Part 28 (2/2)
succ.u.mbed to these a.s.saults. For a fortnight he was confined to his bed, rising only by sheer force of will to make a final plea for sanity, before his party took its suicidal plunge. He spoke on the 22d of March under exceptional conditions. In the expectation that he would speak in the forenoon, people thronged the galleries at an early hour, and refused to give up their seats, even when it was announced that the Senator from Illinois would not address the Senate until seven o 'clock in the evening. When the hour came, crowds still held possession of the galleries, so that not even standing room was available. The door-keepers wrestled in vain with an impatient throng without, until by motion of Senator Gwin, ladies were admitted to the floor of the chamber. Even then, Douglas was obliged to pause several times, for the confusion around the doors to subside.[658] He spoke with manifest difficulty, but he was more defiant than ever. His speech was at once a protest and a personal vindication. Denial of the right of the administration to force the Lecompton const.i.tution upon the people of Kansas, went hand in hand with a defense of his own Democracy. Sentences culled here and there suggest not unfairly the stinging rebukes and defiant challenges that accentuated the none too coherent course of his speech:
”I am told that this Lecompton const.i.tution is a party test, a party measure; that no man is a Democrat who does not sanction it ... Sir, who made it a party test? Who made it a party measure?... Who has interpolated this Lecompton const.i.tution into the party platform?... Oh! but we are told it is an Administration measure. Because it is an Administration measure, does it therefore follow that it is a party measure?” ... ”I do not recognize the right of the President or his Cabinet ... to tell me my duty in the Senate Chamber.” ”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's enemy? if not, your head comes off.'” ”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, or drive me from my principles. I stand firmly, immovably upon those great principles of self-government and state sovereignty upon which the campaign was fought and the election won.... If, standing firmly by my principles, I shall be driven into private life, it is a fate that has no terrors for me. I prefer private life, preserving my own self-respect and manhood, to abject and servile submission to executive will. If the alternative be private life or servile obedience to executive will, I am prepared to retire. Official position has no charms for me when deprived of that freedom of thought and action which becomes a gentleman and a senator.'”[659]
On the following day, the Senate pa.s.sed the bill for the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton const.i.tution, having rejected the amendment of Crittenden to submit that const.i.tution to a vote of the people of Kansas. A similar amendment, however, was carried in the House. As neither chamber would recede from its position, a conference committee was appointed to break the deadlock.[660] It was from this committee, controlled by Lecomptonites, that the famous English bill emanated.
Stated briefly, the substance of this compromise measure--for such it was intended to be--was as follows: Congress was to offer to Kansas a conditional grant of public lands; if this land ordinance should be accepted by a popular vote, Kansas was to be admitted to the Union with the Lecompton const.i.tution by proclamation of the President; if it should be rejected, Kansas was not to be admitted until the Territory had a population equal to the unit of representation required for the House of Representatives.
Taken all in all, the bill was as great a concession as could be expected from the administration. Not all were willing to say that the bill provided for a vote on the const.i.tution, but Northern adherents could point to the vote on the land ordinance as an indirect vote upon the const.i.tution. It is not quite true to say that the land grant was a bribe to the voters of Kansas. As a matter of fact, the amount of land granted was only equal to that usually offered to the Territories, and it was considerably less than the area specified in the Lecompton const.i.tution. Moreover, even if the land ordinance were defeated in order to reject the const.i.tution, the Territory was pretty sure to secure as large a grant at some future time. It was rather in the alternative held out, that the English bill was unsatisfactory to those who loved fair play. Still, under the bill, the people of Kansas, by an act of self-denial, could defeat the Lecompton const.i.tution. To that extent, the supporters of the administration yielded to the importunities of the champion of popular sovereignty.
Under these circ.u.mstances it would not be strange if Douglas ”wavered.”[661] Here was an opportunity to close the rift between himself and the administration, to heal party dissensions, perhaps to save the integrity of the Democratic party and the Union. And the price which he would have to pay was small. He could a.s.sume, plausibly enough,--as he had done many times before in his career,--that the bill granted all that he had ever asked. He was morally sure that the people of Kansas would reject the land grant to rid themselves of the Lecompton fraud. Why hesitate then as to means, when the desired end was in clear view?
