History of the United States, Volume 3

by Elisha Benjamin Andrews

Franklin Pierce.
From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery.
Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and
taking heresy of "squatter sovereignty," that Congress, though
possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Constitution,
general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch
slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace "to vote
up or vote down." At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed
"nonintervention," and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery
character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the
repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render
Kansas free.

Stephen A. Douglas.
[1855]
This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid
anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was
the Kansas Aid Society, another a Massachusetts corporation entitled the
New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began
to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in
real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in
apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote
against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by
Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and
returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905
legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast
for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the
pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the
subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at
Pawnee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered
that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative
authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to
support the fugitive slave law.
The free-state settlers, now a majority, ignored this Legislature and
its acts, and at once set to work to secure Kansas admission to the
Union as a State without slavery. The Topeka convention, October 23,
1855, formed the Topeka constitution, which was adopted December 14th,
only forty-six votes being polled against it. This showed that
pro-slavery men abstained from voting. January 15, 1856, an election was
held under this constitution for state officers, a state legislature,
and a representative in Congress. The House agreed, July 3d, by one
majority, to admit Kansas with the Topeka constitution, but the Senate
refused. The Topeka Legislature assembled July 4th, but was dispersed by
United States troops.
[1856-1857]
This was done under command from Washington. President Pierce, backed by
the Senate with its steady pro-slavery majority, was resolved at all
hazards to recognize the pro-slavery authorities of Kansas and no other,
and, as it seemed, to force it to become a slave State; but fortunately
the House had an anti-slavery majority which prevented this. The friends
of freedom in Kansas had also on their side the history that was all
this time making in Kansas itself. During the summer of 1856 that
Territory was a theatre of constant war. Men were murdered, towns
sacked. Both sides were guilty of violence, but the free-state party
confessedly much the less so, having far the better cause. Nearly all
admitted that this party was in the majority. Even the governors, all
Democrats, appointed by Pierce, acknowledged this, some of them, to all
appearance, being removed as a punishment for the admission. Governor
Geary, in office from September, 1856, to March, 1857, and Governor
Walker, in office from May, 1857, were just and able men, and their
decisions, in most things favorable to the free-state cause, had much
weight with the country.
Walker's influence in the Territory led the free-state men to take part
in the territorial election of October, 1857, where they were entirely
triumphant. But the old, pro-slavery Legislature had called a
constitutional convention, which met at Lecompton, September, 1857, and
passed the Lecompton constitution. This constitution sanctioned slavery
and provided against its own submission to popular vote. It ordained
that only its provision in favor of slavery should be so submitted. This
pro-slavery clause was adopted, but only because the free-state men
would not vote. The Topeka Legislature submitted the whole constitution
to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and
Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton constitution,
although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March,
1859, had adopted constitutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being
that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not
admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the
United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the
Wyandotte constitution and hence as a free State.
It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S.
Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly
attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon
the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but
unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted
severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State.
This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the
Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon
him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never
recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial
duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate,
characterized the assault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks,
but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the
barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame,
representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the
caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he
named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for
the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would
endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a
majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned,
but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina constituency.

Charles Sumner.
While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown
cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had
gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was
to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause
2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully
legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out
the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged
to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one
citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general
Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought
was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of
the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as
to establish it.
The new southern or Calhoun theory assumed startling significance for
the Nation when, in 1857, it was proclaimed in the Dred Scott decision
of the United States Supreme Court as part of the innermost life of our
Constitution. Dred Scott was a slave of an army officer, who had taken
him from Missouri first into Illinois, a free State, then into
Wisconsin, covered by the Missouri Compromise, then back into Missouri.
Here the slave learned that by decisions of the Missouri courts his life
outside of Missouri constituted him free, and in 1848, having been
whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for assault. The decision was
in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri
Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him
also he prosecuted for assault, but as he and Sandford belonged to
different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court.
Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not
a citizen of Missouri but a slave.
It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court
having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to
the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizenship of the
negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The
upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it
was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of
pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the
old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all
other legislation against slavery in Territories unconstitutional, and
the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into
all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in
its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's
citizenship was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable
implication being that no man of African blood could be an American
citizen.
This decision rendered jubilant all friends of slavery, as also the
ultra Abolitionists, but correspondingly disheartened the sober friends
of human liberty. How, it was asked, is the cause of freedom to be
advanced when the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the highest
tribunal existing for that purpose, virtually establishes slavery in New
England itself, provided any slave-master wishes to come there with his
troop? But anti-slavery men did not despair. Patriots had of course to
obey the court till its opinion should be reversed, yet its opinion was
at once repudiated as bad law. Men like Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Giddings,
Seward, and Lincoln, appealing to both the history and the letter of the
Constitution, and to the course of legislation and of judicial decisions
on slavery even in the slave States, had been elaborating and
demonstrating the counter theory, under which our fundamental law
appeared as anything but a "covenant with hell."
