THE FOURTH EPOCH.
CHAPTER VII.
History of the Compromise Measures of 1850—Cessation of the Agitation in Congress—The Fugitive Slave Law in the North—Repeal of the Missouri Compromise—Narrative of the Difficulties in Kansas—Disunion Convention in Massachusetts.
The next important move upon the political chessboard with reference to slavery preceded the adoption of the celebrated measures familiarly known by the above title, or as the “Omnibus Bill of 1850.” The events which led to this measure may be briefly stated thus:—
Ever since 1848, a storm had been lowering in the political horizon of the country on the slavery question, threatening to dissolve the Union, which necessarily burst over Congress in Legislating for the new Territories brought into the Union by the result of the Mexican war. Probably no subject has been presented since the adoption of the federal constitution involving questions of such deep and vital importance to the inhabitants of the different States of the confederacy as that in reference to the territory thus acquired. Not only was the sentiment avowed of the existence of danger to the Union, but in various quarters was heard an open and undisguised declaration of a necessity and desire for its dissolution. General Taylor was elected, a new administration came into power, and being somewhat identified with the Northern anti-slavery elements, as opposed to the Democratic party, a tremendous agitation was at once created, and the whole question of slavery thrown again into the crucible.
The Thirtieth Congress had adjourned without organizing the new Territories, or settling any great principle as to their future government and destiny. California had gone forth without asking leave, formed a State government prohibiting slavery, and put its machinery in operation. Utah was governed by a high and arbitrary spiritual despotism, and New Mexico was under military rule, ordered from the seat of federal power at Washington. In addition to this, it was discovered that Mexico had abolished slavery, and consequently that the lex loci of all the countries ceded by Mexico to the United States excluded slavery. The Wilmot Proviso had been carried in the House, but failed in the Senate, and waited only for the admission of California, which would give sixteen free States against fifteen slave States.
Of course the whole South rose in arms against the consequences of this disappointment. They would not admit California; they declared that slavery did exist in the territories acquired from Mexico; that in any case the Constitution of the United States would carry it there and protect it there; and that they would dissolve the Union if the Wilmot Proviso became a law.
In this state of affairs, Henry Clay, on the 29th of January, brought forward in the Senate his famous resolutions of compromise, and laid the basis of an adjustment which might have lasted till this day but for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. Subsequently, a Committee of Thirteen was appointed by the Senate, charged with the duty of considering all the subjects, of which Mr. Clay was appointed chairman. On the 8th of May, 1850, this committee reported a series of measures, differing but inconsiderably from the original resolutions of Mr. Clay. These were:—
1. The admission of California as a free State, according to the expression of the will of her people.
2. The establishment of Territorial governments, without the Wilmot Proviso, for New Mexico and Utah, embracing all the territory recently acquired by the United States from Mexico, not contained in the boundaries of California. The question of slavery was left without any other restriction than the will of the people.
3. The establishment of the western and northern boundary of Texas, and the exclusion from her jurisdiction of all New Mexico, with the grant to Texas of a pecuniary equivalent.
4. More effectual enactments for the recovery of fugitive slaves.
5. Abstaining from abolishing slavery, but under a heavy penalty prohibiting the slave trade, in the District of Columbia.
Separate bills were drawn embodying all the main features of this compromise, and eight months having been consumed in their discussion, the two houses were at last brought to a vote on each bill by itself.
The Utah Territorial Bill passed the Senate, August 10, 1850, by a vote of yeas 32, nays 18.
The Texas Boundary Bill passed the Senate, August 10, 1850, by a vote of yeas 30, nays 20.
The bill for the admission of California passed the Senate, August 13, 1850, by a vote of 34 to 18.
The New Mexico Bill passed the Senate, August 14, 1850, by a vote of 27 to 10.
The Fugitive Slave Bill passed the Senate on the 23d of August, 1850, by a vote of 27 to 12.
The bill abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia passed the Senate, September 14, 1850, by a vote of 33 to 19.
