These speeches were delivered, the one early and the other late, in the month of June: they present strongly, yet guardedly, the important issues which were to engage Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas in the famous campaign of 1858, and leave us no choice but to look into Kansas, and observe what had taken place and what was happening there.
Violence still (June, 1857) prevailed throughout the Territory. The administration of President Pierce committed itself at the first in support of the proslavery party. It acknowledged the Legislature as the only legal government in the Territory, and gave it military assistance to enforce its enactments. Gov. Shannon, having by his course only served to increase the hostility between the parties, was recalled, and John W. Geary of Pennsylvania was appointed his successor. Gov. Geary, while adopting the policy of the administration, so far as recognizing the Legislative party as the only legally organized government, was yet disposed to see, that, so far as the two parties could be got to act together, each should be fairly protected. This policy, however, soon brought him into collision with some of the proslavery leaders in the Territory; and, not being sustained by Mr. Buchanan's administration, which had in the mean time succeeded the administration of President Pierce, he resigned his office. Hon. Robert J. Walker of Mississippi was appointed his successor, with Hon. F. P. Stanton of Tennessee as secretary. Both were strong Democrats; and both were earnest advocates of the policy of the administration, as expressed in the recent presidential canvass, and in Mr. Buchanan's inaugural Message,—the absolute freedom of the people of the Territories to form such governments as they saw fit, subject to the provisions of the Constitution. Gov. Walker and his secretary earnestly set themselves to work to carry out this policy. The governor, in various addresses to the people of the Territory, assured all parties that he would protect them in the free expression of their wishes in the election for a new Territorial legislature; and he besought the Free-State men to give up their separate Territorial organization, under which they had already applied for admission into the Union, and by virtue of which they claimed still to have an equitable legal existence. The governor was so earnest in his policy, and so fair-minded in his purposes, that he soon drew upon himself the opposition of the proslavery party of the Territory, now in a small minority, as well as the enmity of that party in the States. He assured the people they should have a fair election for the new Legislature to be chosen in October (1857), and which would come into power in January following. The people took him at his word; and he kept it. Enormous frauds were discovered in two districts, which were promptly set aside. The triumph of the Free-State party was complete: they elected a legislature in their interest by a handsome majority. And now began another phase of the struggle. The policy of the Governor and the Secretary was repudiated at Washington: the former resigned, and the latter was removed. Meanwhile, a convention held under the auspices of the old Legislature had formed a new constitution, known as the Lecompton Constitution, which the old Legislature proposed to submit to the people for ratification on the 21st of December. The manner of submitting it was singular, to say the least. The people were required to vote either for the constitution with slavery, or the constitution without slavery. As without slavery the constitution was in some of its provisions as objectionable as if it upheld slavery, the Free-State men refused to participate in its ratification. The vote on its submission, therefore, stood 4,206 for the constitution with slavery, and 567 without slavery; and it was this constitution, thus submitted and thus adopted, that Mr. Buchanan submitted to Congress on the 2d of February, 1858, as the free expression of the wishes of the people of Kansas; and its support was at once made an administration measure. Meantime the new Legislature elected by the people of the Territory in October submitted this same Lecompton Constitution to the people again, and in this manner: votes to be given for the constitution with slavery and without slavery, and also against the constitution entirely. The latter manner prevailed; the vote against the constitution in any form being over ten thousand. Thus the proslavery party in the Territory was overthrown. Under the auspices of the new Free-State Legislature, a constitutional convention was held at Wyandotte, in March, 1859. A Free-State constitution was adopted, under which Kansas was subsequently admitted into the Union.
Before leaving this Kansas question, there is one phase of the closing part of the struggle which it is worth while to note, particularly as it has a direct bearing upon the fortunes of Judge Douglas, and indirectly to the success of Mr. Lincoln. Douglas always insisted that his plan of "popular sovereignty" would give to the people of the Territories the utmost freedom in the formation of their local governments. When Mr. Buchanan attempted to uphold the Lecompton Constitution as being the free choice of the people of Kansas, Judge Douglas at once took issue with the administration on this question, and the Democratic party was split in twain. Up to the time of the vote of the people of the Territory on the constitution, Douglas had been an unswerving supporter of the administration policy in Kansas. His speech at Springfield, in the June previous, could not be misunderstood. He held all the proceedings which led to the Lecompton issue to be in strict accordance, not only with the letter, but the spirit, of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and with the faith of the Democratic party as expounded by himself. But a few weeks later it became manifest that his opinions had undergone a change. Ominous rumors of a breach with the administration began to circulate among his friends. It was alleged at length that Mr. Douglas's delicate sense of justice had been shocked by the unfairness of certain elections in Kansas: it was even intimated that he, too, considered the Lecompton affair an "outrage" upon the sovereign people of Kansas, and that he would speedily join the Republicans—the special objects of his indignation in the June speech—in denouncing and defeating it. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill had borne its appropriate fruits,—the fruits all along predicted by Mr. Lincoln,—and Mr. Douglas commended them to anybody's eating but his own. His desertion was sudden and astonishing; but there was method in it, and a reason for it. The next year Illinois was to choose a senator to fill the vacancy created by the expiration of his own term; and the choice lay between the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and its most conspicuous opponent in that State. The newspapers were not yet done publishing Mr. Lincoln's speech, in which occurred the following paragraph:—
"Three years and a half ago Judge Douglas brought forward his famous Nebraska Bill. The country was at once in a blaze. He scorned all opposition, and carried it through Congress. Since then he has seen himself superseded in a Presidential nomination by one indorsing the general doctrine of his measure, but at the same time standing clear of the odium of its untimely agitation and its gross' breach of national faith; and he has seen the successful rival constitutionally elected, not by the strength of friends, but by the division of his adversaries, being in a popular minority of nearly four hundred thousand votes. He has seen his chief aids in his own State, Shields and Richardson, politically speaking, successively tried, convicted, and executed for an offence not their own, but his. And now he sees his own case standing next on the docket for trial."