The pith of this counter theory was that slaves were property not by
moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence
freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our
government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for
its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney were
right as against Douglas in ascribing to Congress all power over the
Territories, it was as impossible to find slaves in any United States
Territory as to find a king there. Slaves taken into Territories
therefore became free. Slaves taken into any free State became free.
Slaves carried from a slave State on to the high seas became free. Even
the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution must be applied in the way
least favorable to slavery.
On the other hand Douglas was right in his view that citizens and not
States were the partners in the Territories. As to the assertion of
incompatibility between citizenship and African blood, it would not
stand historical examination a moment. If it was true that the framers
of the Constitution did not consciously include colored persons in the
"ourselves and our posterity" for whom they purposed the "Blessings of
Liberty," neither did they consciously exclude, as is clear from the
fact that nearly everyone of them expected blacks some time to be free.
CHAPTER VI.
SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES
[1841]
The Democratic Party was predominantly southern, the Whig northern. Both
sought to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the
better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the
Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and
prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent
and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was
that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they
tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a
whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the
slavocracy. This status became more pronounced with the progress of the
controversy and of the South's self-assertion. It was real under
Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk,
Pierce, and Buchanan.
Whig temper toward slavery was throughout the North much better, but
whig party action was little better. Fear of losing southern supporters
permanently forbade all frank enlistment by the Whig Party for freedom.
The mighty leaders, Adams, Webster, even Clay, were well inclined, and
the party, as such, was at the South persistently accused of alliance
with the Abolitionists. This was untrue. Abolitionists, Liberal Party
men, and Free-soilers oftener voted with Democrats than with Whigs. Clay
complained once that Abolitionists denounced him as a slave-holder,
slave-holders as an Abolitionist, while both voted for Van Buren.
Compromise was the bane of this party as of the other; and each of the
resplendent chieftains named at one time or another seemed so reverent
to Belial that the record is painful reading.
When in 1841 the ship Creole sailed from Richmond with one hundred and
thirty-five slaves on board bound for the southern market, and one
Madison Washington, a recovered runaway on board, headed a dash upon
captain and crew, got possession of the vessel and took her into New
Providence, Clay was as loud as Calhoun or any southern senator in
demanding of the English Government the return of these slaves to
bondage or, at least, that of "the mutineers," as they were called.
Webster, Secretary of State at the time, instructed Edward Everett, our
English minister, to insist upon this, his arguments being sound and his
tone emphatic enough to please Mr. Calhoun. This was the time when
Giddings, of Ohio, brought into the House his resolutions to the effect
that slavery was a state institution only, and that hence any slave
carried on to the open ocean or to any other locality where only
national law prevailed, was free. He was censured in the House by a
large majority and resigned, but his Ohio constituency immediately
re-elected him.
[1836-1844]
Up to this time Giddings and Adams were the only pronounced anti-slavery
men in that body. Adams had acquiesced in the Missouri Compromise, but
all his subsequent career, especially his course in the House of
Representatives after 1830, is not only creditable to him so far as the
slavery question is concerned, but registers him as one of the most
influential opponents of slavery in our history. Refusing to be classed
with the Abolitionists, he was, in effect, the most efficient
Abolitionist of them all.
Previous to 1835, though petitions against slavery reached Congress in
great numbers and nettled many members, they had been received and
referred in the usual manner. But in February, 1836, the House created a
special committee to consider these petitions. It reported a resolution,
which passed under the previous question, that thereafter all papers of
the kind should be tabled without printing or reference. Adams declared
to the House: "I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the
Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the
rights of my constituents." In this rencounter Adams advanced the view
on which the Emancipation Proclamation by and by proceeded, that
slavery, even in States, was not beyond reach of the national arm, but
would be at the mercy of Congress the instant slave-masters should
rebel. This, the first of the gag laws, was, however, enacted. The
second, or Patton gag, was passed on December 21, 1837, and the third,
or Atherton gag, a year later. The principle of these, practically
cutting off all petitions to Congress respecting slavery, was taken up
in the twenty-first rule of the House in 1840.
Mr. Adams was from the first the resolute and uncompromising foe of the
gag policy. Wagon-loads of petitions came to him to offer, among them
one for his own expulsion from the House and one to dissolve the Union,
and he presented all.
