When the proposition was made in 1854 to abrogate the Missouri Compromise, the country was profoundly excited, and the opponents of slavery extension in all parties hoped to bring about the union of men who were ready to resist the slave-power. Believing that the time had come to effect the union of men who were opposed to the Kansas Nebraska Act, Gen. Wilson labored with unflagging zeal to accomplish that result, and for that end he visited Washington, in May, and consulted with the opponents of the bill, to repeal the prohibition of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska. Returning home, he avowed in the Free-soil State Convention, assembled in Boston on the 31st of May, the readiness of the free-soilers to abandon their organization, everything but their principles, to bring about the union of men who were ready to crush out the members from the North who had betrayed the people, and to sustain the faithful men of all parties who had been true to principle, and who were ready to resist hereafter the policy of the slavery propagandists. Speaking for the men of the free-soil party, he said they "were ready to go into the rear;" if a forlorn hope was to be led, they would lead it; they would toil; others might take the lead, hold the offices, and win the honors. The hour had come to form one great Republican party, which should hereafter guide the policy and control the destinies of the Republic. A State Convention was called at Worcester on the 10th of August, with the view of uniting the people in one organization, and Gen. Wilson addressed the people in all sections of the State in favor of the fusion, in which he assured men of all political creeds that the men of the free-soil party would gladly yield to others the lead and the honors; all they asked was the acceptance of their doctrines of perpetual hostility to the aggressive policy of the slave power. But the leaders of the Whig party in Massachusetts, then in the pride of power, resisted all attempts to unite the people, and the convention at Worcester, on the 10th of August, failed to accomplish that decided result. Gen. Wilson, and other members of the free-soil party at this convention, again avowed their desire for union, for the sake of the cause of freedom, and their readiness to yield to men of other parties, everything but principle. The people desired fusion, and in spite of the efforts of the Whig leaders, they rushed into the councils of the American organization to effect that object. Gen. Wilson, finding that all efforts to unite the people in the Republican movement had been defeated by men who had personal ends to secure, urged his friends to unite in that rising organization, liberalize its platform and action, and make it a party for freedom. With the view of bringing about harmonious action among men who desired to unite the people, he accepted the nomination of the Republican party for Governor, and exerted every effort to conciliate and bring together men in favor of organizing a great party of freedom. Some of his political friends doubted the wisdom of his policy, as they did in 1850 the wisdom of the coalition with the Democrats; but that coalition placed Rantoul and Sumner in the Senate of the United States, and this union largely contributed to the influence of anti-slavery men, enabling them to choose a delegation to Congress, of true men, a majority of whom were free-soilers, and to elect the most radical anti-slavery legislature ever chosen in America.
In the elections of 1854, the Americans had in the free States coöperated with men of other parties in opposition to the pro-slavery policy of the Administration. But in November of that year, a national council assembled at Cincinnati, and through the management of southern men, anxious to win local power, and corrupt and weak politicians from the North, hungry for place, the American organization was placed in an equivocal attitude on the slavery question. The work of treachery to freedom commenced, and men who had labored to combine the opponents of slavery in one organization, as Gen. Wilson had done, were marked for swift destruction, and men who were ready to compromise away the cause of freedom, were to be the trusted leaders of the now nationalized American party.
The legislature of Massachusetts, which assembled in January, 1855, had to choose a United States senator in place of Mr. Everett, who had resigned and whose term expired on the 3d of March, 1859. General Wilson had publicly and privately declared that the slavery question was with him the paramount question, and in the spring and summer of 1854, while a member of the American organization, he had at all times openly labored to unite men of all parties for freedom. He had taken this position, and his declared opinions and acts were well known in and out of his State, and the men who were ready to sacrifice the anti-slavery cause, to adhere to the compromising policy of the past, were bitterly hostile to his elevation to the Senate. But the anti-slavery men in and out of the State were enthusiastic in his support. He was nominated in the caucus of the members of the legislature, by more than one hundred majority on the first ballot. While the election was pending, several gentlemen representing that portion of the party who wished to nationalize the organization, called upon him, and urged him to write something to modify his recorded opinions, and thus give the men who claimed to be national men, an opportunity to assent to his elevation. In answer to this request, he said he had not travelled a single mile, expended a single dollar, nor conversed with a single member to secure votes for his election;—that his opinions upon the slavery questions were the matured convictions of his life, and that he would not qualify them to win the loftiest position on earth. If elected, he should carry these opinions with him into the Senate, and if the party with which he acted proved recreant to freedom, he would, if he had the power, shiver it to atoms. His position was distinctly avowed and fully comprehended, and he was opposed to the end by members who dissented from his principles, and supported and chosen by men who concurred with him in opinion and policy. He received 234 to 130 votes in the House of Representatives, and 21 to 19 votes in the Senate, and took his seat in the Senate of the United States on the 8th of February, 1855.
