Abraham Lincoln: a History — Volume 01

by John G. Nicolay; John Hay

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BALANCE OF POWER

We shall see in the course of the present work how the life of Abraham Lincoln divides itself into three principal periods, with corresponding stages of intellectual development: the first, of about forty years, ending with his term in Congress; the second, of about ten years, concluding with his final campaign of political speech- making in New York and in New England, shortly before the Presidential nominations of 1860; and the last, of about five years, terminating at his death. We have thus far traced his career through the first period of forty years. In the several stages of frontier experience through which he had passed, and which in the main but repeated the trials and vicissitudes of thousands of other boys and youths in the West, only so much individuality had been developed in him as brought him into the leading class of his contemporaries. He had risen from laborer to student, from clerk to lawyer, from politician to legislator. That he had lifted himself by healthy ambition and unaided industry out of the station of a farm-hand, whose routine life begins and ends in a backwoods log-cabin, to that representative character and authority which seated him in the national Capitol to aid in framing laws for his country, was already an achievement that may well be held to crown honorably a career of forty years.

Such achievement and such distinction, however, were not so uncommon as to appear phenomenal. Hundreds of other boys born in log-cabins had won similar elevation in the manly, practical school of Western public life. Even in ordinary times there still remained within the reach of average intellects several higher grades of public service. It is quite probable that the talents of Lincoln would have made him Governor of Illinois or given him a place in the United States Senate. But the story of his life would not have commanded, as it now does, the unflagging attention of the world, had there not fallen upon his generation the unusual conditions and opportunities brought about by a series of remarkable convulsions in national politics. If we would correctly understand how Lincoln became, first a conspicuous actor, and then a chosen leader, in a great strife of national parties for supremacy and power, we must briefly study the origin and development of the great slavery controversy in American legislation which found its highest activity and decisive culmination in the single decade from 1850 to 1860. But we should greatly err if we attributed the new events in Lincoln's career to the caprice of fortune. The conditions and opportunities of which we speak were broadly national, and open to all without restriction of rank or locality. Many of his contemporaries had seemingly overshadowing advantages, by prominence and training, to seize and appropriate them to their own advancement. It is precisely this careful study of the times which shows us by what inevitable process of selection honors and labors of which he did not dream fell upon him; how, indeed, it was not the individual who gained the prize, but the paramount duty which claimed the man.

It is now universally understood, if not conceded, that the Rebellion of 1861 was begun for the sole purpose of defending and preserving to the seceding States the institution of African slavery and making them the nucleus of a great slave empire, which in their ambitious dreams they hoped would include Mexico, Central America, and the West India Islands, and perhaps even the tropical States of South America. Both a real and a pretended fear that slavery was in danger lay at the bottom of this design. The real fear arose from the palpable fact, impossible to conceal, that the slave system was a reactionary obstacle in the pathway of modern civilization, and its political, material, philosophical, and religious development. The pretended danger was the permanent loss of political power by the slave States of the Union, as shown in the election of Lincoln to the presidency, which they averred would necessarily throw all the forces of the national life against the "peculiar institution," and crush it under forms of law. It was by magnifying this danger from remote into immediate consequence that they excited the population of the cotton States to resistance and rebellion. Seizing this opportunity, it was their present purpose to establish a slave Confederacy, consisting of the cotton States, which should in due time draw to itself, by an irresistible gravitation of sympathy and interest, first, the border slave States, and, in the further progress of events, the tropical countries towards the equator.

The popular agitation, or war of words between the North and the South on the subject of slavery, which led to the armed insurrection was threefold: First, the economic efforts to prevent the destruction of the monetary value of four millions of human beings held in bondage, who were bought and sold as chattels, and whose aggregate valuation, under circumstances existing at the outbreak of the civil war, was variously computed at $400,000,000 to $1,600,000,000; [Footnote: The Convention of Mississippi, which passed the secession ordinance, in its Declaration of Causes placed the total value of their property in slaves at "four billions of money," This was at the rate of a thousand dollars for each slave, an average absurdly excessive, and showing their exaggerated estimate of the monetary value of the institution of slavery.] second, a moral debate as to the abstract righteousness or iniquity of the system; and, third, a political struggle for the balance of power in government and public policy, by which the security and perpetuity of the institution might be guaranteed.

