Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

Emigrants from New England were sent into that territory so rapidly that the Douglas plan seemed likely to hasten the time when it would be a free State. The South had insisted on the rights of the settlers; but they were outvoted, in November, 1854, and afterwards, by bands of armed Missourians, who marched off when they had carried the election. The Free State men were then supplied with rifles; and an anti-slavery constitution was adopted by the majority of actual residents. The minority were supported by the President, as well as by the "border-ruffians"; two rival governments were set up; and civil war began early in 1855. Lawrence, the principal town in Kansas, was sacked by command of the United States Marshal, the most important buildings burned, and much private property stolen. Five settlers, whose threats of violence had offended John Brown, were slain in cold blood by him and his men, in retaliation for the Lawrence outrage, in May, 1856. Anarchy continued; but the new State was not admitted until 1861.

Prominent among the Northerners who insisted on the right of Kansas to govern herself, was Sumner. His speech in the Senate in May, 1856, was so powerful that half a million copies were printed as campaign literature, and Whittier said, "It has saved the country." The orator had attacked some of his colleagues with needless severity; and on the day after the sack of Lawrence, he was assaulted by a Representative from South Carolina in the Senate Chamber with such ferocity that he could not return to his seat before 1860. This cruel outrage against freedom of speech was universally applauded throughout the South.

There was indignation enough at the North in 1856 to have given the election to the Republicans, if the field had been clear; but Protestant bigotry enabled the South to choose the President who failed to oppose rebellion. The Catholics had objected as early as 1840 to the Protestantism which was taught, in part at their expense, to their children in the public schools. Some ways in which this was done then have since been abandoned; but the principal controversy has been about using a book which is universally acknowledged to be a bulwark of Protestantism. There would not be so much zeal at present for having it read daily in the schools, if it has no religious influence; and our Catholic citizens have a right to prefer that their children should be taught religion in ways not forbidden by their Church. Pupils have not had much moral or even religious benefit from school-books against which their conscience rebelled, however unreasonably.

The Catholic position in 1841, according to Bishop Hughes, afterwards Archbishop, was this: "We do not ask money from the school fund;—all our desire is that it should be administered in such a way as to promote the education of all" and "leave the various denominations each in the full possession of its religious rights over the minds of its own children. If the children are to be educated promiscuously, as at present, let religion in every shape and form be excluded."

The Catholics soon changed their ground, and demanded that their parochial schools should be supported by public money. This called out the opposition of a secret society, which insisted on keeping the Bible in the schools and excluding Catholics from office. The Know Nothings had the aid of so many Whigs in 1854 as to elect a large number of candidates, most of whom were friendly to the Republicans. The leaders wished to remain neutral between North and South; but it is hard to say whether the pledge of loyalty to the Union did not facilitate the capture of the organisation by the insatiable South early in 1856. Beecher had already declared that the Know Nothing lodges were "catacombs of freedom" in which indignation against slavery was stifled.

The presidential election showed that the outburst of bigotry had done more harm to friends than enemies of liberty. The Democrats lost Maryland, but gained Pennsylvania and four other Northern States. This enabled them to retain the Presidency and the Senate, as well as to recover the House of Representatives, where they had become weaker than the Republicans. The party of freedom polled eight times as many votes as in 1852, and made its first appearance in the electoral colleges. It carried eleven States. The Whigs had accepted the Know Nothing nominee; and both these neutral parties soon dissolved.

Anarchy in Kansas had been suppressed by United States dragoons; but they did not prevent the adoption of a pro-slavery constitution by bogus elections. Buchanan promptly advised Congress to admit Kansas as a slave State, and declared she was already as much one as Georgia or South Carolina. This opinion he based on the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Douglas insisted on the right of the people of Kansas to "vote slavery up or down." They were enabled by the joint efforts of Republicans and Northern Democrats to have a fair chance to say whether they wished to become a slave State or remain a territory; and the latter was preferred by four-fifths of the voters.

V. The South called Douglas a traitor; but leading Republicans helped the Illinois Democrats, in 1858, to elect the Legislature which gave him another term in the Senate. He might have become the next President if his opponent in the senatorial contest, Abraham Lincoln, had not led the Republican party into the road towards emancipation. On June 16, 1858, he said, in the State convention: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." Seward took the same position, four months later, in his speech about the "irrepressible conflict." Lincoln held that summer and autumn a series of joint debates with his opponent, before audiences one of which was estimated at twenty thousand. The speeches were circulated by the Republicans as campaign documents; and Lincoln's were remarkable, not only for his giving no needless provocation to the South, but for his proving that slavery ought not to be introduced into any new territory or State by local elections. He represented Douglas as really holding that if one man chooses to enslave another no third man has any business to interfere; and he repudiated the decision in the Dred Scott case, that coloured people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." He had more votes that fall than Douglas; but the latter's friends were enabled by the district system to control the Legislature. Douglas was sent back to the Senate. Lincoln gained the national reputation which made him President.

The congressional elections were more favourable to the Republicans than in 1856, for Northern indignation was growing under the stimulus, not only of the new wrong to Kansas, but of attempts to annex Cuba and revive the slave trade. Plans for emancipation were still discussed in the South; and the agitation had reached even Texas. Helper's Impending Crisis had gained circulation enough in his own State, North Carolina, to alarm the slaveholders. They knew that they constituted only three-tenths of the Southern voters, and that the proportion was less than one-sixth in Maryland. Helper proved that emancipation would be greatly to the advantage of many men who held slaves, as well as of all who did not. When this was found out by the majority in any Southern State, slavery would begin to fall by its own weight. It had been kept up by popular ignorance; but the prop was crumbling away. This way of emancipation might have been long; but it would have led to friendly relations between whites and blacks, as well as between North and South.

What was most needed in 1859 was that all friends of freedom should work together, and that no needless pretext should be given for secession. Garrison still insisted on disunion, and predicted that the South would not "be able to hold a single slave one hour after the deed is done," but he also maintained, as most abolitionists did, that nothing would be more foolish than trying to excite a slave insurrection. Precisely this greatest of blunders was committed at Harper's Ferry. If the attempt had been made six months later, or had had even a few weeks of success, it might have enabled the slaveholders to elect at least one more President. The bad effect, in dividing the North, was much diminished by John Brown's heroism at his trial and execution; but great provocation was given to the South, and especially to Virginia, which soon turned out to be the most dangerous of the rebel States. Business men were driven North by the dozen from cities which were preparing for war.