Part 26 (1/2)
[Footnote 581: Political Debates between Lincoln and Douglas, pp. 161 ff.]
[Footnote 582: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 22.]
[Footnote 583: _Ibid._, App., p. 127. Toombs also stated that the submission clause had been put in his bill in the first place by accident, and that it had been stricken from the bill at his suggestion.]
[Footnote 584: The submission of State const.i.tutions to a popular vote had not then become a general practice.]
[Footnote 585: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 195.]
[Footnote 586: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 844.]
[Footnote 587: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 21.]
[Footnote 588: Sheahan, Douglas, p. 443.]
[Footnote 589: Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, p. 650.]
[Footnote 590: MS. Letter, Douglas to Sheahan, October 6, 1856.]
[Footnote 591: _Tribune Almanac_, 1857. The vote was as follows:
Buchanan 105,348 Fremont 96,189 Fillmore 37,444 ]
BOOK III
THE IMPENDING CRISIS
CHAPTER XIV
THE PERSONAL EQUATION
Vast changes had pa.s.sed over Illinois since Douglas set foot on its soil, a penniless boy with his fortune to make. The frontier had been pushed back far beyond the northern boundary of the State; the Indians had disappeared; and the great military tract had been occupied by a thrifty, enterprising people of the same stock from which Douglas sprang. In 1833, the center of political gravity lay far south of the geographical center of the State; by 1856, the northern counties had already established a political equipoise. The great city on Lake Michigan, a l.u.s.ty young giant, was yearly becoming more conscious of its commercial and political possibilities. Douglas had natural affinities with Chicago. It was thoroughly American, thoroughly typical of that restless, aggressive spirit which had sent him, and many another New Englander, into the great interior basin of the continent. There was no other city which appealed so strongly to his native instincts. From the first he had been impressed by its commercial potentialities. He had staked his own fortunes upon its invincible prosperity by investing in real estate, and within a few years he had reaped the reward of his faith in unseen values. His holdings both in the city and in Cook County advanced in value by leaps and bounds, so that in the year 1856, he sold approximately one hundred acres for $90,000. With his wonted prodigality, born of superb confidence in future gains, he also deeded ten acres of his valuable ”Grove Property” to the trustees of Chicago University.[592] Yet with a far keener sense of honor than many of his contemporaries exhibited, he refused to speculate in land in the new States and Territories, with whose political beginnings he would be a.s.sociated as chairman of the Committee on Territories. He was resolved early in his career ”to avoid public suspicion of private interest in his political conduct.”[593]
The gift to Chicago University was no doubt inspired in part at least by local pride; yet it was not the first nor the only instance of the donor's interest in educational matters. No one had taken greater interest in the bequest of James Smithson to the United States. At first, no doubt, Douglas labored under a common misapprehension regarding this foundation, fancying that it would contribute directly to the advancement and diffusion of the applied sciences; but his support was not less hearty when he grasped the policy formulated by the first secretary of the inst.i.tution. He was the author of that provision in the act establis.h.i.+ng the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, which called for the presentation of one copy of every copyrighted book, map, and musical composition, to the Inst.i.tution and to the Congressional Library.[594] He became a member of the board of regents and retained the office until his death.
With his New England training Douglas believed profoundly in the dignity of labor; not even his Southern a.s.sociations lessened his genuine admiration for the magnificent industrial achievements of the Northern mechanic and craftsman. He shared, too, the conviction of his Northern const.i.tuents, that the inventiveness, resourcefulness, and bold initiative of the American workman was the outcome of free inst.i.tutions, which permitted and encouraged free and bold thinking.
The American laborer was not brought up to believe it ”a crime to think in opposition to the consecrated errors of olden times.”[595] It was impossible for a man so thinking to look with favor upon the slave-labor system of the South. He might tolerate the presence of slavery in the South; but in his heart of hearts he could not desire its indefinite extension.
Douglas belonged to his section, too, in his att.i.tude toward the disposition of the public domain. He was one of the first to advocate free grants of the public lands to homesteaders. His bill to grant one hundred and sixty acres to actual settlers who should cultivate them for four years, was the first of many similar projects in the early fifties.[596] Southern statesmen thought this the best ”bid” yet made for votes: it was further evidence of Northern demagogism. The South, indeed, had little direct interest in the peopling of the Western prairies by independent yeomen, native or foreign. Just here Douglas parted company with his Southern a.s.sociates. He believed that the future of the great West depended upon this wise and beneficial use of the national domain. Neither could he agree with Eastern statesmen who deplored the gratuitous distribution of lands, which by sale would yield large revenues. His often-repeated reply was the quintessence of Western statesmans.h.i.+p. The pioneer who went into the wilderness, to wrestle with all manner of hards.h.i.+ps, was a true wealth-producer. As he cleared his land and tilled the soil, he not only himself became a tax-payer, but he increased the value of adjoining lands and added to the sum total of the national resources.[597]
Douglas gave his ungrudging support to grants of land in aid of railroads and ca.n.a.ls. He would not regard such grants, however, as mere donations, but rather as wise provisions for increasing the value of government lands. ”The government of the United States is a great land owner; she has vast bodies of land which she has had in market for thirty or forty years; and experience proves that she cannot sell them.... The difficulty in the way of the sale does not arise from the fact that the lands are not fertile and susceptible to cultivation, but that they are distant from market, and in many cases dest.i.tute of timber.”[598] Therefore he gave his voice and vote for nearly all land grant bills, designed to aid the construction of railroads and ca.n.a.ls that would bring these public lands into the market; but he insisted that everything should be done by individual enterprise if possible.
He shared the hostility of the West toward large grants of land to private corporations.[599] What could not be done by individual enterprise, should be done by the States; and only that should be undertaken by the Federal government which could be done in no other way.
As the representative of a const.i.tuency which was profoundly interested in the navigation of the great interior waterways of the continent, Douglas was a vigorous advocate of internal improvements, so far as his Democratic conscience would allow him to construe the Const.i.tution in favor of such undertakings by the Federal government.
Like his const.i.tuents, he was not always logical in his deductions from const.i.tutional provisions. The Const.i.tution, he believed, would not permit an appropriation of government money for the construction of the s.h.i.+p ca.n.a.l around the Falls of the St. Mary's; but as landowner, the Federal government might donate lands for that purpose.[600] He was also constrained to vote for appropriations for the improvement of river channels and of harbors on the lakes and on the ocean, because these were works of a distinctly national character; but he deplored the mode by which these appropriations were made.[601]
Just when the Nebraska issue came to the fore, he was maturing a scheme by which a fair, consistent, and continuous policy of internal improvements could be initiated, in place of the political bargaining which had hitherto determined the location of government operations.
Two days before he presented his famous Nebraska report, Douglas addressed a letter to Governor Matteson of Illinois in which he developed this new policy.[602] He believed that the whole question would be thoroughly aired in the session just begun.[603] Instead of making internal improvements a matter of politics, and of wasteful jobbery, he would take advantage of the const.i.tutional provision which permits a State to lay tonnage duties by the consent of Congress. If Congress would pa.s.s a law permitting the imposition of tonnage duties according to a uniform rule, then each town and city might be authorized to undertake the improvement of its own harbor, and to tax its own commerce for the prosecution of the work. Under such a system the dangers of misuse and improper diversion of funds would be reduced to a minimum. The system would be self-regulative.