Part 2 (1/2)

At the organization of the Government twelve of the thirteen States had slavery. but six of them voluntarily abolished it. Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee would yet adopt the system of gradual emanc.i.p.ation. Seventeen free States would soon be formed out of the territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific. Where would they find slave territory with which to balance these States? If Texas were divided into five States, three of them would be free. If Mexico were annexed, twenty of her twenty-two States would be free by the ordinance of Nature or the will of G.o.d. He urged the duty of promptly providing governments for the unorganized domain and closed with a graceful tribute to Clay and the prediction that the Territories would soon be organized, California admitted and the controversy ended forever.

There were three generically distinct groups of statesmen partic.i.p.ating in this great debate--the aggressive, unyielding men of the South to whom slavery was dearer than the Union; the temporizing politicians of the North and the border, with their compromises and concessions, hoping to save the Union by salving its wounds; and the stern Puritans of the North, bent on rooting out the sins of the Nation, through the heavens fell.

The climax of the debate was now past, but it continued to agitate Congress until the middle of September. President Taylor, who had exerted his influence against the Compromise, died on July 9th, and was succeeded by Fillmore, who at once called Webster to the head of his Cabinet and turned the Executive influence to the support of the bill. It proved impossible, even with his help, to pa.s.s it as a whole; but after it had gone to wreck its fragments were gathered up and each of the several bills which were jumbled together in the ”Omnibus” was pa.s.sed. The great Compromise was accomplished and the slavery question declared settled forever.

Chapter V. Results of the Fugitive Slave Law.

In 1850 Douglas moved to Chicago, which had become the chief city of the State.

The people were greatly exasperated by the pa.s.sage of the Fugitive Slave Law. The City Council, on October 21st, pa.s.sed resolutions harshly condemning the Senators and Representatives from the free States who had supported it and ”those who basely sneaked away from their seats and thereby evaded the question,” cla.s.sing them with Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot. This was a personal challenge to Douglas. It happened that he was absent from the Senate on private business when the bill was pa.s.sed. But the charge of evading the question was grossly unjust.

On the evening of the 22nd a ma.s.s meeting was held at the city hall, attended by a great concourse of angry citizens, who, amid tumultuous applause, resolved to defy ”death, the dungeon and the grave” in resisting the hated law. Douglas appeared on the platform and announced that on the following evening he would address the people in defense of the Fugitive Slave Law and the entire Compromise.

The announcement was received with a storm of hisses and groans.

The next night an enormous mult.i.tude gathered to hear him. The audience was not only sullen but bitterly hostile. After a contemptuous reference to the resolutions and a brief vindication of himself against their insinuations, he plunged into the defense of the law. He insisted that the provision for the return of fugitive slaves contained in the recent act was a.n.a.logous to the general provision of law for the return of fugitives from justice, and, while abuses of the process might occur and wrong occasionally inflicted, that was one of the inherent infirmities of human law, and the same objection could be urged with equal force to all extradition statutes. While free blacks might be seized in the North and carried South on the false charge of being fugitives from service, innocent white men might also be seized in Chicago and carried to California on the false charge of being fugitives from justice.

He reminded them that the law of 1850 was substantially a reenactment of that of 1793, pa.s.sed by the Revolutionary Fathers, the founders of the Const.i.tution, and approved by President Was.h.i.+ngton. He did not argue, but a.s.sumed the justice of the old law; nor did he allude to the increased ardor of pursuit of fleeing slaves since their increase in value. He rested his case on the close resemblance of the letter of the new law to that of the old. He told them that the duty of returning fugitive slaves was created not by THIS law, but by the Const.i.tution, and that the real question was not as to the existence of the duty, but which law performed it most justly and efficiently.

