CHAPTER VII.
Review (continued).—Continuance of the Struggle for Kansas.— List of Governors.—Robert J. Walker appointed Governor by President Buchanan.—His Failure.—The Lecompton Constitution fraudulently adopted.—Its Character.—Is transmitted to Congress by President Buchanan.—He recommends the Admission of Kansas under its Provisions. —Pronounces Kansas a Slave State.—Gives Full Scope and Effect to the Dred Scott Decision.—Senator Douglas refuses to sustain the Lecompton Iniquity.—His Political Embarrassment.—Breaks with the Administration.—Value of his Influence against Slavery in Kansas. —Lecompton Bill passes the Senate.—Could not be forced through the House.—The English Bill substituted and passed.—Kansas spurns the Bribe.—Douglas regains his Popularity with Northern Democrats. —Illinois Republicans bitterly hostile to him.—Abraham Lincoln nominated to contest the Re-election of Douglas to the Senate.— Lincoln challenges Douglas to a Public Discussion.—Character of Each as a Debater.—They meet Seven Times in Debate.—Douglas re- elected.—Southern Senators arraign Douglas.—His Defiant Answer. —Danger of Sectional Division in the Democratic Party.
The Dred Scott decision, in connection with the Democratic triumph in the national election, had a marked effect upon the struggle for Kansas. The pro-slavery men felt fresh courage for the work, as they found themselves assured of support from the administration, and upheld by the dogmas of the Supreme Court. The Territory thus far had been one continued scene of disorder and violence. For obvious reasons, the administration of President Pierce had selected its governors from the North, and each, in succession, failed to placate the men who were bent on making Kansas a slave State. Andrew H. Reeder, Wilson Shannon, John W. Geary, had, each in turn, tried, and each in turn failed. Mr. Buchanan now selected Robert J. Walker for the difficult task. Mr. Walker was a Southern man in all his relations, though by birth a Pennsylvanian. He had held high stations, and possessed great ability. It was believed that he, if any one, could govern the Territory in the interest of the South, and, at the same time, retain a decent degree of respect and confidence in the North. As an effective aid to this policy, Frederick P. Stanton, who had acquired an honorable reputation as representative in Congress from Tennessee, was sent out as secretary of the Territory.
THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION.
Governor Walker failed. He could do much, but he could not placate an element that was implacable. Contrary to his desires, and against his authority, a convention, called by the fraudulent Legislature, and meeting at Lecompton, submitted a pro-slavery constitution to the people, preparatory to asking the admission of Kansas as a State. The people were not permitted to vote for or against the constitution, but were narrowed to the choice of taking the constitution with slavery or the constitution without slavery. If the decision should be adverse to slavery, there were still some provisions in the constitution, not submitted to popular decision, which would postpone the operation of the free clause. The whole contrivance was fraudulent, wicked, and in retrospect incredible. Naturally the Free-state men refused to have any thing to do with the scandalous device, intended to deceive and betray them. The constitution with slavery was, therefore, adopted by an almost unanimous vote of those who were not citizens of Kansas. Many thousands of votes were returned which were never cast at all, either by citizens of Kansas or marauders from Missouri. It is not possible, without using language that would seem immoderate, to describe the enormity of the whole transaction. The constitution no more represented the will or the wishes of the people of Kansas than of the people of Ohio or Vermont.
Shameful and shameless as was the entire procedure, it was approved by Mr. Buchanan. The Lecompton Constitution was transmitted to Congress, accompanied by a message from the President recommending the prompt admission of the State. He treated the anti-slavery population of Kansas as in rebellion against lawful authority, recognized the invaders from Missouri as rightfully entitled to form a constitution for the State, and declared that "Kansas is at this moment (Feb. 2, 1858) as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina." The Dred Scott decision occupied a prominent place in this extraordinary message and received the most liberal interpretation in favor of slavery. The President declared that "it has been solemnly adjudged by the highest judicial tribunal known to our laws that slavery exists in Kansas by virtue of the Constitution of the United States." This was giving the fullest scope to the extreme and revolting doctrine put forward by the advocates of slavery, and, had it been made effective respecting the Territories, there are many reasons for believing that a still more offensive step might have been taken respecting the anti- slavery action of the States.