CHAPTER XVI
ALTHOUGH primarily responsible for all that had taken place in Kansas, Mr. Douglas appeared to be suddenly animated by a new and burning zeal in behalf of the Free-State party in the Territory. It struck him very forcibly, just when he needed most to be struck by a new idea, that the Lecompton Constitution was not "the act and deed of the people of Kansas."
Accordingly, Mr. Douglas took his stand against Lecompton at the first note of the long conflict in Congress. We shall make no analysis of the debates, nor set out the votes of senators and representatives which marked the intervals of that fierce struggle between sections, parties, and factions which followed. It is enough to say here, that Mr. Douglas was found speaking and voting with the Republicans upon every phase of the question. He had but one or two followers in the Senate, and a mere handful in the House; yet these were faithful to his lead until a final conference committee and the English Bill afforded an opportunity for some of them to escape. For himself he scorned all compromises, voted against the English Bill, and returned to Illinois to ask the votes of the people upon a winter's record wholly and consistently anti-Democratic. The fact is mentioned, not to obscure the fame of the statesman, nor to impugn the honesty of the politician, but because it had an important influence upon the canvass of the ensuing summer.
During the winter Mr. Douglas held frequent consultations with the leaders of the Republican party. Their meetings were secret, and for that reason the more significant. By this means, harmony of action was secured for the present, and something provided for the future. Mr. Douglas covertly announced himself as a convert to the Republicans, declared his uncompromising enmity to "the slave power," and said that, however he might be distrusted then, he would be seen "fighting their battles in 1860;" but for the time he thought it wise to conceal his ultimate intentions. He could manage the Democracy more effectually by remaining with them until better opportunities should occur. "He insisted that he would never be driven from the party, but would remain in it until he exposed the administration and the Disunionists; and, when he went out, he would go of his own accord. He was in the habit of remarking, that it was policy for him to remain in the party, in order to hold certain of the rank-and-file; so that, if he went over from the Democracy to any other party, he would be able to take the crowd along with him; and, when he got them all over, he would cut down the bridges, and sink the boats." When asked if he knew precisely where his present course was taking him, he answered repeatedly, "I do; and I have checked all my baggage, and taken a through ticket."
He was a proselyte not to be despised: his weight might be sufficient to turn the scale in the Presidential election. The Republicans were naturally pleased with his protestations of friendship, and more than pleased with his proffers of active service; but he was not content with this alone. He contrived to convince many of his late opponents that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill itself was actually conceived in the interests of antislavery, and that the device was the most cunning of political tricks, intended to give back to "freedom" all the vast expanse of territory which the Missouri line had dedicated forever to slavery. "Mr. Douglas's plan for destroying the Missouri line," said one Republican, "and thereby opening the way for the march of freedom beyond the limits forever prohibited by that line, and the opening up of Free States in territory which it was conceded belonged to the Slave States, and its march westward, embracing the whole line of the Pacific from the British possessions to Mexico, struck me as the most magnificent scheme ever conceived by the human mind. This character of conversation, so frequently employed by Mr. Douglas with those with whom he talked, made the deepest impression upon their minds, enlisted them in his behalf, and changed, in almost every instance, their opinion of the man." In support of this view, Mr. Douglas could point to Kansas, where the battle under his bill was being fought out. The Free-State men had, perhaps from the very beginning, been in a majority, and could take possession of the Territory or the new State, as the case might be, whenever they could secure a fair vote. The laboring classes of, the North were the natural settlers of the western Territories. If these failed in numbers, the enormous and increasing European immigration was at their back; and, if both together failed, the churches, aid societies, and antislavery organizations were at hand to raise, arm, and equip great bodies of emigrants, as they would regular forces for a public purpose. The South had no such facilities: its social, political, and material conditions made a sudden exodus of its voting population to new countries a thing impossible. It might send here a man with a few negroes, and there another. It might insist vehemently upon its supposed rights in the common Territories, and be ready to fight for them; but it could never cover the surface of those Territories with cosey farmsteads, or crowd them with intelligent and muscular white men; and yet these last would inevitably give political character to the rising communities. Such clearly were to be the results of "popular sovereignty," as Mr. Douglas had up to that time maintained it under the Nebraska Bill.