CHAPTER X[ToC]
YOUNG AMERICA
When Douglas reached Chicago, immediately after the adjournment of Congress, he found the city in an uproar. The strong anti-slavery sentiment of the community had been outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law. Reflecting the popular indignation, the Common Council had adopted resolutions condemning the act as a violation of the Constitution and a transgression of the laws of God. Those senators and representatives who voted for the bill, or "who basely sneaked away from their seats and thereby evaded the question," were stigmatized as "fit only to be ranked with the traitors, Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot." This was indeed a sorry home-coming for one who believed himself entitled to honors.
Learning that a mass-meeting was about to indorse the action of the city fathers, Douglas determined to face his detractors and meet their charges. Entering the hall while the meeting was in progress, he mounted the platform, and announced that on the following evening he would publicly defend all the measures of adjustment. He was greeted with hisses and jeers for his pains; but in the end he had the satisfaction of securing an adjournment until his defense had been heard.
It was infinitely to his credit that when he confronted a hostile audience on the next evening, he stooped to no cheap devices to divert resentment, but sought to approve his course to the sober intelligence of his hearers.[[370]] It is doubtful if the Fugitive Slave Law ever found a more skillful defender. The spirit in which he met his critics was admirably calculated to disarm prejudice. Come and let us reason together, was his plea. Without any attempt to ignore the most obnoxious parts of the act, he passed directly to the discussion of the clauses which apparently denied the writ of habeas corpus and trial by jury to the fugitive from service. He reminded his hearers that this act was supplementary to the Act of 1793. No one had found fault with the earlier act because it had denied these rights. Both acts, in fact, were silent on these points; yet in neither case was silence to be construed as a denial of constitutional obligations. On the contrary, they must be assumed to continue in full force under the act. Misapprehension arose in these matters, because the recovery of the fugitive slave was not viewed as a process of extradition. The act provided for the return of the alleged slave to the State from which he had fled. Trial of the facts by jury would then follow under the laws of the State, just as the fugitive from justice would be tried in the State where the alleged crime had been committed. The testimony before the original court making the requisition, would necessarily be ex parte, as in the case of the escaped criminal; but this did not prevent a fair trial on return of the fugitive. Regarding the question of establishing the identity of the apprehended person with the fugitive described in the record, Douglas asserted that the terms of the act required proof satisfactory to the judge or commissioner, and not merely the presentment of the record. "Other and further evidence" might be insisted upon.
At various times Douglas was interrupted by questions which were obviously contrived to embarrass him. To all such he replied courteously and with engaging frankness. "Why was it," asked one of these troublesome questioners, "that the law provided for a fee of ten dollars if the commissioner decided in favor of the claimant, and for a fee of only five dollars if he decided otherwise? Was this not in the nature of an inducement, a bribe?" "I presume," said Douglas, "that the reason was that he would have more labor to perform. If, after hearing the testimony, the commissioner decided in favor of the claimant, the law made it his duty to prepare and authenticate the necessary papers to authorize him to carry the fugitive home; but if he decided against him, he had no such labor to perform."
After all, as Douglas said good-naturedly, all these objections were predicated on a reluctance to return a slave to his master under any circumstances. Did his hearers realize, he insisted, that refusal to do so was a violation of the Constitution? And were they willing to shatter the Union because of this feeling? At this point he was again interrupted by an individual, who wished to know if the provisions of the Constitution were not in violation of the law of God. "The divine law," responded Douglas, "does not prescribe the form of government under which we shall live, and the character of our political and civil institutions. Revelation has not furnished us with a constitution—a code of international law—and a system of civil and municipal jurisprudence." If this Constitution were to be repudiated, he begged to know, "who is to be the prophet to reveal the will of God, and establish a theocracy for us?"
At the conclusion of his speech, Douglas offered a series of resolutions expressing the obligation of all good citizens to maintain the Constitution and all laws duly enacted by Congress in pursuance of the Constitution. With a remarkable revulsion of feeling, the audience indorsed these sentiments without a dissenting voice, and subsequently repudiated in express terms the resolutions of the Common Council.[[371]] The triumph of Douglas was complete. It was one of those rare instances where the current of popular resentment is not only deflected, but actually reversed, by the determination and eloquence of one man.
There were two groups of irreconcilables to whom such appeals were unavailing—radical Abolitionists at the North and Southern Rights advocates. Not even the eloquence of Webster could make willing slave-catchers of the anti-slavery folk of Massachusetts. The rescue of the negro Shadrach, an alleged fugitive slave, provoked intense excitement, not only in New England but in Washington. The incident was deemed sufficiently ominous to warrant a proclamation by the President, counseling all good citizens to uphold the law. Southern statesmen of the radical type saw abundant evidence in this episode of a deliberate purpose at the North not to enforce the essential features of the compromise. Both Whig and Democratic leaders, with few exceptions, roundly denounced all attempts to nullify the Fugitive Slave Law.[[372]] None was more vehement than Douglas. He could not regard this Boston rescue as a trivial incident. He believed that there was an organization in many States to evade the law. It was in the nature of a conspiracy against the government. The ring-leaders were Abolitionists, who were exciting the negroes to excesses. He was utterly at a loss to understand how senators, who had sworn to obey and defend the Constitution, could countenance these palpable violations of law.[[373]]
In spite of similar untoward incidents, the vast majority of people in the country North and South were acquiescing little by little in the settlement reached by the compromise measures. There was an evident disposition on the part of both Whig and Democratic leaders to drop the slavery issue. When Senator Sumner proposed a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, Douglas deprecated any attempt to "fan the flames of discord that have so recently divided this great people,"[[374]] intimating that Sumner's speech was intended to "operate upon the presidential election." It ill became the Senator from Illinois to indulge in such taunts, for no one, it may safely be said, was calculating his own political chances more intently. "Things look well," he had written to a friend, referring to his chances of securing the nomination, "and the prospect is brightening every day. All that is necessary now to insure success is that the northwest should unite and speak out."[[375]]