Part 34 (1/2)
[Footnote 769: Debates, p. 234.]
[Footnote 770: _Ibid._, p. 238.]
[Footnote 771: Sheahan, Douglas, p. 432.]
[Footnote 772: Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, II, p. 146 note.]
[Footnote 773: Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 439-442; Herndon-Weik, Lincoln, II, p. 128.]
[Footnote 774: It has not been generally observed that the Democrats gained more than their opponents over the State contest of 1856. The election returns were as follows:
Democratic ticket in 1856, 106,643; in 1858, 121,609; gain, 14,966.
Republican ticket in 1856, 111,375; in 1858, 125,430; gain, 14,055.
CHAPTER XVII
THE AFTERMATH
Douglas had achieved a great personal triumph. Not even his Republican opponents could gainsay it. In the East, the Republican newspapers applauded him undisguisedly, not so much because they admired him or lacked sympathy with Lincoln, as because they regarded his re-election as a signal condemnation of the Buchanan administration. Moreover, there was a general expectation in anti-slavery circles to which Theodore Parker gave expression when he wrote, ”Had Lincoln succeeded, Douglas would be a ruined man.... But now in place for six years more, with his own personal power unimpaired and his positional influence much enhanced, he can do the Democratic party a world of damage.”[775]
There was cheer in this expectation even for those who deplored the defeat of Lincoln.
As Douglas journeyed southward soon after the November elections, he must have felt the poignant truth of Lincoln's shrewd observation that he was himself becoming sectional. Though he was received with seeming cordiality at Memphis and New Orleans, he could not but notice that his speeches, as Lincoln predicted, ”would not go current south of the Ohio River as they had formerly.” Democratic audiences applauded his bold insistence upon the universality of the principles of the party creed, but the tone of the Southern press was distinctly unfriendly to him and his Freeport doctrine.[776] He told his auditors at Memphis that he indorsed the decision of the Supreme Court; he believed that the owners of slaves had the same right to take them into the Territories as they had to take other property; but slaves once in the Territory were then subject to local laws for protection, on an equal footing with all other property. If no local laws protecting slave property were pa.s.sed, slavery would be practically excluded.
”Non-action is exclusion.” It was a matter of soil, climate, interests, whether a Territory would permit slavery or not. ”You come right back to the principle of dollars and cents ... If old Joshua E.
Giddings should raise a colony in Ohio and settle down in Louisiana, he would be the strongest advocate of slavery in the whole South; he would find when he got there, his opinion would be very much modified; he would find on those sugar plantations that it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile.” ”The Almighty has drawn the line on this continent, on one side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor; on the other by white labor.”[777]
At New Orleans, he repeated more emphatically much the same thought.
”There is a line, or belt of country, meandering through the valleys and over the mountain tops, which is a natural barrier between free territory and slave territory, on the south of which are to be found the productions suitable to slave labor, while on the north exists a country adapted to free labor alone.... But in the great central regions, where there may be some doubt as to the effect of natural causes, who ought to decide the question except the people residing there, who have all their interests there, who have gone there to live with their wives and children!”[778]
It was characteristic of the man that he thought politics even when he was in pursuit of health. Advised to take an ocean voyage, he decided to visit Cuba so that even his recreative leisure might be politically profitable, for the island was more than ever coveted by the South and he wished to have the advantage of first-hand information about this unhappy Spanish province. Landing in New York upon his return, he was given a remarkable ovation by the Democracy of the city; and he was greeted with equal warmth in Philadelphia and Baltimore.[779] Even a less ambitious man might have been tempted to believe in his own capacity for leaders.h.i.+p, in the midst of these apparently spontaneous demonstrations of regard. At the capital, however, he was less cordially welcomed. He was not in the least surprised, for while he was still in the South, the newspapers had announced his deposition from the chairmans.h.i.+p of the Committee on Territories. He knew well enough what he had to expect from the group of Southern Democrats who had the ear of the administration.[780] Nevertheless, his removal from a position which he had held ever since he entered the Senate was a bitter pill.
For the sake of peace Douglas smothered his resentment, and, for a brief time at least, sought to demonstrate his political orthodoxy in matters where there was no conflict of opinion. As a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, he cordially supported the bill for the purchase of Cuba, even though the chairman, Slidell, had done more to injure him in the recent campaign than any other man. There were those who thought he demeaned himself by attending the Democratic caucus and indorsing the Slidell project.[781]
It was charged that the proposed appropriation of $30,000,000 was to be used to bribe Spanish ministers to sell Cuba; that the whole project was motived by the desire of the South to acquire more slave territory; and that Douglas was once more cultivating the South to secure the presidency in 1860. The first of these charges has never been proved; the second is probably correct; but the third is surely open to question. As long ago as Folk's administration, Douglas had expressed his belief that the Pearl of the Antilles must some day fall to us; and on various occasions he had advocated the annexation of Cuba, with the consent of Spain and the inhabitants. At New Orleans, he had been called upon to express his views regarding the acquisition of the island; and he had said, without hesitation, ”It is folly to debate the acquisition of Cuba. It naturally belongs to the American continent. It guards the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is the heart of the American continent and the body of the American nation.”