The attempt to admit Kansas, under the Lecompton Constitution, proved disastrous to the Democratic party. The first decided break was that of Senator Douglas. He refused to sustain the iniquity. He had gone far with the pro-slavery men, but he refused to take this step. He had borne great burdens in their interest, but this was the additional pound that broke the back of his endurance. When the Dred Scott decision was delivered, Mr. Douglas had applauded it, and, as Mr. Lincoln charged, had assented to it before it was pronounced. With his talent for political device, he had doubtless contrived some argument or fallacy by which he could reconcile that judicial edict with his doctrine of "popular sovereignty," and thus maintain his standing with the Northern Democracy without losing his hold on the South. But events traveled too rapidly for him. The pro-slavery men were so eager for the possession of Kansas that they could not adjust their measures to the needs of Mr. Douglas's political situation. They looked at the question from one point, Mr. Douglas from another. They saw that if Kansas could be forced into the Union with the Lecompton Constitution they would gain a slave State. Mr. Douglas saw that if he should aid in that political crime he would lose Illinois. It was more important to the South to secure Kansas as a slave State than to carry Illinois for Mr. Douglas. It was more important for Mr. Douglas to hold Illinois for himself than to give the control of Kansas to the South. Indeed, his Northern friends had been for some time persuaded that his only escape from the dangerous embarrassments surrounding him was in the admission of Kansas as a free State. If the Missouri Compromise had not been repealed, a free State was assured. If Kansas should become a slave State in consequence of that repeal, it would, in the excited condition of the popular mind, crush Douglas in the North, and bring his political career to a discreditable end.
Mr. Douglas had come, therefore, to the parting of the ways. He realized that he was rushing on political destruction, and that, if he supported the vulgar swindle perpetrated at Lecompton, he would be repudiated by the great State which had exalted him and almost idolized him as a political leader. He determined, therefore, to take a bold stand against the administration on this issue. It was an important event, not only to himself, but to his party; not only to his party, but to the country. Rarely, in our history, has the action of a single person been attended by a public interest as universal; by applause so hearty in the North, by denunciation so bitter in the South. In the debate which followed, Douglas exhibited great power. He had a tortuous record to defend, but he defended it with extraordinary ability and adroitness. From time to time, during the progress of the contest, he was on the point of yielding to some compromise which would have destroyed the heroism and value of his position. But he was sustained by the strong will of others when he himself wavered—appalled, as he often was, by the sacrifice he was making of the Southern support, for which he had labored so long, and endured so much.
SENATOR BRODERICK'S DEATH.
Senator Broderick of California imparted largely of his own courage and enthusiasm to Douglas at the critical juncture, and perhaps saved him from a surrender of his proud position. Throughout the entire contest Broderick showed remarkable vigor and determination. Considering the defects of his intellectual training in early life, he displayed unusual power as a political leader and public speaker. He was a native of Washington, born of Irish parents, and was brought up to the trade of a stone-mason. He went to California among the pioneers of 1849, and soon after took part in the fierce political contests of the Pacific coast. Though a Democrat, he instinctively took the Northern side against the arrogant domination of the Southern wing of the party, led by William H. Gwin. Broderick was elected to the United States Senate as Gwin's colleague in 1856, and at once joined Douglas in opposition to the Lecompton policy of the administration. His position aroused fierce hostility on the part of the Democratic leaders of California. The contest grew so bitter in the autumn of 1859, when Broderick was canvassing his State, as to lead to a duel with Judge Terry, a prominent Democrat of Southern birth. Broderick was killed at the first fire. The excitement was greater in the country than ever attended a duel, except when Hamilton fell at the hands of Burr in 1804. The Graves and Cilley duel of 1838, with its fatal ending, affected the whole nation, but not so profoundly as did the death of Broderick. The oration of Senator Baker, delivered in San Francisco at the funeral, so stirred the people that violence was feared. The bloody tragedy influenced political parties, and contributed in no small degree to Lincoln's triumph in California the ensuing year.
In the peculiar position in which Douglas was placed, still maintaining his membership of the Democratic party while opposing the administration on the Lecompton question, he naturally resorted to arguments which were not always of a character to enlist the approval of men conscientiously opposed to slavery. The effect of the arguments, however, was invaluable to those who were resisting the imposition of slavery upon Kansas against the wish of a majority of her people, and Republicans could be content with the end without justifying the means. Douglas frankly avowed that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down, but he demanded that an honest, untrammeled ballot should be secured to the citizens of the Territory. Without the aid of Douglas, the "Crime against Kansas," so eloquently depicted by Mr. Sumner, would have been complete. With his aid, it was prevented.
