Part 7 (1/2)
One who reads Whittier to-day may be allowed to wish that he had known the sunny as well as the shady side of Southern life; and that, as in a later poem he softened his fierce criticism on Webster, so he had celebrated the virtues and graces of his white countrymen below the Potomac and the Ohio, as well as the wrongs of his black countrymen.
Lowell, usually a scholarly poet, spoke to the common people n.o.bly for peace and freedom in the Biglow Papers. In 1857 the _Atlantic Monthly_ was started under his editors.h.i.+p, the organ at once of the highest literary ability of New England, and of p.r.o.nounced anti-slavery and Republican sentiment. After he gave up the editors.h.i.+p in 1862, he wrote at intervals of a few years the second series of Biglow Papers, and his ”Commemoration Ode” was the n.o.blest literary monument of the triumph of Union and freedom.
Longfellow's main vocation was away from the turmoils of the hour. He interpreted to America the art, the culture, the legends of Europe and the Middle Ages; he found the poetry in the early soil of America, as in ”Hiawatha” and ”Evangeline.” He was not deaf to the wrongs of the slave, and gave to them some touching poems. But his finest contribution to the national idea was the apostrophe to the Union which crowns ”The Building of the s.h.i.+p.” It was written in 1849, in the stress of the struggle over California, and it may well last as long as the nation lasts. The poem is an idyl of the s.h.i.+p-building folk and the sea; the consummation is the bridal of the captain and the builder's daughter, and the launching of the s.h.i.+p, christened ”The Union”--emblem of the wife's and husband's voyage begun together on the sea of life; then,--
Thou, too, sail on, O s.h.i.+p of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel, What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the sh.o.r.e, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,--are all with thee!
CHAPTER XVII
DRED SCOTT AND LECOMPTON
Under Buchanan's administration, 1857-61, three events befell which were like wedges riving farther and farther apart the national unity. They were the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, the Lecompton const.i.tution in Kansas, and John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry.
President Buchanan declared in his inaugural that the people of a Territory had a right to shape their inst.i.tutions in their own way, but as to how far that right extended before they organized as a State, the United States Supreme Court was the proper arbiter. Two days after the inaugural, the Supreme Court announced its decision, in a case made up expressly to test the status of slavery in the Territories. Suit was brought before it to obtain freedom for Dred Scott, who being held as a slave in Missouri had been taken by his master to reside for a time in Illinois, and afterward at Fort Snelling in unorganized territory north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, and so free under the Missouri compromise. It was claimed that by being taken upon free soil, in State or Territory, he became free. The court, in an elaborate opinion delivered by Chief-Justice Taney, dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction, on the ground that no person of slave descent or African blood could be a citizen of the United States or be ent.i.tled to sue in its courts. The court affirmed that the sweeping language of the Declaration, that ”all men are born free,” had no application to negroes, because at that time they were generally regarded ”as so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The case being thus thrown out of court, all further discussion of its merits was superfluous--a mere _obiter dictum_, without legal force. Nevertheless, the court through its chief-justice went on to p.r.o.nounce upon the plaintiff's claim and declare it baseless; on the ground that inasmuch as a slave was lawful property, and the Const.i.tution decreed that no man should be deprived of his property without due process of law, therefore an act of Congress declaring in effect that when carried beyond a certain line a slave was lost to his master, was unconst.i.tutional and void. Thus the court set aside as invalid the exclusion of slavery from the Territories by Congress. As to the effect of a slave's residence in a free State by his master's act, followed by a return to a slave State,--the court held that this question belonged properly to the Missouri courts, which had decided against the slave's claim.
Two of the justices, McLean and Curtis (Northern Whigs), dissented emphatically from the decision. Justice Curtis pointed out, as to the alleged incapacity of the negro for citizens.h.i.+p at the era of the Const.i.tution, that at that period free negroes had the right of suffrage in five of the thirteen States. As to the argument against depriving a man of his property, the contention of the Republicans was that slaves were property, not by the common usage of mankind, but only by local law, and that when a slaveholder moved into a Territory he did not carry with him that local law by which alone a man could be held as a chattel.
But the authoritative voice of the highest court in the land had proclaimed these amazing propositions,--that the guarantee of freedom to the Northwest, which the nation had accepted for a third of a century, was invalid, and that no person with negro blood had any civil rights as a citizen of the United States.
When, forty years later, a law of Congress establis.h.i.+ng an equitable income tax was declared unconst.i.tutional by the Supreme Court, and a Democratic national convention protested against that decision, the Republican papers of the day denounced the protest as hardly less than treason. But the Republicans of an earlier day were not so reverential toward the Supreme Court as an infallible authority. Could the court as a finality outlaw the negro from the common rights of man, and prevent Congress from establis.h.i.+ng freedom in the national domain? Not so thought the men who led the Republican party and the sentiment of the North. The New York Legislature, for example, promptly enacted that African descent should not disqualify from State citizens.h.i.+p; that any slave brought into the State by his master became free, and any attempt to hold him was a penal offense. It pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that the Supreme Court had lost the confidence and respect of the people.
Lincoln said in his dry way that the Republican party did not propose to declare Dred Scott a free man (by the way, he was soon manumitted by his former master's daughter)--but neither did they propose to accept the court's decision as a political rule binding the voters, or Congress, or the President; and they intended so to oppose it as to have it reversed if possible, and a new judicial rule established. Seward was very outspoken. He said a year later, in the Senate, ”The people of the United States never can and never will accept principles so unconst.i.tutional, so abhorrent. Never, never! Let the court recede.