This sectional controversy over the institution of slavery in its threefold aspect had begun with the very birth of the nation, had continued with its growth, and become intensified with its strength. The year before the Mayflower brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth Bock, a Dutch ship landed a cargo of African slaves at Jamestown, in Virginia. During the long colonial period the English Government fostered and forced the importation of slaves to America equally with English goods. In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson invoked the reprobation of mankind upon the British King for his share in this inhuman traffic. On reflection, however, this was discovered to be but another case of Satan rebuking sin. The blood money which reddened the hands of English royalty stained equally those of many an American rebel. The public opinion of the colonies was already too much debauched to sit in unanimous moral judgment on this crime against humanity. The objections of South Carolina and Georgia sufficed to cause the erasure and suppression of the obnoxious paragraph. Nor were the Northern States guiltless: Newport was yet a great slave-mart, and the commerce of New England drew more advantage from the traffic than did the agriculture of the South.

[Sidenote: J. C. Hurd, "Law of Freedom and Bondage," Vol. I. pp. 228- 311.]

All the elements of the later controversy already existed. Slave codes and fugitive-slave laws, abolition societies and emancipation bills, are older than our Constitution; and negro troops fought in the Revolutionary war for American independence. Liberal men could be found in South Carolina who hated slavery, and narrow men in Massachusetts who defended it. But these individual instances of prejudice or liberality were submerged and lost in the current of popular opinion springing from prevailing interests in the respective localities, and institutions molded principles, until in turn principles should become strong enough to reform institutions. In short, slavery was one of the many "relics of barbarism"—like the divine right of kings, religious persecution, torture of the accused, imprisonment and enslavement for debt, witch-burning, and kindred "institutions"—which were transmitted to that generation from former ages as so many burdens of humanity, for help in the removal of which the new nation was in the providence of God perhaps called into existence. The whole matter in its broader aspects is part of that persistent struggle of the centuries between despotism and individual freedom; between arbitrary wrong, consecrated by tradition and law, and the unfolding recognition of private rights; between the thraldom of public opinion and liberty of conscience; between the greed of gain and the Golden Rule of Christ. Whoever, therefore, chooses to trace the remote origin of the American Rebellion will find the germ of the Union armies of 1861-5 in the cabin of the Mayflower, and the inception of the Secession forces between the decks of that Dutch slaver which planted the fruits of her avarice and piracy in the James River colonies in 1619.

So elaborate and searching a study, however, is not necessary to the purposes of this work. A very brief mention of the principal landmarks of the long contest will serve to show the historical relation, and explain the phraseology, of its final issues.

The first of these great landmarks was the Ordinance of 1787. All the States tolerated slavery and permitted the slave-trade during the Revolution. But in most of them the morality of the system was strongly drawn in question, especially by the abolition societies, which embraced many of the most prominent patriots. A public opinion, not indeed unanimous, but largely in the majority, demanded that the "necessary evil" should cease. When the Continental Congress came to the practical work of providing a government for the "Western lands," which the financial pressure and the absolute need of union compelled New York and Virginia to cede to the general Government, Thomas Jefferson proposed, among other features in his plan and draft of 1784, to add a clause prohibiting slavery in all the North-west territory after the year 1800. A North Carolina member moved to strike out this clause. The form of the question put by the chairman was, "Shall the clause stand?" Sixteen members voted aye and seven members voted no; but under the clumsy legislative machinery of the Confederation these seven noes carried the question, since a majority of States had failed to vote in the affirmative.

Three years later, July 13, 1787, this first ordinance was repealed by a second, establishing our more modern form of territorial government. It is justly famed for many of its provisions; but its chief value is conceded to have been its sixth article, ordaining the immediate and perpetual prohibition of slavery. Upon this all the States present in Congress—three Northern and five Southern—voted in the affirmative; five States were absent, four Northern and one Southern. This piece of legislation is remarkable in that it was an entirely new bill, substituted for a former and altogether different scheme containing no prohibition whatever, and that it was passed through all the forms and stages of enactment in the short space of four days. History sheds little light on the official transaction, but contemporary evidence points to the influence of a powerful lobby.

Several plausible reasons are assigned why the three slave States of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina voted for this prohibition. First, the West was competing with the Territory of Maine for settlers; second, the whole scheme was in the interest of the "Ohio Company," a newly formed Massachusetts emigrant aid society which immediately made a large purchase of lands; third, the unsettled regions south of the Ohio River had not yet been ceded to the general Government, and were therefore open to slavery from the contiguous Southern States; fourth, little was known of the extent or character of the great West; and, therefore, fifth, the Ohio River was doubtless thought to be a fair and equitable dividing line. The ordinance itself provided for the formation of not less than three nor more than five States, and under its shielding provisions Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were added to the Union with free constitutions.

[Sidenote: "Ellior's Debates," Vol. V., p. 395.]

[Sidenote: Ibid., p. 392.]

It does not appear that sectional motives operated for or against the foregoing enactment; they were probably held in abeyance by other considerations. But it must not be inferred therefrom that the slavery question was absent or dormant in the country. There was already a North and a South. At that very time the constitutional convention was in session in Philadelphia. George Washington and his fellow delegates were grappling with the novel problems of government which the happy issue of the Revolution and the lamentable failure of the Confederation forced upon the country. One of these problems was the presence of over half a million of slaves, nearly all in five Southern States. Should they be taxed? Should they be represented? Should the power to regulate commerce be allowed to control or terminate their importation? Vital questions these, which went not merely to the incidents but the fundamental powers of government. The slavery question seemed for months an element of irreconcilable discord in the convention. The slave-trade not only, but the domestic institution itself, was characterized in language which Southern politicians of later times would have denounced as "fanatical" and "incendiary." Pinckney wished the slaves to be represented equally with the whites, since they were the Southern peasantry. Gouverneur Morris declared that as they were only property they ought not to be represented at all. Both the present and the future balance of power in national legislation, as resulting from slaves already in, and hereafter to be imported into, old and new States, were debated under various possibilities and probabilities.

Out of these divergent views grew the compromises of the Constitution. 1. The slaves were to be included in the enumeration for representation, five blacks to be counted as three whites. 2. Congress should have the right to prohibit the slave-trade, but not till the lapse of twenty years. 3. Fugitive slaves should be delivered to their owners. Each State, large or small, was allowed two senators; and the apportionment of representatives gave to the North thirty-five members and fourteen senators, to the South thirty members and twelve senators. But since the North was not yet free from slavery, but only in process of becoming so, and as Virginia was the leading State of the Union, the real balance of power remained in the hands of the South.

The newly formed Constitution went into successful operation. Under legal provisions already made and the strong current of abolition sentiment then existing, all the Eastern and Middle States down to Delaware became free. This gain, however, was perhaps more than numerically counterbalanced by the active importation of captured Africans, especially into South Carolina and Georgia, up to the time the traffic ceased by law in 1808. Jefferson had meanwhile purchased of France the immense country west of the Mississippi known as the Louisiana Territory. The free navigation of that great river was assured, and the importance of the West immeasurably increased. The old French colonies at New Orleans and Kaskaskia were already strong outposts of civilization and the nuclei of spreading settlements. Attracted by the superior fertility of the soil, by the limitless opportunities for speculation, by the enticing spirit of adventure, and pushed by the restless energy inherent in the Anglo-Saxon character, the older States now began to pour a rising stream of emigration into the West and the South-west.

In this race the free States, by reason of their greater population, wealth, and commercial enterprise, would have outstripped the South but for the introduction of a new and powerful influence which operated exclusively in favor of the latter. This was the discovery of the peculiar adaptation of the soil and climate of portions of the Southern States, combined with cheap slave-labor, to the cultivation of cotton. Half a century of experiment and invention in England had brought about the concurrent improvement of machinery for spinning and weaving, and of the high-pressure engine to furnish motive power. The Revolutionary war was scarcely ended when there came from the mother- country a demand for the raw fiber, which promised to be almost without limit. A few trials sufficed to show Southern planters that with their soil and their slaves they could supply this demand with a quality of cotton which would defy competition, and at a profit to themselves far exceeding that of any other product of agriculture. But an insurmountable obstacle yet seemed to interpose itself between them and their golden harvest. The tedious work of cleaning the fiber from the seed apparently made impossible its cheap preparation for export in large quantities. A negro woman working the whole day could clean only a single pound.

