhaps the highest tribute to his
character.
In after-years, in the midst of the war, when Pierce, on
account of his undisguised Southern sympathies, had lost the
favor of the Northern people, and Hawthorne had reached
that point of a successful writer's career where the most
trivial productions of his pen were awaited with eagerness,
the popular author dedicated to the unpopular ex-President,
in the most complimentary of inscriptions, his work, " Our
Study of Hawthorne, Lathrop, p. 248.
CH.V.] HAWTHORNE 397
Old Home." For the most part, the men who read books
were earnest for the prosecution of the war and the destruc-
tion of slavery, and Hawthorne's publishers remonstrated
with him for the dedication of the book. His reply, abso-
lutely refusing to withdraw either the dedication or- dedica-
tory epistle, displays a manliness of temper which it is a
pleasure to record. " If," wrote Hawthorne, " Pierce is so
exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the
volume, there is so much the more need that an old friend
should stand by him. I cannot, merely on account of
pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go back from Avhat
I have deliberately felt and thought it right to do ; and if I
were to tear out the dedication, I should never look at the
volume again without remorse or shame." '
It is a curious fact that an unobtrusive politician like Haw-
thorne should have owed to his connection with politics the
necessary prompting and opportunity for his two greatest
works.2 The loss of his place in the custom-house impelled
him to write "The Scarlet Letter;" the consulship gave
him the opportunity of visiting Europe, which enabled him
to write "The Marble Faun." It is the contrast between
these two romances, together with their similarities, which
make the deepest impression on the minds of those who
admire this literary artist. The one portrays the manners
of the narrow-minded Puritan community, making us enter
into the inmost thoughts and feelings of those men who
founded a State ; the other takes us among the gay, light-
hearted Italians. We enjoy for the moment their sensuous
existence, and share with them the feeling that life is one
long holiday. Both are tales of sin and remorse, yet so
marked is the power of the artist in the setting of his pict-
ures that to us it seems the New England sky must be al-
1 Study of Hawthorne, p. 321 The Old Home was published in 1863.
2 But Hawthorne wrote, March 15, 1851 : " The House of the Seven Ga-
Ues, in my opinion, is better than The Scarlet Letter." — Letter to Horatio
Bridge, Harper's Magazine, February, 1892, p. 371.
398 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
ways gray, nature ever taking on a sombre hue to be in
keeping with the gloomy story.1
In the tale of Italy everything is bright. A flood of sun-
shine pours upon the remorseful souls in their most bitter
moments. One can scarce believe, such is the powerful phys-
ical impression made by these stories, that the sun shines as
brightly, and that the clear blue sky is as common, in New
England as in Italy. The criticism has sometimes been
made that as Hawthorne did not know Italian he could not
penetrate into the inner life of the people, and seize upon
their essential characteristics. Yet, in truth, he seemed to
know Home better than his birthplace, and to have known it
longer. " Rome certainly does draw into itself my heart,"
he wrote, " as I think even London, or even little Concord
itself, or old sleepy Salem, never did and never will." 2 Rome
does not belong to Italy, but to the western world. One
must indeed be an Aryan to appreciate its worth, but every
one who speaks a language of the European branch of that
race has a part in the historic and artistic possessions of the
imperial city. This view powerfully influenced Hawthorne,
and the elaboration of it in the descriptive portions of " The
Marble Faun" has made it the best of Roman guide-books.
As long as these romances are read, people fond of meta-
physical subtleties will interpret variously the meaning of
the author, argue about the motive, and seek the underlying
meaning of these tales of sin, suffering, and remorse. But
if there were nothing but the plot and the moral to give
merit to his books, they would have been forgotten by the
generation who first read them. It is because Hawthorne
wrote the best English prose of the century that he may
be reckoned among the immortals. " Where," asked Mot-
1 Hawthorne wrote, Feb. 4, 1850: " The Scarlet Letter lacks sunshine.
... It is ... a story, into which I found it almost impossible to throw
any cheering light." — Ibid., p. 369.
2 See articles in New York Nation, vol. xlix. pp. 32, 48, and references to
Italian Note Books, vol. ii. pp. 189, 216.
CH. V.] OFFICE-SEEKING 399
ley of him, after reading " the Marble Faun," " oh, where
is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and dia-
monds?"1
While the diplomatic appointments were under considera-
tion, the parcelling-out of offices which brought profit rather
than honor was also going on. It has been noted above
that the crowd of people at the inauguration was unusually
great. A large number remained at Washington after the
ceremonies to seek reward for their exertions in bringing
back again to power the Democratic party. During the
canvass it had been openly proclaimed that if the Democrats
were successful, a clean sweep of offices would be made.
The President stated in his inaugural, in courtly terms, that
the general expectation would be realized. Everybody was
agreed about the policy ; but when it came to the division of
the spoils there were ten applicants for nearly every impor-
tant office, and the disappointment of the many was more
noticeable than the complacency of the few.
The importunate begging for official positions in a repub-
lic where it was so easy to earn a living was nothing less
than disgraceful. Office-seekers crowded the public recep-
tions of the President, and while greeting him in the usual
way, attempted at the same time to urge their claims, actu-
ally thrusting their petitions into his hands. " There never
was a fiercer time than this among the office-seekers," wrote
Hawthorne to a friend.2
The usual trouble about the New York City offices exist-
ed, and the factional fight in the party made it extremely
difficult to decide between the conflicting interests. The
President and his cabinet applied themselves diligently to
the work, and in less than two months after the inaugura-
tion it could be said that practically all the fat places in the
1 A Study of Hawthorne, p. 262.
2 To R. H. Stoddard, who had applied for his influence. The letter is
worth reading, as a commentary on the spoils system in 1853. Haw-
thorne and his Wife, vol. i. p. 461.
400 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1863
gift of the administration at home and abroad had been
filled.1
In this proscription, Fillmore Whigs received no more con-
sideration than the followers of Seward. The fact that they
had fought side by side with the Northern Democrats for
the compromise and had counselled submission to the Fugi-
tive Slave law counted for nothing. The popular verdict
was interpreted as a demand that all the Whigs should be
turned out of office, and it is the most noteworthy feature of
the situation that the Whigs tamely acquiesced in this whole-
sale proscription, surrendering their positions without a mur-
mur. Nor did the opposition press teem with articles cen-
suring the administration for its course. None of those
journals were violent in denunciation, some even approved
the policy, and all appeared to regard it as a matter of
course. From the time when Jackson began the practice of
making party fealty the test for appointment to the civil
service, the opposition press had denounced vigorously the
removal of political opponents at every partisan change of
administration. The acquiescence in the practice now may
have arisen in some degree from the crushing defeat which
the Whigs had sustained ; but a more powerful reason for
this silent submission lay in the fact that the constant prac-
tice and advocacy of the policy by party leaders had so de-
bauched public opinion that a change of officers in the civil
service had come to be regarded as a necessary accompani-
ment of a change of party control. From the year 1853 we
must date the cordial recognition by politicians and people
of the principle " To the victors belong the spoils."
The summer of 1853 was one of political quiet and busi-
ness prosperity, but many Southern cities were afflicted by
a scourge more terrible than political turmoil or financial
disaster. The dreaded }7ellow fever made its appearance.
In New Orleans its ravages were the greatest. Never had
1 See New York Herald, April 22d, 1853. I have, in this account of
office-seeking, consulted that newspaper carefully from March 4th.
Cu.V.] AMUSEMENTS AT NEW ORLEANS 401
New Orleans been so prosperous and gay as during the win-
ter season of 1853 ; never had the city been so full of people.1
The largest cotton crop ever produced in the United States
up to that time was being marketed at favorable prices.
Never had the sugar plantations yielded such rich returns.
One hundred and thirty million dollars' worth of produce of
all kinds had been landed upon the levees of New Orleans.
The Jackson railroad was building, and a great system of
iron roads was projected. Real estate was active. Louisi-
ana had not indulged in threats of secession or in dreams
of a Southern confederacy, such as were common in the
sister States of South Carolina and Mississippi ; for her citi-
zens appreciated that her prosperity was bound up in the
Union, and the triumphant election of Pierce was inter-
preted as being favorable to the allaying of sectional con-
troversies.
If the smiling material conditions of New Orleans were a
tribute to the energy of the American population, the many
places of amusement, nightly 'open, denoted that the desire
of distraction, so characteristic of the French, prevailed in
this cosmopolitan city. At one theatre the elder Booth as-
tonished the audience by his intensely natural impersonation
of Richard III. ; at another, Anna Cora Mowatt delighted
the old-fashioned play-goers ; at another, Lola Montez, who
had not yet outlived the notoriety of causing a revolution
in Munich and the abdication of a king, fascinated crowds
of gay and frivolous people by representing on the mimic
stage a story of her disorderly adventures in Bavaria,2 and
by dancing in voluptuous measure the swift, whirling taran-
tella. One place of amusement was devoted to French
opera, which had become a necessity of the winter to the
lovers of music ; Dan Rice had a hippodrome ; Ole Bull
with the violin, and Gottschalk with the piano, enchanted
their hearers by their brilliant execution ; Adelina Patti was
1 New Orleans Picayune, Jan. 9th, 1853.
2 The play was called Lola Montez in Bavaria : a Drama in Five Eras.
I.— 26
402 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
just beginning in the concert hall that career which has en-
titled her to the name of the queen of song. Those who
loved science were gratified by a course of lectures from
Louis Agassiz on his favorite subjects. The Southern peo-
ple heard him gladly, for his theory of the origin of man
denied emphatically that the Caucasian and negro had a
common ancestor, and this hypothesis was construed to
justify the enslaving of the inferior race.
Every Sunday those who were fond of the sport could
choose between the attractions offered at three rival race-
courses. Private hospitality was lavishly dispensed, and to
those whose social position was high, and who were able to
take part in all the gayeties of the season, life seemed a car-
nival.1 The public balls were numerous. When Mardi-
gras came, although many bewailed that the usual street
parade was given up, and regretted the glories of bygone
days, it was acknowledged by every one that the brilliant
fancy-dress parties and balls were a compensation.
Isolated cases of yellow fever began to occur in the early
part of May, and although during the month there were
deaths from the disease, no alarm whatever was felt, for
this was but a repetition of the experience of every year
since the epidemic of 1847. Those who intimated that
the vile condition of the streets was such as to augment a
pestilence, if not to invite it, were frowned upon as defam-
ers of the city. It was pleasanter to discuss magnificent
future schemes of improved drainage than to take immedi-
ate and practical steps towards setting the city in order.
The travel to the North and Europe during the spring and
early summer was larger than usual ; not, however, because
the rich and the fashionable had any forebodings of the
dismal fate in store for their beloved city, but because the
spring, being warmer than common, prompted an earlier
1 " At the time of my first visit, in the winter of 1856-57, New Orleans
was socially the most delightful city in the Union." — Episodes in a Life
of Adventure, Laurence Oliphant, p. 91.
CH.V.] THE YELLOW FEVER AT NEW ORLEANS 403
departure from the Southern climate ; and, as money was
abundant, the desire for travel could be gratified as soon as
born.
By the latter part of June the situation looked ominous.
For the week ending June 25th there were nine deaths from
yellow fever, and for that ending July 2d twenty-five. Yet
if one had depended upon the newspapers for knowledge of
passing events, he would never have dreamed that the dread-
ed epidemic had begun, since the journals made no mention
whatever of the startling fact. The commercial interest of
the city insisted strenuously that the state of affairs should
not be made public, and the real-estate speculators were
wild with alarm lest the truth should be told. The next
week, when the deaths had more than doubled, there were
editorial expressions of fear that the present season would
be a sickly one ; but when July 16th arrived and two hun-
dred and four deaths by yellow fever for the week were re-
ported, it was felt that concealment was no longer possible,
and the newspapers became again the chronicles of the
time. The jaunty air with which a serious condition had
been treated now gave place to panic-stricken fear. All
who were able, and who were not detained by duty, fled.
The city government failed completely to grasp the situa-
tion ; the board of aldermen resolved, the last week in July,
that the yellow fever in the city had not become epidemic,
and adjourned till October; the cowardly went North, the
brave remained, and as citizens did duty which their asso-
ciates would not let them do officially.
As frequently happens, however, in American cities, when
the constituted authorities have broken down, the best men
of the community came to the front and went to work with
discretion and heroism. Chief among the agencies of good
was the Howard Association, composed of active, energetic
men, whose mission during an epidemic was to take care of
the poor and destitute sick, and provide them with proper
medical attendance and nursing. A record of the work of
this noble body during the fatal summer was written by
404 ' PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
one of their number, and, while it vies in interest with any
romance, it is simply the truthful tale of an unassuming
" Samaritan ;" ' but the fascination of the book lies in the
accounts of the conversation and action of the men and
women whom the approach of death made sincere.
The premonitory symptoms of yellow fever were not
unmistakable, nor such as to cause intense anxiety; they
were the same that precede the most ordinary diseases. It
began with a cold, a hardly perceptible chill, an aching in
the head, an apparently insignificant fever, and, a little later,
pains in the back ensue. These warnings were made light
of by the laboring poor. Those who lived from hand to
mouth could not afford to lie by on account of ill feelings,
which strong men living in a malarious climate learn to
slight. In such cases, the poison of the insidious disease
had coursed through the veins of the body before the man
took to his bed or called a physician. Only about one-half
of those attacked with yellow fever recovered ; an apparent
cessation of the ravages of the disease was with many but a
premonition of a fatal issue.
The weather was unfavorable, being characterized by
sudden changes ; there was much rain, and for ten days
July seemed like January. Woollens were worn, people
slept under blankets, windows were kept shut, and the thin-
blooded lighted their fires. The death-rate increased. On
the last day of July there were one hundred and thirty-
seven deaths from yellow fever, and in August the num-
ber of victims became constantly greater until the 21st,
which, by common consent, was called the black day of
the plague. Two hundred and thirty deaths from yellow
fever were reported that day, but the actual number was
nearer three hundred — a daily mortality more than double
the ordinary weekly death-rate of New Orleans.
1 Diary of a Samaritan, by a Member of the Howard Association of New
Orleans. The writer was W. L. Robison,a gentleman of good social and
business position and high character. (Harper & Brothers, 1860.)
CH. V.] THE YELLOW FEVER AT NEW ORLEANS 405
The weather now became intensely hot, but the atmos-
phere was full of humidity, and the analytical chemists said
there was a lack of ozone in the air. To purify the atmos-
phere, the Board of Health ordered that four hundred dis-
charges should be fired from several six-pound cannons ; but
the thunder of the artillery had a fatal effect on many of
the sick, throwing them into convulsions. Then another
mode of clearing the air was tried. Barrels filled with tar
were burned all over the city. "At sunset," wrote the
"Samaritan" in. his diary, "when all were simultaneously
fired, a pandemonium glare lighted up our city. Not a
breath of air disturbed the dense smoke, which slowly as-
cended in curling columns until it reached the height of
about five hundred feet. Here it seemed equipoised, fes-
tooning over our doomed city like a funeral pall, and there
remaining until the shades of night disputed with it the
reign of darkness." '
In the latter part of August there were new developments
in the disease, and greater difficulty in treating it. After a
few days of convalescence, the patient failed to gain appe-
tite or strength, distressing boils appeared on the body, and
a fatal relapse was not uncommon. Another characteristic
appeared in some patients on the second day of their attack.
" Kound purple spots, the size of a dime, with the edges
darker than the centre," were discovered on their bodies.
" If they survived the third day, the side on which they lay
for a few hours became of the same color, as if mortification
had set in from interruption to a free circulation through
the laggard veins." 2 These symptoms suggested to physi-
cians who had not forgotten their classical reading the de-
scriptions of Thucydides and Lucretius, and gave rise to the
conjecture that the spots indicated a modified type of the
most famous of plagues.
When the historian writes that the physicians were faith-
1 Diary of a Samaritan, p. 153.
8 Ibid., p. 208.
406 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
ful, brave, and untiring, he simply adds another to the many
tributes to the character of the American medical profes-
sion. The yellow fever of 1853 was the most aggravated
type ever known. The doctors early recognized this fact,
and appreciated that different treatment was required from
that which had hitherto been in vogue. Cupping, which
in former epidemics had been deemed indispensable, was
now only employed in rare cases, and even then with the
greatest caution. The differences in treatment among the
native physicians were not very material except on one
point ; and that was as to whether quinine should be ad-
ministered, and if so, whether in large or small quantities.
The physicians not only worked nobly, but with rare good
sense. In the presence of the appalling scourge, they felt
that petty wrangles were unworthy of their profession, and
adjourned their disputes until the epidemic was over, when
they carried them on in the columns of newspapers and
magazines instead of in the sick-chamber or hospital.
The " Samaritan," who seems to have been a man of dis-
cernment and good judgment, made some curious observa-
tions. The only quarrel he reported was the case of two
German doctors who, by a mistake, were asked to visit the
same patient. Both prescribed ; each condemned the treat-
ment of the other ; and each, at every visit, threw the medi-
cine of his rival into the street. The poor patient could
not venture to decide between the two, and therefore took
the physic of neither, but drank copiously of iced water.
He was soon beyond danger and convalesced rapidly.
Two patients in a hospital had their cots changed by some
accident, and as the doctor prescribed by number, the con-
valescent got the medicine of the one who had been sick
but thirty-six hours, while he in turn took physic which,
according to the directions of the faculty, was neither proper
nor useful until the disease had been eight days in progress.
Both patients finally recovered.
A physician who had a diploma from the college of medi-
cine at Paris came to the hospital stricken with the disease,
CH.V.] THE YELLOW FEVER AT NEW ORLEANS 407
and claimed the right of prescribing for himself. He was
a friend to the heroic treatment, had himself cupped and
bled frequently and freely, and swallowed the strongest of
drugs ; his strength failed him, he had no power to resist
the disease, and fell its victim.
A circumstance worthy of note is the difference of treat-
ment among physicians of different nationalities. It was
the aim of the Howard Association to send respectively to
sick Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Germans doctors of their
own country. The Spanish physician would give to his
patients on the first day of convalescence the juice of fresh
oysters ; the German, at the height of the disease, advised
strong fluid nourishment, and in convalescence hard-boiled
eggs; the French physicians would give hot drinks or cold
drinks, and enjoin close covering or no covering at all.
Each treatment seemed to be equally successful.
The doctors, recognizing that careful nursing was as im-
portant as skilful medical attendance, made many visits
simply of counsel and suggestion to their assistants. Nurses
were plentiful, and good ones easily obtained. The fever
did not attack negroes or quadroons, and white persons once
having the disease rarely suffered from it again. Thus there
was a large class of people available for ministering to the
sick. The Sisters of Charity received a special tribute
from the " Samaritan," though he was not of their religion.
" Chief above all," he writes, u do I record the praise of the
Sisters of Charity. . . . They do good by stealth. ... I have
seen them in the silent rounds of duty, in the infirmaries,
hospitals, and rickety tenements of the poor, comforting
their own sex of all religions, castes, and conditions, fearless
of contamination, dressing loathsome wounds and inhaling
the most nauseating odors. . . . The world may be bad in
the main, but a redeeming feature is this institution, which
is as a golden connecting link between heaven and earth." '
Many strange experiences does this observer record.
Diary of a Samaritan, p. 196.
408 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
His walk led him among the poor, but he found people of
education and refinement ; he gave succor to a woman from
France whom he thought more beautiful than the Yenus of
Praxiteles ; he witnessed among destitute families the strong-
est attachments, the most bitter grief at separations, and the
most heroic self-sacrifice ; he saw Christians die with hero-
ism, and infidels without fear. The " Samaritan" was espe-
cially struck with the carelessness of an Italian soldier who,
though sick unto death and perfectly conscious, remained in
gay spirits, and attempted to cheer his companions in the
hospital by his philosophy. He spoke of quitting life as los-
ing "a thing which none but fools would keep," and when
enjoined to sleep, replied, " Sleep ! have we not all eternity
to sleep in ?"
The most incongruous circumstance which came under the
" Samaritan's" observation was the case of an old man who
was employed as a hospital nurse. The sick who were past
recovery had for him a serpent-like fascination : when there
was agony in the face or when the body writhed in contor-
tions, he would chuckle ; when the fatal symptom of the
black vomit manifested itself, he grinned with a strange de-
light ; and the death-rattle was music to his ear. It turned
out that the man had suffered from misfortune, deceit, and
ingratitude, and had become a hater of his kind, to whom
remained no joy but that of seeing his fellow-man in trouble
and in pain.
When all attempt to conceal the truth became useless, and
the full horror of the situation broke upon the people of
New Orleans, dismay and despair succeeded for a while
levity and hope. The newspapers, as if to atone for their
first silence, now spoke of nothing but the epidemic ; the
editors studied the history of former plagues, and in their
articles imitated the many graphic accounts found in litera-
ture, which are remembered, not so much for their historical
and scientific value, as for the thrilling interest which the
writers have transfused into their narratives. The one item
of news anxiously awaited was the daily bulletin of the
CH.V.] THE YELLOW FEVER AT NEW ORLEANS 409
Board of Health giving the interments of the day previous,
which was posted up in many frequented places. As the
number of deaths by the epidemic mounted up to an alarm-
ing degree, this intelligence caused blanched cheeks and
sinking hearts. Business was suspended ; the levee was a
desert ; pleasure was hardly thought of ; the bar-room and
club-houses were scarcely visited.. Vice was cowed; the
haunts of the libertine were deserted. One passion alone
proved too strong for the prevailing fear to overcome:
gambling held its . votaries, the excitement of high play
making them forget that the pestilence stalked through their
city.
But the lawlessness, the bold and illicit indulgence in the
pleasure of the moment, of which Thucydides speaks ; the
disregard of human laws and religious vows, the voluptuous
riot which Boccaccio has related of the plague of Florence ;
the work of thieves and the excesses of blasphemers which
augmented the horrors of the great plague of London, if
De Foe's account be true — from all these New Orleans was
spared. Mention is made, however, of hilarious parties who
drove along the shell road to the lake to escape for a while
the deadly atmosphere that hung over the doomed city.
There, in a fine hotel, might gentlemen and ladies partake
of dainty food and generous wines. Yet revelry which in
ordinary times would be counted innocent jarred harshly on
the ears in this season of distress. The streets of the city
were given, up to doctor's gigs, to cabs conveying the sick to
the hospital and hearses carrying the dead to the grave.
" The morning train of funerals," wrote the " Samaritan,"
" as was the evening's, crowded the road to the cemeteries.
It was an unbroken line of carriages and omnibuses for two
miles and a half." l
When the number of deaths grew rapidly, it was for a
while impossible to bury the dead. The situation of the
city below the level of the river, and the nature of the soil,
Diary of a Samaritan, p. 152.
410 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
which is almost semi-fluid at the depth of two or three feet,
added to the difficulty. The living brought the remains of
their relatives and friends to the cemeteries, but men could
not be had to dig the graves. The white laborers seemed to
have disappeared ; they were either dead, sick, or tending the
sick. In some cases the mourners dug the graves for their
own dead, and when the. task was completed threw aside the
spades, dropped on their knees, and solemnly repeated a fu-
neral prayer. At times a dozen or more processions would
meet at the cemetery ; abuse of the authorities and strife for
precedence marred sadly the impressiveness of the place and
occasion. Quarrels became so frequent that it was necessary
to detail a strong police force to preserve order at the grave-
yards.
But most horrible of all were the cases of the poor who
had no friends, or of families who were all victims of the
pestilence and were buried by the city authorities. The
dead coming faster than they could be interred, seventy
coffins were at one time left on the ground exposed to the
powerful action of the August sun. The bodies swelled, the
roughly constructed board coffins of the corporation burst
open, and the poisonous effluvia were Avafted by breezes from
the lake over the stricken city. The attention of the public
was drawn to this hideous scene ; it called forth notices from
the journals; the turgid style of the editors in describing
this cumulation of horrors shows the excitement under
which they labored. Order, however, was soon restored
and a system adopted which prevented the recurrence of
such dreadful incidents. The chain-gang was ordered to
the work by the mayor ; negroes were hired at five dollars
per hour and an unstinted supply of strong liquor to bury
the dead. Trenches, seven feet wide and one hundred feet
long, were dug, into which the coffins were closely packed
three to four feet deep, without intermediate earth.1 The
pits made by the corporation wrere not more than two feet
Diary of a Samaritan, p. 151.
