Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

XVII NEBRASKA ACT—1854

Over the disposition of the Territory of Nebraska it remained to have the last Congressional struggle for the extension of slavery. This Territory in 1854 comprised what are now the States of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. It was a large part of the Louisiana Purchase, in area 485,000 square miles, twelve times as large as Ohio, about ten times the size of New York, 140,000 square miles larger than the original thirteen States,(79) and more than four times the area of Great Britain and Ireland. It was what was left of the purchase after Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Indian Territory were carved out. It then had only about one thousand white inhabitants.

The desire to still placate the threatening South and to win its political favor, led some great and patriotic men of the North to attempt measures in the interest of slavery.

On January 4, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, made a report embodying constitutional theories not hitherto promulgated, and questioning or repudiating others long supposed to have been settled.

The report announced the discovery of a new principle of the Compromise measures of 1850.

It declared:

"They were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring effect than the mere adjustment of difficulties arising out of the recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to establish certain great principles, which would not only furnish adequate remedies for existing evils, but in all time to come avoid the perils of similar agitation by withdrawing the question of slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, committing it to the arbitration of those who are immediately interested in and alone responsible for its consequences. . . . A question has arisen in regard to the right to hold slaves in the Territory of Nebraska. . . . It is a disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country by valid enactment. In the opinion of eminent statesmen. . . . the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void."

The eighth section prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of 36° 30´, hence from the Nebraska Territory. The report reiterated the absurd doctrine:

"That the Constitution. . . . secures to every citizen an inalienable right to move into any of the Territories with his property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanction of law."

(What law? The law of the place whence it came, or the law of the place to which it was taken? Not even an ox or an ass can be held as property save under the law of the place where it is; nor is the title to the soil valid except under the law of the place where it is located. As well as might a person claim the right to move to a Territory and there own the land by virtue of the Constitution and the laws of the State of his former residence as to claim under them the right to own and sell his slave in a Territory. The difficulty is, while the emigrant might take with him his human chattel, he could not take with him the law permitting him to hold it.)

The report did not, however, as presented, propose to repeal the Missouri Compromise line that had stood thirty-four years with the approval of the first statesmen of all parties in the Union.

It assumed simply to interpret for the dead Clay and Webster their only four-year-old work, and ran thus:

"The Compromise Measures of 1850 affirm and rest upon the following propositions:

"First—That all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein.

"Second—That 'all cases involving the title to slaves' and 'questions of personal freedom' are to be referred to the jurisdiction of the local tribunals, with the right to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

"Third—That the provisions of the Constitution, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into faithful execution in all 'the organized Territories,' the same as in the States."

The first of these propositions, in another form, announced the new doctrine of popular sovereignty, soon thereafter popularly called "Squatter Sovereignty," in derision of the rights thus to be vested in the territorial squatter, however temporary his stay might be. It was opposed to the principle of Congressional right (expressly granted by the Constitution (80)) to provide rules (laws) and regulations for United States territory until it became clothed with statehood.

The second proposition announced nothing new, as cases involving titles to slaves, or questions of personal freedom, must necessarily go for final determination to the courts, with a right of appeal.

The third proposition, like the second, was a mere platitude.

The bill accompanying the report, as first presented, required that any part of Nebraska Territory admitted as a state (as provided in the New Mexico and Utah Acts of 1850) "shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as its Constitution may prescribe at the time of admission." This, too, was not new in any sense, as new States had ever been thus received. The anti-slavery press and societies, and all people opposed to further slavery aggression and extension, at once took alarm and violently assailed the new doctrines of the report; the South, too, at first viewed them with surprise, denominating them "a snare set for the South," yet later regarded them as favorable to the extension of slavery. Southern statesmen, however, determined to force Douglas to amend them so as to accomplish the ends of the South. Accordingly, Senator Dixon of Kentucky, on January 16th, offered an amendment to the Nebraska Bill providing for the absolute repeal of the Missouri Compromise line. This amendment Douglas, apparently with reluctance,(81) accepted, after a consultation with Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, and President Pierce, both of whom promised it their support.(82)

January 23, 1854, Douglas presented a substitute for his original bill, wherein it was provided that the restriction of the Missouri Compromise "was superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850, and is hereby declared inoperative."

