Part 7 (1/2)
A little before seven the short figure of Douglas was observed at the door and he was greeted with loud applause from the galleries.
The session resumed and he rose to speak. Cheered as he was by the sympathy and admiration of the visitors, it was to him a stern enough hour when he must finally break with his powerful party and battle with his utmost strength against its cherished program. He must attack, not Buchanan, but the organized Democracy, now more powerfully entrenched than ever before. It controlled the President and the Supreme Court and had bent them to its will in this precise quarrel. The Senate was Democratic nearly two to one, and but two of the majority followed him in his revolt. In the House the Democrats had a majority of twenty-five.
Foreseeing the personal consequences of his act, he opened his speech with an elaborate review of his course in Congress in relation to slavery in the Territories, showing that from the beginning he had favored leaving the whole question fairly to the inhabitants. He stood on the principle of the Compromise of 1850 as approved and interpreted by the legislature of Illinois in 1851. That body had declared that the people of a Territory had a right to form such government as they chose. But was the Lecompton Const.i.tution the act and deed of the people of Kansas? Did it embody their will?
If not, Congress had no right to impose it on them. Where was the evidence that it did embody their will? By a fraudulent vote on December 12th it was adopted by 5,500 majority. By a fair vote on January 4th it was defeated by 10,000 majority. The election on December 21st was ordered by the Lecompton Convention, deriving its authority from the territorial legislature. The legislature itself ordered the election on January 4th. Granting the argument that the organic act was in effect an enabling act, then the territorial legislature had power to authorize the Lecompton Convention and also to order it work submitted to a vote. The legislature either had the full power of Congress over the subject or it had none.
But, it was claimed, the Const.i.tution would have been voted down if submitted. What right had Congress to force it upon the people?
It was a mockery to call it an embodiment of their will and a crime to attempt to enforce it. If it ever became the Const.i.tution of Kansas it would be the act of Congress that made it so and not the decision of the people. That it could be changed thereafter was no apology for this outrage. It was as much a violation of fundamental principle, a violation of popular sovereignty, to force a Const.i.tution on an unwilling people for a day as for a year or for a longer time.
If a few thousand Free Soilers had fabricated a Const.i.tution in this fas.h.i.+on, prohibiting slavery forever, would the gentlemen from the South have submitted to the outrage? They were asked to admit Kansas with a State government brought into existence not only by fraudulent voting but forged returns sustained by perjury.
He paused to comment on certain diatribes in the Was.h.i.+ngton Union which had denounced him as a renegade, traitor and deserter, and read from its columns an article presenting the extreme claims of the South, arguing that all laws and Const.i.tutions of the free States forbidding slavery were violations of the Federal Const.i.tution, and that the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves in the Northern States was a gross outrage on the rights of property. But this article, he said, was in harmony with the Lecompton Const.i.tution, which declared the right of property in a slave to be higher than Const.i.tutions.
This meant that the Const.i.tutions of the free States forbidding slavery were in conflict with the Const.i.tution of the United States and of no validity. Hence slavery had right to exist in all the States. But this was not the authentic Democratic faith, which left the whole question to the option of the several States. If each one took care of its own affairs, minded its own business and let its neighbors alone, there would be peace in the country.
Seward had proclaimed a higher law which forbade slavery everywhere.
this instrument and the Administration paper proclaimed a higher law which established it in all the States. It was time to quit this folly and yield obedience to the Const.i.tution and laws of the land.
It was the most arrant presumption for the Administration to attempt to make this a party measure. By what right did these accidental and temporary holders of office prescribe party politics? There had been no Convention, not even a caucus, since this question arose.
The party was not committed. The President had no right to tell a Senator his duty and command his allegiance. He had no power to prescribe tests. A Senator's first duty was to his State. ”If the will of my State is one way and the will of the President is the other, am I to be told that I must obey the Executive and betray my State, or else be branded as a traitor to the party and hunted down by all the newspapers that share the patronage of the Government?
And every man who holds a petty office in any part of my State to have the question put to him, 'Are you Douglas' enemy? If not, your head comes off.'”
What despotism on earth could equal this? The obedience of Senators was demanded on this question only. On all else they were free.
The President was evidently guided by the old adage that a man needs no friends when he knows he is right and only want his friends to stand by him when he is wrong.
The President regretted that the Const.i.tution was not submitted to the people, although he knew that if it had been submitted it would have been rejected. Hence, he regretted that it had not been rejected. Would he regret that it had not been submitted and rejected if he did not think it was wrong? And yet, he demanded their a.s.sistance in forcing it on an unwilling people and threatened vengeance on all who refused.