CH. V.] THE YELLOW FEVER AT NEW ORLEANS 411
in depth. Custom soon reconciled the laborers to their work,
and moved them to ribald jokes more unseemly than the
jesting of the grave-diggers at Ophelia's grave. It was
strange that in this time of dire distress the poor should
have thought to object to the name of Potter's Ifield as
the place of interment for their relatives and friends, but
in the very height of the epidemic the designation of that
cemetery was officially changed to " Cypress Grove, Num-
ber 2."
" As we passed the cemeteries," wrote the " Samaritan,"
" we saw coffins piled up beside the gate and in the walks,
and laborers at work digging trenches in preparation for
the morrow's dead. ... A fog, which hung over the moss-
enveloped oaks, prevented the egress of the dense and putrid
exhalations. The atmosphere was nauseating to a degree
that I have never noticed in a sick-room." ' The experiences
of this month of August were the most awful in the event-
ful history of New Orleans. The city " was one vast charnel-
house."2 Men now went around with carts, knocking at
every door and crying out, "Who have dead* to bury?"
The atmosphere in the streets was stifling and fetid. Emi-
grants just landed were nearly all attacked by the plague.
Whole families died, leaving not a trace behind them ; par-
ents left young children who grew up, not only in ignorance
of a father or mother, but who never knew their own proper
names, or from what country they came. When the sub-
urbs and country were blasted with the fell disease, " the
poultry, horses, and mules fell dead in the fields." 3
New Orleans was a field for heroism, nor was heroism
lacking. The rich gave money freely for the relief of the
destitute, the energetic devoted their time and ability for
the general good, and brave, hopeful souls cheered those
who were on the brink of despair. All accounts agree that,
with rare exceptions, the clergy of all denominations re-
mained at their posts, ministering to the sick, smoothing
Diary of a Samaritan, p. 187. a Ibid., p. 209. s Ibid., p. 186.
412 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION" [1853
the pillow of the dying, and speaking words of comfort to
the mourners. An excess of zeal led many to overwork,
and these became an easy prey to the epidemic. Those
who received aid from the Howard Association were nearly
all Catholics, so that the " Samaritan " saw much of the la-
bor and devotion of the priest, who was on duty from early
morn until late at night ; caring nothing for comforts, and
seemingly above fatigue; working for the glory of his
church and the relief of those in her communion ; holding
the crucifix before the eyes of the dying, and always on
hand in the hospital to administer the rite of extreme unc-
tion. " The sympathy of the priest and the dying penitent
was complete."
Thus wrote the " Samaritan," who felt deep gratitude for
the assistance he received from ministers of a religion not
his own. On one occasion, in response to an urgent request,
he visited one of those unhappy women whom the more
favored of their sex call the scourge, and whom philosophers
have called the safeguard, of society. She had fallen a vic-
tim to the plague, but worse than the rage of the fever was
her bitter remorse as she thought of the life she had quitted
to become an inmate of a house of sin. She felt that her
peace could not be made with Heaven until she had confessed
and received absolution from a priest of the church, and she
begged that such a one might be brought to her. The
" Samaritan " went in search of a priest, and stated to him
clearly who the woman was and in what manner of house
she lived, expecting that objection would be made ; but the
good father quickly responded : " Such as you speak of have
my readiest service, for truly do they stand in need of the
consolations of religion." The priest shrived the patient,
feeling rewarded that he had given peace to the soul of an-
other Magdalene, and he could not murmur that, while the
Angelus was ringing, she passed away.
When September came the weather changed and the fever
was more successfully treated. But this epidemic lasted
longer than its predecessors ; sixty days was the usual term,
Cn.V.] THE YELLOW FEVER AT NEW ORLEANS 413
but this did not cease its ravages until after three months.
The 2d of September was observed as a day of fasting in
response to a proclamation of the mayor calling upon all
citizens to keep it " as a day of special prayer for the repose
of the souls of the dead, for the stay of the epidemicyfor the
well-being of the survivors, and for gratitude that the hearts
of so many have been led to share of their abundance with
this afflicted city." The North had contributed money lib-
erally for the work of the Howard Association. The board
of health officially declared the city free of the epidemic
on the 13th of October. The number of deaths from this
visitation is variously stated, but no doubt remains that they
exceeded eight thousand. Never before or since has New
Orleans suffered so severely from the yellow fever. In mak-
ing a comparison with other plagues, confusion arises from
the fact that the actual population of the city and the num-
ber of unacciimated persons who remained during the epi-
demic are matters only of estimate ; but it is not a rash as-
sertion to make, that, reckoning the proportion of deaths to
the probable number of people subject to the disease, the
mortality of the yellow fever at New Orleans in 1853 was
equal to that of the great plague of London or the yellow-
fever epidemic at Philadelphia in 1Y98.1
1 My authorities for this account of the yellow fever are, first and fore-
most, The Diary of a Samaritan (see p. 404, note) ; article by Dr. A. W.
Ely, of New Orleans, De Bow's Review, Dec., 1853; an article in Har-
per's Magazine, Nov., 1853, by one who was present during the epi-
demic; the New Orleans Picayune; the New York Times, Sept., 1853,
and March 3d, 1854; Dr. McFarlane in De Bow's Review, May, 1854;
Dr. E. D. Fenner in De Bow's Review, July, 1854. I have derived valu-
able information on the yellow fever in general from vol. ii. of Prin-
cipal Diseases of North America, by Dr. Daniel Drake. The New Or-
leans epidemic bears no comparison in severity with the great plague
of the fourteenth century. "The plague [of 1348] raged in Florence
from April to September. . . . The deaths in Florence averaged 600 a
day ; and three-fifths of the population are recorded to have perished."
—.History of Florence, T. A. Trollope, vol. ii. p. 90. " The memorable
plague, described with so much eloquence by Giovanni Boccaccio, and
414 PIEROE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
The prevalence of the yellow fever in the Southern cities
excited much sympathy at the North, but it was not mixed
with apprehension, for every one felt confident that the epi-
demic would be confined to the South. Political repose and
signal activity in trade characterized the year. One of the
victories of peace was the Industrial exhibition in the Crys-
tal Palace at New York. It was a private enterprise, sug-
gested by the London exhibition of 1851, and called by the
high-sounding name of a World's Fair. The edifice was ad-
mirable. George William Curtis called it Aladdin's palace
because of the light elegance in its architectural lines,
which were "worthily surmounted and crowned by the
dome." " It is," he adds, " a dome of Oriental characteris-
tics. But there is nothing in architecture more pleasing.
It seems to have been borne in upon a zephyr, and the
slightest breath would lift it away. Blown like a bubble
in some happy moment of a Jinn's inspiration, it floats
over the whole, imparting an aerial grace, not to be com-
prehended without being seen." l
Karely has there been a more creditable result to a specu-
by which Florence lost 96,000 souls." — History of Florence, Machia-
velli. " In Florence there died of the black plague 60,000 ; in Venice,
100,000 ; in Paris, 50,000 ; in London, at least 100,000. ... In all Germany,
according to a probable calculation, there seem to have died only 1,244,-
434 inhabitants; this country was, however, more spared than others.
Italy, on the contrary, was most severely visited. It is said to have lost
half of its inhabitants. . . . The whole period during which the black
death raged with destructive violence in Europe was, with the excep-
tion of Russia, from the year 1347 to 1350. ... Of all the estimates of
the number of lives lost in Europe, the most probable is that altogether
a fourth part of the inhabitants were carried off. It may be assumed
without exaggeration that Europe lost during the black death 25,000,000
of inhabitants." — Hecker on the Black Death, Buckle's Commonplace
Book, p. 557. The plague of 1349 " probably killed a third of the popu-
lation " of England. The Economic Interpretation of History, Thorold
Rogers, p. 22. See also article of Andrew D. White, Popular Science
Monthly, Sept., 1891.
1 Harper's Magazine, Nov., 1853, p. 844.
CH. V.] THE CRYSTAL PALACE EXHIBITION 415
lative enterprise. No sooner was the building begun than a
furious speculation took place in the stock of the company.
The shares steadily advanced until they reached eighty per
cent, above par. The President opened the exhibition ; dis-
tinguished people from the country and Europe were pres-
ent. It was not asserted that the fair would equal its Lon-
don predecessor; the head of the enterprise said that the
attempt was made to do on a smaller scale what had been
done so magnificently in London.1 The exhibition com-
menced in midsummer, but at first the number of visitors
was small. The summer was hot, and in August there oc-
curred a heated spell which put a stop to business and pleas-
ure. Nearly everywhere at the North the mercury for sev-
eral days rose to 100° in the shade ; in New York City two
hundred and thirty deaths were in one day caused by the
heat, and the mortality for a week was great.2 When the
cooler days of September came, people began to attend the
exhibition and appreciate its value. Those who had sneered
at the enterprise now admired the display. The most
graceful commenter on passing events wrote that beneath
the dome of the Crystal Palace, " in cheerful rivalry meet
all the nations, as of old kings met upon a field of cloth of
gold. But this is a tournament of friendship ; this is a joust
of justice. Denmark sends the solemn group of Thorwald-
sen, and France her rarest and most delicate tapestries and
porcelains, and England her solid silver and earthen ware,
and hydra- headed Germany a hundred varieties in every
kind, and Italy, Belgium, and Holland each their best.
While America, like a host of infinitely various hospitality,
receives each with a kindred welcome, meeting the useful
and beautiful of every art and of every country upon its
1 See article " Our Crystal Palace," by Parke Godwin, Putnam1* Maga-
zine, Aug., 1853.
2 New York Tribune, Harper's Magazine, and American Almanac.
Official reports from the Smithsonian Institution show 1853 to be the
hottest summer since 1798. New Orleans Picayune, Aug. 23d, 1853.
416 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
own ground. . . . The true success of the exhibition lies in
its justification of the American pride. We have grown
tired of hearing that we were such a great nation ; but the
Crystal Palace inclines us to tolerate the boast. It will
teach us the high-minded humility we want, by showing us
what actual and undeniable successes we have achieved.
Lyons and Manchester and Paris and Yienna must look to
their laurels." '
The material progress of the country was, indeed, great.
Railroads were building everywhere. The extension of the
system was bringing the rich grain-fields of the prairies into
easy communication with the seaboard ; and as the iron rails
were laid westward, the comforts and luxuries of civilization
were brought within the reach of the pioneers. But the op-
eration of the railroads left much to be desired. Travelling
was attended with danger. In the first eight months of the
year sixty-five fatal railroad accidents occurred, one hundred
and seventy-seven persons were killed, and three hundred
and thirty -three injured.2 These accidents were for the
most part charged against the carelessness of the officials, the
greed of the directors, and the desire of the public for high
speed. " Our fast age is growing rapidly faster," wrote the
moralist of the time;3 and while the journals and maga-
zines inveighed against the railroad management, and each
casualty caused a fresh outburst of indignation, this was
succeeded by indifference, and nothing was done to remedy
the evil. It could hardly be denied, therefore, that a disre-
gard of human life characterized the nation.
Contemporaneous with the glorification of our industries
by the Crystal Palace exhibition came a vigorous assertion
from the Secretary of State of the power and protection
afforded by American nationality, which caused deep exulta-
tation. Martin Koszta, a Hungarian, took part in the un-
1 Editor's Easy Chair, Harper's Magazine, Nov., 1853, p. 844.
8 New York Herald, quoted by De Bow's Review, Oct., 1853, p. 429.
8 Harper's Magazine, July, 1853, p. 272.
CH.V.] MARTIN KOSZTA 417
successful revolution of 1848, escaped to Turkey, was con-
fined there for a while, and then came to the United States,
where he declared, under oath and before a proper officer,
his intention to become a citizen of this country. After re-
siding here nearly two years he returned to Smyrna, Tur-
key, upon business of a temporary nature, and placed him-
self under the protection of the American consul. The
Austrian consul-general tried to get authority from the
Turkish governor for his arrest, but, failing in this, insti-
gated some desperadoes to kidnap him. He was taken on
board the Austrian brig-of-war the Iluszar, and put in irons.
The American representatives made the proper protests, but
the demand for his release was unsuccessful. Meanwhile
there arrived in the harbor of Smyrna the United States
sloop -of -war Saint Louis, under the command of Captain
Ingraham, who, becoming convinced that a design was set
on foot by the Austrian officials to remove Koszta clandes-
tinely to Trieste, an Austrian port, demanded his release,
and to enforce it brought the guns of the Saint .Louis to
bear upon the Hussar. A compromise, however, was effect-
ed, by virtue of which the prisoner was delivered to the cus-
tody of the French consul-general until the two governments
should agree in regard to his disposal. The Austrian gov-
ernment addressed to various courts a protest against the
action of Captain Ingraham, and instructed Hiilsemann, the
imperial charge d'affaires at Washington, to ask the govern-
ment of the United States " not to interpose any obstacle to
the extradition of Koszta to Austria," " to disavow the con-
duct of its agents," and " to call them to a severe account
and tender to Austria a satisfaction proportionate to the mag-
nitude of the outrage." Such an opportunity could make
Marcy well believe that the stars were in his favor. Ar-
dently desiring the next Democratic nomination for Presi-
dent, he set himself to write a diplomatic paper that should
gain the good -will of the people. He acquitted himself,
however, with credit and dignity, equal to that of Webster
and Everett on similar occasions. His reply to Hiilsemann
L— 27
418 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
is a state-paper carefully considered and clearly expressed ;
and while it may be criticised as raising too many questions,
the main reason for refusing Austria's request is cogently
argued, and, to an American, his position seems irrefutable.
This manifesto had a remarkable reception, not confined to
section or party, and for the moment Marcy was certainly
the most popular man in the United States.
From a careful and precise statement of the facts, the
Secretary of State shows that " Koszta was. seized without
any rightful authority." And although he had not yet be-
come a naturalized citizen, he had established his domicile
in the United States and become thereby clothed with the
national character; "he retained that character when he
was seized at Smyrna ; ... he acquired the right to claim
protection from the United States, and they had the right to
extend it to him." The course of Captain Ingraham was
fully justified, the disavowal of the acts of American agents
refused, the satisfaction asked for by Austria respectfully
declined, and the request to put no obstacles in the way of
the delivery of Koszta to the Austrian consul-general at
Smyrna was denied. Marcy made one declaration which
has the flavor of the stump-speech, but it was of a nature to
thrill the American heart with delight, for never had the
national aggressiveness been so strong as at this time.
" Whenever," he wrote, " by the operation of the law of na-
tions, an individual becomes clothed with our national char-
acter, be he a native-born or naturalized citizen, an exile
driven from his early home by political oppression, or an
emigrant enticed from it by the hopes of a better fortune
for himself and his posterity, he can claim the protection of
this government, and it may respond to that claim without
being obliged to explain its conduct to any foreign power ;
for it is its duty to make its nationality respected by other
nations and respectable in every quarter of the globe." Yet
there was little of buncombe about Marcy's paper. His im-
portant point was well taken and has been sustained by em-
inent American authorities on international law ; and his
CH.V.] MARTIN KOSZTA 419
successors in the State department have followed the prin-
ciple he laid down. In the end Koszta was allowed to re-
turn to the United States. Congress showed its satisfaction
by a joint resolution thanking Captain Ingraham and con-
ferring on him a medal.1
The President needed all the glory he could get from the
State department to prevent his administration from sinking
into contempt. Undoubtedly the most popular man in the
country when he delivered his inaugural address, he was,
by the time that he sent his first message to Congress, re-
garded by most of the leaders of his own party as incom-
petent for his position. To distribute the offices in a man-
ner that should subserve the best interests of the party
1 See Executive Documents, 1st Sess. 33d Cong., vol. i. part 1, House
Document 1. Marcy's doctrine is approved by Woolsey, International
Law, § 81, and in a qualified way by G. B. Davis, Outlines of International
Law, p. 105. Calvo, the eminent South American authority, sustains
Marcy. See Wharton, § 198. Halleck's International Law, edited by
Sir Sherston Baker, Bart., an English barrister, thoroughly supports
Marcy's position, and says the allegations of the Austrian government
"were most clearly and satisfactorily disproved in the masterly despatch
of Mr. Marcy," vol. i. p. 202. See also Boyd's edition of Wlieaton ; also
Woolsey's International Law, sixth edition (1891), Appendix III. Hall,
however, an English authority, says, "Marcy's contention was wholly
destitute of legal foundation," International Law, § 72. Marcy's position
is questioned by Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 280, who adds: "The question is
permissible, too, whether both Ingraham and the President would not
have proceeded more gently if they had had to do with England instead
of Austria." This statement leads me to emphasize what I have already
alluded to in the text. The fact is, that the American of 1853 feared no
nation, and thought his country fully able to cope with any European
power. Marcy was too good a lawyer and loo just a man to take an un-
tenable attitude towards a weak nation, and too brave not to maintain the
rights of his country against a strong nation. Moreover, nothing pleased
one section of the Democratic party better than to defy England; and as
the Crimean war was already looming in the distance, no Democratic
Secretary of State would have bated a jot of a just demand on England.
For public opinion in the matter, see Harper's Magazine, Nov., 1853,
p. 834, and Dec., 1853, p. 130; also the debate in Congress.
420 PIERGE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
would have been an herculean task for a wise man, but the
inherent difficulty of the situation was increased by the
President's lack of executive ability. He would make up
his mind in the morning and change it in the afternoon.
He would receive an applicant for office effusively, put on
his most urbane manner, listen to the claim with attention,
giving the aspirant for public place every reason to feel that
the position was surely his. For Franklin Pierce could not
say no ; and when he was not able to give a direct promise,
he would give an implied one. This falling caused him
trouble without end. In more than one case the same im-
portant office was promised to two different men, and indi-
rect assurances of executive favor were almost as numerous
as visitors at the White House.
It was a common saying that Pierce treated everybody
with the same marked kindness and seeming confidence.1
People soon perceived that the President lacked firmness,
and by the time that Congress assembled there had arisen
general distrust of his capacity. No one could deny that he
had grown less by his elevation, like a little statue on a
great pedestal.
In New York State, Pierce was accused of being tinctured
with Free-soilism, because in the distribution of the patron-
age his personal affiliations had led him to lean to the fac-
tion of Softs. Marcy's influence, moreover, was very appar-
ent and was exercised in a manner to take care of the faction
of which he was the admitted chief. But in Massachusetts
the liberty-loving Democrats were alienated ; for Gushing,
who unquestionably had the ear of the President, had writ-
ten a letter which gave no uncertain sound on the slavery
question. " If," wrote the Attorney-General, " there be any
purpose more fixed than another in the mind of the Presi-
dent and those with whom he is accustomed to consult, it is
that that dangerous element of abolitionism, under whatever
1 "The President has a very winning way in his manners." — Seward
to his wife, March 30th, 1853, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 202.
CH.V.J THE THIRTY-THIRD CONGRESS 421
guise or form it may present itself, shall be crushed out so
far as this administration is concerned." *
In one part of the South, however, Pierce was regarded
as an abolitionist, for it was believed that John Van Buren,
the soul of the Democratic Free-soil movement, was closeted
daily with him and had undisguised influence with the ad-
ministration; while in Mississippi, where the contest between
the Union and the secession faction had been bitter, it was
thought that Pierce had thrown himself into the arms of
the states-rights men, from his avowed political and per-
sonal friendship with Jefferson Davis.3 But in spite of fac-
tional disaffection, the position of the President and the
Democratic party was apparently an enviable one when
Congress came together on the first Monday of December.
In the Senate there were thirty-seven Democrats, twenty-one
Whigs, and two Free-soilers ; in the House there were one
hundred and fifty-nine Democrats, seventy-one Whigs, and
four Free-soilers. Moreover, the unpopularity of the admin-
istration with the leaders and politicians of the party had
not spread to the mass of voters. Indeed, it would not have
been surprising had the Democrats lost ground in the elec-
tions of 1853 as compared with their remarkable success
one year earlier. After such an astounding victory, under
ordinary circumstances even, a reaction might have been ex-
pected. It is now a maxim in American politics that the
first year of a new administration is the trying one ; and it
was undeniable that the difficulties of the unfavorable year
had been increased b}^ many unwise acts on the part of the
President. Yet with one notable exception, there was no
evidence of this in the State elections of the year, for where
they occurred every State that had voted for Pierce but
New York went Democratic. Here the Hards and Softs
each nominated a State ticket, which resulted in a plurality
1 This letter was published in the New York Tribune of Nov. 3d.
8 See Foote's speech at a public dinner at Washington, Richmond
Whig, Jan. 24th, 1854.
422 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1853
for the Whigs, but the combined Democratic vote was thirty
thousand in excess of that received by the Whig candidates.
As a partial set-off, Tennessee, which Scott had carried, now
elected a Democratic governor, and some States gave in-
creased Democratic majorities as compared with the presi-
dential year. Thus, the Democrats had not only the execu-
tive and a large majority in Congress, but they had the
governors and the legislatures of nearly every State.
The President in his message to Congress mentioned that
negotiations were on foot with Great Britain to settle a dis-
pute about the fisheries and certain embarrassing questions
which had arisen between the two governments regarding
Central America. The relations with Spain were touched
upon lightly, and no inkling was given of the scheme of
which the minds of the President and his Southern advisers
were full. There being a surplus of revenue over expendi-
tures, it was Pierce's opinion that the reduction of the tariff
was a matter of great importance, and he asked a careful and
candid consideration of the plan of the Secretary of the
Treasury, which was " to reduce the duties on certain arti-
cles, and to add to the free list many articles now taxed, and
especially such as enter into manufactures, and are not large-
ly, or at all, produced in this country." He also recom-
mended to Congress that it should aid by all constitutional
means the construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast.
This Congress would have been notable for a reduction
of the tariff, and still more notable for giving a start to a
railroad across the continent, had there not been in the
Senate a man powerful enough to change the course of his-
tory.
The Democratic party now occupied high vantage-ground.
It certainly never entered the heads of that party's mag-
nates that anything could endanger its supremacy in the
government for many years ; and he would have been in-
deed a rash Whig who cast a doubt on the prediction that
the Democrats had secured for themselves a long lease of
power. The nearly unanimous opinion of the country was
CH.V.] PIERCE AND HIS PARTY 423
that he who should receive the Democratic nomination
for President in 1856 would be elected, and that without a
formidable opposition. Never in the history of the party,
when the nomination had been open to active competition,
had it seemed so glittering and sure a prize. Pierce had
tasted the sweets of office and wanted to succeed himself.1
Puffed up with the vanity of power, looking on everything
with an optimistic eye, full of good humor with himself and
the world, he little dreamed of the attacks on him which
were whispered in corners or talked openly on the streets.2
If he saw, or heard of, the criticisms in the newspapers of
his own party, he could ascribe them in the main to ungrati-
fied desires ; and before Democratic members, on the floor of
the House, called in question his motives and policy, a pub-
lic measure engrossed his attention and made this factional
contest seem like a petty quarrel.
The four prominent candidates of 1852 still cast long-
ing eyes on the next Democratic nomination for President.
Marcy 3 felt that he had gained an advantage in the Koszta
affair ; but if Cuba could be honorably acquired, he was cer-
tain that the people would call him, instead of the President,
the second Jefferson.
Buchanan had accepted the English mission with reluc-
tance, because the negotiations in regard to all the disputed
questions between this country and Great Britain had not
been put in his hands. The Central American affair was
1 As early as May, 1853, this was noted by Buchanan : " I had not been
iu Washington many days before I clearly discovered that the President
and his cabinet were intent upon his renomination and re-election."-
Life of Buchanan, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 80.
2 An occasional correspondent of the New York Evening Post, who
knew Pierce well, gives a noteworthy account of the impression he got
on seeing the President at about this time. See the Post, Feb. 13th,
1854.
3 Buchanan thought in May, 1853, that Governor Marcy would "prob-
ably cherish until the day of his death the anxious desire to become
President."— Curtis, vol. ii. p. 80.
