Volume II Part 16 (1/2)
Seward, who advised the omission of certain personal allusions to Senator Butler;[478] but he delivered it as he wrote it, and two days later the country was startled by Preston S. Brooks' a.s.sault. The North received this outrage with horror as the work of the slave power. In public meetings, the people condemned it as a violation of the freedom of speech and a blow at the personal safety of public men having the courage to express their convictions. ”The blows that fell on the head of the Senator from Ma.s.sachusetts,” said Seward, ”have done more for the cause of human freedom in Kansas and in the territories of the United States than all the eloquence which has resounded in these halls since the days of Rufus King and John Quincy Adams.”[479] The events surrounding the a.s.sault--Brooks' resignation, his unanimous re-election, his challenge to Burlingame, and his refusal to fight in Canada--all tended to intensify Northern feeling.
Close upon the heels of this excitement came news from Kansas of the burning of Lawrence, the destruction of Osawatomie, the sacking of free-state printing offices, and the murder of Northern immigrants. To complete the list of crimes against free speech and freedom, the commander of a force of United States troops dispersed the Topeka Legislature at the point of the bayonet.
[Footnote 478: Statement of William H. Seward, Jr., to the Author.]
[Footnote 479: This speech was made on June 24, 1856.]
This was the condition of affairs when the two great political parties of the country a.s.sembled in national convention in June, 1856, to select candidates for President and Vice President. At their state convention, in January, to select delegates-at-large to Cincinnati, the Softs had put themselves squarely in accord with the pro-slavery wing of their party. They commended the administration of Pierce, approved the Nebraska Act, and denounced as ”treasonable” the Kansas policy of the Republican party. This was a wide departure from their position of August, 1855, which had practically reaffirmed the principles of the Wilmot Proviso; but the trend of public events compelled them either to renounce all anti-slavery leanings or abandon their party. Their surrender, however, did not turn their reception at Cincinnati into the welcome of prodigals. The committee on credentials kept them waiting at the door for two days, and when they were finally admitted they were compelled to enter on an equality with the Hards.
Horatio Seymour pleaded for representation in proportion to the votes cast, which would have given the Softs three-fifths of the delegation, but the convention thought them ent.i.tled to no advantages because of their ”abolition principles,” and even refused a request for additional seats from which their colleagues might witness the proceedings. To complete their humiliation the convention required them formally to deny the right of Congress or of the people of a territory to prohibit slavery in any territory of the United States.
It was a bitter dose. The Democracy of the Empire State had been accustomed to control conventions--not to serve them. For twenty years they had come with candidates for the Presidency, and if none of their statesmen had been nominated since 1836 they were recognised as resolute men, bold in diplomacy, ready for any emergency, and as formidable to their enemies as they were dear to their friends. For nearly three decades a New Yorker had been in the Cabinet of every administration. But the glory of former days had now departed. For twelve years the party had been divided and weakened, until, at last, it had neither presidential candidate to offer nor cabinet position to expect.
The leading candidates at Cincinnati were Franklin Pierce, Stephen A.
Douglas, and James Buchanan. Northern delegates had been inclined to support Pierce or Douglas; but since the a.s.sault upon Sumner and the destruction of Lawrence, the conciliation of the North by the nomination of a candidate who had not partic.i.p.ated in the events of the past three years seemed the wisest and safest policy. Buchanan had been minister to England since the birth of the Pierce administration; and the fact that he hailed from Pennsylvania, a very important State in the election, strengthened his availability. The Softs recognised the wisdom of this philosophy, but, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Marcy, who had given them the federal patronage for three years, they voted for the President, with the hope that his supporters might ultimately unite with those of Douglas. The Hards, on the contrary, supported Buchanan. They had little use for Pierce, who had persecuted them.