”For my part,” he continued, * * * ”come what may, I intend to vote, speak and act according to my own sense of duty, so long as I hold a seat in this Chamber. * * * I have no professions to make of my fidelity. I have no vindication to make of my course. Let it speak for itself. * * * I intend to perform my duty in accordance with my own convictions. Neither the frowns of power nor the influence of patronage will change my action, nor drive me from my principles. I stand firmly and immovably upon those great principles of self-government and State sovereignty upon which the campaign was fought and won. I stand by the time honored principles of the Democratic party, ill.u.s.trated by Jefferson and Jackson, those principles of State rights, of State sovereignty, of strict construction, upon which the great Democratic party has ever stood. I will stand by the Const.i.tution of the United States with all its compromises and perform all my obligations under it. I will stand by the American Union as it exists under the Const.i.tution. If standing firmly by my principles I shall be driven into private life, it is a fate that has no terrors for me. * * * If the alternative be private life or servile obedience to the Executive will, I am prepared to retire. Official position has no charm for me when deprived of that freedom of thought and action which becomes a gentleman and a Senator.”
When he closed, Toombs rose to reply. The speech was offensively bitter and personal, in one memorable pa.s.sage of which he announced that the slave States would take care of themselves and were prepared to bid defiance to the North and to the world. Green of Missouri answered in coa.r.s.er strain, both intimating that Douglas had been guilty of deliberate perfidy in his change of front.
On the 23rd the vote was taken and the bill pa.s.sed, 33 being for it and 25 against it.
The Administration now declared war on him. The patronage was unsparingly used against his friends and it was better for an applicant for Federal appointment to be accused of any crime than suspected of friends.h.i.+p with Douglas. This separation from his party touched his feelings more deeply than any other event of his life, and we find surprising evidence of his being shaken by deep emotions that seem out of harmony with his robust and unsentimental nature. But when we remember that all his life had been spent in the activities of politics, that his thoughts, sentiments and pa.s.sions had all been political for twenty years, that the Democratic platform was at once his creed and his philosophy, we can understand something of the choking emotion that threatened to overpower him as he announced that he was thenceforth a rebel and a heretic.
After December 9th, the Administration press attacked him bitterly and he found himself everywhere proclaimed a traitor and deserter.
He told the Senate that he knew the knife would be put to the throats of his followers. The Administration Senators a.s.sailed him. But he was equal to all emergencies and his new position as the recognized leader of the anti-Lecompton revolt gave him the enthusiastic applause of the Northwest.
On March 23rd the bill went to the House. A motion was made to refer it to a special committee. A contest over this motion arose, lasted all night, and degenerated into a general brawl, in which a Member from Pennsylvania knocked down a South Carolina Member, and many others were engaged in fisticuffs. At last a reference was agreed to.
On April 1st, while the House had the bill under consideration, Montgomery of Pennsylvania offered a subst.i.tute which had been offered by Crittenden in the Senate and there rejected, providing that the Const.i.tution should be submitted to a vote, and, if adopted, the President should at once proclaim the admission of the State; if rejected, the inhabitants should hold a new Const.i.tutional Convention. This subst.i.tute pa.s.sed the House but was rejected by the Senate. A conference Committee was appointed, which reported the notorious English bill, providing that a generous grant of land should be offered to Kansas, and the people at a special election vote to accept it. If they so voted, they were to be admitted as a State with the Lecompton Const.i.tution. If they rejected the grant, they could not be admitted until they numbered 93,000, which meant indefinite postponement. The bill was merely an offer of a bribe to the people to accept a Const.i.tution which they abhorred.
Its form was such that men who still believe it well to maintain the guise of decency could vote for it on the pretence that it was a land grant.
Douglas, who had now tried the th.o.r.n.y path of rebellion, faltered.
He was tempted to support the bill and seek reconciliation, but decided to vote against it. It pa.s.sed the Senate by a majority of nine and the House by a majority of eight. In the following August the proposition was submitted and rejected so decisively that the maddest fanatic must have seen that all hope of making Kansas a slave State was gone forever.
Chapter XIII. The Illinois Campaign.
Congress adjourned on June 16th and Douglas, after spending a few days in New York, returned to Chicago. Meanwhile the people of Illinois had awakened to great political activity. On April 21st the regular Democratic Convention was held at Springfield and without opposition pa.s.sed a resolution endorsing his candidacy for re-election. On June 9th the ”Administration Democracy,” consisting of the Federal office holders and those democrats who condemned his anti-Lecompton battle, held a Convention at Springfield, the purpose of which was to divide the party and insure his defeat. On the 17th the Republicans held their Convention at Springfield and chose Lincoln as their candidate for United States Senator.
The nomination of Lincoln was not an accident. He was prepared to accept it in a speech that should serve as the text of his campaign and was destined to great fame in after years. Against the resolve of his friends he announced the dangerous doctrine that the Government could not endure permanently half slave and half free. ”A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He did not expect the Union to be dissolved or the house to fall, but that it would cease to be divided. ”Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”