The Lecompton Bill passed the Senate by a vote of 33 to 25. Besides Broderick, Douglas carried with him only two Democratic senators, —Stuart of Michigan, and Pugh of Ohio. The two remaining members of the old Whig party from the South, who had been wandering as political orphans since the disastrous defeat of 1852,—Bell of Tennessee, and Crittenden of Kentucky,—honored themselves and the ancient Whig traditions by voting against the bill. In view of the events of the preceding four years, it was a significant spectacle in the Senate when Douglas voted steadily with Seward and Sumner and Fessenden and Wade against the political associations of a lifetime. It meant, to the far-seeing, more than a temporary estrangement, and it foretold results in the political field more important than any which had been developed since the foundation of the Republican party.
The resistance to the Lecompton Bill in the House was unconquerable. The Administration could not, with all its power and patronage, enforce its passage. Anxious to avert the mortification of an absolute and unqualified defeat, the supporters of the scheme changed their ground, and offered a new measure, moved by Mr. William H. English of Indiana, submitting the entire constitution to a vote of the people. If adopted, the constitution carried with it a generous land grant to the new State. If rejected, the alternative was not only the withdrawal of the land grant, but indefinite postponement of the whole question of admission. It was simply a bribe, cunningly and unscrupulously contrived, to induce the people of Kansas to accept a pro-slavery constitution. It was not so outrageous as it would have been to force the constitution upon the people without allowing them to vote upon it at all, and it gave a shadow of excuse to certain Democrats, who did not wish to separate from their party, for returning to the ranks. The bill was at last forced through the House by 112 votes to 103. Twelve Democrats, to their honor be it said, refused to yield. Douglas held all his political associates from Illinois, while the President failed to consolidate the Democrats from Pennsylvania. John Hickman and Henry Chapman honorably and tenaciously held their ground to the last against every phase of the outrage. In New York, John B. Haskin and Horace F. Clarke refused to yield, though great efforts were made to induce them to support the administration. The Senate promptly concurred in the English proposition.
LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION REJECTED.
But Kansas would not sell her birthright for a mess of pottage. She had fought too long for freedom to be bribed to the support of slavery. She had at last a free vote, and rejected the Lecompton Constitution, land grant and all, by a majority of more than ten thousand. The struggle was over. The pro-slavery men were defeated. The North was victorious. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had not brought profit or honor to those who planned it. It had only produced strife, anger, heart-burning, hatred. It had added many drops to the cup of bitterness between North and South, and had filled it to overflowing. It produced evil only, and that continually. The repeal, in the judgment of the North, was a great conspiracy against human freedom. In the Southern States it was viewed as an honest effort to recover rights of which they had been unjustly deprived. Each section held with firmness to its own belief, and the four years of agitation had separated them so widely that a return to fraternal feeling seemed impossible. Confidence, the plant of slowest growth, had been destroyed. Who could restore it to life and strength?
Douglas had, in large degree, redeemed himself in the North from the obloquy to which he had been subjected since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The victory for free Kansas was perhaps to an undue extent ascribed to him. The completeness of that victory was everywhere recognized, and the lawless intruders who had worked so hard to inflict slavery on the new Territory gradually withdrew. In the South, Douglas was covered with maledictions. But for his influence, Southern men felt that Kansas would have been admitted with a pro-slavery constitution, and the senatorial equality of the South firmly re-established. Northern Republicans, outside of Illinois, were in a forgiving frame of mind toward Douglas; and he had undoubtedly regained a very large share of his old popularity. But Illinois Republicans were less amiable towards him. They would not forget that he had broken down an anti-slavery barrier which had been reared with toil and sanctified by time. He had not, as they alleged, turned back from any test exacted by the South, until he had reached the point where another step forward involved political death to himself. They would not credit his hostility to the Lecompton Constitution to any nobler motive than the instinct of self-preservation. This was a harsh judgment, and yet a most natural one. It inspired the Republicans of Illinois, and they prepared to contest the return of Douglas to the Senate by formally nominating Abraham Lincoln as an opposing candidate.