In the House, the vote on the several bills was:—
New Mexico and Texas boundary, Sept. 6, 1850, yeas 180, nays 97.
Admission of California, Sept. 7, 1850, yeas 150, nays 53.
Utah Bill, Sept. 7, 1850, yeas 97, nays 85.
Fugitive Slave Bill, Sept. 12, 1850, yeas 109, nays 76.
Slave trade in the District of Columbia, Sept. 17, 1850, yeas 124, nays 59.
Out of Congress the abolitionists were aroused almost to a pitch of frenzy by the passage of the Compromise measures and the Fugitive Slave Law. Addresses were immediately issued by thousands, which were freely circulated in all the Northern States, counseling resistance to the law under every circumstance. Conventions were held of whites and negroes, in which was proclaimed death to every slaveholder who attempted to carry out the provisions of the infamous enactment. The tide of runaway slaves from the South, which had been flowing for so many years, swelled into a flood. Where one slave formerly made a successful escape, scores made good their flight now. New England became the goal of the fugitives, and here they found friends without number, who furnished them with the means of extending their journey to the Canadian provinces.
One of the first and most successful attempts to resist the Fugitive Slave Law was in Boston, in April, 1851, when one Thomas Sims, who had escaped from Georgia, was taken in custody by the city authorities, on a warrant issued by the United States Commissioner. A mob was the result. The military was called out, and for several days the most intense excitement ensued. The law finally triumphed, however, and amid the cry of “Sims, preach liberty to your fellow slaves,” he was put on a steamtug and sent where he belonged.
Shortly after this, a meeting was called by the Vigilance Committee, which was presided over by Hon. Horace Mann, when Anson Burlingame, Henry Wilson, Remond, Higginson and several other negroes appeared and made denunciatory speeches against the law and in favor of the resolutions, which proclaimed the necessity of resistance to the uttermost.
On September 11, 1851, occurred the celebrated Christiana affair. Edward Gorsuch, of Maryland, his son and a party of friends, accompanied by a United States Commissioner, appeared in the neighborhood of Christiana, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in pursuit of a slave. An attack was made upon them by negroes, and both father and son were killed. The United States marines were ordered to the spot, and for several days the place was under martial law. The slave, of course, escaped. We might also refer to the rescues of Shadrack, Anthony Burns, the slave Jerry at Syracuse, and similar incidents that occurred in various parts of the Northern States; but the circumstances are most of them too recent and familiar to require more than a passing allusion.
It is only necessary to say that this kind of agitation—resistance to the laws and disturbance of the peace—has been a part of the tactics of abolitionists down to the present moment. They have never allowed an opportunity to pass of showing their utter disregard for law and order, and of interposing every obstacle in the way of those whose sincere desire it is to promote the peace and prosperity of the country. The breeze has become a gale, and the gale has swelled into a tempest, under the influence of which the mind of a portion of the North has been lashed into insane fury.
THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE, AND FORMATION OF THE
TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENTS OF KANSAS AND NEBRASKA.
It was reserved for the years 1853 and 1854 to be a period of agitation—revived under the auspices of such men as Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Caleb Cushing, David Atchinson and other politicians intent upon the Presidency—unrivalled in the annals of the country.
The new danger came up in the shape of a proposition to establish a Territorial government in Nebraska (then embracing Kansas), a Territory which, with Missouri, originally constituted the upper part of the province of Louisiana, and was acquired from the French in 1803 by the payment of 60,000,000 francs.
