Governor Stevens rapidly overcame—lived down—the prejudice excited by the charges and reports against him, and won the respect of his fellow members. Several of them expressed to him their surprise at finding him so different a man from what they had been led to believe. Said one gentleman, “I expected to find you a loud-voiced, tobacco-chewing, drinking, swearing, violent man, and instead I find a gentleman of quiet manners, education, ability, and high aims and ideals.” The governor used to regard this change of opinion, which he personally made upon members, with a good deal of satisfaction.
He usually rose early, and spent the two hours before breakfast at work in his office. After breakfast and until noon, when Congress met, he would spend in visiting the departments. He kept a light carriage with one horse for this purpose, and for going to and from the Capitol, having the colored servant Bob drive it, or driving himself. He had unbounded influence in all the departments. The clear, lucid way in which he presented his cases; his brief, prompt, business-like methods; the fact that he never asked anything that he did not believe to be right, and called for by public interests, and that he would not submit to delay or neglect, but would follow up his matters until they received due attention, even to the President himself if necessary,—made him respected and somewhat feared, while his uniform courtesy and consideration for the clerks and subordinates won their goodwill.
He acquired great influence with President Buchanan. His son Hazard was desirous of entering West Point, and he took the youth to call on the President and ask an appointment for him. Mr. Buchanan very naturally asked the governor why he did not give his son the appointment within his own gift as a member of Congress. The latter declared he could not do this with propriety, and pointedly requested the desired appointment, which the President seemed reluctant to make, pleading the many claims upon him for the few cadetships at his disposal. But finding the governor still firm in his request, he promised unequivocally and positively to appoint his son. The governor carefully refrained from advising or influencing the latter in the choice of a profession, telling him that he had better decide the matter for himself. An uncle, however, very strenuously urged him not to go to West Point. At last the young man besought the advice of his father, who simply said that he would not advise him to enter West Point, or adopt the army as a profession, but told him to decide according to his own judgment and inclination. Under these circumstances he concluded to give up West Point. Within a year the rebellion broke out, and he was carrying a musket in the ranks of the Union volunteers. How little can we foresee the future!
The governor appointed Robert Catlin as cadet to West Point from Washington Territory.
He dined at six, and spent the evening in social intercourse. Sometimes he would make the rounds of the hotels, meeting old friends and acquaintances, and frequently would work late in the night on some matter that engaged his attention. Like all rising and influential men, he was more and more sought after in behalf of all sorts of people and schemes. Mrs. Stevens relates that on one occasion, when she was reading in the rear end of the large double parlors and the governor was receiving two gentlemen in the front room, she was startled to see him suddenly spring from his chair, face his visitors with upright, soldierly bearing and head erect, exclaiming in a stern and indignant voice, “Look at me, gentlemen, and tell me what you see about me that you dare intimate such a proposition! Leave my house!” They slunk off without a word.
The governor delighted in hospitality, and was never happier than when entertaining his friends. While in Washington he was visited by many of his own and Mrs. Stevens’s relatives.
Governor Stevens was preëminently a national man in all his ideas and sympathies. His Revolutionary ancestry, his West Point training, his participation in large national interests,—as the Mexican war, the Coast Survey, the exploration of the continent and upbuilding of the Pacific Northwest, together with the natural bent of his patriotic nature and comprehensive, far-sighted mind,—strengthened his love for and pride in the great Republic, and made sectionalism or disunion utterly abhorrent to him. Like Webster, he regarded the Union as the palladium of national liberty, life, and power, and its preservation the highest patriotic duty.
There was an aggressive disunion faction, in the Southern tier of slave States, seeking to disrupt the Union by magnifying Northern encroachments against the Southern institution of negro slavery; but the great bulk of the Southern people still held fast to their ancient moorings. Governor Stevens firmly believed that to maintain unimpaired the compromises of the Constitution in regard to slavery was not only the highest statesmanship looking to the preservation of the Union, but a matter of justice and good faith to the Southern Unionists. He believed that as long as the Northern Democracy stood by the constitutional rights of the South, they would continue to hold fast to the Union, and defeat the Secessionists, and that thus, by the league of broad-minded national men both North and South, the extremists could be kept down and the Union maintained.
The political issues of the day sprang up over the question of slavery in the Territories. The Republican party held that Congress had the right, and it was its duty, to prohibit slavery within them; and its more progressive leaders openly expressed the belief that the institution, if debarred from extension and confined to the existing slave States, would ultimately become extinct. The Democratic party was divided between two doctrines on the question. The majority of Northern Democrats upheld the “Squatter Sovereignty” doctrine of Stephen A. Douglas, to wit, that the people of each Territory had the right to decide for or against slavery; while the Southern Democrats and a large part of those in the North, including many of the oldest and ablest leaders and public men, held that, as the Territories had been acquired by the blood and treasure of all the States, neither Congress nor the citizens of a Territory could lawfully prohibit slavery therein as long as they remained Territories; but when they assumed Statehood, the people could prohibit or establish slavery, as they saw fit. The latter doctrine had the support of a dictum of the Supreme Court. Moreover, well-informed men knew that, as a practical matter, there was no probability that negro slavery could be extended into any of the existing Territories, for both natural conditions and the great preponderance of Northern emigration to the West were adverse to it. A few brief years would settle the question in the Territories, and remove it from national politics; and meantime, if the Southern people, the great majority of whom were Union-loving and patriotic, could be reassured that their constitutional rights as to slavery would be respected, the disunionists would become powerless, the dangerous controversies over slavery would die out, and the Union would be saved, stronger and more glorious than ever. Such were the views of Stevens and many of the ablest Democratic leaders, the same views that actuated Clay and Webster and their compatriots when they allayed the storm of an earlier strife over the same subject. No spirit of subserviency to the South actuated them, but a strong sense of justice to the weaker section, of fidelity to the Constitution, of loyalty to the Southern Unionists, and, above all, a broad-minded national patriotism. Thus it was that the men of whom Governor Stevens was a type, after striving to the utmost to safeguard the Southern constitutional rights, when sacrilegious hands assailed the nation’s life, and the Southern people, frenzied with the madness of the hour, were swept into the maelstrom of the great rebellion, were foremost in defense of the country, in self-devotion and self-sacrifice for her sake. In this school of patriots are numbered two members of Lincoln’s cabinet, Edwin M. Stanton, the great War Secretary, and Joseph Holt, the Attorney-General; General John A. Dix and Daniel L. Dickinson, of New York; Generals Grant, Sherman, Halleck, Sheridan; Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts; John A. Logan, of Illinois; and many others, all of whom supported Breckinridge and Lane.
Although deeply immersed in the important practical measures for the advancement of the Northern route and the Pacific Northwest, Governor Stevens was as earnest and decided in his political views as in everything else he undertook. He attended the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Charleston, S.C., April 23, as a delegate representing Oregon, the Territories having no representation. He ardently advocated the nomination of General Lane, his friend and co-worker in behalf of the Pacific Territories. General Lane had achieved much distinction in the Mexican war, was a man of broad, statesman-like views, sound judgment, upright, high-toned, generous, and considerate of others, and universally esteemed. He was just the man for a compromise candidate, and his chances were good for the nomination after the more prominent candidates should defeat each other. But the convention split upon the platform, the Northern delegates insisting upon the squatter sovereignty doctrine; whereupon the representatives of nine extreme Southern States seceded from the convention, which, without making any nominations, adjourned to meet at Baltimore on June 18. In the few ballots taken, General Lane received six votes; but the opportune moment for which his friend hoped never arrived, owing to the disruption of the convention.