The contest that ensued was memorable. Douglas had an herculean task before him. The Republican party was young, strong, united, conscious of its power, popular, growing. The Democratic party was rent with faction, and the Administration was irrevocably opposed to the return of Douglas to the Senate. He entered the field, therefore, with a powerful opponent in front, and with defection and betrayal in the rear. He was everywhere known as a debater of singular skill. His mind was fertile in resources. He was master of logic. No man perceived more quickly than he the strength or the weakness of an argument, and no one excelled him in the use of sophistry and fallacy. Where he could not elucidate a point to his own advantage, he would fatally becloud it for his opponent. In that peculiar style of debate, which, in its intensity, resembles a physical contest, he had no equal. He spoke with extraordinary readiness. There was no halting in his phrase. He used good English, terse, vigorous, pointed. He disregarded the adornments of rhetoric,—rarely used a simile. He was utterly destitute of humor, and had slight appreciation of wit. He never cited historical precedents except from the domain of American politics. Inside that field his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical. Beyond it his learning was limited. He was not a reader. His recreations were not in literature. In the whole range of his voluminous speaking it would be difficult to find either a line of poetry or a classical allusion. But he was by nature an orator; and by long practice a debater. He could lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions. He could, if he wished, incite a mob to desperate deeds. He was, in short, an able, audacious, almost unconquerable opponent in public discussion.
LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS AS DEBATERS.
It would have been impossible to find any man of the same type able to meet him before the people of Illinois. Whoever attempted it would probably have been destroyed in the first encounter. But the man who was chosen to meet him, who challenged him to the combat, was radically different in every phase of character. Scarcely could two men be more unlike, in mental and moral constitutions, than Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Mr. Lincoln was calm and philosophic. He loved the truth for the truth's sake. He would not argue from a false premise, or be deceived himself or deceive others by a false conclusion. He had pondered deeply on the issues which aroused him to action. He had given anxious thought to the problems of free government, and to the destiny of the Republic. He had for himself marked out a path of duty, and he walked in it fearlessly. His mental processes were slower but more profound than those of Douglas. He did not seek to say merely the thing which was best for that day's debate, but the thing which would stand the test of time and square itself with eternal justice. He wished nothing to appear white unless it was white. His logic was severe and faultless. He did not resort to fallacy, and could detect it in his opponent, and expose it with merciless directness. He had an abounding sense of humor, and always employed it in illustration of his argument,—never for the mere sake of provoking merriment. In this respect he had the wonderful aptness of Franklin. He often taught a great truth with the felicitous brevity of an AEsop fable. His words did not flow in an impetuous torrent as did those of Douglas, but they were always well chosen, deliberate, and conclusive.
Thus fitted for the contest, these men proceeded to a discussion which at the time was so interesting so as to enchain the attention of the nation,—in its immediate effect so striking as to affect the organization of parties, in its subsequent effect so powerful as to change the fate of millions. Mr. Lincoln had opened his own canvass by a carefully prepared speech in which, after quoting the maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand, he uttered these weighty words: "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, north as well as south."
Mr. Lincoln had been warned by intimate friends to whom he had communicated the contents of his speech, in advance of its delivery, that he was treading on dangerous ground, that he would be misrepresented as a disunionist, and that he might fatally damage the Republican party by making its existence synonymous with a destruction of the government. But he was persistent. It was borne into his mind that he was announcing a great truth, and that he would be wronging his own conscience, and to the extent of his influence injuring his country, by withholding it, or in any degree qualifying its declaration. If there was a disposition to avoid the true significance of the contest with the South, he would not be a party to it. He believed he could discern the scope and read the destiny of the impending sectional controversy. He was sure he could see far beyond the present, and hear the voice of the future. He would not close the book; he would not shut his eyes; he would not stop his ears. He avowed his faith, and stood firmly to his creed.
Mr. Douglas naturally, indeed inevitably, made his first and leading speech against these averments of Mr. Lincoln. He had returned to Illinois, after the adjournment of Congress, with a disturbed and restless mind. He had one great ambition,—to re-instate himself as a leader of the national Democracy, and, as incidental and necessary to that end, to carry Illinois against Mr. Lincoln. The issue embodied in Mr. Lincoln's speech afforded him the occasion which he had coveted. His quick eye discerned an opportunity to exclude from the canvass the disagreeable features in his own political career by arraigning Mr. Lincoln as an enemy of the Union and as an advocate of an internecine conflict in which the free States and the slave States should wrestle in deadly encounter. Douglas presented his indictment artfully and with singular force. The two speeches were in all respects characteristic. Each had made a strong presentation of his case, but the superior candor and directness of Mr. Lincoln had made a deep impression on the popular mind.