On the first ballot Buchanan had 135 votes, Pierce 122, Douglas 33, and Ca.s.s 5, with 197 necessary to a choice. This made Buchanan's success probable if his forces stood firm; and as other ballots brought him additional votes at the expense of Pierce, his nomination seemed certain. The Softs, however, continued with Pierce until his withdrawal on the fourteenth ballot; then, putting aside an opportunity to support the winning candidate, they turned to Douglas.
But to their great surprise, Douglas withdrew at the end of the next ballot, leaving the field to Buchanan. This placed the Softs, who now joined the Hards because there was no longer any way of keeping apart, in an awkward position. Seymour, however, gracefully accepted the situation, declaring that, although the Softs came into the convention under many disadvantages, they desired to do all in their power to harmonise the vote of the convention and to promote the discontinuance of factional differences in the great State of New York. Greene C.
Bronson, who smiled derisively as he heard this deathbed repentance, did not know how soon Horatio Seymour was destined again to command the party.
The Republican national convention convened at Philadelphia on the 17th of June. Recent events had encouraged Republicans with the hope of ultimate victory. Nathaniel P. Banks' election as speaker of the national House of Representatives on the one hundred and thirty-seventh ballot, after a fierce contest of two months, was a great triumph; interest in the Pittsburg convention on the 22d of February had surpa.s.sed expectations; and the troubles of ”bleeding Kansas,” which seemed to culminate in the a.s.sault upon Sumner and the destruction of Lawrence, had kept the free States in a condition of profound excitement. Such brutal outrages, it was thought, would certainly discredit any party that approved the policy leading to them. Sustained by this hope the convention, in its platform, arraigned the Administration for the conduct of affairs; demanded the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union under the Topeka Const.i.tution; and resolved, amidst the greatest enthusiasm, that ”it is both the right and duty of Congress to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery.”
The selection of a presidential candidate gave the delegates more trouble. They wanted an available man who could carry Pennsylvania; and between the supporters of John C. Fremont and the forces of John McLean, for twenty-six years a member of the United States Supreme Court, the canva.s.s became earnest and exciting. Finally, on an informal ballot, Fremont secured 359 of the 555 votes in the convention. William L. Dayton of New Jersey was then nominated for Vice President over Abraham Lincoln, who received 110 votes.
William H. Seward was the logical candidate for President. He represented Republican principles and aims more fully than any man in the country, but Thurlow Weed, looking into the future through the eyes of a practical politician, disbelieved in Republican success. He argued that, although Republicans were sure of 114 electoral votes, it was essential to carry Pennsylvania to secure the additional 35, and that Pennsylvania could not be carried. This belief was strengthened after the nomination of Buchanan, who pledged himself to give fair play to Kansas, which many understood to mean a free State. Under these conditions Weed advised Seward not to become a candidate, on the theory that defeat in 1856 would sacrifice his chances in 1860.
Seward, as usual, acquiesced in Weed's judgment. ”I once heard Seward declare,” wrote Gideon Welles, ”that 'Seward is Weed and Weed is Seward. What I do, Weed approves. What he says, I indorse. We are one.'”[480] On this occasion, however, it is certain Seward accepted Weed's judgment with much reluctance. His heart was set upon the nomination, and his letters reveal disappointment and even disgust at the arrangement. ”It is a delicate thing,” he wrote, on the 27th of April, ”to go through the present ordeal, but I am endeavouring to do so without giving any one just cause to complain of indifference on my part to the success of the cause. I have shut out the subject itself from conversation and correspondence, and, so far as possible, from my thoughts.”[481] But he could not close his ears. ”From all I hear 'availability' is to be indulged next week and my own friends are to make the sacrifice,” he wrote his wife, on June 11, six days before the convention opened. ”Be it so; I shall submit with better grace than others would.”[482] Two days later he said: ”It tries my patience to hear what is said and to act as if I a.s.sented, under expectation of personal benefits, present and prospective.”[483]
[Footnote 480: Gideon Welles, _Lincoln and Seward_, p. 23. ”I am sorry to hear the remark,” said the late Chief Justice Chase, ”for while I would strain a point to oblige Mr. Seward, I feel under no obligations to do anything for the special benefit of Mr. Weed. The two are not and never can be one to me.”--_Ibid._, p. 23.]
