Volume Iii Part 16 (2/2)

Notwithstanding all this the Democracy might still have elected a president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did not so desire, but sincerely believed in that doctrine as part and parcel of the true democratic faith. But it was now obvious that the working out of the Douglas theory was absolutely sure to make free all the western States henceforth to be formed. This would, of course, remove the Senate from the domination of slavery. Hence the South was irrevocably opposed to it, and insisted with all its might upon the Calhoun-Taney contention that the national Government must protect slavery in all the Territories to which it pleased to go. In a pa.s.sage at arms with Douglas as they were stumping Illinois for the senators.h.i.+p in 1858, Lincoln keenly forced upon him the question whether under the Dred Scott decision any Territory could possibly be kept free from slavery. ”If,” said he, ”Douglas answers yes, he can never be President; if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator.” Douglas replied in the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South a doomed man.

The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded.

Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The so-called Const.i.tutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket, Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted.

The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine. Lincoln was already a marked man in his party, especially in the West, his brilliant joint debate with Judge Douglas during some months in 1858 having brought out his matchless good sense and good nature, his rare knowledge of our history and law, and his high quality as thinker and speaker. Born in Kentucky in 1809, removing to Indiana in 1816, to Illinois in 1830, reared in extreme poverty and wholly self-educated, this man had risen by his wits, his st.u.r.dy perseverance and industry, his extraordinary ability, and his proverbial honesty, to be the acknowledged peer of the ”Little Giant” himself. He began political life a Whig and ably represented that party in the national Congress from 1847 to 1849, making his voice heard against the high-handed procedure of the Administration in the Mexican War. But as with Seward, Greeley, Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, Sherman, Dayton, Corwin, and Collamer, subsequent events had intensified his anti-slavery feeling, convincing him, as he avowed, that the Union could not ”permanently continue half slave and half free.” He was thus drawn to unite his fortunes with the Republicans. His nomination was received coolly in the East, where Seward had been preferred; but as men studied Lincoln's record they were convinced of the wisdom which had made him the party's leader. He swept New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Oregon, having 180 electoral votes to Breckenridge's 72, Bell's 39, and Douglas's 12.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

William H. Seward.

From a photograph by Brady.

CHAPTER VIII.

MATERIAL PROGRESS

[1860]

The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,443,321. In spite of the threatening political complications between 1840 and 1860, these years were characterized by astonis.h.i.+ng economic prosperity. The decade after 1848 was, indeed, in point of advance in material weal, the golden age of our history. Between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the nation swelled 120 per cent., the value of its farms 103 per cent., its total manufacturing product 87 per cent., its manufactured export 171 per cent., its railroad mileage 220 per cent. Making all due allowance for the rise of prices during the period, this is still a remarkable exhibit.

The great West continued to come under the hand of civilization. Between 1850 and 1860 our centre of population made a longer stride westward than during any other decade--from east of the meridian of Parkersburg, W. Va., to the meridian of Chillicothe, O. Florida and Texas having been admitted to statehood in 1845, Iowa followed next year, Wisconsin in 1848, California in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Was.h.i.+ngton Territories were organized before 1860. By this date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in 1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In 1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places become dense.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Elias Howe.

Immigration hither was unfortunately checked a little later by Indian hostilities, the gravest attacks being in 1847 and 1855. In the latter year Major Haller, leading an exploring party, was surrounded by the savages and cut off from food and water, only making his escape by a fight of two days against overwhelming odds. He and his party at last hewed their desperate way through, losing their entire outfit, besides one-fifth of their number. The whole territory was hara.s.sed by Indians on the war path, and General Wool had to be sent up from San Francisco to restore peace. This done, immigration was renewed. A thousand new inhabitants came to Oregon in 1852, and its northern half was organized as Was.h.i.+ngton Territory the following year. The Pacific Mail Steams.h.i.+p Company had been chartered in 1848, and four years earlier a newspaper started, the first in English on that coast. Its seat was Oregon City, its name the Flumgudgeon Gazette.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Vandalia. The Pioneer Propeller On the Lakes.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Stone Towers of the Niagara Suspension Bridge.]

The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856.

The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855.

The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of ca.n.a.ls. The Miami Ca.n.a.l, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 1825, was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middles.e.x Ca.n.a.l in Ma.s.sachusetts was, in 1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the State the ca.n.a.l and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga., was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston & Maine Railway finished to Berwick.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The New Iron Towers of the Niagara Bridge.]

The first railway out of Chicago--it was the first in Illinois--was built in 1850, to Elgin. Chicago had no railway connection with the East till two years later, when the Michigan Southern was opened. The Michigan Central was finished soon after the Southern, and the Rock Island before the end of the year. The Michigan Central had direct connection east across Canada to Niagara Falls by 1854. In 1856 the Burlington route reached the Mississippi and the Rock Island went on to Iowa City. This year witnessed the opening of the first railroad in California--from Sacramento to Folsom. In 1857 Chicago and St. Louis were joined by rails, as also the latter city with Baltimore, over the Parkersburg branch of the Baltimore & Ohio.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Three story frame building; first floor is shops.]

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