As early as Dec. 11, 1844, Mr. Douglas gave notice to the House of his intention to introduce a bill for this purpose, which he did on the 17th instant following. After being favorably reported upon, it was referred to the Committee of the Whole, where, owing to the importance of other measures pending, it was not again acted upon during the session. On the 15th of March, 1848, he introduced a similar bill, and again it met a similar fate. In the Senate, in 1852, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, early introduced a resolution, which was passed, instructing the Committee on Territories to inquire into the expediency of organizing the Territory; but no further action was taken upon it until the House of Representatives had passed its bill for that purpose. On December 17, the petition of Mr. Guthrie for a seat as a delegate from Nebraska, was received and referred, and on the 2d day of February, 1853, the Committee on Territories, through Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, their chairman, reported their bill for organizing Nebraska, which, after three days consideration, was passed on the 10th, by a vote of 98 to 43. It was silent on the subject of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The Senate received it the next day, and on the 17th instant, the Committee on Territories reported it without amendment. On the 3d of March, 1853, it was laid upon the table. In the debate which immediately preceded this disposition, Senator Atchison, of Missouri, openly avowed the ground of his opposition to be that the law excluding slavery from the Territory of Louisiana, north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, would be enforced in the new Territory, “unless specially rescinded.” He did not appear, however, to entertain any hope that this desirable object could be effected. He said he should, therefore, oppose the organization, unless the whole South could go into the Territory with rights and privileges, respecting property, equal to other people of the Union. The idea of the possibility of a repeal of the Missouri Compromise was thus, for the first time, thrown out and left to take root in the minds of the nation, with the chance of growing up to perfection. Even the most ultra among the Southerners then regarded this as a thing rather to be hoped for than realized.
On the 4th of January, 1854, Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories, (which consisted of Messrs. Douglas, of Illinois; Houston, of Texas; Johnson, of Arkansas; Bell, of Tennessee; Jones, of Iowa, and Everett, of Massachusetts,) to whom had been referred the bill of Mr. Dodge, reported back the same with amendments and a report which contained the first open, and as it were official, declaration of the impending coup d’etat. This report assumed as its basis that the Compromise acts of 1850, which, it will be recollected, leave to the people of the Territories to decide for themselves whether or not there shall be slavery in their midst, were the supreme, authentic law of the land, and the Missouri Compromise was cited and put aside as immaterial, because it came in collision with this latest legislation and adjustment of the question. This perpetual prohibition Mr. Douglas proposed incidentally to repeal by the following provision in the bill:—
“And when admitted as a State or States, the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received in the Union with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe at the time of their admission.”
Later in this month the same committee submitted an amended bill by which two Territories—Kansas and Nebraska—were to be created out of the domain in question.
On the 22d of January, Messrs. Chase and Sumner, of the Senate, and Messrs. Giddings, Wade, Dewitt and Gerrit Smith, of the House, issued a stirring appeal to the people of the United States, urging and imploring instant action to avert the pending calamity. This was circulated over the whole country, and aided not a little in adding fuel to the already furious flame of excitement.
The discussion of the bill in the Senate was continued from time to time through January. It swallowed up all other interests, and was the absorbing topic throughout the country. The vote was finally reached at five o’clock in the morning of March 4, 1854, when the bill passed the Senate by a vote of thirty-seven to fourteen. Fourteen of the votes in its favor were given by Senators from the free States, and two of those against it by Senators from the slave States—Messrs. Houston, of Texas, and Bell, of Tennessee.
On the 14th of March Mr. Everett presented the famous mammoth memorial, signed by 3,050 clergymen of New England, protesting against the passage of the bill.
In the House of Representatives the bill was brought up on the 31st of January, 1853. The debate upon it was closed on the 19th of May, 1854, and on the 22d of May, 1854, it passed the House by the following vote:—Yeas, 113; nays, 100. The vote of the Senate on the final passage of the bill was, yeas, 35; nays, 13.
On the 20th of December, 1854, the Hon. John H. Whitfield, delegate elect from the Territory of Kansas, was sworn in and admitted to a seat in the House. It was alleged that his election had been carried by an importation of Missourians into the Territory, but no contest was made on his right, and he held his position during the remainder of the Thirty-third Congress.
During the recess between the 4th of March and the 1st of December, 1855, the history of Kansas was marked by the most exciting events. The removal of the seat of government by the Territorial Legislature from the place which had been fixed by Governor Reeder, was deemed by the latter to have made void, ab initio, all acts enacted by them subsequent to such removal, on the ground that the power to locate the same was vested in him alone.