424 PTERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
confided to him, but out of that little glory was to be had.1
He had written a public letter stating his intention to retire
from active politics on the completion of his mission,2 but
his rivals regarded those expressions as conventional rather
than sincere. A private letter written by Buchanan soon
after his arrival in England is evidence that he mentally re-
served a loop-hole through which he might evade this posi-
tive declaration. " I have neither the desire nor the inten-
tion," he wrote, " again to become a candidate for the presi-
dency. On the contrary, this mission is tolerable to me alone
because it will enable me gracefully and gradually to retire
from an active participation in party politics. . . . But
while these are the genuine sentiments of my heart, I do
not think I ought to say that in no imaginable state of cir-
cumstances would I consent to be nominated as a candi-
date." 3
General Cass had not yet given up all hope of the presi-
dency, and there was considerable rivalry between him and
Douglas, as they were both representatives of the North-
west. Douglas was the boldest of all the aspirants, and on
the 1st day of January, 1854, of the five candidates for the
Democratic succession he was the least popular with the
South. He had not grown in favor since 1852, when he had
the smallest following from that section in the convention
which nominated Pierce. Although Douglas had married a
Southern lady and had agreeable personal relations at the
South, the politicians did not trust him. It may be that
they thought he was too practical a champion of free labor,
for he liked to boast of his early poverty and the fact that
when a boy he had worked at a trade. The result of the
previous convention, however, had taught Douglas that he
could not be nominated without the aid of Southern votes.
He might get nearly the whole support of the West and he
might hope for assistance from New York, but he could ex-
1 Life of Buchanan, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 92 et ante. 2 Ibid., p. 93.
3 Letter to Ben: Perley Poore, Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 437.
CH.V.] STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 425
pect nothing from New England and Pennsylvania. While
the term " the solid South " had not come into use, politi-
cians were beginning to think what a force there might be
in the fact. The South would have one hundred and seven-
teen votes in the next convention, and, it being pretty well
understood that there was no chance of the nomination of a
Southern man, it was evident that if this strength could be
concentrated on a favorite son of the North, it would, added
to his home support, assure him the nomination. Thoughts
and calculations like these must have passed through Doug-
las's mind during his trip of recreation to Europe the pre-
ceding summer; and when he came to Washington to survey
the ground, one way was manifest in which he might com-
mend himself to Southern favor. The acquisition of Cuba
was out of his province. While free trade was popular at
the South, the senator had no taste for economical questions,
and the Pacific railroad was a Western measure. But the
organization of the new territories might be handled in a
satisfactory manner; this, moreover, was the favorite field
of Douglas, and he was chairman of the committee on terri-
tories. A bill for the organization of the territory of Ne-
braska had passed the House at the previous session and was
reported to the Senate. This bill was in the usual form, but
made no reference whatever to slavery. It encountered op-
position in the Senate, as involving bad faith with the In-
dians ; and as it came up late in the session, there was not
sufficient time for its consideration, so it failed to become a
law. The same bill was introduced into the Senate in De-
cember, 1853, and referred to the committee on territories.1
On the 4th of January, 1854, Douglas made a report which
was the introduction to a project whose importance cannot
1 It is well to bear in mind ttiat so far as any affirmative legislation
was concerned, the committee on territories was Douglas. It was com-
posed of Douglas, Johnson of Arkansas, Jones of Iowa, Houston, Dem-
ocrats, and Bell and Everett, Whigs. The last three named are well-
known men, but were all opposed to the Nebraska bill.
426 FIERCER ADMINISTRATION [1854
be overestimated. The territory of Nebraska comprised
what is now l the States of Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas,
Montana, part of Colorado, and Wyoming. It was part of
the Louisiana purchase, and contained four hundred and
eighty-five thousand square miles, a territory more than ten
times as large as New York, and larger by thirty-three thou-
sand square miles than all the free States then in the Union
east of the Rocky Mountains. In this magnificent domain
were less than one thousand white inhabitants; but as soon as
it should be opened to settlement by proper legislation, there
was certain to be a large immediate increase of population.2
This report of Douglas began with the announcement of
the discovery of a great principle which had been established
by the compromise measures of 1850. They " were intend-
ed to have a far more comprehensive and enduring effect
than the mere adjustment of difficulties arising out of the
recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were de-
signed to establish certain great principles, which would not
only furnish adequate remedies for existing evils, but, in all
time to come, avoid the perils of similar agitation by with-
drawing the question of slavery from the halls of Congress
and the political arena, committing it to the arbitration of
those who wTere immediately interested in, and alone respon-
sible for, its consequences. ... A question has arisen in re-
gard to the right to hold slaves in the territory of Nebraska,
when the Indian laws shall be withdrawn and the country
thrown open to emigration and settlement. ... It is a dis-
puted point whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska
country by valid enactment. ... In the opinion of those
1 In 1890.
2 One of the objections made to the organization of the territory was
on account of insufficient population, but it was not well taken. Doug-
las was well informed on this point, and showed clearly that if the re-
strictions in favor of the Indians were removed, there would be a large
influx of settlers. Benton, who opposed the Nebraska bill of Douglas,
was positive that a territorial government ought to be at once estab-
lished for Nebraska. See Harper's Magazine, Dec., 1853, p. 121.
On. V.] DOUGLAS'S REPORT OX NEBRASKA 427
eminent statesmen who hold that Congress is invested with
no rightful authority to legislate upon the subject of slavery
in the territories, the eighth section of the act preparatory
to the admission of Missouri is null and void." The reader
may be reminded that the gist of the Missouri Compromise
lay in this eighth section, which provided that slavery should
be prohibited in all the Louisiana territory lying north of
36° 30' north latitude, not included Avithin the limits of the
State of Missouri. The report of Douglas continued : " The
prevailing sentiment in large portions of the Union sustains
the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States se-
cures to every citizen an inalienable right to move into any
of the territories with his property, of whatever kind and
description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanc-
tion of law." Yet the committee did not propose to recom-
mend the affirmation or the repeal of the eighth section of
the Missouri act. The report concluded with the statement,
" The compromise measures of 1850 affirm and rest upon the
following propositions :
"First — That all questions pertaining to slavery in the
territories, and the new States to be formed therefrom, are
to be left to the decision of the people residing therein,
by their appropriate representatives, to be chosen by them
for that purpose.
" Second — That ' all cases involving title to slaves ' and
' questions of personal freedom ' are to be referred to the
jurisdiction of the local tribunals, with the right of appeal
to the Supreme Court of the United States.
"Third — That the provision of the Constitution of the
United States in respect to fugitives from service is to be
carried into faithful execution in all 'the organized terri-
tories,' the same as in the States."
The bill reported by the committee as first printed
contained the provision that the territory of Nebraska,
or any portion of the same, when admitted as a State or
States, "shall be received into the Union with or without
slavery, as their Constitution may prescribe at the time
428 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
of their admission." This language was borrowed from
the Utah and New Mexico bills, which were a part of the
compromise of 1850. Three days after the bill was first
printed another section was added, which incorporated into
the bill these closing propositions of the committee's re-
port.
Douglas professed to have discovered a way by which the
slavery question might be put to rest. But everybody North
and South, as well as Douglas himself, knew that this report
would certainly open up again the agitation. The country
was at peace. Business was good ; evidences of smiling
prosperity were everywhere to be seen. The spirit of enter-
prise was rampant; great works were in progress, others -
were projected. Political repose \vas a marked feature of
the situation. The slavery question seemed settled, and the
dream of the great compromisers of 1850 seemed to be real-
ized. Every foot of land in the States or in the territories
seemed to have, so far as slavery was concerned, a fixed and
settled character. The obnoxious part of the compromise to p
the North, the Fugitive Slave law, was no longer resisted.
Another era of good feeling appeared to have set in. The
earnest hope of Clay, that the work in which he had so
large a share would give the country rest from slavery agi-
tation for a generation, did not seem vain. There has been
restored, said the President in his message, " a sense of re-
pose and security to the public mind throughout the con-
federacy." This quiet was ruthlessly disturbed by the re-
port of Douglas, which, although it professed in one part
not to repeal the Missouri Compromise, closed with a prop-
osition which certainly set it aside. The Missouri Com-
promise forever prohibited slavery in what was now the
territory of Nebraska. Douglas proposed to leave to the
inhabitants of Nebraska the decision as to whether or not
they would have slavery. From the circumstances under
which the Missouri Compromise was enacted, from the fact
that it received the seal of constitutionality from an impar-
tial President and a thoroughly representative cabinet, it
CH.V.] POLITICAL REPOSE DISTURBED BY DOUGLAS 429
had been looked upon as having the moral force of an arti-
cle of the Constitution itself. For what purpose was the
repose of the country disturbed by throwing a doubt on the
constitutionality and application of an act which had been
acquiesced in and observed by both parties to the compact
for thirty-four years ?
The motives which actuate men who alter the current of
their time are ever an interesting study ; and in this case no
confidential letters or conversations need be unearthed to
arrive at a satisfactory explanation. We may use the ex-
pression of the Independent Democrats in Congress and say
that the dearest interests of the people were made "the
mere hazards of a presidential game ;" or we may employ
the words of John Van Buren, an astute politician who was
in the secrets of the party, and ask, " Could anything but a
desire to buy the South at the presidential shambles dictate
such an outrage ?" ' And this true statement and the in-
ference from this trenchant question explain the motives
prompting Douglas to this action. Even those who were
very friendly to the measure did not scruple openly to ex-
press this opinion. One wrote that Douglas had betrayed
" an indiscreet and hasty ambition ;" 2 another granted that
the object of Douglas " was to get the inside track in the
South." 3 The defences made by Douglas and his friends
at the time and in the succeeding years, when his political
prospects depended upon the justification of his course, are
shuffling and delusive. None are satisfactory, and it may
1 Private letter of John Van Buren to ex-Senator Clemens, Feb. 3d,
1854, published in the New York Evening Post, Feb. llth, 1854.
2 Washington correspondence Richmond Enquirer, quoted by Rich-
mond Whig, Jan. 31st, 1854. I am indebted to the New York Historical
Society for permission to examine their file of the Richmond Whig.
3 New York Herald, Feb. 21st. I am indebted to the Society Library
of New York for permission to examine their file of the New York Herald
and the New York Courier and Enquirer. These expressions were used
after the formal repeal of the Missouri Compromise had been incorpo-
rated into the Kansas-Nebraska bill.
430 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
with confidence be affirmed that the action of the Illinois
senator was a bid for Southern support in the next Demo-
i cratic convention. In truth, Douglas might have used the
words of Frederick the Great when he began the unjust
war against Austria for the conquest of Silesia : " Ambition,
interest, the desire of making people talk about me, carried
the day, and I decided " to renew the agitation of slavery.
Douglas subsequently, veiling his own ambition under the
wish to promote the interests of the Democratic party, con-
fessed in part the truth of this impeachment. He said " that
his party, in the election of Pierce, had consumed all its
powder, and therefore, without a deep-reaching agitation,
it would have no more ammunition for its artillery." ' Yet
it was patent to every one — and none knew it better than
Douglas, for he was the ablest politician of the party — that
the Democrats needed to make no fresh issue ; that to let
things drift along and not turn them into new channels was
the safest course, and that appeals to past history were the
best of arguments. An economical administration, a reduc-
tion of the tariff, a vigorous and just foreign policy, were
certain to keep the Democrats in power as long as man
could foresee. There was, it is true, one element of uncer-
tainty. The factious quarrel in New York had led to defeat
at the last State election ; but the party was so strong that
even without the Empire State it could retain its ascendency
in the nation, and there was, moreover, good reason to hope
that this trouble would be patched up before another presi-
dential election.
To become the acknowledged and dominating leader of so
strong a party seemed to an ardent partisan an object worthy
of any exertion and any sacrifice. It was the ambition of
Douglas to hold the same position among the Democrats
that Clay had held among the Whigs. Clay attained that
position by being the originator of important legislative
1 Kapp, Gesclrichte der Sklaverei, quoted by Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 313.
This was in the fall of 1855.
CH. V.] POLITICAL REPOSE DISTURBED BY DOUGLAS 431
measures and by carrying them to a successful issue. The
ability of Douglas lay in this direction, and he, like Clay,
was a natural leader of men. Indeed, they were men of
similar parts, strong natures whose private vices were
hardly hidden. But Clay had profound moral convictions
which, although sometimes set at naught in the heat of
partisan conflict, were of powerful influence in his political
career ; in the view of Douglas, moral ideas had no place in
politics.
Douglas prepared the bill without consultation with any
Southern men. First submitted to two Western senators,
after their approval was given, it was shown to their South-
ern friends.1 It became the object of some of those opposed
to the Nebraska bill to show that the project was dictated
by the South. Much credence was given to a boast of sen-
ator Atchison, made under the inspiration of the invisible
spirit of wine, that he had forced Douglas to bring in such
a bill.2 It was also charged that Toombs and Stephens had
been the potent influence which had brought about the ac-
1 This was the statement of Douglas in the Senate in 1856, Congres-
sional Globe, vol. xxxiii. p. 393. I have never seen any well-attested evi-
dence which contradicts this statement. Butler, of South Carolina, said
in the Senate during the debate : " I have had very little to do with this
bill, and I believe the South has had very little to do with the provisions
of the bill.1' At the time of the greatest unpopularity of this legislation,
Douglas said in the Senate (Feb. 23d, 1855) : " The Nebraska bill was
not concocted in any conclave, night or day. It was written by myself,
at my own house, with no man present. Whatever odium there is at-
tached to it, I assume it. Whatever of credit there may be, let the pub-
lic award it where they think it belongs." The earliest premonition of
the report which I have found is in the Ntw York Herald of Jan. 3d,
1854: "It is understood that the territory of Nebraska is to be admitted
into the confederacy upon such terms as will leave it at the option of her
people to make it either a slave or free territory."
2 This speech was made at Atchison, Kan., Sept. 26th, 1854, reported
in the Parkville Luminary Sept. 26th, copied in the New York Tribune
Oct. 10th ; see also the New York Tribune, June 4th, 1855, and see Wil-
son's remarks in the Senate, April 14th, 1856.
432 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
tion. The Illinois senator, in April, 1856, denied both of these
imputations,1 and all the circumstances support the truth of
this denial.2 Douglas was a man of too much independence
to suffer the dictation of Atchison, Toombs, or Stephens. He
always wanted to lead, and was never content to follow.
Immediately on the publication of the report the anti-
slavery people of the North took alarm. The newspapers
which were devoted to freedom saw the point at once and
made clear the scheme which was in progress. One journal
said it was a " proposition to turn the Missouri Compromise
into a juggle and a cheat ;" it was " presented in so bold
and barefaced shape that it is quite as much an insult as it
is a fraud." 3 Another called it an overt attempt to over-
ride the Missouri Compromise.4 Another termed the proj-
ect low trickery, which deluded the South with the idea that
it would legalize slavery in Nebraska, and at the same time
cheated the North " with a thin pretence of not repealing
the existing prohibition." 5 The anti-slavery press respond-
ed more quickly than the people whose sentiment they both
represented and led. The people of the South were as much
surprised at the report as those of the North. Not count-
ing upon Douglas as one of their adherents through thick
and thin, they at first viewed the proposition with distrust,
1 Congressional Globe, vol. xxxiii. p. 393.
2 In 1886, Jefferson Davis, in a letter to a friend, said : " So far as I know
and believe, Douglas and Atchison never were in such relation to each
other as would have caused Douglas to ask Atchison's help in preparing
the bill, and I think the whole discussion shows that Douglas originated
the bill, and for a year or two vaunted himself on its paternity." — Me-
moir of Jefferson Davis, by his wife, vol. i. p. 671.
3 New York Evening Post, Jan. 7th, 1854.
* New York Tribune, Jan. llth, 1854.
5 New York Independent, Jan. 7th. The Herald, which approved of the
report of Douglas, said : " Senator Douglas's report has created a great
sensation among the abolitionists and their aiders and abettors in this
city. Already the Post and Tribune — and the Times will soon follow
with the other abolitionist organs — are out in full swoop against the re-
port."
lta.V.] DIXON'S AMENDMENT 433
and some even regarded it as " a snare set for the South." '
But the senators and representatives from the slave-holding
States understood the matter better than the people and the
press, and knew that Douglas had taken a long stride in their
direction. As he could not retrace his steps, he could there-
fore be easily influenced to alter his bill in a manner that
should make it conform pretty nearly to their cherished wish.
On Monday, the 16th of January, Dixon, a Whig senator
from Kentucky, who was filling the unexpired term of Henry
Clay, offered an amendment to the Nebraska act, which pro-
vided in set terms for the repeal of the slavery-restriction
feature of the Missouri Compromise. The Senate was as-
tonished and Douglas was startled. He went at once to
Dixon's seat and remonstrated courteously against the
amendment. He said that in his bill he had used almost
the same words which were employed in the Utah and New
Mexico acts ; and as they were a part of the compromise
measures of 1850, he hoped that Dixon, who had been a
zealous friend of that adjustment, would do nothing to in-
terfere with it or weaken it before the country. Dixon re-
plied that it was precisely because he was a zealous friend
of the compromise of 1850 that he had introduced the
amendment ; in his view, the Missouri Compromise, unless
expressly repealed, would continue to operate in the Terri-
tory of Nebraska ; and while the bill of Douglas affirmed
the principle of non-intervention, this amendment was
necessary to carry it legitimately into effect. That being
the well-considered opinion of Dixon, he was determined to
insist upon his amendment.2
On the 17th of January, Sumner offered an amendment to
1 Richmond Whig, Jan. 20th ; also see Cullom's speech, Congressional
Globe, vol. xxix. p. 54.
a Letter of Dixon to Henry S. Foote, Sept. 30th, 1858, Spring's Kan-
sas, p. 3 ; Life of Douglas, by a Member of the Western Bar, New York,
1860. Dixon's letter is referred to by Nicolay and Hay, in History of Lin-
coln, as having been published in the Louisville Democrat, Oct. 3d, 1858.
I— 28
434 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
the Nebraska act which expressly affirmed the slavery re-
striction of the Missouri Compromise.
A few days after Dixon had surprised the Senate, Doug-
las called to see him and invited him to take a drive. The
conversation turned upon the subject which was uppermost
in their minds, and, to the great delight of Dixon, the Illi-
nois senator proposed to take charge of his amendment and
incorporate it in the Nebraska bill. As Dixon reports the
familiar talk, Douglas in substance said : " I have become
perfectly satisfied that it is my duty, as a fair-minded na-
tional statesman, to co-operate with you as proposed in se-
curing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise restriction.
It is due to the South ; it is due to the Constitution, hereto-
fore palpably infracted ; it is due to that character for con-
sistency which I have heretofore labored to maintain. The
repeal, if we can effect it, will produce much stir and com-
motion in the free States of the Union for a season. I
shall be assailed by demagogues and fanatics there, without
stint or moderation. Every opprobrious epithet will be ap-
plied to me. I shall probably be hung in effigy in many
places. It is more than probable that I may become per-
manently odious among those whose friendship and esteem
I have heretofore possessed. This proceeding may end my
political career. But, acting under the sense of duty which
animates me, I am prepared to make the sacrifice ; I will do
it." Dixon relates that Douglas spoke in an earnest and
touching manner ; the Kentucky senator was deeply affect-
ed and showed emotion in the reply that he made. " Sir,"
he said, " I once recognized you as a demagogue, a mere
party manager, selfish, and intriguing. I now find you a
warm-hearted and sterling patriot. Go forward in the path-
way of duty as you propose, and though all the world de-
sert you, I never will" l
It was a pretty comedy. The words of Douglas are those
of a self-denying patriot, and not those of a man who was
Letter of Dixon, Life of Douglas, p. 172.
CH. V.] DIXON'S AMENDMENT 435
sacrificing the peace of his country, and, as it turned out,
the success of his party, to his own personal ambition. Be-
tween the Monday on which the amendment repealing the
Missouri Compromise was introduced, and the day of the
drive with Dixon, Douglas resolved to take a further step in
the path on which he had entered. Of course, all sorts of
influences were brought to bear upon him by Southern men,
and there was one powerful argument from the Democratic
point of view. While the difference between Democrats
and Whigs at the South wras no longer essential, the party
organizations remained intact, and each endeavored to win
an advantage over the other by taking more pronounced
ground in the interest of slavery. It would not do, there-
fore, to have a measure of so obvious advantage to the South
fathered by a Whig, even by one who truly felt, as he after-
wards stated in the Senate : " Upon the question of slavery,
I know no Whiggery and I know no Democracy." This
and other arguments undoubtedly had their influence on
Douglas ; but, in truth, he had laid out his course when he
made the report of the 4th of January. He had then
crossed the Kubicon; he was now preparing to burn his
bridges behind him.
Unquestionably Douglas would have preferred to stand on
the proposition as at first introduced. It is the testimony of
two personal and political friends that he was reluctant to
incorporate in his bill a clause virtually repealing the Mis-
souri Compromise.1 The ambiguous character of the first
project was not without design, and suited his purpose ex-
actly. At the South it could be paraded as a measure in
her interest, while at the North there might be honest dif-
ferences of opinion whether or not the slavery restriction
was set aside ; and in the inception of this movement it is
probable that Douglas thought that, no matter what legisla-
tion was had, none but free States would be formed out of
1 Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation, p. 49 ; Foote, Casket of
Reminiscences, p. 93.
436 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
this territory. This was certainly his opinion in 1850, when
he maintained that "the Missouri Compromise had no
practical bearing upon the question of slavery — it neither
curtailed nor extended it an inch. Like the ordinance of
1787, it did the South no harm, the North no good."1 And
in the same speech he expressed the opinion that the Ne-
braska territory would be forever free, and out of it would
be formed at least six free States. It was rumored at the
time, and was always believed by many of the friends of Doug-
las, that what finally decided him to shape the bill in accord-
ance with Dixon's views was because he had reason to believe
that if he did not take that step Cass would forestall him, sup-
port the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and thereby gain
an important advantage in the race for the Democratic nomi-
nation.2
Douglas had written his report and prepared his first bill
without any consultation with the President, but the rising
tide of Northern sentiment against the measure, and the cer-
tainty that the murmur would become a roar, admonished
him that nothing could be safely omitted which would aid
the passage of the act through both houses of Congress.
He felt confident that success in the Senate was certain, but
the power and influence of the administration might be
necessary to insure a majority in the House. He sought,
therefore, the assistance of the President. Pierce, through
his own organ, the Washington Union, which faithfully rep-
resented his opinions,3 had approved the report of the com-
1 Speech on the compromise measures, March 13th, 1850.
2 This was a view presented to me by ex-Senator Bradbury, of Maine.
Cass regarded the rumor of enough importance to deny it in open Senate.
" I am aware," he said, " it was reported that I intended to propose the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise; but it was an error. My intentions
were wholly misunderstood. " — -Congressional Glol)e,\o\. xxix. p. 270. See
also the St. Louis Democrat, quoted in the New York Tribune of Jan. 30th ;
also Washington Union, Jan. 19th, referred to in Nicolay and Hay's His-
tory of Lincoln, Century Magazine, vol. xi. p. 699.
3 " While I was one of the editors of the National Democratic organ
CH. V.] DOUGLAS AND JEFFERSON DAVIS 437
mittee on territories ; l but he did not regard with favor the
amendment of Dixon, and on January 20th the Union argued
against it.*
On Sunday morning, January 22d, Douglas, in company
with other gentlemen, members of Congress, called- on Jef-
ferson Davis, and stated to him the proposed change in the
Nebraska bill. They further desired that he would procure
them on that day an interview with the President, who, as
they knew, was strictly opposed to receiving visits or dis-
cussing political affairs on Sunday ; but it was highly im-
portant to introduce the substitute on the following day,
and Douglas would not do so without consulting the Presi-
dent. Davis went with them to the White House. He
stood on such friendly footing with Pierce that the door was
always open to him, and, leaving his companions in the re-
ception-room, he proceeded at once to the private apart-
ments of the President and unfolded the object of their
visit. Afterwards the President met the gentlemen, listened
during Pierce's administration, Attorney-General Gushing, although deep-
ly immersed in the business of his department, hardly let a day pass with-
out sending me an editorial on some subject." — Forney, Anecdotes of
Public Men, vol. i. p. 229.
1 Douglas " has arrived at conclusions which seem to us unassailable.
. . . We commend Mr. Douglas's report not only for the ability with
which it is prepared, but for the sound, national, Union-loving sentiments
with which it abounds.'' — Washington Union, Jan. 5th.
" The Nebraska bill is drawn upon the same principles [*. 0., those of
1850] and presents an opportunity for a practical vindication of the pol-
icy of the administration." — Ibid., Jan. 6th.
2 "To repeal the Missouri Compromise might, and according to our
view would, clear the principle of congressional non-intervention of all
embarrassment; but we doubt whether the good thus promised is so im-
portant that it would be wise to. seek it through the agitation which
necessarily stands in our path. Upon a calm review of the whole ground,
we yet see no such reasons for disturbing the compromise of 1850 as
could induce us to advocate either of the amendments proposed to Mr.