A listener asked him whether the Const.i.tution was not in violation of the will of G.o.d. He warned them of the danger of that objection, arising from the difficulty of authentically ascertaining the will of G.o.d. It was not practicable to allow each citizen to determine it for himself. Hence, certain fundamental principles had been established as a Const.i.tution, which must be a.s.sumed to be in harmony with it and from which no appeal lay. The Const.i.tution provided for the return of fugitive slaves. The sacred duty of citizens.h.i.+p bound them to support it. Appeals to a higher law were impracticable and a mere evasion of duty.

Read in a the calmer light of after years the effectiveness of this speech is hard to understand. The literal difference between the recent act and the law of 1793, was not great. But the difference between the ethical views of slavery held by the people in 1850 and those held in 1793 was not to be measured. The changes in the law were vicious and in the opposite direction from the radical changes in popular sentiment. The specially odious provision of the new law, distinguis.h.i.+ng it from general extradition statutes, was that forbidding resort to the writ of habeas corpus by the alleged fugitive at the place where seized. The fugitive from justice in California seized in Chicago could, on writ of habeas corpus issued by an Illinois court, have it judicially determined before his deportation whether the facts charged against him const.i.tuted a crime and whether thee was probable cause to believe that he had committed it.

Under the new law the Federal Commissioner of the State where the arrest was made had no power to inquire into the truth or sufficiency of the charge. He could only determine whether the person arrested was probably the one who had committed the escape, and must decline to hear the testimony of the fugitive himself. The fact of escape was judicially determined in advance, ex parte, in the State from which it had been made, and the alleged fugitive was remanded to that State for such further proceedings as its laws might provide and ”no process issued by any Court, Judge, Magistrate or other person whomsoever” could molest the captor in bearing away his prize.

The speech was adroit, clever and marvelously effective. It strikingly ill.u.s.trates the mental habits of the times. It sought to stem an irresistible moral current with ingenious plausibilities and appeals to precedent. It treated the question as one of political expediency. It sounded no moral depths, discussed no ethical problem, though the country was aflame with moral indignation and rising pa.s.sionately against the ethics of the past. It mastered the audience by its fidelity to literal truth and sent them home dazed, troubled, doubtful and ashamed. At the close of the speech resolutions affirming the duty of Congress to pa.s.s the Fugitive Slave Law and that of citizens to obey and support it, and repudiating those of the Common Council, were presented and unanimously adopted by the subdued and humbled crowd. On the following night the Council repealed their offensive resolutions.

Meanwhile the country was enjoying the fruits of the Compromise and striving to persuade itself that it would endure. The people earnestly desired to believe that the slavery question was settled forever. So strong was the wish to be done with it that, but for the restless ambition of the politicians, the truce might have been protracted for many years. Permanent peace on the preposterous condition of maintaining on equipoise between active, aggressive and hostile forces was, of course, impossible. but it was confidently expected. Clay, Stephens and fifty-two other Members of the Senate and House issued a manifesto in January, 1851, in which they announced that the Compromise was final and, to give their manifesto the highest solemnity, gravely declared that they would not support anyone for office who was not in favor of faithfully upholding it.

In the North approval for the Compromise was general and enthusiastic.

It was hoped that money-making would no longer be disturbed by fanatical agitation of moral questions.

And yet there were murmurs of anger against the detested law. It was hard to compel the descendents of the Puritans to hunt down the fleeing slaves when they believed that the curse of G.o.d rested on the inst.i.tution and that the rights of the fugitive were as sacred as those of his pursuers. There were outbreaks of defiance, violent rescues, occasional riots. But resistance was sporadic. The people were disposed to wash their hands of all responsibility for the law, to deprecate its existence, but, since it had been p.r.o.nounced a final Compromise, to pray that it might prove so. In the South the general opinion was that the danger was past and that years of peace were in prospect. Enthusiastic meetings approving the compromise were held everywhere outside of South Carolina and Mississippi.

While the entire moral victory of the Compromise rested with the people of the South, they had won nothing substantial but the Fugitive Slave Law, which was of questionable value. The great object for which they had conspired, sinned and fought had slipped from their grasp. California was a free State. New Mexico with indecent haste had called a Convention, adopted a Const.i.tution prohibiting slavery, and now demanded admission.

