Stephen A. Douglas by Allen Johnson

A >> Allen Johnson >> Stephen A. Douglas

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34

When the new Congress met in the fall of 1855, the anti-Nebraska men
drew closer together and gradually assumed the name "Republican."
Their first victory was the election of their candidate for the
Speakership. They were disciplined by astute leaders under the
pressure of disorders in Kansas. Before the session closed, they
developed a remarkable degree of cohesion, while the body of their
supporters in the Northern States assumed alarming proportions. The
party was not wholly, perhaps not mainly, the product of humanitarian
sentiment. The adherence of old-line Whig politicians like Seward
suggests that there was some alloy in the pure gold of Republicanism.
Such leaders were willing to make political capital out of the
breakdown of popular sovereignty in Kansas.[523] They were too shrewd
to stake the fortune of the nascent party on a bold, constructive
policy. They preferred to play a waiting game. Events in Kansas came
to their aid in ways that they could not have anticipated.

While this re-alignment of parties was in progress, the presidential
year drew on apace. It behooved the Democrats to gather their
scattered forces. The advantage of organization was theirs; but they
suffered from desertions. The morale of the party was weakened. To
check further desertions and to restore confidence, was the aim of the
party whips. No one had more at stake than Douglas. He was on trial
with his party. Conscious of his responsibilities, he threw himself
into the light skirmishing in Congress which always precedes a
presidential campaign. In this partisan warfare he was clever, but not
altogether admirable. One could wish that he had been less
uncharitable and less denunciatory; but political victories are seldom
won by unaided virtue.

From the outset his anti-Nebraska colleague was the object of his
bitterest gibes, for Trumbull typified the deserter, who was causing
such alarm in the ranks of the Democrats. "I understand that my
colleague has told the Senate," said Douglas contemptuously, "that he
comes here as a Democrat. Sir, that fact will be news to the Democracy
of Illinois. I undertake to assert there is not a Democrat in Illinois
who will not say that such a statement is a libel upon the Democracy
of that State. When he was elected he received every Abolition vote in
the Legislature of Illinois. He received every Know-Nothing vote in
the Legislature of Illinois. So far as I am advised and believe, he
received no vote except from persons allied to Abolitionism or
Know-Nothingism. He came here as the Know-Nothing-Abolition candidate,
in opposition to the united Democracy of his State, and to the
Democratic candidate."[524]

When to desertion was added association with "Black Republicans,"
Douglas found his vocabulary inadequate to express his scorn. Like
most Democrats he was sensitive on the subject of party
nomenclature.[525] "Republican" was a term which had associations with
the very father of Democracy, though the party had long since dropped
the hyphenated title. But this new, so-called Republican party had
wisely dropped the prefix "national," suggested Douglas, because "it
is a purely sectional party, with a platform which cannot cross the
Ohio river, and a creed which inevitably brings the North and South
into hostile collision." In view of the emphasis which their platform
put upon the negro, Douglas thought that consistency required the
substitution of the word "Black" for "National." The Democratic party,
on the other hand, had no sympathy with those who believed in making
the negro the social and political equal of the white man. "Our people
are a white people; our State is a white State; and we mean to
preserve the race pure, without any mixture with the negro. If you,"
turning to his Republican opponents, "wish your blood and that of the
African mingled in the same channel, we trust that you will keep at a
respectful distance from us, and not try to force that on us as one of
your domestic institutions."[526] In such wise, Douglas labored to
befog and discredit the issues for which the new party stood. The
demagogue in him overmastered the statesman.

Douglas believed himself--and with good reason--to be the probable
nominee of his party in the approaching presidential election. Several
State conventions had already declared for him. There was no other
Democrat, save President Pierce, whose name was so intimately
associated with the policy of the party as expressed in the
Kansas-Nebraska bill. Yet, while both were in favor at the South,
neither Pierce nor Douglas was likely to secure the full party vote at
the North. This consideration led to a diversion in favor of James
Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. The peculiar availability of this
well-known Democrat consisted in his having been on a foreign mission
when the Kansas-Nebraska bill was under fire. Still, Buchanan was
reported "sound" on the essential features of this measure. Before the
national convention met, a well-organized movement was under way to
secure the nomination of the Pennsylvanian.[527] Equally
well-organized and even more noisy and demonstrative was the following
of Douglas, as the delegates began to assemble at Cincinnati during
the first week in June.