[Footnote 481: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 270.]
[Footnote 482: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 277.]
[Footnote 483: _Ibid._, p. 277.]
What especially gravelled Seward was the action of his opponents. ”The understanding all around me is,” he wrote his wife, on June 14, ”that Greeley has struck hands with enemies of mine and sacrificed me for the good of the cause, to be obtained by the nomination of a more available candidate, and that Weed has concurred in demanding my acquiescence.”[484] Seward suspected the truth of this ”understanding”
as to Greeley, but it is doubtful if he then believed Weed had betrayed him. Perhaps this thought came later after he heard of Fremont's astonis.h.i.+ng vote and learned that the newspapers were again nominating the Path-finder for a standard-bearer in 1860. ”Seward more than hinted to confidential friends,” wrote Henry B. Stanton, ”that Weed betrayed him for Fremont.” Then Stanton tells the story of Weed and Seward riding up Broadway, and how, when pa.s.sing the bronze statue of Lincoln in Union Square, Seward said, ”Weed, if you had been faithful to me, I should have been there instead of Lincoln.”
”Seward,” replied Weed, ”is it not better to be alive in a carriage with me than to be dead and set up in bronze?”[485]
[Footnote 484: _Ibid._, p. 277.]
[Footnote 485: H.B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_, p. 194.]
How much Weed's advice to Seward was influenced by the arguments of opponents nowhere appears, but the disappointment of Democrats and conservative Americans upon the announcement of Seward's withdrawal proves that these objections were serious. His views were regarded as too extreme for a popular candidate. It was deemed advisable not to put in issue either the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or the repeal of the fugitive slave law, and Seward's p.r.o.nounced att.i.tude on these questions, it was a.s.serted, would involve them in the campaign regardless of the silence of the platform. It was argued, also, that although the Whigs were numerically the largest portion of the Republican party, a candidate of Democratic antecedents would be preferable, especially in Pennsylvania, a State, they declared, which Seward could not carry. To all this Greeley undoubtedly a.s.sented. The dissolution of the firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley, announced in Greeley's remarkable letter of November 11, 1854, but not yet made public, had, indeed, taken effect. The result was not so patent, certainly not so vitriolic, as it appeared at Chicago in 1860, but Greeley now began insinuating doubts of Seward's popular strength, exaggerating local prejudices against him, and yielding to objections raised by his avowed opponents. His hostility found no place in the columns of the _Tribune_, but it coloured his conversations and private correspondence. To Richard A. Dana he wrote that Callamer's speech on the Kansas question ”is better than Seward's, in my humble judgment;”[486] yet the _Tribune_ p.r.o.nounced Seward's ”the great argument” and ”unsurpa.s.sed in political philosophy.” The importance of Pennsylvania became as prominent a factor in the convention of 1856 as it did in that of 1860, and Greeley did not hesitate to affirm Seward's inability to carry it, declaring that such weakness made his nomination fatal to party success.
[Footnote 486: Letters of April 7, 1856.]
The opponents of Seward, however, could not have prevented his nomination had he decided to enter the race. He was the unanimous choice of the New York delegation. The mere mention of his name at Philadelphia met with the loudest applause. When Senator Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts spoke of him as ”the foremost American statesman,” the cheers made further speaking impossible for several minutes. He was the idol of the convention as he was the chief figure of his party.
John A. King declared that could his name have been presented ”it would have received the universal approbation of the convention.”
Robert Emmet, the son of the distinguished Thomas Addis Emmet, and the temporary chairman of the convention, made a similar statement. Even Thurlow Weed found it difficult to prevail upon his friends to bide their time until the next national convention. ”Earnest friends refused to forego my nomination,” Seward wrote his wife on June 17, the day the convention opened, ”without my own authority.”[487]