Part 5 (1/2)
She gives credit for the habits of courage and command, which are bred in the upper cla.s.s, as when she tells of a heroic rescue from a s.h.i.+pwreck: ”The devil must have his due, and men brought up in habits of peremptory command over their fellowmen, and under the constant apprehension of danger and awful necessity of immediate readiness to meet it, acquire qualities precious to themselves and others in hours of supreme peril.”
She touches repeatedly on the social restrictions on free speech; thus, speaking of two gentlemen, one a clergyman: ”They seem good and kind and amiable men, and I have no doubt are conscientious in their capacity of slave holders; but to one who has lived outside this dreadful atmosphere, the whole tone of their discourse has a morally m.u.f.fled sound which one must hear to be able to conceive.” She observes that whenever she discusses slavery with people she meets, they waive the abstract right or wrong of the system. Now and then she gets a bit of entire frankness, as when a very distinguished South Carolinian says to her, ”I'll tell you why abolition is impossible; because every healthy negro can fetch $1000 in Charleston market at this moment.”
She generalizes as to the effects of emanc.i.p.ation in a way which later events completely justified. Unlike the West Indies, she says, the South is not tropical, and will not yield food without labor, and necessity would compel the liberated blacks to work. That they would not work, and the ground would lie idle, was, as we know, the bogy which was held up to scare away from emanc.i.p.ation--just as in our own day the danger of race mixture is made a bogy to scare away from social justice. But the event proved that f.a.n.n.y Kemble was right in her predictions, in which indeed she was at one with other candid observers at the time. As to gradual emanc.i.p.ation, she believed it unwise--the system, she writes, is too absolutely bad for slow measures. Had she owned her husband's plantation, she would at once have freed the slaves, and hired them, if only as a means of financial salvation.
She p.r.o.nounces _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ to be no exaggeration. Her own story of facts gives a darker impression than Mrs. Stowe's novel. It may be asked, why, at this distance, revive the tragic tale? The answer is, that the truth of history is precious, and our present problems cannot be understood if we shut our eyes to their antecedents. Just now there is a fas.h.i.+on, among many Southern writers on the negro question, of beginning their story with the wrongs and sufferings of the reconstruction period. Now, it was indeed deplorable, and a thing not to be forgotten, that ignorant negroes sat in the Senate chambers of South Carolina and Mississippi, that taxes were excessive, and the public business mismanaged. But, in the broad view, it is well to remember that a few years earlier very much worse things than these were happening, and that a system which made cattle of men and women might be expected to avenge itself.
Another work may be merely mentioned as illuminating the facts of slavery. It is Frederic Law Olmsted's three volumes of travels in the slave States. He studied them with the eyes of a farmer and a practical man; a well-equipped, fair, and keen observer. His testimony, already touched on in these chapters, is very strong as to the economic mischief of the system, its frequent cruelties, its demoralization of both master and slave, and the absolute need of its ultimate extinction. From his pages we can borrow but one or two pa.s.sages. The contrasts of slavery are epitomized in two plantations he found side by side in Mississippi. On one the slaves had good food and clothes, were not driven hard, were given three stops in the day for meals, and had the time from Friday night till Monday morning for themselves. In this time the men cultivated gardens and the women washed and sewed. They were smartly dressed, and seemed very contented; many could read and write; on Sundays there was a church service and a Sabbath school taught by their mistress, both of which they could attend or not as they pleased.
On the other plantation, owned by a religious woman, the working hours were from 3.30 A. M. to 9 P. M. The slaves had only Sunday free from labor, and on that day there were three services which they had to attend under penalty of a whipping. They were never allowed off the plantation, and were whipped if they talked with slaves from other plantations. Said a neighbor, ”They can all repeat the catechism, but they are the dullest, laziest, and most sorrowful negroes I ever saw.”
As to the possibilities of gradual emanc.i.p.ation, which he favored, Olmsted wrote that in Cuba every slave has the right of buying his own freedom, at a price which does not depend on the selfish exaction of his master, but is either a fixed price or is determined in each case by disinterested appraisers. ”The consequence is that emanc.i.p.ations are continually going on, and the free people of color are becoming enlightened, cultivated, and wealthy. In no part of the United States do they occupy the high position which they enjoy in Cuba.” So much for the despised Spanish-American.
From a still different standpoint--that of the non-slaveholding Southern white--the system was reviewed and scathingly judged in Helper's _The Impending Crisis_. But that, like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, was not merely a book, but an event, and as such is to be mentioned in its place among events. The general survey of the slave system in itself need not here be carried further. As to its essential character and basal principle, no truer word was ever spoken than that which Mrs.
Stowe puts in the mouth of the slaveholder St. Clare:
”The short of the matter is, cousin, on this abstract question of slavery there can, as I think, be but one opinion. Planters, who have money to make by it,--clergymen, who have planters to please,--politicians, who want to rule by it,--may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press Nature and the Bible, and n.o.body knows what else, into the service; but, after all, neither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more. It comes from the devil, that's the short of it,--and to my mind, it's a pretty respectable specimen of what he can do in his own line. You seem to wonder; but if you will get me fairly at it, I'll make a clean breast of it. This cursed business, accursed of G.o.d and man, what is it? Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,--because I know how, and can do it,--therefore I may steal all he has, keep it, and give him only such and so much as suits my fancy.
