Volume II Part 18 (1/2)

CHAPTER XIX

SEWARD'S BID FOR THE PRESIDENCY

1859-1860

The elections in 1858 simplified the political situation. With the exception of Pennsylvania, where the tariff question played a conspicuous part, all the Northern States had disapproved President Buchanan's Lecompton policy, and the people, save the old-line Whigs, the Abolitionists, and the Americans, had placed themselves under the leaders.h.i.+p of Seward, Lincoln, and Douglas, who now clearly represented the political sentiments of the North. If any hope still lingered among the Democrats of New York, that the sectional division of their party might be healed, it must have been quickly shattered by the fierce debates over popular sovereignty and the African slave-trade which occurred in the United States Senate in February, 1859, between Jefferson Davis, representing the slave power of the South, and Stephen A. Douglas, the recognised champion of his party in the free States.

Under these circ.u.mstances, the Democratic national convention, called to meet in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23, 1860, became the centre of interest in the state convention, which met at Syracuse on the 14th of September, 1859. Each faction desired to control the national delegation. As usual, Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson was a candidate for the Presidency. He believed his friends in the South would prefer him to Douglas if he could command an unbroken New York delegation, and, with the hope of having the delegates selected by districts as the surer road to success, he flirted with Fernando Wood until the latter's perfidy turned his ear to the siren song of the Softs, who promised him a solid delegation whenever it could secure his nomination. d.i.c.kinson listened with distrust. He was the last of the old leaders of the Hards. Seymour and Marcy had left them; but ”Scripture d.i.c.k,” as he was called, because of his many Bible quotations, stood resolutely and arrogantly at his post, defying the machinations of his opponents with merciless criticism. The Binghamton Stalwart did not belong in the first rank of statesmen. He was neither an orator nor a tactful party leader. It cannot be said of him that he was a quick-witted, incisive, and successful debater;[504] but, on critical days, when the fate of his faction hung in the balance, he was a valiant fighter, absolutely without fear, who took blows as bravely as he gave them, and was loyal to all the interests which he espoused. He now dreaded the Softs bearing gifts. But their evident frankness and his supreme need melted the estrangement that had long existed between them.

[Footnote 504: ”'Scripture d.i.c.k,' whom we used to consider the sorriest of slow jokers, has really brightened up.”--New York _Tribune_, March 17, 1859.]

In the selection of delegates to the state convention Fernando Wood and Tammany had a severe struggle. Tammany won, but Wood appeared at Syracuse with a full delegation, and for half an hour before the convention convened Wood endeavoured to do by force what he knew could not be accomplished by votes. He had brought with him a company of roughs, headed by John C. Heenan, ”the Benicia Boy,” and fifteen minutes before the appointed hour, in the absence of a majority of the delegates, he organised the convention, electing his own chairman and appointing his own committees. When the bulk of the Softs arrived they proceeded to elect their chairman. This was the signal for a riot, in the course of which the chairman of the regulars was knocked down and an intimidating display of pistols exhibited. Finally the regulars adjourned, leaving the hall to the Wood contestants, who completed their organisation, and, after renominating the Democratic state officers elected in 1857, adjourned without day.

Immediately, the regulars reappeared; and as the Hards from the up-state counties answered to the roll call, the Softs vociferously applauded. Then d.i.c.kinson made a characteristic speech. He did not fully decide to join the Softs until Fernando Wood had sacrificed the only chance of overthrowing them; but when he did go over, he burned the bridges behind him. The Softs were delighted with d.i.c.kinson's bearing and d.i.c.kinson's speech. It united the party throughout the State and put Tammany in easy control of New York City.

With harmony restored there was little for the convention to do except to renominate the state officers, appoint delegates to the Charleston convention who were instructed to vote as a unit, and adopt the platform. These resolutions indorsed the administration of President Buchanan; approved popular sovereignty; condemned the ”irrepressible conflict” speech of Seward as a ”revolutionary threat” aimed at republican inst.i.tutions; and opposed the enlargement of the Erie ca.n.a.l to a depth of seven feet.

The Republican state convention had previously a.s.sembled on September 7 and selected a ticket, equally divided between men of Democratic and Whig antecedents, headed by Elias W. Leavenworth for secretary of state. Great confidence was felt in its election until the Americans met in convention on September 22 and indorsed five of its candidates and four Democrats. This, however, did not abate Republican activity, and, in the end, six of the nine Republican nominees were elected. The weight of the combined opposition, directed against Leavenworth, caused his defeat by less than fifteen hundred, showing that Republicans were gradually absorbing all the anti-slavery elements.

Upon what theory the American party nominated an eclectic ticket did not appear, although the belief obtained that it hoped to cloud Seward's presidential prospects by creating the impression that the Senator was unable, without a.s.sistance, to carry his own State on the eve of a great national contest. But whatever the reason, the result deeply humiliated the party, since its voting strength, reduced to less than 21,000, proved insufficient to do more than expose the weakness. This was the last appearance of the American party. It had endeavoured to extend its life and increase its influence; but after its refusal to interdict slavery in the territories it rapidly melted away. Henry Wilson, senator and Vice President, declared that he would give ten years of his life if he could blot out his members.h.i.+p in the Know-Nothing party, since it a.s.sociated him throughout his long and attractive public career with proscriptive principles of which he was ashamed.

