The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Narrative and Critical History

by George Cary Eggleston

Daniel Webster fitly exposed the character and significance of this petition by moving that it be prefaced with a preamble as follows:

Whereas, at the commencement of the session, you and each of you took your solemn oaths, in the presence of God and on the Holy Evangelists, that you would support the Constitution of the United States; now, therefore, we pray you to take immediate steps to break up the Union, and overthrow the Constitution of the United States as soon as you can.

So repulsive was this proposal of disunion that only three senators voted even to receive the petition embodying it and in the House a like refusal was made. But those three senators were Mr. Seward, of New York, Mr. Chase of Ohio, and Mr. Hale of New Hampshire—three great leaders of Northern thought who were destined soon to become three men of dominant influence in the new party of Free-soil and leaders in antagonism to the Southern claim to a share in the new territories.

There might have been a score of other votes for the petition which would have had far less significance. The votes of these three senators meant clearly that the Free-soil party looked upon disunion just as the extreme pro-slavery men of the South did, as a legitimate and always available remedy for existing ills or a prophylactic against evils anticipated.

As early as 1847 Mr. Calhoun had set forth the Southern contention with regard to the territories in a series of carefully worded resolutions which read as follows:

Resolved, that the territories of the United States belong to the several States composing this Union, and are held by them as their joint and common property.

Resolved, that Congress, as the joint agent and representative of the States of this Union, has no right to make any law, or do any act whatever, that shall directly, or by its effects, make any discrimination between the States of this Union, by which any of them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in any territory of the United States, acquired or to be acquired.

Resolved, that the enactment of any law which should, directly or by its effects, deprive the citizens of any of the States of this Union from emigrating, with their property, into any of the territories of the United States, would make such discrimination, and would, therefore, be a violation of the Constitution and the rights of the States from which such citizens emigrated, and in derogation of that perfect equality which belongs to them as members of this Union, and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself.

Resolved, that it is a fundamental principle of our political creed, that a people, in forming a Constitution, have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity, and happiness; and that, in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the Federal Constitution on a State, in order to be admitted into this Union, except that its constitution shall be republican; and that the imposition of any other by Congress would be not only in violation of the Constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on which our political system rests.

Here we have from the South a threat of disunion, a trifle more disguised, perhaps, than the threats that had come from the North, but not less positive. The resolutions were intended especially to cover the new territories which the country was then acquiring from Mexico by conquest and treaty, but they covered with equal effect all of that territory which had been added to the Union by the Louisiana Purchase, and the greater part of which had been set apart by the Missouri Compromise to be formed into free states. They were a challenge to the Missouri Compromise, and the assertion of a doctrine which afterwards greatly vexed the country and contributed in an important way to the bringing about of war. They constituted a plea for that repeal of the Missouri Compromise which was to come a very few years later.

This was the condition of things which Congress had to confront on its assembling in December, 1849. Disunion was everywhere in the air and on each side there was a party openly advocating it as the only remedy for existing and threatened ills. Both in the North and the South this party of disunion was in a hopeless minority, but by reason of its ceaseless and aggressive activity it had managed to make itself seem the authorized exponent of public opinion for each side.

The questions before the country were many, but they all related, directly or indirectly, to slavery. Should California be admitted to the Union as a free state? If so with what boundaries? for California then included Utah, Nevada and adjacent territory. Or should California, limited to the present boundaries of that state, be divided into two commonwealths, so that the Southern half might come in as a slave state to offset the Northern half in the Senate and the electoral college? Texas had already been admitted as a slave state, but its boundaries were still vague and undefined. It claimed jurisdiction over all that we now know as New Mexico and Arizona. Should that vast region—the sterility of which was at that time wholly unappreciated—be added to the domain of slavery, or should it be set apart in the hope that it might be erected presently into two or three or possibly half a dozen free states?

There were also two complaints of arrogant aggression from the opposing sides. At the North there was complaint that the "slave power," as it was called, sought and threatened to make itself dominant and supreme in the Union by its demands for the rendition of fugitive slaves. At the South there was complaint that the homes and firesides of the Southern people were menaced with servile insurrection by the activities of those who sought to breed discontent among the negroes and spread among them sentiments dangerous to public peace and order. There was complaint at the North that the constitutional and statutory provisions for the rendition of fugitive slaves exacted of Northern people an obligation which many of them could not conscientiously fulfil, making them unwilling parties to a system which their consciences abhorred, or, if they refused obedience, condemning them to the condition of lawbreakers and denouncing them as criminals because of their refusal to do that against which their very souls revolted. On the other hand the people of the South complained that their Northern brethren, or many of them, not only assisted runaway slaves to escape but deliberately incited them to that course and that the constitutional compact upon that subject was not enforced by any adequate statutory law.