Whatever is too hard, too dirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it. Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod. Quashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find convenient. This I take to be about what slavery is.”
St. Clare goes on to say that ”for pity's sake, for shame's sake, because we are men born of women and not savage beasts, many of us do not and dare not--we would scorn to--use the full power which our savage laws put into our hands.” In truth, a compilation of the slave laws was one of the most convincing arguments against the whole system.
This book is characterized by Charles G. Ames,--whose long life of n.o.ble service to humanity included earnest work among the anti-slavery pioneers: ”To my mind, the heaviest blow, though probably not the most telling one, ever struck against our slave system as a system was the compilation and publication of Stroud's _Slave Laws_--a codification from the statute-books of the Southern States of their own barbarous methods of legislation, made necessary for the protection of the peculiar inst.i.tution. All the recent sentimental defenses of it, as gentle, humane, and patriarchal, seem utterly to ignore the rugged facts, which Lawyer Stroud's book made as plain as the stratification of the rocks to the eye of the geologist.”
In its actual administration, the system was in a measure softened and humanized. It was more humane in the border than in the cotton and sugar States, and it was generally better when a plantation was managed by its owner than when left to an overseer,--as the plantation of f.a.n.n.y Kemble's husband had been left. But in one respect its disastrous effect was everywhere felt. By a.s.sociating manual labor with the stigma of servitude, it bred, in free men, a strong disrelish for work,--a most demoralizing and ruinous influence. Inefficiency and degradation were the marks of the non-slaveholding whites. The master cla.s.s missed the wholesome regimen of toil. Nature is never more beneficent than when she lays on man the imperative command ”Thou shalt work.” Of all ways of evading it the worst is to s.h.i.+ft the burden to another man. In being driven to do other men's work as well as his own the negro found some compensation, but his enslaver paid a constant and heavy penalty.
CHAPTER XIII
THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS
The foremost politician of the Northwest, in the early '50s, was Stephen A. Douglas, United States senator from Illinois. He was a native of Vermont, and had early gone West and pushed his fortunes with energy, audacity, and shrewdness. He was an effective, popular speaker; and his short and stout frame and large head had won for him the nickname of ”The Little Giant.” He was a leader in the Democratic party, and a prominent Presidential candidate, but never identified with any great political principle or broad policy. He was chairman of the Senate committee on Territories, and early in the session of 1853-4 he introduced a bill for the organization of a vast section hitherto known as ”the Platte country,” a part of the Louisiana purchase, lying next to the western tier of States, and stretching from Indian Territory to Canada; all of which was now to const.i.tute the Territory of Nebraska, or, as it was soon divided, the two Territories of Nebraska and Kansas.
This region had as yet been scarcely touched by permanent settlers, but it was the next step in the great onward march toward the Pacific. It lay north of the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, above which it had been declared by the compromise act of 1820 slavery should never be extended.
Douglas incorporated in his ”Kansas-Nebraska” bill, a clause declaring that the prohibition of slavery north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, by the act of 1820, had been ”superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850,” and was ”inoperative and void.” Later he added the explanatory clause: ”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.” On its face, this was a proposal to withdraw the congressional prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern territory, and remand the question to the territorial population. But the latent purpose to distinctly favor slavery was proved when Senator Chase moved an additional clause: ”Under which (the Const.i.tution) the people of the Territory, through their appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein”; and Douglas and his followers, in defiance of consistency, instantly threw this out.
The meaning of the whole business was unmistakable; under the pretext of ”popular sovereignty,”--Douglas's favorite watchword--the bars were thrown down and slavery was invited to enter.
The proposal took the country completely by surprise. The South was not asking for any such advantage as was offered, but was prompt to accept it. This of course Douglas had expected, and in this lay his personal gain as a Presidential candidate. But he had utterly misjudged the temper of the North. The general acquiescence in the compromise of 1850 might seem to indicate a weariness or indifference as to the slavery question. But just as in 1820 and in 1850, again there sprung up a wide and deep hostility to any extension of slavery, and now the old restraints on that hostility were gone, and its sources were newly filled. For now Clay and Webster were dead, and the case itself offered no room for compromise; no offset was possible. And the anti-slavery feeling had strengthened immensely throughout the North. Under the stimulus of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, the inhumanity of the system had made the deepest impression on the popular imagination and conscience. To this system it was now proposed to throw open all the fair and fertile Northwest, in effect from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The North awoke like a giant from sleep. The old party organizations went down in the shock; a new party came instantly to birth; and the last triumph of slavery in Congress gave the signal for a six-years' campaign, ending in the triumph of the Republicans and the appeal of the South to revolution.