In the midst of the campaign the country was startled by John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. For two years Brown had lived an uneventful life in New York on land in the Adirondack region given him by Gerrit Smith. In 1851, he moved to Ohio, and from thence to Kansas, where he became known as John Brown of Osawatomie. He had been a consistent enemy of slavery, working the underground railroad and sympathising with every scheme for the rescue of slaves; but once in Kansas, he readily learned the use of a Sharpe's rifle. In revenge for the destruction of Lawrence, he deliberately ma.s.sacred the pro-slavery settlers living along Pottawatomie creek. ”Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins,” was a favourite text. His activity made him a national character. The President offered $250 for his arrest and the governor of Missouri added $3000 more. In 1858, he returned East, collected money to aid an insurrection among the slaves of Virginia, and on October 17, 1859, with eighteen men, began his quixotic campaign by cutting telegraph wires, stopping trains, and seizing the national armory at Harper's Ferry. At one time he had taken sixty prisoners.

The affair was soon over, but not until the entire band was killed or captured. Brown, severely hurt, stood between two of his sons, one dead and the other mortally wounded, refusing to surrender so long as he could fight. After his capture, he said, coolly, in reply to a question: ”We are Abolitionists from the North, come to release and take your slaves.”

The trial, conviction, and execution of Brown and his captured companions ended the episode, but its influence was destined to be far-reaching. John Brown became idealised. His bearing as he stood between his dead and dying sons, his truth-telling answers, and the evidence of his absolute unselfishness filled many people in the North with a profound respect for the pa.s.sion that had driven him on, while his bold invasion of a slave State and his reckless disregard of life and property alarmed the South into the sincere belief that his methods differed only in degree from the teachings of those who talked of an irrepressible conflict and a higher law. To aid him in regaining his lost position in the South, Stephen A. Douglas proclaimed it as his ”firm and deliberate belief that the Harper Ferry crime was the natural, logical, and inevitable result of the doctrine and teachings of the Republican party.”[505]

[Footnote 505: _Congressional Globe_, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 553-4 (January 23, 1860).]

The sentimentalists of the North generally sympathised with Brown.

Emerson spoke of him as ”that new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross.”[506] In the same spirit Th.o.r.eau called him ”an angel of light,” and Longfellow wrote in his diary on the day of the execution: ”The date of a new revolution, quite as much needed as the old one.”[507] But the Republican leaders deprecated the affair, characterising it as ”among the gravest of crimes,” and denying that it had any relation to their party except as it influenced the minds of all men for or against slavery.

[Footnote 506: James E. Cabot, _Life of Emerson_, p. 597.]

[Footnote 507: Samuel Longfellow, _Life of Longfellow_, Vol. 2, p.

347.]

William H. Seward was in Europe at the time of the raid. Early in May, 1859, his friends had celebrated his departure from New York, escorting him to Sandy Hook, and leaving him finally amidst shouts and music, bells and whistles, and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Such a scene is common enough nowadays, but then it was unique. His return at the close of December, after an absence of eight months, was the occasion of great rejoicing. A salute of a hundred guns was fired in City Hall Park, the mayor and common council tendered him a public reception, and after hours of speech-making and hand-shaking he proceeded slowly homeward amidst waiting crowds at every station. At Auburn the streets were decorated, and the people, regardless of creed or party, escorted him in procession to his home.

Few Republicans in New York had any doubt at that moment of his nomination and election to the Presidency.

On going to Was.h.i.+ngton Seward found the United States Senate investigating the Harper's Ferry affair and the House of Representatives deadlocked over the election of a speaker. Bitterness and threats of disunion characterised the proceeding at both ends of the Capitol. ”This Union,” said one congressman, ”great and powerful as it is, can be tumbled down by the act of any one Southern State. If Florida withdraws, the federal government would not dare attack her.

If it did, the bands would dissolve as if melted by lightning.”[508]

Referring to the possibility of the election of a Republican President, another declared that ”We will never submit to the inauguration of a Black Republican President. You may elect Seward to be President of the North; but of the South, never! Whenever a President is elected by a fanatical majority of the North, those whom I represent are ready, let the consequences be what they may, to fall back on their reserved rights, and say, 'As to this Union we have no longer any lot or part in it.'”[509]

[Footnote 508: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 441.]

[Footnote 509: _Ibid._, p. 442.]

In the midst of these fiery, disunion utterances, on the 21st of February, 1860, Seward introduced a bill for the admission of Kansas into the Union. After the overwhelming defeat of the Lecompton Const.i.tution, the free-state men had controlled the territorial legislature, repealed the slave code of 1855, and, in the summer of 1859, convened a const.i.tutional convention at Wyandotte. A few weeks later the people ratified the result of its work by a large majority.

It was this Wyandotte Const.i.tution under which Seward proposed to admit Kansas, and he fixed the consideration of his measure for the 29th of February. This would be two days after Abraham Lincoln had spoken in New York City.