When he arrived in Washington, leading politicians were assembled there from the South, endeavoring to organize a National American party, which should ignore the slavery issues, and contest the supremacy of the Democracy in the South. In his speech at Springfield, before the State Council, he thus described the efforts made to seduce him to assent to this policy:
"On my arrival at Washington, I saw at a glance that the politicians of the South—men who had deserted their northern associates upon the Nebraska issue, were resolved to impose upon the American party by the aid of doughfaces from New York and Pennsylvania, as the test of nationality, fidelity to the slave power. Flattering words from veteran statesmen were poured into my ears—flattering appeals were made to me to aid in the work of nationalizing the party whose victories in the South were to be as brilliant as they had been in the North. But I resolved that upon my soul the sin and shame of silence or submission should never rest. I returned home, determined to baffle if I could the meditated treason to freedom and to the North."
Two weeks after taking his seat, he addressed the senate upon Mr. Toucey's "bill to protect persons executing the fugitive slave act, from prosecution by State courts." Extracts from this speech show that his sentiments had undergone no change in Washington, under the pressing influences of political leaders:
"Now, sir, I assure senators from the South, that we of the free States mean to change our policy—I tell you, frankly, just how we feel and just what we propose to do. We mean to withdraw from these halls that class of public men who have betrayed us and deceived you; men who have misrepresented us, and not dealt frankly with you. And we intend to send men into these halls who will truly represent us and deal justly with you. We mean, sir, to place in the councils of the nation men who, in the words of Jefferson, 'have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to every kind of oppression of the mind and body of man.' Yes, sir, we mean to place in the national councils men who cannot be seduced by the blandishments, or deterred by the threats of power; men who will fearlessly maintain our principles. I assure senators from the South that the people of the North entertain for them and their people no feelings of hostility; but they will no longer consent to be misrepresented by their own representatives, nor proscribed for their fidelity to freedom. This determination of the people of the North has manifested itself during the past few months in acts not to be misread by the country. The stern rebuke administered to faithless northern representatives, and the annihilation of old and powerful political organizations, should teach senators that the days of waning power are upon them. This action of the people teaches the lesson, which I hope will be heeded, that political combinations can no longer be successfully made to suppress the sentiments of the people. We believe we have the power to abolish slavery in all the territories of the Union; that, if slavery exists there, it exists by the permission and sanction of the Federal Government, and we are responsible for it. We are in favor of its abolition wherever we are morally or legally responsible for its existence.
"I believe conscientiously, that if slavery should be abolished by the National Government in the District of Columbia, and in the territories, the fugitive slave act repealed, the Federal Government relieved from all connection with, or responsibility for the existence of slavery, these angry debates banished from the halls of Congress, and slavery left to the people of the States, that the men of the South who are opposed to the existence of that institution, would get rid of it in their own States at no distant day. I believe that if slavery is ever peacefully abolished in this country—and I certainly believe it will be—it must be abolished in this way.
"The senator from Indiana [Mr. Pettit] has made a long argument to-night to prove the inferiority of the African race. Well, sir, I have no contest with the senator upon that question. I do not claim for that race intellectual equality; but I say to the senator from Indiana that I know men of that race who are quite equal in mental power to either the senator from Indiana or myself—men who are scarcely inferior, in that respect, to any senators upon this floor. But, sir, suppose the senator from Indiana succeeds in establishing the inferiority of that despised race, is mental inferiority a valid reason for the perpetual oppression of a race? Is the mental, moral, or physical inferiority of a man a just cause of oppression in republican and Christian America? Sir, is this Democracy? Is it Christianity? Democracy cares for the poor, the lowly, the humble. Democracy demands that the panoply of just and equal laws shall shield and protect the weakest of the sons of men. Sir, these are strange doctrines to hear uttered in the Senate of republican America, whose political institutions are based upon the fundamental idea that 'all men are created equal.' If the African race is inferior, this proud race of ours should educate and elevate it, and not deny to those who belong to it the rights of our common humanity.
"The senator from Indiana boasts that his State imposes a fine upon the white man that gives employment to the free black man. I am not surprised at the degradation of the colored people of Indiana, who are compelled to live under such inhuman laws, and oppressed by the public sentiment that enacts and sustains them. I thank God, sir, Massachusetts is not dishonored by such laws! In Massachusetts we have about seven thousand colored people. They have the same rights that we have; they go to our free schools, they enter all the business and professional relations of life, they vote in our elections, and in intelligence and character are scarcely inferior to the citizens of this proud and peerless race whose superiority we have heard so vauntingly proclaimed to-night by the senators from Tennessee and Indiana."