Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

NOMINATION OF JAMES BUCHANAN.

With Houston impracticable, other Southern candidates purposely withheld, and all the Northern candidates in Congress or of the administration disabled, the necessity of the situation pointed to one man. The Democratic managers in whose hands the power lay were not long in descrying him. Mr. Buchanan had gone to England as minister directly after the inauguration of Pierce. He had been absent from the country during all the troubles and the blunders of the Democracy, and never before was an alibi so potential in acquitting a man of actual or imputed guilt. He had been a candidate for the Presidency ever since 1844, but had not shown much strength. He was originally a Federalist. He was somewhat cold in temperament and austere in manners, but of upright character and blameless life. He lacked the affability of Cass, the gracious heartiness of Pierce, the bluff cordiality of Douglas. But he was a man of ability, and had held high rank as a senator and as secretary of State. Above all he had never given a vote offensive to the South. Indeed, his Virginia friend, Henry A. Wise, boasted that his record was as spotless as that of Calhoun.

Buchanan's hour had come. He was a necessity to the South, a necessity to his party; and against the combined force of all the ambitious men who sought the place, he was nominated. But he had a severe struggle. President Pierce and Senator Douglas each made a persistent effort. On the first ballot Buchanan received 135 votes, Pierce 122, Douglas 33. Through sixteen ballots the contest was stubbornly maintained, Buchanan gaining steadily but slowly. Pierce was at last withdrawn, and the convention gave Buchanan 168, Douglas 121. No further resistance was made, and, amid acclamation and rejoicing, Buchanan was declared to be the unanimous choice of the convention. Major John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, a young man of popularity and promise, was nominated for the Vice- Presidency.

Before the nomination of Buchanan and Breckinridge another Presidential ticket had been placed in the field. The pro-slavery section of the American party and the ghastly remnant of the Whigs had presented Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency, and had associated with him Andrew Jackson Donelson of Tennessee as candidate for the Vice-Presidency. On the engrossing question of the day Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Fillmore did not represent antagonistic ideas, and between them there could be no contest to arouse enthusiasm or even to enlist interest in the North. The movement for Fillmore afforded a convenient shelter for that large class of men who had not yet made up their minds as to the real issue of slavery extension or slavery prohibition.

The Republican party had meanwhile been organizing and consolidating. During the years 1854 and 1855 it had acquired control of the governments in a majority of the free States, and it promptly called a national convention to meet in Philadelphia in June, 1856. The Democracy saw at once that a new and dangerous opponent was in the field,—an opponent that stood upon principle and shunned expediency, that brought to its standard a great host of young men, and that won to its service a very large proportion of the talent, the courage, and the eloquence of the North. The convention met for a purpose and it spoke boldly. It accepted the issue as presented by the men of the South, and it offered no compromise. In its ranks were all shades of anti-slavery opinion,—the patient Abolitionist, the Free-Soiler of the Buffalo platform, the Democrats who had supported the Wilmot Proviso, the Whigs who had followed Seward.

NOMINATION OF JOHN C. FRÉMONT.

There was no strife about candidates. Mr. Seward was the recognized head of the party, but he did not desire the nomination. He agreed with his faithful mentor, Thurlow Weed, that his time had not come, and that his sphere of duty was still in the Senate. Salmon P. Chase was Governor of Ohio, waiting re-election to the Senate, and, like Seward, not anxious for a nomination where election was regarded as improbable if not impossible. The more conservative and timid section of the party advocated the nomination of Judge McLean of the Supreme Court, who for many years had enjoyed a shadowy mention for the Presidency in Whig journals of a certain type. But Judge McLean was old and the Republican party was young. He belonged to the past, the party was looking to the future. It demanded a more energetic and attractive candidate, and John C. Frémont was chosen on the first ballot. He was forty-three years of age, with a creditable record in the Regular Army, and wide fame as a scientific explorer in the Western mountain ranges, then the terra incognita of the continent. He was a native of South Carolina, and had married the brilliant and accomplished daughter of Colonel Benton. Always a member of the Democratic party, he was so closely identified with the early settlement of California that he was elected one of her first senators. To the tinge of romance in his history were added the attractions of a winning address and an auspicious name.

The movement in his behalf had been quietly and effectively organized for several months preceding the convention. It had been essentially aided if not indeed originated by the elder Francis P. Blair, who had the skill derived from long experience in political management. Mr. Blair was a devoted friend of Benton, had been intimate with Jackson, and intensely hostile to Calhoun. As editor of the Globe, he had exercised wide influence during the Presidential terms of Jackson and Van Buren, but when Polk was inaugurated he was supplanted in administration confidence by Thomas Ritchie of the State-rights' school, who was brought from Virginia to found another paper. Mr. Blair was a firm Union man, and, though he had never formally withdrawn from the Democratic party, he was now ready to leave it because of the Disunion tendencies of its Southern leaders. He was a valuable friend to Frémont, and gave to him the full advantage of his experience and his sagacity.

William L. Dayton of New Jersey, who had served with distinction in the Senate, was selected for the Vice-Presidency. His principal competitor in the only ballot which was taken was Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. This was the first time that Mr. Lincoln was conspicuously named outside of his own State. He had been a member of the Thirtieth Congress, 1847-9, but being a modest man he had so little forced himself into notice that when his name was proposed for Vice-President, inquiries as to who he was were heard from all parts of the convention.

The principles enunciated by the Democratic and Republican parties on the slavery question formed the only subject for discussion during the canvass in the free States. From the beginning no doubt was expressed that Mr. Buchanan would find the South practically consolidated in his favor. Electoral tickets for Frémont were not presented in the slave States, and Fillmore's support in that section was weakened by his obvious inability to carry any of the free States. The canvass, therefore, rapidly narrowed to a contest between Buchanan and Frémont in the North. The Republican Convention had declared it to be "both the right and imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism,— polygamy and slavery." The Democratic Convention had presented a very elaborate and exhaustive series of resolutions touching the slavery question. They indorsed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and recognized the "right of the people of all the territories to form a constitution with or without domestic slavery." The resolution was artfully constructed. Read in one way it gave to the people of the Territories the right to determine the question for themselves. It thus upheld the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" which Mr. Douglas had announced as the very spirit of the Act organizing Kansas and Nebraska. A closer analysis of the Democratic declaration, however, showed that this "popular sovereignty" was not to be exercised until the people of the Territory were sufficiently numerous to form a State constitution and apply for admission to the Union, and that meanwhile in all the Territories the slave- holder had the right to settle and to be protected in the possession of his peculiar species of property. In fine, the Republicans declared in plain terms that slavery should by positive law of the nation be excluded from the Territories. The Democrats flatly opposed the doctrine of Congressional prohibition, but left a margin for doubt as to the true construction of the Constitution, and of the Act repealing the Missouri Compromise, thus enabling their partisans to present one issue in the North, and another in the South.