February 6, 1837, he inquired of Mr. Speaker whether or not it would be
appropriate to offer a petition in his hand from slaves, whereupon the
pro-slavery members flew at him like vampires. After much uproar, in
which Adams gave as good as was sent him, he sarcastically reminded his
already infuriated assailants that the petition was in favor of slavery,
not against, and that he had emphatically not offered it, but only made
an innocent inquiry of the Speaker about doing so, the proper answer to
which was so far from obvious that the Speaker himself had signified his
intention to take the sense of the House upon it. Regularly, year after
year, Adams moved the abolition of the gag rule, was beaten as
regularly, long as a matter of course, sometimes after heated debate in
which he was always victor. But little by little the majority vote
against him lessened. In 1842 the gag passed by but four votes, in 1843
it had a majority of three only, in 1844 his motion to strike it out was
carried by a vote of one hundred and eight to eighty. Adams wrote that
day in his diary: "Blessed, forever blessed be the name of God."
[1850]
But a plenitude of Whigs, not all southern, voted for each of these
gags. The worst one of all was moved by a Whig. The XXVIIth Congress,
strongly whig, voted to retain the gag, which it was left for the
XXVIIIth, strongly democratic, finally to repeal. At the South, slavery
more and more overbore party feeling. Said Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, in
1854, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery, no Democracy--I
am a pro-slavery man." It should be added, however, that as the
conflict progressed, pro-slavery Whigs became few save in the South, and
that these nearly all soon turned Democrats.
Most humiliating was the vassalage to the slave power displayed by
northern congressmen of both parties, though forming a majority in the
House during all the great days of the slavery battle. The gag history
is one example. Resolutions against unquestionably unconstitutional laws
imprisoning northern seamen at southern ports simply because they were
colored, were tabled in the House by a large majority. Slavery in the
District of Columbia, where Congress had the right of "exclusive
legislation in all cases whatsoever," so that the entire nation was
responsible, defied every effort to abolish it till 1862, after the
Civil War began. Nor was the trade there in aught alleviated till 1850,
when some modification of it was possible as an element of the
compromise described in the preceding chapter. An enlargement of
Missouri, adding to the northwest corner of that State, as slave
territory, a vast tract which the Missouri Compromise had forever
devoted to freedom, being in truth a preliminary repeal of that pact,
was carried without opposition.
The brutal and murderous lawlessness practised against Abolitionists was
praised by northern congressmen often as slavery came up in debate. Even
Senator Silas Wright, of New York, subsequently famous as a foe of
slavery, in remarks upon the reference of anti-slavery petitions,
boasted of the atrocities at Utica in 1835 and of others similar, as
proof that "resistance to these dangerous and wicked agitators in the
North had reached a point beyond law and above law." A bill, in 1836,
for closing the mails to abolitionist literature, another defiance of
the Constitution, Amendment I., secured engrossment in the Senate by the
casting vote of Vice-President Van Buren; Wright, Tallmadge, and
Buchanan also favoring; but failed to pass, nineteen to twenty-five,
because Benton, Clay, and Crittenden had the patriotism to vote nay.
Discussion hereon laid bare the vital contradiction in our governmental
system. Calhoun showed that the Constitution permits each State for
itself to define, in order to inhibit, incendiary literature.
Characteristically, he would have forced mail agents to obey state laws
upon this matter. Yet for Congress to have so directed would plainly
have been abridging freedom of the press.

Thomas H. Benton.
Had the Whig Party, while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough
boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have
been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance
passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders
and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern
members--twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise--proved deadly to the organization, its faithful old
battalions going over in the South to the Democrats, in the North to the
Republicans.
Many Whigs took the latter course by a circuitous route. Ever since the
alien and sedition laws, cry had been raised at intervals against the
too easy attainment of citizenship by the unnumbered immigrants
thronging to our shores, and agitation raised, more or less successful,
to thrust forward "Nativism" or Americanism, with opposition to the
Roman Catholic Church, as an issue in our politics. To such movements
Whigs, as legatees of Federalism, were always more friendly than
Democrats, which was partly a cause and partly a consequence of the
affinity that naturalized citizens all along showed for the Democratic
Party.
Americanism had its greatest run after 1850, when the Whigs saw their
organization going to pieces, and, mistakenly in part, attributed
democratic success to the immigrant vote. A secret fraternity arose,
called the "Know-nothings," from "I don't know," the ever-repeated reply
of its members to inquiry about its nature and doings. "America for
Americans" was their cry, and they proposed to "put none but Americans
on guard." At first pursuing their aims through silent manipulation of
the old parties, by 1854 the Know-nothings swung out as a third party.