Douglas found himself subjected to a new pressure, harder even to resist than any he had yet felt. Some of his staunch supporters in the anti-Lecompton struggle went over to the administration, covering their retreat by just such excuses as have been suggested. Was he wiser and more conscientious than they? A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,--he knew it well,--the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction. And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmans.h.i.+p, a compromise. His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust. They fully expected him to join his former a.s.sociates.
From them he could expect no sympathy in such a dilemma.[662] His political ambitions, no doubt, added to his perplexity. They were bound up in the fate of the party, the integrity of which was now menaced by his revolt. On the other hand, he was fully conscious that his Illinois const.i.tuency approved of his opposition to Lecomptonism and would regard a retreat across this improvised political bridge as both inglorious and treacherous. Agitated by conflicting emotions, Douglas made a decision which probably cost him more anguish than any he ever made; and when all has been said to the contrary, love of fair play would seem to have been his governing motive.[663]
When Douglas rose to address the Senate on the English bill, April 29th, he betrayed some of the emotion under which he had made his decision. He confessed an ”anxious desire” to find such provisions as would permit him to support the bill; but he was painfully forced to declare that he could not find the principle for which he had contended, fairly carried out. He was unable to reconcile popular sovereignty with the proposed intervention of Congress in the English bill. ”It is intervention with inducements to control the result. It is intervention with a bounty on the one side and a penalty on the other.”[664] He frankly admitted that he did not believe there was enough in the bounty nor enough in the penalty to influence materially the vote of the people of Kansas; but it involved ”the principle of freedom of election and--the great principle of self-government upon which our inst.i.tutions rest.” And upon this principle he took his stand. ”With all the anxiety that I have had,” said he with deep feeling, ”to be able to arrive at a conclusion in harmony with the overwhelming majority of my political friends in Congress, I could not bring my judgment or conscience to the conclusion that this was a fair, impartial, and equal application of the principle.”[665]
As though to make reconciliation with the administration impossible, Douglas went on to express his distrust of the provision of the bill for a board of supervisors of elections. Instead of a board of four, two of whom should represent the Territory and two the Federal government, as the Crittenden bill had provided, five were to const.i.tute the board, of whom three were to be United States officials. ”Does not this change,” asked Douglas significantly, ”give ground for apprehension that you may have the Oxford, the Shawnee, and the Delaware Crossing and Kickapoo frauds re-enacted at this election?”[666] The most suspicions Republican could hardly have dealt an unkinder thrust.
There could be no manner of doubt as to the outcome of the English bill in the Senate. Douglas, Stuart, and Broderick were the only Democrats to oppose its pa.s.sage, Pugh having joined the majority. The bill pa.s.sed the House also, nine of Douglas's a.s.sociates in the anti-Lecompton fight going over to the administration.[667] Douglas accepted this defection with philosophic equanimity, indulging in no vindictive feelings.[668] Had he not himself felt misgivings as to his own course?
By midsummer the people of Kansas had recorded nearly ten thousand votes against the land ordinance and the Lecompton const.i.tution. The administration had failed to make Kansas a slave State. Yet the Supreme Court had countenanced the view that Kansas was legally a slave Territory. What, then, became of the great fundamental principle of popular sovereignty? This was the question which Douglas was now called upon to answer.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 621: Report of the Covode Committee, pp. 105-106; Cutts, Const.i.tutional and Party Questions, p. 111; Speech of Douglas at Milwaukee, Wis., October 14, 1860, Chicago _Times and Herald_, October 17, 1860.]
[Footnote 622: Spring, Kansas, p. 213; Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 274.]
[Footnote 623: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 277-278.]
[Footnote 624: _Ibid._, pp. 278-279; Spring, Kansas, p. 223.]
[Footnote 625: See Article VII, of the Kansas const.i.tution, Senate Reports, No. 82, 35 Cong., 1 Sess.]
[Footnote 626: Schedule Section 14.]
[Footnote 627: Covode Report, p. 111.]
[Footnote 628: Chicago _Times_, November 19, 1857.]
[Footnote 629: Chicago _Times_, November 20 and 21, 1857.]
[Footnote 630: Speech at Milwaukee, October 14, 1860, Chicago _Times and Herald_, October 17, 1860.]
[Footnote 631: New York _Tribune_, December 3, 1857.]
[Footnote 632: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 5.]
[Footnote 633: Chicago _Times_, December 19, 1857.]
[Footnote 634: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 17.]
[Footnote 635: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 17-18.]
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