[Illustration: JAMES K. POLK.]

[Sidenote: Memoir of Eli Whitney, "American Journal of Science," 1832.]

It so happened that at this juncture, November, 1792, an ingenious Yankee student from Massachusetts was boarding in the house of friends in Savannah, Georgia, occupying his leisure in reading law. A party of Georgia gentlemen from the interior, making a visit to this family, fell into conversation on the prospects and difficulties of cotton- culture and the imperative need of a rapidly working cleaning-machine. Their hostess, an intelligent and quick-witted woman, at once suggested an expedient. "Gentlemen," said Mrs. Greene, "apply to my young friend, Mr. Eli Whitney; he can make anything." The Yankee student was sought, introduced, and had the mechanical problem laid before him. He modestly disclaimed his hostess's extravagant praises, and told his visitors that he had never seen either cotton or cotton- seed in his life. Nevertheless, he went to work with such earnestness and success, that in a few months Mrs. Greene had the satisfaction of being able to invite a gathering of gentlemen from different parts of the State to behold with their own eyes the working of the newly invented cotton-gin, with which a negro man turning a crank could clean fifty pounds of cotton per day.

[Sidenote: 1808.]

[Sidenote: Compendium, Eighth Census, p. 13.]

This solution of the last problem in cheap cotton-culture made it at once the leading crop of the South. That favored region quickly drove all competitors out of the market; and the rise of English imports of raw cotton, from thirty million pounds, in 1790 to over one thousand million pounds in 1860, shows the development and increase of this special industry, with all its related interests. [Footnote: The Virginia price of a male "field hand" in 1790 was $250; in 1860 his value in the domestic market had risen to $1600.—SHERRARD CLEMENS, speech in H. E. Appendix "Congressional Globe," 1860-1, pp. 104-5.] It was not till fifteen years after the invention of the cotton-gin that the African slave-trade ceased by limitation of law. "Within that period many thousands of negro captives had been added to the population of the South by direct importation, and nearly thirty thousand slave inhabitants added by the acquisition of Louisiana, hastening the formation of new slave States south of the Ohio River in due proportion." [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (1) relocated to chapter end.]

It is a curious historical fact, that under the very remarkable material growth of the United States which now took place, the political influence remained so evenly balanced between the North and the South for more than a generation. Other grave issues indeed absorbed the public attention, but the abeyance of the slavery question is due rather to the fact that no considerable advantage as yet fell to either side. Eight new States were organized, four north and four south of the Ohio River, and admitted in nearly alternate order: Vermont in 1791, free; Kentucky in 1792, slave; Tennessee in 1796, slave; Ohio in 1802, free; Louisiana in 1812, slave; Indiana in 1816, free; Mississippi in 1817, slave; Illinois in 1818, free. Alabama was already authorized to be admitted with slavery, and this would make the number of free and slave States equal, giving eleven States to the North and eleven to the South.

The Territory of Missouri, containing the old French colonies at and near St. Louis, had attained a population of 60,000, and was eager to be admitted as a State. She had made application in 1817, and now in 1819 it was proposed to authorize her to form a constitution. Arkansas was also being nursed as an applicant, and the prospective loss by the North and gain by the South of the balance of power caused the slavery question suddenly to flare up as a national issue. There were hot debates in Congress, emphatic resolutions by State legislatures, deep agitation among the whole people, and open threats by the South to dissolve the Union. Extreme Northern men insisted upon a restriction of slavery to be applied to both Missouri and Arkansas; radical Southern members contended that Congress had no power to impose any conditions on new States. The North had control of the House, the South of the Senate. A middle party thereupon sprang up, proposing to divide the Louisiana purchase between freedom and slavery by the line of 36 degrees 30', and authorizing the admission of Missouri with slavery out of the northern half. Fastening this proposition upon the bill to admit Maine as a free State, the measure was, after a struggle, carried through Congress (in a separate act approved March 6, 1820), and became the famous Missouri Compromise. Maine and Missouri were both admitted. Each section thereby not only gained two votes in the Senate, but also asserted its right to spread its peculiar polity without question or hindrance within the prescribed limits; and the motto, "No extension of slavery," was postponed forty years, to the Republican campaign of 1860.

