A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

CHAPTER XV
A BREAKING-UP OF PARTY TIES
1854

While the Hards and Softs quarrelled, and the Whigs showed weakness because of a want of harmony and the lack of principles, a great contest was being waged at Washington. In December, 1853, Stephen A. Douglas, from his place in the United States Senate, introduced the famous Nebraska bill affirming that the Clay compromise of 1850 had repealed the Missouri compromise of 1820. This sounded the trumpet of battle. The struggle of slavery and freedom was now to be fought to a finish. The discussion in Congress began in January, 1854, and ended on May 30. When it commenced the slavery question seemed settled; when it closed the country was in a ferment. Anti-slavery Whigs found companionship with Free-soil Democrats; the titles of "Nebraska" and "Anti-Nebraska" distinguished men's politics; conventions of Democrats, Whigs, and Free-soilers met to resist "the iniquity;" and on July 6 the Republican party, under whose banner the great fight was to be finished, found a birthplace at Jackson, Michigan.

Rufus King's part in the historic struggle of the Missouri Compromise was played by William H. Seward in the great contest over its repeal. He was the leader of the anti-slavery Whigs of the country, just as his distinguished predecessor had been the leader of the anti-slavery forces in 1820. He marshalled the opposition, and, when he finally took the floor on the 17th of February, he made a legal argument as close, logical, and carefully considered as if addressed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He developed the history of slavery and its successive compromises; he answered every argument in favour of the bill; he appealed to its supporters to admit that they never dreamed of its abrogating the compromise of 1820; he ridiculed the idea that it was in the interest of peace; and he again referred to the "higher law" that had characterised his speech in 1850. "The slavery agitation you deprecate so much," he said in concluding, "is an eternal struggle between conservatism and progress; between truth and error; between right and wrong. You may sooner, by act of Congress, compel the sea to suppress its upheavings, and the round earth to extinguish its internal fires. You may legislate, and abrogate, and abnegate, as you will, but there is a Superior Power that overrules all; that overrules not only all your actions and all your refusals to act, but all human events, to the distant but inevitable result of the equal and universal liberty of all men."[154]

Seward was not an orator. He could hardly be called an effective speaker. He was neither impassioned nor always impressive; but when he spoke he seemed to strike a blow that had in it the whole vigour and strength of the public sentiment which he represented. So far as one can judge from contemporary accounts he never spoke better than on this occasion; or when it was more evident that he spoke with all the sincere emotion of one whose mind and heart alike were filled with the cause for which he pleaded. "Some happy spell," he wrote his wife, "seemed to have come over me and to have enabled me to speak with more freedom and ease than on any former occasion here."[155] Rhodes suggests that Seward "could not conceal his exultation that the Democrats had forsaken their high vantage ground and played into the hands of their opponents."[156] He became almost dramatic when he threw down his gauntlet at the feet of every member of the Senate in 1850 and challenged him to say that he knew, or thought, or dreamed, that by enacting the compromise of 1850 he was directly or indirectly abrogating, or in any degree impairing the Missouri Compromise. "If it were not irreverent," he continued, "I would dare call up the author of both the compromises in question, from his honoured, though yet scarcely grass-covered grave, and challenge any advocate of this measure to confront that imperious shade, and say that, in making the compromise of 1850, Henry Clay intended or dreamed that he was subverting or preparing the way for a subversion of his greater work of 1820. Sir, if that spirit is yet lingering here over the scene of its mortal labours, it is now moved with more than human indignation against those who are perverting its last great public act."[157]