The first ballot in the convention must have been a grievous
disappointment to Douglas and his friends. While Buchanan received
135 votes and Pierce 122, he could muster only 33. Only the Missouri
and Illinois delegations cast their full vote for him. Of the slave
States, only Missouri and Kentucky gave him any support. As the
balloting continued, however, both Buchanan and Douglas gained at the
expense of Pierce. After the fourteenth ballot, Pierce withdrew, and
the bulk of his support was turned over to Douglas. Cass, the fourth
candidate before the convention, had been from the first out of the
running, his highest vote being only seven. On the sixteenth ballot,
Buchanan received 168 and Douglas 122. Though Buchanan now had a
majority of the votes of the convention, he still lacked thirty of the
two-thirds required for a nomination.[528]

It was at this juncture that Douglas telegraphed to his friend
Richardson, who was chairman of the Illinois delegation and a
prominent figure in the convention, instructing him to withdraw his
name. The announcement was received with loud protestations. The
dispatch was then read: "If the withdrawal of my name will contribute
to the harmony of our party or the success of our cause, I hope you
will not hesitate to take the step ... if Mr. Pierce or Mr. Buchanan,
or any other statesman who is faithful to the great issues involved in
the contest, shall receive a majority of the convention, I earnestly
hope that all my friends will unite in insuring him two-thirds, and
then making his nomination unanimous. Let no personal considerations
disturb the harmony or endanger the triumph of our principles."[529]
Very reluctantly the supporters of Douglas obeyed their chief, and on
the seventeenth ballot, James Buchanan received the unanimous vote of
the convention. For the second time Douglas lost the nomination of his
party.

Douglas bore himself admirably. At a mass-meeting in Washington,[530]
he made haste to pledge his support to the nominee of the convention.
His generous words of commendation of Buchanan, as a man possessing
"wisdom and nerve to enforce a firm and undivided execution, of the
laws" of the majority of the people of Kansas, were uttered without
any apparent misgivings. Prophetic they certainly were not. Douglas
could approve the platform unqualifiedly, for it was a virtual
indorsement of the principle which he had proclaimed from the
housetops for the greater part of two years. "The American Democracy,"
read the main article in the newly adopted resolutions, "recognize and
adopt the principles contained in the organic laws establishing the
Territories of Nebraska and Kansas as embodying the only sound and
safe solution of the slavery question, upon which the great national
idea of the people of this whole country can repose in its determined
conservation of the Union, and non-interference of Congress with
slavery in the Territories or in the District of Columbia."[531]
Douglas deemed it a cause for profound rejoicing that the party was
at last united upon principles which could be avowed everywhere,
North, South, East, and West. As the only national party in the
Republic, the Democracy had a great mission to perform, for in his
opinion "no less than the integrity of the Constitution, the
preservation and perpetuity of the Union," depended upon the result of
this election.[532]

No man could have been more magnanimous under defeat and so little
resentful at a personal slight. His manly conduct received favorable
comment on all sides.[533] He was still the foremost figure in the
Democratic party. To be sure, James Buchanan was the titular leader,
but he stood upon a platform erected by his rival. His letter of
acceptance left no doubt in the minds of all readers that he indorsed
the letter and the spirit of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.[534]

A fortnight later the Republican national convention met at
Philadelphia, and with great enthusiasm adopted a platform declaring
it to be the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories "those
twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery." Even in this new
party, availability dictated the choice of a presidential candidate.
The real leaders of the party were passed over in favor of John C.
Fremont, whose romantic career was believed to be worth many votes.
Pitted against Buchanan and Fremont, was Millard Fillmore who had been
nominated months before by the American party, and who subsequently
received the indorsement of what was left of the moribund Whig
party.[535]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 507: This aspect of party has been treated at greater length
in an article by the writer entitled "The Nationalizing Influence of
Party," _Tale Review_, November; 1906.]

[Footnote 508: Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 264-265.]

[Footnote 509: _Ibid._, p. 271.]

[Footnote 510: _Ibid._, p. 269.]