THE LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS DEBATE.
In the seven public debates which were held as the result of these preliminary speeches, the questions at issue were elaborately and exhaustively treated. The friends of each naturally claimed the victory for their own champion. The speeches were listened to by tens of thousands of eager auditors; but absorbing, indeed unprecedented, as was the interest, the vast throngs behaved with moderation and decorum. The discussion from beginning to end was an amplification of the position which each had taken at the outset. The arguments were held close to the subject, relating solely to the slavery question, and not even incidentally referring to any other political issue. Protection, free trade, internal improvements, the sub-treasury, all the issues, in short, which had divided parties for a long series of years, and on which both speakers entertained very decided views, were omitted from the discussion. The public mind saw but one issue; every thing else was irrelevant. At the first meeting, Douglas addressed a series of questions to Mr. Lincoln, skillfully prepared and well adapted to entrap him in contradictions, or commit him to such extreme doctrine as would ruin his canvass. Mr. Lincoln's answers at the second meeting, held at Freeport, were both frank and adroit. Douglas had failed to gain a point by his resort to the Socratic mode of argument. He had indeed only given Mr. Lincoln an opportunity to exhibit both his candor and his skill. After he had answered, he assumed the offensive, and addressed a series of questions to Mr. Douglas which were constructed with the design of forcing the latter to an unmistakable declaration of his creed. Douglas had been a party to the duplex construction of the Cincinnati platform of 1856, in which the people of the South had been comforted with the doctrine that slavery was protected in the Territories by the Constitution against the authority of Congress and against the power of the Territorial citizens, until the period should be reached, when, under an enabling act to form a constitution for a State government, the majority might decide the question of slavery. Of this doctrine Mr. Breckinridge was the Southern representative, and he had for that very reason been associated with Mr. Buchanan on the Presidential ticket. On the other hand, the North was consoled, it would not be unfair to say cajoled, with the doctrine of popular sovereignty as defined by Mr. Douglas; and this gave to the people of the Territories the absolute right to settle the question of slavery for themselves at any time. The doctrine had, however, been utterly destroyed by the Dred Scott decision, and, to the confusion of all lines of division and distinction, Mr. Douglas had approved the opinion of the Supreme Court.
Douglas had little trouble in making answer in an ad captandum manner to all Mr. Lincoln's questions save one. The crucial test was applied when Mr. Lincoln asked him "if the people of a Territory can, in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?" In the first debate, when Douglas had the opening, he had, in the popular judgment, rather worsted Mr. Lincoln. His greater familiarity with the arts if not the tricks of the stump had given him an advantage. But now Mr. Lincoln had the opening, and he threw Mr. Douglas upon the defensive by the question which reached the very marrow of the controversy. Mr. Lincoln had measured the force of his question, and saw the dilemma in which it would place Douglas. Before the meeting he said, in private, that "Douglas could not answer that question in such way as to be elected both Senator and President. He might so answer it as to carry Illinois, but, in doing so, he would irretrievably injure his standing with the Southern Democracy." Douglas quickly realized his own embarrassment. He could not, in the face of the Supreme-Court decision, declare that the people of the Territory could exclude slavery by direct enactment. To admit, on the other hand, that slavery was fastened upon the Territories, —past all hope of resistance or protest on the part of a majority of the citizens—would be to concede the victory to Mr. Lincoln without further struggle. Between these impossible roads Douglas sought a third. He answered that, regardless of the decision of the Supreme Court, "the people of a Territory have the lawful means to introduce or exclude slavery as they choose, for the reason that slavery cannot exist unless supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and, if the people are opposed to slavery, they will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction."
This was a lame, illogical, evasive answer; but it was put forth by Douglas with an air of sincerity and urged in a tone of defiant confidence. It gave to his supporters a plausible answer. But Mr. Lincoln's analysis of the position was thorough, his ridicule of it effective. Douglas's invention for destroying a right under the Constitution by a police regulation was admirably exposed, and his new theory that a thing "may be lawfully driven away from a place where it has a lawful right to go" was keenly reviewed by Mr. Lincoln. The debate of that day was the important one of the series. Mr. Lincoln had secured an advantage in the national relations of the contest which he held to the end. At the same time Douglas had escaped a danger which threatened his destruction in the State canvass, and secured his return to the Senate. As to the respective merits of the contestants, it would be idle to expect an agreement among contemporary partisans. But a careful reading of the discussion a quarter of a century after it was held will convince the impartial that in principle, in candor, in the enduring force of logic, Mr. Lincoln had the advantage. It is due to fairness to add that probably not another man in the country, with the disabilities surrounding his position, could have maintained himself so ably, so fearlessly, so effectively, as Douglas.