Whether it recede or not, we shall reorganize the court, and thus reform its political sentiment and practices, and bring them in harmony with the Const.i.tution and the laws of Nature.”
The court's decision, _obiter dictum_ and all, extended only to the power of Congress over the Territories. What a Territorial Legislature might do by way of excluding slavery had not been pa.s.sed on; and Douglas thus found room for his doctrine of ”popular sovereignty.” But as to just what that meant, he was adroitly non-committal, till the more adroit Lincoln in the joint debate in 1858 drew from him the statement that a Territorial Legislature might by ”unfriendly legislation”
practically exclude slavery--a committal which ended his favor from the South.
But meanwhile attention was focused on a different and more concrete question. Buchanan began his administration with an effort to pacify Kansas, by sending a new governor, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, with strong pledges from the President that the people should have fair dealing. But the situation was badly complicated. The Legislature had provided for a convention to frame a State Const.i.tution. This was to be elected on the basis of a census taken by the county officials. But the Free State men having never recognized this Territorial Legislature, and having kept up the form of a State government of their own, there were no officials to take the census and register the votes in fifteen out of the thirty-four counties, and the registration was confined to the part of the Territory lying convenient for invasion from Missouri. Under these circ.u.mstances the Free State party resisted all Governor Walker's appeals to take part in the election, and the convention was chosen by a small vote. It met at Lecompton, and drew up a const.i.tution. One article provided for the exclusion of free negroes, and another forbade any amendment for seven years. One section affirmed owners.h.i.+p of slaves as an inviolable right of property, and forbade any adverse legislation; and this section alone of the Const.i.tution was submitted to the popular vote. A vote of the people was ordered, as between ”const.i.tution with slavery” and ”const.i.tution without slavery.” The Free State men scouted the whole proceeding, and refused to vote. So, by the form of a popular election, the ”const.i.tution with slavery” was adopted.
The administration now gave its whole strength to the admission by Congress of Kansas with the Lecompton const.i.tution. The same election that made Buchanan President had made the House as well as the Senate Democratic. But it was no longer the disciplined and docile Democracy of old. The proposal to admit a State under a const.i.tution of which only a single article had been submitted to even the form of a popular vote, was too obnoxious for any but the most unflinching partisans. It was impossible to a leader whose watchword was ”popular sovereignty.”
Douglas broke squarely with the administration, and acted with the Republicans against the bill. He came in close touch with their leaders, and his open accession to their party seemed probable. Meanwhile in the Democratic party he had a small following in Congress and a large following among the people. The struggle in Congress over the Lecompton bill was obstinate. Senator Crittenden of Kentucky,--belonging nominally to the remnant of the American party, which sheltered some of the moderate Southerners, and himself one of their best leaders--proposed a bill submitting the entire Const.i.tution to a direct popular vote. This was defeated in the Senate, but pa.s.sed by the House, with the support of the Republicans. A committee of conference sought for some agreement, and found a singular one: a bill proposed by and named from Mr. English, a Douglas Democrat from Illinois. It provided that the Const.i.tution should be submitted to a popular vote; if accepted, Kansas was at once to become a State and receive an immense land grant; if rejected, it was to remain a Territory until it had the population requisite for one representative in the House,--93,340,--and get no land grant. The combination of a bribe and a threat gave an almost grotesque air to the proposition. Party lines were broken in the vote; Douglas and a part of his a.s.sociates joined with the bulk of the Republicans in opposing the bill; but enough of both sides saw in it the best they could get, to win a majority in both houses, and the English bill became law, in April, 1858.
In the previous summer, the a.s.surances of Governor Walker and the advice of sagacious politicians like Henry Wilson had induced the Free State men to give up their separate organization and take part in the election of the Territorial Legislature. They carried the election by two to one.
But again fraud was attempted. From a hamlet with eleven houses was sent in a return of 1624 votes,--the names, it was found, copied in alphabetical order from a Cincinnati directory; and from another district an equally dishonest return was made; and the two would have changed the majority in the Legislature. This catastrophe was averted by the firmness of Walker, who threw out the fraudulent returns. In this he was vainly opposed by the Territorial chief justice, a servile partisan.
After this the President turned against Walker and in the following December drove him into resignation. He protested in an indignant letter that the President had betrayed and deserted him, and that his policy had saved the Territory from civil war and brought the entire people together for the first time in a peaceable election.
Indeed the troubles of Kansas were practically ended. The people rejected the Lecompton const.i.tution and its land grant by a heavy majority. They framed and ratified a Const.i.tution of their own at Wyandotte, and came into the Union as a free State when secession had left the Republicans in full control of Congress in the winter of 1860-1.
The accession of Kansas to the Free States was full of significance. It was fresh evidence that in the actual settlement of the new country the inevitable preponderance lay with free labor. Its industrial advantage could not be overborne by a hostile national administration, nor by the inroads of aggressive and lawless neighbors. The management of their affairs by the Free State settlers was a great vindication of the methods of peace. The guerrilla warfare undertaken by Brown and his party had won no real advantage. The decisive triumph came from the habitual self-control of the Free State men, their steady refusal to resist the Federal authority, and the sympathy they thus won from the peaceful North, turning at last the scales of Congressional authority in their favor. Thus far, peace and freedom moved hand in hand.