Volume Iii Part 15 (1/2)
Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and taking heresy of ”squatter sovereignty,” that Congress, though possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Const.i.tution, general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace ”to vote up or vote down.” At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed ”nonintervention,” and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render Kansas free.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Stephen A. Douglas.
[1855]
This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was the Kansas Aid Society, another a Ma.s.sachusetts corporation ent.i.tled the New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905 legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at p.a.w.nee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to support the fugitive slave law.
The free-state settlers, now a majority, ignored this Legislature and its acts, and at once set to work to secure Kansas admission to the Union as a State without slavery. The Topeka convention, October 23, 1855, formed the Topeka const.i.tution, which was adopted December 14th, only forty-six votes being polled against it. This showed that pro-slavery men abstained from voting. January 15, 1856, an election was held under this const.i.tution for state officers, a state legislature, and a representative in Congress. The House agreed, July 3d, by one majority, to admit Kansas with the Topeka const.i.tution, but the Senate refused. The Topeka Legislature a.s.sembled July 4th, but was dispersed by United States troops.
[1856-1857]
This was done under command from Was.h.i.+ngton. President Pierce, backed by the Senate with its steady pro-slavery majority, was resolved at all hazards to recognize the pro-slavery authorities of Kansas and no other, and, as it seemed, to force it to become a slave State; but fortunately the House had an anti-slavery majority which prevented this. The friends of freedom in Kansas had also on their side the history that was all this time making in Kansas itself. During the summer of 1856 that Territory was a theatre of constant war. Men were murdered, towns sacked. Both sides were guilty of violence, but the free-state party confessedly much the less so, having far the better cause. Nearly all admitted that this party was in the majority. Even the governors, all Democrats, appointed by Pierce, acknowledged this, some of them, to all appearance, being removed as a punishment for the admission. Governor Geary, in office from September, 1856, to March, 1857, and Governor Walker, in office from May, 1857, were just and able men, and their decisions, in most things favorable to the free-state cause, had much weight with the country.
Walker's influence in the Territory led the free-state men to take part in the territorial election of October, 1857, where they were entirely triumphant. But the old, pro-slavery Legislature had called a const.i.tutional convention, which met at Lecompton, September, 1857, and pa.s.sed the Lecompton const.i.tution. This const.i.tution sanctioned slavery and provided against its own submission to popular vote. It ordained that only its provision in favor of slavery should be so submitted. This pro-slavery clause was adopted, but only because the free-state men would not vote. The Topeka Legislature submitted the whole const.i.tution to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton const.i.tution, although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March, 1859, had adopted const.i.tutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the Wyandotte const.i.tution and hence as a free State.
It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S.
Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State.
This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate, characterized the a.s.sault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks, but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame, representative from Ma.s.sachusetts, who had publicly denounced the caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned, but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina const.i.tuency.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Charles Sumner.
While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause 2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out the const.i.tutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as to establish it.
The new southern or Calhoun theory a.s.sumed startling significance for the Nation when, in 1857, it was proclaimed in the Dred Scott decision of the United States Supreme Court as part of the innermost life of our Const.i.tution. Dred Scott was a slave of an army officer, who had taken him from Missouri first into Illinois, a free State, then into Wisconsin, covered by the Missouri Compromise, then back into Missouri.
Here the slave learned that by decisions of the Missouri courts his life outside of Missouri const.i.tuted him free, and in 1848, having been whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for a.s.sault. The decision was in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him also he prosecuted for a.s.sault, but as he and Sandford belonged to different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court.
Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not a citizen of Missouri but a slave.
It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizens.h.i.+p of the negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all other legislation against slavery in Territories unconst.i.tutional, and the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's citizens.h.i.+p was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable implication being that no man of African blood could be an American citizen.
This decision rendered jubilant all friends of slavery, as also the ultra Abolitionists, but correspondingly disheartened the sober friends of human liberty. How, it was asked, is the cause of freedom to be advanced when the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the highest tribunal existing for that purpose, virtually establishes slavery in New England itself, provided any slave-master wishes to come there with his troop? But anti-slavery men did not despair. Patriots had of course to obey the court till its opinion should be reversed, yet its opinion was at once repudiated as bad law. Men like Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Giddings, Seward, and Lincoln, appealing to both the history and the letter of the Const.i.tution, and to the course of legislation and of judicial decisions on slavery even in the slave States, had been elaborating and demonstrating the counter theory, under which our fundamental law appeared as anything but a ”covenant with h.e.l.l.”
The pith of this counter theory was that slaves were property not by moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney were right as against Douglas in ascribing to Congress all power over the Territories, it was as impossible to find slaves in any United States Territory as to find a king there. Slaves taken into Territories therefore became free. Slaves taken into any free State became free.
Slaves carried from a slave State on to the high seas became free. Even the fugitive slave clause of the Const.i.tution must be applied in the way least favorable to slavery.
On the other hand Douglas was right in his view that citizens and not States were the partners in the Territories. As to the a.s.sertion of incompatibility between citizens.h.i.+p and African blood, it would not stand historical examination a moment. If it was true that the framers of the Const.i.tution did not consciously include colored persons in the ”ourselves and our posterity” for whom they purposed the ”Blessings of Liberty,” neither did they consciously exclude, as is clear from the fact that nearly everyone of them expected blacks some time to be free.
CHAPTER VI.
SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES
[1841]
The Democratic Party was predominantly southern, the Whig northern. Both sought to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the slavocracy. This status became more p.r.o.nounced with the progress of the controversy and of the South's self-a.s.sertion. It was real under Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan.