But slavery does not give up its point so easily after one defeat. Preparations were made along the Missouri frontier for another invasion, conducted in a more military manner and by troops under better discipline. The Free-State people of Kansas were to be exterminated. From week to week they were expecting an attack, and had to watch continually against it. After having worked all day the men were obliged to do military duty and stand guard all night. Men who lived four and five miles out from Lawrence got wood and water for their wives in the morning, left them a revolver with which to defend themselves, and went to Lawrence to do military duty, returning at night again.
If we had a writer gifted with the genius of Macaulay to describe the resistance of Kansas to the Federal authorities on one side and the Missouri invaders on the other, it would show as heroic courage and endurance as are related in the brilliant pages which tell of the defense of Londonderry. The invaders were unscrupulous, knowing that they had nothing to fear from the government at Washington. Senator Atchison, formerly the presiding officer of the United States Senate, openly advised the people of Missouri to go and vote in Kansas. General Stringfellow told them to take their bowie-knives and exterminate every scoundrel who was tainted with Free-soilism or Abolitionism. The orders were obeyed. The first legislature was elected by armed invaders from Missouri, and Buford with a regiment of Southern soldiers entered the Territory in 1856, and surrounded Lawrence. These troops, under Atchison, Buford, and Stringfellow, burned houses and hotels, and stole much property. Osawatomie was sacked and burned, Leavenworth invaded and plundered, and Free-State men were killed. A proslavery constitution formed by Missouri slaveholders was forced through Congress, but rejected by the people of Kansas, who at last gained possession of their own State by indomitable courage and patience. Four territorial governors, appointed by the President, selected from the Democratic party and favorable to the extension of slavery, were all converted to the cause of freedom by the sight of the outrages committed by the Missouri invaders.
Amid this scene of tumult arose a warrior on the side of freedom destined to take his place with William Wallace and William Tell among the few names of patriots which are never forgotten. John Brown of Osawatomie was one of those who, in these later days, have reproduced for us the almost forgotten type of the Jewish hero and prophet. He was a man who believed in a God of justice, who believed in fighting fire with fire. He was one who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, an austere man, a man absorbed in his ideas, fixed as fate in pursuing them. Yet his heart was full of tenderness, he had no feeling of revenge toward any, and he really lost his own life rather than risk the lives of others. While in Kansas he become a leader of men, a captain, equal to every exigency. The ruffians from Missouri found to their surprise that, before they could conquer Kansas, they had some real fighting to do, and must face Sharpe's rifles; and as soon as they understood this, their zeal for their cause was very much abated. In this struggle John Brown was being educated for the last scene of his life, which has lifted up his name, and placed it in that body which Daniel O'Connell used to call "The order of Liberators."[53]
Out of these persecutions of Free-State men in Kansas came the assault on Charles Sumner, for words spoken in debate. Charles Sumner was elected to the United States Senate in 1851. He found in Congress some strong champions of freedom. John Quincy Adams was gone; but Seward was there, and Chase, and John P. Hale, in the Senate; and Horace Mann, Giddings, and other true men in the House. Henry Wilson himself, always a loyal friend to Sumner, did not come till 1855. These men all differed from one another, and each possessed special gifts for his arduous work. They stood face to face with an imperious majority, accustomed to rule. They had only imperfect support at home,—people and press at the North had been demoralized by slavery. They must watch their words, be careful of what they said, control their emotions, maintain an equal temper. Something of the results of this discipline we think we perceive in the calm tone of Mr. Wilson's volumes, and the absence of passion in his narration. These men must give no occasion to the enemy to blaspheme, but be careful of their lips and their lives. Their gifts, we have said, were various. Seward was a politician, trained in all the intricate ways of New York party struggles; but he was also a thinker of no small power of penetration. He could see principles, but was too much disposed to sacrifice or postpone them to some supposed exigency of the hour. In his orations, when he spoke for mankind, his views were large; but in his politics he sometimes gave up to party his best-considered convictions. Thought and action, he seemed to believe, belonged to two spheres; in his thought he was often broader in his range than any other senator, but in action he was frequently tempted to temporize. Mr. Chase was a man of a different sort. He had no disposition to concede any of his views. A cautious man, he moved slowly; but when he had taken his position, he was not disposed to leave it. John P. Hale was admirable in reply. His retorts were rapid and keen, and yet were uttered so good-naturedly, and with so much wit, that it was difficult for his opponents to take offense. But Charles Sumner was "the noblest Roman of them all." With a more various culture, a higher tone of moral sentiment, he was also a learned student and a man of implacable opinions. He never could comprehend Mr. Seward's diplomacy, and probably Mr. Seward could never understand Sumner's inability to compromise. He was deficient in imagination and in tact; therefore he could not enter into the minds of others, and imperfectly understood them. But the purity of his soul and life, the childlike simplicity of his purposes, and the sweetness of his disposition, were very charming to those who knew him well. Add to this the resources of a mind stored with every kind of knowledge, and a memory which never forgot anything, and his very presence in Washington gave an added value to the place. He had seen men and cities, and was intimate with European celebrities, but yet was an Israelite indeed in whom was no guile. Fond of the good opinions of others, and well pleased with their approbation, he never sacrificed a conviction to win their praise or to avoid their censure. Certainly, he was one of the purest men who ever took part in American politics.