The free State party backed up Governor Reeder, while the pro-slavery party endorsed the action of the Legislature. Governor Reeder was in the meantime removed from office.
The free State party met at Big Springs and resolved to repudiate the acts of the Territorial Legislature and organize a State government. A Convention was accordingly called and held at Topeka, on the 4th Tuesday of October, framed what was called the Topeka Convention, and set on foot a State Government which soon came in conflict with the regularly constituted authorities, and resulted in the indictments against the former for treason, which followed.
Meanwhile, finding opposition to the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska act unavailing in Congress and under the forms of the Constitution, combinations were entered into at the North to control the political destinies and form and regulate the domestic institutions of these Territories through the machinery of emigrant aid societies, by which means large numbers of persons were forwarded to the debatable ground. In order to give consistency to the movement and surround it with the color of legal authority, an act of incorporation was procured from the Legislature of Massachusetts for an association by the name of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, the ostensible purpose of which was to enable emigrants to settle in the West. It was a powerful corporation, with a capital of five millions of dollars, invested in houses and lands, in merchandise and mills, in cannons and rifles, in powder and lead—in all the implements of art, agriculture and war, and employing a corresponding number of men under the management of directors who remained at home and pulled the wires of this immense political automaton. In a measure they succeeded. Thousands of these emigrants poured into the Territory, armed with Sharpe’s rifles and the Word of God, and located themselves wherever their votes were most necessary. The result might have been anticipated. Under the influence of inflammatory appeals and stung by the irritating threats of the free-state men, the most intense indignation was aroused in the States near the Territory of Kansas, and especially in Missouri, whose domestic peace was thus the most directly endangered. Counter movements consequently ensued. Bands of men came over the State border and appeared at the polls, and on both sides angry accusations followed that the elections were carried by fraud and violence. In the meantime, statements entirely unfounded or grossly exaggerated concerning events within the Territory, were sedulously diffused through remote States to feed the flame of sectional animosity there, and the agitators in the States in turn exerted themselves to encourage and stimulate strife within the Territory.
During the Presidential campaign of 1856 Kansas may be said to have been in a state of civil war. Life was nowhere safe. Armed men espousing both sides of the question roamed throughout the country, committing depredations and atrocities which find their equal only in the records of savage barbarity. Men, women and children were murdered in their beds, and few could aver themselves either as free-state men or pro-slavery men without danger of being shot down in their tracks. It was during this period that the notorious John Brown, with his band, made his appearance and commenced those villanies for which he has since met a just reward upon the gallows.
To return to Congress, however: on the 7th of April, 1856, a memorial of the Senators and Representatives of the so-called State of Kansas, accompanied by the Constitution adopted at Topeka, praying the admission of the same into the Union, was presented in the House of Representatives and referred. The Committee on Territories reported a bill to that effect, which was rejected on the 30th of June by a vote of yeas 106, nays 107.
On motion of Mr. Barclay, of Pennsylvania, the question was reconsidered, and the vote being taken on the passage of the bill, it was carried by yeas 107, nays 106, the abovenamed gentleman changing his ballot, and one other voting aye who was not present before.
The bill being brought before the Senate, that body substituted for it a bill of its own, which was returned to the House, where no action was taken upon it. Several other attempts were subsequently made in both the Senate and House, during 1856, to pass bills to authorise the people of Kansas to form a Constitution and State government, but without success—neither body endorsing the act of the other.
On the 29th of July, 1856, a bill reported by Mr. Grow, from the Committee on Territories, “To annul certain acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Kansas,” being before the House, Mr. Dunn, of Indiana, moved an amendment to the same, which substantially re-established the compromise of 1820. This was carried by a vote of 89 yeas and 77 nays. The bill reached the Senate, and a report upon it was made by the Committee on Territories on the 11th of August, 1856, recommending that it be laid upon the table, which was done, by a test vote of 35 to 12.