At the same time he was careful to add that he was no filibuster: he desired Cuba only upon terms honorable to all concerned.[782]
Subsequent events acquit Douglas of truckling to the South at this time. No doubt he would have been glad to let bygones be bygones, to close up the gap of unpleasant memories between himself and the administration, and to restore Democratic harmony. For Douglas loved his party and honored its history. To him the party of Jefferson and Jackson was inseparably linked with all that made the American Commonwealth the greatest of democracies. Yet where men are acutely conscious of vital differences of opinion, only the hourly practice of self-control can prevent clas.h.i.+ng. Neither Douglas nor his opponents were prepared to undergo any such rigid self-discipline.
On February 23d, the pent-up feeling broke through all barriers and laid bare the thoughts and intents of the Democratic factions. The Kansas question once more recurring, Brown of Mississippi now demanded adequate protection for property; that is, ”protection sufficient to protect animate property.” Any other protection would be a delusion and a cheat. If the territorial legislature refused such protection, he for one would demand it of Congress. He dissented altogether from the doctrine of the Senator from Illinois, that by non-action, or unfriendly legislation a Territory could annul a decision of the Supreme Court and exclude slavery. That was mistaking power for right.
”What I want to know is, whether you will interpose against power and in favor of right.... If the Territorial Legislature refuses to act, will you act?... If it pa.s.s laws hostile to slavery, will you annul them, and subst.i.tute laws favoring slavery in their stead?” ”What I and my people ask is action; positive, unqualified action. Our understanding of the doctrine of non-intervention was, that you were not to intervene against us, but I never understood that we could have any compromise or understanding here which could release Congress from an obligation imposed on it by the Const.i.tution of the United States.”[783]
Reluctant as Douglas must have been to accentuate the differences between himself and the Southern Democrats, he could not remain silent, for silence would be misconstrued. With all the tact which he could muster out of a not too abundant store, he sought to conciliate, without yielding his own opinions. It was a futile effort. At the very outset he was forced to deny the right of slave property to other protection than common property. Thence he pa.s.sed with wider and wider divergence from the Southern position over the familiar ground of popular sovereignty. To the specific demands which Brown had voiced, he replied that Congress had never pa.s.sed an act creating a criminal code for any organized Territory, nor any law protecting any species of property. Congress had left these matters to the territorial legislatures. Why, then, make an exception of slave property? The Supreme Court had made no such distinction. ”I know,” said Douglas, in a tone little calculated to soothe the feelings of his opponents, ”I know that some gentlemen do not like the doctrine of non-intervention as well as they once did. It is now becoming fas.h.i.+onable to talk sneeringly of 'your doctrine of non-intervention,' Sir, that doctrine has been a fundamental article in the Democratic creed for years.”
”If you repudiate the doctrine of non-intervention and form a slave code by act of Congress, when the people of a Territory refuse it, you must step off the Democratic platform.... I tell you, gentlemen of the South, in all candor, I do not believe a Democratic candidate can ever carry any one Democratic State of the North on the platform that it is the duty of the Federal government to force the people of a Territory to have slavery when they do not want it.”[784]
What Brown had a.s.serted with his wonted impulsiveness, was then reaffirmed more soberly by his colleague, Jefferson Davis, upon whom more than any other Southerner the mantle of Calhoun had fallen. State sovereignty was also his major premise. The Const.i.tution was a compact. The Territories were common property of the States. The territorial legislatures were mere instruments through which the Congress of the United States ”executed its trust in relation to the Territories.” If, as the Senator from Illinois insisted, Congress had granted full power to the inhabitants of the Territories to legislate on all subjects not inconsistent with the Const.i.tution, then Congress had exceeded its authority. Turning to Douglas, Davis said, ”Now, the senator asks, will you make a discrimination in the Territories? I say, yes, I would discriminate in the Territories wherever it is needful to a.s.sert the right of citizens.... I have heard many a siren's song on this doctrine of non-intervention; a thing shadowy and fleeting, changing its color as often as the chameleon.”[785]
When Douglas could again get the floor, he retorted sharply, ”The senator from Mississippi says, if I am not willing to stand in the party on his platform, I can go out. Allow me to inform him that I stand on the platform, and those that jump off must go out of the party.”
Hot words now pa.s.sed between them. Davis spoke disdainfully of men who seek to build up a political reputation by catering to the prejudice of a majority, to exclude the property of the minority. And Douglas retorted, ”I despise to see men from other sections of the Union pandering to a public sentiment against what I conceive to be common rights under the Const.i.tution.” ”Holding the views that you do,” said Davis, ”you would have no chance of getting the vote of Mississippi to-day.” The senator has ”confirmed me in the belief that he is now as full of heresy as he once was of adherence to the doctrine of popular sovereignty, correctly construed; that he has gone back to his first love of squatter sovereignty, a thing offensive to every idea of conservatism and sound government.”