Douglas's bill." — Washington Union, Jan. 20th. The amendments re-
ferred to are Dixon's and Suinner's.
438 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
to the reading of the bill, gave attention to the arguments
of Douglas explanatory of the proposed alteration, and in
the end promised the support of the administration.1 We
may feel certain, however, that it was the persuasion of
Davis at the private interview which induced the President
to give his approval. He could not have forgotten that, less
than two months previously, when in his message he men-
tioned that in regard to the slavery and sectional question
there had been " restored a sense of repose and security to
the public mind throughout the confederacy," he had added,
" That this repose is to suffer no shock during my official
term, if I have power to avert it, those who placed me here
may be assured." On this Sunday he had the power to ful-
fil the solemn pledge he had given the nation and its repre-
sentatives ; but his hankering after a renomination made him
easily susceptible to the influences which were brought to
bear upon him.
Douglas had reckoned wisely when he applied to Davis
for help in gaining the President. There were two oppos-
ing influences in the administration, one represented by the
Secretary of State and the other by the Secretary of War,
and Douglas knew that in this affair it was Davis that he
should call upon. Pierce loved and trusted Davis,2 who
had, moreover, the backing of the Southern Democracy,
which the President was now anxious to conciliate in order
to effectually contradict reports current in the South that
the administration was tinctured with Free-soilism. Yet
Pierce was also solicitous for the support of Marcy in this
1 The Kise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis,
vol. i. p. 28 ; Life of Davis, Alfriend, p. 94 ; Life of Davis, Pollard, p.
49 ; Memoir of Jefferson Davis, by his wife, vol. i. p. 669. See also
Washington correspondence of the New York Courier and Enquirer,
March 25th ; New York Herald, Jan. 24th.
9 At the end of his term of office, Pierce said to Davis: " I can scarcely
bear the parting from you, who have been strength and solace to me for
four anxious years, and never failed me." — Memoir of Jefferson Davis, by
his wife, vol. i. p. 530.
CH. V.] THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 439
affair, and requested Douglas and his companions to call upon
him for consultation. This wish was, of course, complied
with, but the Secretary of State was not found at home.1
On Monday, January 23d, Douglas offered a substitute
for his preceding bill. It differed from the other in two
particulars. It affirmed that the slavery restriction of the
Missouri Compromise " was superseded by the principles of
the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise
measures, and is hereby declared inoperative;" and it di-
vided the great territory into two parts, calling the northern
portion Nebraska, and the southern Kansas. The northern
and southern boundaries of Kansas were the same as those
of the present State, but the western limit was the Rocky
Mountains, and the total area one hundred and twenty-six
thousand square miles.2
We cannot clearly trace the ways leading up to this di-
vision of Nebraska, which apparently formed no part of the
original plan. Nor is the explanation of Senator Douglas
sufficient.3 It is almost certain that if there had been no
question of slavery, this change would not have been made.
A steadfast Northern follower of Douglas has acknowledged
that the purpose which he had in view by this division was
to make one slave and one free State ; 4 and there is much
in the contemporaneous evidence to lead one to this conclu-
sion. In the summer and fall of 1853, a movement began
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Wilson, vol. ii. p. 383.
a Spring's Kansas, p. 17. The present State of Kansas has 81,700 square
miles.
3 See Congressional Globe, vol. xxviii. p. 221.
* Three Decades of Federal Legislation, S. S. Cox, p. 49. Of the close
relation of Cox to Douglas, see his eulogy on the death of Douglas, House
of Representatives, July, 1861, when he said : " It may not be improper
to refer to the fact that I was among the many young men of the West
who were bound to him by a tie of friendship and a spell of enthusiasm
which death has no power to break ;" and he also speaks of the " un-
broken association of friendship with him from the first year of my po-
litical life."
440 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
in western Missouri with the avowed object of making Ne-
braska slave territory.1 In that portion of the State there
were fifty thousand slaves, worth perhaps twenty-five mill-
ions of dollars, and the interests of their owners seemed to
demand that the contiguous country should be devoted to
slavery. Senator Atchison urged this view warmly, showing
that the only obstacle to their wishes lay in the Missouri
Compromise. Coming to Washington on the opening of
Congress, he felt that he had an aggressive sentiment be-
hind him which demanded the repeal of the slavery restric-
tion.2 His eyes, and those of his constituents, were cast
longingly on the country which is now Kansas, and in which
they hoped slavery might gain the foothold it had in Mis-
souri. The Missouri border abounded in adventurous spirits
who were ready for any enterprise ; Atchison and his fellow
slave-holders were confident that if the restriction were re-
moved, these men could be used to advantage in establishing
a slave State. Kansas was all they wanted, and the territory,
if divided, would be easier to manage. That all this was
known to the Southern Democrats and Whigs in Congress
and to Senator Douglas is indisputable. The supporters of
the Nebraska bill came together so frequently in caucus
and conference3 that, if all the features of the situation
were not discussed, they must certainly have been well un-
derstood. Indeed, the expectation that Kansas would be-
come a slave State was openly expressed on the floor of the
House.4 It follows plainly enough, therefore, that the di-
vision of the territory w as in the interest of slavery ; and
if Douglas had not been brought to the point of actually
1 Spring's Kansas, p. 24. See a very noteworthy article in the New
York Tribune of Nov. 12th, 1853.
1 Spring's Kansas, p. 24.
3 See speech of Senator Benjamin, May 8th, I860.
* " I will not now detail my reasons, but I have a strong faith that Kan-
sas will become a slave State."— Zollicofier, Whig representative from Ten-
nessee, May 9th, quoted by Von Hoist.
CH. V.] THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 441
conceding that Kansas should be a slave State, he at least
knew that there was a well-devised scheme in progress to
make it one.
Tuesday, the 24th of January, was a notable day in the
history of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Dixon statecj in the
Senate that he was entirely satisfied with the amendment
Douglas had incorporated in his bill ; and the Washington
Union had a carefully written editorial which was the fruit
of the conference of the preceding Sunday. After endors-
ing the substitute of the committee on territories, the
organ of the President went on to say : " We cannot but re-
gard the policy of the administration as directly involved
in the question. That policy looks to fidelity to the com-
promise of 1850 as an essential requisite in Democratic or-
thodoxy. The proposition of Mr. Douglas is a practical ex-
ecution of the principles of that compromise, and, therefore,
cannot but be regarded by the administration as a test of
Democratic orthodoxy. The union of the Democracy on
this proposition will dissipate forever the charge of Free-soil
sympathies so recklessly and pertinaciously urged against
the administration by our Whig opponents; while it will
take from disaffection in our ranks the last vestige of a pre-
text for its opposition."
On this same day (January 24th) was published the " Ap-
peal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the Peo-
ple of the United States." ' Chase wrote the paper from a
draft made by Giddings, and it received some verbal correc-
1 There was considerable confusion about the date of this address.
As published in the New York Times and National Era of the 24th, it
was dated the 22d, which was Sunday. Douglas made a great point of
the date, charging that the abolition confederates had assembled in se-
cret conclave on the holy Sabbath. The date was an error. The New
York Tribune, when it copied the address from the Times, changed the
date to the 23d. It appears in the Congressional Globe as of Jan. 19th,
but a postscript is added which could not possibly have been written
until the 23d.
442 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
tions from Sumner and Gerrit Smith.1 These men signed it,
as did also Edward Wade and Alexander De Witt, repre-
sentatives from Ohio and Massachusetts. All of the signers
were Free-soilers. Like so many political manifestoes, com-
posed in the midst of agitating events and under the influ-
ence of powerful emotion, the Appeal of the Independent
Democrats is strong in expression ; but few partisan docu-
ments will stand so well the test of time. It expresses
earnest feeling, but it relates truthful history. The histori-
cal argument is incontrovertible. The reasoning is earnest,
but the writers felt that, having history and justice on their
side, they needed only to make fair statements, and that the
straining of any point was unnecessary. Viewing it in the
calm light of the present, criticism is silent. Had the lan-
guage been less strong, the writers would not have shown
themselves equal to the occasion. It is a brave, truthful,
earnest exposition.
It should be remarked that all of the address except the
postscript was written before Douglas introduced his sub-
stitute of January 23d, and has reference to the report and
first bill of the committee on territories. The Appeal
states at the outset that, should the project receive the sanc-
tion of Congress, it " will open all the unorganized territory
of the Union to the ingress of slavery." Therefore, *" We
arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge ; as a
criminal betrayal of precious rights ; as part and parcel of
an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region
immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our
own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism
inhabited by masters and slaves." The history of the Mis-
souri Compromise is then related,2 and the truthful state-
ment is made : " For more than thirty years — during more
than half the period of our national Constitution — this com-
1 Life of Chase, Schuckers, p. 140 ; History of the Rebellion, Giddings,
p. 300 ; Life of Wade, Riddle, p. 225.
s See Chap. I.
CH. V.] THE APPEAL OF THE INDEPENDENT DEMOCRATS 443
pact [i. e., the Missouri Compromise] has been universally re-
garded and acted upon as inviolable American law." And
no\v it is proposed to cancel this compact. " Language fails
to express the sentiments of indignation and abhorrence"
which the Nebraska act inspires. "It is a bold scheme
against American liberty worthy of an accomplished archi-
tect of ruin. . . . Shall a plot against humanity and democ-
racy so monstrous, and so dangerous to the interest of lib-
erty throughout the world, be permitted to succeed ? We
appeal to the people. We warn you that the dearest inter-
ests of freedom and the Union are in imminent peril. . . .
Let all protest, earnestly and emphatically, by correspond-
ence, through the press, by memorials, by resolutions of
public meetings and legislative bodies, and in whatever other
mode may seem expedient, against this enormous crime."
The postscript, which was written just before the Appeal
was given to the press, relates to the substitute of January
23d. The truth of the emphatic statements with which it
closes has never been successfully impugned, and they may
justly receive the seal of impartial history. " This amend-
ment," the Appeal says, " is a manifest falsification of the
truth of history. . . . Not a man in Congress, or out of
Congress, in 1850 pretended that the compromise measures
would repeal the Missouri prohibition.1 Mr. Douglas him-
self never advanced such a pretence until this session. His
own Nebraska bill, of last session, rejected it. It is a sheer
afterthought. To declare the prohibition inoperative may,
indeed, have effect in law as a repeal, but it is a most dis-
creditable way of reaching the object. Will the people per-
mit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards
of a presidential game, and destroyed by false facts and
false inferences ?" a
This appeal was published -in nearly all the newspapers of
1 There may possibly be one exception to this statement. It will be
considered later.
3 Congressional Globe, vol. xxviii. p. 281.
444 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
the free States. The field had been well prepared for the
sowing of this seed. Connected with the journals of this
time were many able and earnest men full of enthusiasm for
a righteous cause. Almost without exception, the conspic-
uous editors at the North took ground from the first against
the Nebraska act, and their papers abounded in sharp criti-
cisms of the author of the measure and in entreaties to the
friends of freedom not to permit the consummation of the
infamy. Some regarded the measure with anger, others with
grief, and all with apprehension. The public mind was in a
state that could not fail to be profoundly affected by an au-
thoritative and impressive protest from Washington. It is
true that the Free-soil congressmen had not a large political
following ; but their arguments were so cogent that they
convinced and roused many men who had been accustomed
to regard the authors of the Appeal with mistrust. If the
politicians at Washington, wrote one earnest journalist, have
any doubt about the public opinion, let them put their ears
to the ground and they " will hear the roar of the tide com-
ing in." '
When Douglas came into the Senate on the morning of
January 30th, he was a prey to angry excitement, and
shortly after his entrance he took the floor to open the de-
bate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The reason of his rage
was soon apparent. It was caused by the Appeal of the In-
dependent Democrats and by the indications of public sen-
timent which had already reached Washington, and which
Douglas was inclined to attribute wholly to the prompting
of this address. In deference to the wishes of Chase and
Sumner, he had postponed the consideration of the bill for
six days, and now he charged Chase with having come to
him " with a smiling face and the appearance of friendship,"
begging for delay, merely in order to get a wide circulation
for the Appeal and forestall public opinion before an exposi-
tion of the measure was made by its author. The address,
1 New York Evening Post, Feb. 3d. 1854.
CH.V.] DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 445
he said, grossly misrepresented the bill, arraigned the mo-
tives and calumniated the characters of the members of the
committee, and the postscript applied coarse epithets to
himself by name. Chase endeavored to interrupt the
speaker, and an excited colloquy followed ; Douglas lost his
temper completely, and emphatic language was used by both
senators, so that they were at different times called to order
by the president. This, one may gather from the official
report in the Congressional Globe • but it was stated that
Douglas carefully corrected his remarks before publication,
and struck out many opprobrious words he had used.1
Several Washington correspondents agree in their descrip-
tion of the manner and language of Douglas. One speaks
of his " senatorial billingsgate," and of the " vulgarity and
vehemence of the abuse which he poured out upon Senator
Chase ;" 2 another described the scene as one of " intemper-
ate violence," and maintained that the course of Douglas
was " indecorous and a most reprehensible violation of the
dignity of the body," and that his style of attack was " more
becoming a pot-house than the Senate ;" 3 and another spoke
of his speech as "violent and abusive."4 In spite of the
fact that the display of temper at the outset lost Douglas in
a certain degree the respect of his audience, the speech was
conceded by his opponents to be able and ingenious, indeed
the very best that could be made in a very bad cause.5 An
earnest abolitionist paid a tribute to the remarkable force
and adroitness of the argument.6
1 See New York Times, Feb. 2d ; also letter in the New York Indepen-
dent of March 16th.
3 See New York Times, Feb. 1st.
3 Washington correspondence New York Courier and Enquirer, Jan.
80th.
* New York Tribune. It may be remarked that all these journals were
hostile to Douglas. The anger of Douglas was raised when he referred
to the affair five years later. See Constitutional and Party Questions, J.
M. Cutts, p. 94. 5 New York Times.
6 T. W. Higginson, letter in the Liberator, Feb. 24th.
446 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
Douglas stated that by the Missouri Compromise of 1820
a geographical line had been established, north of which
slavery was prohibited, and south of which it was permitted.
When New Mexico and California were acquired, a logical
adherence to that principle required the extension of this
line to the Pacific Ocean. On his motion in 1848, the Senate
had adopted such a provision ; but it failed in the House, be-
ing defeated " by Northern votes with Free-soil proclivities." '
This refusal to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the
Pacific Ocean gave rise to a furious slavery agitation, which
continued until it was quieted by the compromise measures
of 1850. In that series of acts, the principle established
was : " Congressional non-intervention as to slavery in the
territories ; that the people of the territories . . . were to
be allowed to do as they pleased upon the subject of slavery,
subject only to the provisions of the Constitution." Al-
though the only territorial bills which were a part of the
plan of 1850 were those organizing Utah and New Mexico,
yet the Missouri Compromise line, in all the unorganized
territory not covered by those bills, was superseded by the
principles of that compromise. " We all know," said the
senator, "that the object of the compromise measures of
1850 was to establish certain great principles, which would
avoid the slavery agitation in all time to come. Was it our
object simply to provide for a temporary evil ? Was it our
object just to heal over an old sore and leave it to break out
again ? Was it our object to adopt a mere miserable expe-
dient to apply to that territory, and that alone, and leave
ourselves entirely at sea, without compass, when new terri-
tory was acquired or new territorial organizations were to
be made ? Was that the object for which the eminent and
venerable senator from Kentucky [Clay] came here and
sacrificed even his last energies upon the altar of his
country ? Was that the object for which Webster, Clay,
and Cass, and all the patriots of that day, struggled so long
See p. 96.
CH.V.] DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 447
and so strenuously? Was it merely the application of a
temporary expedient in agreeing to stand by past and dead
legislation that the Baltimore platform pledged us to sustain
the compromise of 1850? Was it the understanding of the
Whig party when they adopted the compromise measures
of 1850 as an article of political faith, that they were only
agreeing to that which was past and had no reference to the
future?" By no means. In the legislation of 1850 a prin-
ciple was adopted — the principle of congressional non-in-
terference with slavery, and when the two party conventions
resolved to acquiesce in the compromise measures,, they
were giving pledges that in their future action they would
carry out that principle. Now it is necessary to organize
the territory of Nebraska. The Missouri Compromise re-
striction is inconsistent with this later principle and should
give place to it. " The legal effect of this bill," continued
Douglas, " is neither to legislate slavery into these terri-
tories nor out of them, but to leave the people do as they
please. ... If they wish slavery, they have a right to it. If
they do not want it, they will not have it, and you should not
force it upon them."
Did Douglas describe the workings of his own mind be-
tween January 4th and 23d, when he said, in graphic words :
" I know there are some men, Whigs and Democrats, who
. . . would be willing to vote for this principle, provided
they could do so in such equivocal terms that they could
deny that it means what it Avas intended to mean, in certain
localities." But he went on to say : " I do not wish to deal
in any equivocal language. If the principle is right, let it
be avowed and maintained. If it is wrong, let it be repu-
diated. Let all this quibbling about the Missouri Compro-
mise ... be cast behind you ; for the simple question is,
will you allow the people to- legislate for themselves upon
the question of slavery ? Why should you not ?" For the
benefit, probably, of what he called " tender-footed Demo-
crats," he maintained that it was worse than folly to think
of Nebraska being a slave-holding country. Nor did the
448 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
manifestations of public sentiment averse to the measure
frighten Douglas. " This tornado," he said, " has been
raised by abolitionists, and abolitionists alone."
The senator made an argument based on the fact that the
boundary lines of New Mexico and Utah, as constituted, an-
nulled the Missouri Compromise in a part of the territory
to which it applied. While this at the time was considered
ingenious reasoning, it was effectually refuted by Chase and
Everett, and Douglas did not allude to it in his speech which
closed the debate ; nor was this the argument he relied on
in the many defences he made of his present course in after-
years.
When Douglas sat down, Chase obtained the floor and
made a defence of the Appeal of the Independent Demo-
crats. They meant exactly what they said ; it was not an
occasion for soft words ; they considered the Missouri Com-
promise a sacred pledge, and its proposed abrogation " a
criminal betrayal of precious rights." "What rights are
precious," demanded the senator, " if those secured to free
labor and free laborers in that vast territory are not f ' The
attempt of Douglas to shield himself under the asgis of Clay
and Webster was not overlooked ; the Illinois senator knew it
to be a strong point, and in after-years elaborated it into a
statement that he had given the " immortal Clay," lying on
his death-bed, a pledge that his energies should be devoted
to the vindication of the principle of leaving each State and
territory free to decide its institutions for itself, and he had
also given the same pledge to the " godlike Webster." ' On
the day when this justification was first broached, Chase
must have felt that if he held his peace, the stones would
cry out against it, and he emphatically asserted : " When the
senator vouches the authority of Clay and Webster to sus-
tain him, he vouches authorities which would rebuke him
could those statesmen speak from their graves."
On the 3d of February, Chase made his mark in an elab-
Speech at Bloomington, 111., 1858, Life of Douglas, Flint, p. 125.
OH. V.] CHASE'S SPEECH 449
orate speech against the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and on that
day he took a place in the foremost ranks of the statesmen
who devoted themselves to anti-slavery principles.
He was, with perhaps the exception of Sumner, the hand-
somest man in the Senate, and as he rose to make his plea
for the maintenance of plighted faith, all felt the force of
his commanding presence. More than six feet high, he had
a frame and figure proportioned to his height; with his
large head, massive brow, and smoothly shaven face, he
looked like a Roman senator ; and the similitude was height-
ened by his coming to plead against the introduction of
Punic faith into the Congress of the United States. He ap-
preciated the gravity of the situation, and attributed the
crowded galleries, the thronged lobbies and the full at-
tendance of the Senate to the transcendent interest of the
theme. Chase was not a fluent and easy speaker ; he had
less of the spirit of the orator than Douglas ; he could not
sway an audience of the Senate as could the Little Giant.1
Nevertheless, the dignity of his manner and the weight of
his words obtained him a careful hearing, and he was listened
to with attention by senators and visitors.2
When Congress met, he said, "no agitation seemed to
disturb the political elements." The two great political
parties "had announced that slavery agitation was at an
end;" the President "had declared his fixed purpose to
maintain the quiet of the country. . . . But suddenly all is
changed. . . . And now we find ourselves in an agitation
the end and issue of which no man can foresee. "Who is re-
sponsible for this renewal of strife and controversy ? ... It
is slavery. . . . And what does slavery ask for now ? It de-
mands that a time-honored and sacred compact shall be re-
scinded— a compact which has endured through a whole
1 Warden's Life of Chnse, p. 340.
9 Washington correspondence New York Times, published Feb. 6th.
I am indebted to Mr. R. C. Parsons, of Cleveland, who knew Chase inti-
mately, for a vivid description of him as he was in his senatorial career.
I.— 29
450 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
generation ; a compact which has been universally regarded
as inviolable, North and South ; a compact the constitu-
tionality of which few have doubted, and by which all have
consented to abide." The ground on which it is proposed
to violate this compact is supposed to be found in the doc-
trine that the restriction of the Missouri Compromise is
superseded by the principles of the compromise measures of
1850. This is a " statement untrue in fact and without
foundation in history." It is, continued the senator, " a
novel idea. At the time when these measures were before
Congress in 1850, when the questions involved in them were
discussed from day to day, from week to week, and from
month to month, in this Senate Chamber, who ever heard
that the Missouri prohibition was to be superseded ? What
man, at what time, in what speech, ever suggested the idea
that the acts of that year were to affect the Missouri Com-
promise ? . . . Did Henry Clay, in the report made by him
as chairman of the committee of thirteen, or in any speech
in support of the compromise acts, or in any conversation, in
the committee or out of the committee, ever even hint at
this doctrine of supersedure? Did any supporter or any
opponent of the compromise acts ever vindicate or condemn
them upon the ground that the Missouri prohibition would
be affected by them ? Well, sir, the compromise acts wrere
passed. They were denounced North and they were de-
nounced South. Did any defender of them at the South
ever justify his support of them upon the ground that the
South had obtained through them the repeal of the Missouri
prohibition ? Did any objector to them at the North ever
even suggest, as a ground of condemnation, that that prohi-
bition was swept away by them ? No, sir ! No man, North
or South, during the whole of the discussion of those acts
here, or in that other discussion which followed their enact-
ment throughout the country, ever intimated any such opin-
ion." After effectually refuting the argument of Douglas
drawn from the constitution of the boundaries of New
Mexico and Utah, and giving an account of the anti-slavery
CH. V.] CHASE'S SPEECH 451
opinions of the fathers of the government, Chase related
briefly and correctly the history of the Missouri Compromise,
and in a few words he stated the obligations which that act
imposed on the South. He said : " A large majority of
Southern senators voted for it ; a majority of Southern rep-
resentatives voted for it. It was approved by all the
Southern members of the cabinet, and received the sanction
of a Southern President. The compact was embodied in a
single bill containing reciprocal provisions. The admission
of Missouri with slavery, and the understanding that slavery
should not be prohibited by Congress south of 36° 30', were
the considerations of the perpetual prohibition north of that
line. And that prohibition was the consideration of the ad-
mission and the understanding. The slave States received
a large share of the consideration coming to them, paid in
hand. Missouri was admitted without restriction by the act
itself. Every other part of the compact, on the part of the
free States, has been fulfilled to the letter. No part of the
compact on the part of the slave States has been fulfilled at
all, except in the admission of Iowa and the organization of
Minnesota ; and now the slave States propose to break up the
compact without the consent and against the will of the free
States." Chase gave a brief but able review of the slavery
question in this country. He rose to the height of noble
prophecy as he spoke of his faith in progress and his hope
of the future of the republic, and he closed with an earnest
appeal to the senators to reject this bill, as it was " a viola-
tion of the plighted faith and solemn compact which our
fathers made, and which we, their sons, are bound by every
sacred tie of obligation sacredly to maintain."
This speech of Chase was great. As an earnest protest
against a measure which violated the sentiment of justice,
and whose iniquity the speaker felt in every fibre of his be-
ing, it must ever take high rank. In it were united the un-
derstanding of the lawyer, the elevation of the statesman,
and the gravity of the moralist ; the warmth of the advo-
cate is tempered by the fairness of the judge. His state-
452 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
ments are lucid, his arguments unanswerable. He seems to
feel a profound regret that the question of slavery should
be agitated again ; but his strong moral nature had burning
convictions, and he was bound to express them. The mat-
ter is made plain, history is truthfully related, his reasoning
is careful, and the conclusions irresistible.