From this date they lustily competed with the Republicans for the hosts
of whig and democratic stragglers jostled from their old ranks by the
omnibus bill legislation, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the "Crime
against Kansas" committed by Pierce and his slavocratic Senate. In 1855
this party assumed national proportions, and worried seasoned
politicians not a little; but having crystallized around no living
issue, like that which nerved Republicanism, it fell like a
rocket-stick, its sparks going over to make redder still republican
fires. Henry Wilson became a Republican from the status of a
Know-nothing; so did Banks, Colfax, and a score of others subsequently
eminent among their new associates. Some had of old been Democrats,
though most had been Whigs.
Notwithstanding many appearances to the contrary, the Democracy had
begun to lose its hold upon the North from the moment of Polk's
nomination in 1844. In that act it showed preference, on the score of
availability, for a small man as presidential candidate. Harrison's
election and Van Buren's defeat in 1840 doubtless had something to do
with this. The same disposition was revealed in 1852, when Pierce was
made candidate. What harmed the party still more was swerving from
strict construction in declaring for the annexation of Texas, which in
this case did not imply enlargement of view in reading the Constitution,
but simply subserviency to the slave power. In this way Van Buren was
alienated and the vote of New York lost in 1848, insuring defeat that
year.
[1856-1860]
This particular breach was pretty well healed, but the evil survived.
Then came the compromise repeal, wherein the Democracy stood by the
South in casting to the winds, the moment it promised to be of service
to the North, a solemn bargain which had yielded the South Florida,
Arkansas, and Missouri as slave States. Northern Democrats, especially
in the rural parts, unwilling longer to serve slavery, drew off from the
party in increasing numbers. Northern States one by one passed to the
opposition. The whole of New England had gone over in 1856, also New
York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa--Buchanan having six votes
outside those of Pennsylvania, where he won, as many believed, by unfair
means. In 1860, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Indiana,
Minnesota, and Oregon crossed to the same side.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CRISIS
[1850]
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was politically a remarkable
epoch. It not only consolidated old anti-slavery men, but cooled, to say
the least, many "silvergray," or conservative Whigs, as well as many
"hards" and "hunkers" among the Democrats. But the slavocrats were blind
to the risk they were running, and grew bolder than ever. There were now
propositions for renewing the foreign slave-trade. Worse black laws were
enacted. There was increased ferocity toward all who did not pronounce
slavery a blessing, prouder domineering in politics, especially in
Congress, and perpetual threat of secession in case the slave power
should fail to have its way.

Abraham Lincoln. After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah
Brooks. (Only five copies of this photograph were printed.)
There were also plans for foreign conquest in slavery's behalf, which
received countenance from public and even from national authorities. The
idea seemed to be that the victory and territorial enlargement
consequent upon the Mexican War might be repeated in Central America and
Cuba. The efforts of Lopez in 1850 and 1851 to conquer Cuba with aid
from the United States had indeed been brought to an end through this
adventurer's execution in the latter year by the Cuban authorities.
Pierce put forth a proclamation in 1854, warning American citizens
against like attempts in future. Defying this, the next year William
Walker headed a filibustering expedition to the Pacific coast of
Nicaragua, conquering the capital of that state and setting up a
government which proceeded to re-establish slavery and invite
immigration from the United States. Driven out by a coalition of other
Central American states against him, Walker at once organized a new
raid, and landed at Punta Arenas, Nicaragua, November 25, 1857; but he
was seized by Commodore Paulding of our navy and brought to New York. He
made a similar effort the next year, and another in 1860, when he
captured Truxillo in Honduras, only to be soon overwhelmed, tried and
shot.
[1852]
If the Government at Washington was not openly implicated in any of
these movements, no more, surely, did it heartily deprecate them.
Fillmore's administration had in 1852 declined to enter into an alliance
with Great Britain and France disclaiming intention to secure Cuba. In
1854, inspired by Pierce, our ministers at London, Paris, and Madrid,
met at Ostend and put forth the "Ostend Manifesto." The tenor of this
was that Spain would be better off without Cuba and we with it, and
further, that, if Spain refused to sell, the United States ought as a
means of self-preservation to take that island by force, lest it should
become a second San Domingo. This proposition, like everything else
relating to the great Repeal, was under umbrage in 1856; but in 1858 the
southern Democrats in Congress brought in a bill to purchase Cuba for
$30,000,000, and the democratic platform of 1860 spoke for the
acquisition thereof at the earliest practicable moment, by all
"honorable and just means."
