Part 19 (2/2)
The gist of the appeal was contained in two clauses, one of which declared that the Nebraska bill would open all the unorganized territory of the Union to the ingress of slavery; the other arraigned the bill as ”a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights.” In ominous words, fellow citizens were besought to observe how the blight of slavery would settle upon all this land, if this bill should become a law. Christians and Christian ministers were implored to interpose. ”Let all protest, earnestly and emphatically, by correspondence, through the press, by memorials, by resolutions of public meetings and legislative bodies, and in whatever other mode may seem expedient, against this enormous crime.” In the postscript Douglas received personal mention. ”Not a man in Congress or out of Congress, in 1850, pretended that the compromise measures would repeal the Missouri prohibition. Mr. Douglas himself never advanced such a pretence until this session. His own Nebraska bill, of last session, rejected it. It is a sheer afterthought. To declare the prohibition inoperative, may, indeed, have effect in law as a repeal, but it is a most discreditable way of reaching the object. Will the people permit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game, and destroyed by false facts and false inferences?”[466]
This attack roused the tiger in the Senator from Illinois. When he addressed the Senate on January 30th, he labored under ill-repressed anger. Even in the expurgated columns of the _Congressional Globe_ enough stinging personalities appeared to make his friends regretful.
What excited his wrath particularly was that Chase and Sumner had asked for a postponement of discussion, in order to examine the bill, and then, in the interval, had sent out their indictment of the author. It was certainly unworthy of him to taunt them with having desecrated the Sabbath day by writing their plea. The charge was not only puerile but amusing, when one considers how Douglas himself was observing that particular Sabbath.
It was comparatively easy to question and disprove the unqualified statement of the _Appeal_, that ”the original settled policy of the United States was non-extension of slavery.” Less convincing was Douglas's attempt to prove that the Missouri Compromise was expressly annulled in 1850, when portions of Texas and of the former Spanish province of Louisiana were added to New Mexico, and also a part of the province of Louisiana was joined to Utah. Douglas was in the main correct as to geographical data; but he could not, and did not, prove that the members of the Thirty-first Congress purposed also to revoke the Missouri Compromise restriction in all the other unorganized Territories. This contention was one of those _non-sequiturs_ of which Douglas, in the heat of argument, was too often guilty. Still more regrettable, because it seemed to convict him of sophistry, was the mode by which he sought to evade the charge of the _Appeal_, that the act organizing New Mexico and settling the boundary of Texas had reaffirmed the Missouri Compromise. To establish his point he had to a.s.sume that _all_ the land cut off from Texas north of 36 30', was added to New Mexico, thus leaving nothing to which the slavery restriction, reaffirmed in the act of 1850, could apply. But Chase afterward invalidated this a.s.sumption and Douglas was forced so to qualify his original statement as to yield the point. This was a damaging admission and prejudiced his cause before the country. But when he brought his wide knowledge of American colonization to bear upon the concrete problems of governmental policy, his grasp of the situation was masterly.
”Let me ask you where you have succeeded in excluding slavery by an act of Congress from one inch of American soil? You may tell me that you did it in the northwest territory by the ordinance of 1787. I will show you by the history of the country that you did not accomplish any such thing. You prohibited slavery there by law, but you did not exclude it in fact.... I know of but one territory of the United States where slavery does exist, and that one is where you have prohibited it by law, and it is in this very Nebraska Territory. In defiance of the eighth section of the act of 1820, in defiance of Congressional dictation, there have been, not many, but a few slaves introduced.... I have no doubt that whether you organize the territory of Nebraska or not this will continue for some time to come.... But when settlers rush in--when labor becomes plenty, and therefore cheap, in that climate, with its productions, it is worse than folly to think of its being a slave-holding country.... I do not like, I never did like, the system of legislation on our part, by which a geographical line, in violation of the laws of nature, and climate, and soil, and of the laws of G.o.d, should be run to establish inst.i.tutions for a people.”[467]
The fate of the bill was determined behind closed doors. After all, the Senate chamber was only a public clearing-house, where senators elucidated, or per-chance befogged, the issues. The real arena was the Democratic caucus. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Douglas, those high in the party conclaves met, morning after morning, in the endeavor to compose the sharp differences between the Northern and the Southern wings of the party.[468] On both sides, there was a disposition to agree on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, though grave misgivings were felt.
