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Stephen A. Douglas by Allen Johnson

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These rumors foreshadowed the report of the committee. The problem was
to find a mode of overcoming the opposition of the South to the
organization of a Territory which would not only add eventually to the
number of free States, but also open up a northern route to the
Pacific. The price of concession from the South on the latter point
must be some apparent concession to the South in the matter of
slavery. The report of January 4, 1854, and the bill which accompanied
it, was Douglas's solution of the problem.[444] The principles of the
compromise measures of 1850 were to be affirmed and carried into
practical operation within the limits of the new Territory of
Nebraska. "In the judgment of your committee," read the report, "those
measures were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring
effect than the mere adjustment of the difficulties arising out of the
recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to
establish certain great principles ... your committee have deemed it
their duty to incorporate and perpetuate, in their territorial bill,
the principles and spirit of those measures. If any other
consideration were necessary, to render the propriety of this course
imperative upon the committee, they may be found in the fact that the
Nebraska country occupies the same relative position to the slavery
question, as did New Mexico and Utah, when those Territories were
organized."[445]

Just as it was a disputed point, the report argued, whether slavery
was prohibited by law in the country acquired from Mexico, so it is
questioned whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country by
_valid_ enactment. "In the opinion of those eminent statesmen, who
hold that Congress is invested with no rightful authority to legislate
upon the subject of slavery in the Territories, the 8th section of the
act preparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void; while
the prevailing sentiment in large portions of the Union sustains the
doctrine that the Constitution of the United States secures 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 sanction of law. Your committee do not feel
themselves called upon to enter upon the discussion of these
controverted questions. They involve the same grave issues which
produced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle
of 1850." And just as Congress deemed it wise in 1850 to refrain from
deciding the matter in controversy, so "your committee are not
prepared now to recommend a departure from the course pursued on that
memorable occasion either by affirming or repealing the 8th section of
the Missouri act, or by any act declaratory of the meaning of the
Constitution in respect to the legal points in dispute." The essential
features of the Compromise of 1850, which should again be carried into
practical operation, were stated as follows:

"First: That all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories,
and in 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 referred to the adjudication 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 Territories,' the same as in the
States."

The substitute reported by the committee followed the Dodge bill
closely, but contained the additional statement. "And when admitted as
a State or States, the said Territory, or any part of the same, shall
be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their
Constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission."[446] This
phraseology was identical with that of the Utah and New Mexico Acts.
The bill also made special provision for writs of error and appeals
from the territorial court to the Supreme Court of the United States,
in all cases involving title to slaves and personal freedom. This
feature, too, was copied from the Utah and New Mexico Acts. As first
printed in the Washington _Sentinel_, January 7th, the bill contained
no reference to the Missouri Compromise and no direct suggestion that
the territorial legislature would decide the question of slavery. The
wording of the bill and its general tenor gave the impression that the
prohibition of slavery would continue during the territorial status,
unless in the meantime the courts should declare the Missouri
Compromise null and void. Three days later, January 10th, the
_Sentinel_ reprinted the bill with an additional section, which had
been omitted by a "clerical error." This twenty-first section read,
"In order to avoid all misconstruction, it is hereby declared to be
the true intent and meaning of this act, so far as the question of
slavery is concerned, to carry into practical operation the following
propositions and principles, established by the compromise measures of
one thousand eight hundred and fifty, to wit:" then followed the three
propositions which had accompanied the report of January 4th. The last
of these three propositions had been slightly abbreviated: all
questions pertaining to slavery were to be left to the decision of the
people through their appropriate representatives, the clause "to be
chosen by them for that purpose" being omitted.

This additional section transformed the whole bill. For the first time
the people of the Territory are mentioned as the determining agents in
respect to slavery. And the unavoidable inference followed, that they
were not to be hampered in their choice by the restrictive feature of
the Missouri Act of 1820. The omission of this weighty section was
certainly a most extraordinary oversight. Whose was the "clerical
error"? Attached to the original draft, now in the custody of the
Secretary of the Senate, is a sheet of blue paper, in Douglas's
handwriting, containing the crucial article. All evidence points to
the conclusion that Douglas added this hastily, after the bill had
been twice read in the Senate and ordered to be printed; but whether
it was carelessly omitted by the copyist or appended by Douglas as an
afterthought, it is impossible to say.[447] After his report of
January 4th, there was surely no reason why Douglas should have
hesitated to incorporate the three propositions in the bill; but it is
perfectly obvious that with the appended section, the Nebraska bill
differed essentially from its prototypes, though Douglas contended
that he had only made explicit what was contained implicitly in the
Utah bill.