The Compromise, however, bade fair to endure. Fillmore in his annual message in December said, with perfect truth, that a great majority of the people sympathized in its spirit and purpose and were prepared in all respects to sustain it. In Congress an optimistic feeling prevailed. Clay complacently congratulated the country on the general acquiescence in the law and said that it had encountered but little resistance outside of Boston. Douglas a.s.sured the Senate that Illinois in good faith discharged its duty under the late Act. It was flanked on the east and west by the slave States of Kentucky and Missouri. It did not intend to become a free negro colony by offering refuge to the fleeing slaves of neighboring States and, not relying on the action of the Federal Government alone for protection, had enacted severe laws of its own to prevent it. When a Judge in that State he had imposed heavy penalties on citizens convicted of the offense of harboring fugitives from service. It was the duty of all citizens to sustain and execute the law, a duty imposed by patriotism and loyalty to the Const.i.tution.

But there was an organization in the North to evade and resist the law, with men of talent, genius, energy, daring and desperate purpose at its head. It was a conspiracy against the Government, and men occupying seats in the Senate were responsible for the outrages the Boston mob perpetrated in resistance of the law. The Abolitionists were arming negroes in the free States and inciting them to murder anyone who attempted to seize them under the provisions of the law.

Already he aspired to the Presidency and began to jealously guard his reputation against the sinister suspicions which in those days haunted the ambitious statesman. The great problem which then taxed the ingenuity of the aspiring politician was, how to win the South without alienating the North, or how to hold the North without losing the South. Irreconcilable differences of opinion on fundamental questions, deepening ominously into pa.s.sionate hostility of sentiment, were already manifesting themselves. The task of the politician was to steer his dangerous course between this Scylla and Charybdis.

If he gave color to the suspicion that he even tolerated the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North, the South would reject him with horror. If he espoused too warmly the cause that had become so dear to the heart of the South, the North, goaded by its over-sensitive conscience, would spurn him with disgust. In the existing state of party organization the highest success was not possible without at least partial reconciliation of these irreconcilable forces. Northern statesmen could not hope to succeed by brave appeals to the pa.s.sions and prejudices of the South, for they would lose their home const.i.tuencies, the worst fatality that can befall an American politician. They could not hope to succeed by brave appeals to the earnest convictions of the North, for they had not yet authority as affirmative rules of political conduct.

The charge of dodging a vote on the Fugitive Slave bill had annoyed Douglas deeply. Any doubt cast upon his fidelity to the South in its contest with the rising anti-slavery sentiment would be disastrous. It was extremely distrustful of Northern politicians and ready to take alarm on the slightest occasion. When the session was but three weeks old he spoke, defending himself against a series of political charges and boasting his partisan virtues in a way that plainly proclaimed the candidate and savored strongly of the stump. He explained that he had been called to New York on urgent private business on the day of the pa.s.sage of the law and that on his return he was taken seriously ill and confined to his bed during the latter part of the session and for weeks after adjournment. He claimed credit for having written the original Compromise bills which Clay's Committee joined together with a wafer and reported as its own. He denied vehemently having favored the Wilmot Proviso, excluding slavery from all territory acquired from Mexico, and declared that he had sought to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific. He said that the legislature of Illinois had instructed him to vote for the exclusion of slavery from the Territories, and that, while he had cast the vote of his State according to instructions, he had protested against it, and the vote cast was that of the legislature. He regarded the slavery question as settled forever and had resolved to make no more speeches on it. He a.s.sured them that the Democratic party was as good a Union party as he wanted, and protested against new tests of party fidelity and all interpolations of new matter into the old creed. He conjured them to avoid the slavery question, with the intimation that, if they did so, it would disappear from Federal politics forever.

Already the approaching presidential nominations were casting their shadows over the political arena. Though not yet thirty-nine, Douglas was as eager for the Democratic nomination as Webster at seventy was for that of the Whigs.