[Footnote 511: Cutts, Constitutional and Party Questions, pp. 98-99.]

[Footnote 512: Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, pp. 641-643.]

[Footnote 513: See items scattered through the Illinois _State
Register_ for these exciting weeks.]

[Footnote 514: See Illinois State _Register_, October 6, 1854, and
subsequent issues.]

[Footnote 515: Nearly every biographer of Lincoln has noted this
apparent breach of agreement on the part of Douglas, but none has
questioned the accuracy of the story, though the unimaginative Lamon
betrays some misgivings, as he records Lincoln's course after the
"Peoria truce." See Lamon, Lincoln, p. 358. The statement of Irwin (in
Herndon-Weik, Lincoln, II, p. 329) does not seem credible, in the
light of all the attendant circumstances.]

[Footnote 516: _Whig Almanac_ 1855.]

[Footnote 517: MS. Letter, Douglas to Lanphier, December 18, 1854.]

[Footnote 518: MS. Letter, Douglas to Lanphier, December 18, 1854.]

[Footnote 519: Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, pp. 689-690;
Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 275-276.]

[Footnote 520: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 67.]

[Footnote 521: _Globe_, 33 Cong., 2 Sess., App., p. 216.]

[Footnote 522: Globe, 33 Cong., 2 Sess., App., p. 330.]

[Footnote 523: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 97-98,
130, 196.]

[Footnote 524: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 655.]

[Footnote 525: _Ibid._, App., p. 391.]

[Footnote 526: _Globe,_34 Cong., 1 Sess., App. p. 392.]

[Footnote 527: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 169-171.]

[Footnote 528: Stanwood, History of the Presidency, p. 265. Douglas
received 73 votes from the slave States and Buchanan 47; Buchanan
received 28 votes in New England, Douglas 13; Buchanan received 41
votes from the Northwest, Douglas 19. The loss of Buchanan in the
South was more than made good by his votes from the Middle Atlantic
States.]

[Footnote 529: Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 448-449; Proceedings of the
National Democratic Convention, 1856.]

[Footnote 530: Washington _Union_, June 7, 1856.]

[Footnote 531: Stanwood, History of the Presidency, p. 267.]

[Footnote 532: Washington _Union_, June 7, 1856.]

[Footnote 533: Correspondent to Cincinnati _Enquirer_, June 12, 1856.]

[Footnote 534: The letter read, "This legislation is founded upon
principles as ancient as free government itself, and in accordance
with them has simply declared that the people of a Territory like
those of a State, shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or
shall not exist within their limits. The Kansas-Nebraska Act does no
more than give the force of law to this elementary principle of
self-government, declaring it to be '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 Constitution of the United States.' How vain and
illusory would any other principle prove in practice in regard to the
Territories," etc. Cincinnati _Enquirer_, June 22, 1856.]

[Footnote 535: Stanwood, History of the Presidency, pp. 269-274.]

CHAPTER XIII

THE TESTING OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

The author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill doubtless anticipated a gradual
and natural occupation of the new Territories by settlers like those
home-seekers who had taken up government lands in Iowa and other
States of the Northwest. In the course of time, it was to be expected,
such communities would form their own social and political
institutions, and so determine whether they would permit or forbid
slave-labor. By that rapid, and yet on the whole strangely
conservative, American process the people of the Territories would
become politically self-conscious and ready for statehood. Not all at
once, but gradually, a politically self-sufficient entity would come
into being. Such had been the history of American colonization; it
seemed the part of wise statesmanship to follow the trend of that
history.

Theoretically popular sovereignty, as applied in the Kansas-Nebraska
Act, was not an advance over the doctrine of Cass and Dickinson. It
professed to be the same which had governed Congress in organizing
Utah and New Mexico. Nevertheless, popular sovereignty had an
artificial quality which squatter sovereignty lacked. The relation
between Congress and the people of the Territories, in the matter of
slavery, was now to be determined not so much by actual conditions as
by an abstract principle. Federal policy was indoctrinated.