The debate in Congress was hot through the winter and spring of 1854. In the Senate, Seward and Sumner and Chase had been reinforced by such allies as Benjamin Wade of Ohio, Hamilton Fish of New York, Solomon Foot of Vermont, and William P. Fessenden of Maine. The supporters of the bill, with such leaders as Douglas and Ca.s.s from the North and Mason and Benjamin from the South, proved finally to number three-fourths of the Senate. In the House, party lines were completely broken, and the division was almost equal,--the bill pa.s.sed by 113 to 110. Its supporters included all the Southern and just half of the Northern Democrats, and two-thirds of the few Southern Whigs. Its opponents were all the Northern and a third of the Southern Whigs, with half of the Northern Democrats and the four Free-Soilers in the House.
The bill finally pa.s.sed on the 25th of May, 1854, and there instantly began a hot battle for the congressional election. On the very next morning,--so Henry Wilson relates,--a meeting of about twenty members of the House was held; among their leaders were Israel Washburn, Jr., of Maine, and Edward d.i.c.kinson and Thomas D. Eliot of Ma.s.sachusetts; and it was agreed that the best hope lay not in the Whig organization, but in a new party, for which the name ”Republican” was chosen; and of which this occasion might now be considered the birth and christening. It came to its earliest maturity in Michigan, where the Whigs and Free Soilers united in the new party and carried the autumn election. But in most Northern States there was political confusion, heightened by the sudden appearance of the ”American” party. This was the political development of the ”Know-nothing” secret society, which came into existence the year before, on the basis of the exclusion of recent immigrants from political power. Its special animus was hostility to the Irish Catholics, and in various parts of the country it had for a year or two a mushroom growth. In Ma.s.sachusetts, where the Whigs clung obstinately to their tradition and their social prestige, and the Republican party was at first only a continuance of the Free Soil, the Know-nothings won in 1854 a sweeping victory, carrying the State by almost two to one and electing all the members of Congress. That shrewd politician, Henry Wilson, contributed to the result; was elected to the United States Senate; and led the anti-slavery element which controlled the American party in Ma.s.sachusetts and a year or two later divided its national organization. In other States, the term ”anti-Nebraska” was the basis of a temporary union, such as in Ohio had a majority of 70,000. In New York the influence of Greeley, Seward, and Weed prolonged the Whig organization as an anti-Nebraska party. The roster of the new Congress was a jumble of Democrats, Whigs, Republicans, Americans, and anti-Nebraskans. But the general result was clear; Douglas's bill had turned an overwhelming administration majority into a minority of the popular vote; and the political revolution had carried the House in the first engagement. The result crystallized a year later, when an obstinate battle of many weeks for the House speakers.h.i.+p ended in the election of Nathaniel P. Banks of Ma.s.sachusetts.
The immediate practical effect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to throw the political destiny of those Territories into the hands of the future settlers. There were men at the North who were prompt to see and seize the opportunity. In February, 1854, three months before the bill became law, the New England Emigrant Aid Society was incorporated in Ma.s.sachusetts. Its originator was Eli Thayer of Worcester, and among its active promoters was Edward Everett Hale. In the following July it sent to Kansas a colony of twenty-four, speedily followed by another of seventy, which founded the town of Lawrence. Other colonies followed from various Northern States, and other settlements were made. The natural westward movement of an active population seeking new homes and personal betterment was augmented and stimulated by a propaganda of freedom. Whittier gave the colonists a marching song:
We cross the prairies as of old Our fathers crossed the sea, To make the West as they the East The home of liberty.
A counter movement was started from the South. Missouri was its natural base. But Missouri furnished the material and leaders.h.i.+p for another kind of crusade. The rough and lawless element of a border community was brought out in its worst character by the appeal to champion the cause of slavery. Men high in political life were ready to utilize such forces. The first settlers of Lawrence, before they had time to raise their houses, were visited by a ruffianly mob from Missouri, who tried by threats and show of force to drive them from the Territory, but failed. When in November the first election was held for Territorial delegate to Congress, there was a systematic invasion by bands of Missourians, who captured the polling-places and elected their candidate by 3000 votes; though it was afterward proved that there were only half that number of voters resident in Kansas.
In 1855 the first Territorial Legislature was elected by a similar invasion of armed men, which chose the entire body. A foremost leader in these operations was United States Senator Atchison of Missouri.
President Pierce's administration recognized the usurping faction. It sent a succession of governors--Reeder, Shannon, Geary, Walker (the last was sent by President Buchanan)--who, with the exception of the incompetent and worthless Shannon, were by the inexorable facts of the situation won to the side of the Free-State men, and accordingly lost favor and their office. Meantime the usurping Legislature had enacted an extraordinary code of laws. By these statutes, decoying a slave from his master was punishable by death or hard labor for ten years; the circulation of writings inciting to revolt was made a capital offense; and the a.s.sertion by speech, writing, or the circulation of any book or paper, that slavery was not lawful in the Territory, was punishable by two years' hard labor.