Two years later Douglas replied to certain criticisms from Trumbull in
these words: "He knew, or, if not, he ought to know, that the bill in
the shape in which it was first reported, as effectually repealed the
Missouri restriction as it afterwards did when the repeal was put in
express terms. The only question was whether it should be done in the
language of the acts of 1850, or in the language subsequently
employed, but the legal effect was precisely the same."[448] Of course
Douglas was here referring to the original bill containing the
twenty-first section.

It has commonly been assumed that Douglas desired the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise in order to open Nebraska to slavery. This was the
passionate accusation of his anti-slavery contemporaries; and it has
become the verdict of most historians. Yet there is ample evidence
that Douglas had no such wish and intent. He had said in 1850, and on
other occasions, that he believed the prairies to be dedicated to
freedom by a law above human power to repeal. Climate, topography, the
conditions of slave labor, which no Northern man knew better, forbade
slavery in the unoccupied areas of the West.[449] True, he had no such
horror of slavery extension as many Northern men manifested; he was
probably not averse to sacrificing some of the region dedicated by law
to freedom, if thereby he could carry out his cherished project of
developing the greater Northwest; but that he deliberately planned to
plant slavery in all that region, is contradicted by the
incontrovertible fact that he believed the area of slavery to be
circumscribed definitely by Nature. Man might propose but physical
geography would dispose.

The regrettable aspect of Douglas's course is his attempt to nullify
the Missouri Compromise by subtle indirection. This was the device of
a shifty politician, trying to avert suspicion and public alarm by
clever ambiguities. That he really believed a new principle had been
substituted for an old one, in dealing with the Territories, does not
extenuate the offense, for not even he had ventured to assert in 1850,
that the compromises of that year had in any wise disturbed the status
of the great, unorganized area to which Congress had applied the
restrictive proviso of 1820. Besides, only so recently as 1849, he had
said, with all the emphasis of sincerity, that the compromise had
"become canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred
thing, which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to
disturb." And while he then opposed the extension of the principle to
new Territories, he believed that it had been "deliberately
incorporated into our legislation as a solemn and sacred
compromise."[450]

By this time Douglas must have been aware of the covert purpose of
Atchison and others to secure the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
though he hoped that they would acquiesce in his mode of doing it. He
was evidently not prepared for the bold move which certain of the
senators from slave States were contemplating.[451] He was therefore
startled by an amendment which Dixon of Kentucky offered on January
16th, to the effect that the restrictive clause of the Act of 1820
should not be so construed as to apply to Nebraska or any other
Territory; "but that the citizens of the several States or territories
shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the
territories of the United States or of the States to be formed
therefrom," as if the Missouri Act had never been passed. Douglas at
once left his seat to remonstrate with Dixon, who was on the Whig side
of the Senate chamber. He disliked the amendment, not so much because
it wiped out the Missouri Compromise as because it seemed
"affirmatively to legislate slavery into the Territory."[452] Knowing
Dixon to be a supporter of the compromise measures of 1850, Douglas
begged him not to thwart the work of his committee, which was trying
in good faith to apply the cardinal features of those measures to
Nebraska. The latter part of Dixon's amendment could hardly be
harmonized with the principle of congressional non-intervention.[453]

There seems to be no reason to doubt that Dixon moved in this matter on
his own initiative;[454] but he was a friend to Atchison and he could
not have been wholly ignorant of the Missouri factional quarrel.[455]
To be sure, Dixon was a Whig, but Southern Whigs and Democrats were at
one in desiring expansion for the peculiar institution of their
section. Pressure was now brought to bear upon Douglas to incorporate
the direct repeal of the compromise in the Nebraska bill.[456] He
objected strongly, foreseeing no doubt the storm of protest which would
burst over his head in the North.[457] Still, if he could unite the
party on the principle of non-intervention with slavery in the
Territories, the risk of temporary unpopularity would be worth taking.
No doubt personal ambition played its part in forming his purpose, but
party considerations swayed him most powerfully.[458] He witnessed with
no little apprehension the divergence between the Northern and Southern
wings of the party; he had commented in private upon "the distracted
condition" of the party and the need of perpetuating its principles and
consolidating its power. Might this not be his opportunity?

On Sunday morning, January 22d, just before the hour for church,
Douglas, with several of his colleagues, called upon the Secretary of
War, Davis, stating that the Committees on Territories of the Senate
and House had agreed upon a bill, for which the President's approval
was desired. They pressed for an immediate interview inasmuch as they
desired to report the bill on the morrow. Somewhat reluctantly, Davis
arranged an interview for them, though the President was not in the
habit of receiving visitors on Sunday. Yielding to their request,
President Pierce took the proposed bill under consideration, giving
careful heed to all explanations; and when they were done, both he
and his influential secretary promised their support.[459]

What was this momentous bill to which the President thus pledged
himself? The title indicated the most striking feature. There were now
to be two Territories: Kansas and Nebraska. Bedded in the heart of
Section 14, however, was a still more important provision which
announced that the prohibition of slavery in the Act of 1820 had been
"superseded by the principles of the legislation of eighteen hundred
and fifty, commonly called the compromise measures," and was therefore
"inoperative."