The new bill divided the Territory in two parts; the southern, called Kansas, lay between 37° and 40° of latitude, extending west to the Rocky Mountains, and the northern was still called Nebraska.

As early as 1853 a movement in Missouri was started, avowedly to make Nebraska slave Territory, and this was well known to Douglas and the supporters of his newly announced doctrines. Kansas, lying farthest south, was climatically better suited for slavery than the new Nebraska. Before the bill passed, plans were made to invade Kansas from Missouri and Arkansas by slaveholders with their slaves.

January 24, 1854, the Appeal of the Independent Democrats in
Congress to the People of the United States was published.

Chase and Giddings of Ohio were its authors; some verbal additions, however, were made to it by Sumner and Gerritt Smith.(83)

This Appeal was signed by S. P. Chase, Charles Sumner, Joshua R. Giddings, Edward Wade, Gerritt Smith, and Alexander De Witt; three at least of whom were then, or soon became first among the great statesmen opposed to human slavery. The Appeal declared the new Nebraska Bill would "open all the unorganized Territories of the Union to the ingress of slavery." A plot to convert them "into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves," to the exclusion of immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States. It reviewed the history of Congressional legislation on slavery in the Territories, reciting, among other things, that President Monroe approved the Missouri Compromise after his Cabinet had given him a written opinion that the section restricting slavery was constitutional.

John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, Secretary
of War, Wm. H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, and Wm. Wirt,
Attorney-General—three from slave States—then constituted Monroe's
Cabinet.

The Appeal warningly proceeded:

"The dearest interests of freedom and the Union are in imminent peril. Demagogues may tell you that the Union can be maintained only by submitting to the demands of slavery. We tell you that the Union can only be maintained by the full recognition of the just claims of freedom and man. When it fails to accomplish these ends it will be worthless, and when it becomes worthless it cannot long endure. . . . Whatever apologies may be offered for the toleration of slavery in the States, none can be offered for its extension into the Territories where it does not exist, and where that extension involves the repeal of ancient law and the violation of solemn compact.

"For ourselves, we shall resist it by speech and vote, and with all the abilities which God has given us. Even if overcome in the impending struggle, we shall not submit. We shall go home to our constituents, erect anew the standard of freedom, and call on the people to come to the rescue of the country from the dominion of slavery. We will not despair; for the cause of human freedom is the cause of God."

These patriotic expressions electrified the whole country. The North was aroused to their truth, the South seized upon them as threats of disunion, and still louder than before, if possible, called for a united South to vindicate slavery's rights in the Territories. Douglas attempted in the Senate to answer the Appeal. This led to an acrimonious debate, participated in by Chase, Sumner, Seward, Everett, and others, too long to be reviewed here.

Senator Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, took a prominent part in the memorable debate over the Douglas-Nebraska Bill. He was bold, and never dealt in sophistry, but in plain speech.

Mr. Badger, of North Carolina, while making a slavery-dilution argument, appealingly said:

"Why, if some Southern gentleman wishes to take the nurse who takes charge of his little baby, or the old woman who nursed him in childhood, and whom he called 'Mammy' until he returned from college, . . . and whom he wishes to take with him . . . into one of these new Territories, . . . why, in the name of God, should anybody prevent it?"

Mr. Wade responded:

"The Senator entirely mistakes our position. We have not the least objection, and would oppose no obstacle to the Senator's migrating to Kansas and taking his old 'Mammy' along with im. We only insist that he shall not be empowered to sell her after taking her there."

Mr. Chase moved to amend the bill by adding the words:

"Under which the people of the Territories, through their appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein."

This amendment failed, but it served to test the good faith of those who supported the squatter sovereignty feature of the bill.

After a long struggle the bill passed, and was approved by the
President in May, 1854.

(79) Area of original thirteen States, 354,504 square miles.

(80) "Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States," etc.—Art. IV., Sec. 3, Con. U. S.

(81) Three Decades of Fed. Leg. (Cox), p. 49.

(82) Rise and Fall Con. Government (Davis), vol. i., p. 28.

(83) Schucker's Life of Chase, p. 140.