From this time forward, the maintenance of this balance of power,—the numerical equality of the slave States with the free,—though not announced in platforms as a party doctrine, was nevertheless steadily followed as a policy by the representatives of the South. In pursuance of this system, Michigan and Arkansas, the former a free and the latter a slave State, were, on the same day, June 15, 1836, authorized to be admitted. These tactics were again repeated in the year 1845, when, on the 3d of March, Iowa, a free State, and Florida, a slave State, were authorized to be admitted by one act of Congress, its approval being the last official act of President Tyler. This tacit compromise, however, was accompanied by another very important victory of the same policy. The Southern politicians saw clearly enough that with the admission of Florida the slave territory was exhausted, while an immense untouched portion of the Louisiana purchase still stretched away to the north-west towards the Pacific above the Missouri Compromise line, which consecrated it to freedom. The North, therefore, still had an imperial area from which to organize future free States, while the South had not a foot more territory from which to create slave States.

Sagaciously anticipating this contingency, the Southern States had been largely instrumental in setting up the independent State of Texas, and were now urgent in their demand for her annexation to the Union. Two days before the signing of the Iowa and Florida bill, Congress passed, and President Tyler signed, a joint resolution, authorizing the acquisition, annexation, and admission of Texas. But even this was not all. The joint resolution contained a guarantee that "new States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to the said State of Texas," and to be formed out of her territory, should hereafter be entitled to admission—the Missouri Compromise line to govern the slavery question in them. The State of Texas was, by a later resolution, formally admitted to the Union, December 29, 1845. At this date, therefore, the slave States gained an actual majority of one, there being fourteen free States and fifteen slave States, with at least equal territorial prospects through future annexation.

If the North was alarmed at being thus placed in a minority, there was ample reason for still further disquietude. The annexation of Texas had provoked the Mexican war, and President Polk, in anticipation of further important acquisition of territory to the South and West, asked of Congress an appropriation of two millions to be used in negotiations to that end. An attempt to impose a condition to these negotiations that slavery should never exist in any territory to be thus acquired was the famous Wilmot Proviso. This particular measure failed, but the war ended, and New Mexico and California were added to the Union as unorganized Territories. Meanwhile the admission of Wisconsin in 1848 had once more restored the equilibrium between the free and the slave States, there being now fifteen of each.

It must not be supposed that the important political measures and results thus far summarized were accomplished by quiet and harmonious legislation. Rising steadily after 1820, the controversy over slavery became deep and bitter, both in Congress and the country. Involving not merely a policy of government, but a question of abstract morals, statesmen, philanthropists, divines, the press, societies, churches, and legislative bodies joined in the discussion. Slavery was assailed and defended in behalf of the welfare of the state, and in the name of religion. In Congress especially it had now been a subject of angry contention for a whole generation. It obtruded itself into all manner of questions, and clung obstinately to numberless resolutions and bills. Time and again it had brought members into excited discussion, and to the very verge of personal conflict in the legislative halls. It had occasioned numerous threats to dissolve the Union, and in one or more instances caused members actually to retire from the House of Representatives. It had given rise to resolutions of censure, to resignations, and had been the occasion of some of the greatest legislative debates of the nation. It had virtually created and annexed the largest State in the Union. In several States it had instigated abuse, intolerance, persecutions, trials, mobs, murders, destruction of property, imprisonment of freemen, retaliatory legislation, and one well-defined and formidable attempt at revolution. It originated party factions, political schools, and constitutional doctrines, and made and marred the fame of great statesmen.

