Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

"He aint half anti-slav'ry 'nough";

but Whittier exclaimed, that September:

"Now joy and thanks forever more!
The dreary night has well-nigh passed:
The slumbers of the North are o'er:
The giant stands erect at last!"

The anti-slavery vote was nearly five times as large as in 1844. Cass would have been elected if the Free Soilers had supported him in New York. Their hostility gave that State, as well as Vermont and Massachusetts, to Taylor, who thus became President. He also carried Georgia and seven other Southern States; but the West was solidly Democratic. It was not an anti-slavery victory, but a pro-slavery defeat.

II. The first question before the new President and Congress was about California. The discovery of gold, before the country was ceded by Mexico, had brought in crowds of settlers, but scarcely any slaves. Unwillingness to have another free State prevented Polk and his Senate from allowing California to have any better government than a military one; and this was deprived of all authority by the desertion of the soldiers to the diggings. The settlers knew the value of a free government, and made one independently. The constitution which they completed in October, 1848, was so anti-slavery that it was not sanctioned for nearly two years by Congress. Meantime there was no legal authority in California to levy taxes, or organise fire departments, or arrest criminals. Robberies and conflagrations were numerous; the mushroom cities were not graded, paved, or lighted; the uncertainty of titles to land caused fights in which lives were lost; and criminals became so desperate that several were lynched by a Vigilance Committee.

The duty of admitting California as a free State was urged upon the new Congress in December, 1849, by Taylor, who promised to make an unexpectedly good President. This plan had become so popular at the North that it was recommended by the Democratic State conventions of Massachusetts and Wisconsin, as well as by the legislature of every Northern State, except Iowa. The House of Representatives could easily have been carried; for the Whigs and Free Soilers constituted a majority, and would have had some help from Northern Democrats. The Senate would probably not have consented until after another appeal to the people; but this might have been made with success at the elections of 1850.

Taylor had carried Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware. The last two States had permitted some Free Soil votes to be cast; this was also the case in Virginia; and anti-slavery meetings had been held publicly in St. Louis. The pro-slavery defeat in 1848 encouraged Southerners who knew the advantage of free labour to agitate for emancipation. The convention held for this purpose in Kentucky, in 1849, was attended by delegates from twenty-four counties; and its declaration that slavery was "injurious to the prosperity of the Commonwealth," was endorsed by Southern newspapers. Clay himself proposed a plan of gradual emancipation; and such a measure was called for, according to the Richmond Southerner (quoted in Hoist's Constitutional History, vol. iii., p. 433), by "two-thirds of the people of Virginia." Admissions that "Kentucky must be free," that "Delaware and Maryland are now in a transition, preparatory to becoming free States," and that "Emancipation is inevitable in all the farming States, where free labour can be advantageously used," were published in 1853, at New Orleans, in De Bow's Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States (vols. i., p. 407; ii., p. 310; Hi., p. 60). A book which was written soon after by a North Carolinian named Helper, and denounced violently in Congress, shows how much those Southerners who did not hold slaves would have gained by emancipation; and what was so plainly for the interest of the majority of the voters would have been established by them, sooner or later, if it had not been for the breaking out of civil war.

How much danger there was, even in 1849, to slave-holders is shown by their threats to secede. They wished to increase the hostility between North and South in order to check the spread southwards of Northern views. It was in this spirit that Senators and Representatives from the cotton States demanded a more efficient law for returning fugitives. Most of the thirty thousand then at the North had come from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri; and these States were invited to act with their southern neighbours against abolitionism.

There were very few secessionists at this time, except in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. President Taylor was so popular at the South, and so avowedly ready to take command himself against rebels, that no army could have been raised to resist him. Webster declared, in February, 1850, that there was no danger of secession; and the same opinion was held by Benton of Missouri, Seward, and other Senators. There was not enough alarm at the North to affect the stock-market. All that the Whigs needed to do for the Union was to sustain it with all the strength which they could use for that purpose at the South. If they had also insisted that California should be admitted unconditionally, they would soon have had support enough from Northern Democrats in Congress. The demand for a national party of freedom was urgent. The Free Soilers were too sectional; but the Whigs had so much influence at the South that they could have checked the extension of slavery without bloodshed; and this would have ensured the progress of emancipation.

III. All this might have been done if Clay's hatred of the abolitionists, who had refused to make him President, had not made him try to cripple them by another compromise. He proposed that California should be admitted at once and without slavery; that it should be left to the settlers in Utah and New Mexico to decide whether these territories should ultimately become free or slave States; that Texas should receive a large sum of money, as well as a great tract of land which she had threatened to take from New Mexico by force; and, worst of all, that a new fugitive-slave bill should be passed. The law then on the statute books left the question whether the defendant should be enslaved to be decided by a magistrate elected by the people or appointed by the governor; and the court was so apt to be restricted by local legislation or public opinion, that recovery of fugitives was practically impossible in New England. The new law retained the worst provision of the old one; namely, that no jury could be asked to decide whether the defendant had ever been a slave. The principal change was that the judge was to come into such close relations with the national administration as to be independent of the people of the State. In short, fugitive slaves were to be punished, and disloyal Texans rewarded, in order that California might get her rights.