On the 11th of July, 1856, the committee appointed by the House to proceed to Kansas and investigate all matters connected with the contested election case between A. H. Reeder and John W. Whitfield, each of whom claimed to have been elected a delegate to Congress, made a majority and minority report, Messrs. W. A. Howard, of Michigan, and Lewis Campbell, of Ohio, affirming that everything connected with the Territorial Legislature and the election of Whitfield was wrong; and Mr. Mordecai Oliver, of Missouri, affirming that everything was right, and that Mr. Reeder was not duly elected according to law.
These reports were acted upon on the 29th of July, when Mr. Whitfield was declared not to be entitled to a seat in the House by a vote of 110 yeas to 92 nays, and Mr. Reeder was likewise declared not to be entitled to a seat by a vote of 88 yeas and 113 nays. On the 1st Of December, 1856, however, Mr. Whitfield, having again been elected a delegate, was sworn in by a vote of 112 yeas to 108 nays.
The effect of this agitation in Congress upon the people was immense, and every power that could be brought to bear to influence the result one way or another was unsparingly employed. It was almost the sole hinge upon which, for a time, swung the welfare of the country. The immediate admission of Kansas, with her free constitution, formed at Topeka, was engrafted upon the republican platform of 1856, and men were arraigned at the bar of public opinion and proved guilty or innocent by their standing with reference to this great question. Happily, however, the election of Mr. Buchanan threw oil upon the troubled waters, and with his inauguration the country relapsed once more into a state of comparative quiet. The predatory bands engaged in Kansas in acts of rapine, under cover of existing political disturbances, were arrested or dispersed, the troops were withdrawn, and tranquillity was once more restored to the hitherto agitated territory.
On the first Monday of September, 1857, a Convention was called together by virtue of an act of the Territorial Legislature, whose lawful existence had been recognized by various enactments of Congress, to frame a constitution for Kansas. A large proportion of the citizens did not think proper to register their names and vote at the election for delegates; but an opportunity to do this having been afforded, in the language of Mr. Buchanan, “their refusal to avail themselves of their right, could in no manner affect the legality of the Convention.” But little difficulty occurred except on the question of slavery, and after an excited and angry debate on this subject, by a majority of only two, it was decided to submit the question of slavery to the people.
This was the famous Lecompton Convention. They adopted a constitution, and the form of submission was “constitution with slavery,” or “constitution without slavery.” A great many people were indignant because the constitution was made thus imperative, and more than one-half stayed away from the polls. The constitution was consequently adopted by the party voting for it with slavery. In that form it was submitted to the President, and the President submitted it to Congress. After a protracted discussion in both houses, the admission of Kansas under that instrument was defeated, and a compromise was adopted to submit the Lecompton constitution back to the people, with the condition that if accepted they should immediately come into the Union by a proclamation of the President, and that, if rejected, they should wait until they had ninety-three thousand inhabitants, to be ascertained by a census. They rejected the constitution by some ten thousand majority. In the meantime, under the operation of the Territorial Legislature and the Lecompton Convention acting in conjunction with each other, the anti-slavery elements rallied and elected an anti-slavery Legislature. There were, however, bogus returns from two or three counties, which, if admitted, would have changed the complexion of the Legislature into a pro-slavery body; but these were cast out by Governor Walker, and the Legislature was thus left in the possession of the free-soil party.
After the rejection of the Lecompton constitution, the people called another Convention, which assembled at Wyandot, and adopted an anti-slavery constitution. This they laid before Congress, and at the same time elected a Legislature and a member of Congress, the Legislature in turn electing two Senators, in anticipation of the admission of the State under the Wyandot constitution. The bill for the admission of the State was taken up in Congress during the present session and passed, and on Wednesday, the 30th of January, was returned to Congress with the signature of the President, thus forever setting at rest a question which has so long disturbed the country.
The following are the State officers of Kansas elected under the Wyandot constitution, and who will assume to administer the new State government:—
Governor—Charles Robinson, formerly of Massachusetts.
Lieutenant Governor—J. P. Root, formerly of Connecticut.