There was, too, this vital difference between squatter sovereignty in
Utah and New Mexico and popular sovereignty in Nebraska and Kansas:
the former were at least partially inhabited and enjoyed some degree
of social and political order; the latter were practically
uninhabited. It was one thing to grant control over all domestic
concerns to a population _in esse_, and another and quite different
thing to grant control to a people _in posse_. In the Kansas-Nebraska
Act hypothetical communities were endowed with the capacity of
self-government, and told to decide for themselves a question which
would become a burning issue the very moment that the first settlers
set foot in the Territories. Congress attempted thus to solve an
equation without a single known quantity.

Moreover, slavery was no longer a matter of local concern. Doubtless
it was once so regarded; but the time had passed when the conscience
of the North would acquiesce in a _laissez faire_ policy. By force of
circumstances slavery had become a national issue. Ardent haters of
the institution were not willing that its extension or restriction
should be left to a fraction of the nation, artificially organized as
a Territory. The Kansas-Nebraska Act prejudiced the minds of many
against the doctrine, however sound in theory it may have seemed, by
unsettling what the North regarded as its vested right in the free
territory north of the line of the Missouri Compromise. The Act made
the political atmosphere electric. The conditions for obtaining a
calm, dispassionate judgment on the domestic concern of chief
interest, were altogether lacking.

It was everywhere conceded that Nebraska would be a free Territory.
The eyes of the nation were focused upon Kansas, which was from the
first debatable ground. A rush of settlers from the Northwest joined
by pioneers from Kentucky and Missouri followed the opening up of the
new lands. As Douglas had foretold, the tide of immigration held back
by Indian treaties now poured in. The characteristic features of
American colonization seemed about to repeat themselves. So far the
movement of population was for the most part spontaneous. Land-hunger,
not the political destiny of the West, drove men to locate their
claims on the Kansas and the Missouri. By midsummer colonists of a
somewhat different stripe appeared. Sent out under the auspices of the
Emigrant Aid Company, they were to win Kansas for freedom at the same
time that they subdued the wilderness. It was a species of assisted
emigration which was new in the history of American colonization,
outside the annals of missionary effort. The chief promoter of this
enterprise was a thrifty, Massachusetts Yankee, who saw no reason why
crusading and business should not go hand in hand. Kansas might be
wrested from the slave-power at the same time that returns on invested
funds were secured.

The effect of these developments upon the aggressive pro-slavery
people of Missouri is not easy to describe. Hitherto they had assumed
that Kansas would become a slave Territory in the natural order of
events. This was the prevailing Southern opinion. At once the people
of western Missouri were put upon the defensive. Blue lodges were
formed for the purpose of carrying slavery into Kansas. Appeals were
circulated in the slave-holding States for colonists and funds.
Passions were inflamed by rumors which grew as they stalked abroad.
The peaceful occupation of Kansas was at an end. Popular sovereignty
was to be tested under abnormal conditions.

When the election of territorial delegates to Congress occurred, in
the late fall, a fatal defect in the organic law was disclosed, to
which many of the untoward incidents of succeeding months may be
ascribed. The territorial act conferred the right of voting at the
first elections upon all free, white, male inhabitants, twenty-one
years of age and actually resident in the Territory.[536] Here was an
unfortunate ambiguity. What was actual residence? Every other act
organizing a territorial government was definite on this point,
permitting only those to vote who were living in the proposed
Territory, at the time of the passage of the act. The omission in the
case of Kansas and Nebraska is easily accounted for. Neither had legal
residents when the act was passed. Indeed, this defect bears witness
to the fact that Congress was legislating, not for actual, but for
hypothetical communities. The consequences were far-reaching, for at
the very first election, it was charged that frauds were practiced by
bands of Missourians, who had crossed the border only to aid the
pro-slavery cause. Not much was made of these charges, as no
particular interest attached to the election.