There were Southern men who believed that the repeal would be ”an unavailing boon”; and there were Northern politicians who foresaw the storm of popular indignation that would break upon their heads.[469]
Southern Democrats were disposed to follow the South Carolina theory to its logical extreme: as joint owners of the Territories the citizens of all the States might carry their property into the Territories without let or hindrance; only the people of the Territory in the act of framing a State const.i.tution might exclude slavery.
Neither Congress nor a territorial legislature might take away property in slaves. With equal pertinacity, Douglas and his supporters advocated the right of the people in their territorial status, to mould their inst.i.tutions as they chose. Was there any middle ground?
Prolonged discussion made certain points of agreement clear to all. It was found that no one questioned the right of a State, with sufficient population and a republican const.i.tution, to enter the Union with or without slavery as it chose. All agreed that it was best that slavery should not be discussed in Congress. All agreed that, whether or no Congress had the power to exclude slavery in the Territories, it ought not to exercise it. All agreed that if Congress had such power, it ought to delegate it to the people. Here agreement ceased. Did Congress have such power? Clearly the law of the Const.i.tution could alone determine. Then why not delegate the power to control their domestic inst.i.tutions to the people of the Territories, subject to the provisions of the Const.i.tution? ”And then,” said one of the partic.i.p.ants later, ”in order to provide a means by which the Const.i.tution could govern ... we of the South, conscious that we were right, the North a.s.serting the same confidence in its own doctrines, agreed that every question touching human slavery or human freedom should be appealable to the Supreme Court of the United States for its decision.”[470]
While this compromise was being reached in caucus, the bill was under constant fire on the floor of the Senate. The _Appeal of the Independent Democrats_ had bitterly arraigned the declaratory part of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, where the Missouri Compromise was said to have been superseded and therefore inoperative. Even staunch Democrats like Ca.s.s had taken exception to this phraseology, preferring to declare the Missouri Compromise null and void in unequivocal terms. To Douglas there was nothing ambiguous or misleading in the wording of the clause. What was meant was this: the acts of 1850 rendered the Missouri Compromise _inoperative_ in Utah and New Mexico; but so far as the Missouri Compromise applied to territory not embraced in those acts, it was _superseded_ by the great principle established in 1850.
”Superseded by” meant ”inconsistent with” the compromise of 1850.[471]
The word ”supersede,” however, continued to cause offense. Ca.s.s read from the dictionary to prove that the word had a more positive force than Douglas gave to it. To supersede meant to set aside: he could not bring himself to a.s.sent to this statement.[472]
By this time agreement had been reached in the caucus, so that Douglas was quite willing to modify the phraseology of the bill. ”We see,”
said he, ”that the difference here is only a difference as to the appropriate word to be used. We all agree in the principle which we now propose to establish.” As he was not satisfied with the phrases suggested, he desired some time to consult with friends of the bill, as to which word would best ”carry out the idea which we are intending to put into practical operation by this bill.”[473]
On the following day, February 7th, Douglas reported, not merely ”the appropriate word,” but an entirely new clause, the product of the caucus deliberations.
The eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union is no longer said to be superseded, but ”being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, (commonly called the Compromise Measures) is hereby declared inoperative and void, it being 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 inst.i.tutions in their own way, subject only to the Const.i.tution of the United States.”[474]
This part of the bill had now a.s.sumed its final form. _Subject only to the Const.i.tution of the United States_. The words were clear; but what was their implication? A few days later, Douglas wrote to his Springfield confidant, ”The Democratic party is committed in the most solemn manner to the principle of congressional non-interference with slavery in the States and Territories. The administration is committed to the Nebraska bill and will stand by it at all hazards.... The principle of this bill will form the test of parties, and the only alternative is either to stand with the Democracy or rally under Seward, John Van Buren & Co.... We shall pa.s.s the Nebraska bill in both Houses by decisive majorities and the party will then be stronger than ever, for it will be united upon principle.”[475]
Yet there were dissentient opinions. What was in the background of Southern consciousness was expressed bluntly by Brown of Mississippi, who refused to admit that the right of the people of a Territory to regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions, including slavery, was a right to destroy. ”If I thought in voting for the bill as it now stands, I was conceding the right of the people in the territory, during their territorial existence, to exclude slavery, I would withhold my vote.... It leaves the question where I am quite willing it should be left--to the ultimate decision of the courts.”[476] Chase also, though for widely different reasons, disputed the power of the people of a Territory to exclude slavery, under the terms of this bill.[477] And Senator Clayton pointed out that non-interference was a delusion, so long as it lay within the power of any member of Congress to move a repeal of any and every territorial law which came up for approval, for the bill expressly provided for congressional approval of territorial laws.[478]
Douglas was irritated by these aspersions on his cherished principle.
He declared again, in defiant tones, that the right of the people to permit or exclude was clearly included in the wording of the measure.
He was not willing to be lectured about indirectness. He had heard cavil enough about his amendments.[479]
In the course of a debate on March 2d, another unforeseen difficulty loomed up in the distance. If the Missouri Compromise were repealed, would not the original laws of Louisiana, which legalized slavery, be revived? How then could the people of the Territories be free to legislate against slavery? It was a knotty question, testing the best legal minds in the Senate; and it was dispatched only by an amendment which stated that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise should not revive any antecedent law respecting slavery.[480]
The objection raised by Clayton still remained: how was it possible to reconcile congressional non-intervention with the right of Congress to revise territorial laws? Now Douglas had never contended that the right of the people to self-government in the Territories was complete as against the power of Congress. He had never sought to confer upon them more than a relative degree of self-government--”the power to regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions.” He could not, and he did not, deny the truth and awkwardness of Clayton's contention. Where, then, demanded his critics, was the guarantee that the Kansas-Nebraska bill would banish the slavery controversies from Congress? This challenge could not go unanswered. Without other explanation, Douglas moved to strike out the provision requiring all territorial laws to be submitted to Congress.[481] But did this divest Congress of the power of revision? On this point Douglas preserved a discreet silence.
Recognizing also the incongruity of giving an absolute veto power to a governor who would be appointed by the President, Douglas proposed a suspensive, in place of an absolute, veto power. A two-thirds vote in each branch of the territorial legislature would override the governor's negative.[482] Chase now tried to push Douglas one step farther on the same slippery road. ”Can it be said,” he asked, ”that the people of a territory will enjoy self-government when they elect only their legislators and are subject to a governor, judges, and a secretary appointed by the Federal Executive?” He would amend by making all these officers elective.[483] Douglas extricated himself from this predicament by saying simply that these officers were charged with federal rather than with territorial duties.[484] The amendment was promptly negatived. Yet seven years later, this very proposition was indorsed by Douglas under peculiar circ.u.mstances. At this time in 1854, it would have effected nothing short of a revolution in American territorial policy; and it might have altered the whole history of Kansas.
Despite a.s.severations to the contrary, there were Southern men in Congress who nourished the tacit hope that another slave State might be gained west of the Missouri. There was a growing conviction among Southern people that the possession of Kansas at least might be successfully contested.[485] At all events, no barrier to Southern immigration into the Territory was allowed to remain in the bill.
Objection was raised to the provision, common to nearly all territorial bills, that aliens, who had declared their intention of becoming citizens, should be permitted to vote in territorial elections. In a contest with the North for the possession of the territorial government, the South would be at an obvious disadvantage, if the homeless aliens in the North could be colonized in Kansas, for there was no appreciable alien population in the Southern States.[486]
So it was that Clayton's amendment, to restrict the right to vote and to hold office to citizens of the United States, received the solid vote of the South in the Senate. It is significant that Douglas voted with his section on this important issue. There can be no better proof of his desire that freedom should prevail in the new Territories. The Clayton amendment, however, pa.s.sed the Senate by a close vote.[487]
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