It has been commonly believed that Douglas contemplated making one
free and one slave State out of the Nebraska region. His own simple
explanation is far more credible: the two Johnsons had petitioned for
a division of the Territory along the fortieth parallel, and both the
Iowa and Missouri delegations believed that their local interests
would be better served by two Territories.[460]

Again Pacific railroad interests seem to have crossed the path of the
Nebraska bill. The suspicions of Delegate-elect Hadley Johnson had
been aroused by the neglect of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to
extinguish the claims of the Omaha Indians, whose lands lay directly
west of Iowa. At the last session, an appropriation had been made for
the purpose of extinguishing the Indian title to lands west of both
Missouri and Iowa; and everyone knew that this was a preliminary step
to settlement by whites. The appropriation had been zealously
advocated by representatives from Missouri, who frankly admitted that
the possession of these lands would make the Pacific railroad route
available. Now as the Indian Commissioner, who had before shown
himself an active partisan of Senator Atchison, rapidly pushed on the
treaties with the Indians west of Missouri and dallied with the
Omahas, the inference was unavoidable, that Iowa interests were being
sacrificed to Missouri interests. Such was the story that the Iowa
Johnson poured into the ear of Senator Douglas, to whom he was
presented by Senator Dodge.[461] The surest way to safeguard the
interests of Iowa was to divide the Territory of Nebraska, and give
Iowa her natural outlet to the West.

Senator Dodge had also come to this conclusion. Nebraska would be to
Iowa, what Iowa had been to Illinois. Were only one Territory
organized, the seat of government and leading thoroughfares would pass
to the south of Iowa.[462] Put in the language of the promoters of the
Pacific railroad, one Territory meant aid to the central route; two
Territories meant an equal chance for both northern and central
routes. As the representative of Chicago interests, Douglas was not
blind to these considerations.

On Monday, January 23d, Douglas reported the Kansas-Nebraska bill with
a brief word of explanation. Next day Senator Dixon expressed his
satisfaction with the amendment, which he interpreted as virtually
repealing the Missouri Compromise. He disclaimed any other wish or
intention than to secure the principle which the compromise measures
of 1850 had established.[463] An editorial in the Washington _Union_
threw the weight of the administration into the balance: "The
proposition of Mr. Douglas is a practical execution of the principles
of that compromise [of 1850], and therefore, cannot but be regarded by
the administration as a test of Democratic orthodoxy."[464]

While the administration publicly wheeled into line behind Douglas,
the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of
the United States" summoned the anti-slavery elements to join battle
in behalf of the Missouri Compromise. This memorable document had been
written by Chase of Ohio and dated January 19th, but a postscript was
added after the revised Kansas-Nebraska bill had been reported.[465]
It was an adroitly worded paper. History has falsified many of its
predictions; history then controverted many of its assumptions; but it
was colored with strong emotion and had the ring of righteous
indignation.

The gist of the appeal was contained in two clauses, one of which
declared that the Nebraska bill would open all the unorganized
territory of the Union to the ingress of slavery; the other arraigned
the bill as "a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal
betrayal of precious rights." In ominous words, fellow citizens were
besought to observe how the blight of slavery would settle upon all
this land, if this bill should become a law. Christians and Christian
ministers were implored to interpose. "Let all protest, earnestly and
emphatically, by correspondence, 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." In the
postscript Douglas received personal mention. "Not a man in Congress
or out of Congress, in 1850, pretended that the compromise measures
would repeal the Missouri prohibition. Mr. Douglas himself 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 discreditable way of reaching the object. Will the
people permit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards
of a presidential game, and destroyed by false facts and false
inferences?"[466]

This attack roused the tiger in the Senator from Illinois. When he
addressed the Senate on January 30th, he labored under ill-repressed
anger. Even in the expurgated columns of the _Congressional Globe_
enough stinging personalities appeared to make his friends regretful.
What excited his wrath particularly was that Chase and Sumner had
asked for a postponement of discussion, in order to examine the bill,
and then, in the interval, had sent out their indictment of the
author. It was certainly unworthy of him to taunt them with having
desecrated the Sabbath day by writing their plea. The charge was not
only puerile but amusing, when one considers how Douglas himself was
observing that particular Sabbath.

It was comparatively easy to question and disprove the unqualified
statement of the _Appeal_, that "the original settled policy of the
United States was non-extension of slavery." Less convincing was
Douglas's attempt to prove that the Missouri Compromise was expressly
annulled in 1850, when portions of Texas and of the former Spanish
province of Louisiana were added to New Mexico, and also a part of the
province of Louisiana was joined to Utah. Douglas was in the main
correct as to geographical data; but he could not, and did not, prove
that the members of the Thirty-first Congress purposed also to revoke
the Missouri Compromise restriction in all the other unorganized
Territories. This contention was one of those _non-sequiturs_ of which
Douglas, in the heat of argument, was too often guilty. Still more
regrettable, because it seemed to convict him of sophistry, was the
mode by which he sought to evade the charge of the _Appeal_, that the
act organizing New Mexico and settling the boundary of Texas had
reaffirmed the Missouri Compromise. To establish his point he had to
assume that _all_ the land cut off from Texas north of 36 deg. 30', was
added to New Mexico, thus leaving nothing to which the slavery
restriction, reaffirmed in the act of 1850, could apply. But Chase
afterward invalidated this assumption and Douglas was forced so to
qualify his original statement as to yield the point. This was a
damaging admission and prejudiced his cause before the country. But
when he brought his wide knowledge of American colonization to bear
upon the concrete problems of governmental policy, his grasp of the
situation was masterly.

"Let me ask you where you have succeeded in excluding slavery by an
act of Congress from one inch of American soil? You may tell me that
you did it in the northwest territory by the ordinance of 1787. I
will show you by the history of the country that you did not
accomplish any such thing. You prohibited slavery there by law, but
you did not exclude it in fact.... I know of but one territory of the
United States where slavery does exist, and that one is where you have
prohibited it by law, and it is in this very Nebraska Territory. In
defiance of the eighth section of the act of 1820, in defiance of
Congressional dictation, there have been, not many, but a few slaves
introduced.... I have no doubt that whether you organize the territory
of Nebraska or not this will continue for some time to come.... But
when settlers rush in--when labor becomes plenty, and therefore cheap,
in that climate, with its productions, it is worse than folly to think
of its being a slave-holding country.... I do not like, I never did
like, the system of legislation on our part, by which a geographical
line, in violation of the laws of nature, and climate, and soil, and
of the laws of God, should be run to establish institutions for a
people."[467]

The fate of the bill was determined behind closed doors. After all,
the Senate chamber was only a public clearing-house, where senators
elucidated, or per-chance befogged, the issues. The real arena was the
Democratic caucus. Under the leadership of Douglas, those high in the
party conclaves met, morning after morning, in the endeavor to compose
the sharp differences between the Northern and the Southern wings of
the party.[468] On both sides, there was a disposition to agree on the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, though grave misgivings were felt.
There were Southern men who believed that the repeal would be "an
unavailing boon"; and there were Northern politicians who foresaw the
storm of popular indignation that would break upon their heads.[469]
Southern Democrats were disposed to follow the South Carolina theory
to its logical extreme: as joint owners of the Territories the
citizens of all the States might carry their property into the
Territories without let or hindrance; only the people of the Territory
in the act of framing a State constitution might exclude slavery.
Neither Congress nor a territorial legislature might take away
property in slaves. With equal pertinacity, Douglas and his supporters
advocated the right of the people in their territorial status, to
mould their institutions as they chose. Was there any middle ground?

Prolonged discussion made certain points of agreement clear to all. It
was found that no one questioned the right of a State, with sufficient
population and a republican constitution, to enter the Union with or
without slavery as it chose. All agreed that it was best that slavery
should not be discussed in Congress. All agreed that, whether or no
Congress had the power to exclude slavery in the Territories, it ought
not to exercise it. All agreed that if Congress had such power, it
ought to delegate it to the people. Here agreement ceased. Did
Congress have such power? Clearly the law of the Constitution could
alone determine. Then why not delegate the power to control their
domestic institutions to the people of the Territories, subject to the
provisions of the Constitution? "And then," said one of the
participants later, "in order to provide a means by which the
Constitution could govern ... we of the South, conscious that we were
right, the North asserting the same confidence in its own doctrines,
agreed that every question touching human slavery or human freedom
should be appealable to the Supreme Court of the United States for its
decision."[470]

While this compromise was being reached in caucus, the bill was under
constant fire on the floor of the Senate. The _Appeal of the
Independent Democrats_ had bitterly arraigned the declaratory part of
the Kansas-Nebraska bill, where the Missouri Compromise was said to
have been superseded and therefore inoperative. Even staunch Democrats
like Cass had taken exception to this phraseology, preferring to
declare the Missouri Compromise null and void in unequivocal terms. To
Douglas there was nothing ambiguous or misleading in the wording of
the clause. What was meant was this: the acts of 1850 rendered the
Missouri Compromise _inoperative_ in Utah and New Mexico; but so far
as the Missouri Compromise applied to territory not embraced in those
acts, it was _superseded_ by the great principle established in 1850.
"Superseded by" meant "inconsistent with" the compromise of 1850.[471]
The word "supersede," however, continued to cause offense. Cass read
from the dictionary to prove that the word had a more positive force
than Douglas gave to it. To supersede meant to set aside: he could
not bring himself to assent to this statement.[472]

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