Far different was the election of members of the territorial
legislature in the following spring. On all hands it was agreed that
this legislature would determine whether Kansas should be slave or
free soil. It was regrettable that Governor Reeder postponed the
taking of the census until February, since by mid-winter many
settlers, who had staked their claims, returned home for the cold
season, intending to return with their families in the early spring.
This again was a characteristic feature of frontier history.[537] In
March, the governor issued his proclamation of election, giving only
three weeks' notice. Of those who had returned home, only residents of
Missouri and Iowa were able to participate in the election of March
30th, by hastily recrossing into Kansas. Governor Reeder did his best
to guard against fraud. In his instructions to the judges of election,
he warned them that a voter must be "an actual resident"; that is,
"must have commenced an active inhabitancy, which he actually intends
to continue permanently, and must have made the Territory his dwelling
place to the exclusion of any other home."[538] Still, it was not to
be expected that _bona fide_ residents could be easily ascertained in
communities which had sprung up like mushrooms. A hastily constructed
shack served all the purposes of the would-be voter; and, in last
analysis, judges of elections had to rest content with declarations of
intentions. Those who crossed into Kansas after the governor's
proclamation and endeavored to continue actual inhabitancy, were with
difficulty distinguished from those who now crossed for the first
time, under a similar pretext. As Douglas subsequently contended with
much force, the number of votes cast in excess of the census returns
did not in itself prove wholesale fraud.[539]

Under such liability to deception and misjudgment, the territorial
authorities held the election which was likely to determine the status
of Kansas with respect to slavery. Both parties were playing for great
stakes; passion and violence were the almost inevitable outcome. Both
parties contained desperadoes, who invariably come to the surface in
the general mixing which occurs on the frontier. Both parties committed
frauds at the polls. But the most serious gravamina have been laid at
the door of those Blue Lodges of Missouri which deliberately sought to
secure the election of pro-slavery candidates by fair means or foul.
The people of western Missouri had come to believe that the fate of
slavery in their own Commonwealth hinged upon the future of Kansas. It
was commonly believed that after Kansas, Missouri would be
abolitionized. It was, therefore, with the fierce, unreasoning energy
of defenders of their own institutions, that Blue Lodges organized
their crusade for Kansas.[540] On election day armed bands of
Missourians crossed into Kansas and polled a heavy vote for the
pro-slavery candidates, in the teeth of indignant remonstrances.[541]

The further history of popular sovereignty in Kansas must be lightly
touched upon, for it is the reflex action in the halls of Congress
that interests the student of Douglas's career. Twenty-eight of the
thirty-nine members of the first territorial legislature were men of
pronounced pro-slavery views; eleven were anti-slavery candidates. In
seven districts, where protests had been filed, the governor ordered
new elections. Three of those first elected were returned, six were
new men of anti-slavery proclivities. But when the legislature met,
these new elections were set aside and I the first elections were
declared valid.[542]

In complete control of the legislature, the pro-slavery party
proceeded to write slavery into the law of the Territory. In their
eagerness to establish slavery permanently, these legislative Hotspurs
quite overshot the mark, creating offenses and affixing penalties of
doubtful constitutionality.[543] Meanwhile the census of February
reported but one hundred ninety-two slaves in a total population of
eight thousand six hundred.[544] Those who had migrated from the
South, were not as a rule of the slave-holding class. Those who
possessed slaves shrank from risking their property in Kansas, until
its future were settled.[545] Eventually, the climate was to prove an
even greater obstacle to the transplantation of the slave-labor system
into Kansas.

Foiled in their hope of winning the territorial legislature, the
free-State settlers in Kansas resolved upon a hazardous course.
Believing the legislature an illegal body, they called a convention to
draft a constitution with which they proposed to apply for admission
to the Union as a free State. Robinson, the leader of the free-State
party, was wise in such matters by reason of his experience in
California. Reeder, who had been displaced as governor and had gone
over to the opposition, lent his aid to the project; and
ex-Congressman Lane, formerly of Indiana, gave liberally of his
vehement energy to the cause. After successive conventions in which
the various free-State elements were worked into a fairly consistent
mixture, the Topeka convention launched a constitution and a
free-State government. Unofficially the supporters of the new
government took measures for its defense. In the following spring,
Governor Robinson sent his first message to the State legislature in
session at Topeka; and Reeder and Lane were chosen senators for the
inchoate Commonwealth.[546]

Meantime Governor Shannon had succeeded Reeder as executive of the
territorial government at Shawnee Mission. The aspect of affairs was
ominous. Popular sovereignty had ended in a dangerous dualism. Two
governments confronted each other in bitter hostility. There were
untamed individuals in either camp, who were not averse to a decision
by wager of battle.[547]

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34