Part 4 (1/2)
One flourish of a pen, And fetters shall be riveted on millions more of men.
One drop of ink to sign a name, and Slavery shall find For all her surplus flesh and blood a market to her mind.
Awake New England! While you sleep, the foe advance their lines, Already on your stronghold's wall their b.l.o.o.d.y banner s.h.i.+nes.
Awake and hurl them back again in terror and despair!
The time has come for earnest deeds: we 've not a man to spare.”
If the Whigs had nominated Webster that May, on a platform opposing both annexation and disunion, they would have gained more votes at the North than they would have lost at the South. They might possibly have carried that election; and their strength in the Border States would have enabled them, sooner or later, to check the extension of slavery without bringing on civil war. Their platform was silent about Texas, as well as about the Union; their chief candidate, Clay, had already made compromises in the interest of the South in 1820 and 1833; he did so again in 1850; and he admitted, soon after the convention, that he ”should be glad to see” Texas annexed, if it could be done without war.
This failure of the Whigs to oppose the extension of slavery, together with their having made the tariff highly protective in 1842, cost them so many votes in New York and Michigan that they lost the election.
Negligence and dissension at the North had enabled the South to set aside Van Buren in favour of Polk at the Democratic convention. The party was pledged to annex Texas; and Northern members were appeased by a crafty promise that all which was worth having in British America, west of the Rocky Mountains, should be acquired also. The declaration in the platform of 1840, that the government ought not ”to foster one branch of industry to the detriment of others,” was repeated in 1844, as often afterwards, but it was so cunningly explained away in Pennsylvania that this State voted for the President who signed the low-tariff bill of 1846.
The election of 1844 strengthened the influence of the South. Texas was soon annexed by the same Congress which had refused to do so previously, and was admitted like Florida, as a slave State, in spite of remonstrances made by the legislatures of Ma.s.sachusetts and Vermont, as well as by two-thirds of the Unitarian ministers.
In March, 1846, Polk's army invaded Mexico; her soldiers resisted; the Democrats in Congress voted that she had begun the war, which lasted for the next eighteen months; and the Whigs a.s.sented reluctantly. Most of the volunteers were Southerners, and there was much opposition at the North to warfare for the extension of slavery. The indignation was increased by the publication of Whittier's pathetic poem, _The Angels of Buena Vista_, as well as of that series of powerful satires, Lowell's _Biglow Papers_, The greatest achievement of literary genius thus far in America was the creation of _Birdofre-dom Sawin_; and no book except Mrs. Stowe's famous novel did so much for emanc.i.p.ation.
A foremost place among abolitionists was taken by Parker in 1845, when he began to preach in Boston. His first sermon against the war with Mexico was delivered the same month as the publication of the first of the _Biglow Papers_, June, 1846.
Early in 1847 he spoke with such severity, at an indignation meeting in Faneuil Hall, that his life was threatened by drunken volunteers. Other preachers that year in Ma.s.sachusetts followed his example so generally as to win praise from the Garrisonians, as well as from the most patriotic abolitionists; and great effect was produced by his _Letter to the People_, which showed, early in 1848, that slavery was ruining the prosperity, as well as the morals, of the South. More about his work may be found in Chapter V. There we shall see how active the Transcendentalists were in carrying on the revolt begun by Channing. The most important victory for liberty recorded in this chapter was that of 1844 over the protectionists. The defeat of the Garrisonians was due largely to their mistakes; and there was urgent need of a new anti-slavery movement on broader ground.
CHAPTER IV. EMANc.i.p.aTION
THE revolutionary movements of 1848 did much to encourage love of liberty in America, where the anti-slavery agitation was now becoming prominent in politics. The indignation against the Mexican war increased as it was found that nothing would be done to keep the promise of 1844, that Great Britain should be excluded from the Pacific. The purpose of the South, to enlarge the area of slavery but not that of freedom, was so plain that the northern Democrats proposed the Wilmot Proviso, by which slavery would have been forbidden in all territory acquired from Mexico; and they actually carried it through the House of Representatives, with the help of the Whigs, in 1846. Similar action was taken by the legislatures of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and seven other States. The Senate was so unwilling to have slavery prohibited anywhere as to oppose, merely on this account, a bill for giving a territorial government to Oregon.