Secretary of State—J. W. Robinson, formerly of Maine.
Treasurer—William Tholen, formerly of New York.
Auditor—George W. Hillyer, formerly of Ohio.
Superintendent of Public Instruction—W. R. Griffith, formerly of Illinois.
Chief Justice—Thomas Ewing, Jr., formerly of Ohio.
Associate Justices—Samuel D. Kingham, formerly of Kentucky, and Lawrence Bailey, formerly of New Hampshire.
In the Supreme Court, under the Dred Scott decision, the right has been established of every citizen to take his property of every kind, including slaves, into the common Territories, belonging equally to all the States of the confederacy, and to have it protected there under the Constitution.
It is hardly necessary to advert further to the progress of the anti-slavery element in Congress than to merely recal the tumults excited at the beginning of every session by the election of a Speaker, and the constant ebb and flow of agitation upon the one absorbing theme which has at last, through the efforts of the abolitionists and their allies, come to be the single sentiment, upon which hang suspended the destiny and hopes of a nation.
In 1857, a State Convention assembled in Worcester, Mass., “to consider the practicability, probability and expediency of a separation of the free and slave States.” In the language of one of the orators, they felt that the time had come when they should “sever for ever the bloody bond which united them to the slaveholders, slave-breeders and slave-traders of the nation.” The meeting found its sympathizers, and made converts in every portion of the North, and from that day to the present, have been spreading among a certain class the following sentiments, with which Wendell Phillips closed one of his speeches:—
“If the slaveholder loves the Union, I hate it. The love of so sagacious a tyrant is authority enough for my hate. If the slaveholder clings to the Union, it is instinct. When they set horses to run in the Roman races, each horse bears about him a little network of pointed pricks, that the faster he goes, make him run yet faster. I would set the slaveholder running with four millions of slaves for the pricks. Dissolution is my method for that race. Dissolution, in other words, is only another method of letting natural causes have free play. I would take down the dam of the Union and let loose the torrent of God’s own water-courses, and, like every current, you may be sure it will clear every channel for itself.”
In an address delivered by Wm. Lloyd Garrison, July 20, 1860, at the Framingham celebration, he declares:
“Our object is the abolition of slavery throughout the land; and whether in the prosecution of our object, this party goes up, or the other party goes down, it is nothing to us. We cannot alter our course one hair’s breadth, nor accept a compromise of our principles, for the hearty adoption of our principles. I am for meddling with slavery everywhere—attacking it by night and by day, in season and out of season—(no, it can never be out of season)—in order to effect its overthrow. (Loud applause.) Higher yet will be my cry. Upward and onward. No union with slaveholders. Down with this slaveholding government. Let this covenant ‘with death and agreement with hell’ be annulled. Let there be a free, independent, Northern republic, and the speedy abolition of slavery will inevitably follow. (Loud applause.) So I am laboring to dissolve this blood-stained Union, as a work of paramount importance. Our mission is to regenerate public opinion.”
This has been the point, end and object at which the practical abolitionists of the country have aimed from the start. If they have advocated a measure, its purpose has been dissolution. If they have prevented the execution of the laws, the purpose has been dissolution; if they have made war or made peace, or taken any step during their unholy career, the one end and object has been the overthrow of the government and the freedom of the slave, no matter what may be the consequence.
The conventions of the abolitionists are now held every year, and they have gathered about them a galaxy of congenial followers—
“Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray”—
well worthy of the cause they espouse. No stone remains unturned that obstructs the accomplishment of their designs. Until of late their agents have circulated in every nook and corner of the country, and from Maine to Texas these serpents of society have been distilling their venom among the people. We have seen the result within the past two years in poisoned families, executed slaves, a John Brown insurrection, and all the enormities which attend the movement of a band of infatuated individuals who are spurred on to deeds of desperation by those who stay at home to preach that which they leave their deluded victims to practise.
As a party they have become so strong that,
“Having both the key
Of officer and office, they set all hearts
To what tune they please.”