Seward's speech created a profound impression throughout New York and the North. "It probably affected the minds of more men," says Rhodes, "than any speech delivered on that side of this question in Congress."[158] Senator Houston had it translated into German and extensively circulated among the Germans of western Texas. Even Edwin Croswell congratulated him upon its excellence. It again directed the attention of the country to his becoming a presidential candidate, about which newspapers and politicians had already spoken. Montgomery Blair's letter of May 17, 1873, to Gideon Welles, charges Seward with boasting that he had "put Senator Dixon up to moving the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as an amendment to Douglas' first Kansas bill, and had himself forced the repeal by that movement, and had thus brought life to the Republican party."[159] Undoubtedly Seward read the signs of the times, and saw clearly and quickly that repeal would probably result in a political revolution, bringing into life an anti-slavery party that would sweep the country. But the charge that he claimed to have suggested the repeal, smells too strongly of Welles' dislike of Seward, and needs other evidence than Blair's telltale letter to support it. It is on a par with Senator Atchinson's assertion, made under the influence of wine, that he forced Douglas to bring in the Nebraska bill—a statement that the Illinois Senator promptly stamped as false.

The temper of the people of the State began to change very soon after the introduction of Douglas' proposal. Remonstrances, letters, and resolutions poured in from Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and other cities. Senator Fish presented a petition headed by the Bishop of the Episcopal Church and signed by a majority of the clergymen of New York City. Merchants, lawyers, and business men generally, who had actively favoured the compromise of 1850, now spoke in earnest protest against the repeal of the compromise of 1820. From the first, the Germans opposed it. Of their newspapers only eight out of eighty-eight were favourable. Public meetings, full of enthusiasm and noble sentiment, resembled religious gatherings enlisted in a holy war against a great social evil. The first assembled in New York City as early as January 30, six days after the repeal was agreed upon. Another larger meeting occurred on the 18th of February. It was here that Henry Ward Beecher's great genius asserted the fulness of its intellectual power. He had been in Brooklyn five years. The series of forensic achievements which began at the Kossuth banquet in 1851 had already made him the favourite speaker of the city, but, on the 18th of February, he became the idol of the anti-slavery host. Wit, wisdom, patriotism, and pathos, mingled with the loftiest strains of eloquence, compelled the attention and the admiration of every listener. When he concluded the whole assembly rose to do him honour; tears rolled down the cheeks of men and women. Everything was forgotten, save the great preacher and the cause for which he stood. "The storm that is rising," wrote Seward, "is such an one as this country has never yet seen. The struggle will go on, but it will be a struggle for the whole American people."[160] In the Tribune of May 17, Greeley said that Pierce and Douglas had made more Abolitionists in three months than Garrison and Phillips could have made in half a century.

The agitation resulted in an anti-Nebraska state convention, held at Saratoga on the 16th of August. It was important in the men who composed it. John A. King called it to order; Horace Greeley reported the resolutions; Henry J. Raymond represented the district that had twice sent him to the Assembly; and Moses H. Grinnell became chairman of its executive committee. In the political struggles of two decades most of its delegates had filled prominent and influential positions. These men were now brought together by an absorbing sense of duty and a common impulse of resistance to the encroachments of slavery. People supposed a new party would be formed and a ticket nominated as in Michigan; but after an animated and at times stormy discussion, the delegates concluded that in principle too little difference existed to warrant the present disturbance of existing organisations. So, after declaring sentiments which were to become stronger than party ties or party discipline, it agreed to reassemble at Auburn on September 26.[161]

The Nebraska Act also became a new source of division to Democrats. Marcy's opposition, based upon apprehensions of its disastrous effect in New York, was so pronounced that he contemplated resigning as secretary of state—a step that his friends persuaded him to abandon. John Van Buren was equally agitated. "Could anything but a desire to buy the South at the presidential shambles dictate such an outrage?"[162] he asked Senator Clemens of Alabama. But nothing could stop the progress of the Illinois statesman; and, while the Whigs of New York ably and uniformly opposed repeal, Democrats broke along the lines dividing the Hards and the Softs. Of twenty-one Democratic congressmen, nine favoured and twelve opposed it. Among the former was William M. Tweed, the unsavoury boss of later years; among the latter, Reuben E. Fenton, Rufus W. Peckham, and Russell Sage. The Democratic press separated along similar lines. Thirty-seven Hards supported the measure; thirty-eight Softs opposed it.