I. Many of the New York delegates to the national Democratic convention in 1848 came pledged to ”uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery,” and were so badly treated that they withdrew. Ca.s.s was nominated as a friend to the South; the Mexican war was declared ”just and necessary”; and abolitionism was denounced, as it had been in 1840 and 1844. Van Buren was nominated soon after by the anti-slavery Democrats. A similar movement had already been made by Sumner, Wilson, and other men who were known as ”conscience Whigs,” and who had some support from Clay and Webster. Both these candidates for the presidency were set aside in favour of a slave-holder, who had been very successful in conquering Mexico, but never cast a vote. In fact, General Taylor had taken so little interest in politics, that he was supported in the North as a friend, and in the South as an enemy, to the Wilmot Proviso. No opinion on this or any other question could be extorted from the majority; Wilson declared in the convention that he should do all he could to defeat its nominee; the conscience Whigs made an alliance with the Van Buren Democrats; and the new movement was joined by the ”Liberty men,” whose vote of sixty thousand had decided the election of 1844.
Thus was formed the Free Soil party, whose fundamental idea, like that afterwards held by the Republicans, was preservation of the Union by checking the extension of slavery.
Dougla.s.s and other Garrisonists were present at the Free Soil convention, where he was invited to speak. The new party pledged itself to ”Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labour, and Free Men.” The national Government was to relieve itself of ”all responsibility for slavery,”
and begin by prohibiting its extension. There should be ”no more slave States,” ”no more slave territory,” and ”no more compromises with slavery.” The convention also demanded that Oregon should be organised as a territory with free labour only; and this was granted at once by President Polk and both Houses of Congress. Most of the members of the convention were Transcendental enough to think that wisdom must be spontaneous; and their scorn of political machinery left it to be used for making Van Buren the candidate. Lowell, who was then at his height of productiveness, complained that,
”He aint half anti-slav'ry 'nough”;
but Whittier exclaimed, that September:
”Now joy and thanks forever more!
The dreary night has well-nigh pa.s.sed: The slumbers of the North are o'er: The giant stands erect at last!”
The anti-slavery vote was nearly five times as large as in 1844. Ca.s.s would have been elected if the Free Soilers had supported him in New York. Their hostility gave that State, as well as Vermont and Ma.s.sachusetts, to Taylor, who thus became President. He also carried Georgia and seven other Southern States; but the West was solidly Democratic. It was not an anti-slavery victory, but a pro-slavery defeat.
II. The first question before the new President and Congress was about California. The discovery of gold, before the country was ceded by Mexico, had brought in crowds of settlers, but scarcely any slaves.
Unwillingness to have another free State prevented Polk and his Senate from allowing California to have any better government than a military one; and this was deprived of all authority by the desertion of the soldiers to the diggings. The settlers knew the value of a free government, and made one independently. The const.i.tution which they completed in October, 1848, was so anti-slavery that it was not sanctioned for nearly two years by Congress. Meantime there was no legal authority in California to levy taxes, or organise fire departments, or arrest criminals. Robberies and conflagrations were numerous; the mushroom cities were not graded, paved, or lighted; the uncertainty of t.i.tles to land caused fights in which lives were lost; and criminals became so desperate that several were lynched by a Vigilance Committee.
The duty of admitting California as a free State was urged upon the new Congress in December, 1849, by Taylor, who promised to make an unexpectedly good President. This plan had become so popular at the North that it was recommended by the Democratic State conventions of Ma.s.sachusetts and Wisconsin, as well as by the legislature of every Northern State, except Iowa. The House of Representatives could easily have been carried; for the Whigs and Free Soilers const.i.tuted a majority, and would have had some help from Northern Democrats. The Senate would probably not have consented until after another appeal to the people; but this might have been made with success at the elections of 1850.
Taylor had carried Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware. The last two States had permitted some Free Soil votes to be cast; this was also the case in Virginia; and anti-slavery meetings had been held publicly in St. Louis.
The pro-slavery defeat in 1848 encouraged Southerners who knew the advantage of free labour to agitate for emanc.i.p.ation. The convention held for this purpose in Kentucky, in 1849, was attended by delegates from twenty-four counties; and its declaration that slavery was ”injurious to the prosperity of the Commonwealth,” was endorsed by Southern newspapers. Clay himself proposed a plan of gradual emanc.i.p.ation; and such a measure was called for, according to the _Richmond Southerner_ (quoted in Hoist's _Const.i.tutional History_, vol.
iii., p. 433), by ”two-thirds of the people of Virginia.” Admissions that ”Kentucky must be free,” that ”Delaware and Maryland are now in a transition, preparatory to becoming free States,” and that ”Emanc.i.p.ation is inevitable in all the farming States, where free labour can be advantageously used,” were published in 1853, at New Orleans, in De Bow's _Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States_ (vols.