It was such a man as this, so gifted and adorned, so spotless and upright, who by the wise providence of God was permitted to be the victim of a brutal assassin. It was this noble head, the instrument of laborious thought for the public welfare, which was beaten and bruised by the club of a ruffian, on May 22, 1856. Loud was the triumph through the South, great the joy of the slave power. They had disabled, with cruel blows, their chief enemy. Little did they foresee—bad men never do foresee—that Charles Sumner was to return to his seat, and become a great power in the land, long after their system had been crushed, and their proud States trampled into ruin by the tread of Northern armies. They did not foresee that he was to be the trusted counselor of Lincoln during those years of war; and that, after they had been conquered, he would become one of their best friends in their great calamity, and repay their evil with good.
This murderous assault on Mr. Sumner cannot be considered as having strengthened the political position of the slave power. It was a great mistake in itself, and it was a greater mistake in being indorsed by such multitudes in the slave States. In thus taking the responsibility of the act, they fully admitted that brutality, violence, and cowardly attempts at assassination are natural characteristics of slavery. A thrill of horror went through the civilized world on this occasion. All the free States felt themselves outraged. That an attempt should be made to kill in his seat a Northern man, for words spoken in debate, was a gross insult and wrong to the nation, and deepened everywhere the detestation felt for the system.
But madness must have its perfect work. One more step remained to be taken by the slave power, and that was to claim the right, under the Constitution, and protected by the general government, to carry slaves and slavery into all the Territories. It was not enough that they were not prohibited by acts of Congress. They must not allow the people of the Territories to decide for themselves whether slavery should exist among them or not. It had a right to exist there, in spite of the people. A single man from South Carolina, going with his slaves into Nebraska, should have the power of making that a slave State, though all the rest of its inhabitants wished it to be free. And if he were troubled by his neighbors, he had a right to call on the military power of the United States to protect him against them. Such was the doctrine of the Dred Scott case, such the doctrine accepted by the majority of the United States Senate under the lead of Jefferson Davis in the spring of 1859. Such was the doctrine demanded by the Southern members of the Democratic Convention in Charleston, S. C., in May, 1860, and, failing to carry it, they broke up that convention. And it was because they were defeated in this purpose of carrying slavery into the Territories that they seceded from the Union, and formed the Southern Confederacy.
They had gained a long succession of political triumphs, which we have briefly traced in this article. They had annexed Texas, and made another slave State of that Territory. They had established the principle that slavery was not to be excluded by law from any of the Territories of the nation. They had repealed the Missouri Compromise, passed the Fugitive Slave Law, obtained the Dred Scott decision from the Supreme Court. In all this they had been aided by the Democratic party, and were sure of the continued help of that party. With these allies, they were certain to govern the country for a long period of years. The President, the Senate, the Supreme Court, were all on their side. As regarded slavery in the States, there was nothing to threaten its existence there. The Republicans proposed only to restrict it to the region where it actually existed, but could not and would not meddle with it therein. If the slave power had been satisfied with this, it seems probable that it might have retained its ascendency in the country for a long period. An immense region was still open to its colonies. Cotton was still king, and the slaveholders possessed all the available cotton-growing regions. They were wealthy, they were powerful, they governed the nation. They threw all this power away by seceding from the Union. Why did they do this?
The frequent answer to this question is contained in the proverb, "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." No doubt this act was one of madness, and no doubt it was providential. But Providence works not by direct interference, but by maintaining the laws of cause and effect. Why did they become so mad? Why this supreme folly of relinquishing actual enormous power, in order to set their lives and fortunes on the hazard of a die?
It seems to be the doom of all vaulting ambition to overleap itself, and to fall on the other side. When Macbeth had gained all his ends, when he had become Thane of Cawdor and Glamis, and king, he had no peace, because the succession had been promised to Banquo:—