Wade, Seward, and Sumner made powerful speeches
against the bill. Their point of view was the same as that
of Chase. All thought slavery an evil whose power must
be circumscribed, and all looked to a time when it should be
eradicated. The line of argument which they pursued was
substantially the same as that of Chase, but each had a pe-
culiar following in the country, to whom their arguments
were addressed as well as to the Senate. The rasping lan-
guage of Wade offended some Eastern critics,1 but the farm-
ers of Northern Ohio, whom he represented, loved plain
speaking, and were glad that their senator did not mince
his words when he protested against a rank injustice. He
had a ready wit, and, while his set speech was soon forgotten,
a retort that he made during the debate is still remembered.
In it there lurked a strong argument, and it states incisively
the difference between the apologists and the assailants of
slavery.
Badger, of North Carolina, had rehearsed the ancient argu-
ment for the dilution of slavery, and in a feeling manner had
asked : " Why, if some Southern gentleman wishes to take
the nurse who takes charge of his little baby, or the old
woman who nursed him in childhood, and whom he called
'Mammy' until he returned from college, and perhaps after-
wards too, and whom he wishes to take with him in his old
age when he is moving into one of these new territories for
the betterment of the fortunes of the whole family — why, in
the name of God, should anybody prevent it ?" Wade was
glad to answer this question. " The senator," he said, " en-
tirely mistakes our position. We have not the least objec-
1 See Washington correspondence New York Times, Feb. 6th.
CH.V.] SEWARD'S SPEECH 453
tion, and would oppose no obstacle to the senator's migrat-
ing to Kansas and taking his old 'Mammy' along with
him. We only insist that he shall not be empowered to sell
her after taking her there." '
Seward was not an effective speaker, but his high political
position gave him an attentive hearing at Washington, and
his words were listened to not only by his followers in New
York, but they had a marked influence on all the anti-slavery
Whigs in the country. His speech was translated into Ger-
man and extensively circulated among the Germans of West-
ern Texas under the frank of Senator Houston.2 It probably
affected the minds of more men than any speech delivered
on that side of this question in Congress ; and, though lack-
ing the force, feeling, and decision of that of Chase, it was a
clever legal argument. The speech of Chase was the argu-
ment of an indignant moralist, the pathetic appeal of a pa-
triotic statesman ; that of Seward was the reasoning of a
politician who could not conceal his exultation that the
Democrats had forsaken their high vantage-ground and
played into the hands of their opponents.3 But he could
not feel entirely certain whether a new anti-slavery party
would be formed, or whether there was still a reason for the
existence of the Whig party, and thought it not well to use
words so harsh that a deadly breach would be made be-
tween the Northern and Southern Whigs. He had declined.
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Wilson, vol. ii. p. 388. Compare
Life of Wade, Riddle, p. 232.
2 See letter of Yeoman from San Antonio, Texas, of April 18th, 1854,
New York Times, May 13th. Yeoman was the name under which Fred-
erick Law Olrnsted wrote.
3 Montgomery Blair wrote to Gideon Welles, May 17th, 1873 : "I shall
never forget how shocked I was at-his [Seward] telling me that he was
the man who put Archy Dixon, the Whig senator from Kentucky in 1854,
up to moving the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as an amendment to
Douglas's first Kansas bill, and had himself forced the repeal by that
movement, and had thus brought to life the Republican party." — Lincoln
and Seward, Welles, p. 68.
454 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
therefore, to sign the Appeal of the Independent Demo-
crats.1
Yet Seward made some pregnant assertions that may not
be omitted in an account of this debate. If, said he, it had
been known that the Missouri Compromise was to be abro-
gated, directly or indirectly, by the compromise of 1850, not
a representative from a non-slaveholding State would have
at that day voted for it, while every senator from the slave-
holding States would have given it his support. Nor, he as-
serted, does it weaken my opposition to this measure " to be
told that only a few slaves will enter into this vast region.
One slave-holder in a new territory, with access to the ex-
ecutive ear at Washington, exercises more political influence
than five hundred freemen." 2
Sumner spoke to the cultured people of Massachusetts, to
the professors and students of colleges, and to clergymen of
advanced political views. The moral side of the question
appealed to him forcibly, and he approached it inspired by
the same sentiment that had moved Chase. His illustrations
delighted scholars, and his quotations pleased lovers of litera-
ture ; but the speech lacked the cogency that distinguished
the effort of the Ohio senator. No doubt can remain in the
minds of impartial men that the speech of Chase was the
greatest which was made in either House in opposition to
the Kansas-Nebraska bill. It was so regarded by Douglas.
Five years afterwards, in speaking of the senatorial debates
on this subject, he said : " Seward's and Simmer's speeches
were mere essays against slavery. Chase was the leader."3
In eloquent periods Sumner depicted the nature of the
question which now agitated the country. He showed that
1 Life of Chase, Sclmckers, p. 160. Many "Western papers published
the Appeal with. Seward's name signed to it. The Tribune said, when
the Appeal was made, " Seward was at home in Auburn in consequence
of serious illness in his family, and accordingly neither signed it, nor had
any knowledge of it whatever."— New York Weekly Tribune, Feb. llth.
2 Seward's Works, vol. iv. p. 442.
8 Constitutional and Party Questions, J. M. Cutts, p. 123.
CH. V.] SUMNER'S SPEECH 455
the issue was made up. Slavery, he said, " is the only sub-
ject within the field of national politics which excites any
real interest. The old matters which have divided the
minds of men . . . have disappeared, leaving the ground to
be occupied by a question grander far. The bank, sub-
treasury, the distribution of the public lands, are each and
all obsolete issues. And now, instead of these superseded
questions, which were filled for the most part with the odor
of the dollar, the country is directly summoned to consider
face to face a cause which is connected with all that is di-
vine in religion, with all that is pure and noble in morals,
with all that is truly practical and constitutional in politics.
Unlike the other questions, it is not temporary or local in its
character. It belongs to all times and to all countries.
Though long kept in check, it now, by your introduction,
confronts the people, demanding to be heard. To every
man in the land, it says with clear, penetrating voice, ' Are
you for freedom or are you for slavery ?' And every man
in the land must answer this question when he votes." '
Edward Everett also made a speech against the bill in the
Senate. His utterances were important, not only for the
weight of his argument, but because he spoke for the con-
servative Whigs of the North, those who had supported the
compromise of 1850 and had been the followers of Webster
or Fillmore. Chase and Seward in the Senate, and Sumner
and Wade out of it, had opposed that adjustment. The
character of the opposition had led Douglas to assert that
every one in either House of Congress who had supported
the compromise of 1850 was now in favor of the Kansas-
Nebraska bill ; and this speech of Everett gave that state-
ment the first effective denial.2 As hod been the case when
the other senators who have been mentioned spoke, so now
crowds filled the Senate Chamber ; the House was deserted.
The senator was listened to with profound attention, in
1 Wade spoke Feb. 6th, Seward Feb. 17th, and Sumner Feb. 21st.
2 Everett's speech was made Feb. 8th.
456 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
which curiosity in regard to his position was mingled with
interest, for it had been reported that he would favor the
bill.1 But all doubts regarding Everett's position were soon
dispelled as he gradually unfolded his argument, which,
though expressed in too courtly phrase to suit the radical
spirits, was very forcible. Being of a deprecatory nature, it
would hardly have fitted the leader of the opposition.2 Yet
it appealed to men whom the more radical utterances of
Chase, Wade, and Sumner could not reach, and it was of
great importance as reflecting, and at the same time mould-
ing, a certain public sentiment.3
Everett showed conclusively, by an argument drawn from
the letter of the acts and from the very nature of the legis-
lation itself, that the principle of non-intervention on the
part of Congress in the question of slavery was not enacted
in the territorial bills of 1850. Furthermore he asked:
" How can you find in a simple measure applying in terms
to these individual territories, and to them alone, a rule
which is to govern all other territories with a retrospective
and with a prospective action ? Is it not a mere begging of
1 Everett was a true conservative. "You are quite right," he wrote
Greeley in 1862, " in calling me a ' conservative,' but I am so, not from any
bigoted attachment to the past or to the established, as such. We should
all strive to preserve what is good as well as contest what is evil. . . .
Few men succeed in living up to their ideal of character, but I have tried
to obey the apostolic rule in both parts — ' to prove all things : hold fast
that which is good.' " This letter was called out by a complimentary
biographical notice that Greeley had written for the New York Ledger, and
a copy of it was kindly furnished me by Mr. Gordon L. Ford, of Brooklyn,
who owns the original. I take this occasion to say that I have been under
many obligations to Mr. Ford, and to his son, Mr. Paul L. Ford.
2 See Washington correspondence New York Times, Feb. 8th ; see also
New York Evening Post, especially letter from Boston criticising this
speech, published March llth.
3 The New York Courier and Enquirer called this speech of Everett
the most brilliant and effective effort of the session. Editorial of Feb.
9th. The Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune spoke of
his " eloquent, impressive, and truthful words."
CH.V.] EVERETT'S SPEECH 457
the question to say that those compromise measures adopted
in this specific case amount to such a general rule ?"
He then went on to consider the spirit of the compromise
measures of 1850, and what was the understanding of their
scope by their chief supporters. While, said he, " I was not
a member of Congress and had not heard the debates . . .
I inquired of those who had heard them, I read the reports,
and I had an opportunity of personal intercourse with some
who had taken a prominent part in all of those measures.
I never formed the idea — I never received the intimation
until I got it from this report of the committee — that those
measures were intended to have any effect beyond the terri-
tories of Utah and New Mexico, for which they were en-
acted. I cannot but think that if it was intended that they
should have any larger application, if it was intended that
they should furnish the rule which is now supposed, it would
have been a fact as notorious as the light of day." The well-
known personal and political friendship existing between
Webster and Everett ' gave a peculiar force to these expres-
sions ; and it was heightened when the orator proceeded to
relate his familiar intercourse with the expounder of the
Constitution in 1851, brought about by the fact that he had
by request undertaken to edit Webster's works and write
the biographical memoir prefaced to them. He had occa-
sion to discuss the 7th - of - March speech with its author ;
and, while the question of 1854 was not mooted, for little
had they dreamed that any such construction would ever be
put upon the legislation of 1850, Everett spoke with author-
ity when he expounded the meaning of Webster. He had
not the slightest doubt that the great Massachusetts senator
considered the Missouri restriction a compact which the gov-
ernment could not in good faith repeal.
Everett touched upon the absurdity of the principle of
Congressional non-intervention on the subject of slavery in
the territories ; and in conclusion he gave vent to words
1 See p. 293.
458 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
eminently proper for a philosophic historian, but which
sounded strange enough in the midst of a heated debate.
He said : " I share the opinions and the sentiments of the
part of the country where I was born and educated. . . .
But in relation to my fellow-citizens in other parts of the
country, I will treat . . . their characters and feelings with
tenderness. I believe them to be as good Christians, as good
patriots, as good men as we are."
The speeches in the Senate in favor of the Kansas-
Nebraska bill were not, with the exception of those of
Douglas, remarkable. There was considerable curiosity in
regard to the position of Cass. Although in the early part
of January it was reported that he would take advanced
ground in favor of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
an opinion became current, after Douglas had in substance
incorporated the Dixon amendment in his bill, that Cass was
wavering and would vote against the Kansas-Nebraska act.1
" He," wrote a prominent Democratic representative from
New York City, "evidently looks upon the whole move-
ment, and the manner in which it has been made, as a des-
picable piece of demagogism on the part of Douglas, though
he does not like to say so."2 John Van Buren had hopes
that Cass might be induced even to head the opposition.
" There are but two men," he wrote to Clemens, " who can
do any good in this crisis — one is General Cass, the other
yourself. If you will agree to the Nebraska bill of last year,3
it will be promptly and triumphantly passed." 4 Cass voted
for one of the amendments with Avhich Chase badgered
Douglas, and he explained that he did so because he did not
like the phraseology of the bill. In order to meet this ob-
jection, Douglas still further amended his bill so that the
1 See correspondence New York Courier and Enquirer, Jan. 31st.
2 Letter of Mike Walsh, New York Herald, Feb. 13th.
3 See p. 425.
* John Van Buren to ex-Senator Clemens, Feb. 3d, 1854, New York
Evening Post, Feb. llth.
CH.V.] DIFFERING CONSTRUCTIONS 459
crucial section should read: "which [the Missouri Com-
promise act] being inconsistent with the principles of non-
intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and
territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, com-
monly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared
inoperative and void, it being the true intent and meaning
of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or
State, nor to exclude it therefrom ; but to leave the people
thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitu-
tion of the United States." The alteration lay in the use of
the words " being inconsistent with" instead of " was super-
seded by," and in the more elaborate explanation of the in-
tention of the act ; in this shape it finally became a law.
This satisfied Cass, who declared that he would support the
measure,1 and two weeks later he delivered a long and formal
speech advocating it.
Among the supporters of the bill, two distinct conceptions
were developed of what would be the practical working of
the act. One was the notion of Douglas and Cass, agreed
to by most of the Northern Democrats, and in the main by
the Southern Whigs. It was their idea that the inhabitants
of the territories themselves should protect or prohibit slav-
ery. As that part of the country to which the act applied
was practically unsettled, they eluded the decision as to
when this sovereignty should begin, or as to how great a
number of settlers there should be in the territory before
they might legislate on this subject. Cass, goaded to define
the doctrine of which he was the author2 by the questions
of Southern Democrats, said that he did not seek " in the
science of arithmetic the principles of the science of political
institutions ;" and he maintained that the world had never
1 This amendment was not formally introduced until Feb. 7th ; but the
vote on the Chase amendment was on the 6th. This amendment was then
outlined by Douglas, and declared satisfactory by Cass.
3 See the Nicholson letter.
460 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
seen a truer basis of government than that established by
the one hundred and one Pilgrims when they landed at
Plymouth.
The Southern Democrats, however, believed in the doc-
trine of Calhoun ; that as slaves were property, those own-
ing them had the same right under the Constitution to carry
their negroes into the new territories as they had to take
their horses and mules, and no law could rightfully be made
to prevent their exercise of this right. It was true that the
Missouri restriction in set words prohibited slavery in the
Nebraska territory ; but the Southern Democratic senators
were all sure that it was unconstitutional, and would be so
decided when the question should be brought before the
highest tribunal. Yet to have the Missouri restriction de-
clared inoperative and void by Congress was more speedy
and direct than to have it decided unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court, and the Kansas-Nebraska act, therefore, met
their approval. But if it became a law, they held that they
would have a right to take their slaves into these territories,
and that such property would be entitled, to the same pro-
tection as any other property. When the people of a terri-
tory came to the point of applying for admission as a State,
then it would be decided by the voice of those inhabitants
whether the new State should be free or slave.
Chase laid great stress upon this difference of views be-
tween the supporters of the bill, and he endeavored, by an
amendment and pertinent suggestions, to have the Senate
declare precisely what was meant by the act. He averred
that in its present shape it settled nothing, and that misun-
derstandings were sure to arise in its construction. But his
amendment only received ten votes, and his suggestions were
contemptuously rejected. The reason of this is plainly ap-
parent. If the act stated that the first settlers of the terri-
tory might prohibit slavery, it would not receive the full
Southern Democratic vote ; if, on the other hand, it declared
the doctrine of Calhoun, hardly a Northern senator would
dare to give it his support. This difference of opinion was
CH. V.] DIFFERING CONSTRUCTIONS 461
frequently discussed in caucus ; and as the bill looked either
way, it was decided to put it through and leave it to the Su-
preme Court to determine which of the two constructions
was correct.1
Toombs made a noteworthy contribution to the discus-
sion when he denied the declaration so frequently made,
that in 1850 no one pretended that the compromise meas-
ures were inconsistent with the Missouri restriction. He
said that in Georgia he had been severely criticised for hav-
ing supported the compromise, and that in an address made
to the people of his State to vindicate his action, he had
maintained that a great principle, compromised away in 1820,
had " been rescued, re-established, and again firmly planted
in our political system" by the legislation of 1850. Yet
Toombs did not say that the Missouri restriction was abro-
gated ; and if that were his meaning, he would have been
practically alone in his opinion. His statement did not,
therefore, invalidate in the slightest degree the argument
drawn from the spirit of the compromise measures or the
intent of their originator and supporters.
' Douglas managed the bill in an adroit and energetic man-
ner, but it was objected that he was at times dictatorial to
the friends of the measure. Anxious to have the debate
proceed rapidly, he objected to a postponement, no matter
how reasonable might be the cause. He chafed at the de-
lay that Everett asked for in order to examine and consider
carefully the last amendment of Douglas before speaking
to the subject, and he was urgent that Clayton should con-
tinue speaking when physically unable to do so. It was
foreign to the nature of Douglas to be discourteous, but he
felt the necessity of. haste. While he could at no time have
had any doubt about carrying the measure through the Sen-
ate, he had anxiety about the. bill in the House ; for that
1 Speech of Benjamin in the Senate, May 8th, 1860; see also speech of
Bell, May 24th. and 25th, 1854 ; and speech of Douglas in the Senate, Feb.
23d, 1859.
462 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
body was more amenable to public opinion, and by the 1st
of February Douglas knew that the current of Northern
sentiment was setting strongly against his measure. The
longer the delay, the greater was the chance of representa-
tives being influenced by the manifest feeling of their con-
stituents. Douglas was always present in the Senate, and
eagerly watched the progress of the debate. His political
prospects were bound up in this measure, and he could not
afford to miss a single trick. He did not, however, speak
as often as Clay did on the compromise measures, but these
w^ere before the Senate more than six months, while the de-
bate on the Kansas -Nebraska act lasted but thirty -three
days.
Chase tacitly took the position of the leader of the op-
position. He was ready in debate, and quick to see and lay
bare the weak points of the adversary. Yet he was frank
in his replies, even when forced to answer questions he
would rather have left unanswered; for while he knew he
could not be too radical for his Free-soil supporters, he felt
that the time had come when he must appeal to a larger
constituency. His manner was described by Badger " as
cool and unimpassioned earnestness."
Some of the Southern Whig senators justified their sup-
port of the bill, because the offer of the repeal of the Mis-
souri Compromise came from the North ; if it were a com-
pact between the North and the South, the two parties to the
contract had the right to annul it ; and as the restriction
was manifestly in the interest of the Northern people, they
had, in a spirit of magnanimity, offered through their sena-
tors to yield their advantage. Could it be expected that the
South would refuse this generous proffer ? l
It was, indeed, strange that honorable men could shield
1 This was the argument of Dixon, Jones of Tennessee, and Clayton of
Delaware. The latter, indeed, did not vote for the bill. " Clayton speaks
for the bill, but will vote against it. Cass speaks against the bill, but will
vote for it."— New York Evening Post, March. 3d,
CH. V.] THE NORTHERN PRESS 463
themselves under such a miserable subterfuge ; for no fact
was ever more certain or easier to be seen than that the
Northern people utterly repudiated the action of the Illinois
senator and his supporters. Never but thrice in our history
has a feeling so spontaneous, fierce, and sincere spread over
the North. For a parallel to the sentiment of February, 1 854,
we must look backward to that inspired by the shedding of
American blood at Lexington, or forward to the grand up-
rising of 1861. " The storm that is rising," wrote Seward,
" is such a one as this country has never yet seen." ' In
every way that was possible a free and earnest people ex-
pressed their opinion. The power of the newspapers was
exercised in a manner to justify all the praise that has ever
been bestowed upon an unrestrained press. Ability and
zeal combined marked every step. Greeley and Dana, of
the New York Tribune; Bryant and Bigelow, of the Even-
ing Post; Raymond, of the Times ; Webb, of the Courier
and Enquirer; Bowles, of the Springfield Republican;
Thurlow Weed, of the Albany Journal; Schouler, of the
Cincinnati Gazette— all bore an honorable part in exciting
and guiding public opinion. And they had coadjutors, young
men full of enthusiasm for a righteous cause, who were glad
to begin a journalistic career under the inspiration of the
noble principle of opposition to the spread of slavery. Some
of them have written their reminiscences, which are a record
of pure and unselfish labors in a holy war. In reading
carefully the leading articles in the journals of this period,
one is struck with the vigor of the reasoning, and the sincere
motives which prompted it. Apparently the editors de-
termined their course without ulterior thoughts as to what
the effect might be on their pecuniary interest, or whether
it would suit their party or faction.
What was true of the prominent newspapers which have
been named may be affirmed, in general, of the opposition
press all over the North. The Whig journals were unani-
1 Seward to his wife, Feb. 19th, Life of Seward, yoj. ii. p.
464 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
mously opposed to the bill ; the Democratic press was di-
vided. In the main it could be said that the newspapers
which favored it had their policy dictated from Washing-
ton.1 The journals which opposed the repeal of the Mis-
souri Compromise were aggressive in tone ; their articles had
the ring of sincerity and earnestness; they were fervent
protests against the violation of plighted faith and against
opening the door to an extension of slavery.2 On the other
hand, the arguments of the newspapers favoring the bill were
shuffling, and sounded as if the heart of the writers was not
in the cause they were paid to advocate.3
1 See New York Evening Post, Feb. 7th. In New York State the Al-
bany Argus stated that thirty-seven " Hard " papers and two " Soft " sup-
ported the bill, while thirty-eight " Soft " papers opposed it ; cited by Von
Hoist, vol. iv. p. 418, note. In Ohio, thirteen Democratic journals were
for it, forty-one against it. National Intelligencer, March 25th. In Wis-
consin, four Democratic papers supported and eleven opposed the bill.
Boston Atlas, Feb. 21st. In Illinois, but one daily journal supported it.
Ibid. The five daily newspapers of Chicago, one of which Senator Doug-
las had a prominent share in establishing, were against it. New York
, Evening Post, Feb. 20th. Only two daily papers in Indiana were in favor
of the bill; and it was about the same way in Michigan and Iowa as in
Indiana and Illinois. Boston Atlas. "In some hundred newspapers
which we have just looked over, the expression of an indignant disap-
proval of the Nebraska bill is almost unanimous. It is a perfect chorus
of condemnation and remonstrance." — New York Evening Post, Feb. 15th.
2 One of the notable contributions to the discussion may be found in
the New York Tribune of Feb. 22d. Greeley, who obviously wrote the ar-
ticle, says: "We know Henry Clay did not deceive us with regard to his
views and purpose in urging that compromise [the compromise of 1850] ;
we are morally sure that no idea of repealing or 'superseding' the Mis-
souri Compromise entered into his mind. Others may have been deeper
in his confidence; but he deceived no man, and he discussed the whole
subject freely with us, and ever regarded it as one wherein the territories
[i. e., Utah and New Mexico] were to inure to free labor, and that the prac-
tical business was to save the South from all needless and wanton humil-
iation."
3 A good example of this may be seen in the able paper, the New York
Journal of Commerce. The remarks in the text will not apply to the New
York Herald, which advocated the bill in a positive and flippant manner.
CH. V.J PUBLIC MEETINGS 465
Public opinion generally acts more quickly through" the
press than through public meetings. People will not as-
semble to pass resolutions on any subject until they have
had time to get at the facts, to discuss them with their
neighbors, and to make up their minds. But the Kansas-
Nebraska bill was a measure whose provisions, clearly stated,
were its own condemnation; and the newspapers and the
Appeal of the Independent Democrats had made the intent
of the bill easily intelligible. Public meetings of protest
began to be held early. New York City was one of the first
to lead off.1 On January 30th, two or three thousand con-
servative people met at the Broadway Tabernacle. They
were, for the most part, the solid merchants and leading
lawyers of the city, who had been active in 1850 in working
up public sentiment in favor of the compromise measures.
This meeting, with but one negative vote, declared against
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and asserted that
such action " would impair the confidence of the country in
the integrity of the South." a A gathering in Chicago on
the 8th of February attracted great attention, for the pro-
ceedings were directed by men who, though they had been
warm personal and political friends of Senator Douglas,
could not follow where he led. These spoke in earnest tones
against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act.3 On the
18th of February a people's meeting was held at the Broad-
wray Tabernacle, New York City. The building was crowd-
ed ; people were glad to stand in the aisles and lobbies for
the sake of hearing the speeches, and many were turned
away because they could not get inside the doors. The
meeting was addressed by John P. Hale and Henry Ward
Beecher, who created great enthusiasm. Resolutions de-
nouncing the Kansas-Nebraska bill and calling upon the
1 The first meeting of which I have found any notice was at Cleveland
on Jan. 28th.