BUCHANAN'S OPPOSITION TO DOUGLAS.
Douglas was aided in his canvass by the undisguised opposition of the administration. The hostility of President Buchanan and his Southern supporters was the best possible proof to the people of Illinois that Douglas was representing a doctrine which was not relished by the pro-slavery party. The courage with which he fought the administration gave an air of heroism to his canvass and prestige to his position. It secured to him thousands of votes that would otherwise have gone to Mr. Lincoln. For every vote which the administration was able to withhold from Douglas, it added five to his supporters. The result of the contest was, that, while Douglas was enabled to secure a majority of eight in the Legislature in consequence of an apportionment that was favorable to his side, Mr. Lincoln received a plurality of four thousand in the popular vote. In a certain sense, therefore, each had won a victory, and each had incurred defeat. But the victory of Douglas and the means by which it was won proved to be his destruction in the wider field of his ambition. Mr. Lincoln's victory and defeat combined in the end to promote his political fortunes, and to open to him the illustrious career which followed.
This debate was not a mere incident in American politics. It marked an era. Its influence and effect were co-extensive with the Republic. It introduced a new and distinct phase in the controversy that was engrossing all minds. The position of Douglas separated him from the Southern Democracy, and this, of itself, was a fact of great significance. The South saw that the ablest leader of the Northern Democracy had been compelled, in order to save himself at home, to abjure the very doctrine on which the safety of slave institutions depended. The propositions enunciated by Douglas in answer to the questions of Mr. Lincoln, in the Freeport debate, were as distasteful to the Southern mind as the position of Mr. Lincoln himself. Lincoln advocated a positive inhibition of slavery by the General Government. Mr. Douglas proposed to submit Southern rights under the Constitution to the decision of the first mob or rabble that might get possession of a Territorial legislature, and pass a police regulation hostile to slavery. Against this construction of the Constitution the South protested, and the protest carried with it implacable hostility to Douglas.
The separation of the Democratic party into warring factions was, therefore, inevitable. The line of division was the same on which the Republican party had been founded. It was the North against the South, the South against the North. The great mass of Northern Democrats began to consolidate in support of Douglas as determinedly as the mass of Northern Whigs had followed Seward. The Southern Democrats began, at the same time, to organize their States against Douglas. Until his break from the regular ranks in his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, Douglas had enjoyed boundless popularity with his party in the South. In every slave State, there was still a small number of his old supporters who remained true to him. But the great host had left him. He could not be trusted. He had failed to stand by the extreme faith; he had refused to respond to its last requirement. Even at the risk of permanently dissevering the Democratic party, the Southern leaders resolved to destroy Douglas.
To this end, in the session of Congress following the debate with Mr. Lincoln, the Democratic senators laid down, in a series of resolutions, the true exposition of the creed of their party. Douglas was not personally referred to, but the resolutions were aimed so pointedly at what they regarded his heretical opinions, that his name might as well have been incorporated. The resolutions were adopted during the absence of Douglas from the Senate, on a health-seeking tour, after his laborious canvass. With only the dissenting vote of Mr. Pugh of Ohio among the Democrats, it was declared that "neither Congress nor a territorial legislature, whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect or unfriendly character, possesses the power to impair the right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial condition exists." Not satisfied with this utter destruction of the whole doctrine of popular sovereignty, the Democratic senators gave one more turn to the wrench, by declaring that if "the territorial government should fail or refuse to provide adequate protection to the rights of the slave-holder, it will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency." The doctrine thus laid down by the Democratic senators was, in plain terms, that the territorial legislature might protect slavery, but could not prohibit it; and that even the Congress of the United States could only intervene on the side of bondage, and never on the side of freedom.
DOUGLAS AND THE SOUTHERN DEMOCRACY.