New Mexico, when acquired, contained one of the oldest towns on the continent, and a considerable population of Spanish origin. California, almost simultaneously with her acquisition, was peopled in the course of a few months by the world-renowned gold discoveries. Very unexpectedly, therefore, to politicians of all grades and opinions, the slavery question was once more before the nation in the year 1850, over the proposition to admit both to the Union as States. As the result of the long conflict of opinion hitherto maintained, the beliefs and desires of the contending sections had by this time become formulated in distinct political doctrines. The North contended that Congress might and should prohibit slavery in all the territories of the Union, as had been done in the Northern half by the Ordinance of 1787 and by the Missouri Compromise. The South declared that any such exclusion would not only be unjust and impolitic, but absolutely unconstitutional, because property in slaves might enter and must be protected in the territories in common with all other property. To the theoretical dispute was added a practical contest. By the existing Mexican laws slavery was already prohibited in New Mexico, and California promptly formed a free State constitution. Under these circumstances the North sought to organize the former as a Territory, and admit the latter as a State, while the South resisted and endeavored to extend the Missouri Compromise line, which would place New Mexico and the southern half of California under the tutelage and influence of slavery.

These were the principal points of difference which caused the great slavery agitation of 1850. The whole country was convulsed in discussion; and again more open threats and more ominous movements towards disunion came from the South. The most popular statesman of that day, Henry Clay, of Kentucky, a slaveholder opposed to the extension of slavery, now, however, assumed the leadership of a party of compromise, and the quarrel was adjusted and quieted by a combined series of Congressional acts. 1. California was admitted as a free State. 2. The Territories of New Mexico and Utah were organized, leaving the Mexican prohibition of slavery in force. 3. The domestic slave-trade in the District of Columbia was abolished. 4. A more stringent fugitive-slave law was passed. 5. For the adjustment of her State boundaries Texas received ten millions of dollars.

[Sidenote: Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 208.]

These were the famous compromise measures of 1850. It has been gravely asserted that this indemnity of ten millions, suddenly trebling the value of the Texas debt, and thereby affording an unprecedented opportunity for speculation in the bonds of that State, was "the propelling force whereby these acts were pushed through Congress in defiance of the original convictions of a majority of its members." But it must also be admitted that the popular desire for tranquillity, concord, and union in all sections never exerted so much influence upon Congress as then. This compromise was not at first heartily accepted by the people; Southern opinion being offended by the abandonment of the "property" doctrine, and Northern sentiment irritated by certain harsh features of the fugitive-slave law. But the rising Union feeling quickly swept away all ebullitions of discontent, and during two or three years people and politicians fondly dreamed they had, in current phraseology, reached a "finality" [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (2) relocated to chapter end.] on this vexed quarrel. The nation settled itself for a period of quiet to repair the waste and utilize the conquests of the Mexican war. It became absorbed in the expansion of its commerce, the development of its manufactures, and the growth of its emigration, all quickened by the riches of its marvelous gold-fields; until unexpectedly and suddenly it found itself plunged once again into political controversies more distracting and more ominous than the worst it had yet experienced.

[Relocated Footnote (1): No word of the authors could add to the force and eloquence of the following from a recent letter of the son of the inventor of the cotton-gin (to the Art Superintendent of "The Century"), stating the claims of his father's memory to the gratitude of the South, hitherto apparently unfelt, and certainly unrecognized:

"NEW HAVEN, CONN.," Dec. 4, 1886. "… I send you a photograph taken from a portrait of my father, painted about the year 1821, by King, of Washington, when my father, the inventor of the cotton-gin, was fifty- five years old. He died January 25, 1825. The cotton-gin was invented in 1793; and though it has been in use for nearly one hundred years, it is virtually unimproved…. Hence the great merit of the South, financially and commercially. It has made England rich, and changed the commerce of the world. Lord Macaulay said of Eli Whitney: 'What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin has more than equaled in its relation to the power and progress of the United States.' He has been the greatest benefactor of the South, but it never has, to my knowledge, acknowledged his benefaction in a public manner to the extent it deserves—no monument has been erected to his memory, no town or city named after him, though the force of his genius has original invention. It has made caused many towns and cities to rise and flourish in the South….

"Yours very truly, E. W. WHITNEY.">[

[Relocated Footnote (2): Grave doubts, however, found occasional expression, and none perhaps more forcibly than in the following newspaper epigram—describing "Finality":

To kill twice dead a rattlesnake,
And off his scaly skin to take,
And through his head to drive a stake,
And every bone within him break,
And of his flesh mincemeat to make,
To burn, to sear, to boil, and bake,
Then in a heap the whole to rake,
And over it the besom shake,
And sink it fathoms in the lake—
Whence after all, quite wide awake,
Comes back that very same old snake!]