2 New York Tribune, Jan. 31st; see also the Liberator, Feb. 10th, and
the New York Evening Post of Jan. 81st.
3 Boston Atlas; New York Tribune.
I.— 30
466 ?IERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
President to veto it, if passed, were adopted with demon-
strations of intense feeling.1
Boston likewise had two meetings in Faneuil Hall to pro-
test against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The
radical gathering was addressed by Theodore Parker ; the
conservative meeting was composed largely of the same ele-
ment that had assembled together to endorse Webster's
7th -of -March speech, and was presided over by Samuel
Eliot, the Boston representative who had voted for the Fugi-
tive Slave law.2
These meetings which have been mentioned were simply
a representation of what was taking place all over the
North. In every city and every town, people of the same
mind came together and expressed their sentiments. The
newspapers had columns in each issue which were entitled
" The Yoice of the Free States on the Nebraska Question," s
or " The Voice of the North, No Slavery Extension," 4 and
these were devoted to brief accounts of public meetings the
tenor and action of which were always the same. At last
one journal which had devoted a great deal of space to these
expressions of opinion felt impelled to say : " If the Evening
Post were three times as large as it is, and were issued three
times a day, we should still despair of finding room for any-
thing like full reports of the spontaneous gatherings which
are every day held throughout the North and West " to
protest against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act.5
Up to the 15th of March two to three hundred large popular
meetings had been held to denounce the bill, while there had
not been at the North half a dozen gatherings to sustain
it.6 "We have never known," said the Richmond Whig,
"such unanimity of sentiment at the North upon any ques-
New York Times ; New York Tribune.
The Liberator; New York Tribune, Feb. 24th.
New York Evening Post. * New York Tribune.
Cited by the Liberator, April 7th.
New York Courier, March 15th, cited and verified by the Washington
National Intelligencer of March 18th.
CH. V.] NORTHERN LEGISLATURES 467
tion affecting the rights of the South as now prevails in op-
position to the Missouri Compromise repeal." *
The expression of the authoritative representatives of the
people, with one notable exception, was all in the same di-
rection. Between January 1st and March 15th, ten of the
legislatures of the free States were in session, and these
bodies, in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York,
and Wisconsin, protested against the passage of the Kansas-
Nebraska bill.2 The legislatures of Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, and Ohio, although strongly Democratic, refused to
vote on resolutions concerning the subject. California took
no action. A large amount of influence and work was
brought to bear upon Illinois, with the result of obtaining a
reluctant approval of the measure from her legislature.3
1 March 21st. The description of the opinion of New England by a
Southerner visiting there may be interesting : " They are ' boiling over '
here upon the Nebraska bill; all parties, Whigs and Democrats, Silver
Grays and Woolly Pleads, Softs and Hards, anti-slavery and even the lit-
tle handful of pro-slavery folks." — Private letter to a Washington lady,
dated Boston, Feb. 18th, published in National Intelligencer, Feb. 28th.
The Boston correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce wrote
Feb. 16th: "It must be acknowledged that persons who have hitherto
been quite conservative on the questions before the country are now giv-
ing unmistakable symptoms in the opposite direction. . . . They begin
to feel that they must oppose with all their might the further extension of
slave-holding on this continent, and that the North has hitherto been too
lukewarm on this subject," " The protest against the Nebraska bill of
Senator Douglas from the Northwest will be long and loud. It comes
not from anti-slavery men, but from men of all parties." — Letter from
Iowa, dated Jan. 26th, published in New York Independent.
2 In Maine, the resolutions passed the Senate by a vote of 24 to 1, the
House by 96 to 6 ; in Massachusetts, the Senate was unanimous, the House
246 to 13. The Rhode Island Legislature passed the resolutions unani-
mously. In New York, the Senate stood 23 to 6, the Assembly 80 to 27 ;
in Wisconsin, the majorities for the resolutions were large. New York
Courier, March 15th, cited and corrected by the Washington National
Intelligencer of March 18th. Maine, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin were
Democratic States.
8 Ibid. The vote in Illinois stood : Senate, 14 to 8 ; House, 30 to 22 j but
468 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
Petitions and memorials against the Kansas-Nebraska act
poured in to Congress. " We know not," said the Liberator,
"how many remonstrances have been sent to Congress from
all parts of the free States against the passage of the Ne-
braska bill : we only know that we cannot keep pace with
them ; while the first memorial, approving the bill, has yet
to be presented to that body." ' " Sir," said a great man at
Washington to a friend, " every ten signatures to a remon-
strance against this bill make a pale face at Washington." 2
Those who have read the preceding chapter will not ex-
pect any such display of sentiment in favor of the measure
at the South as there was against it at the North. There
had, indeed, been exciting political contests at the South,
but they were generally connected with the strife of candi-
dates for office, at which time interest in the struggle had
been aroused by impassioned appeals from the stump. But
a healthy public opinion which was not worked up by poli-
ticians, and which manifested itself in engrossing private dis-
cussion, in countless letters to the newspapers, in large popu-
lar meetings, and in petitions to Congress without number,
was almost absolutely unknown at the South.3 A portion
of the Southern press and a large part of the Southern aris-
tocracy, who were the only people that did any political
thinking in their section, were at first disposed to regard
this measure of Douglas as a gift of the Greeks. It is true
that, in 1848, Calhoun had originated the doctrine that the
Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and Southern
thinkers had embraced that theory ; but Calhoun himself had
never proposed its abrogation ; and, indeed, at the previ-
ous session of Congress, Atchison, who was one of the chief
the affirmative vote in both branches made up less than one-half of the
legislature.
1 April 14th. 2 New York Evening Post, Feb. 20th.
8 The South does not speak by petitions to Congress, said Toombs ;
" she speaks through her representatives and senators."— Senate, May
25th, 1854.
CH.V.] SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 469
apostles of slavery, had admitted that while the Missouri
Compromise was a great error, the error was irremediable
and must be submitted to, for it was evident that the restric-
tion could never be repealed. And now " no public meet-
ing of the people, no private assembly, no convention, no
legislative body, had asked that the Missouri restriction
should be set aside; and no Southerner in Congress had
ever proposed its repeal." l
But when the scope of the Kansas - Nebraska act came
to be thoroughly understood, when it was noted that the
friends of Southern institutions in Congress were earnest in
its favor and that the abolitionists were vehemently opposed
to it, the newspapers began to praise Douglas warmly and to
advocate his measure with zeal.2 The exceptions were few,
and were practically confined to New Orleans and the com-
mercial cities of the border States.3 While some observers
reported a feeling of indifference in regard to the measure,
this arose from the fact that it was not perfectly understood,
or because its passage would be regarded as a barren vic-
tory.4 There was no doubt, however, that the Charleston
Courier faithfully represented Southern opinion when it re-
marked, " We cherish slavery as the apple of our eye, and
1 See speech of Cullom, Whig representative of Tennessee, April llth.
2 Compare the Richmond Whig of Jan. 25th and Feb. 14th. Jan. 25th it
is " that tricky demagogue, Douglas ;" Feb. 14th, Douglas has " exhibited
a disinterested fearlessness." See New York Times, Feb. 4th; also article
in the Columbia (S. C.) Times of March 4th. "Senator Douglas deserves
well of his country for having originally proposed it." — Charleston Cour-
ier, Feb. 16th ; also letters in the Washington National Intelligencer, Jan.
31st and Feb. 14th.
8 The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin was strongly opposed to it ;
see articles of Jan. 23d, 27th, Feb. 18th, 24th, and March 8th. The New
Orleans Crescent thought the measure one of bad policy for the South ;
see article of Feb. 24th, cited in the New York Times, March 8th. The
Louisville Journal and Baltimore American gave it a qualified condemna-
tion, and the St. Louis Democrat was outspoken against it. See New
York Evening Post, Feb. 4th.
4 New York Evening Post, March 17th ; New York Times, Feb. 16th.
470 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
are resolved to maintain it, peaceably if we can, forcibly if
we must ;" and it may confidently be stated that when the
Kansas-Nebraska bill was understood to be of benefit to
slavery, Southern sentiment at that moment became concen-
trated in its favor.1 "The South flies to the bill," wrote
Francis Lieber from South Carolina, "as moths to the
candle." 2
The legislatures of the slave States were slower to act
than those of the North. Before the bill passed the Senate,
only Georgia had spoken. Her House unanimously, and the
Senate with only three dissenting votes, adopted resolutions
strongly in favor of the bill, and instructed her delegation to
vote in Congress accordingly. In Tennessee the Senate en<
dorsed the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska act, but the
House laid a similar resolution on the table.3 Not until
after the bill had passed the United States Senate did the
legislatures of Mississippi and Louisiana adopt resolutions
approving it.4
And now the day had come when a vote on the bill was
to be taken. The Senate met on the 3d of March at the
usual hour, and an animated discussion of the measure con-
sumed the afternoon and evening. The floor was full and
the galleries were crowded when Douglas rose, a half an
hour before midnight, to close the debate. He offered to
waive his privilege in order that they might proceed to vote ;
but many senators protested, and begged him to go on. The
importance of the occasion and the influence which this
speech might have on his future career might well make
even as ready a speaker as Douglas tremble when he thought
what he must confront. The bill had passed to a third read-
1 Charleston Courier, Feb. 16th. The Richmond WJiig said, March 14th :
"The South are united for the removal of the Missouri restriction."
3 Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 269.
3 New York Courier, March 15th, cited and corrected by the National
Intelligencer of March 18th.
4 National Intelligencer, April 1st and 4th.
CH.V.] DOUGLAS CLOSES THE DEBATE 471
ing the day previous by a vote of twenty-nine to twelve, so
that argument in the Senate was needless ; but the people
of the North were almost unanimously against the measure
and its author, and it was to them that Douglas spoke with
extraordinary energy and ability, persuading and imploring
them to reverse their verdict. A feeling of regret that he
had provoked this controversy must have mingled with the
excitement of the combatant in the contest ; but there was
no trace of it in his manner as he applied himself vigorously
to the work of justifying himself, of defending his bill, and
of hurling defiance at his opponents.
The appearance of Douglas was striking. Though very
short in stature, he had an enormous head, and when he rose
to take arms against the sea of troubles which opposed him,
he was the very picture of intellectual force. Always a
splendid fighter, he seemed this night like a gladiator who
contended against great odds ; for while he was backed by
thirty-seven senators, among his fourteen opponents were
the ablest men of the Senate, and their arguments must be
answered if he expected to ride out the storm which had
been raised against him. Never in the United States, in
the arena of debate, had a bad cause been more splendidly
advocated ; never more effectively was the worse made to
appear the better reason.
The opponents of the bill, he said, had misrepresented the
issue to the country ; they wished the people to believe that
the paramount object of the bill was to repeal the Missouri
Compromise. " That which is a mere incident they choose
to consider the principle. They make war on the means by
which we propose to accomplish an object instead of openly
resisting the object itself. The principle which we propose
to carry into effect is this : That Congress shall neither legis-
late slavery into any territories or State, nor out of the same ;
but the people shall he left free to regulate their domestic con-
cerns in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the
United States. In order to carry this principle into practi-
cal operation, it becomes necessary to remove whatever legal
472 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
obstacles might be found in the way of its free exercise.
It is only for the purpose of carrying out this great funda-
mental principle of self-government that the bill renders"
the Missouri restriction inoperative and void.
Douglas then went on to show, by extracts from his
speeches, that as he thought now, so had he thought in
1850 ; and at that time the legislature of his State believed
that the principle should be so applied.1 We are contend-
ing, he maintained, for " the great fundamental principle of
popular sovereignty ;" and as the Missouri restriction is in-
consistent with that principle, it ought to be abrogated. In-
stead of the opponents of this bill talking about " the sanc-
tity of the Missouri Compromise and the dishonor attached
to the violation of plighted faith, . . . why do they not
meet the issue boldly and fairly and controvert the sound-
ness of this great principle of popular sovereignty in obedi-
ence to the Constitution ?" It is because " the doctrine of
the abolitionists — the doctrine of the opponents of the Ne-
braska and Kansas bill and of the advocates of the Missouri
restriction — demands congressional interference with slav-
ery, not only in the territories, but in all the new States to
be formed therefrom. It is the same doctrine, when applied
to the territories and new States of this Union, which the
British government attempted to enforce by the sword upon
the American colonies. It is this fundamental principle of
self-government which constitutes the distinguishing feature
of the Nebraska bill. . . . The onward march of this great
and growing country," he continued, made it necessary for
the committee on territories to give a government to Ne-
braska ; and then we met this question of slavery. It could
be settled on the principle of 1820, which was congressional
interference, or on the principle of 1850, which was non-
interference. " We chose the latter for two reasons : first,
because we believed that the principle was right ; and, sec-
ond, because it was the principle adopted in 1850, to which
1 See Appendix, Congressional Globe, vol. xxix. p. 327.
GH.V.] DOUGLAS CLOSES THE DEBATE 473
the two great political parties of the country were solemnly
pledged." If we will adopt this principle, the senator fur-
ther argued, "it will have the effect to destroy all sectional
parties and sectional agitations." If the slavery question
is withdrawn from the political arena and removed -to the
States and territories, each to decide for itself, there can be
no more agitation of slavery. If this vexed question is re-
moved from politics, the agitators will be deprived of their
vocation. There will be no further necessity for bargains
between the North and the South.
" I have not," said Douglas at the close of his argument,
" brought this question forward as a Northern man or as a
Southern man. I am unwilling to recognize such divisions
and distinctions. I have brought it forward as an Ameri-
can senator, representing a State which is true to this prin-
ciple, and which has approved of my action with respect to
the Nebraska bill. I have brought it forward not as an act
of justice to the South more than to the North. I have
presented it especially as an act of justice to the people of
those territories, and of the States to be formed therefrom,
now and in all time to come. I have nothing to say about
Northern rights or Southern rights. I know of no such di-
visions or distinctions under the Constitution. The bill does
equal and exact justice to the whole Union, and every part
of it; it violates the rights of no State or territory, but
places each on a perfect equality, and leaves the people
thereof to the free enjoyment of all their rights under the
Constitution."
The foregoing extracts will give an idea of the line of ar-
gument which Douglas pursued ; but nearly the whole speech
must be read to comprehend the skill with which specious
arguments were urged, and duly to estimate the dexterity
with which an historical account of the Missouri Compro-
mise and succeeding events was used. The kindly feeling
of the audience towards him from the first was increased by
his audacity, and with artful management he gained their
sympathy. He told how he had been maligned all over the
474 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
country. He had been burned in effigy in all the abolition
towns of Ohio because they believed the misrepresentations
of Chase ; he had been hanged in effigy in Boston, owing to
the influence of Sumner ; but that he considered an honor,
for this same Boston had closed Faneuil Hall to the immor-
tal Webster. A remonstrance had been presented to the
Senate in which he was called " a traitor to his country, to
freedom, and to God, worthy only of everlasting infamy;"
and he had even received insulting letters from Ohio, rejoic-
ing at his domestic bereavements,1 and praying that still
greater calamities might befall him. The state of public
sentiment of which these were the manifestations was, the
senator averred, due to the misrepresentations of his oppo-
nents, and particularly to those which were contained in the
Appeal of the Independent Democrats.
In spite of his warmth of argument and vehemence of at-
tack, Douglas showed the most perfect courtesy to his an-
tagonists. When Seward, Chase, or Sumner, to whom he
especially addressed himself, desired to interrupt him to cor-
rect a statement or briefly reply to an argument, Douglas
cheerfully yielded the floor ; but every rejoinder showed
that in debate he was more than a match for any one of
these senators. The politeness with which he complied with
their requests for a hearing, and the force of his answers,
caused Seward to burst out, in admiration, " I have never
had so much respect for the senator as I have to-night."
In the course of his speech, Douglas took up Everett's
argument, and showed by the construction he put upon
Webster's 7th- of -March speech that he could twist the
language of the clearest of speakers to his purpose as well
as he could distort the facts of history.
While the suavity of Douglas during the whole night was
remarkable, he did not propose to let Chase and Sumner off
as easily as he had Seward and Everett. Their charge that
his measure was offered as a bid for Presidential votes was
The wife of Douglas died Jan. 19th, 1853.
CH.V.] DOUGLAS CLOSES THE DEBATE 475
a rankling wound, and he demanded with a show of sincere
indignation if they were " incapable of conceiving that an
honest man can do a right thing from worthy motives?"
Nor did he think that these senators were proper judges of
his character or principles, for he intimated that they had
obtained their seats in the Senate " by a corrupt bargain or
dishonorable coalition." This angered Chase, who met it
with an indignant denial, and Sumner made a calm refuta-
tion. In the excited colloquy which followed between
Chase and a Democrat from California, who insisted on
charging directly what Douglas had only implied, the " Lit-
tle Giant " was cool, and, restraining the impetuosity of his
supporter, continued the defence of his own motives ; and,
with the address of a master of parliamentary art, he made
it appear, by the most delicate implication, that he was a
self-sacrificing patriot, while Chase was actuated by an " un-
worthy ambition."
Douglas spoke until daybreak, and the crowd remained
to hear the last words of the giant, who seemed to exult in
his strength and who was flushed with victory. Senator
Houston explained why he could not consent to a violation
of the Missouri Compromise ; and then the vote was taken.
The Senate was composed of sixty-one members,1 of whom
fifty- one were present, and the vote stood 37 in favor
to 14 against the bill. There were recorded in the affir-
mative fourteen Northern Democrats, fourteen Southern
Democrats, and nine Southern Whigs ; while four North-
ern Democrats, six Northern Whigs, two Free-soilers, one
Southern Whig, and one Southern Democrat voted in
the negative. The negative vote is a roll of legislative
honor, and deserves detailed mention. It was composed of
Dodge of Wisconsin, Hamlin of Maine, James of Rhode
Island, Walker of Wisconsin, Houston of Texas, Demo-
crats ; Fessenden of Maine, Fish and Seward of New York,
Foot of Vermont, Smith of Connecticut, Wade of Ohio, and
1 There were thirty-one States, but there was one vacancy.
476 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
Bell of Tennessee, Whigs ; and Chase and Sumner, Free-
soilers.1
As the senators went home on this sombre March morn-
ing, they heard the boom of the cannon from the navy-yard
proclaiming the triumph of what Douglas called popular
sovereignty. Chase and Sumner, who were devoted friends,
walked down the steps of the Capitol together, and as they
heard the thunders of victory, Chase exclaimed : " They
celebrate a present victory, but the echoes they awake will
never rest until slavery itself shall die." 2
Before the bill passed, an amendment of Badger of North
Carolina was incorporated in it to the effect that nothing in
the act should be construed to revive the old Louisiana law
which protected slavery in the whole of that territory. An
amendment of Clayton was likewise adopted ; this provided
that only citizens of the United States should have the right
of suffrage and of holding office in the territories, it be-
ing intended to work against emigrants from Europe who
might settle there. This amendment was only carried by
a vote of 22 to 20 ; and it is noticeable, as indicating the
feeling towards the foreign population, that all the sen-
ators but one who favored this amendment were from the
slave States, and all who opposed it were from the free
States, Douglas voting with Chase, Seward, Sumner, and
Wade.
1 It will be rioted that Everett's name does not appear in the negative.
He remained in the Senate until half-past three o'clock in the morning,
but was ill and could not remain longer. National Intelligencer, March
4th, and Everett's explanation, March 7th. He showed excessive sensi-
tiveness to attacks that were made upon him for his failure to vote against
the bill. A certificate soon appeared, signed by Seward, Wade, Fish,
Smith, and Foot, vouching his inability to be present. This did not
help the matter. See New York Evening Post, April 10th, llth, and 15th ;
also Reminiscences of a Journalist, C. T. Congdon, p. 278, which undoubt-
edly refers to Everett. See also private letters of Seward, Life of Sew-
ard, vol. ii. p. 225. Clayton was also ill, but would have voted against the
bill ; he stated his reasons in the Senate, March 7th.
9 Life of Chase, Schuckers, p. 156.
CH.V.J POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 477
This speech of Douglas, which closed the debate, has been
considered at length, for it was an epoch-making event in the
decade of 1850-60. Cass was the author of the doctrine
which Douglas so warmly embraced, but until now it had
been known as congressional non-intervention, or squatter
sovereignty.1 Douglas this night gave it the name of popular
sovereignty, and the name was a far greater invention than
the doctrine. The ardent advocacy of the sovereignty of the
people was certain to have a powerful influence;2 and while
at this moment the fate of Douglais seemed trembling in the
balance, he was destined to rise above the wave of popular
indignation which now threatened to overwhelm him. Using
his principle of popular sovereignty to oppose the encroach-
ments of slavery, he would in the future enlist under that
banner many who now regarded his work with execration.
The doctrine of popular sovereignty died with slavery.
At the best it was a makeshift. As expounded by Doug-
las, it meant that Congress, which represented the political
wisdom of an educated people, should abdicate its constitu-
tional right of deciding a question, which demanded the most
sagacious statesmanship, in favor of a thousand, or perhaps
ten thousand, pioneers, adventurers, and fortune-seekers who
should happen to locate in a territory. As an expedient to
settle an angry controversy, and as one of a series of com-
promises, congressional non-intervention in Utah and New
Mexico was justified in 1850 ; but, used as a principle to un-
settle a time-honored settlement, it can receive at the bar of
history only an unqualified condemnation.
A spirit had been roused by the introduction of this bill
which the politicians must reckon with. On the 13th of
March, Hamilton Fish, senator from "New York, present-
ed a petition, signed by clergymen of different denomina-
tions in New York City and its vicinity, remonstrating
against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act. The bish-
1 Douglas made a distinction between squatter and popular sovereignty.
See Cutts, p. 123. a See Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, vol. i. p. 115,
478 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
op of the Episcopal Church headed the memorial, and it was
subscribed by a majority of the clergymen of New York
City.1 This petition attracted no attention, and it was or-
dered to lie upon the table in the usual manner. But the
next day Everett presented a remonstrance against the pas-
sage of the Nebraska bill, signed by three thousand and
fifty clergymen of all denominations and sects in the differ-
ent States of New England. There were in that section of
country three thousand eight hundred ministers,2 and this
memorial was therefore the expression of the sentiments of
a very large proportion of the whole number.3
The petition was couched in strong language. It said :
" The undersigned, clergymen of different religious denom-
inations in New England, hereby, in the name of Almighty
God, and in his presence, do solemnly protest against the
passage of what is known as the Nebraska bill. . . . We pro-
test against it as a great moral wrong, as a breach of faith
eminently unjust to the moral principles of the community,
and subversive of all confidence in national engagements;
as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the exist-
ence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the righteous
judgments of the Almighty." 4
1 Among the names subscribed to it were : J. M. Wainwright, Stephen
H. Tyng, G. T. Bedell, Isaac Ferris, George B. Cheever, R. S. Storrs, Jr.,
Theo. L. Cuyler, Samuel Osgood, Henry W. Bellows, Thomas K. Beecher.
The Independent said that if there had been time to circulate the peti-
tion more widely, many more names would have been obtained. The
Independent, March 23d.
8 See Everett's statement, Congressional Globe, vol. xxviii. p. 617.
3 Among the names subscribed to this memorial were : Lyman Beecher ;
Manton Eastburn, Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts; C. A. Bartol; Theo-
dore Parker; T. D. Woolsey, Pres. of Yale College; F. Wayland, Pros, of
Brown University ; Mark Hopkins, Pres. Williams College ; Edward Hitch-
cock, Pres. Amherst College; G. Burgess, Episcopal bishop of Maine;
Horace Bushnell, Hartford ; E. Ballou, Moutpelier. See the Liberator,
April 14th.
* The petition was dated March 1st, and the purpose was to present it
to the Senate before the bill passed,
CH.V.] THE CLERGYMEN'S PETITION 479
The reading of this memorial created a sensation in the
Senate. Douglas made some fierce and sarcastic remarks,
and rebuked the clergymen for quitting their proper voca-
tion and meddling in an affair which they did not under-
stand. They had, he said, " desecrated the pulpit and pros-
tituted the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting
influence of party politics."