Anxious as Douglas was to be re-established in full relations with his party, he had not failed to see the obstacles in his way. He now realized that a desperate fight was to be made against him; that he was to be humiliated and driven from the Democratic ranks. The creed laid down by the Southern senators was such as no man could indorse without forfeiting his political life in free States. Douglas did not propose to rush on self-destruction to oblige the Democracy of the slave States; nor was he of the type of men who, when the right cheek is smitten, will meekly turn the other for a second blow. When his Democratic associates in the Senate proceeded to read him out of the party, they apparently failed to see that they were reading the Northern Democracy out with him. Jefferson Davis and Judah P. Benjamin might construct resolutions adapted to the latitude of the Gulf, and dragoon them through the Senate, with aid and pressure from Buchanan's administration; but Douglas commanded the votes of the Northern Democracy, and to the edict of a pro-slavery caucus he defiantly opposed the solid millions who followed his lead in the free States.
Without wrangling over the resolutions in the Senate, Douglas made answer to the whole series in a public letter of June 22, 1859, in which he said that "if it shall become the policy of the Democratic party to repudiate their time-honored principles, and interpolate such new issues as the revival of the African slave-trade, or the doctrine that the Constitution carries slavery into the Territories beyond the power of the people to legally control it as other property," he would not "accept a nomination for the Presidency if tendered him." The aggressiveness of Southern opinion on the slavery question was thus shown by Douglas in a negative or indirect view. It is a remarkable fact, that, in still another letter, Douglas argued quite elaborately against the revival of the African slave-trade, which he believed to be among the designs of the most advanced class of pro-slavery advocates. So acute a statesman as Douglas could not fail to see, that, at every step of his controversy with Southern Democrats, he was justifying the philosophy of Lincoln when he maintained that the country was to become wholly free, or wholly under the control of the slave power.
The controversy thus precipitated between Douglas and the South threatened the disruption of the Democratic party. That was an event of very serious significance. It would bring the conflict of sections still nearer by sundering a tie which had for so long a period bound together vast numbers from the North and the South in common sympathy and fraternal co-operation. Even those who were most opposed to the Democratic party beheld its peril with a certain feeling of regret not unmixed with apprehension. The Whig party had been destroyed; and its Northern and Southern members, who, but a few years before, had worked harmoniously for Harrison, for Clay, for Taylor, were now enrolled in rival and hostile organizations. A similar dissolution of the Democratic party would sweep away the only common basis of political action still existing for men of the free States and men of the slave States. The separation of the Methodist church into Northern and Southern organizations, a few years before, had been regarded by Mr. Webster as a portent of evil for the Union. The division of the Democratic party would be still more ominous. The possibility of such an event showed how deeply the slavery question had affected all ranks,—social, religious, and political. It showed, too, how the spirit of Calhoun now inspired the party in whose councils the slightest word of Jackson had once been law. This change, beginning with the defeat of Van Buren in 1844, was at first slow; but it had afterwards moved so rapidly and so far, that men in the North, who wished to remain in the ranks of the Democracy, were compelled to trample on the principles, and surrender the prejudices, of a lifetime. Efforts to harmonize proved futile. In Congress the breach was continually widening.
FACTIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
The situation was cause of solicitude, and even grief, with thousands to whom the old party was peculiarly endeared. The traditions of Jefferson, of Madison, of Jackson, were devoutly treasured; and the splendid achievements of the American Democracy were recounted with the pride which attaches to an honorable family inheritance. The fact was recalled that the Republic had grown to its imperial dimensions under Democratic statesmanship. It was remembered that Louisiana had been acquired from France, Florida from Spain, the independent Republic of Texas annexed, and California, with its vast dependencies, and its myriad millions of treasure, ceded by Mexico, all under Democratic administrations, and in spite of the resistance of their opponents. That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro, in a region where his labor was not wanted, was, to many of its members, as incomprehensible as it was sorrowful and exasperating. They protested, but they could not prevent. Anger was aroused, and men refused to listen to reason. They were borne along, they knew not whither or by what force. Time might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle subordinated to passion, with judgment displaced by a desire for revenge.
[NOTE.—The following are the questions, referred to on p. 147, which were propounded to Mr. Douglas by Mr. Lincoln in their debate at Freeport. The popular interest was centred in the second question.
First, If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State Constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it before they have the requisite number of inhabitants, according to the English bill— some ninety-three thousand—will you vote to admit them?
Second, Can the people of a United-States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?
Third, If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor or acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action?
Fourth, Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?]