[1854]
Thus an institution, barbarous, anti-democratic, sectional, an
unmitigated curse even to its section, not so much as named in the
Constitution, beginning with apology from all, by the zeal and
unscrupulousness of advocates, the consolidation of political power at
the South, and apathy, sycophancy, divided counsels, and commercial
greed in the North, gradually amassed might, till, at the middle of Mr.
Buchanan's term, every branch of the national Government was its tool,
the Supreme Court included, enabling it authoritatively to mis-read the
Constitution, declare the Union a pro-slavery compact, and act
accordingly. But justice would not be mocked, and, though advancing upon
halting foot, dealt the death-blow like lightning at last.
We have seen the feeble efforts of the old Liberty Party to make head
against slavery, Birney and Earle being its candidates in 1840, Birney
and Morris in 1844. In 1848 these "conscience Free-soilers" were
re-enforced by what have been called the "political Free-soilers" of the
State of New York, led by ex-President Van Buren. This astute organizer,
aware that his defeat in the democratic convention of 1844 had resulted
from southern and pro-slavery influences, led a bolt in the New York
Democracy. His partisans in this were known as the "Barn-burners," while
the administration Democrats were called the "Hunkers." In the
democratic convention of 1848 at Baltimore appeared representatives of
both factions, and both sets were admitted, each with half the state
vote. This satisfied neither side. The Barn-burners called a convention
at Utica in June, and put Van Buren in nomination for the presidency.
The Liberty Party men had the preceding year nominated Hale for this
office, but now, seeing their opportunity, they called a new convention
at Buffalo for August 9, 1848, to which all Free-soilers were invited;
and this convention made Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams its
candidates for President and Vice-President. The platform declared
against any further extension of slavery. The party was henceforth known
as the "Free-soilers," the name coming from its insistence that the
territory conquered from Mexico should forever remain free. Its platform
denounced slavery as a sin against God and a crime against man, and
repudiated the compromise of 1850. It also laid special emphasis upon
the wickedness of the new fugitive slave law, of which it demanded the
repeal. By 1852 the regular Democracy in New York had won back a large
proportion of the Barn-burners or free-soil revolters, so that the
free-soil prospect in this year was not encouraging. Only 146,149
free-soil votes were polled in all the northern states.
[1856]
What quickened this drooping movement into new and triumphant life was
the revocation of the Missouri Compromise. This rallied to the free-soil
standard nearly all the northern Whigs, many old Barn-burners who since
1848 had returned to the democratic fold, and vast numbers of other
anti-Lecompton Democrats. Most of the Know-nothings throughout the North
also joined it, while of course it had in all its anti-slavery measures
the hearty co-operation, directly political or other, of the
Abolitionists. The first national convention of this new party,
fortunately styling itself "Republican," was in 1856. Whig doctrine
early appeared in the party by the demand for protection, internal
improvements, and a national banking system; in fact, Republicanism may
be said to have received nearly entire the whig mantle, as the Whigs did
that of Federalism.
But the living soul and integrating idea of the party was new, the rigid
confinement of slavery and the slave power to their narrowest
constitutional limits. It denounced the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. In the election of this year, 1856, eleven States chose
Republican electors, viz.: all New England, also New York, Ohio,
Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Evidently the Democracy had at last found
a foe at which it were best not to sneer. The Dred Scott decision
immensely aided the growth of this new political power, as it was now
quite generally believed in the North that the whole policy of the South
was a greedy, selfish grasping for the extension of slavery.
[1858]
Out of this conviction, apparently, grew the John Brown raid into
Virginia in 1858. John Brown was an enthusiast, whom sufferings from the
Border Ruffians in Kansas, where one of his sons had been atrociously
murdered and another driven to insanity by cruel treatment as a
prisoner, had frenzied in his opposition to slavery. He had dedicated
himself to its extirpation. The intrepid old man formed the purpose of
invading Virginia, and of placing himself with a few white allies at the
head of a slave insurrection that should sweep the State. Friends in
the North had contributed money for the purchase of arms, and on October
16th, Brown, with fourteen white men and four negroes, seized the United
States Armory at Harper's Ferry. He stopped the railway trains, freed
some slaves, and assumed to rule the town. United States troops were at
once despatched to the scene, when the misguided hero, with his devoted
band, fortified themselves in the engine house, surrendering only after
thirteen of them, including two of Brown's sons, were killed or mortally
wounded. Brown and the other survivors were soon tried, convicted, and
hung. This insane attempt was deprecated by nearly all of all parties;
but the fate of Brown, with his resolute bravery, begot him large
sympathy, and the false assumption of the South that he really
represented northern feeling made his deed helpful to the anti-slavery
movement, of which the Republican Party was now the centre.