Somewhat more than a month later, Douglas himself pre-
sented a petition against the bill of five hundred and four
clergymen of the Northwestern States, which emanated
from Chicago, and which was similar in language to the
New England petition. He made this the text of a speech
which criticised severely the interference of preachers in
affairs of State.
Douglas and the Southern senators might cry down these
manifestations, but in truth they were the inception of a
movement which was destined to have a powerful influence
towards the abolition of slavery. On the compromise meas-
ures clergymen had been divided ; indeed, many of high sta-
tion had counselled submission to the Fugitive Slave law.
Now, however, they were practically united, and they con-
sidered it their duty to preach sermons against what they
believed to be a violation of plighted faith.1
It will be generally conceded that on political questions
which are those of mere expediency the minister should be
silent. It would to-day 2 shock the church-going community
to hear from the pulpit arguments directed to show that a
high tariff or free trade was demanded by the law of God ;
but when the paramount political issue becomes intertwined
with a sacred moral principle, it is the duty of the preacher
to declare that principle, and to urge his hearers to make
1 Douglas said that on one day in New England fifteen hundred to two
thousand sermons were preached against the bill. Appendix, Congres-
sional Globe, vol. xxix. p. 656. The religious and secular newspapers of
this time are full of reports of sermous on the subject.
2 1892,
480 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
their political action conform to the behests of the moral
law. The slavery question had a moral as well as a polit-
ical side. The ministers would have been recreant to their
calling had they not proclaimed from their pulpits what the
spirit of their religion prompted them to speak. This wide-
spread agitation from the pulpit is a striking evidence of
the deeply stirred-up feeling at the North. It was patent
that the preachers spoke to willing listeners, and that their
congregations would stand by them in the position they had
taken.
The bill now went to the House of representatives, and
the first action of this body showed that it paid atten-
tion to the uprising of popular sentiment which the Senate
had depreciated and disregarded. On the 21st of March, the
Senate Kansas-Nebraska bill came up in order, and Rich-
ardson,1 who was thoroughly devoted to Douglas and his
interests, moved that it be referred to the committee on
territories, of which he was the chairman. Cutting, a mem-
ber from New York City, and who belonged to the faction
of " Hards," at once moved that it be referred to the com-
mittee of the whole on the state of the Union, and demand-
ed the previous question. He stated that he was in favor of
the principle of the bill; but the representatives owed it to
the country to consider this "grave and serious question"
carefully, to correct whatever imperfections there were in
the measure as it had come from the Senate, and to make
plain to the people of the North what was intended by this
legislation; for it was undeniable that, "since its introduc-
tion into Congress, the North would seem to have taken up
arms, and to have become excited into a sort of civil insur-
rection." In spite of the protest of Richardson that such a
reference of the bill "would be killing it by indirection,"
Cutting's motion prevailed by a vote of 110 to 95. This
action was a defeat for the friends of the measure, and es-
pecially incensed Breckinridge, of Kentucky, who said that,
1 Richardson was from Illinois.
CH.V.] THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL IN THE HOUSE 481
having been done " under the guise of friendship to the bill,
it was the act of a man who throws his arm in apparently
friendly embrace around another saying, ' How is it with
thee, brother ?' and at the same time covertly stabs him to
the heart." Some of the opponents of the bill were disposed
to think that it could not possibly pass the. House at this ses-
sion ; but those who had the best knowledge and clearest
judgment thought, with the New York Tribune, that the
snake was scotched, not killed.1 As a matter of fact, this
reference placed the bill at the foot of the calendar ; there
were fifty bills ahead of it, and it could not be reached in
the regular course of legislation.2
The shrewd anticipation of Douglas, that the help of
the administration would be needed to carry the measure
through the House, was realized. Marcy, however, who had
more influence with the representatives than any other mem-
ber of the cabinet, was indifferent to the fate of the measure.
Indeed, after Douglas introduced the substitute, Marcy's ap-
prehensions of the effect of it on the Democratic party were
so grave that he entertained the idea of resigning his posi-
tion, and took advice from his personal and political friends
regarding his line of duty. The drift of their opinion was
that he ought to remain. The "Softs" had now an equal
amount of the patronage and influence of New York State ;
but should Marcy retire, it was feared that the " Hards "
would gain the supremacy.3 It may be presumed that in
Marcy's mind a higher motive was mixed with the lower,
and that he felt that, if he resigned, a secretary of state
might be chosen who would truckle to the Southern propa-
ganda, and give them effective aid in carrying out schemes
prejudicial to the country.
1 March 23d. 2 See Congressional Globe, vol. xxviii. p. 762.
3 Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 382. This was
stated on the authority of Reuben E. Fenton, a "Soft" representative
from New York. See also Washington correspondence New York Cou-
rier and Enquirer, Jan, 31st and Feb. 25th.
I.— 31
482 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
The vacillation of the President undoubtedly gave uneas-
iness to the supporters of the measure. When under the
influence of Davis and Gushing, he was an enthusiastic friend
of it, and expressed himself warmly in favor of the princi-
ple of the bill;1 when chilled by the doubts of Marcy,
he wavered. " You ask me," wrote Dix, " what General
Pierce's opinion is. I do not know. Some say he is for
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise — others as confi-
dently that he is against it." a The result of the New Hamp-
shire election might well make him halt between the two
opinions. His native State, which had given him a hand-
some majority for President, was now only carried with great
difficulty by the Democratic governor; and, what was of
more importance, the lower House of the legislature was so
strongly anti-Nebraska that it would insure the choice of
two opposition senators in the place of Norris and Williams,
who had voted for the Kansas-Nebraska act. But, in spite
of internal dissensions and the unsteadiness of the Presi-
dent, the authoritative public expressions of the adminis-
tration were all one way. It was announced that the pat-
ronage would be used in the interest of those representatives
who voted for the bill ; 3 and the morning after the House
had consigned it to the committee of the whole, the organ
declared that the Kansas - Nebraska project had become
a prominent measure of President Pierce's administration.
" If it be defeated in the House, it will, it must be admit-
ted, be a defeat of the administration."* Important ap-
pointments were withheld in order that they might be used
to reward the constant friends of the bill ; alluring bait was
held out to those who were lukewarm, and threats were
1 See letter of Jeremiah Clemens to Franklin Pierce, March 24th,
Washington Union, March 26th.
2 Letter of Dix to J. C. Curtis, Feb. 25th, Memoirs of J. A. Dix, vol. i,
p. 285.
3 Washington Union, March 7th, quoted by Voii Hoist.
* Washington Union, March 22d.
CH.V.] THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL AND THE PRESIDENT 483
employed to coerce the representatives who were disposed
to rebel against the dictates of the party leaders. All the
members of the cabinet, except Marcy and McClelland, were
working for the measure, and Davis and Gushing were earn-
est and indefatigable advocates.
As the bill slept in the committee of the whole, some of
its friends and some of its enemies began to think that the
project would not be revived this session.1 But they little
knew Douglas who thought one check would daunt him.
He thoroughly understood the situation. He was aware
that many Northern Democratic representatives would se-
cretly delight if the bill were never brought to a vote in the
House, yet these same men would feel constrained to give it
their voice when the question was actually put. They would
not dare to resist the power of the administration and that
party discipline which, having been instituted by Jefferson,
had gained force by use, and was never so powerful as now.
On the 8th of May the result of the pressure became man-
ifest. On that day Richardson, the trusted lieutenant of
Douglas, obtained the floor after the reading of the journal,
and moved that the House resolve itself into the committee
of the whole on the state of the Union. He frankly avowed
that his object was to have the committee lay aside all bills
which had the precedence of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, so
that they might at once proceed to its consideration. While
the Senate act had been placed at the foot of the calendar,
there were but eighteen bills ahead of the House bill, which
had been reported by the House committee of territories,
and which was the same as the Senate bill before it had been
amended. Eichardson now moved to lay aside one by one
1 " The Nebraska bill lies quietly in the committee of the whole. . . .
The Nebraska bill is considered dead, . . . Killed by Cutting." — New
York Herald, April 6th. " We now believe it most improbable that any
bill repudiating the Missouri restriction can be forced through the pres-
ent House."— New York Tribune, April 27th. The latter is quoted by
Von Hoist.
484 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
these bills. The question was put eighteen times, and each
time the majority voted with their leader. The House Kan-
sas-Nebraska bill was then reached, when Kichardson pro-
posed as a substitute a bill which was the same as the Senate
act, with the exception of the Clayton amendment. This
was, the next two days, debated in committee. On Thurs-
day, May llth, Richardson obtained the floor almost imme-
diately after the reading of the journal, moved that the de-
bate close the next day at twelve o'clock, and on that motion
called for the previous question. At this, the pent-up feel-
ing of the opponents of the measure broke forth. They im-
plored Kichardson for more time ; they protested against
this summary closing of debate as rank injustice. An in-
formal discussion was permitted by the speaker, in order to
see whether an understanding could not be arrived at ; but
the feeling was so intense that -heated expressions were not
avoided, and the breach became wider. One member roused
the wrath of others by calling the bill a " swindle." Alex-
ander H. Stephens expressed the willingness of the majority
to give the minority a reasonable time for. debate, provided
they would then allow a vote to be taken ; but he emphatic-
ally declared that if factious opposition were made, it would
be met " as factious opposition in this House has always been
met." Lewis D. Campbell ' cried, amidst shouts of approval :
" I will resist the further progress of this bill by all the means
which the rules of the House place in my power, even though
gentlemen may call it faction." Then filibustering under
the leadership of Campbell began. Motions to adjourn,
motions to adjourn to a fixed time, motions for a call of the
House, followed one another. Then a member would ask
to be excused from voting, and a friend would move that
he be excused ; and on all these motions the yeas and nays
were called for. In short, all kinds of dilatory motions were
used with skill by men who thoroughly understood the rules
of the House, and they were supported by a determined
Of Ohio.
CH. V.] THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL IN THE HOUSE 485
minority. The session continued all day Thursday, all of
Thursday night, and all day Friday, without reaching any
result. At times the monotonous call of the yeas and nays
would cease, and attempts would be made by the more mod-
erate of both sides to come to some arrangement, when a
remark would be interjected by some member which would
provoke an angry reply, and the uproar and confusion would
begin again. Douglas was on the floor of the House a large
share of the time for the purpose of directing his followers,
but he and Kichardson did little but watch and wait for a
subsidence of the excited feeling. It was after eleven o'clock
on Friday night when, as a result of a talk between Camp-
bell and Richardson, the latter stated that, as a number of
the opponents of the bill had signified their desire that they
might have until the next day for deliberation, he would
move an adjournment. The House was now in a very ex-
cited state. The nervous tension caused by loss of sleep,
irregular hours, and powerful emotion was manifest. Those
who were accustomed to stimulate themselves in times of
excitement were inflamed by strong drink. It had been
freely talked that a disturbance was liable to occur, and
many members came to the House armed for the fray. A
spark only was needed to produce an explosion.
Hunt, a Whig from Louisiana opposed to the measure,
who many times had tried to pour oil upon the troubled
waters, now made a patriotic and amicable appeal to Rich-
ardson to give his friends until Monday for consideration.
Richardson made a courteous reply, saying it was beyond
his power to grant the request, but hoped that on the mor-
row a desirable result might be reached. Had the speaker1
then put the question, trouble would have been avoided; but,
with praiseworthy intentions, he permitted a desultory dis-
cussion, during which Alexander Stephens made some fiery
remarks. This brought Campbell to his feet, who was pro-
1 Linn Boycl, of Kentucky, was speaker, but at this moment Orr, of
South Carolina, was in the chair.
486 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
ceeding to reply when he was called to order by Seward, of
Georgia. It must be understood that this discussion was by
unanimous consent, no debatable question being before the
House, and no member could speak if called to order by an-
other. The interposition of Seward was unfair, and cries of
order went up from all parts of the hall. Above the confu-
sion could be heard the voice of Campbell : " I shall resist
this measure to the bitter end. I say so, never minding the
gentleman who calls me to order." Amidst repeated shouts
of "Order!" Seward retorted: "There are other places
instead of this where personal difficulties may be settled."
Confusion was now confounded. Members crowded around
Campbell. Many got on the tops of the desks. Above the
din Campbell vehemently exclaimed : " I tell you, gentle-
men, that I shall resist this measure with all the power that
I can to the bitter end." Members still continued to crowd
around Campbell, and it was reported that weapons were
drawn, and that an attempt was made to use one by Ed-
mundson, of Virginia. The speaker did his best to pre-
serve order ; he prayed all lovers of order to assist him, and
he commanded the sergeant-at-arms to use the emblem of
authority. The sergeant-at-arms, advancing with the mace
of the House, arrested Edmundson, compelled members to
resume their seats, and was successful in partially restoring
order. The speaker then cut off all further attempts at dis-
cussion, and, as soon as possible, put the motion of Richard-
son, and declared the House adjourned. By his prompt
action he undoubtedly prevented a bloody affray. It de-
serves to be noted that among the gentlemen who effectu-
ally assisted the speaker in preventing a disgraceful brawl
were Aiken and Keitt, of South Carolina. The sitting came
to a close at twenty-seven minutes before midnight, the
House having been in continuous session nearly thirty-six
hours.1
1 See Congressional Globe, Washington correspondence New York Cour-
ier and Enquirer, New York Times, and New York Herald.
CH. V.] THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL IN THE HOUSE 487
The next day's session of the House was short, and noth-
ing was done. On this Saturday, May 13th, an enthusiastic
anti-Nebraska meeting of five thousand people was held in
the City Hall Park, New York City, the assemblage being
composed chiefly of mechanics. The speeches were heard at-
tentively, and the resolutions responded to with earnestness.
One of these declared that they would vote for no repre-
sentative who gave his voice in Congress for the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise.1
On Monday, May 15th, Richardson proposed to give until
Saturday for debate. This offer would undoubtedly have
been made before, had not a special order on the Pacific
Railroad bill stood in the way. To postpone this now, a
suspension of the rules was necessary, and eighteen North-
ern Democrats, who had hitherto voted in the opposition,
gave their voices on the side of the majority, which made
the requisite two-thirds vote ; and it was then decided that
the debate should close on the Saturday following. The
action of these Democrats was severely criticised by the
Whigs, and they were charged with being recreant to prin-
ciple and dominated by party considerations ; but, in truth,
such questioning of motives was liable to be unjust. It
must always occur to some congressmen of the minority, as
it does to the philosophic observer, that filibustering is an
inane mode of accomplishing an object. It rarely defeats
the aim of the majority, although indeed it may postpone
action. It is true that there was abundant reason to sup-
pose that if action were not reached on the Kansas-Nebraska
bill this session, it would not be revived at the next ; but it
was also true that the majority was large enough and de-
termined enough to keep the House in session until the
measure was passed. The assertion of the minority that
the majority wanted to stifle debate was, of course, a sub-
terfuge. Already, Richardson stated, eighty speeches had
been made in the House on the question, which was more
New York Times, May 15th.
488 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
than had ever been made on any previous measure;1 and
before the bill came to a vote this number was increased
to one hundred.2
The discussion proceeded quietly the remaining days of
the week, the House holding long sessions. On Saturday,
the 20th, the members came together at nine o'clock. The
debate closed soon after twelve; the opposition badgered
the majority the rest of the day by offering amendments
and speaking to them under the five-minute rule. On Mon-
day, May 22d, the House met and went immediately into
committee. Stephens then moved to strike out the enact-
ing clause of the bill, avowing that his object was to cut off
all amendments, and have the bill reported to the House so
that a vote might be taken on it. This unusual proceeding
caused a great sensation. Indeed, Stephens had great diffi-
culty in getting the leaders to agree to this mode of action.3
One member declared that it was apparent the majority
purposed to ride rough-shod over the minority. Another, in
the midst of the excitement, called upon his friends not to
vote upon the question, and cried : " Oppose tyranny by rev-
olution!" The motion to strike out the enacting clause
was, however, agreed to. The committee rose and reported
to the House. Then ensued a stubborn contest. The minority
used every means in their power to prevent a vote ; but the
management of Richardson4 was skilful, and he had Doug-
las at hand to prompt him. The House refused to concur
in the report of the committee, which struck out the enact-
ing clause of the bill. Well might Stephens write, " I took
the reins in hand, applied whip and spur, and brought the
1 Congressional Globe, vol. xxviii. p. 1161.
• Washington Sentinel, quoted by New York Herald, May 23d. In the
House, 45 speeches were made for the bill, 55 against; in the Senate, 17
for, 11 against. Total number of set speeches to May 21st, 128.
3 Life of Alexander H. Stephens, Johnston and Browne, p. 277.
* Campbell afterwards (June 27th) said that the course of Richardson
on the Nebraska bill was " open, frank, and manly."
CH.V.] THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL PASSED 489
'wagon' out."1 It was nearly midnight when a vote was
reached. The Kansas-Nebraska bill was then passed by
113 yeas to 100 nays. Forty -four Northern and fifty-
seven Southern Democrats voted for the bill, and these
were reinforced by twelve Whigs from the slave States ;
against the bill were forty-five Whigs and forty-two Dem-
ocrats from the North, two Democrats and seven Whigs
from the slave States. The names of these nine, with whom
respect for plighted faith was more powerful than the sup-
posed interest of their section, deserve a record. They
were : Puryear and Rogers of North Carolina, Bugg, Cul-
lom, Etheridge, and Taylor of Tennessee, Hunt of Louisiana,
Whigs; and Millson of Virginia and Thomas H. Benton,
Democrats.2
No man in either House of Congress brought so much in-
telligence and experience to bear upon his vote as did Ben-
ton. He had come into political life on the Missouri Com-
promise. His State had kept him in the Senate for thirty
years; and when the legislature would no longer elect him,
he had appealed to the people of his district and they had
sent him to the House. He was not only a statesman of ex-
perience, but he was writing a history of the events in which
he had been an actor and on which he had looked as a spec-
tator. Certainly his protest should have been regarded.
He spoke as a statesman whose memory and judgment were
enlightened by the investigation of an historian. He de-
clared that the movement for the abrogation of the Missouri
Compromise began " without a memorial, without a petition,
without a request from a human being ;" that this scheme
was directed against a compromise which was not a " mere
statute to last for a day," but one which " was intended for
perpetuity, and so declared itself." When he carne to ana-
lyze the Kansas-Nebraska bill, he referred to the explana-
tion which Douglas had incorporated in his substitute in
1 Johnston and Browne, p. 277.
3 This analysis is taken from the New York Tribune.
490 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
words which were remembered as long as Douglas was a
candidate for the presidency.1
As the House bill had left out the Clayton amendment, it
was necessary that it should go to the Senate before becom-
ing a law. An interesting debate of two days occurred, in
which important revelations were made of the efforts used
to dragoon a few objecting Southern Whigs into support of
the measure. The difference, moreover, in the construction
of the act by its friends became again apparent. Judged
by the succeeding events, the most remarkable expressions
came from Sumner, for he had an insight into the future.
This bill, he said, " is at once the worst and the best bill on
which Congress ever acted. It is the worst bill, inasmuch
as it is a present victory of slavery. ... It is the best bill,
. . . for it prepares the way for that * All hail hereafter,'
when slavery must disappear. It annuls all past compro-
mises with slavery, and makes all future compromises im-
possible. Thus it puts freedom and slavery face to face,
and bids them grapple. Who can doubt the result ?"
The bill, as it had come from the House, was ordered to a
third reading by a vote of 35 to 13, and passed the Senate
May 25th. It was approved by the President May 30th.
It is safe to say that, in the scope and consequences of the
Kansas-Nebraska act, it was the most momentous measure
that passed Congress from the day that the senators and
representatives first met to the outbreak of the civil war.
It sealed the doom of the Whig party ; it caused the forma-
tion of the Republican party on the principle of no exten-
sion of slavery; it roused Lincoln and gave a bent to his
great political ambition.2 It made the Fugitive Slave law a
1 Benton said that the clause " It beiug the true intent and meaning
of this act, etc.," was " a little stump speech injected in the belly of the
bill."
2 Life of Lincoln, Herndon, p. 361 ; Life of Lincoln, Arnold, p. 115. He
wrote to a friend : " I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise aroused me again." — E. B. Washburne on Lin-
coln, Reminiscences of A. Lincoln, North American Publishing Company.
CH.V.] POWER AND INFLUENCE OF DOUGLAS 491
dead letter at the North ; it caused the Germans to become
Republicans ; it lost the Democrats their hold on New Eng-
land ; it made the Northwest Republican ; it led to the down-
fall of the Democratic party.
It may be asserted with confidence that no man in the
country except Douglas could have carried this measure
through the necessary stages of becoming a law. Five
years later, in familiar talk with his Bos well, he said : " I
passed the Kansas-Nebraska act myself. I had the author-
ity and power of a dictator throughout the whole contro-
versy in both houses. The speeches were nothing. It was
the marshalling and directing of men, and guarding from
attacks, and a ceaseless vigilance preventing surprise," ' that
led to the success of the measure. It is certain that in after-
years Douglas came to believe that his doctrine of popular
sovereignty was a great political principle ; and it is proba-
ble that even now he half believed that there was some oc-
cult virtue in it as a rule of action. Persistent advocacy
often convinces the advocate. Yet, laying aside entirely
the moral view, the action of Douglas as a statesman, as a
politician and leader of a party, was characterized by a la-
mentable lack of foresight and the utter absence of the care-
ful reflection which far-reaching measures of legislation de-
mand. Douglas had asserted in 1849 that all the evidences
of public opinion seemed to indicate that the Missouri Com-
promise " had become canonized in the hearts of the Ameri-
can people, as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would
ever be reckless enough to disturb."2 Having once had
that conviction, therefore, he owed it to his country, and to
his party as well, not to broach this measure until he had
given it deep study and prolonged consideration. For Doug-
las loved his country ; his party was his religion, the Con-
stitution was his creed ; and in following the leading of an
inordinate ambition he did not imagine that he was sacrific-
1 Constitutional and Party Questions, Cutts, p. 122.
8 Quoted by Culloin, Appendix, Congressional Globe, vol. xxix. p. 539.
492 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
ing his party and injuring his country. He made up his
mind quickly ; confiding, like all spoiled children of fortune
who have been endowed with rich natural gifts, in his in-
tuitive judgment, he thought that he had no need of close
application and methodical reasoning. "His library was
never clear from dust," said a friend and follower;1 and
Greeley, who in these days denounced him without stint,2
wrote truly after his death that, if Douglas had been a hard
student, "it would have been difficult to set limits to his
power." 3 He, like his greater Illinois rival, was a fine math-
ematician,4 but he did not, like Lincoln, wrestle in manhood
with the problems of Euclid for mental discipline.5 He
hardly knew any history but that of his own country ; he
cared not to learn of the development of the world, except
when Alexander, Ca9sar, and Napoleon were on the stage
of action, and of them he could not read too much.6
Of all the descriptions of Douglas at this time, none seem
to seize the essential characteristics of the man so well as
that of a journalist whose soul was wrapped up in the anti-
slavery cause. The writer was impressed with his " pluck,
persistency, and muscular self-assurance and self-assertion."
To see and hear him was to "comprehend the aptness of
that title of 'Little Giant.'" Never was a characteristic
name better applied. The historian must sympathize with
the regret expressed by this journalist that one who cham-
pioned bad measures with such indomitable ability was not
upon the right side ; and the thought cannot fail to come,
" of what infinite value this remarkable man might have
1 S. S. Cox, Eulogy, July, 1861.
2 " We presume that three more tricky and managing politicians don't
live than Pierce, Gushing, and Soule. If we were to add a fourth, we
should of course name S. A. Douglas." — New York Tribune, May 13th,
1854 ; evidently written by Greeley.
8 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 358.
4 See Atlantic Monthly, vol. viii. p. 208.
6 Herndon's Life of Lincoln, p. 808.
6 Atlantic Monthly, vol. viii. p. 206 ; Forney's Anecdotes of Public Men.
CH.Y.] CHARACTER OF DOUGLAS 493
been to the cause of liberty if the fortune of politics had
made him a leader of it." '
Douglas had the quality of attaching men to him; he
was especially fond of young men, and they repaid his com-
plaisance by devotion. No American statesman but. Clay
ever had such a personal following. He no\v became the
leader of the Democratic party ; he retained the leadership
of the Northern Democrats to the last ; and since Andrew
Jackson, no man has possessed the influence, received the
confidence, or had the support that it was the lot of Doug-
las to enjoy from the Democrats in the northern half of the
Union. From 1854 to 1858, he was the centre of the polit-
ical history of the country ; from 1858 to 1860, he was the
best-known man in the United States ; but after the contest
with Lincoln in 1858, it became apparent that the " Little
Giant " had met his match in that other son of Illinois.
Douglas was generous and faithful to his friends. He
had large ideas in business; he made money easily and
spent it lavishly. It was stated during this controversy that
he was furthering the interests of slavery because he was
himself a slave-holder, but the allegation was untrue. Doug-
las had, indeed, been offered the gift of a plantation with a
large number of slaves by his father-in-law, but he had re-
fused it, being unwilling to accept such a responsibility.
He answered this charge in the Senate with dignity.2 In-
deed, those who sought a mercenary motive as a key to the
course of Douglas strangely misapprehended his character.3
1 Reminiscences of a Journalist, C. T. Congdon, p. 286.
9 Life of Douglas, Sheahan, p. 437.
3 My authorities for the view of Douglas are, besides those I have
named, the two biographies of him by Sheahan and Flint; Constitutional
and Party Questions, J. M. Cutts ; Representative Men, Savage ; Forney's
Anecdotes of Public Men; Elaine's Eulogy on Garfield. I have received
valuable hints concerning him from Senator John Sherman, General
Logan, and my friend Mr. George H. Stone; but for his personal char-
acteristics more than to any other source I am indebted to my father and
mother, who were intimately acquainted with him and very often saw
494 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
In comprehensive views he was a true representative of
the West. No public man has ever had more of the spirit
of the boundless prairie or has been such a faithful type of
the resistless energy that characterizes the city of Chicago.
He understood the West, but it is plain that he had not
thought out the results of the repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise, for he seemed to have little apprehension of the
political revolution that was destined to take place in his
beloved section of country.1 On January 1st, 1854. Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa were Democratic
States ; 2 all their senators were Democrats ; of twenty-nine
representatives only five were Whigs. None but Indiana
remained reliably Democratic. Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Iowa at once became Republican, and Illinois would have
immediately ranged herself at their side had it not been for
the strong personal influence of Douglas.
Some writers and many men who were contemporary
with the event have maintained that the civil war would
not have taken place had it not been for the abrogation of
the Missouri Compromise. This will probably not be the
mature verdict of history. The more the subject is studied,
the more profound will appear the prophetic saying of John
Quincy Adams : " I am satisfied slavery will not go down
until it goes down in blood." 3 Yet it must be adjudged
that Douglas hastened the struggle; he precipitated the
civil war.
The North was now in a ferment. At the Connecticut
State election in April the Democrats had failed to elect
him familiarly. Having seen him frequently when a child, my own rec-
ollection of his personal appearance and manner of speaking from the
stump is vivid.
1 See his speech, May 25th, 1854.
3 Minnesota was not a State. "What gain had freedom in the admis-
sion of Iowa into the Union? Are Alabama and Mississippi more de-
voted to the despotic ideas of American panslavism than are Indiana and
Illinois ?"— New York Tribune, March 29th, 1854.
3 Life of Seward, vol. i. p. 672, This remark was made in 1843.
CH. V.] NORTHERN SENTIMENT 495
the legislature or governor. While both Whig and Demo-
cratic conventions had protested against the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise,1 the result of the election was ob-
viously a rebuke to the dominant party for their support of
the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The newly elected legislature
passed resolutions averse to the proposed measure ; these
were presented to the House the day on which the con-
cluding vote was taken, and to the Senate before its final
action on the bill. The Whig convention of Pennsylvania
resolved against the disturbance of the legislation of 1820.
while the Democratic convention of that State was silent.2
One phase of the public sentiment has been barely alluded
to. The foreign immigration had become a factor in poli-
tics of which heed must be taken. The Germans and Irish,
for the most part, had joined the Democratic party ; but the
Germans, from the first, were opposed to the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, for they were against the extension of
slavery.3 Of eighty-eight German newspapers, eight were
in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, while eighty were de-
cidedly opposed to it.4 This change was of enough conse-
quence to determine the political character of Wisconsin
and Iowa, and was a great element of anti-slavery strength
in Ohio.
The cannon roared in Washington when the Senate en-
acted the measure, but gloom overspread the minds of North-
ern men. Pierce and Douglas, said Greeley, have made
more abolitionists in three months than Garrison and Phil-
lips could have made in half a century.5 Crowds of people
1 National Intelligencer, March 2d. a Ibid, March 18th.
* See New York Evening Post, Feb. 4th and 7th ; the Liberator, April
21st; National Intelligencer, April 15th.
4 List made by Cincinnati Gazette, cited by Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 429.
See Von Hoist's remarks on this subject in his history ; also his criticism
of Bryce's American Commonwealth. See The Nation, April 24th, 1890,
which refers to an article in the Historische Zeitschrift, neue Folge, vol.
xxviii. pp. 1-50.
5 New York Trilmne, May 17th.
496 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
who had heretofore severely criticised Garrison, Phillips,
Parker, and their methods, now flocked to hear them, and
were glad to listen to the arguments of these earnest men.1
It was at once urged by the press and from the platform
that an effort should be made to have Kansas enter the
Union as a free State, and a systematic movement was be-
gun with this end in view.
The author of the bill was regarded with execration ; his
middle name was Arnold, and this suggested a comparison
to Benedict Arnold. The term which is used in every
Christian land as a synonym of traitor was likewise applied
to him, and one hundred and three ladies of an Ohio village
sent him thirty pieces of silver.2 He could travel, as he
afterwards said, " from Boston to Chicago by the light of
his own effigies." Horace Bushnell, a noted preacher in
Hartford, applied to Douglas the bitter prophecy of the
Hebrew prophet : " Tidings out of the east and out of the
north shall trouble him ; therefore he shall go forth with
great fury to destroy and utterly to make away many, yet
he shall come to his end, and none shall help him." A jour-
nal which had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska measure with
pertinacity asked, in derision, "Who names Douglas for
the next President now?"3 Not a response came from the
North.
"Never was an act of Congress so generally and so
unanimously hailed with delight at the South" as was the
Kansas-Nebraska act, wrote Alexander Stephens six years
after its passage.4 This may be accepted as a fact, although
there were some exceptions to the almost universal acclaim.
Many people in New Orleans did not like it ; such, also, ap-
1 Life of Garrison, vol. iii. pp. 407, 408 ; New York Tribune. See Bell's
speech in the Senate, Congressional Globe, Appendix, vol. xxix. p. 943.
2 The Liberator, vol. xxiv. p. 43.
3 New York Times, May 23d.
4 Life of Alex. H. Stephens, Johnston and Browne, p. 360, letter of
May 9th, 1860.
CH. V.] SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 497
peared to be the feeling in Texas.1 Indifference as to the
fate of the bill while it was pending was reported from
Charleston, from other parts of South Carolina, and from a
city of Mississippi.2 The leading state-rights organ of
Charleston did not scruple to condemn the tactics of Ste-
phens as a violation of the rights of the minority and as of
a dangerous tendency.3 But as the measure gradually came
to be understood as a victory for slavery and a defeat of the
abolitionists, the general feeling fully justified the assertion
of Stephens. It was thought in the border States that if a
new slave State could be created it would add five per cent,
to the value of slaves, which was already very high.4 The
planters in the cotton States, being buyers of negroes, did not
regard the rise of values as an unmixed good ; but they did
not grumble : they cast about for a remedy, and did not look
for it long. The reopening of the African slave-trade be-
gan to be discussed seriously in South Carolina and Missis-
sippi.5
There were Southern members of Congress whom Atchi-
son could not convince that Kansas would enter the Union
as a slave State.6 But they felt that if Atchison were too
1 See the New Orleans Crescent. Gen. Houston says : " The people of
the South care nothing for it; it is the worst thing for the South that has
ever transpired since the Union was first formed." — Washington corre-
spondence New York Tribune, June 5th.
2 See Charleston News, cited in National Intelligencer, May 25th and
27th ; Charleston Mercury, June 21st, cited in National Intelligencer, June
27th ; see private letter from Beaufort, S. C., to New York Courier and
Enquirer, dated May 15th; letter from Natchez, Miss., to the National
Intelligencer, cited by Courier and Enquirer, May 31st. There was a
strong feeling against the measure in Eastern Tennessee, see letter from
Knoxville, ibid.
3 Charleston Mercury, cited in New York Tribune, May 31st.
4 See letter of Yeoman, New York Times, May 13th. For the high price
of slaves see Mobile Advertiser, cited in New York Evening Post, Jan. 30th.
5 New York Tribune, May 31st ; see Pike, First Blows of the Civil War,
cited by Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 437.
6 See Congressional Globe, Appendix, vol. xxix. p. 939.
I.— 32
498 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
sanguine, and even if the Kansas-Nebraska act did not rec-
ognize the Calhoun dogma, it did at any rate make a quie-
tus of the Wilmot proviso doctrine. As the establishment
of a principle it was of great benefit to the South ; for when
the bill was introduced negotiations were in progress which
were expected to, result in the accession of an important
piece of territory from Mexico. That Cuba would be ours
by the close of the year was not deemed an unwarranted
expectation. Nor was it a wild dream to expect that be-
fore many years the United States would extend to the
isthmus. The acquisition of Mexico, Central America, and
Cuba, to be cut up into slave States, was an object worth
striving for, and the Kansas-Nebraska act seemed to assert
a principle that could properly be applied if this territory
were gained to achieve such a consummation. The better
the measure was understood, the more complete seemed the
humiliation of the North, and the greater reason there ap-
peared for the exultation of the South.
" The Fugitive law did much to unglue the eyes of men,
and now the Nebraska bill leaves us staring," said Emerson.1
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise emphasized every
argument against the Fugitive Slave act, and gave to the
story of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " the force of solid reasoning.
The uprising against this law of 1850 is a well-known fact
of the decade between 1850-60, but the distinction between
the excitement which followed its passage and that which
grew out of the Kansas-Nebraska act is not always care-
fully borne in mind. Yet the difference is of transcendent
importance. The excitement of 1850 and 1851 was transi-
tory. It was vehement while it lasted, for the abolitionists
and extreme anti-slavery men prompted it, but all their ag-
itation did not prevent the public mind from settling into
the conviction that the Fugitive Slave law was only one un-
palatable article of a good contract. Public opinion at the
North in 1852 was well expressed by the Democratic and
New York Evening Post, March 8th.
CH. V.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 499
Whig platforms.1 Even the brilliant speech of Sumner on
the subject2 did not produce a ripple of excitement, and in
1853 the acquiescence was complete. When the Fugitive
Slave law was enforced it was done quietly, with sometimes
a lack of zeal3 on the part of the officers, and with little or
no resistance from the people. It seemed to be one of those
laws which a law-abiding community believe wrong to re-
sist, though inexpedient to put in force.
But in 1854 there began to be a smarting sense of the in-
justice of the Fugitive Slave law, which was never allayed
until there was no longer reason for its existence. We
shall see, in the course of this work, that one political party
made, in its political platforms, obedience to this act a test
of fidelity, and that the other remained silent on the sub-
ject ; we shall see that Lincoln, on first taking the oath of
his high office, virtually announced his purpose of enforcing
it. Yet, after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, the
majority of men at the North, and by far the greater num-
ber of intelligent and moral people, felt that they had been
cheated, and that the Fugitive Slave law was a part of the
cheat. They reasoned that the South set aside the Missouri
Compromise because it no longer operated in their favor ;
and as the Fugitive act was to them the obnoxious part of
the compromise of 1850, they would consider the breach of
it more honorable than the observance.
In March a colored man had been claimed as a fugitive
slave and committed to jail at Milwaukee, Wis. He was
rescued by a part}r of sympathizers. Booth, a journalist,
who was one of these, was arrested on a warrant of the
United States commissioner; he applied to an associate
justice of the State Supreme Court for a writ of habeas
corpus and his discharge. The justice ordered his discharge
on two grounds, one of which was that the Fugitive Slave
law was unconstitutional. This decision was afterwards
1 See pp. 249, 253. * See p. 266.
8 See the Richmond Whig, Jan. 19th, 1854.
500 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
affirmed by a full bench of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
only one justice dissenting.1
"If the Nebraska bill should be passed, the Fugitive
Slave law is a dead letter throughout New England," wrote
a Southerner from Boston to a friend.2 "As easily," he
continued, " could a law prohibiting the eating of codfish
and pumpkin-pies be enforced as that law be executed."
The events which followed hard upon the action of the
House of Representatives showed that the stranger had ac-
curately judged the drift of opinion.
On the evening of the 24th of May, Anthony Burns, a
negro who had escaped from servitude about three months
previously, was arrested in the heart of Boston. The next
morning he was taken manacled to the United States Court-
room for examination by Commissioner Loring. The news
of his arrest had not got into the papers, and the proceed-
ings would have been summary had not Eichard H. Dana,
Jr., a prominent lawyer of anti-slavery opinions, chanced to
pass the court-house at about nine o'clock and received an
intimation of what was going on. He entered the court-
room and offered Burns his professional .services. The ne-
gro declined them. " It is of no use," he said ; " they will
swear to me and get me back ; and if they do, I shall fare
worse if I resist." 3 Meanwhile, Theodore Parker and other
gentlemen who had accidentally heard of the arrest had
entered the court-room, and Parker had a conference with
Burns. He told the frightened fugitive that he was a min-
ister, that by a meeting of citizens he had been appointed
the special pastor of fugitive slaves, and he asked whether
Burns did not want counsel. The negro replied : " I shall
1 3 Wisconsin Reports, edited by Abram D. Smith, pp. 1-144. The case
was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States and the decision
of the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed. Chief-Justice Taney gave the
decision. See 21 Howard, p. 506.
2 Letter dated Feb. 18th, National Intelligencer, Feb. 28th.
3 R. H. Dana's Diary, Life by C. F. Adams, vol. i. p. 265.
CH.V.] THE BURNS CASE 501
have to go back. My master knows me. His agent knows
me. If I must go back, I want to go back as easily as I
can." " But surely," rejoined Parker, " it can do you no
harm to make a defence." "Well," said Burns, "you may
do as you have a mind to about it." " He seemed,", Parker
afterwards related, " to be stupefied with fear."
The news of the arrest, and the circumstances connected
with it, spread quickly through the city and found a great
change in public opinion from that which had prevailed
three years before, when Sims was arrested.1 The fugitive
had now the active or passive sympathy of nearly every
one. Inflammatory handbills were circulated; they were
drawn up with skill, appealing at the same time to the fiery
abolitionist and to the compromiser of 1850. Invectives
against kidnappers and man-stealing were joined to a state-
ment which expressed the overpowering thought in the
minds of New England men. " The compromises," one of
the placards said, " trampled upon by the slave power when
in the path of slavery, are to be crammed down the throat
of the North." 2 On Friday morning, the 26th, a call for a
meeting at Faneuil Hall that evening was issued, the object
of which was stated to be : " To secure justice for a man
claimed as a slave by a Virginia kidnapper ;" and the notice
ended : " Shall he be plunged into the hell of Virginia slav-
ery by a Massachusetts judge of probate?"3 By Friday
evening the city was in a ferment. Not since the massacre
in revolutionary days had there been such wild excitement.
Agitators were running to and fro, setting all the city in
an uproar. The pent-up feeling produced by the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise broke forth with fury. The
crowd that gathered in Faneuil Hall were agitated by pas-
1 See p. 211 ; also Life of R. Ef. Dana, C. F. Adams, vol. i. pp. 269, 285,
286. For a similar change in Iowa, see Life of Grimes, Salter, p. 73.
2 A copy of these placards may be found in Life and Correspondence
of Theo. Parker, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 132.
3 Loring was judge of probate as well as United States commissioner.
502 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
sion ; and when Wendell Phillips rose to speak, they were
in that state which orators delight to see when they would
urge their fellow-men to violent deeds. Phillips had the
manner of Brutus, but his words were like those of Mark
Antony, fitted to stir up mutiny. " See to it," he said,
" that to-morrow, in the streets of Boston, you ratify the
verdict of Faneuil Hall, that Anthony Burns has no master
but his God. . . . Will you adhere to the case of Sims and
see this man carried down State Street between two hun-
dred men? . . . Nebraska, I call knocking a man down,
and this is spitting in his face after he is down." Thus
Phillips went on, the audience hanging breathless on his
every word.
When he had finished, Theodore Parker delivered a wild,
incoherent, and vindictive harangue. " Men and brothers,"
Parker said, " I am an old man ; I have heard hurrahs and
cheers for liberty many times; I have not seen a great
many deeds done for liberty. I ask you are we to have deeds
as well as words ? . . . Gentlemen, there was a Boston once,
and you and I had fathers — brave fathers; and mothers
who stirred up fathers to manly deeds. . . . They did not
obey the stamp-act. . . . You know what they did with
the tea." He ended with the proposition that when they
adjourned it should be to meet the next morning at nine
o'clock in Court-house Square. " To-night," shouted a hun-
dred voices in reply. The excitement was now intense.
The people were in a tumult. Above the roar of voices
might be heard cries, " To the court-house !" ] " To the Re-
vere House for the slave-catchers!" Parker tried in vain
to still the storm he had raised, but he could not get a hear-
ing. Phillips then ascended the platform and a few well-
chosen words sufficed to allay the tumult. He had almost
persuaded the audience to disperse quietly, when a man at
the entrance of the hall shouted : " Mr. Chairman, I am just
1 The United States leased a portion of the court-house. Burns was
imprisoned in the jury-room of the United States Court.
CH.V.J THE BURNS CASE 503
informed that a mob of negroes is in Court Square attempt-
ing to rescue Burns. I move that we adjourn to Court
Square." The hall became quickly empty. The crowd
rushed to the scene of action. There they found a small
party under the lead of Thomas W. Higginson attempting
to break down one of the doors of the court-house with a
large stick of timber used as a battering-ram. The Faneuil
Hall men lent a hand. Those who could not work rent the
air with shouts ; others hurled stones or fired pistol-shots at
the court-house windows. It was an angry, excited crowd
of two thousand, bent on the rescue of Burns.1 At last a
breach was made in the door, but the place was defended.
In the melee one of the marshal's posse was killed, and
Higginson was wounded by a sabre-cut. Several of Hig-
ginson's companions were arrested, after which no further
attempt was made to break into the court-house. Two
companies of artillery were immediately ordered out by the
mayor to preserve the peace.
It was a foolish attempt for the rescue of Burns. Under
a government like ours there can be no justification for an
attack upon the constituted authorities. It pleased the mul-
titude to call the Boston Court-house the Bastille; but the
recollection of the event which was thus conjured up strikes
one with the contrast between the Paris of 1Y89 and the
Boston of 1854, and not with their likeness. Yet it is an
evidence of the deep feeling that, although this attempt
was widely condemned, it did not weaken the public sym-
pathy for the fugitive or the indignation against the United
States functionaries. This attack enabled the marshal to
appear as a vindicator of the law ; he immediately called out
two companies of United States troops, reported his action
to the President, and received the reply : " Your conduct is
approved. The law must be. executed."
On the following Monday the examination began. An
eye-witness relates that " the court-house had the air of a
A Bronson Alcott was in the mob.— The Nation, March 8, 1888.
504 PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION [1854
beleaguered fortress."1 Every window was guarded by
Massachusetts or United States soldiery. Only one door of
the court-house was open, and at that was stationed a strong
force of city police. None but functionaries could enter
without a permit from the marshal. The counsel for the
fugitive made a strong defence. Burns was undeniably the
slave of the claimant, although the proofs were clumsy, and
on technical grounds he might have been set free. The
United States officers, however, were determined to win.
On the 2d of June, Commissioner Loring adjudged the ne-
gro to his owner.
The most instructive act in the whole drama was now to
be played. The fugitive slave must be sent out of Boston.
The city was full of people ; during the whole week men
from the suburban towns and from all parts of Massachu-
setts had been flocking into Boston. The President had
just signed the Kansas-Nebraska act. There was earnest
indignation against Congress, the President, and the United
States authorities of Boston ; but these Massachusetts men
were, for the most part, on a peaceful errand bent. The
United States district attorney, the marshal, and the mayor
of the city were determined, however, to be prepared for a
mob and an attempt at rescue. A large body of city police
and twenty-two companies of Massachusetts soldiers guard-
ed in detachments the streets through which Burns and his
guard must pass. The streets were cleared by a company
of cavalry. The procession was made up of one United
States artillery battalion, one platoon of United States
marines, the marshal's civil posse of one hundred and
twenty-five men guarding the fugitive, two platoons of ma-
rines, a field-piece, and one platoon of marines as a guard
to the field-piece. Windows along the line of march were
draped in mourning ; from a window opposite the old State-
house was suspended a black coffin on which were the
words, " The funeral of liberty ;" further on was an Amer-
Anthony Burns, Stevens, p. 80.
CH. V.] THE BURNS CASE 505
lean flag, the union down, draped in mourning. The sol-
emn procession was witnessed by fifty thousand people, who
hissed, groaned, and cried " Shame ! shame !" as it went by.
A weight of suspense hung over the crowd, and it seemed
as if a slight occasion might precipitate an outbreak with
terrible consequences. The fugitive was marched to the
wharf, and was soon on a United States revenue-cutter, sail-
ing towards Virginia.1
To this complexion had it come at last. In a community
1 About fourteen thousand dollars were paid out of the United States
Treasury for services rendered by the Massachusetts militia. Anthony
Burns, Stevens, p. 133. The cost of returning Burns to the federal
government was not far from forty thousand dollars. New York Times,
June 9th. Henry A. Wise said it cost the government a hundred thou-
sand dollars. Speech at Alexandria, Feb., 1855.
My chief authority in this account is Anthony Burns, a History, by C.
E. Stevens, published in 1856. The writer states in his preface : " My ma-
terials have been derived chiefly from original sources. ... I was pres-
ent at the Faneuil Hall meeting from its commencement to its close, and
I witnessed the attack on the court-house." I have also used the Life of
R. H. Dana, by C. F. Adams ; the Life of Theodore Parker, by Weiss ; and
I have carefully read the contemporary accounts in the Boston Journal,
the Liberator, and the Boston Courier. The latter was a very conserva-
tive Whig newspaper. The sequel of this affair is interesting. Burns,
after undergoing persecution and hardship in Virginia, was sold to go to
North Carolina, was ransomed in 1855 by money collected by a Boston
colored preacher ; was sent to Oberlin College ; afterwards became the
pastor of a colored society at St. Catherines, Canada, and died in 1862.
"Burns was the last fugitive slave ever seized on the soil of Massachu-
setts."— Life of R. H. Dana, C. F. Adams, vol. i. p. 265. Indictments were
found against Parker, Phillips, Higginson, and others. A test case was
made of one, and Judge Curtis quashed the indictment. Rise and Fall
of the Slave Power, Wilson, vol. ii. p. 443.
Loring had previously been appointed lecturer to the law-school of
Harvard University, but the board of overseers refused to confirm the ap-
pointment. The legislature sent ah address to the governor requesting
him to remove Loring from the position of probate judge ; this the gov-
ernor declined to do. The agitation against Loring was, however, kept
up, and when Banks became governor in 1858 he made the removal of
the probate judge on an address from the legislature.
506
PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION
[1854
celebrated all over the world for the respect it yielded to
law, and for obedience to those clothed with authority ; in
a community where the readiness of all citizens to assist the
authorities had struck intelligent Europeans with amaze-
ment— it now required to execute a law a large body of
deputy marshals, the whole force of the city police, eleven
hundred and forty soldiers with muskets loaded, supplied
with eleven rounds of powder and ball and furnished with a
cannon loaded with grape-shot. If anything were needed
to heighten the strangeness of the situation, it may be
found in the fact that the marshal's deputies were taken
from the dregs of society, for no reputable citizen would
serve as a slave-catcher.
As the men of Boston, and the men of New England re-
flected on what had taken place, they were persuaded, as
they had never been before, that something was rotten in
the United States, and that these events boded some strange
eruption to our State.1 Nor was the significance of the
transaction entirely lost upon the South. " We rejoice at
the recapture of Burns," said a fiery organ of the slavery
propaganda, " but a few more such victories and the South
is undone." 2
1 " The tables under the Fugitive Slave law are beginning at last to
turn against the law and in favor of humanity. There is deep and pain-
ful suspense here."— Seward to his wife from Washington, May 28th.
Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 230.
8 Richmond Enquirer, cited in the Independent, June 8th.
END OF VOL. I.
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